A groundbreaking manifesto on living better and longer that challenges the conventional medical thinking on aging and reveals a new approach to preventing chronic disease and extending long-term health, from a visionary physician and leading longevity expert
“One of the most important books you’ll ever read.”—Steven D. Levitt, New York Times bestselling author of Freakonomics
Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.
For all its successes, mainstream medicine has failed to make much progress against the diseases of aging that kill most people: heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and type 2 diabetes. Too often, it intervenes with treatments too late to help, prolonging lifespan at the expense of healthspan, or quality of life. Dr. Attia believes we must replace this outdated framework with a personalized, proactive strategy for longevity, one where we take action now, rather than waiting.
This is not “biohacking,” it’s science: a well-founded strategic and tactical approach to extending lifespan while also improving our physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Dr. Attia’s aim is less to tell you what to do and more to help you learn how to think about long-term health, in order to create the best plan for you as an individual. In Outlive, listeners will discover:
Why the cholesterol test at your annual physical doesn’t tell you enough about your actual risk of dying from a heart attack.
That you may already suffer from an extremely common yet underdiagnosed liver condition that could be a precursor to the chronic diseases of aging.
Why exercise is the most potent pro-longevity “drug”—and how to begin training for the “Centenarian Decathlon.”
Why you should forget about diets, and focus instead on nutritional biochemistry, using technology and data to personalize your eating pattern.
Why striving for physical health and longevity, but ignoring emotional health, could be the ultimate curse of all.
Aging and longevity are far more malleable than we think; our fate is not set in stone. With the right roadmap, you can plot a different path for your life, one that lets you outlive your genes to make each decade better than the one before.
Top Review
5.0 out of 5 stars Attia does nothing half-way: amazing!
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2023
I normally don’t write product reviews but after I read the few one- and two-star reviews describing the book as fluff I could not control my fingers! What?? Are you kidding me? To paraphrase senator Lloyd Bentsen, I know “fluff” and my friends this book is no fluff. Rather, to say that this amazing book is by far and away at the top of its genre is an understatement. I write this as I embark on a second reading of “Outlive”, having read it once almost in one setting, skipping a couple of exercise sessions no less. Attia clearly possesses the intellect, integrity, wit, vigor, candor, and God knows what else that went into the making of this amazing mind and person. Everyone will experience the book from his special angle, based on background and knowledge, but no one will leave empty handed.
As an eye surgeon, professor, and author of several books myself, I can say that I so thoroughly enjoyed this book and will be sharing it with my friends and family and recommending it to patients and colleagues. Attia’s content is a favorite discussion topic with my children: podcast, emails, and finally the book, and sometimes my son or daughter would wonder aloud “what do you think is Attia’s position on this?”. So what if I, as a moslem, will be “adding” a final chapter to the book, so as to discuss it within my circle, that imparts a transcendental framework to our quest for a long life beyond the raising of a strong healthy physical horse. If you believe that your existence totally ends with death, it makes perfect sense to embark on a quest to lengthen your life, beyond which there is nothing.
But if you belief as I do that there is an eternal component to our essence that continues beyond the entombment of our bodies, then your horizon and end point is limitless. Is the martyr who died defending his people and his family against oppression and tyranny at age 20, achieving a dismal Attia-style longevity, a loser, a tragic figure who fell victim to unfortunate conflicts, or is he worth a thousand longevity-focused horses? To exclusively pamper the animal (body) and ignore the horseman (soul) is to put the cart before the horse. In addition, to preach that we should persevere in trying to lengthen life a few more years, and spend a whole lifetime doing it, strikes me as wasting your life in order to lengthen it.
My advice to friends and family is this: Go ahead and double click on exercise and nutrition; huff and buff to raise your VO2 max, and be stable with firm resolve as you prioritize DNS. But do bear in mind that you are making the horse strong to serve the horseman, and not the other way around. We are not mere shells: eat, move, sleep, copulate, repeat. Get yourself a more spacious framework. Be in control as your phosphorylated spirit commandeer the horse so that the both of you can stand, marsh, live, and die with nobility and honor. “Outliving” to me is a transcendent term, to outdo and go beyond the bounds of your biological carbon-based body, to achieve escape velocity through a noble righteous life on Earth that propels your soul to heaven when biology fails you, so as to justify the reason that God commanded the angels to bow to Adam.
Of course, this is not a book about religion, and of course we agree less on religion than we do nutrition, and of course moslems are a zealot punch (attempt at self-deprecating humor), and of course as a physician I would love to read the 2000 page version (sorry, Penguin Random House). But from my perspective this is a beautifully written book by an author that I and my kids grew to love and admire, one who does not do anything half-way. Read it and reread it but put the material to practice by moving a good amount in between reading spurts.