Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Life expectancy calculations

I was just at someone else's blog talking about relatives who don't take care of their health. I was reminded that my brother took an online life expectancy test, which told him he would probably live to be 44. That was several years ago, and he's done very little to change his health. So he's probably still going to die in about five years.

I just took one of the things myself. It said that I'm going to live to be 79.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Anyway, it probably isn't terribly accurate. There was a box to check how much coffee you drink, and there was a box to check how much tea you drink, but there was no box to check how much cola you drink. And there is a box for how much red meat you eat and another box for how much white carbs you eat and so forth. But there's not really a place for explaining that this if this is a recent change. There is a box to check if you are currently trying to diet and think that you will end up with a healthy weight, but that's not quite the same. There's no place to put that you have the yo-yo weight or that last year you ate fast food daily and ate twice as much red meat, almost no veggies, and drank about half a gallon of sugar soda. Somehow I don't imagine that the changes in the last two months make up for the last twenty years of fried foods and Cokes and binge eating cookies.

1 comment:

Ananda girl said...

That is so crazy isn't it? My dad smoked like a chimney until he was 65 and was a beer-o. Oops, still is a beer-o at 82. He worked long, long hours running his own business with all that stress for 45 years. He is still ticking strong with no sign of being old soon.
My mom on the other hand, never drank, smoked or did anything wrong. She took good care of herself. Yet, she died of cancer at age 69.
It's all a magic 8 ball in life.