This body has to last a hundred years

At sixty-eight he stops at the foot of every staircase. In his forties he took the elevator — stairs made him sweat. In his fifties his knees hurt; in his sixties the stairs became frightening. The elders' advice was to act now as if you will need this body for a hundred years. Smoking, poor eating, inactivity are less likely to kill you quickly than to sentence you to decades of chronic disease. A body does not collapse all at once. It goes quietly, a little each day.