why do people who smoke and drink heavily sometimes outlive heathy people?

Question

So people who exercise, eat healthy and never touch drugs or excess of any kind and do all they can to stay fit only to die so soon into their lives?

But then you have people who drink, smoke and do drugs in massive amounts for ages but they last for a long time all things considered and sometimes way older then other average people

This isn’t the case for all of them but it happens enough to be noticed

So how and why does this happen?

Thanks for reading and have a nice day

In: Other

Answer 1

Luck essentially. You have nature and nature going on; both the aspects out or your control (genes, diseases, injuries, environment) and aspects in your control (exercise, diet, making healthy choices) will affect your health and ultimate death. If nature gives you an amazing hand you can probably live a long life without nurturing your body as much as someone who got a really shitty hand dealt to them.

Aside from that, it’s also about quality of life. Someone might die from a random stroke 10 years earlier than an obese, alcoholic, chain smoker. However, the former is more likely to have a litany of health issues, probably some that are pretty horrific (liver failure, emphysema, diabetes) while the healthier person probably had a much higher quality of life while they were still kicking.

An easy way to think about it is this example of my dad. He was a lifetime runner, didn’t smoke/drink, always super active. He had a heart attack at 65, and not too shocking because his father died of a heart attack around the same age. Now, the interesting thing is that even though he actually blacked out because he had a complete blockage, because he was in such good shape he had enough collateral arteries where he came too and was able to recover. A lot of the damage his heart sustained even started to heal because he kept active and was health conscious.

You play out that same scenario with someone that treats their body like crap, they may not be healthy enough to survive that heart attack. Comparatively someone who didn’t have a genetic risk of heart disease or any other fatal health risks would obviously be less likely to even have a heart attack in the first place.