Unhealthy
In the 80s I tried to stop our company from extending retirement age to 58 and got a bunch of mortality figures. The only surprising bit was that long haul was statistically healthier than short haul legacy.
I have had a host of illness, often being told that it was psychosomatic purely because they didn't find the cause.
My first lot was in the 70s when I was given a week to live. I believe this was aerotoxic syndrome due to several significant smoke incidents. For the first time I was told I was a nervous pilot and should resign.
My second lot was probally due to Salmonella from Karachi but never confirmed. I collapsed after landing in Jeddah.
My third lot lasted 18 months and was only cured by a double dose of the strongest sulphonomide which made me allergic to the drug. A 23 year old hostess on my crew died. At a guess it was a bacterial lung infection from a west African pax. Again I was told that it was psychosomatic.
The next four years was relatively healthy until I went onto the DC10. Two lots of malaria, a year of diarrhoea passing blood much of the time, extended visits to tropical diseases, stress ECG with a resus team in case my ticker stopped. Lots of special diets and back to the psychosomatic cop out.Migraines on extra long flights.
Given a special return to short haul and then command. Things got better especially as I took a couple of months unpaid leave a year but after a head injury and breakdown I lost my license.
At the time of my problems on the DC10 we had a lot of loss of licenses due to mental health and several crew members with stroke symptoms. Another few died from brain tumours and heart attacks.
My views.
I believe both of my major problems were due to neurotoxins. The first from air conditioning smoke and the second Larium but I'm not ruling out aerotoxic.
A lot of our passengers were from exotic destinations and brought with them exotic bacteria, it is not very different to east London where one of my grand children is in and out of hospital with unknown chest problems.
So we sit in a tube breathing in exhaled air from all over the world although if you fly loco you don't have that problem.
My long haul migraines stopped except when I flew flights of more than five hours mainly around 13,000ft in the alps without oxygen. Our dc10 air quality was a particular problem because most of our crossings were way north and polar plus our engineers would turn off packs to save fuel.
My loss of license was due to depression but I have lost my short term memory and senses of taste and smell. I have permanent tinitus as well as a personality change.I stopped airline flying 22 years ago and after 7 years felt confident enough to instruct on gliders which I did for 8 years but felt that in my late 50s I was starting to make small mistakes so quit. The type of gliding I did was far more challenging than airline work. I now paraglide, again very challenging. I 've flown 4,000 hours plus since I lost my license and generally my health has improved. My short term memory slightly in spite of increasing age (68). I am now celiac, which I think I have been for a long time. This was diagnosed three years ago after an overdose of cortisone (motorcycle race track injury). My bowel movements are now more normal than at any time since 1975.I have had a minor blood disorder for a decade which they don't know the cause which I ignore after all I've got to die from something.
To sum up. It depends on the routes,company, aircraft, maintenance, genes and luck. You won't find anyone admitting the dodgy aircraft, oils, drugs and radiation.