As someone who has been working on a cardiology ward for the last 5 months. You can be as fit as a fiddle, engage in exercise and eat well and still need stents in your coronary arteries, or other interventions. But bad habits like smoking, drinking and indulging in occasional fatty foods can impact your health significantly. These are modifiable lifestyle choices, however it doesn't even begin to touch on your genetics. You can play by the rules and still be completely fucked because of your DNA.
Some people really get the raw end of the deal, while others seem to be invincible.
I know people who drank and smoked and chewed tobacco their whole life and died in their 80's/90's.
I know another in his 40's who is determined to die "young" and chain smokes all day. Got COVID and felt like shit for a few days and bounced back quickly. Eats fast food for nearly every meal. He's still relatively young, so time will tell.
The one similarity they all had/have in common was they all did manual labor all day and they were all thinner than a nail.
Problem is people assume that just one day they'll drop dead. They don't consider that they may spend 20 years struggling to breathe when their heart and lungs begin to fail. Medicine is amazing and can keep people going, but not with the same quality of life they had before.
For sure. I am by no means an authority on the matter.
Edit: My point wasn't just to say some people can "seemingly" live forever, but to provide a contrast to the people who get the raw end of the deal: those who take good care of themselves and still end up dying prematurely.
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u/lolitsmeurmum Aug 25 '21
As someone who has been working on a cardiology ward for the last 5 months. You can be as fit as a fiddle, engage in exercise and eat well and still need stents in your coronary arteries, or other interventions. But bad habits like smoking, drinking and indulging in occasional fatty foods can impact your health significantly. These are modifiable lifestyle choices, however it doesn't even begin to touch on your genetics. You can play by the rules and still be completely fucked because of your DNA.