Santa Delivered

ninnymary

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Everyone around you is watching. Your kids, friends, etc. Sometimes it takes time, like in years. One of my good friends had cancer 5 years ago. She had a rough time of it. Went into the hospital several times due to infections in her port. She was extremely overweight and over the course of her treatments lost 100lbs. I told her, "Let this weight loss be one good thing that has come out of this". "Please watch your weight from now on". Well she gained all those pounds back. A few months ago she started walking on the treadmill at the gym. She goes every day. She still looks the same but she is on the right track.

A few months ago my brother died of a heart attack at age 50. He was a heavy smoker, drinker, and didn't eat healthy. My husband says even healthy people die young and I agree. But I feel that if my brother had been living a healthier lifestyle that he would have had more years with us. Fifty is too young to die.

Mary
 

digitS'

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I hope it's okay, GWR, if I move this part from the post on your thread over here:

I was thinking about how people age and I bet if you asked most people who live to be 100 if they ever jogged, lifted weights and most didn't. My uncle lived to be 90. I know he could ride a bike at 80, but not with exercise clothes and racing, just for fun.

My father will be 99 this winter. In all sorts of ways, he isn't in very good health but he is nearly 100 years old.

He never really exercised altho I remember saying that when he was 80, he could (STILL) outwork me! He retired when he was 62 (just imagine, he has been retired for over 35 years ;).) He wasn't very happy in retirement and took a part-time job for about 18 months. He was working with horses, enjoying himself. He could just about set his own hours. Anyway, he developed some interests altho they didn't much include what he had said he'd be doing in retirement: fishing, hunting, camping, traveling ... and taking a nap every afternoon. Those first few months, that nap was all he was doing and it bothered him that he just couldn't get enough motivation to do anything else. Mostly, he began visiting with his buddies and being involved with other people's lives and that gave him motivation, not the recreation that he couldn't seem to be able to take seriously. Pipe dreams, you know. Kind of too bad but I, certainly, can understand.

Dad was a little overweight only when he was about 50 years. I remember that but Dad changed jobs about then and the new job must have been challenging enough that he lost that extra weight. I saw nothing new about his diet and, by the way, he quit smoking about then and still lost the weight ;).

Mom pretty much decided what Dad ate. She also decided that he would take vitamins and he sure did for probably 40 years. Mom lived into her 80's. You should know that her sisters mostly lived that long but not her brothers. Not Dad's siblings, either -- he was a middle child and has lived longer than the others. Only one of Dad's brothers made it to 80 altho his mother lived to be 90. So, you see - I attribute much of the reason for Dad's longevity to Mom taking good care of him ;). A good diet, little alcohol, getting away from tobacco, interest in others, some good genes, and luck ...

Steve
 
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Gardening with Rabbits

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Everyone around you is watching. Your kids, friends, etc. Sometimes it takes time, like in years. One of my good friends had cancer 5 years ago. She had a rough time of it. Went into the hospital several times due to infections in her port. She was extremely overweight and over the course of her treatments lost 100lbs. I told her, "Let this weight loss be one good thing that has come out of this". "Please watch your weight from now on". Well she gained all those pounds back. A few months ago she started walking on the treadmill at the gym. She goes every day. She still looks the same but she is on the right track.

A few months ago my brother died of a heart attack at age 50. He was a heavy smoker, drinker, and didn't eat healthy. My husband says even healthy people die young and I agree. But I feel that if my brother had been living a healthier lifestyle that he would have had more years with us. Fifty is too young to die.

Mary

My uncle the one that lived to be 90, his wife lost 100 pounds and gained it back a couple of times and ended up with heart failure and died long before he did. I am sorry about your brother. I cannot imagine losing my DB. My DB is 60, never smoked, does not drink, barely drinks coffee, vitamins, organic meat, etc. I am so glad and the difference between him and DH who is only 57 is night and day. DH smoked and drank all his life. Over the years he stopped the heavy drinking and drank beer, but still too much and the smoking until the day he was diagnosed with lung cancer. His mother is 82 and not a think wrong with her, but she never smoked or drank. His dad died at age 70 something and was looking 90 for 20 years, smoking and drinking and died of lung cancer. Fifty is way too young to die.
 

Gardening with Rabbits

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I hope it's okay, GWR, if I move this part from the post on your thread over here:



My father will be 99 this winter. In all sorts of ways, he isn't in very good health but he is nearly 100 years old.

Steve

How wonderful! It is so interesting to hear about older people and kind of frightening to see older people outliving their children. There is a woman at church who is in her 80s. She still gardens. There is no stopping her. She has outlived a lot of her children who have had chronic illnesses. Her husband was on the roof fixing it this fall and she raked the leaves and spread on the garden so she could be outside and keep an eye on him. I have 2 older men neighbors and both are about 70. One has lived in his house 40 years. No smoking. He works in his yard daily. I hear him at night splitting wood for his stove. The other man is from England. He has lived in his house a couple of years. I barely see him outside and when he is out he is smoking with a can of beer in his hand. He tried to have a garden and gave up. He looks at least 15 years older than the nonsmoking neighbor. I agree your mother kept your father healthy and the interest in others. They say the reason the people in Okinawa live so long is not just the food, light eating, less red meat, but their community involvement and spending time with friends and family. My mother lived to be almost 90. A lot of that was her relaxed personality, always interested in things, hard to get her upset. She was born in 1915 and only weighed 3 pounds. They said she would turn blue, but her grandmother would turn her on her side to get her to breathe. Her dad died when she was 3. Her mother was so young she let the grandmother adopt my mother and her baby sister. That grandmother died when my mother was 15. When she was about age 23 she went blind from infection from impacted colon and had to have emergency surgery. She married my dad who was also blind at the age of 39 and had me when 40 years of age and my brother the next year. My dad died when she was 70 and that is when DB and I started worrying about health and we started taking vitamins and eating better. My mother had a lot of allergies when younger and took a lot of sinus medicine. She started snoring in late 50s and they say that will cause right-sided heart failure and she did die from congestive heart failure. She did not get a lot of exercise being blind. She was not overweight.
 

seedcorn

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Not hi jack thread, everyone over 50 should get a colonoscopy. I watched my mom die of untreated colon cancer. It is a slow, PAINFUL death that has a very high recovery rate IF it is detected early.

You all are inspiring me to get off my posterior and lose my pouch.
 

ninnymary

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Well you sure changed the subject seedcorn, haha

Yes it's very important to get a colonoscopy. My mother had colon cancer so now I have to get one done every 5 years. It's really not as bad as you think.

Mary
 
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