Peter Attia's insatiable longevity

Good health matters, but at what cost?

We all know the basics of good health:

• Sleep 7-9 hours per night (some require slightly more, some less)

• Exercise regularly

• Eat a diet consisting of whole foods (as much as possible, as your budget allows)

• Keep stress as low as possible

• Maintain strong and consistent social relationships

Even these seemingly simple guidelines aren’t possible for everyone. Two other important factors are generally beyond our control:

• Be born with good genetics

• Be wealthy

Point being: health is complex. There are steps some people can take and don’t. There are steps some people want to take and can’t. There are steps that many take—gym memberships are strong, as are health food sales.

Sometimes we get the results we want. Other times, not so much. 

For those of us not born with a sizable trust fund, which is most of us, listening to those given a fortune offer health advice can be grating, quickly.

We shouldn’t discount personal will, ambition, and discipline. These factors matter as well. Yet confusing your own drive for someone else’s lack of one can be frustrating to both parties, often unnecessarily so.

Defining the line between the social determinants of health and individual sovereignty also has its challenges. So, we start with the basics and do the best we can with what we have. Or not. But hopefully so.

Health is complex.

And then some aspire to go beyond the basics, and can afford to go beyond the basics. Then some sell protocols and plans to go beyond the basics because the basics aren’t salable.

This is one of my main issues with wellness and fitness influencers: they package and market ambition when, in reality, the basics suffice. They sell a “new and improved” formula that’s neither new nor improved. Slapping a coat of paint on an already sturdy wall and demanding you pay for the entire structure.

Some people go beyond, and some go far beyond, into biohacking and optimizing everything in the quest for, if not eternal, than a long, much longer life. For example: the upcoming 10th Annual Biohacking Conference’s tagline is Live BEYOND 180. I apologize for their design sense:

Some have a humbler approach, like not spending the last decade of your life in constant pain. Seems reasonable. But what does getting there really entail? And is it worth the cost?

Peter Attia thinks so. As a recent New Yorker feature on the former McKinsey consultant turned optimizing guru (a term he apparently loathes; to his credit, he doesn’t think we can live to, or beyond, 180) says, his extrapolations from data might be a bit extreme. And unscientific. 

The big trade-off

Pushback for the pushback about Andrew Huberman was expected. He’s a Stanford neuroscientist, so he must know the science, fans claim. And sure, he knows a lot about the brain. Does that mean he’s an expert in sunscreen and protein powders and jaw strength and all the other claims he’s made? I’d argue no, yet the sheen of respectability has kept him not only afloat, but thriving.

Peter Attia falls into that camp. He graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine with a Doctor of Medicine but dropped out of his residency to pursue corporate consulting. Still, like Huberman, the man has some knowledge.

In transparency: I’ve enjoyed some of his videos. I find his honesty about his process refreshing, though sometimes that honesty is obscured, as we’ll get to. He’ll freely admit his protocol changes, and state the reasons why he made them. Unlike many health figures who move on without cleaning up their mess, Attia publishes his experiments in real-time. And while, yes, he often admits his process is anecdotal, there are consequences.