There is also this commonly held notion that if you "live right", with healthy habits, food, and exercise, you will live to 98 in perfect health, and probably die of an instant heart attack while in bed with a young lover. It's of course true that obesity and lack of exercise increase health risks at all ages, but that risk was never going to be 0. The notion that I mentioned basically makes health problems into a morality play. I've even seen people get angry at the fact that statins can reduce heart disease risk in an "unearned" way - they can't accept that. The fact is that blood vessels and everything else lose function with increasing age, at a different rate for different people.