• cobysev@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’ve been extremely healthy all throughout my life. Although that could be thanks to all the vaccines I’ve had throughout childhood and the annual “needle-sticking” for 20 years in the military.

    If I get sick, it’s usually a minor cold, and I only get sick once every 5-6 years, if even that. I’ve had no major surgeries for issues with my internal organs or anything. Still have my appendix, still have my tonsils. The military did remove all 4 of my wisdom teeth, but only as a precaution, because they said over half of all adults will suffer complications with their wisdom teeth later in life if they’re not 100% straight. Oh, my teeth are straight too. Never needed braces or anything. But my wisdom teeth were slightly crooked; enough that the military decided to not take the risk.

    My family is also very healthy. My grandparents lived into their late 80s/90s and died of natural causes. Just went to bed and didn’t wake up in the morning. No alarming health concerns or surgeries, etc. My grandfather had a major heart attack once, only saved by my mother who was a certified CPR instructor for the Red Cross at the time. The doctors gave him maybe a few months to live. Just to spite them, he lived another decade, healthy as a horse the whole time.

    My dad just passed away a few months ago, in his late 70s, but it was Parkinson’s that took him down. He was so healthy otherwise, he would’ve lasted another decade or two easily. He never had so much as a heart palpitation; no stroke or heart attack, no major surgeries, etc. He almost never brushed his teeth, yet he still had all his original teeth. (Definitely got some dental work recently, though, to patch them up after 50+ years avoiding the dentist)

    My mother is still alive in her mid-70s and fully autonomous; living on her own in a cabin on a lake. Despite gray hair and a few subtle wrinkles, she still looks like the mother I grew up with for the past 40 years; the years have been very kind to her.

    I was bursting at the seams with energy all throughout my childhood, so I was always running around, climbing trees, challenging people to obstacle courses, and doing parkour long before we had a name for it. I was so physically active, I was the only kid I knew who had 8-pack abs and actual bicep muscles. If American Ninja Warrior was a thing when I was a kid, I would’ve dominated that show. I never met a person who I couldn’t beat. Found out in my late 30s that I have a bad case of ADHD, which is probably why I couldn’t sit still as a kid.

    However. The one fatal flaw (literally) I have going for me is that I was so active, I actually broke a bunch of bones in my life. I’ve broken 8 bones within about 2 decades or so. If this were medieval times, if I was lucky, I’d just be gimpy. At worst, I likely would’ve died very young of sepsis or attempted amputation or something. My first break was when I was 10 years old, falling out of a tree and breaking my wrist. My worst break was when I shattered my ankle in my late 20s. I would’ve been hobbled for life if I lived in medieval times.

    I found out recently, those “milk is good for strong bones” ads in the '80s and '90s were completely fabricated; there’s no science to support them. Actually, the science shows the opposite effect. Milk makes your bones brittle. Which explains my childhood; milk was my favorite drink and I consumed multiple glasses a day. Yet I broke more bones than anyone I knew. Maybe I would’ve been okay in medieval times, if I didn’t have easy access to milk everyday.

    Also, I had 20/10 vision as a kid (better than perfect vision), but in the 9th grade, I woke up one day and couldn’t get my eyes to focus anymore. Ever since then, I’ve needed glasses. My eyesight isn’t terrible, I just can’t see fine details more than 5 feet away. In medieval times, I’d have to live with everything in my life being blurry unless it was right in front of my face. That could significantly shorten my lifespan if I couldn’t clearly see threats until they were close.