The medications that change who we are

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

90. I suspect my excellent health is a combination of good genes

and having been exposed to many things that built up my immune system. I was sick A LOT as a young child, and then abruptly stopped getting sick very often at all. I continued to have the usual colds, and occasional flu or flu-like illness through my twenties.

There's also an attitude aspect. I don't think of myself as old, and I don't act old. Most people, when they find out how old I really am, are shocked. They think I'm at least a decade younger. And this is even though I have gray hair. Mind set matters.

I've never smoked. I do drink. I eat reasonably well. I do a lot of cooking from scratch. I eat meat. I almost never have a soft drink. I gave them up nearly thirty years ago, and I honestly wonder if that isn't important. Diet soft drinks are especially bad for you.

Smoking is so far and away the worst thing a person can do, and too many people, especially smokers, don't get it. Nice that your FIL apparently didn't suffer adverse effects from smoking. But no one should take that chance. My older sister smoked starting at age 13. A while back, when we were both in our 50's, someone was utterly astonished to learn that we were only 18 months apart. By then she looked at least a decade older. Plus, she had cardiac problems and continued to smoke. She died almost three years ago, and the last several years of her life were miserable. She was in and out of hospital. She'd had coronary bypass surgery, which finally got her to mostly quit smoking.

I'm simply not that concerned about my cholesterol. The connection between it and bad things simply isn't well demonstrated. Plus, the side effects can be meaningful.