I’ve decided to start my Monday Morning Reading series this year with a book that I think suits the beginning of the year – Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, by Dr. Peter Attia. Originally from Toronto, Attia is a Stanford, Johns Hopkins and NIH trained surgeon, who left all of that behind to become, effectively, a family physician, trying to help his patients (and himself) live longer. Well, not only longer, but live well for longer – and that’s the key to this book.
I first came to Attia on the Tim Ferris podcast, then subsequently on the Jordan Peterson podcast (Peterson talked too much in my opinion), then Barry Weiss (which I thought was the best because of what he shared about his mental health), and Sam Harris (which I didn’t bother listening to, since I’d already read the book and already heard him speak several times about it). Finally, I read the book, though if you don’t want all the details, and just want the 30,000 foot summary, the podcasts are pretty good.
Attia distinguishes between lifespan (living a long time) and healthspan (how healthy you can live for a long time), since it’s entirely possible to live a long time and be in pretty terrible shape. His goal is to help with both, in what he calls the centenarian decathlon, which is a way of saying: What do I have to do early on and consistently in order to get to 100 in a way that I can still live independently, and happily? To do this, he says, you have to avoid the ‘four horseman’ – cancer, diabetes and other metabolic disorders, dementia and heart disease. This is mostly proactive work on our part (accounting for genetics), and something the world of medical science pays less attention to, though it is learning more and more every day. This proactive medicine is what he calls medicine 3.0, in contrast to medicine 2.0, which is reactive medicine – how to keep the person alive who’s already had cancer or a heart attack.
As a non-scientist, I didn’t have a good way of assessing the science behind Attia’s claims, and so won’t adjudicate it here. What I did find compelling was the basic idea of thinking about what to attend to now and consistently throughout my life that will keep me healthy and functioning well in my older age. This includes the obvious, but not easy to-do things like exercise, diet, and good sleep (the last of which I’m still terrible at getting enough of), but more specifically, which kinds of exercise are more important for long term well-being (e.g. grip and lower body strength), and the importance of mental health for one’s overall physical well-being. Attia is generous in sharing his harrowing struggle with mental health, as a model for the rest of us. That chapter alone (even if you hear Barry Weiss) is worth the read.
While I left the book with some big picture ways to improve my health, his obsession is not one I can match. Still, if I can move the needle, as is probably useful for many of us, it will be worth the time invested.
Just Because I Liked It:
- This was an extraordinarily insightful interview on Conversations With Coleman with Jean Twenge, who has done extensive research on generational differences. She moves beyond stereotypes to hard data – and it is extremely revealing and clarifying. What I found particularly interesting are the ways in which trends that would be construed as positive (e.g. lower rates of drinking), are also connected to delayed development and maturity in young people.
- I found this article about the history of the Pope and the Jews very interesting, especially as it came from the Chief Rabbi of Rome.