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Comment by libraryatnight | Hacker News Reader

Do you find this to be true of many health related things as you get older? I know 80 year olds who do literally everything doctors say not to (red meat makes up most of their diet, they drink tons,they smoke or smoked for most of their lives, breakfast of 3 eggs and bacon almost every day) and then I've known people who didn't make it to 50 that looked like bruce lee and lived ultra healthy lives that managed to get lung cancer or pancreatic cancer.

It sometimes seems like life is just a game where you can min-max your stats if you want but RNG rules in the end.

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A lot of the people who take care of themselves are following bogus advice (though it is/was often considered the gold standard at the time they followed it - salt reduction is mostly harmful, many eggs/day are mostly helpful, etc)

So it’s really hard to draw any conclusion from these cases.

There has got to be some research group out there looking into this sort of phenomenon - people who take great care of themselves yet have lots of medical issues and on the other end of spectrum people who do little in the way of living healthily yet live to a very long age devoid of ailments. We've all seen this anecdotally, at least.

Do you think stress levels are a factor that typically go unstudied that play a part in these things?

Gut-brain connection? Just good genes?

The way we're all bombarded with all kinds of health-centric information of varying integrity these days one would think someone is studying this in a massive way with very large trials across varied populations.

On day its TMAO[1] in red meat the next day its something else. Surely someones studying all of this as a whole, right?

[1] Teasing Out the Role of Red Meat and TMAO in Cardiovascular Risk

https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/teasing-out-the-role-o...

I remember when someone wanted to study Ozzy Osborne as an example of someone who abused themselves but is pretty healthy (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/genetic-mutations-ozz...)

So I'd like to think someone is looking at the things you mention. Someone should study my wife's grandparents, BBQ and 7&7s are their way of life and they're as spry as can be

Right? Ha. My dad won't exercise, he says you see old guys working out and then they die of a heart attack. He would rather just relax. My grandfather had full denchers (age 94). Watching him brush his teeth in the sink and leaving them in a cup on the counter to soak/clean didn't seem half bad.

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