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use your head.
[Gut Rumbles]
Reading the above post by Acidman caused me to think about my Great Grandfathers. Both lived to be 105 years old. Neither died of old age.
My Great Grandfather on my mothers side came over from Germany at an early age to find a better life for his new family. They homesteaded in SE North Dakota. It was common for young boys in Germany in those days to begin drinking and smoking at around 12 to 14 years of age. I was fortunate to be able to watch him in the last 15 years of his life so I know what the other family members told me was true.
He smoked a pipe and cigars and drank two or three (four on holidays) shots of straight whiskey every day of his life from the age of 14. He lived his entire life on the farm. The food was extremely high in fat and colestorol content. They did all their own butchering. The huge majority of the meat was pork since pigs were raised strictly for the purpose of eating and meat from cattle was considered more of a luxury. Everything was cooked in lard and all the fat drippings were saved and reused. When products like Crisco came on the market he refused to eat anything cooked in them. He consumed ten eggs a day. Six at breakfast and another four in egg sandwiches at lunch. The bread was always thickly spread with real butter. He drank only buttermilk and only warm - never cooled.
I would watch him eat and was always amazed that he could consume such huge quantities of food every day and never change from his same 150 pounds.
He worked everyday of his life on the farm till he was in his 90's and would not stop till in desperation the family moved him to town.
There he insisted on having the bedroom at the top of the stairs and only began to use a cane the last few years of his life. It was those stairs that finally took his life.
His eyesight was good till the end. Hearing was a problem but no other physical ailments that any family member can remember. No one can ever remember him having a cold or the flu. His diet remained exactly the same till the end. Who knows how long he could have lived if he had not insisted on the room at the top of the stairs.
After he died from the fall the medical center asked the family if they could do an autopsy on the heart for a research project. They found that his 105 year old heart was still strong and had no trace of buildup. They said there was no reason he could not have continued to live for many years.
The other Great Grandfather had a very similar life and died in a car accident while coming home from the funeral of another family member.
Whenever I hear all the obsessing about good eating and living in todays world I always remember these two men. How did they do it without the help of a low fat, low colestorol diet? How did they do it with all that smoke filling the room and their lungs? How did they do it with all the alcohol consumption? How did they do it riding in automobiles with no safety features? How did they do it with all that DDT they used on the farm? How did they do it with no government inspection of their meat and no one testing their well water?
How did they do it? CP
2:11:39 PM 
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