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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #190:

Peter Attia on longevity and proactive medicine

I post on Twitter semi-regularly. Find me at @foodhealthfacts The full catalog of my previous posts, articles, and commentaries can be found on the Food and Health Facts website

The following is excerpt from Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity by Peter Attia, MD. Read my Wall Street Journal review of the book here. 

One of the main obstacles in anyone’s quest for longevity is the fact that the skills that my colleagues and I acquired during our medical training have proved to be far more effective against fast death than slow death. We learned to fix broken bones, wipe out infections with powerful antibiotics, support and even replace damaged organs, and decompress serious spine or brain injuries. We had an amazing ability to save lives and restore full function to broken bodies, even reviving patients who were nearly dead.

But we were markedly less successful at helping our patients with chronic conditions, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, or neurological disease, evade slow death. We could relieve their symptoms, and often delay the end slightly, but it didn’t seem as if we could reset the clock the way we could with acute problems. . . .

[L]ongevity demands a paradigm-shifting approach to medicine, one that directs our efforts toward preventing chronic diseases and improving our health span—and doing it now, rather than waiting until disease has taken hold or until our cognitive and physical function has already declined. It’s not “preventive” medicine; it’s proactive medicine, and I believe it has the potential not only to change the lives of individuals but to relieve vast amounts of suffering in our society as a whole. This change is not coming from the medical establishment either; it will happen only if and when patients and physicians demand it.