The men in my family don't have a consistent problem that leads to their demise.
Grampa on Mom's side was a diabetic who didn't bother changing what he ate all that much and a one-two blow of dementia and heart problems associated with that neglect got him. At 76 years old.
Great Grampa on Dad's side had his brain just quit. 85 years old.
Grampa on Dad's side got done in by undetected prostate cancer that had metastasized into his bones and further. 77 years old.
Dad is trucking along at 84 years old and nobody has told me about any health scares he's had. We don't talk.
Nobody really did the diet and exercise bit, but all of them remained active. Mom's dad probably should have watched what he ate though.
My dad's sister tells me that high cholesterol is a thing in the family and nothing really gets it under control and the women in the family have been making it to their 90's regular like.
My mom's mom's side of the family have all been fat, up to 'morbidly obese' and lived till 95-100 years old.
ReplyDeleteMy dad's dad's side of the family all did well and healthy and had widowmaker heart attacks, even though their hearts were supposedly healthy (old tech of course) and dropped DRT right there right then.
I vastly resemble my mom. Fat ass, moobs, fat belly and all. Totally out of shape according to all the fitness charts. Yet when I was in the SCA I was usually first in armor, last out of armor and enjoyed watching the young, fit people fall out while I was still going.
It's almost like... the health industry lies to us. That the body-mass index system is totally screwed up.
The most important fact here is that both BMI and the cholesterol legends are associations and not proven cause and effect. The whole cholesterol myth was started by Ancel Keyes in his famous "Seven Countries" study that actually started out with 23 countries but he picked the seven that looked like he wanted them to look. If any engineer had cherry-picked answers like that, we'd be in jail. The cholesterol myth has gotten several doctors and scientists investigating what's really going on and there are now books about it.
ReplyDeleteSame goes for BMI. Look up professional athletes, and lots of them have a BMI that's considered dangerous, but they're incredibly healthy. Body composition doesn't enter into BMI, just height and weight. That's like saying if you lose a leg and get a titanium prosthetic, you'll live longer than if you got one made of steel because it weighs less. Any support for the idea of BMI being important is just correlation.