What Dr. Peter Attia Doesn’t (Yet) Know about Healthy Aging
Don’t get me wrong, I loved reading Dr. Peter Attia’s book, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, as well as his podcasts and articles. (But I say “no thanks” to the $2,500 price tag for his digital longevity program, called Early.) He has infused the conversation about preventive health in later life with tons of new energy, reliable research, and credible evidence that preventive strategies can work to preserve our health and functionality as we get older. And because he is an MD he is trusted by people who follow his advice as well as other doctors when they are talking to their patients.
Yet there is much that he doesn’t know, cannot know, about health past 60, simply because he is not living life as someone who is in their 60s or 70s who is experiencing what is feels like to actually be this age and trying to maintain or improve health and function.
Dr. Attia is only 51 years old. And while he may have older patients and friends who talk with him about their experiences, I submit that there are many things you cannot know about later life unless you are living later life. Among them is the sheer wonder about life itself, your life as well as life in general, that comes to many of us with an awareness of mortality that many of us experience when in our 60s. It is a moment of recognition that there is no more hiding or disguising the fact that aging and eventually dying are what are in store for you, whether you like it or not. That moment can be experienced as terrifying or hopeful or any range or combination of emotions in between. This experience brings us to the core of who we are and what matters to us for as long as we have left on this planet.
The Ultimate Awareness
I submit that we all experience this awareness on some level. What we do with it and whether we choose to ignore it, avoid it, “spin” it, or face it is what’s most important. But if we acknowledge it and let it sink in, which I did, it brings with it a kind of profound and grounded reality of life that I had only very rarely felt previously. It is not easy to do, to admit to your own mortality. The world is full of distractions made to steer us away from the unpleasant and fearful sensation that we will ever die. Religions promise us eternal life. Modern-day distractions promising the so-called “good life” beckon us with all that we could have or all that we could be. Only rarely does someone say, “The biggest wonder of your life is life itself, right here and now,” and then live accordingly.
I have no doubt that Dr. Attia has had some glimmers of all this. But in his own ambitious and driven way he most likely has not yet experienced his awareness of mortality as fully as someone my age, almost 75, where, despite my own ambitious training schedule and health practices, I feel the weight of physical decline and mortality much more acutely than I ever did in my 50s. At his still-young age of 51, he doesn’t personally know the extra effort it takes to train or the extra recovery time required to heal from that training. He doesn’t experience the change in how an “older” person like me is treated socially (yes, ageism does exist.) He doesn’t exist with the direct knowledge and experience that his body could easily decline faster at age 75 and that he has to muster extraordinary amounts of motivation and work to keep it from declining or at least slow it down. And he certainly doesn’t need to worry about the elevated risk of unexpected disease that often happens to older people.
Valuable Contributions, But Not the Whole Story
So, while I value the contributions of Peter Attia, and many of the other younger practitioners out there who are providing valuable advice to their patients and subscribers about prevention and longevity, I keep my own counsel and value my own experience of life even more. And this is what I will leave you with.Yourexperience ofyourlife at this stage (or at any stage), is what matters, taking your health into your own hands by coming to terms with what matters to you and why you want to live healthier and longer. Then experience your own body and follow whatever advice out there makes sense to you to get started. The path to health startsinsideyou, when you value your time on this planet and realize it doesn’t last forever.
