Without looking it up, I believe that Ian Fleming died at 56. That is smack dab when the study concluded that Bond would. A pretty accurate study, for once!
If you read, "Thunderball" carefully, you'll see the effects that heavy drinking and smoking had on 007. I think Fleming had been to such a health clinic and reported what he experienced. Bond was almost surely to a large degree Fleming's own fantasy life.
At one time, and even today in Eastern Europe, many men think it more manly to smoke and drink a lot. Macho bluster is common. I had a Romanian acquaintance who told me how men act to her and a Serb has, too. Political Correctness has yet to rear its head in some countries. That's why Putin poses bare-chested for photos and flaunts his hunting and fishing prowess. He also keeps a big dog to support his macho image.
George W. Bush said on Leno recently that Putin looked with disdain at Bush's little dog and made sure that the US President later met his own big mutt.
This sort of posturing also was manifested in the fireside telling of bold deeds by some Amerindian braves after a hunt or a battle. That probably extends back at least as far as Cro-Magnon days.
But Bond didn't drink only alcohol. He also drank coffee, which he preferred to tea, regarding tea as the opiate of the masses, and rather insipid. When telling someone of his Navy days, he said that he was just a "chocolate sailor", probably referring to drinking the Royal Navy's cocoa (more used then in the Navy than was tea) to point out that he was really a spy, not a normal line officer. This is where he acquired his Naval rank of Commander, consistent with Fleming's own rank attained while on Naval Intelligence duties in WW II.
I read the Bond books as a teen and occasionally re-read them. I like them much better than the movies, beyond, "Thunderball."
I still have a letter from the real Geoffrey Boothroyd, written on "Dr. No" movie stationery. It's probably worth a lot of money now, and I'll likely offer it soon through an auction house or on e-bay.
None of Fleming's successors has managed to write Bond as well as did the original author. They seem to be basing their books on the movie Bond and incorporating Political Correctness to a degree that would have disgusted Fleming's Bond.
A couple of years ago, "Playboy" ran a feature on Fleming's home in Jamaica, where he wrote the Bond books while on holiday. It showed his typewriter and where he sat to use it, his bed, and the beach off which he spearfished for his lunch on many days. The magazine ran excerpts of his novels when he was still writing, and has done several Bond features since. I still recall the illustrations that ran with the excerpts.
Bond was a creature of his day, but we can still enjoy the thrils he generated in print. I think most agree that Connery was the ultmate cinema Bond, the most plausible. I'd pick Timothy Dalton as the next best. I had formed a mental image of Bond before the movies arrived. It was of Michael Rennie, if you remember that actor. I convert words to film in my mind and "see" what I read. After Connery arrived, I was at first a bit put off, but soon accepted him as the most likely Bond. He came off a little more aggressive and rude than I thought Bond would be, but on reflection, I decided that perhaps his image was right.
Bond almost surely had a rugged he-man image of himself, and Connery made the role his own.
Someone posted above that bit about Bond with a shotgun and another post said that this scene ws in, 'Thunderball." In that film he also used a Remington M-1100 to blast a clay target and seemed surprised that shooting skeet was easier than it looked to the persona that he was portraying. This was right in character for a man whose ego would cause him to reveal skills that the man he was pretending to be wouldn't have.
When Donald Hamilton created his American counterpart to Bond, Matt Helm, Helm also exhibited this trait of seeing himself as a sort of macho superman. Both heroes had some mental swaggering going on. I think this was reflected in their lifestyles and actions. In loose moments, they might even blow their covers through their egos.
BTW, I would hope these Doctors would have better things to do. 
