1: The mythical Greek Tithonus asked the gods for eternal life.
The gods granted his wish.
At first, Tithonus was joyous. There was only one problem. He forgot to ask for eternal youth as well, and his body continued to decay.
Oops.
When patients visit with Dr. Peter Attia, they instinctively understand the message of the Tithonus story: “They generally insist that they don’t want to live longer, if doing so means lingering on in a state of ever-declining health,” Peter writes in his book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity.
Many “have watched their parents or grandparents endure such a fate, still alive but crippled by physical frailty or dementia,” he notes. “They have no desire to reenact their elders’ suffering.”
Peter’s message? That does not have to be our fate.
“Just because our parents endured a painful old age, or died younger than they should have . . . does not mean that we must do the same.”
2: Peter’s medical practice focuses on longevity. Which is more changeable than we realize.
The word longevity is one he “kind of hates.” Because it “has been hopelessly tainted by a centuries-long parade of quacks and charlatans who have claimed to possess the secret elixir to a longer life. I don’t want to be associated with those people.”
What does Peter think about longevity?
“Longevity does not mean living forever,” he writes. “Or even to age 120 or 150, which some self-proclaimed experts are now routinely promising to their followers.
Because…
“Barring some major breakthrough that, somehow, someway, reverses two billion years of evolutionary history and frees us from time’s arrow, everyone and everything that is alive today will inevitably die. It’s a one-way street.”
Okay. Now what?
Peter believes we should focus on two components of longevity: lifespan and healthspan.
“The first is how long you live, your chronological lifespan, but the second and equally important part is how well you live—the quality of your years. “
Which is what Tithonus forgot to ask for.
Healthspan is the period of our lives when we are free from disability or disease. The key? We must maintain and improve our physical and mental functions.
3: The critical questions we must ask ourselves are: What’s my future trajectory? Where am I headed from here?
“The only way to create a better future for ourselves—to set ourselves on a better trajectory—is to start thinking about it and taking action now.”
This is what we can and must do.
“With enough time and effort, we can potentially extend our lifespan by a decade and our healthspan possibly by two, meaning we might hope to function like someone twenty years younger.”
Peter’s approach is not to tell us exactly what to do. But rather to help us learn to be proactive about our health.
“More broadly, longevity demands a paradigm-shifting approach to medicine, one that directs our efforts toward preventing chronic diseases and improving our healthspan—and doing it now, rather than waiting until disease has taken hold or until our cognitive and physical function has already declined.”
More tomorrow.
_____________________
Reflection: What are my assumptions about aging? What was my parents’ or grandparents’ experience of getting older? Will that be my fate as well?
Action: Journal about my answers to the questions above.
What did you think of this post?
