1: Making a behavior change requires specific, actionable tactics.
For example, let’s say our goal is to reduce dying in a car accident.
Currently, one person dies every twelve minutes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Peter Attia, MD, writes in Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity. .
“What can we do to reduce our risk of dying behind the wheel?” Peter asks. “Is it even possible to avoid car accidents, when they seem so random?”
There are some obvious things we should do: “Wear a seat belt, don’t text and drive (seemingly difficult for many people), and don’t drink and drive, since alcohol is a factor in up to a third of fatalities,” he suggests. “Automotive fatality statistics also reveal that almost 30 percent of deaths involve excessive speed.”
And while these are all helpful reminders, there’s nothing here particularly new or insightful.
2: However, understanding where people are most likely to die in an automobile accident is more interesting.
Perhaps our assumption is that freeways would be the deadliest place to drive because of the faster speeds involved.
Not so.
“Decades’ worth of auto accident data reveal,” Peter writes, “that a very high proportion of fatalities occur at intersections. The most common way to be killed, as a driver, is by another car that hits yours from the left, on the driver’s side, having run a red light or traveling at high speed. It’s typically a T-bone crash, and often the driver who dies is not at fault.”
Okay, then. Now, we have choices. Now, we have agency as we can decide when to drive into an intersection.
“This gives us an opportunity to develop specific tactics to try to avoid getting hit in an intersection,” he notes. “We are most concerned about cars coming from our left, toward our driver’s side door, so we should pay special attention to that side. At busy intersections, it makes sense to look left, then right, then left again, in case we missed something the first time.”
One of Peter’s high school friends is a long-haul truck driver. “Before entering any intersection, even if he has the right of way (i.e. a green light), he always looks left first, then right, specifically to avoid this type of crash,” he notes. “And keep in mind, he’s in a huge truck.”
This behavior is “a specific, actionable tactic that we can employ every time we drive,” Peter writes. “Even if it can’t guarantee that we are 100 percent safe, it reduces our risk in a small but demonstrable way.
“Better yet, our tactic has leverage: a relatively minor effect yields a potentially significant risk reduction.”
3: Peter believes we can take a similar approach to living longer.
“To stay healthy as we grow older, we must learn to navigate a world that is filled with ever more hazards and risks to our health,” he writes. That said, we can employ “various methods by which we can mitigate or eliminate those risks, and improve and increase our healthspan. . .
“And seemingly small tweaks can yield a significant advantage if compounded over time.”
There are four specific areas to focus on: Exercise, nutrition, sleep, and our mental health. . . “none of which,” he notes, are “really covered, or even mentioned, in medical school or residency.”
We need specific, detailed tactics to address each of these core four areas.
We aim to “dig deeper to get beyond the obvious,” Peter suggests.
Peter’s approach is to provide direction to allow each of his patients to create their own playbook. “I almost never write out a prescription for them to follow blindly. My goal is to empower them to take action.”
Our goal? “To live longer and live better—to outlive,” he suggests. “To do that, we must rewrite the narrative of decline that so many others before us have endured and figure out a plan to make each decade better than the one before.”
This week in RiseWithDrew, we’ll begin our exploration of exercise.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: What are the specific tactics I am utilizing to optimize my nutrition, exercise routine, sleep, and mental health? Which area or areas do I need more tactics?
Action: Continue reading RiseWithDrew this week!