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reviewed Outlive by Peter Attia

Peter Attia, Bill Gifford: Outlive (2023, Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale) 4 stars

A groundbreaking manifesto on living better and longer that challenges the conventional medical thinking on …

Good bones but some issues

3 stars

Overall the book presents broad stroke information on longevity that looks at the usual areas: exercise, diet, sleep, and how to be proactive with health. He contrasts this "Medicine 3.0" approach with the existing "Medicine 2.0" approach. Overall the suggestions are solid and mostly align with standard medical advice. His exercise level suggestions are far more than what is usually recommended or shown to be effective in studies but he has rationale for it which makes sense and may pan out over the long term but there is no study data to confirm it. Nothing he suggests is outside the realm of safety.

The food discussion is a bit more problematic. Again the core is good bones however I think prior his Paleo/Keto bent shows here. He looks at it mostly through the carb/fat/protein macros lense. The way he presents it you would not be wrong to conclude that you pretty much must eat a lot of animal protein to stay healthy and the plant side of the equation is kind of moot. No epidimiological data holds this up. All of it shows that a plant dominant diet is a key part of long term health and longevity. Even the handful of studies that show that people who ate meat had better outcomes than vegetarians and vegans, the meat level consumed is way less than one serving a day (usually in the 2-3 ounces/60-90 grams level). While he has no problem telling people to just suck it up on exercise and sleep fronts on this front he minimizes this by essentially saying "eat a lot of meat three times a day" follow up with minimizing negative longevity effects of that advice with "just take a statin" and "not everyone's lipid profile is adversely affected by eating a lot of saturated fat". This is probably the weakest part of the book.

I was expecting more actionable information as well. This is more like a primer with a pitch for "Medicine 3.0" which is going to specialists for all these special tests, interactions, etc. I personally do do all those things but I have to pay a lot out of pocket for that. Would it be great if all of this was covered by standard medical insurance? Absolutely. It isn't. There are plenty of things that those that can't afford that sort of treatment could be doing, and most of it is following standard guidelines put out by government health organizations. Laying that out could have been helpful to readers who can't spend thousands of dollars a year out of pocket on these things.

Overall I learned almost nothing new in this book because I follow these topics intensely already. For someone who has never heard of these things it could be a helpful primer but I have concerns about people coming away with misimpressions on the diet side of things and perhaps even fatalism about the approachability of these things if "Medicine 3.0" is out of financial range for them.