holy ****ing **** ted hoppe!!!

[Paul Pless]

If I lived like her I'd be dead a long time ago.

so your dad's genes lead to extraordinarily bad health outcomes?

[John Smith]

People know better and make choices. Driving 55 reduces greenhouse gas and helps the air quality. Any takers?

Smaller cars do this and go 65 or 70

[John Smith]

I lost a good chunk of weight by not eating bread.

Since the wife died, I've not been so good and likely put a few back on, but hopefully I'll get back into that habit

[Ted Hoppe]

I have to agree with you. My mother is 102 and healthy; still goes up & down the stairs to her bedroom in the house she was born in. She eats too many sweets, oversalts everything else, 2 big glasses of wine in the evening, dislikes most fruits, and indifferent to vegetables. Never did any structured exercise though she tries to be active. Avoids the doctor, takes no medications.

If I lived like her I'd be dead a long time ago.

Classic. she also grew up and lived most of her life on real food, likely did not drink contaminated petrochemical water, had fresh, less toxic air to breathe. You living on the coast now bodes well to your future.

[Keith Wilson]

. . . had fresh, less toxic air to breathe.

Age 102, born in 1920? Not if she lived in a town or city; air quality in most even moderately urban places was FAR worse than it is now. Coal-heated houses, industry that dumped whatever they liked out the smokestack, cars with zero pollution controls, lead in gasoline; I could go on for days.

[Paul Pless]

not so fast ted

when was silent spring published? when were the clean air and clean water acts signed into law and as a response to what? when was the epa made a cabinet level agency? when did the cuyahoga catch on fire? when was lead removed from gasoline? when and why does carb exist? why was ddt banned? when did pbb's and dairy products become an issue and when was the last time there was a real concern over ingesting pbb's in anything but wild caught riverine fish?

[Paul Pless]

cross post with the esteem-able and ever reasonable mister wilson

[bluedog225]

Dead tomorrow or not, I eat healthier than most can imagine. I feel better than I have a right to. Joints are tolerable. Lung capacity good. Cancer is almost certainly inbound (both parents) but I’ll give it a good run.

[Keith Wilson]

As I said, we could go on for days. If you lived in the country in pre-industrial times, the air you breathed was clean (except in your hut, where the wood or coal fires used for heating and cooking made it pretty crunchy). The water, well, maybe; depends on what the upstream villagers were doing and the location of your neighbor's outhouse relative to your well. The food - what's a 'microorganism', again, anyway? And if you didn't die being born, or of smallpox or plague or cholera or diphtheria or typhoid or famine or measles or polio or mumps or rubella or whooping cough or pellagra or any other of a dozen diseases that are mostly unknown now, you might live to the ripe old age of sixty or so, maybe a bit longer. Average life expectancy has been in the high 20s or low 30s for most of our species' history until very recently.

[Too Little Time]

Age 102, born in 1920? Not if she lived in a town or city; air quality in most even moderately urban places was FAR worse than it is now. Coal-heated houses, industry that dumped whatever they liked out the smokestack, cars with zero pollution controls, lead in gasoline; I could go on for days.

My mother-in-law died in her late 90's and was born around then. Lived near Detroit and was married to a smoker. The smoker died in his 70s.

My mother died in her early 90's. Similar birth time. Lived near Detroit and married a smoker. The smoker, also a factory worker, died in his early 60's from issues related to WW2.

I think there is a much greater correlation to poverty than general environmental issues. And there are current charts. There might be historical charts as well. But the graph shows expectations not individual results.



There is a nice chart, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_e...ina_Russia.png , showing how China's life expectancy has changed over the last 60 years. The population has become richer. Indicating that economic effects are a large factor.

[Jack Loudon]

Classic. she also grew up and lived most of her life on real food, likely did not drink contaminated petrochemical water, had fresh, less toxic air to breathe. You living on the coast now bodes well to your future.

All that is true, she grew up (and still lives on) an apple orchard 10-15 miles inland from the Sonoma County CA coast with well water and (then) home grown or locally-sourced food. The orchard though, was sprayed with sulfur and whatever else was available in the 1920s-30s, not all of it benign. It's been an organic orchard for the past 30 years or so, which means wormy scabby apples

She's outlived her brothers, husband, and cousins, all of whom grew up in similar circumstances. So a win for DNA with an assist from the pre-WW2 environment, I think.

[Jack Loudon]

so your dad's genes lead to extraordinarily bad health outcomes?

I was exaggerating slightly - he made it to 88. Not too shabby, but a fair distance from 102.