7 ms·

What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

53 points by gits1225 4y ago

VLM 4y ago
Generally life extension runs up against three non-technical problems: Addicts will fight VERY hard in support of their addiction. Try telling a life long sugar addict to fix their T2 diabetes by eating fewer carbs; they'll completely explode at you. People who die from smoking were usually told about a million times to quit smoking before their diagnosis, LOL. Innumerate people seem to actively oppose statistics. There is only it works or it doesn't and they'll have a complete meltdown at the concept that maybe 80% of lung cancer is caused by smoking and 20% for other causes therefore there is nothing they can do to alter their pre-determined destiny. Arguably belief in predestination and/or innumeracy could be considered a mental illness (see below) but I'm specifically referencing the stubborn desire to beat the odds by ignoring the odds. (edited to emphasize, the type of thing I'm referring to is the aggressive proselytization of the idea that finding one counterexample or anecdote disproves the entire corpus of all theoretical and applied statistical mathematics) Most people decline and die younger for some kind of psychological reason. They're depressed so they can't do anything so they can't exercise so they get fat and die of a heart attack, they did in a certain technical sense die because they were fat, but they got fat because they were depressed. Or they have an addiction problem. Or they follow quacks because they think if martyrdom is religiously superior then punishing themselves is superior even if it shortens their life, or they follow medical advice based mostly upon making money off prescriptions, or they follow medical advice that was proven obsolete via research last century, or they are so into collectivism and "fitting in" that they would literally rather die than think for themselves or read a book, whatever the TV (or social media) says is not just good enough, but should be forced on people, even if it kills them.
bovermyer 4y ago
This is inspiring. I think tonight I'll go for a bike ride instead of drinking and playing video games.
- paulcole 4y ago
  Do you enjoy bike riding?
  - bovermyer 4y ago
    I do, actually.
- eesmith 4y ago
  One data point isn't that useful. > At age 111, America's oldest veteran is still smoking cigars, drinking whiskey and loving life > Richard Overton smokes 12 cigars a day, eats grits for breakfast and spends his days on the front porch of his Austin home. https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/2017/06/02/at-age-111-america-s-oldest-veteran-is-still-smoking-cigars-drinking-whiskey-and-loving-life/ https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/2017/06/02/at-...
  - bovermyer 4y ago
    From a scientific perspective, no. But from a motivational perspective, it is.
    - fezfight 4y ago
      Bike rides are nice (maybe the best?) but not everyone is the same. My mother in law is awaiting hip surgery after a lifetime of being physically active. Her husband, who lived the same life, is older, has no such problems. Of course genetics plays a part, that's the point.
  - awillen 4y ago
    You're clearly wrong as it relates to the post you're responding to. This one data point is going to get him to engage in a behavior that's healthier than the one he otherwise would've been engaged in, which is clearly good. Thus, the data point is useful! Not everything his to be a double blind study showing significant effects to be useful.
michaelmcdonald 4y ago
> Dad has no patience for those who say your healthspan is predetermined. At 80 he has no memory issues, no aches, no pains, no depression. The author's father is apparently blessed with no genetic predisposition for memory/cognitive disorders, degenerative physical disease, etc... Everybody is different. What works for the author's father may not work for everybody else. Take the above article with a grain of salt.
- awillen 4y ago
  Yeah, that's covered very clearly in the article: "Dad’s been generous to share what he does each day with us all. But let me be clear: all of the standard caveats apply to his approach. This is NOT necessarily a prescription for a healthy life."
lqet 4y ago
Anecdotally, most of my family members who actively tried to stay healthy died relatively early (< 70 years). Those who didn't usually lived to be at least 85. My grandfather, who never did any type of sports, ate meat every day, who came home after worked and watched TV until bedtime and who drank 1-2 liters of cider per day after retirement died at 92 and was completely healthy up until a few hours before his death.
- perth 4y ago
  Funnily enough the “ate meat every day” part might be the key. Red meat boosts testosterone and testosterone plays a big role in mens health, especially as they age and experience the natural drop in testosterone levels.
  - jfabre 4y ago
    People literally think that eating meat is unhealthy nowadays. While they don't restrain themselves on carbs and sugar whatsoever. Then you wonder why people are so confused and think being healthy is like winning a lottery ticket.
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    Well, off-the-cuff guessing like this is why nutrition is plagued with superstitions. You can easily look up what the oldest living populations eat.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    > Red meat boosts testosterone Citation needed?
- cma 4y ago
  Exercise doesn't really improve lifespan in rats, beyond enough to not be completely sedentary.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Most of us are more concerned with improving healthspan rather than lifespan. And I think those rat studies are mostly useless. Lab rats live in nice safe flat cages where they don't have to worry about falling down the stairs and breaking a hip. Whereas sarcopenia is a huge risk for elderly humans.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
avgDev 4y ago
This is survivorship bias at its finest. What his father is experiencing is luck mixed with good genetics. Plus, additional support of good diet and exercise. Yes, we all can control our diets and exercise. However, we cannot control the medication that we take, which carry side effects. We cannot control what is in our food, we cannot control the air we breath, we cannot control cancer and hundreds other diseases. There are so MANY other factors. If his father grew up somewhere where lead is a problem, I have a feeling the outcome might have been different. The whole article is useless. My grandfather was an awful person, smoked all his life, drank most of it, and ate whatever he could. Lived to 78 and was healthy, at that point he committed suicide as he could not live without his wife, which passed away few months earlier. Ironically he was an awful husband. This is all anecdotal and useless.
- methehack 4y ago
  Nonsense. No one is trying to establish a causal link here. Still, a concrete example of what's possible is useful and inspirational. If you do this, will you get this outcome? Probably not. Does it help me imagine a possible path? Yes, definitely.
  - avgDev 4y ago
    So, if the article mentioned {insert product name}, doing mushrooms, drinking and smoking, should I look at it as a possible path for me to achieve great health? Even though all it is, is just some survivorship bias? Should I think about doing those things? Am I wrong for not doing those things?
    - ericmcer 4y ago
      Yeah it’s anecdotal but there are statistics backing up most of what is said here. We know diet and exercise play a positive role, we know drinking and smoking play a negative one and we know there are outliers. It’s probably best to assume you aren’t one.
- mandeepj 4y ago
  > However, we cannot control the medication that we take, which carry side effects. >We cannot control what is in our food, we cannot control the air we breath, we cannot control cancer and hundreds other diseases. Seriously? The answer to all of the above - Yes, we can!
brianwawok 4y ago
> His resting heart rate is just below 60 beats per minute. The steps pushed it up to 155 beats per minute. (His maximum heart rate should be 220 minus his age, 80. That’s only 140 beats per minute — far below what he is capable of!) Sorry, that's not how this works. 220 - age is a very crude and not very good guess at the heart rate for a population. It is not YOUR max heart rate, and your max heart rate being higher or lower than that is not a sign of health. It is likely just a sign of your particular heart. It's worth checking in on it every few years and knowing yours. On the other hand, resting heart rate of under 60 is good. Under 50 is likely better.
- outworlder 4y ago
  > On the other hand, resting heart rate of under 60 is good. Under 50 is likely better. At which point does that becomes bradycardia and a sign of a health problem? My understanding is that, unless you are an athlete, your resting heart rate won't be that low (as in, < 50)
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    Right, I think it depends on activity level. Couch potatoe and 45? You may have a health problem. Cardio athlete and 45? Likely means you are in good shape. My own resting heart rate varies from low 40s when I am in good shape (trained for a marathon) to near 60 when I am not (currently recovering from having a newborn). I did need an EKG once, and the dr raised an eyebrow at my heart rate, but upon hearing I was a runner he was fine again.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  > On the other hand, resting heart rate of under 60 is good. Under 50 is likely better. Not true in the general case. Asymptomatic bradycardia without increased risk of death may be present in athletes but assuming that's always the case can be dangerous. Other causes include a number of heart diseases, hypothyroidism, sleep apnea, medications such as betablockers...
terran57 4y ago
While staying active and eating healthy are very important contributors to a longer life, it seems one also needs to have a healthy social life and sense of purpose to foster the will to live longer.
neogodless 4y ago
If you work backwards from what kills people, you can theoretically work out what will improve your chances. In the elderly, heart disease and a rapid decline in health after a broken hip are high on the list of events that lead to death. So keeping the cardiovascular system healthy, and strengthening the muscles that support balance and reduce injuries make sense. Strength training and a sufficient, consistent amount of exertion each week make sense. They do not, of course, guarantee you'll never have a genetic condition, or some other unfortunate incident. That's not how biology and bodies work. But it does help prepare you as you age. Diet seems much trickier, because dietary needs do vary somewhat depending on your specific body! The hacker approach of experimenting (and journaling) and figuring out what leaves you feeling healthy and energetic is what I'd recommend to anyone who cares! So write it off as "yet another" anecdote if you please. But also consider whether these ideas are good for your quality of life, and if they are a trade-off worth making.
- dugmartin 4y ago
  I would add general weight bearing exercises to your list to prevent osteoporosis: https://www.bones.nih.gov/health-info/bone/bone-health/exercise/exercise-your-bone-health https://www.bones.nih.gov/health-info/bone/bone-health/exerc...
- outworlder 4y ago
  > broken hip > and strengthening the muscles that support balance and reduce injuries make sense. Unclear how stronger muscles prevent broken hips. It's the bone that breaks. I've read a comment from a nurse that was pretty interesting. She said that people say that 'someone fell and broke a hip'. While in reality it the more common scenario is: 'someone's hip broke, and due to that, they fell'.
Insanity 4y ago
A healthy lifestyle definitely helps, and some genetic luck. My grandfather recently passed away unexpectedly at age 88. He was working in the garden daily or going for walks / riding a bike. He had a more active social life than I did before COVID hit. He read daily, did crossword puzzles at night, and ate healthy. No mental or physical issues. Lifestyle plays a role, but he was dealt good cards genetically as well which I am aware of.
ejb999 4y ago
My grandfather is 88, he has definitely slowed down quite a bit lately, but his recipe for a long-life was 2-3 packs of cigarettes a day, alcoholic for most of his adult life, rarely slept more than 4 hours a day and I never ever, saw him eat a vegetable or break a sweat from exercise in my entire life. I figure if I got just some of those genes, and since I never smoked, not an alcoholic and eat pretty well, I should live to be 150 or so - either that or he will be a pall-bearer at my funeral.
- abdusco 4y ago
  > pallbearer (n): a person helping to carry or officially escorting a coffin at a funeral. TIL. As a non-native speaker, I've never seen it written and always heard it like "pole bearer", which kinda makes sense: horizontal poles under a coffin.
  - kbutler 4y ago
    Eggcorn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn In linguistics, an eggcorn is an alteration of a phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements,[1] creating a new phrase having a different meaning from the original but which still makes sense and is plausible when used in the same context.
gotrythis 4y ago
My father is 84. Never ate junk food, never smoked, never drank. He plays pickle ball four hours every day and kicks my ass when we play. Also plays volleyball and goes for long walks daily. In his 80's, he's in better shape and has a better life than I do at 51.
- chasd00 4y ago
  my father is the same way, he kills it in pickle ball and is a minor celebrity in Florida. He's always been at least somewhat active for as long as i can remember and probably in better health than i am.
suryong 4y ago
What we really need is robust treatments that either slow down the ageing process or reverse it to some extent. There is some promising research relating to both slowing and reversing. The current approach where we treat age related disease as individual things will never really work out in the long term One thing right now that is available is rapamycin which basically improves health span and lifespan for every animal it is given, won't make you live to 150 but will probably reduce risk of disease. I am considering starting rapamycin myself as my mom was diagnosed with ALS few months ago (doesn't seem strictly genetic as her mom and dad lived relatively long and didn't get that disease), so I might have some risk genes.. World where people live to 90-100 and where increasing amount have dementia or other age related disease won't be a nice place
- eesmith 4y ago
  > One thing right now that is available is rapamycin which basically improves health span and lifespan for every animal it is given Note every animal. Quoting https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11357-020-00274-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11357-020-00274-1: ] Although the overwhelming majority of studies on the effect of rapamycin on longevity in mice have shown a significant increase in lifespan, there are five studies that have reported either no effect or reduced lifespan when treated with rapamycin. When you write "every animal it is given" .. do you mean only flies and mice? I've been having a hard time finding results for any other animals. There's a decade of research with marmosets (here's a 2012 mention about it in Nature - https://www.nature.com/articles/492S18a https://www.nature.com/articles/492S18a ), but none of the papers I find report lifespan, only secondary measures (eg, "Long-term treatment with the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin has minor effect on clinical laboratory markers in middle-aged marmosets" - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.22927 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.22927 ). Since marmosets live for about 15 to 16 years, surely there should be something concrete by now if it has the same effect on middle-aged marmosets when the research started. I found there's research for dogs, but https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507265/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507265/ says it's also ongoing. I haven't found any published results on lifespan only, again, on secondary effects (eg, quoting the paper, "An initial randomized, double-blind veterinary clinical trial confirmed the safety of this treatment and provided indications of potential efficacy (benefits for cardiac function) in dogs".) What other animals have shown improved lifespan with rapamycin? If it's only flies and (most) mice, is that really enough to call it "promising" in humans?
paulpauper 4y ago
And this fall, in Africa, I got to see him in action again. Over 16 days of “go, go, go,” my dad, who’s now 80, always seemed to be at the head of the pack. On most days we started at 6 a.m., crisscrossing the dry Serengeti, or climbing rugged rainforest terrain for hours before returning to our home base, where we ate and drank late into the night. We climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and traversed deserts. Dad was right there the whole time, pushing us all to our limits. This sounds like superior genes more so than lifestyle . Some people's bodies give out earlier in life...stuff like heart disease, stoke, cancer, hypertension which may or may not be related to lifestyle.
Avlin67 4y ago
you NEED to exercise YOUNG to BENEFIT when OLD exercise at 80 if you never did before is not optimal My two grandfathers never went to the gym yet strong physic and mind. One died in his garden, the other one died while stone cutting. Both 80+, no any supplements whatsoever
steve_john 4y ago
Best and Healthy diet and better sleep
Markoff 4y ago
stay away from social media and watch news max 10 minutes a day

53 points by gits1225 4y ago

VLM 4y ago

Generally life extension runs up against three non-technical problems: Addicts will fight VERY hard in support of their addiction. Try telling a life long sugar addict to fix their T2 diabetes by eating fewer carbs; they'll completely explode at you. People who die from smoking were usually told about a million times to quit smoking before their diagnosis, LOL. Innumerate people seem to actively oppose statistics. There is only it works or it doesn't and they'll have a complete meltdown at the concept that maybe 80% of lung cancer is caused by smoking and 20% for other causes therefore there is nothing they can do to alter their pre-determined destiny. Arguably belief in predestination and/or innumeracy could be considered a mental illness (see below) but I'm specifically referencing the stubborn desire to beat the odds by ignoring the odds. (edited to emphasize, the type of thing I'm referring to is the aggressive proselytization of the idea that finding one counterexample or anecdote disproves the entire corpus of all theoretical and applied statistical mathematics) Most people decline and die younger for some kind of psychological reason. They're depressed so they can't do anything so they can't exercise so they get fat and die of a heart attack, they did in a certain technical sense die because they were fat, but they got fat because they were depressed. Or they have an addiction problem. Or they follow quacks because they think if martyrdom is religiously superior then punishing themselves is superior even if it shortens their life, or they follow medical advice based mostly upon making money off prescriptions, or they follow medical advice that was proven obsolete via research last century, or they are so into collectivism and "fitting in" that they would literally rather die than think for themselves or read a book, whatever the TV (or social media) says is not just good enough, but should be forced on people, even if it kills them.

bovermyer 4y ago

This is inspiring. I think tonight I'll go for a bike ride instead of drinking and playing video games.

paulcole 4y ago
Do you enjoy bike riding?
- bovermyer 4y ago
  I do, actually.
eesmith 4y ago
One data point isn't that useful. > At age 111, America's oldest veteran is still smoking cigars, drinking whiskey and loving life > Richard Overton smokes 12 cigars a day, eats grits for breakfast and spends his days on the front porch of his Austin home. https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/2017/06/02/at-age-111-america-s-oldest-veteran-is-still-smoking-cigars-drinking-whiskey-and-loving-life/ https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/2017/06/02/at-...
- bovermyer 4y ago
  From a scientific perspective, no. But from a motivational perspective, it is.
  - fezfight 4y ago
    Bike rides are nice (maybe the best?) but not everyone is the same. My mother in law is awaiting hip surgery after a lifetime of being physically active. Her husband, who lived the same life, is older, has no such problems. Of course genetics plays a part, that's the point.
- awillen 4y ago
  You're clearly wrong as it relates to the post you're responding to. This one data point is going to get him to engage in a behavior that's healthier than the one he otherwise would've been engaged in, which is clearly good. Thus, the data point is useful! Not everything his to be a double blind study showing significant effects to be useful.

michaelmcdonald 4y ago

> Dad has no patience for those who say your healthspan is predetermined. At 80 he has no memory issues, no aches, no pains, no depression. The author's father is apparently blessed with no genetic predisposition for memory/cognitive disorders, degenerative physical disease, etc... Everybody is different. What works for the author's father may not work for everybody else. Take the above article with a grain of salt.

awillen 4y ago
Yeah, that's covered very clearly in the article: "Dad’s been generous to share what he does each day with us all. But let me be clear: all of the standard caveats apply to his approach. This is NOT necessarily a prescription for a healthy life."

lqet 4y ago

Anecdotally, most of my family members who actively tried to stay healthy died relatively early (< 70 years). Those who didn't usually lived to be at least 85. My grandfather, who never did any type of sports, ate meat every day, who came home after worked and watched TV until bedtime and who drank 1-2 liters of cider per day after retirement died at 92 and was completely healthy up until a few hours before his death.

perth 4y ago
Funnily enough the “ate meat every day” part might be the key. Red meat boosts testosterone and testosterone plays a big role in mens health, especially as they age and experience the natural drop in testosterone levels.
- jfabre 4y ago
  People literally think that eating meat is unhealthy nowadays. While they don't restrain themselves on carbs and sugar whatsoever. Then you wonder why people are so confused and think being healthy is like winning a lottery ticket.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  Well, off-the-cuff guessing like this is why nutrition is plagued with superstitions. You can easily look up what the oldest living populations eat.
- outworlder 4y ago
  > Red meat boosts testosterone Citation needed?
cma 4y ago
Exercise doesn't really improve lifespan in rats, beyond enough to not be completely sedentary.
- nradov 4y ago
  Most of us are more concerned with improving healthspan rather than lifespan. And I think those rat studies are mostly useless. Lab rats live in nice safe flat cages where they don't have to worry about falling down the stairs and breaking a hip. Whereas sarcopenia is a huge risk for elderly humans.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

avgDev 4y ago

This is survivorship bias at its finest. What his father is experiencing is luck mixed with good genetics. Plus, additional support of good diet and exercise. Yes, we all can control our diets and exercise. However, we cannot control the medication that we take, which carry side effects. We cannot control what is in our food, we cannot control the air we breath, we cannot control cancer and hundreds other diseases. There are so MANY other factors. If his father grew up somewhere where lead is a problem, I have a feeling the outcome might have been different. The whole article is useless. My grandfather was an awful person, smoked all his life, drank most of it, and ate whatever he could. Lived to 78 and was healthy, at that point he committed suicide as he could not live without his wife, which passed away few months earlier. Ironically he was an awful husband. This is all anecdotal and useless.

methehack 4y ago
Nonsense. No one is trying to establish a causal link here. Still, a concrete example of what's possible is useful and inspirational. If you do this, will you get this outcome? Probably not. Does it help me imagine a possible path? Yes, definitely.
- avgDev 4y ago
  So, if the article mentioned {insert product name}, doing mushrooms, drinking and smoking, should I look at it as a possible path for me to achieve great health? Even though all it is, is just some survivorship bias? Should I think about doing those things? Am I wrong for not doing those things?
  - ericmcer 4y ago
    Yeah it’s anecdotal but there are statistics backing up most of what is said here. We know diet and exercise play a positive role, we know drinking and smoking play a negative one and we know there are outliers. It’s probably best to assume you aren’t one.
mandeepj 4y ago
> However, we cannot control the medication that we take, which carry side effects. >We cannot control what is in our food, we cannot control the air we breath, we cannot control cancer and hundreds other diseases. Seriously? The answer to all of the above - Yes, we can!

brianwawok 4y ago

> His resting heart rate is just below 60 beats per minute. The steps pushed it up to 155 beats per minute. (His maximum heart rate should be 220 minus his age, 80. That’s only 140 beats per minute — far below what he is capable of!) Sorry, that's not how this works. 220 - age is a very crude and not very good guess at the heart rate for a population. It is not YOUR max heart rate, and your max heart rate being higher or lower than that is not a sign of health. It is likely just a sign of your particular heart. It's worth checking in on it every few years and knowing yours. On the other hand, resting heart rate of under 60 is good. Under 50 is likely better.

outworlder 4y ago
> On the other hand, resting heart rate of under 60 is good. Under 50 is likely better. At which point does that becomes bradycardia and a sign of a health problem? My understanding is that, unless you are an athlete, your resting heart rate won't be that low (as in, < 50)
- brianwawok 4y ago
  Right, I think it depends on activity level. Couch potatoe and 45? You may have a health problem. Cardio athlete and 45? Likely means you are in good shape. My own resting heart rate varies from low 40s when I am in good shape (trained for a marathon) to near 60 when I am not (currently recovering from having a newborn). I did need an EKG once, and the dr raised an eyebrow at my heart rate, but upon hearing I was a runner he was fine again.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
> On the other hand, resting heart rate of under 60 is good. Under 50 is likely better. Not true in the general case. Asymptomatic bradycardia without increased risk of death may be present in athletes but assuming that's always the case can be dangerous. Other causes include a number of heart diseases, hypothyroidism, sleep apnea, medications such as betablockers...

terran57 4y ago

While staying active and eating healthy are very important contributors to a longer life, it seems one also needs to have a healthy social life and sense of purpose to foster the will to live longer.

neogodless 4y ago

If you work backwards from what kills people, you can theoretically work out what will improve your chances. In the elderly, heart disease and a rapid decline in health after a broken hip are high on the list of events that lead to death. So keeping the cardiovascular system healthy, and strengthening the muscles that support balance and reduce injuries make sense. Strength training and a sufficient, consistent amount of exertion each week make sense. They do not, of course, guarantee you'll never have a genetic condition, or some other unfortunate incident. That's not how biology and bodies work. But it does help prepare you as you age. Diet seems much trickier, because dietary needs do vary somewhat depending on your specific body! The hacker approach of experimenting (and journaling) and figuring out what leaves you feeling healthy and energetic is what I'd recommend to anyone who cares! So write it off as "yet another" anecdote if you please. But also consider whether these ideas are good for your quality of life, and if they are a trade-off worth making.

dugmartin 4y ago
I would add general weight bearing exercises to your list to prevent osteoporosis: https://www.bones.nih.gov/health-info/bone/bone-health/exercise/exercise-your-bone-health https://www.bones.nih.gov/health-info/bone/bone-health/exerc...
outworlder 4y ago
> broken hip > and strengthening the muscles that support balance and reduce injuries make sense. Unclear how stronger muscles prevent broken hips. It's the bone that breaks. I've read a comment from a nurse that was pretty interesting. She said that people say that 'someone fell and broke a hip'. While in reality it the more common scenario is: 'someone's hip broke, and due to that, they fell'.

Insanity 4y ago

A healthy lifestyle definitely helps, and some genetic luck. My grandfather recently passed away unexpectedly at age 88. He was working in the garden daily or going for walks / riding a bike. He had a more active social life than I did before COVID hit. He read daily, did crossword puzzles at night, and ate healthy. No mental or physical issues. Lifestyle plays a role, but he was dealt good cards genetically as well which I am aware of.

ejb999 4y ago

My grandfather is 88, he has definitely slowed down quite a bit lately, but his recipe for a long-life was 2-3 packs of cigarettes a day, alcoholic for most of his adult life, rarely slept more than 4 hours a day and I never ever, saw him eat a vegetable or break a sweat from exercise in my entire life. I figure if I got just some of those genes, and since I never smoked, not an alcoholic and eat pretty well, I should live to be 150 or so - either that or he will be a pall-bearer at my funeral.

abdusco 4y ago
> pallbearer (n): a person helping to carry or officially escorting a coffin at a funeral. TIL. As a non-native speaker, I've never seen it written and always heard it like "pole bearer", which kinda makes sense: horizontal poles under a coffin.
- kbutler 4y ago
  Eggcorn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn In linguistics, an eggcorn is an alteration of a phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements,[1] creating a new phrase having a different meaning from the original but which still makes sense and is plausible when used in the same context.

gotrythis 4y ago

My father is 84. Never ate junk food, never smoked, never drank. He plays pickle ball four hours every day and kicks my ass when we play. Also plays volleyball and goes for long walks daily. In his 80's, he's in better shape and has a better life than I do at 51.

chasd00 4y ago
my father is the same way, he kills it in pickle ball and is a minor celebrity in Florida. He's always been at least somewhat active for as long as i can remember and probably in better health than i am.

suryong 4y ago

What we really need is robust treatments that either slow down the ageing process or reverse it to some extent. There is some promising research relating to both slowing and reversing. The current approach where we treat age related disease as individual things will never really work out in the long term One thing right now that is available is rapamycin which basically improves health span and lifespan for every animal it is given, won't make you live to 150 but will probably reduce risk of disease. I am considering starting rapamycin myself as my mom was diagnosed with ALS few months ago (doesn't seem strictly genetic as her mom and dad lived relatively long and didn't get that disease), so I might have some risk genes.. World where people live to 90-100 and where increasing amount have dementia or other age related disease won't be a nice place

eesmith 4y ago
> One thing right now that is available is rapamycin which basically improves health span and lifespan for every animal it is given Note every animal. Quoting https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11357-020-00274-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11357-020-00274-1: ] Although the overwhelming majority of studies on the effect of rapamycin on longevity in mice have shown a significant increase in lifespan, there are five studies that have reported either no effect or reduced lifespan when treated with rapamycin. When you write "every animal it is given" .. do you mean only flies and mice? I've been having a hard time finding results for any other animals. There's a decade of research with marmosets (here's a 2012 mention about it in Nature - https://www.nature.com/articles/492S18a https://www.nature.com/articles/492S18a ), but none of the papers I find report lifespan, only secondary measures (eg, "Long-term treatment with the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin has minor effect on clinical laboratory markers in middle-aged marmosets" - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.22927 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.22927 ). Since marmosets live for about 15 to 16 years, surely there should be something concrete by now if it has the same effect on middle-aged marmosets when the research started. I found there's research for dogs, but https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507265/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8507265/ says it's also ongoing. I haven't found any published results on lifespan only, again, on secondary effects (eg, quoting the paper, "An initial randomized, double-blind veterinary clinical trial confirmed the safety of this treatment and provided indications of potential efficacy (benefits for cardiac function) in dogs".) What other animals have shown improved lifespan with rapamycin? If it's only flies and (most) mice, is that really enough to call it "promising" in humans?

paulpauper 4y ago

And this fall, in Africa, I got to see him in action again. Over 16 days of “go, go, go,” my dad, who’s now 80, always seemed to be at the head of the pack. On most days we started at 6 a.m., crisscrossing the dry Serengeti, or climbing rugged rainforest terrain for hours before returning to our home base, where we ate and drank late into the night. We climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and traversed deserts. Dad was right there the whole time, pushing us all to our limits. This sounds like superior genes more so than lifestyle . Some people's bodies give out earlier in life...stuff like heart disease, stoke, cancer, hypertension which may or may not be related to lifestyle.

Avlin67 4y ago

you NEED to exercise YOUNG to BENEFIT when OLD exercise at 80 if you never did before is not optimal My two grandfathers never went to the gym yet strong physic and mind. One died in his garden, the other one died while stone cutting. Both 80+, no any supplements whatsoever

steve_john 4y ago

Best and Healthy diet and better sleep

Markoff 4y ago

stay away from social media and watch news max 10 minutes a day