Eddie Albert must have been doing something right. He was 99 when he died today!
With the Bushie Rethugs in power, who can say anything with confidence about SS? I'm more dependent on my retirement income plus investments I've made over time than I am on SS.
I think one's genes more than anything else determines longevity. I had a maternal great-uncle who lived to be almost 101 with absolutely no health problems except he began to lose his memory around the age of 96. He lived in a nursing home the last few years of his life, but still had periods of lucidity. My maternal grandmother lived to be 87, and my maternal grandfather was almost 80 when he died of heart failure.
My father turns 80 in September and has never spent one night in a hospital. He makes a large veggie garden each summer, roams the mountains in the fall hunting ginsing, and helps look after my 76 year old mother, who is wheel-chair bound after having had a stroke. His people all lived to ripe old ages of 80 or better. But, diabetes runs in my mother's family, too, so it's just the luck of the draw, I guess.
Something is going to get us, one way or the other, but I think the best things we can do for our own longevity is to
not smoke, control stress, exercise regularly, eat reasonably, and continue being sexually active right up to the day we die.
Catherine