Peter Attia is Wrong About 3 Things
It's strange being the same age as old people, isn't it?
You don't have to be like them. You can be the one people look at and say wow, how do you stay so young? Peter Attia's book Outlive, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for two years now. In that book, he explains that muscle is the best medicine -- the number one thing you can do to increase your healthspan is build muscle and increase your peak lung capacity (known as VO2 max). I'm a big fan of Peter Attia. I subscribe to his newsletter and watch most of his podcasts. But when it comes to three critical things, I think he's wrong. Those are the importance of insulin resistance, the importance of zone-3 and zone-4 exercise, and the special way you need to exercise to stimulate bone growth. Let’s break these down …
Insulin resistance is the elephant in the room
Peter doesn't focus enough on insulin resistance, the silent killer, the one thing most likely to shorten your life by ten years or more. In his amazing book, Why We Get Sick, Dr Ben Bikman lays out the case against insulin resistance in stark terms: it's the basis for most chronic disease. Cancer. Heart disease. Alzheimer's. And much more. It could be that insulin resistance is more of a cause of heart disease and LDL cholesterol is either just a symptom or isn’t even part of the equation. More on that in a coming blog post.
We measure insulin resistance with a simple blood marker called A1c. If your A1c number is 5.7 or greater, you're going in the wrong direction. This is regardless of how fat you may be.
Forget the exotic treatments and drugs. If you're overweight or insulin resistant, you need to adjust your diet. Carbs are no longer your friends. You should only eat carbs (especially sugar, but all cereals, baked goods, pastas, pizza, and potatoes) when your system can tolerate the glucose load they add to your system. That requires careful attention to your A1c number. It may require a DEXA scan to check for visceral fat.
This is a gun pointed to your head. Your doctors aren't going to prevent the problem - they will wait until the gun goes off and then charge you hundreds of thousands of dollars to put you back together.
You need to know your A1c, and you need to plan to reduce it. Change your diet. Lose the fat. Build muscle. Live 10-20 years longer and in better health.
Zone 3 workouts
You also need to exercise harder. Peter Attia is big on weight lifting, which I completely agree with. Then, when it comes to cardio, he praises the virtues of zone-2 exercise, which is what you would do on a one-hour run or a two-hour bike ride. It does help your cardiovascular system, but in my view, zones 3 and 4 are even better.
If you read my previous blog post, you know I’m in favor of hard workouts that last 10-20 minutes, 20-4 minutes, or 10-20 seconds. Whichever you choose, take your favorite activity (swimming, rowing, running, stairs, etc) and declare a course. That’s going to be a distance you can repeat over and over. Then, get your best time on that course. Your job now is to keep pushing your time lower and lower and lower on that same course. Forget about the times of other people. You’re competing against yourself, trying to set a new personal record each time.
You can train for this. You can do intervals and sprints that will help you bring your time down. You can train with a breath trainer, which WILL bring your times down. You can go to bootcamp and learn the best techniques. Whatever you do, if you’re always pushing the limit of what you can do, you are keeping your arteries and heart soft for the future. Do that. Do it at least once a week, preferably twice.
A 10-20-second workout is zone 4: the fastest you can go. This is hugely beneficial no matter what your age. For inspiration, watch this …
Building bone
Peter has a weak spot: osteoporosis. Presumably because he hasn’t had much experience with it. He even said in a recent podcast that estrogen is the hormone that triggers bone growth, and that’s incorrect. That’s why I prefer Doug Lucas when it comes to bone health. Working out to build bone is very different from working out to build muscle. You must stress your spine and hips using weight and impact. To understand the effect of impact, listen to Doug talk about heel drops. I make sure my clients are building bone, not just muscle.
Other than all that, and other than the excessive attention he pays to drugs that will supposedly maybe help us live longer some day, I think Peter is right about exercise, and I’ve learned a lot from him.
I'll give you the benefit of my research with a custom-made plan for free. And, I'll give you a money-back guarantee. What are you waiting for?
Book your free discovery call now.
Talk with me, and let's put you on track for a longer, healthier life.
David Siegel
www.infinitegameoflife.com
The hidden dangers of amylopectin
The Amylopectin Starch Guide
Here I present two short articles on amylopectin, a food ingredient everyone should understand. I’ll start with a practical shopping guide and then present evidence that “gluten intolerance” is probably driven by amylopectin, not gluten.
The Amylopectin shopping guide: stay under 70 percent
Starch in wheat, rice, and potatoes contains amylopectin, a fast-digesting molecule that spikes blood sugar and contributes to insulin resistance. Most foods have about 70-80% amylopectin (high, unhealthy), waxy or sticky wheat varieties reach 80-100% (worst), and some are 60-70% (better, with fiber or slower digesting). Whole grain adds fiber but is typically 70% amylopectin. In general, less than 70 percent amylopectin is best. White rice, which is high in amylopectin, promotes insulin resistance: a 2012 meta-analysis in BMJ found that higher white-rice consumption (3-4 servings/day) was associated with a 1.5-fold increased risk of type 2 diabetes, especially in Asian populations.
Here’s how to avoid high-amylopectin foods and pick lower-amylopectin options.
Avoid These: High-Amylopectin Products (70-100%)
Soft, sticky, or refined foods are packed with amylopectin. Soft, white breads (e.g., baguettes) and squishy bagels are ~70-80%. Found in:
Breads/Bagels: Soft baguettes, hamburger buns, white or squishy bagels, factory-produced “whole wheat” loaves like Pepperidge Farms.
Baked Goods: Fluffy muffins, English muffins, soft cookies.
Cereals/Crackers: Puffed rice, puffed corn, corn flakes, Cheerios, buttery crackers.
Any packaged corn product: corn muffins, corn-meal, corn bread, corn-based cereals, corn starch
Noodles: Sticky udon, instant ramen.
Rice/Potatoes: Sticky rice, short-grain white rice, russet potatoes.
Baking: White flour, cake mixes, “enriched” white flour.
Skip squishy, white, or sticky items with “enriched” or “refined” labels. Any baked product that comes from a factory is going to be high in amylopectin, even if you find it at Whole Foods and the package is very “organic” looking.
Choose These: Lower-Amylopectin and Whole Grain (60-70%)
Dense, whole grain, or high-fiber foods have slightly lower amylopectin, often ~60-70%, with fiber to slow digestion. Bagels are ~70% amylopectin unless whole grain. Choose:
Breads/Bagels: Dave’s Killer Bread 21 Whole Grains, Ezekiel 4:9 Sprouted Bagels/English Muffins, whole grain baguettes, Sourdough bread (long-fermented), 100% rye bread, sprouted grain bread (e.g. Ezekiel), spelt bread, einkorn bread, barley bread, buckwheat flatbread, teff-based injera, whole-seed-based breads where the seeds are on the inside, not just on the outside.
Baked Goods: Whole grain muffins, hard cookies not made in a factory.
Cereals: Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes, Kellogg’s All-Bran Original, Post 100% Bran, Cascadian Farm Organic Purely O’s, Barbara’s Bakery Original Puffins, Alpen No Added Sugar Muesli, Grape-Nuts Original, Ezekiel 4:9 Sprouted Crunchy Cereal, Trader Joe’s High Fiber Cereal, Trader Joe’s Organic Heritage Flakes, Trader Joe’s Bran Flakes, Trader Joe’s Weetabix, Weetabix Original, Shredded Wheat Original
Muffins: Food for Life Ezekiel 4:9 Sprouted Grain Muffins, Bob’s Red Mill Whole Grain Muffin Mix, Simple Mills Almond Flour Muffins, Nature’s Path Organic Oat Bran Muffins, Trader Joe’s Whole Grain Muffins, Vitalicious VitaTops Muffin Tops, King Arthur Whole Wheat Muffin Mix, Udi’s Gluten-Free Whole Grain Muffins
Noodles: Firm whole grain spaghetti, buckwheat soba, brown rice noodles. Look for non-sticky, “whole grain,” “buckwheat,” or “brown rice” labels.
Rice: long-grain basmati rice is a healthier choice than short-grain rice. Look for products from Ingredion at Whole Foods — they are experimenting with new starches that are much lower in amylopectin.
Baking: Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Flour, King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour, Einkorn, Emmer, Spelt, Khorasan (Kamut), SBEIIa-silenced durum wheat, triple null SSIIa bread wheat, high-amylose wheat (HAW) lines. If you hear “heirloom varieties,” those are still not low enough in amylopectin for everyday consumption.
About potatoes
Young, small potatoes harvested early in the growing season, typically in spring or early summer, before their starches fully develop. Unlike mature potatoes like russets, which have around 80% amylopectin, new potatoes have a slightly lower amylopectin content, around 65%, making them a better choice for blood-sugar control. They’re often small (golf ball-sized), with thin, waxy skins, and a creamy texture. Common varieties include Yukon Gold (when harvested young), Red Bliss, or Fingerling.
Glycemic load is more important than glycemic index
Most people who are not pre-diabetic or diabetic can eat half a muffin or a small bowl of rice without much of a spike in insulin, so it’s okay to get some of these foods in small doses. My favorite cereal is Grape Nuts, which is on the list of okay cereals. But a bowl of Cheerios, or even Grape Nuts Flakes, or a bagel, or two slices of white bread, or a small baguette, is going to cause a spike in insulin, and the more often it happens, the more likely you are to become insulin resistant. Try to mix your starches and reduce the amount of amylopectin you eat at any one time.
Your A1c number tells you how much you can eat
As I mention in my big longevity roundup, the lower your A1c, the more insulin-resistance-causing foods you can eat. So if your A1c is 5.5, you can pretty much ignore amylopectin, at least until your A1c number goes up. The closer you are to 5.8, the more you need to pay attention, and at 5.9 or higher, the stricter you should be about avoiding these starches. After 6.0, you should consider eating no carbohydrates at all, at least until you can get your number down and buy more starch tickets.
Is Amylopectin the Hidden Driver Behind the Gluten-Intolerance Epidemic?
Gluten gets all the blame, but there's another ingredient hiding in plain sight in modern baked goods that may be fueling the rise in gluten sensitivity: amylopectin. Amylopectin is a highly branched form of starch found in wheat and other grains. It’s digested very quickly, causing rapid spikes in blood sugar and insulin. In contrast, its slower cousin, amylose — also called resistant starch — breaks down more gradually. Foods high in amylose are far less dangerous than foods high in amolypectin.
How Amylopectin Affects Gluten Intolerance
While gluten is the actual protein that triggers immune reactions in celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity, amylopectin plays a supporting (and damaging) role:
Spikes blood sugar and inflammation, increasing gut permeability (“leaky gut”)
Feeds problematic gut bacteria, which may worsen digestive symptoms
Amplifies the inflammatory effect of gluten when consumed together
In other words, amylopectin makes the gut more vulnerable and gluten more toxic. Modern wheat, like hard red wheat in the U.S., is bred to be high in both gluten and amylopectin. The result is fluffier bread with longer shelf life, but it’s a digestive storm for many. See this list of foods high in amylopectin and avoid them.
U.S. vs. Europe: A Tale of Two Breads
In the U.S., most bread is made from dwarf wheat, with high gluten and high amylopectin. Fast-rise baking methods and added starches further intensify the glycemic punch. In contrast, many European countries use heritage wheat, longer fermentation (like sourdough), and fewer added starches. This makes their bread lower in both amylopectin and digestive disruption.
Does This Explain the Gluten Intolerance Epidemic?
It could explain a big part of it. The spike in gluten-related complaints may not just be about gluten itself, but the modern processing and high-amylopectin starches that come with it. People often tolerate bread in Europe but feel awful after eating a slice in the U.S. — not because of gluten levels alone, but because the type of wheat used in Europe is different.
Bottom Line
The “gluten intolerance epidemic” might really be a modern starch intolerance — with amylopectin acting as the match that lights the fire. If you've gone gluten-free but still feel bad, the culprit might not be gluten at all. Try foods that are high in gluten but low in amylopectin and see how you feel.
The big longevity roundup
In case you didn't get the memo: no, the dire wolf has not been brought back from extinction, not even close, not even the right genus, showing once again that marketing, PR, and cute images triumph over science almost every time.
I've been working on growing my longevity-coaching business. I've learned that most people aren't interested in prevention. They prefer to take their chances now and deal with consequences later, which is why so many communities are caught off-guard when a predictable fire destroys all the homes.
The same is true of longevity. I really can help most people live 10 years longer, simply by not doing stupid things that lead to an early death, like drinking alcohol, becoming insulin resistant, and being lazy. There's another 10 years after that from doing smart things, like building bone and muscle and exercising hard to keep your heart strong. The clients I have are educated people who understand that the length of their lives is directly related to their behavior today.
Here's an evidence-based update on what we know and what you can do now to stay healthier longer (You can find the supplements I recommend below on my stack page, and go to the store page to get the books and other goodies you need). Forget all the small stuff. This is the big stuff that matters.
NOTE: An updated version of this is now the home page of this website, better to read that than stay here.
Calcium
Calcium is a critical mineral for bone building. The brand I like is called AlgaeCal Plus. It's similar to getting your calcium from food. It includes magnesium, vitamin D and vitamin K. I think everyone over 40 should be taking it. Possibly everyone under 40 as well. And no, taking calcium has nothing to do with calcium build-up in your arteries, it is not bad for your cardiovascular system, so start taking AlgaeCal Plus today (I’m not affiliated with the company).
Vitamin D
Evidence is now stacking up that too much vitamin D is a bad thing, and most people who get outside don't need to take a supplement. People over 50 should NOT be taking extra vitamin D above the 800 units they get in AlgaeCal Plus. People over 70 who live in temperate zones may need a bit more if they aren't outside often. Stop taking your 2,000-unit vitamin D pills!
Collagen
If you have any joint pain at all, you should be taking collagen daily. See my stack page for details.
Get enough protein
The older we get, the more protein we need. You should be trying to get 1 gram of protein for every pound of lean-mass bodyweight daily. It's not easy. I don't have time to go into all of it, but you'll find a lot on my website, especially the videos.
Kidney stones
If you've ever seen a scanning electron microphotograph of a kidney stone, you understand why you don't want one. First, drink plenty of water. Second, know your foods that have oxalic acid (spinach, almonds, almond milk, beets, beet greens, rhubarb, Swiss chard, sweet potatoes, chocolate, cocoa powder, black tea, navy beans, soybeans, raspberries) and eat them WITH calcium, so the calcium binds to the oxalate in the gut and gets taken out that way. What causes stones is when oxalates go to your kidneys and then bind with calcium there.
Creatine
Creatine is a compound made from three amino acids that people think of as a bodybuilder supplement, but more and more research shows that creative a) is very safe, and b) has many other benefits, including brain health and even MS. It helps improve recovery time after exercise. The new recommended dose is ten grams per day.
This video is a good overview, and the brand I recommend is on the stack page.
Know your A1c number
If you're even a little overweight, you should read Why We Get Sick, by Ben Bikman. You should know your A1c number, which is a quick measure of insulin resistance. A1c measures how many glucose molecules are stuck to hemoglobin, which gives a running three-month average of your insulin resistance. If that number is 5.7 or higher, you should work on your diet to lower it. Cut sugar, cut alcohol, cut carbs. 5.5 and below you are insulin sensitive, which is the safe zone - stay in it. Insulin resistance is more likely to kill you than heart disease is.
Here's how I think of it now: Cut sugar and alcohol out of your diet. If your A1c is 5.6 or less, you have room to eat pizza, pasta, Mediterranean diet, etc. But if the number goes up over 5.6, you need to reduce carb intake. Two very similar looking people, or husband and wife, will have completely different metabolic reactions to the same diet, so one diet does not work for everyone. But just because you're an athlete doesn't mean you should be on a high-carb diet - your A1c number will tell you that. Measure your A1c every 6 months if you aren't 5.5 or below. If you're in the safe zone, sweets should be seen as a once-or-twice-a-month treat.
Fat
When you gain weight, you create new fat cells. When you lose weight, you do NOT lose fat cells. Any fat cells you make will be with you forever, and if you lose fat those cells will want the fat back. Fat cells are like balloons that prefer to stay filled up. Help your kids by not letting them get fat in the first place. If you are ten pounds overweight, that should be a red flag that things are going in the wrong direction.
Losing fat isn't that hard, just reduce your calories. Keeping fat off is hard, and most people don't do it. If you built up 30 extra pounds over 30 years, it's not going to magically melt away in 6 months and never come back. Losing weight is about 30 percent of the job; keeping it off is 70 percent. Diet and exercise are tools - use them intelligently.
Fasting
Fasting is a bad way to lose weight, because you lose muscle as well, and muscle is hard to build back, while the fat comes back readily. Don't fast more than 24 hours.
Fructose
No fructose. Fructose bad for humans.
Hormone replacement therapy
HRT is so beneficial to so many women, you'd need a good reason not to go on it. Here's a video conversation with my client Kathleen on this topic. For men, it's more complicated.
Building bone
If you're not building bone, you're losing it. You can't build bone by walking and doing yoga. Runners and cyclists, even mountain bikers, don't have strong hips and spines. You build bone through resistance training and impact training. Resistance is pushing or carrying heavy weight, and impact is jumping and landing fairly hard. I'll make a better one, but for now you can watch my very blurry video that goes into some of this.
Alcohol
The healthiest amount of alcohol is zero. If you really enjoy alcohol, drop all your junk drinking. That should be 50-70 percent of drinking you can simply give up and the quality of your life hardly changes. It’s easy to do and — assuming you don’t get hit by a bus later — will help you live longer. If you are planning to get hit by a bus, by all means enjoy your wine now!
What's up with LDL cholesterol?
The evidence connecting LDL cholesterol and heart attacks and stroke is very mixed. I hope to have a thorough update on this topic at some point. But what to do about it is quite straightforward. We know that soft plaque is far more dangerous than hard plaque. You can undo it by reducing insulin resistance and hard exercise.
What? Me do hard exercise?
Yes. I can't emphasize the value of zone-3 and zone-4 exercise enough, even if you're in your 80s. This means going as hard as you can for 2-4 minutes in the pool, on the track, rowing machine, or even jumping up and down in your living room (YouTube videos are great for this). Hard. Like you can't do any more, and the last 30 seconds are very very challenging, and it takes several minutes to recover.
Use a stopwatch. If you ride a bike, pick a hill and always start at the same place and measure your time to the top, then keep trying to beat that time. In the pool or on a machine, it's easy. Always keep trying to beat your previous best time. I also like 2-4km of rowing - how fast can I row 4km at the hardest setting?
Try ten flights of stairs (17 steps per flight is normal in a modern building) in under 90 seconds — without touching the handrails at all. Never touch handrails when doing stairs. Stairs are great, because you know exactly how far you're going, you can do them in any weather, all you need is a building with 10 floors. I'm 65. My record for ten flights is 69:45 seconds, but that's because I carry 50 pounds on my back up 13 flights three times a week. Can you beat me? If you're older or not as strong, adjust but still push.
Just for the sake of interest, my 16-year-old son can run up the same 10 flights in under 49 seconds, and he never exercises!
Zone 4 is maximum output, like sprinting 100 meters as fast as you can. I'm sprinting 100m in 21 seconds; my goal is under 20. What's yours?
Whatever you do, establish your best time and keep trying to beat it. Do this for the rest of your life. A breath trainer will help.
Don’t forget lifting heavy in the gym and rucking. If you’re not rucking, you should consider adding it to your routine. People who do a lot of walking, Pilates, and yoga don’t live longer than the rest of us. It’s the weightlifters and serious pushers who outlast everyone else. The average 70-year-old farmer will probably outlive the average 70-year-old citydweller by ten years or so.
Should you take statins?
I think most people will benefit from taking statins. Few people have side effects (if you do, stop taking them or switch the kind of statin). And the lowest dose is generally best. If you're on 20 mg, ask your doctor about going to 10. If you're on 40, ask about going to 20. If you don't like the idea, try red rice yeast, it's pretty much the same.
What about GLP-1 agonists?
Everyone is getting injections, and many doctors are now on Ozempic/Wegovy to lose weight and keep it off. This is not going to turn out well. Stay away from fads and medicines and exercise harder.
Sleep is the elephant in the room
Do whatever it takes to get 7+ hours of sleep a night. Black out your windows. Drop the temperature. Create a routine that works. Measure your cycles using an app or a ring. Find patterns that give you good sleep. One suggestion: make your room as cold as you can possibly get it, like you're winter camping. When you're cold, you snuggle in and don't move around. When it's hot, you move and wake up more often. Drugs as a last resort, but you could look into patches.
This is the dashboard I use for my clients:
Have I left anything out?
Yes, I've left a lot out. I could write much more about getting the big stuff right and forgetting about all the cute little supplements and vitamins and herbs and drips and procedures and fake experts and YouTube influencers. You'll find that on my website. This is just an overview.
Summary
Do all these things. If you can't do them on your own, get a coach. All the pros have coaches for a good reason – they give you better results than you can get on your own.
Do you know any clients for me?
Word of mouth is the best marketing. Please forward this to any of your friends over 50 who could use the advice. And, maybe, a longevity coach. Feel free to drop this into your newsletter. There's much more on my website:
www.infinitegameoflife.com
I hope you are stronger a year from now than you are today,
David Siegel
The Pros and Mostly Cons of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: A Trend Worth Avoiding for Healthy People
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is making waves far beyond its traditional use for medical conditions like decompression sickness and wound healing. Clinics offering HBOT as a wellness treatment are popping up everywhere, promising anti-aging effects, improved performance, and even extended lifespan. While these claims are enticing, they are speculative at best and based on shaky evidence. For healthy individuals, routine exposure to HBOT is more likely to do harm than good, and it’s a trend worth approaching with caution.
What Are Clinics Claiming?
HBOT involves sitting in a pressurized chamber while breathing pure oxygen, dramatically increasing the oxygen levels in your bloodstream. Clinics now market this therapy to healthy clients with promises of tissue repair, reduced inflammation, and cellular rejuvenation. Much of the hype stems from a 2020 Israeli study, which claimed that repeated HBOT sessions lengthened telomeres—the protective caps on chromosomes that are associated with aging. Telomere shortening is often linked to aging and disease, so this finding caused a stir.
But here’s the problem: the study focused on T-cells, a subset of immune cells that naturally show wide variations in telomere length. Experts have criticized the study for misinterpreting the results, suggesting that the observed changes likely reflected natural shifts in immune cell populations rather than genuine telomere elongation. To date, there is no evidence that HBOT has a meaningful impact on telomeres in other cells, let alone on overall longevity.
Despite this, some clinics have seized on the study’s claims to market HBOT as an anti-aging therapy. This is not science—it’s salesmanship.
Why HBOT Could Backfire
While HBOT does have legitimate uses for certain medical conditions, long-term exposure to high oxygen levels carries significant risks. The therapy increases the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), highly reactive molecules that can damage DNA, proteins, and cell membranes when present in excess. Small amounts of ROS are part of normal cellular processes, but too much causes oxidative stress, a key driver of aging and chronic disease.
For healthy individuals, prolonged or habitual HBOT exposure could accelerate cellular aging rather than prevent it. Key risks include:
Oxidative Damage: Chronic oxidative stress harms cells, particularly in tissues like the lungs and brain, where oxygen levels are tightly regulated.
Inflammation: Paradoxically, while HBOT can reduce inflammation in the short term, repeated exposure may trigger low-grade chronic inflammation, a hallmark of many age-related diseases.
Pulmonary and Neurological Risks: High oxygen levels over long periods can lead to lung inflammation, scarring, and even seizures in extreme cases.
HBOT’s Commercial Ploy
The rapid proliferation of HBOT clinics signals a trend driven more by profit than by science. Clinics charge hefty fees for sessions, often bundling treatments into packages marketed as anti-aging solutions. However, their claims lack strong scientific backing and are often based on misinterpreted or flawed studies, like the Israeli telomere study. While HBOT has clear benefits for specific medical conditions, using it as a routine wellness tool is speculative and unsupported.
What’s particularly troubling is the absence of long-term studies on the effects of habitual HBOT for healthy individuals. The therapy’s risks are well-documented, but its purported benefits for the healthy remain anecdotal and unproven. This makes HBOT more of a commercial gimmick than a credible anti-aging intervention.
A Word of Caution
For healthy individuals, the appeal of HBOT lies in its promise of rejuvenation—but at what cost? Current evidence suggests that the therapy’s risks, including oxidative stress and cellular damage, outweigh its speculative benefits. Until robust research demonstrates its safety and efficacy for long-term use, HBOT should be reserved for its medical indications, not marketed as a lifestyle enhancement.
Clinics offering HBOT as a cure-all for aging and wellness are selling hope, not science. If you’re tempted by the promise of HBOT, remember that well-established methods—like exercise, balanced nutrition, and proper sleep—remain the safest and most effective ways to promote longevity. For now, HBOT is a “wellness” fad that is likely to do more harm than good and a fun billionaire biohacking toy that is fun to show off at parties.
Sign up for your onboarding session and let’s start on your longevity program today.
David Siegel
Infinite Game of Life
The Best Time to Hire a Longevity Coach
I’ve done a lot of divorce coaching, life coaching, and executive coaching. Guess when most people hire a coach? When they are already drowning and need a specialist to get them out of trouble. Marketers know you can really only advertise to people who are in pain and suffering and need pain relief, because no one is ever in the market for not getting divorced, not having to lose a lot of weight, not having drama with kids, not getting cavities, not having enough sales to make payroll, etc. You sell hair treatments to the guy who is starting to go bald, not to that same guy two years earlier.
People don’t want to pay for prevention, but they are very motivated to pay someone to help get them back where things were before.
Isn’t that funny? You wouldn’t think to just get into a car for the first time and drive down the road. You wouldn’t think to buy a new set of clubs and just start playing golf. You wouldn’t buy a new tennis racket and just go figure it out on the court. You wouldn’t buy a pair of skis and get into the tram to go to the top of the mountain and see how it goes once you’re on top. You wouldn’t buy ropes, harness, and caribiners and just start climbing rocks. In those areas, everyone knows you need to build skills before you can apply them. But in too many cases, people just hope things will work out. Maybe they can save some money that way. When the shit hits the fan, they are instantly willing to part with their money to hire a specialist who can repair the damage.
There should be a huge market for helping couples not get divorced, but they won’t pay for that. Instead, they are willing to pay hundreds of thousands or even millions to get divorced once it’s too late.
As your longevity coach, I have an important message: even though you may not understand it right now, today is the absolute best day to create a longevity plan and start executing it. Tomorrow is worse. And the day after tomorrow is worse still. Waiting until your doctor says you have diabetes or fatty-liver disease or high cholesterol or you have a heart attack is not the right time.
As soon as I read Outlive, I knew I wanted to build this business into a world-class service, to really help thousands of people be far healthier in their 60s and beyond. Watch Peter’s videos. He constantly says the best time to start is right now.
You can wait for the bad news. You can wait until you’re in pain. But you can’t do it over again later if you realize you shouldn’t have waited. I’m offering to talk with you for free and see how I can help. It might be worth your time to book a call with me and find out.
Taking Time Off from Training
I’ve mentioned before that after you strain/stretch/tear your muscles, they grow in proportion to the damage, but after about 4-5 days, that growth starts to diminish, because your body doesn’t think it will be needed. So you want to work each muscle group every 3-4 days, and you don’t want to miss your window of opportunity to build on previous gains.
But.
According to Mike Israetel, the body is very good at regaining recent gains. Your body can remember that it was recently bigger and catch up quickly. So if you work out in the gym for five months and gain five pounds, then you take an entire month off, you’ll gain even more over the next five months than if you hadn’t taken the month off. This is counter-intuitive, but we can build it into our schedule. Here’s what Mike recommends:
Build muscle using a regular weekly routine for five weeks, then take a week off. You may focus on other sports, work on stretching, work on some smaller muscles you haven’t engaged recently, etc. But nothing on your main muscles. Then go back to your routine for the next five weeks. After the next five weeks, your body won’t notice the week off. Think of this like eating a square of chocolate every day – if you take a week off, that next week of chocolate will be so much better than if you didn’t, right?
After five months of training, take two weeks of very reduced volume in the gym, just going through the motions but not gaining any muscle, then take two weeks of no training in the gym. Take a vacation. Go camping. Hike. Play fun sports, learn a new skill, do fun activities, but take a full two weeks off. Use a schedule to manage your time. Over the next five months, your gains will be bigger than if you hadn’t.
This is all pretty good news. We don’t need to overdo it, but we can see that a ratio of about five to one is beneficial and gives our bodies time to heal better than if we kept up the hard work continuously.
Years two and three of my program are about getting the most gains in the gym possible, and this tells us we can do it more easily than we thought. Later, we’ll learn more about maintenance.
Are you ready for year one? Sign up for your onboarding session with me and let’s get started.
Losing Fat
You hear a lot about gaining weight in the gym, but what if you have fat to lose?
We know a few things about fat:
Visceral fat is fat inside your body, attached to your organs. This kind of fat is difficult to see and can lead to metabolic disease and other problems. People with higher body fat percentages are more likely to have excess visceral fat, particularly if they have a larger waist circumference. Men, women after menopause, sedentary people, those who eat diets high in processed foods, sugar, refined carbohydrates, and trans fats, older people in general, and people with chronic stress.
Belly and bottom fat will reduce the length of your life. Many people with this kind of fat develop metabolic disease, also called insulin resistance. People who are insulin resistant need to work with their doctor to manage insulin and should generally not eat carbohydrates. People who have diabetes should eat no carbohydrates.
All diets work in the short run. Researchers at Stanford have shown that almost any kind of reasonable diet will help you lose 10-20 pounds in 6-12 months. Don’t believe stories of people who lost 50-100 pounds in 12 months. They aren’t done yet.
Almost all diets fail in the long run. Very few people keep the weight off. The same studies also showed that almost no one keeps the weight off – it comes back (sometimes more) within the next 12 months. It’s incredibly hard to keep off. Two reasons for this: 1) you don’t actually lose fat cells. When you lose weight your fat cells get smaller, but they don’t disappear. When you gain weight, your body creates new fat cells, but they pretty much stay with you forever. 2) Your body wants the weight back. Your pituitary is used to pumping out hormones to keep your system balanced. If you gain weight slowly over decades, you’ve trained your pituitary gland. It doesn’t change quickly in response to a loss of fat. So you need to dedicate more time and effort to the second year than the first, it takes increasing amounts of exercise and even more attention to sticking to a strict diet just to hold the weight loss you accomplished early.
The longer you have had extra weight, the harder it is to keep off. Most people gain 1-2 pounds per year for 20-30 years. If you think you’ll lose all that in two years and keep it off, especially while trying to build muscle, you’re living in the check-out aisle at the grocery store where all the magazines are.
The only way to lose weight and keep it off is slowly and steadily. That’s why I have a five-year program, because losing weight in the first year is just the very beginning. In fact, I’d prefer you don’t lose more than a few pounds in the first year, just so we can set up your routines and schedule to support meaningful weight loss and weight gain in years 2-5.
If you understand that you’re not going to be ready for this later, the time is now, book your first session with me and let’s get going.
Stoicism
Stoicism is one of the most powerful tools in anyone’s toolkit. In fact, it is a toolkit. Stoicism is a philosophy that says there’s no need to base your outlook on your circumstances. A lot of people do it, but it’s an unnecessary burden. When you divorce your attitude from your circumstances, you view the world in a more balanced light. You’re able to see options you couldn’t see before. You don’t get upset, you get to work on solving problems.
Life is hard. I think if most of us wrote our autobiography it would be titled “The Hard Way.” There are very few people to whom everything comes easily. I’ve never had a door open for me in my life. Mostly, people try to block whatever I want to do. I’ve always had to use a welding torch and blasting caps and make my own doors. As we say in entrepreneurship: “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas; if you have a good idea, you’ll have to force it down people’s throats.”
Stoics embrace this and use it to their advantage. They say “What’s in the way is the way.” I invite you to sign up for Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic emails and watch some of these videos:
In addition to optimism and skeptical empiricism, Stoicism is part of my philosophy of life, and it can be yours, too. Book your onboarding call with me and let’s get started on your road to a stronger, healthier, happier life.
Hot Yoga
Hot yoga is some kind of normal yoga done in a room heated to about 100 degrees F. There are several kinds of hot yoga. I don’t care what the brand or program is, they are all good. Probably not something you want to do in the middle of summer, but I recommend hot yoga to many people because it’s a great energizer in the middle of winter and it really moves the needle on flexibility and strength.
Hot yoga is hard. It’s an endurance activity. The first time you do it, you’ll be surprised how exhausted you are after just 30 minutes. You need to pace yourself, dial back the moves, and drink plenty of water. You start as a beginner and slowly, incrementally, work your way into the class of regulars, who seem to be able to do the impossible. After an hour of hot yoga, everyone is completely drained. Half an hour later, everyone is super energized to go out and seize the day.
Here’s a good article.
Here are some good videos:
Hot yoga is great for everyone, especially those who don’t like outdoor endurance sports, especially in winter when it’s hard to get motivated to go outside and exercise. If you give it a try, you might find that you look forward to your weekly group and you won’t feel right without a hot-yoga session once a week.
Now is the best time of your life to get in better shape. Book your onboarding call with me and let’s get started.
Overcoming Obstacles
Someone wrote me the other day saying he can’t start my program until his foot is better. He’s had chronic foot pain for years, so he’s not able to start an exercise program.
How’s that going to work out?
They have a saying in the National Football League in the US: “Anyone can play this game uninjured. That’s not what we do.”
I keep emphasizing to people, there’s only one thing to do: make progress toward your goal. However you do it. With whatever limitations. Can you be better and stronger tomorrow? Can you do more to lose fat and build muscle? Can you find a way to take your diet one small step closer to a better one? Can you find five more minutes in the gym? Can you work around your limitations?
I work around my limitations all the time. Some days my knee hurts, some days it doesn’t. I still stretch every day. I still do stairs. I still do squats. I run until it hurts. If it hurts, I walk.
I have tennis elbow in my left arm. I’ve had it before. It takes time. Immobilization doesn’t help. What helps is gentle use, do whatever you can but stay under the pain threshold. So I do light bicep curls and use a machine to help do pullups. When I can, I increase the resistance. When I can’t, I work on something else.
Now is the absolute best time for you to start your longevity training. Now is the time to commit to getting in shape, 30 minutes a day and three times a week. Waiting is always worse. Start with what you have. Find workarounds. Do your workout every day, even if it’s less of a workout than you used to do. If you have a fever, I’d say you can skip the workout. If you just have a sore throat or a stuffed nose, that’s no excuse. Keep moving forward.
Stick with your diet. Take your supplements. Get your protein. Drink your water. Keep moving forward.
That’s the deal: keep moving forward. If you want to use your time and energy best, if you want someone who is flexible but doesn’t accept excuses, set up your onboarding call with me and let’s do this together.
Climbing
When I lived in a loft in San Francisco, I built a climbing wall in my living room. It was gorgeous. And it was fun to climb on. I built it because I have been a lifelong climber, both outdoors and in gyms all around the world. In fact, after we go to Africa next summer, one of the trips I’d like to plan for future clients is to go to the Dolomites and climb the limestone towers there with a group of old people like me.
Climbing is great for people over 50. You have to be flexible, you need a strong grip, and you have to learn a new world of skills and levels of experience. If you think it’s not safe, that’s because you’ve never climbed. Done right, climbing is safer than the drive to the climbing gym or the rock.
Rather than write about it, I’ll give you some videos to watch and be inspired by:
Let’s talk about your longevity strategy. Book a time to talk with me now.
VO2 Max
In addition to building muscle, it’s also important to increase your body’s ability to take in oxygen and put it to work. That’s called VO2 max, and it’s one of the top indicators of how long you will live. While professional athletes measure this very accurately, we can do it simply — with a stopwatch.
I’m not asking you to become a pro athlete or to race on weekends, even though I’d encourage that if you can do it. I’m asking you to find your favorite endurance sport and do it twice a week. Could be running, swimming, rowing, cycling, a cardio machine at the gym, even running up stairs. It should not be tennis, badminton, pickleball, or another sport where you can pause and rest.
At least once every two weeks, you should time yourself and see how far or long or fast you can go in 4-5 minutes. This is called zone-3 training. You should be working too hard to talk, you should be hanging on long enough to make the distance, but at the end of it, you should have nothing left. In running, that could be the quarter mile or half mile. In swimming, it may be 200 meters. On a rowing machine at full resistance, it could be 1,000 meters. It’s hard. It’s tiring. You’re out of breath. You’re counting the seconds until it’s over. And you’re pushing yourself as hard as you can to the line. It should be defined by distance, not time. Try to pick a standard distance, not a standard time.
You should do this sprint at least three, preferably four times in a session, with a good break and drink in between. This session should take about an hour, and you should try to do it every 7-14 days. The goal is to push yourself. If you do that, your times will come down naturally. Keep track on a chart. You’ll see that your times don’t change for a month or two, then they go down a lot.
That’s it. Now, you may not be superman. You may run a quarter mile in 4 minutes. That’s okay. Work on getting it down to 3:50. That’s all I’m asking. At some point, your performance will go below the median, which means more people are slower than you than faster. If you’re in the top 50 percent in your sport for your age group, you’re off to a great start. From there, you can work on incremental gains, to get to the top 40 percent or so. If you can do that and stay there, continuing to perform at that level every ten days or so, you’re far better off than you were before, and you’re far better off than most people your age.
Congratulations. You’ve increased your VO2 max.
Schedule your first call with me and let’s improve everything.
The Shingles Vaccine
Every vaccine must be considered on its own merits. Blanket statements about vaccines in general are unscientific.
Shingles is bad. You don’t want shingles. Now there’s a vaccine.
Background
Herpes zoster is the virus responsible for causing chicken pox and often leads to shingles later in life. Shingles is well-known to produce significant pain and discomfort, which often lasts for months to years and may lead to post-herpetic neuralgia. Shingles can occur anywhere on the body. Patients experience pain, burning, sensitivity to touch, fluid-filled blisters that may crust over, and have itching. For many patients the pain is substantial. Anyone who has had chicken pox may develop shingles as the virus enters the nervous system and lies dormant for years. Eventually, the virus can reactivate to cause shingles. After a shingles episode has resolved, some patients may develop PHN anyway. PHN is a disorder impacting the nerves and skin that produces burning pain that persists after the rash and blisters of shingles has resolved.
To prevent shingles, the RZV vaccine Shingrix was approved and came on the market in 2017. It quickly became one of the most sought-after vaccinations in the developed world. For the first few years, it was very difficult to get, as all doctors and pharmacies had very limited allocations. It is now recommended for all people over 50 and is widely available.
Should you get the Shingrix vaccine?
Of course, each person should make his/her own decision about any medicine, but I highly recommend the Shingrix vaccine. A recent study looked at the real-world results since the vaccine’s release and found it very effective. It doesn’t guarantee you won’t get shingles, but it has been shown to be about 70 percent effective after two doses. These real-world results are less than the 90-percent figures from the drug trials on the way to FDA approval, but I’d rather be 70 percent protected than zero percent. Shingles is bad. The decision not to get the vaccine is a decision to increase your risk of getting shingles.
What is the downside? In addition to the expense and discomfort and potentially a day or two of feeling tired, the one negative is that about 3 people in a million have been diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a serious neurological disorder, following Shingrix vaccination. Given that about 1-2 people per 100,000 are diagnosed with GBS each year, it’s entirely likely that some or all of those “side effects” were going to happen without the vaccine. But even if those numbers are true side effects, the benefits outweigh the risks in my view.
It’s up to you. I’m not giving medical advice here, just information and opinions.
How to get the Shingrix vaccine
The vaccine is now widely available. You may have to pay, depending on your insurance situation, but it’s worth it. I would say most people should get this vaccine right around their 60th birthday. It does wear off over time, so 60 is probably in the sweet spot for most people. It comes in two shots, separated by 2-6 months. In my case, the second shot laid me out for 36 hours. I managed to get out of bed to use the bathroom and get something to drink, but I really slept for almost the entire time. It wasn’t fun. But then it was over and now I’m protected. You should be, too.
Remember, I’m not your doctor, I’m your advisor. For other health concerns and to start your longevity program, book your first call with me today.
Always a Little Sore
There’s a fine line between making good progress and getting injured. In the gym, you want to use your time well. If four sets gives you better results than three sets, it makes sense to do all four sets. But your body doesn’t come with a stress meter that shows exactly where the line is. In fact, you can do the same thing every day for weeks before you go over a threshold you don’t know is there, and then — bang! — you’re injured. Or you can feel like you did a great job in the gym, but the next morning you get the message that you overdid it.
To become a longevity athlete, you need to be more in tune with the signals and with your body’s tolerance for stress. Because these things are invisible, the smart way is to stay low and don’t push it.
There are some things we know about and can watch for. We know what causes tennis elbow, plantar fasciitis, and other injuries. If you’ve never had these conditions, I want to make sure you never cross the line into that territory, so you don’t have to deal with an injury that can take years to recover from.
You should be a little sore, but not too sore. You’re always trying to raise each muscle up from the plateau you reached three/four days ago, but you’re also not trying to jeopardize the gains you’ve made so far. The rule is simple:
Don’t overdo it. There will be more chances to build muscle later. Don’t be too eager. Take your small wins one at a time. Make incremental progress. You’ll see the difference eventually. The results will come.
Be patient. Stick to the plan.
Book your first call with me and let’s set you up for success, not injury.
Women and Longevity
I get messages from women saying “Your get-fit program is great for men, but women are different.”
If that were the case, your mother would be strong and resilient. But look at the 75+ women in your life: are they strong and resilient? Or are they one fall away from disaster? Yes, women are different from men. But they don’t die very differently. They break bones. They get cancer. They have heart attacks. They get dementia. They become frail and less and less active.
The best research shows that most women should be on hormone replacement therapy. In this video, Peter breaks down hormone issues for women. I consider this a must-see video, even for men who want to understand what women go through and need:
To be fit and healthy in their eighties, women – like men – should lose fat and build as much bone and muscle as they can and work to maintain that condition by working harder and harder every year. This is not for everyone. This is for people who really want to be independent in their later years. I’m not saying you should become Lauren Bruzzone, but you can learn from her:
Dr Rhonda Patrick has a YouTube channel where she explains why women need to exercise, hormones, what supplements to take, etc.
Here she talks with an expert on high-intensity training:
Here’s a conversation between Peter and a woman who has been through intense strength training …
Here’s the takeaway: wherever you are, you can do better. You can eat better, sleep better, get better exercise, and get better supplements. If you can move the needle in the right direction, you’ll benefit in the long run. You don’t have to become a superstar athlete. If you can move yourself from the bottom half of your age group to the top half – if you can be at the 60th percentile of physical fitness for your age group – you’ll get huge benefits in quality of life in your later years.
I’m asking the same thing of women that I ask of men: dedicate 30 minutes a day and three cardio sessions a week. It does not have to be world class. It just has to keep moving you in the right direction.
You can do this. You can do it without me. But you’ll do better with a coach behind you. I guarantee it. Sign up for your onboarding session and let’s start on your longevity program today.
Consistency, Consistency, Consistency
You want to get in better shape and redesign your lifestyle to be healthy and strong for the next 30+ years. But it’s not easy. There are setbacks of all kinds:
Accidents
Diseases
Binges and going back on your promises
Outside influences
Time squeeze
Other commitments
These are understandable. They get in the way of many plans. But they will destroy your chances to be healthy and strong in your 70s, 80s, and 90s, simply because you can’t “make it up later.”
Let’s say you’re in your 50s and you enjoy some activity, like running or pickleball. After reading Peter Attia’s book and my previous messages, you understand that you are not protected against the things most likely to crush your quality of life later. So you start on a plan to build muscle.
Muscle building works like this: you stress and tear the fibers of your muscles. Over the next two days, the muscle takes protein from your blood and rebuilds even stronger, because it’s preparing for future abuse. By day three, that rebuilding process is over. If not used, the muscle begins to relax and atrophy. Within about ten days, the muscle is back to where it was before you stressed it. The only way to build muscle is to re-stress it before it starts to give up the previous gains.
This means you need to re-stress every muscle you are trying to build on a 3-4 day rotation. You can do it every other day or every fourth day, but for most people, every third day is optimal. If you get to day three after a big workout and you have some emergency that keeps you out of the gym, you must mentally plan to get back in the next day without fail. If you let yourself go past four days even once, you’ll probably do it again, and then you’re just throwing away your hard-earned gains.
That’s why I say the number one factor is consistency, and it really does take a full year to set up your schedule, your stretching, and your routines so you can build in years three and four. Want to go faster? You’re asking for injury, setbacks, and disappointment.
Consistency is the key. I can help you build that foundation and make those gains, so you make the best use of your time and you build your schedule around your current and future health. Sign up for your first call and let’s put that foundation in place.
The Longevity Store
My website has a store page, and I want you to start buying things from it. Not for my benefit, for yours. Here are some highlights, but there is much more.
For bone building
Most of what you want can be found in AlgaeCal Plus. I have no relationship with them, but this is what I take, in addition to an extra magnesium glycenate every night (see below). To get the best price on Algaecal, go to Fullscript.com, sign up for an account, and buy from them on a subscription plan. Cheaper than Amazon.
Magnesium
I think it makes sense to take magnesium. I think if you just want magnesium without the side effects like diarrhea, calcium glycenate is probably best. However, if you’re taking AlgaeCal Plus, you’re already getting some magnesium. In that case, you could add one of these
magnesium glycenate caps each night at bedtime. To save money, get magnesium bisglycenate instead — it’s every bit as good and costs less. You can also find deals on magnesium at **FullScript.**
Protein-rich foods
Post Premier Protein Mixed Berry Almond Cereal
Silk high-protein almond milk (Amazon doesn’t carry this, but it’s in most grocery stores)
Muscle milk - dairy. Wow, this stuff is fantastic. I’ve been vegan for 45 years, but I don’t mind drinking this after hard workouts, since whey protein is far more efficient for building muscle. It tastes great.
Muscle Milk - vegan. Also excellent, but vegan protein is always lower quality for building muscle.
Dumbbells
Dumbbells are about the best investment you can make in your future quality of life. A set of dumbbells and a bench and you’re most of the way to the home gym you need. The best dumbbells by far are a rack of individual dumbbells — if you have the money and space. Make sure to get small dumbbells in small increments like 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, 15 pounds, etc. Most have coarse adjustments, like 15, 25, 35 — these are no good. I have seen a lot of dumbbells. I only recommend these.
The best rack by far is the Hampton Durabell 5-25 pound rack in 2.5-pound increments: $1300. Get this set if you can afford it and have space. You’ll still need heavier weights for carrying, but this versatile set is a good investment for the long term. Combine with the Bowflex 552 for a perfect, compact solution.
Adjustable dumbbells
Most adjustable dumbbells are useless for our purposes. The only one I recommend is the **Bowflex 552** for ****$429 - this is the set I have. Sounds expensive, but it’s an entire rack of dumbbells in one small package. Maximum 52 pounds per hand. I love them. This is the most versatile and easy-to-use product on the market. Highly recommended.
Step-up blocks
I highly recommend getting one or two of these, so you can work on step-ups and downs: Everymile adjustable-height workout step: $50
These are some of the must-have items I think everyone embarking on his or her longevity journey should load up with. These are cheap but important investments in your future quality of life. There is much more at my store.
What do Doctors Know?
What do doctors know? Less than we think they do. Less than they probably should. Even though doctors say they want to help patients, the entire system is designed to make money. It’s designed to keep customers coming back rather than staying away. Studies show that more than 80 percent of doctors don’t have the required statistical skills to interpret test results, let alone figure out which drugs you should be taking. Drug companies help them do that with constant messaging and outreach.
Most doctors are good people, but they stay inside the system. Your doctor may tell you that you can’t build more bone as you age; you should take bisphosphenates. He or she will tell you they reduce your relative risk of breaking a bone dramatically, by more than 36 percent.
Wow, 36 percent is a huge reduction of risk, right?
Wrong. An article in the American Journal of Medicine called “Reconsidering the benefits of osteoporosis treatment” said:
“When the baseline risk is low, use of relative risk alone is likely misleading. According to the review conducted by the ACP, the relative risk reduction of hip fractures with bisphosphonate treatment for at least 3 years is 36%; however, the absolute risk reduction is only 0.6%. Framed as number needed to treat, 167 patients need to be treated for 3 years to prevent one hip fracture.”
Imagine you study 500 people and, over one year, there are 3 hip fractures. That’s a 1 percent fracture rate. Give another group of 500 people Boniva or Fosamax, and that group has 2 fractures in one year. Wow, that’s a 36 percent reduction!! All of this is rigged to provide that 36 percent number they can use in their advertising. They choose a low number of patients, a short time period, and do enough studies until they find the number they are looking for. If your doctor doesn’t understand this is just marketing, you need a better doctor.
For osteoporosis, we have one. His name is Doug Lucas. He’s the author of “**The Osteoporosis Breakthrough: The Natural Way to Reverse Causes of Bone Loss and Build Strong Bones!” I’ll talk more about him in later blog posts.
Peter Attia had a great conversation with Dr Marty Makary on the fundamental flaws in medicine and what can be done about them. As you watch this, think how many of these fallacies your doctor believes:
It takes critical thinking to navigate the healthcare system. Work with me and I’ll help you do just that. Book your first call now.
Longevity for Women
Peter Attia’s book, Outlive, is for everyone. Peter shows that losing fat, building muscle, building your peak performance, taking the right supplements, and doing a few more things will help you be much healthier in your years after 50. But in 17 chapters, he doesn’t even mention menopause once. I think he wanted to make the book accessible to everyone and guide people on the same basic journey.
But Peter knows a lot about women and aging. I’ve seen all his podcasts and read his blog posts. This video, I believe, is an explanation of female hormones and aging that every woman and her husband should watch:
Peter has also spent a lot of time debunking the myth that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) causes breast cancer. He believes almost all women should start HRT with estrogen and the micronized (bioavailable) progestin most HRT programs use today. Peter, like most doctors, now recommends working with your doctor to start HRT as soon as you begin feeling symptoms (premenopause).
The top ten causes of death for women
The top-ten causes are:
Heart Disease: 21.8%
Cancer: 19.6%
Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases (CLRD): 6.2%
Stroke (Cerebrovascular Diseases): 6.1%
Alzheimer’s Disease: 5.8%
Unintentional Injuries: 4.3%
Diabetes: 2.8%
Influenza and Pneumonia: 2.1%
Kidney Disease: 1.8%
Septicemia (Blood Infection): 1.3%
You might think some of these are beyond your control, but being lean and strong is highly preventative for most of these endpoints. There is always something coming to get you next. But the stronger you are, the better your chances of pushing that death off by years or decades.
Do women age differently than men?
Women do have some genetic factors in their favor, but in general, women mostly outlive men by being exposed to less risk and being willing to get help sooner. Unfortunately, they don’t live much longer than men, and they die from mostly the same causes. So at a high level, the same principles apply to both sexes:
Lose fat
Build as much muscle as you can to stay protected
Build grip strength and agility to prevent falls
Build your endurance
Build your peak performance
Get the protein you need
Take supplements to help preserve what you have
Make sure to get enough quality sleep
Stress and anxiety are killers. Address mental-health issues; don’t let them slide because you are too busy thinking about others
You might think: most of that is for the macho boys at the gym, but that’s a poor excuse for doing what’s necessary to stay healthy for decades longer than you would without. Here’s the story of Jane McDonald, who is 75. She finally had enough of being sick and tired, lost 60 pounds, got into the gym, and now inspires others to do the same:
I’m not saying you should become a competitive bodybuilder. I’m saying what Peter Attia says: get a little stronger every day. If you can give it 30 minutes a day and 3 cardio sessions a week, you can have a huge impact on the quality of your life for decades. Book your onboarding session with me and let’s make a plan for how you can live much healthier for the next 3-4 decades.
How much does Aging Cost?
Suppose you could buy a pill that will protect you from the effects of aging until you’re 90 years old. What would that pill be worth to you?
Option 1 - no pill
You can pretend that some golf and pickleball will protect you. Let’s add up the costs:
Who will pay all your bills - your kids?
There’s also the chance that it doesn’t cost very much at all, because you fall and break a bone, and then you die before you turn 80. Furthermore, what’s the quality of life like? How excited are your grandchildren to come visit you?
Option 2 - the pill
On the other hand, we have the pill.
How much are you willing to pay for that pill?
$20,000? $50,000? $100,000? More?
The pill doesn’t exist. It may someday, but today’s “longevity cures” are absolutely fantastic - for the people selling them. The people buying them give up their money for no measurable return.
But there are two more options …
Option 3 - start your longevity program now
There’s a third option, and it’s all described in Peter Attia’s book, Outlive. It only costs $20, plus you need a gym membership or a small home gym. You’ll need to become a daily athlete and dedicate 40 minutes each day, plus 3 serious cardio workouts a week. You’ll need to take some supplements, adjust your diet, and lose excess body fat while you work to gain muscle. The price is low, but the benefits are tremendous:
You look great.
You feel great.
You have more energy.
You’re independent.
You bound up stairs and go down confidently.
You have strong bones.
You’re out doing things with other active friends.
You have so many more opportunities open to you.
You take adventure vacations with your grandchildren and leave the boring parents behind (and you carry all their luggage, because you’re stronger).
You have your mental faculties and a low cancer risk.
Option 4 - get a longevity coach
I know, you hadn’t considered a longevity coach. If you can read Peter’s book and do everything he says, you don’t need one. But you’ll save time, do it right, and be held accountable if you have one.
That’s what I’m here for. Let’s get started.