Dr. Peter Attia — The Science and Art of Longevity, Optimizing Protein, Alcohol Rules, Lessons from Glucose Monitoring with CGMs, Boosting Your VO2 Max, Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease, Early Cancer Detection, How to Use DEXA Scans, Nature’s Longevity Drug

Illustration via 99designs




“To understand what it means to live longer, you have to understand what ends life.”
— Dr. Peter Attia



Peter Attia, MD  ( @PeterAttiaMD ),   is the founder of  Early Medical , a medical practice that applies the principles of Medicine 3.0 to patients with the goal of lengthening their lifespan and simultaneously improving their healthspan. He is the host of  The Drive , one of the most popular podcasts covering the topics of health and medicine. 



Dr. Attia received his medical degree from the Stanford University School of Medicine and trained for five years at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in general surgery, where he was the recipient of several prestigious awards, including Resident of the Year. He spent two years at the National Institutes of Health as a surgical oncology fellow at the National Cancer Institute, where his research focused on immune-based therapies for melanoma.



His new book is  Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity  (3/28).



Please enjoy!



Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Overcast , Podcast Addict , Pocket Casts , Castbox , Google Podcasts , Stitcher , Amazon Music ,  or on your favorite podcast platform . Watch the interview on YouTube here .



Brought to you by  Wealthfront  high-yield savings account,  Helix Sleep  premium mattresses, and  Shopify  global commerce platform providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business. 



The transcript of this episode  can be found here . Transcripts of all episodes  can be found here .



Listen on Apple Podcasts



Listen on Spotify



Listen on Overcast


#661: Dr. Peter Attia — The Science and Art of Longevity, Optimizing Protein, Alcohol Rules, Lessons from Glucose Monitoring with CGMs, Boosting Your VO2 Max, Preventing Alzheimer's Disease, Early Cancer Detection, How to Use DEXA Scans, Nature’s Longevity Drug, and More













This episode is brought to you by  Helix Sleep !  Helix was selected as the best overall mattress of 2022 by  GQ  magazine , Wired,  and Apartment Therapy. With  Helix , there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz— only two minutes to complete —that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk-free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it.  And now, Helix is offering 20% off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at  HelixSleep.com/Tim .







This episode is brought to you by  Wealthfront !  Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn  4.05%  APY—that’s the Annual Percentage Yield—with the  Wealthfront Cash Account . That’s more than twelve times  more interest than if you left your money in a savings account at the average bank, according to FDIC.gov. 



It takes just a few minutes to sign up, and then you’ll immediately start earning 4.05% interest on your savings. And when you open an account today, you’ll get  an extra fifty-dollar bonus   with a deposit of five hundred dollars or more.   Visit  Wealthfront.com/Tim  to get started.







This episode is brought to you by  Shopify !  Shopify  is one of my favorite platforms and one of my favorite companies.  Shopify  is designed for anyone to sell anywhere , giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. In no time flat, you can have a great-looking online store that brings your ideas to life, and you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day and drive sales. No coding or design experience required.



Go to  shopify.com/Tim  to sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period. It’s a great deal for a great service, so I encourage you to check it out. Take your business to the next level today by visiting  shopify.com/Tim .







Want to hear Peter’s last time on the show?  Listen to this conversation in which we discuss liquid biopsies, the four pillars of exercise someone seeking to improve their metabolic health should understand, methods for remedying modern posture problems, raising kids to be habitually active adults, the three levers of Peter’s nutritional framework, increasing scientific literacy, current pharmacological candidates for extending lifespan and healthspan, everything you ever wanted to know about zone two training, and much more .


#517: Dr. Peter Attia on Longevity Drugs, Alzheimer’s Disease, and the 3 Most Important Levers to Pull



What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments .



SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…







SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE




Connect with Dr. Peter Attia :




Website  |  Twitter  |  Facebook  |  Instagram  |  YouTube




Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia | Amazon



Engineer Your Own Personalized Longevity Playbook | Early Medical



The Peter Attia Drive Podcast



Dr. Peter Attia on Longevity Drugs, Alzheimer’s Disease, and the 3 Most Important Levers to Pull | The Tim Ferriss Show #517



Peter Attia, M.D. — Fasting, Metformin, Athletic Performance, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #398



Dr. Peter Attia vs. Tim Ferriss | The Tim Ferriss Show #352



Dr. Peter Attia on Life-Extension, Drinking Jet Fuel, Ultra-Endurance, Human Foie Gras, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #50



DEXA Scan (DXA): Bone Density Test, What Is It and How It’s Done | Cleveland Clinic



Assessment of Lean Mass and Physical Performance in Sarcopenia | Journal of Clinical Densitometry



Fat-Free Mass Index (FFMI) Calculator | Omni Calculator



AMA #11: All Things Fasting | The Peter Attia Drive #89



How Much Protein Should You Eat? | Peter Attia



Food Sources for Nine Essential Amino Acids | Food Unfolded



The Smart Diet Coaching App | Carbon



5 Proven Benefits of Branched-Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs) | Healthline



mTOR (Mechanistic Target of Rapamycin) | Wikipedia



Lacto-Ovo-Vegetarian Diet: Benefits, Downsides, and Meal Plan | Healthline



What is Ketosis? The Science Explained. | Peter Attia



Jocko Willink, Retired Navy SEAL: Objective, Strategy, and Tactics, Leadership, Protocols, Dealing With Death, and Applying the Many Lessons Learned from War | The Peter Attia Drive #55



USA Causes of Death by Age and Gender | World Life Expectancy



AMA #41: Medicine 3.0, Developments in the Field of Aging, Healthy Habits in Times of Stress, and More | The Peter Attia Drive #231



The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman by Timothy Ferriss | Amazon



Staying Safe from COVID-19 | Johns Hopkins Medicine



What If Moore’s Law Applied to Humans as Well? | The Washington Post



Medicine 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 | Peter Attia, Twitter



Funny Medicine: Hippocrates and the Four Humours | Gavi



Scientific Method | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy



Richard Feynman Teaches You the Scientific Method | Farnam Street



Dirty Doctors Finished What an Assassin’s Bullet Started: Disregarding New Scientific Information Can Be Deadly | Scientific American



Treatments for HIV/AIDS | Stanford Health Care



Treating Hepatitis C | American Liver Foundation



Nixon’s War on Cancer: Why It Mattered | Fred Hutch Cancer Center



Neurodegenerative Diseases | NIEHS



What is ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)? | The ALS Association



Huntington’s Disease | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke



Is Diabetes Becoming the Biggest Epidemic of the 21st Century? | International Journal of Health Sciences



Study Design 101: Randomized Controlled Trial | The Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library



Reading Mendelian Randomisation Studies: A Guide, Glossary, and Checklist for Clinicians | BMJ



What Is ApoB? | Pritkin Longevity Center



Weekly Emails Archives | Peter Attia



Studying the Studies Archives | Peter Attia



Study Design 101: Cohort Study | The Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library



Observational Studies: Epidemiology | Research Guides at Pennsylvania College of Technology



Research Explained in Practical Summaries (REPS) | Biolayne



The Man Who Tries Methods, Ignoring Principles, Is Sure to Have Trouble | Quote Investigator



How to Learn Any Language in Three Months | Tim Ferriss



AMA #30: How to Read and Understand Scientific Studies | The Peter Attia Drive #188



Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks by Ben Goldacre | Amazon



Hills Criteria of Causation



Bradford Hill Criteria | Wikipedia



You’re Blowing Smoke up My Ass, Right? | The Bookwormery



How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff | Amazon



Dr. Matthew Walker, All Things Sleep — How to Improve Sleep, How Sleep Ties Into Alzheimer’s Disease and Weight Gain, and How Medications (Ambien, Trazodone, etc.), Caffeine, THC/CBD, Psychedelics, Exercise, Smart Drugs, Fasting, and More Affect Sleep | The Tim Ferriss Show #650



That Sleep Tracker Could Make Your Insomnia Worse | The New York Times



Alcohol Archives | Peter Attia



Sleep & Alcohol: Part 1 | The Matt Walker Podcast



Sleep & Alcohol: Part 2 | The Matt Walker Podcast



Nutter Butter Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies | Amazon



How to Use a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) to Optimize Your Nutrition (Clip) | The Tim Ferriss Show



Dexcom Continuous Glucose Monitoring | Dexcom



FreeStyle Libre 2 Continuous Glucose Monitor | Abbott US



Dietary Carbohydrate Restriction in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Metabolic Syndrome: Time for a Critical Appraisal | Nutrition & Metabolism



All About Your A1C | CDC



Raisinets | Amazon



Exercise Can Raise Blood Glucose (Blood Sugar) | ADA



Hostel 2 | Prime Video



Wall Street | Prime Video



Hawthorne Effect: How It Works and Is It Real? | Investopedia



VO2 Max: How to Measure and Improve It | Cleveland Clinic



Muscle Fiber Type Transitions with Exercise Training | NCBI



Strength Training Can Help Protect the Brain from Degeneration | The University of Sydney



Concentric, Isometric, and Eccentric Training | Athletic Lab



Best Hamstring Exercise: Nordic Hamstring Curl to Reduce Risk of Injury | Muscle and Motion



How to Do a Hip Hinge | Verywell Fit



Tip: Axial Loading – What You Need to Know | T-Nation



Top Five Hand Strengthening Exercises For Stronger Hands | Virtual Hand Care



What is Rucking? | GORUCK



Training Zones Explained | ACTIVE



Blood Lactate Measurements and Analysis during Exercise: A Guide for Clinicians | Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology



The Beginner’s Gear Guide for Ski Touring or Skinning | Insider



The Rucking Company | GORUCK



Weighted Vest Vs. Rucking | Weight Loss Made Practical



The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter | Amazon



Cognitive Health and Neurodegenerative Disease Prevention | Peter Attia



Physical Exercise and Dementia | Alzheimer’s Society



Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor: A Key Molecule for Memory in the Healthy and the Pathological Brain | Frontiers In Cellular Neuroscience



A New Frontier for Early Cancer Detection? Discussing the Grail Blood Test. | Peter Attia



Whole Body MRI Scans | Prenuvo



Alzheimer’s Genes: Are You at Risk? | Mayo Clinic



Cystatin C | National Kidney Foundation



Creatinine | National Kidney Foundation



FOLFOX Regimen | NCI Dictionary of Cancer Terms



Breast Cancer Hormone Receptor Status | Estrogen Receptor



Guy Winch, Ph.D.: Emotional First Aid and How To Treat Psychological Injuries | The Peter Attia Drive #146



Stuart Smalley’s Daily Affirmation | SNL



Theranos: A Fallen Unicorn | Investopedia




SHOW NOTES




[07:00] How and why Peter’s muscle mass has increased significantly.



[18:48] Why the long wait for Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity ?



[23:19] Objective, strategy, and tactics.



[28:50] From Medicine 1.0 to Medicine 3.0.



[39:04] Randomized control trial results: guidelines, not gospel.



[43:21] Revisiting why and how one should increase their medical literacy.



[52:44] Avoiding scientific method misconceptions.



[55:43] Austin Bradford Hill.



[56:22] Observational study versus randomized control trial.



[1:00:09] Are sleep trackers downgrading the quality of our sleep?



[1:02:53] Under what conditions does Peter feel alcohol might be worth its downsides?



[1:06:47] Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs).



[1:18:24] Underutilized metrics and tools for expanding health and lifespan.



[1:25:01] Strength.



[1:33:11] Rucking around and finding out about VO2 max.



[1:38:32] Finding the zone two sweet spot.



[1:41:10] How skinning and rucking have upped my endurance.



[1:42:24] Rucking vs. weighted vests.



[1:46:39] Are neurodegenerative diseases preventable?



[1:51:47] Helping your doctor understand and embrace Medicine 3.0.



[1:53:47] How much is an ounce of prevention worth to you?



[1:58:23] Early cancer screening.



[2:06:33] Outlive chapters.



[2:08:46] The chapter on emotional health that almost didn’t make the book.



[2:10:16] Peter’s 47 affirmations.



[2:14:18] Parting thoughts.




MORE PETER ATTIA QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW



“Despite what a lot of the epidemiology will tell people, alcohol is not good for you in any dose. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t drink it at all, but let’s not delude ourselves into thinking it’s actually healthy at some low dose. It’s not.” — Dr. Peter Attia



“My response to alcohol is, if I drink something that doesn’t taste incredible, I pour it out. I’m never going to tolerate a bad glass of wine, ever. It’s just not worth it.” — Dr. Peter Attia



“Seven drinks in one day is very different than one drink a day for seven days. It’s the frequency and dose that defines the poison.” — Dr. Peter Attia



“Not one to just clear the bar, I want to be considerably above the bar.” — Dr. Peter Attia



“To understand what it means to live longer, you have to understand what ends life.” — Dr. Peter Attia



“When I went to medical school, I didn’t learn a single thing about nutrition or exercise or sleep or stress management or emotional health. I learned a lot about pharmacology. And it’s tempting at this point to say, ‘Well, pharmacology is either good or bad.’ No, it’s both, right? Pharmacology is good and it’s really valuable, but over-indexing it is bad.” — Dr. Peter Attia



“Sometimes more data is not always the answer.” — Dr. Peter Attia



“Any measurement in isolation can be ridiculous and can be gamed. We shouldn’t ignore blood glucose any more than we should ignore body weight or body fat or body composition. We just have to understand that it’s one of many tools that we can look at.” — Dr. Peter Attia



“To get into that top 2.5 percent of the population where you really start to see an enormous gap between you and everybody else in terms of lifespan, yeah, maybe only a quarter of the population has the potential to get there. But the point is everybody has the potential to be more fit than they are, outside of people who are already doing everything they can. So just going from being in the bottom 25 percent of the population to the 25th to 50th percentile of the population cuts your risk of all-cause mortality in half at any point in time. There’s nothing that compares to that.” — Dr. Peter Attia



PEOPLE MENTIONED




Hercules



David Sabatini



Bill Pearl



Ed Thorp



Hippocrates



Francis Bacon



Richard P. Feynman



Ignaz Semmelweis



Robert Koch



Joseph Lister



Richard M. Nixon



Paracelsus



Robert Kaplan



Layne Norton



Ralph Waldo Emerson



Ben Goldacre



Austin Bradford Hill



Darrell Huff



Gordon Gekko



Lance Armstrong



Jason J. McCarthy



Michael Easter | Twitter



Daniel Palenchar



Bill Gifford



Hugh Jackman



Stuart Smalley

The post Dr. Peter Attia — The Science and Art of Longevity, Optimizing Protein, Alcohol Rules, Lessons from Glucose Monitoring with CGMs, Boosting Your VO2 Max, Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease, Early Cancer Detection, How to Use DEXA Scans, Nature’s Longevity Drug, and More (#661) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss .