Book Review – Outlive
Image: Outlive by Len Lantz (CC BY-NC-ND)
Synopsis: Len's Star Rating: 9 out of 10. An excellent book on longevity.
BY LEN LANTZ, MD / 6.9.2024; No. 122
Disclaimer: Yes, I am a physician, but I’m not your doctor, and this article does not create a doctor-patient relationship. This article is for educational purposes and should not be seen as medical advice. You should consult with your physician before you rely on this information. This post also contains affiliate links. Please click this LINK for the full disclaimer.
Star Rating – 9 out of 10
Rating guide: 1 = horrible, 5 = average and 10 = wow
Author
Peter Attia
About the author
Peter Attia, MD, is a physician, longevity expert, and founder of Early, a medical wellness organization. Outlive is his debut book and became a New York Times #1 bestseller. Dr. Attia completed his BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics at Queen's University at Kingston, his medical degree at Stanford, his general surgery residency training at Johns Hopkins, and his surgical oncology fellowship at the NIH National Cancer Institute. He hosts the podcast The Drive and serves on the editorial board of the journal Aging.
General description
In Outlive, author Peter Attia inspires readers to take better care of their health with the ultimate goal of not only improving longevity but also overall functioning. While many people pay attention to causes of “fast death,” they may be less mindful of illnesses that cause “slow death,” which are chronic diseases that not only shorten lifespan but also can cause severe disability and worsened quality of life. Outlive reinforces commonly known strategies and reveals new insights for managing your health. Topics covered in this book include:
The two components of longevity: lifespan and healthspan
The four most likely causes of “slow death”: heart disease, type 2 diabetes (and other metabolic dysfunction), cancer, and cardiovascular disease
Reasons why traditional medical care struggles to treat “slow death” and steps people can take to take personal action to improve longevity
Distinguishing evidence-based vs. evidence-informed strategies
Strategies to promote longevity
Dietary changes
Treatment for specific medical risk factors
Regular and specific medical screening for certain diseases
Lifestyle changes
Exercises performed regularly (aerobic, strength, balance)
Consistent sleep
Negative impacts of alcohol
Proactively addressing mental health
Unique and most important aspects
Outlive is an eye-opening book on some of the most common chronic diseases that lead to disability and death. In this book, Dr. Peter Attia covers a variety of strategies that people can use immediately to improve their health and quality of life. The author delivers on the promise of the book’s subtitle, The Science & Art of Longevity. In addition to translating longevity research for the reader, Dr. Attia also explains strategies that he uses for his own patients and shares stories from his life that are moving and motivating.
As a psychiatrist, I greatly appreciated that the author addressed mental health concerns on a very personal and convincing level. While I believe that the author could have gone further on recommendations to reduce/eliminate alcohol, his tempered approach might be the most effective and realistic for his patients. Important features of this book include:
Medicine 3.0
“Greater emphasis on prevention than treatment”
“Considers the patient as a unique individual”
“Starting point is the honest assessment, and acceptance, of risk—including the risk of doing nothing.”
Newer approaches to managing cholesterol
The Grail test
The Centenarian Decathlon
Nutrition 3.0
Leveraging the Hawthorne effect on people’s eating habits by having them use a continuous glucose monitor (CGM)
Best quotes
“One of the main obstacles in anyone’s quest for longevity is the fact that the skills that my colleagues and I acquired during our medical training have proved to be far more effective against fast death than slow death.”
“Put another way, if we want to outlive our life expectancy and live better longer, we will have to work hard to earn it—through small, incremental changes.”
“For example, a 2007 study found that older people who were put on a regular exercise program shifted to a more youthful pattern of gene expression after six months.”
“Our goal is to live longer without disease.”
“…nearly half of the population is either on the road to type 2 diabetes or already there.”
“Fully half of all major adverse cardiovascular events in men (and a third of those in women), such as heart attack, stroke, or any procedure involving a stent or a graft, occur before the age of sixty-five. In men, one-quarter of all events occur before age fifty-four.”
“Exercise is the only intervention shown to delay the progression of Parkinson’s.”
“I now tell patients that exercise is, full stop and hands-down, the best tool we have in the neurodegeneration prevention tool kit… Sleep is also a very powerful tool against Alzheimer’s disease.”
“As the authors of the JAMA study concluded, ‘Cardiorespiratory fitness is inversely associated with long-term mortality with no observed upper limit of benefit [emphasis mine]. Extremely high aerobic fitness was associated with the greatest survival.’”
“More alarming is the finding that students who drink heavily two days after a bout of learning or study forgot or failed to retain most of what they had learned.”
“All of these modalities are powerful and potentially useful, but we need to think of them as merely adjuncts to the deep and often very unpleasant, uncomfortable, at times very slow—at other times too fast—self-exploration that is required in real psychotherapy.”
“What I eventually realized, after this long and very painful journey, is that longevity is meaningless if your life sucks. Or if your relationships suck.”
Who would enjoy this book?
Readers looking for a book that explains how they can immediately improve their health and possibly extend their lifespan are likely to enjoy Outlive.
Who would not enjoy this book?
Readers who are uninterested in revisiting the fundamentals of good health or are turned off by medical terminology are unlikely to enjoy Outlive.
Conclusion
Outlive is an excellent book on longevity.
Conclusion
Good to Great is an exceptional book on the principles and practices of highly successful companies and their leaders.