Thu, Apr-26-18, 18:33
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Senior Member
Posts: 6,498
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Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165
BF:
Progress: 5%
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by bluesinger
When I was 16 my mother was diagnosed with cancer of the lymph system, had chemo and went into remission. When I was six and she had my brother, he was too large for her tiny body and I remember hearing the treatment was to "pack her with radium." Shudder! Is that why she got cancer? Who knows.
Mother went on to have multiple strokes, a heart condition, and epileptic seizures. She was on many, many drugs for many years, but lived until just shy of 90.
My father died of some sort of dementia when he was 80.
I come from hardy stock and will not be surprised to live until I'm at least 100. Will it be a life worth having? Only time will tell. But I have good genes.
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In that movie, when the elders said they used to die of old age, it means they all have good genes even today, even as they went through the infectious diseases and chronic diseases eras. I prefer to think we all have good genes, as good as any, but those good genes get ruined by 50-70 years of eating crap.
The car analogy. Two identical cars, pretty good to begin with. One gets the best gasoline, best maintenance, parts, tires, you name it. The other, none of that, it's all the cheapest and lowest quality. They're identical to begin with, they're as good as it gets, but the one with the best maintenance makes it to a million miles over 40 years, the other goes to the dump after only a few years and not even 100k miles.
For us humans, the economy of best maintenance is different. It's not really more expensive to take care of ourselves, especially when we consider how much it costs to fix us when we do get sick with all those chronic diseases. Think about it. The elders in that movie, was it expensive for their grandparents to take care of themselves well enough to eventually die of old age? But then, for a car that goes to the dump every 100k miles instead of making it to a million, we'd need to buy 10x cars to match that kind of longevity. But then again, we only got one body each.
We can make cars that last a million miles and beyond. But we can't make cars that tolerate the cheapest and lowest quality maintenance. Nor can we make that kind of human either.
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