A Great Read

Occasionally, I will review books that I find compelling and complimentary to the Don’t Let The Old Man In ethic.  One such excellent book is “OUTLIVE The Science & Art of Longevity”  The book is a NYT bestseller written by Peter Attia, MD with Bill Gifford.  Attia has a medical degree from Stanford and trained at Johns Hopkins Hospital in general surgery. He also trained at the NIH as a surgical oncology fellow at the National Cancer Institute (what a lightweight!).  Gifford is a veteran journalist and writer. 

The book is very readable and covers a number of health and lifestyle-related topics.  Attia begins the book with a chapter entitled “The Long Game,” which introduces the concept of “healthspan” versus lifespan.  This involves a concept called “bending the mortality curve.” Most people, after a certain point, experience a relatively steep curve towards death.  By bending that curve, the slope towards death is flattened. In other words, we can live a relatively healthy life up until the point of death. Death is inevitable, but the way we approach it is not; much  is under our control.   We are all going to die, no way around that yet, but Attia makes the point that with certain proactive lifestyle choices, we can experience a rather slow, healthy flat curve towards death rather than a painful and precipitous one.

Attia backs up his ideas and advice with lots of good research and data.  At times, he goes  fairly deep into the science of it all, but the book remains very readable despite the occasional deep dive.  I found the book very informative, and it definitely motivated me to make some positive lifestyle adjustments.

The book can be viewed as a basic text on how to keep the Old Man out. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and it fell into the “couldn’t put it down” category for me.  Highly recommended!