Last Spring I was handed a new book called OUTLIVE by Dr. Peter Attia (pub. March 2023) while also being asked if I would spend a moment to review the health ideas this book presents and give my opinion. As promised in a prior blog (May 2023) I would give this book a look and I’ve now a short summary to share, plus I now can also share my personal experience of 6 months following one of the recommendations given in this book. For anyone interested in living a healthy life now and in the long-view, which includes most everyone I know, it’s a good read.
Dr. Attia argues that by doing certain things in our forties, we will have healthier bodies and can have better lives in our eighties. He speaks about our quality of life, what he calls “healthspan”, and not of simply living longer or “lifespan”, e.g. about having more of our later years being more enjoyable, more functional, and his arguments are very convincing.
I doubt I will be scaling mountains and skateboarding and skiing gnarly bowls in the Rockies when I am in my eighties, but I do think about bounding up stairs with glee as the grandchildren call for bedtime stories, and about recreational biking and hiking. These activities require mental agility, physical balance, muscle strength, joint freedom, etc. And those require good oxygen intake, muscle mass, muscle strength, bone health, to name a few. Studies show that all these take a sharp decline after age 65 such that it becomes difficult to maintain them, let alone increase them in later years — hence the advantage of starting early enough, of thinking ahead, of giving a good look at where we want to be health wise later and making the connection that the evidence is overwhelming that we can make a difference by adopting simple changes in life style if we start now.
Discussions are included in this book on what defines illness as best we know it today, which in itself makes for very good reading. Plus advice for ways to avoid illness by keeping good health is given for diet, nutrition, supplements, for what blood tests to perform at annual physicals, and for exercise. It is the exercise that I was drawn to of course as this is my field, yet also because of the irrefutable evidence Dr. Attia presents of the powerful effects of exercise toward good health, across all segments of the human population. In his words:
“More than any other tactical domain we discuss in this book, exercise has the greatest power to determine how you will live out the rest of your life.”
“So if you adopt only one new set of habits based on reading this book, it must be in the realm of exercise.”
“VO2max”, the amount of oxygen taken in to generate ATP to fuel the cells, “is perhaps the single most powerful marker for longevity.”
“Sarcopenia” (age-related muscle loss) presents a “six times likelier to report having a low quality of life a decade later than those who had maintained more muscle mass.”
“Exercise is so effective against diseases of aging that it has often been compared to medicine.”
So then, WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?? Well, LOTS!!!! 🙂
Exercise is something that we have to choose to do. It is not a pill, or even a doctor well-being check-up, but thankfully it doesn’t need a prescription either. Exercise is something that needs to happen everyday. Basically, there are two types needed: ZONE 1 (resistance training) and ZONE 2 (cardio), and a wealth of variety exists in each to satisfy any and all personal situations. So think “I can do this!” no matter what your physical condition. If you are strong then go big time with it! If you are weak then start gently.
I am mostly writing this blog to encourage exercise: to show the absolute importance of it and to help remove any perceived obstacles; and to show that pain/stiffness/weakness/imbalance increase because we choose not to apply the easily available self-care of exercise Of course, it’s not that we are at fault, just that we haven’t been shown how easy it is and how beneficial it is — the payback of time-in to benefits-out is astounding!! …improving our lives, extending our healthspan, and starting early really does help, and it really works well.
But maybe I don’t like structured exercise and would rather be doing something that I simply enjoy?? Yes, this is me :). This is how I have chosen to live most of my life so far: rock climbing, bicycling, mountain climbing, skiing. I’m in great shape. I feel blessed. HOWEVER, now I have read OUTLIVE and I hold a changed perspective. I feel it is time for me to now develop a structured exercise program to stay ahead of the game, to prepare now for a better life later.
So, I decided to see what I could do for myself. My age and state of health are well suited to make use of Dr. Attia’s argument for developing muscle mass now to prevent the “usual” loss of muscle mass later. For the past six months I have joined a gym, hired a trainer to design for me a general upper and lower body resistance training program, and made a personal commitment to workout three days per week. I have kept a log so that I can look back and measure changes. I found my own personal best-fit habits like doing the workouts early, before my daily schedule began, and of course this required getting up a little earlier. I also included more protein in my diet to give the muscles the material needed for muscle building, which all the literature agrees is mandatory for good results.
With resistance training not being my choice for my first 40 years, I engaged in conversations with my weight lifting friends and each would say “You’ll like it! The effects are measurable, the feelings after each session are good!”
Indeed I found all of this to be true, and because of this it’s a very easy new habit to take on. I like it! Agility, balance, strength, and flexibility go a long way to secure a healthy future of being active in later years. Plus the risk of injury from falling is less, and the muscles are better prepared should any repairs (surgeries) be needed as a result of a fall. After all, maybe I will be skiing in my eighties 🙂
So consider the importance of exercise and if it is not a part of your life currently, I encourage you to take it on in some form, as the benefits are simply GREAT!! If this blog has left you needing more to be convinced then please read OUTLIVE, Dr. Peter Attia with Bill Gifford, Harmony Press, 2023.