Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 202: Can Meditation Prolong Your Life?, Dr. Peter Attia

Episode Date: August 28, 2019

Peter Attia is the founder of Attia Medical, PC, a medical practice focusing on the applied science of longevity. In other words, his practice aims to increase the length of one's life, while simultaneously improving the quality. He explains how happiness, or emotional well-being, can help accomplish both and he recommends meditation as one way to achieve that emotional well-being. He knows this first hand; emotionally describing the personal struggles he overcame to transform himself into the person he is today. Discussing both his personal and professional beliefs he tells Dan, "Even If being happier didn't extend your life one day, even if it shortened your life a day, wouldn't it be worth it?" Plug Zone Website: https://peterattiamd.com/ The Peter Attia Drive Podcast: https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/ Facebook, Twitter, Instagram: @PeterAttiaMD ***VOICEMAILS*** Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, we talk a lot on this show about death. This is a extremely cheerful topic of death. Why do we do that? At least two reasons.

One, it's just true and you don't want to be surprised by the fact that no one is immune from aging, illness, and death. Two, being aware of your own finite nature can make your actual life right now much more vibrant instead of sleepwalking through the whole thing. Today, we're going to look at this from a different aspect, which is, can meditation, yes, we're all going to die, but can meditation help us live longer and be healthier while we're alive? We've got a longevity expert on the show this week, the incredibly impressive Dr. Peter Atia.

We're going to talk to him about that. He's of the view that meditation is part of his recipe for helping his patients to live longer. He's also just an interesting person who's extremely, if not extraordinarily driven. I say this as a dyed in the wool type A guy. He is further on that spectrum than I am and has some very interesting things to say about how meditation has helped him in his life. So that's coming up. We do first have quick news flashes for you. First, on the aesthetic tip,

we're getting a facelift. Don't be surprised when that shows up in your feed. Nothing's wrong. We're just changing our look. The headline number two, I am on a separate podcast this week called Meditative Story. I think it's featured in, if you go in the Apple podcast story, it's one of the featured podcasts. It's a new podcast, again it's called Meditative Story, and they get people to come on there and tell stories about how meditation has impacted their life in key moments. And I share a personal story related to my son, Alexander. And so go check it out and went live. My episode went live yesterday. Again, go search in your whatever podcast app you use for meditative story. Third headline. This week, the voicemails are going to be handled by

somebody who's not named Dan Harris. His name is Orrin J. Sofer. He is an incredibly popular teacher on the 10% happier app. I can't tell you how many people come up to me and tell me they love Orrin's meditations. One woman came up to her recently and said, oh man, yesterday I had a two-orin day. So Orrin is really popping on the app. And this week, he's going to answer your questions via voicemail. So, that's all coming up. First though, it's Peter Atia.

He is, here's a just a quick snippet from his bio. He is the founder of a TIA Medical, a medical practice with offices in San Diego, New York City, focusing on the applied science of longevity. The practice applies nutritional, biochemistry, exercise physiology, exercise physiology, sleep physiology, techniques to increase distress tolerance, lipidology, pharmacology, and force system endocrinology to increase lifespan, delaying the onset of chronic disease, while

simultaneously improving health span, which is quality of life. He's trained at some pretty high intensity spots like Johns Hopkins, Stanford University, he's worked at the NIH. He is, as I said, before quite an impressive dude. He also has his own podcast called The Peter Atia Drive, and we're doing an interesting thing where I'm going to be on his podcast and he's coming on mine. So check him out in concert if you if you want. Again, his podcast is called the Peter atia drive, but for now Here he is on this podcast, which in case you don't know it is called the 10% happier podcast. Here he is Peter atia. Nice to see you. Nice to see you too, man. How'd you get into meditation?

It's a great plug for your book. Oh, nice. I'll go away. So be a fuse of it. Was it 2014 that it came out? It came out in 2014. So I feel like spring of 14 in one of those throwaway men's magazines,

like men's fitness, men's health, men's fill in the blank. There was a one page thing on your book. And I read it, and for the first time in my life, because it's not like this was the first time I'd heard about meditation, but I was like, you know, that looks interesting. I think it was just the angle at which you approached it. So I pre-ordered the book, you know, on Amazon, and sure enough, and I think it was the summer of 14, it came out maybe. It came out March of 14, but it was probably starting to hit its stride around the summer. Oh, well, then I got it in March. I mean, I got it right away because I remember I did pre-order it.

I pre-order it. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I read it, I devoured it, and then that was the turning point where I was like, wow, I really, this is the first thing I'd read that spoke to me in a way that sort of made sense to me, which was stop thinking about this through the lens of some sort of spiritual, hoidy, toyty thing. Think about it through the lens of performance enhancement. And just maybe you could be, you know, the book is 10% happier, but I, in my own mind, it was, could you be 10% less miserable? It was, became my sort of mantra. Well, you miserable?

Oh, yeah. Cross-clean miserable. Tell me about that. I mean, I just think I don't think, I don't think I have a happy disposition. I mean, my mom, when I was a kid, used to always be like, are you opposed to being happy? And, you know, my thought was, of course,

like happiness is a horrible thing if you're happy you would stop working really hard you would stop pursuing, you know, all of the things that I'd always been pursuing since I was a kid. So you were mistaking happiness with complacency? Correct. Yes. Yeah. So you understand the difference now?

Oh, today I absolutely do. Yes. No, I'm. Yeah, but at the time this was sort of part of the evolution. By the way, I say that with no judgment. No, I'm, I'm, yeah. But at the time, this was sort of part of the evolution. By the way, I say that with no judgment. No, I understand, of course, of course. Yeah, no one spoke to me. And of course, I've flipped so far the other way now

that we can talk about that later. But so anyway, so the, but then the question was what to do. So the first thing I did was download an app called Headspace. Yeah. Good. Like, like no one's heard of that. And for like two months, I did it. And truthfully, it just didn't click with me. I could speculate as to a bunch of reasons

why. And this is probably not to be critical of the app or anything like that. And I haven't looked at it in five years. I mean, who knows what it looks like today. But the, you know, whatever I was doing at that time was not speaking to me in the right way. But around that same time, a friend of mine who'd been doing TM his whole life, introduced me to a guy named Bob Roth, who you probably know at David Lynch. He's been on this podcast.

Yeah, and I connected with Bob, Bob taught me TM, and then that basically became what I adopted. So by now, we're probably talking late summer of 14. And TM became sort of a part of my daily routine. And then something sort of happened in my life in the end of 2017 that led to kind of this switch where I, you know, just really pivoted to, you know, you could want to know how to use it with people. It's like, I'd been doing, you know, I'd been jogging every day for a few years and then I started lifting weights, you know, just switched the exercise and switched to a Vapassana

based or mindfulness based meditation in late 17 or 18. How did that happen? That's a long story. So I was in sort of a kind of like a rehab-based facility, trauma-based facility, where I had sort of voluntarily put myself away for a while. And it was the first time I'd ever been detached from anything, like detached from electronics, detached from the world.

You couldn't talk to your family or anything like that. And I remember there's this one day about 10 days into it when, and by the way, this place is in the middle of nowhere, it's like an hour outside of a place called Bowling Green Kentucky. So it's truly the middle of nowhere. You'd wake up every morning at, you know, I'd wake up at four.

It'd be pitch dark in the woods. I'd go for a run, exercise a little bit. We'd meditate together in the morning, but I had this moment where for the first time in my life, I actually thought this must be what it feels like to be present. Because I remember we were sitting in this sort of main area where we would, you know, meet to do sort of groups, group therapy stuff.

And I remember looking out the window and sort of seeing trees blowing. And that was the, for a split second, that was the only thing I saw. I just saw trees blowing. I didn't, I didn't have a thought for a moment. And I thought, this must be what Sam Harris talks, because Sam's a good friend of mine. And familiar with Sam's a good friend of mine, and familiar with Sam's work, but it was sort of, there was an intellectual disconnect

between that, and so when I got home from that experience, I called Sam right away, and this was like December of 17, and I said, Sam, I think I got it, I think I got it, I think I really want to switch my practice because I want more of that. I'd like to figure out if there's a way to get to have that experience more often. And so at the time, Sam was working on an app and he said, well, look, I've got this really crappy beta version of an app that's not going to be ready for like, you know, whatever, six months.

But let me just send it to you. And it doesn't have that much in it. I think at the time it had 10 meditations in it, but just keep doing them over and over again. And then he said, oh, by the way, there's lots of other ones out there and he rattled them all off. And of course, he mentioned yours. And I was like, oh, my God, I totally forgot I'd read that. Like, it's not that I didn't remember I'd read the book, but I never even thought that you might have done something. So then I immediately downloaded 10% happier, and then basically it just became using 10% happier,

using waking up, and of course using 10% happier. Yeah, although I think the name changed now, I can't- No, the podcast, Sam's podcast has changed to making sense. Yeah, but I think the app is still the same. Yeah, yeah. So that's what the change was. And again, I describe it really as just thinking about how you would change your exercise routine to achieve a different set of goals.

What kind of impact has this practice had on your life? I mean, I think for people who know me best, they would describe it as profound in terms of just being less angry, being less reactive. I wish I could say I've become like a Buddha monk, but it couldn't be further from that. I mean, I think I'm, if I was sort of a 10 out of 10 psychopath, maybe I'm a five out of 10 now, you know, in other words, I still can get pissed off.

It's funny, if you really get into the new ones of it, there are certain things that do not seem to get to me anymore that used to always get to me. Examples of that would be things that I perceive as truly out of my control. So it really doesn't get to me anymore. Like TSA does not get to me anymore. Airline delays I fly all the time. You have a bike hostel medical. Exactly. So I, if a week goes by

that I'm not on an airplane, that's a great week. And as you know, or in the words of Jay Walker, who's a friend of mine, he said, there is no worse customer service experience than the airline. And I think he said, one out of three flights would be deemed a customer service failure in any other industry One out of seven would be deemed an object failure of customer service in any other engine. That's true if you think about it, right? So when you add up a number of reps. I have flying Like you know, that used to just drive me insane all day long like why can't these people just be on time? Why is it that blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah just be on time? Why is it that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? Well, that doesn't even face me anymore. Like now I'm very much able to just be completely present

with whatever sensation is going on, with whatever thought is going on, and find something blissful in the airport. You have a wife and children as well. How, and your kids are. Three of them. What are the ages? Almost 11. Just turned to an almost five. Wow, okay. Yeah. Pretty interesting delta there. Yeah. Two, five, eleven. How do you think meditation has if at all changed how you are around the house? I mean, I think it's changed

a lot in the sense that you know, I feel grateful that I've discovered it early enough in the life of my children so that they can have a far less reactive parent. And our daughter, who's the 11-year-old, is the easiest kid in the world, like she was, this is a kid that never really needed to be disciplined or anything. The boys, the five and the two-year-old, they're a huge handful. And I think, especially with the five-year-old, because your son's aunt is four? Yeah, four and a half. Yeah, so they get to an age where you start to expect them to behave. The two-year-olds

are a little more forgivable, but something about when they're four and five, you're sort of like, dude, you know you're throwing that thing. So, I know it's really easy to get pissed off out of five-year-old. And especially like my biggest trigger is when the five-year-old hurts the two-year-old. That's a huge trigger. I think there have only been two instances in his life where I've really got upset. Never laid a hand on him or anything like that, but I've yelled at him, and I think if it weren't for disability to practice, that number would.

You'd have to put two more zeros in front of it, for sure. I'm just trying to put together a picture of my mind of your personality. Like, you described yourself maybe somewhat tongue in cheek as having an aversion to being happy. You've got listeners won't have heard you talk about this yet, but I know because we took a walk together and I learned a lot about you. You know, you did professional athletics to like kind of an insane extent. Not insane in a bad way, but like awesome and insane kind of that's I mean insane none of the majority of it's still pretty crazy. And you have this incredible medical practice where you're trying to help your clients live until age 250. So you there's an intensity here

not to mention what and I don't know how much you want to talk about this with whatever trauma sent you into rehab. There's something going on here I'm trying to put my finger on. Can you put your finger on it? I mean, I think I'm working through it. I mean, I don't know if there's something to put my finger on per se, but look, I think a lot of the drive in me is very similar to a lot of the drive in many people, which it usually stems from some inferiority.

So I definitely always felt very inferior as a kid. And I don't think that's, I don't think that's, like, there are a lot of people that have felt that way, right? I did. Yeah. So, and everyone has a different reason for it, I think, you know, being kind of the, we were one of the only immigrants in the area that I grew up in. So you're sort of always an outsider.

Where did you appear as immigrant? My parents both came from Egypt and we grew up in sort of a crappy suburb of Toronto. It was, you know, mostly white. And so yeah, a whole bunch of inferiority, I think, comes from that. And then, of course, there were these events in my life, I think, early on that probably really accelerated some of that fear, anxiety, inferiority. And then somehow, it just sort of, I don't know, I think, when I was 13, I remember kind of figuring out something very special,

which was I had one superpower. Because I think all of life, you're trying to figure out what's your superpower. And I finally figured it out. At about the age of 13, which was, I can work harder than anybody else. I can take a little more pain than anybody standing next to me. And so at the time, like every kid growing up in Canada, my favorite sport was hockey, and I was a goalie, and I loved hockey. We played summer, winter, fall, straight. The hockey was six days a week, you know, all that. But at that point, I switched

to boxing, because I realized this, there's an arbitrage here. And hockey, the ability to take more pain won't take you as far as it can in a sport like boxing. And so boxing became my life until I was 19, along with martial arts. And then eventually that turned into an obsession with mathematics and physics and things like that. But the same ethos was like, I can still take more pain. Like I can definitely outwork you. I can definitely outhustle the next guy. So, that's probably the, I would say the root of the obsession or that's probably the

fuel of the obsession, I guess. Do you have a view on whether it's possible to have that kind of obsessive nature, intensity, willingness to take pain and do it with joy rather than self-inflicted misery throughout because because you think the misery is the only way to light the fire. I absolutely do, and it's amazing as a coincidence that you brought this up because I was talking to a friend of mine, also a veteran of the same place that I went into rehab. You know, she's kind of an amazing person.

I gotta be careful. I don't wanna provide any information that could identify her, but very successful professionally. And even in college and grad school, she was a top collegiate athlete. But as she's opened up to me, most of it was just to punish herself. I mean, she just loved the pain of being a collegiate runner and cyclist because it was just about how much could you, how much pain could she inflict on herself to punish herself for something that obviously in a logical sense she should never have been punishing herself for, but these horrible things that have been done to her. So we're talking two days ago, actually.

And she said, I texted her because it was a very important anniversary, and I was like, hey, can you believe six months ago at this minute what was happening? And she called me and she was like, oh my god, I'm in tears. I can't believe I forgot, such and such. And she said, you know, I'm planning to do a hundred mile run in, you know, whatever, six months.

And I used to do these things purely to suffer. I mean, it was just about how much could I hurt myself. And she said, I remember there was this one woman there that used to do it. And she was always smiling like she was in a state of pure joy. And I could never understand how could this woman be doing this without the hatred for herself that was fueling me to do it? And of course we don't know

because we don't know who that woman is, but we were sitting there speculating, which is no, there's another total bliss to doing this. And truthfully, when I think of like Marathon's swimming, which was the sort of most intense thing I think I've done, I don't think, I mean, there was never a moment when I was doing it that I was miserable or self-loathing. I think that that feeling is much more, you know, below the surface.

It was more of this insecurity of, I've got to do something to prove that I'm better than somebody else. In the case of my friend, I think she was even a more extreme example of really actually trying to punish herself for something. But clearly, there are examples of people who I think can do these things from a place of extreme bliss. I mean, you've seen that movie, I'm getting blank on it. The one about Alex, the guy who climbs El Cap.

Is it free solo? Free solo, which is his name, Alex? I have an age. Oh, it's a wonderful movie. I enjoyed it so much because his passion just, like when I watch those movies, I'm sort of watching it more for the personality than the action. And I didn't, for a moment, get the sense that he's like self-loathing or punishing. Although, there's no doubt, there's like experiences in his life that

that have probably shaped him. Again, it's impossible to know because I don't know the guy. But anyway, long answer to your question. No, I don't think that extreme you know, pursuits necessarily have to be fueled by something negative. Yeah, but I'd be interested to dig into your life. So your five years into the practice, my math is correct Yeah, and really I would say in some ways only a year and a half because I I really think that I think TM has some amazing Benefits but for the problems I needed solving I don't think it was the right tool right the problem I needed solving Was my own demons my own mind I needed to figure my own demons, my own mind. I needed to figure out a way to distance myself from my thoughts.

I needed a way to understand that I was not my thoughts. And I don't, again, not to be critical of anything else, but I couldn't extract that out of TM the way I can extract it from a mindfulness-based practice. Well, I'll see if I can clarify there. But I think, I don't know, maybe clarifies not the right word, but I'll just add onto it. You got to think about meditation practices as roughly akin to sports.

And different types of exercise will develop different types of muscles and skill sets. And so TM is going to, and I haven't done a ton of it, but my understanding of how it works is, I think it'll make your focus quite strong, and as a consequence of getting you concentrated in the way a mantra makes you concentrated, it will add, you know, an object a sense of calm into your life. So I think, I think, you can become calm and focus seem to be the muscles that get most generated through that practice. Unsurprisingly, when you do mindfulness-based practices of the sort that are taught on my app or on SAMS app,

the skill that's gonna come up is most prominently is probably gonna be mindfulness, which is the ability to see your thoughts and impulses and emotions without being owned by them. And so, so I'm not surprised to hear you say that that's what's happening for you. And I didn't take from what you were saying that somehow one is superior to the other. Although some people feel that way on both sides, I just think you have to look at it like what is right for you at this time in your life and you made that pivot. It sounds like it was a wise one. But just getting back to the impact in your life because you're still however many years or months into this practice doing a lot of the incredibly intense things that you were doing before. Again, by coastal

elite medical practice, you're still very athletic. You've got three kids. That's an intense endeavor right there. You're married. Anybody who's married knows that that comes with lots of stuff. Are you able to be the driven pursuer of excellence? By the way, you've got a podcast and I think you're writing a book. Can you do all of that with the same intensity you had when you were wanting to prove yourself in suburban Toronto?

Can you do all that with the same intensity now or is there something else fueling you? I don't know if you can, but I also don't know that I would want to. I think it's so funny, so much of so many of the lessons on your app actually talk about this. And you've talked about it a lot. Of course, I've heard you on many podcasts talking about this idea of pushing the idea that, look, meditation won't kill your edge necessarily. Well, the reality of it is, I kind of need my edge killed a little bit. My edge was killing me. So I'm maybe one of the few people who comes to meditation, willing to accept a 20% reduction in my performance. In fact, kind of hoping for it. Because if it comes with a 50% improvement in my happiness and in the quality of my relationships,

and if it makes me a better dad, honestly, I'll take that all day long. But isn't that edge anyway? It's just how you consider edge. I suppose. I mean, I guess I just want to, I want to be less wed to the results. I want to be less, it's another way to explain it. I'll give you an example. You'll appreciate this because I know you've you've you've gone on about this. There was a day when the worship for my body was so great, it was comical, right? Like if and people who have worked for me

and know me well and are close to me, they they get such a kick out of this. Like, if ever the veins on my abs were not showing to myself, and I wasn't the guy that had to walk around shirtless, this was not like a, you know, I wasn't that guy, but just for myself, if I couldn't see the veins on my abs, I was so upset. I've never seen here like, kind of really hatey you just because I really would love to

unbutton my top button right now. There are no veins. So carry on, go ahead. So I sort of realized something a couple of years ago. In the midst of, you know, at the time my life was sort of falling apart and I realized, wow, like it's really hard work. I mean, there are some people who are just genetically gifted, but for me, it was certainly becoming harder

and harder work to see the veins on my abs in terms of how much I needed to obsess over nutrition and exercise. And things just started to slide and all of a sudden, it's like, you know, yeah, by my most people standards, you still look like a normal fit, healthy guy, but you've lost the opportunity to ever appear in a magazine, not that that was the aspiration. But then something really

interesting happened, which is I actually began to embrace this, which is like, this is helping you stop this ridiculous worshiping of your body. And in part, it was, I came back to the talk, This Is Water by David Foster Wallace, which I'd heard many years ago, because he delivered the talk in 2008 at the graduation of Kenyan College. I remember hearing it a few years later, and it resonated, but about a year and a half ago,

I came back to it, and it really resonated. And to this day, I listened to it at least once a month. I can almost recite it off by heart. And there's a line in there when he talks about, first of all, no one's an atheist. Everybody worships. Everybody worships something. You worship your intellect, you worship your body, you worship money, you worship power, you worship something. And then, of course, there are people who actually worship gods.

I'm not of that ilk, but this gave me, this is for the first time in my life, I actually felt a little bit envious of the religious because I was like, God, the things that they worship tend to be less harmful in the long run. My worshiping of my intellect or my body are actually quite detrimental, because he goes through how each of these worships will eventually kill you. The person who

worships their intellect will always feel like an imposter, which I can completely relate to. The person who worships their body will, as he puts it, die of thousand deaths as time takes its toll on their body inevitably. And so I think that coupled with the practice really helped me start to think through things that are obvious, but when you're in this moment, you can't like, do my kids actually care if I have veins in my abs?

Do my kids care if I'm 7% body fat? Of course not. They couldn't care less. And by the way, if achieving those things comes at the expense of paying attention to them or eating with them or things like that, it's just, you know, it became so obvious to me that that was just not a worthwhile trade-off at all. And it wasn't improving my happiness at all. So was it easier hard to let go? Was it gradual or did it happen just one day?

No, it's very gradual and it's not monotonic. There's days when I regress a little bit. I mean, what's the term for that? Like I'm a backslider. Yeah, I mean, I'm constantly failing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I fail all the time and then I, just like in meditation, right?

I mean, the hardest thing for me to sometimes explain to somebody who doesn't meditate is, and I forget, I think Jeff Warren provided a great explanation on your app when he just was it Jeff's one of Jeff's meditations that talked about doing a bicep curl in your brain. And the bicep curl is every time you're meditating, you have a thought, and then you have to come back to the breath. And so instead of thinking that is, oh, I failed, you have a thought, and then you have to come back to the breath. And so instead of thinking that is, oh, I failed because I had a thought, think of it as I got

to do a curl because I got to come back to the breath. Yes, that is the act of meditation. Noticing who come distracted and starting again. Let me just stick on edge for a second because it strikes me, and I still haven't, this is a bit embarrassing, this is I'm somebody who's allegedly spent a lot of time talking about the impact of meditation on one's edge.

But as I roll back over it in my mind and light of my life now, five years after the book came out, I wonder, you have to kind of think, start to think about what do you mean by edge. So if you're somebody who likes to measure stuff, so your body fat numbers may be slipping, maybe some of the veins aren't there as prominently in your abs cetera, et cetera. So some of the, you may be your time on a race, on a bike race isn't as good as it used to be. But if your comma and happier,

how's that shown up with your patience? And what does that do for your business? And what are the metrics there? If you're a comma and happier and more focused, what does that do for your family life? And what is that? How does that redound to your overall happiness? And how does that do for your family life? And what is that? How does that redound to your overall happiness? And how does that play into your ability

to write your book, do your podcast, deal with your podcast guests. Again, go dealing with your patients and your staff. It feels like there may be ways that are still hard metrics to look at that are improved by loosening up in some areas that may not matter as much. Am I onto something there or how the numbers played out in your actual life?

Yeah, I mean, this is maybe not true, but to the first order, it's probably a reasonable approximation. If you imagine that a person has a finite amount of energy to expend in a given moment or a given period of time, if you go back and look at 13-year-old Peter, I mean, and by the way, there may be just differences between individuals, right? Like there just is like, some people have different color hair or different predispositions

to being lactose intolerant or things like that. Maybe that we're just wired differently. But let's just assume that Peter had X amount of energy to dispense at any given moment. You know, age 13 to 19, all of that energy was put into one thing. And so that was so extreme that the results in that one thing could be quite extreme. If you fast forward and I won't go through what I refer to as Peter 1.0, Peter 2.0, Peter 3.0, but in my journals I write about this. I journal a lot and I journaled extensively about the transition of Peter 1.0 into 2.0 into 3.0, which is where I am today and I believe there will be a 4.0 of course.

But what you describe is yes, I think that more of my energy today goes into, I don't know how to describe it, but wanting to understand the suffering of people a bit more. And so you bring up my medical practice. Well, it's a very small is not amenable to 14-minute visits. And as you know, you're married to a doctor. It's, you know, the medical system today is very difficult, it's very difficult to truly bring what I consider the five tools of healing into a practice. In fact, you're only compensated for one of the five tools as a doctor, so by definition, you're gonna very much ignore

four of the tools. You want to tell us what the tools are? Sure. I think everything that has to do with nutrition and nutritional biochemistry, everything it has to do with exercise and exercise physiology, everything has to do with sleep, everything that has to do with emotional health of which meditation is a huge piece. And then the last piece is all the molecules. You know, the drugs, the hormones, the supplements would be the fifth and final.

That's the one you get paid for. That's the one you get paid for. That's the one you get paid for. The entire medical system is predicated on identifying a diagnosis that links to a code that can have a treatment that is virtually always a molecule. So anyway, you were talking about it. To be clear, by the way, I'm not poo-pooing that. That's a wonderful thing to be able to do. It's just having one tool in a toolkit versus five tools in a toolkit. That sounds right to me.

So I think, if I sort of think about my own evolution, that my energy now can be spread across all of those things. And in particular, I've realized no one gets a free pass on emotional health. I mean, there is no amount of success. There is no amount of money. There is no amount of anything that ensures your happiness or your well-being in relationships.

And, you know, I'm paraphrasing something that's been said by many people and generally they say it more eloquently than me, but the quality of your life is generally proxied by the quality of your life is generally proxied by the quality of your relationships. So I think for me, that's just a high priority now. It's a higher priority than it's ever been. There was a day I've recently reconnected. You mentioned I'm writing a book.

And my high school English teacher, 11th and 12th grade high school English teacher, reached out to me recently. She saw my podcast and reached out to me recently. She, you know, saw my podcast and reached out to me and I just couldn't believe it was her because, you know, I was such a little sack of crap when I was in high school and most teachers really didn't like me that much, but there were a handful that I think saw potential in me. She was clearly one of them and I've always loved her for it and I've always been so grateful. So for her to reach out to me was just amazing. She was also one of the only people that ever knew about some of this stuff that occurred

in my life. And so I've now been talking with her a lot as I'm in the process of trying to finish this book and she's sort of been helping me a little bit with it. And we were talking the other day and I said, I don't know if you remember this. I said, but do you know if you remember this. I said, but do you remember, it's a 12th grade, we're sitting there in class. And very seriously, I mean, very seriously,

I wasn't trying to provoke a reaction. I remember this very well. I was just being completely honest. We were having a discussion in class, and I made the point that one should never love. One should never have a pet. You were saying, I was making this point. One should never love. You know, one should never have a pet. You were saying. I was making this point. One should never love another person.

Anything of that ilk was only going to result in destruction for you. You know, dogs are only going to live an average of 14 years. So if you get a dog, you're guaranteeing you're going to be sad in 14 years. If you fall in love, the probability that you were going to get your heart broken isn't it? And I remember the whole class like turning around and looking at me like, what is wrong with this guy? We invited Dr. Spock. Yeah. And again, it wasn't like trying to provoke people or anything. I was just, I couldn't

understand how people could create attachment. Was that the pain of your trauma talking or was that you're not your intensity and desire to achieve so that you didn't want distractions talking or both? I think it was a bit of both actually. You've made several sort of opaque references to your life falling apart, to having to go to rehab. You want to ask this gingerly because you may to having to go to rehab. I'm gonna ask this gingerly, because you may not wanna talk about it.

How much are you comfortable saying, or have you already said what your comfortable say? And the answer, if the answer that you know stop talking about this, Eris, is totally fine. Ha, ha, ha. I have, we're sort of on the boundaries of what I'm comfortable talking about. After you and I spoke a while ago, when we went for a walk, and we talked very candidly about some of this stuff,

I have decided I am going to write about it. So, my book has 17 chapters in it, 16 of which are almost complete, and the one that I haven't written one word of yet is the chapter that deals with emotional health, which is the one chapter that has nothing to do with science, nothing to do with data, nothing to do with studies, and it's basically going to be one person's journey through this with the hope that there are enough touch points for other people that it's highly applicable.

And I, there's a part of me that wonders if the other 16 chapters won't matter nearly as much as this one if I'm able to convey it. I think what I could say is about two years ago, you know, I had made a number of mistakes, arguably the biggest one, or one, I can't say the biggest one, when you've got a long list of mistakes. But two years ago this week I made an unbelievable mistake. It's hard to talk about because it's so egregious, but I guess since I'm going to write about in the book, I can probably talk about it now. So two days ago was the two-year anniversary of when our youngest son, who was at the time a month old, almost died.

He had a cardiac arrest. To this day, it's not clear how. So that age, though, kids can veys vagal, they can choke on something and it just they don't have the gag reflexes fully developed, but he had a cardiac arrest. So he was lifeless and blue and only by, you know, some miracle was our nanny right there when it happened and was my wife actually home. So the nanny appropriately just ran with him to my wife who happened to be a few rooms away. At that age they don't have reserve meaning they go from colored to blue in seconds. So now he is blue, his eyes are rolled back. And amazingly, because I'm sometimes asked myself,

would I have been able to detach myself from what was happening to start CPR aggressively, immediately, which she did, and two minutes later, he came back, and the nanny had called the paramedics. So just as the first responders come, he's starting to breathe again. She called me from the ambulance and I was in New York. I was heading to dinner with a buddy of mine who'd flown into town. For reasons that are too difficult

to really fully tease out, especially because it'll just make me emotional, I didn't go home for a week and a half. She spent four days in the hospital with him while I stayed here and worked. I would say that that was sort of the, I don't know if that's the beginning of the end, but the beginning of the end of the beginning maybe. But that's sort of like, that was just how, that's how self-absorbed I'd become. That's how focused I'd become on my work, my everything was about me.

So I don't know if I'm answering your question, but I think this probably gives you a sense of how the wheels came off. And not only am I incredibly fortunate that he's alive, but I've got another chance to sort of be a dad. Did that lead to you going to the rehab center? Yes, that was one of many events that ultimately by the fall of that year prompted sort of a scenario where I didn't release, I didn't for myself see a choice. It was either like all of the forces that, so let's go back for a moment, just broadly speaking, right? I mean, the mental model that I find most helpful for myself and I think

for many others is if a kid gets wounded, they adapt. How old were you when you were wounded? I mean, I was sort of, you know, between the ages of five and seven. But again, there are sort of significant things that can happen to kids and minor things that can happen to kids, but let's just say over the period of growing up, things can happen to you and you adapt. And that adaptation is very important. I mean, that's a very good thing to go from being a wounded child to sort of referred to in this type of therapy as an adapted child. The problem is the adapted child can only take you so far because it's

not a fully functional adult. And I think that I'm really grateful at how much juice I was able to squeeze out of that phenotype. I got very lucky. Many years later, my therapist would say one of my three therapists. I'm really lucky to have three therapists, by the way, who all know each other, live in one's Boston, one's New York, one's San Diego, and they're constantly in contact and working through the same paradigm of helping me become a functional adult, which is the aspiration. About a year and a half ago, or maybe two years ago, one of them said,

you only have three tools. Like, you know, a functional adult will have 20 tools. You have three obsession, emotional detachment, and rage. And I mean, she's so right. It's so obvious when she says it. And in the sense, and in a way, I feel so grateful because I don't think most people could utilize obsession, emotional detachment and rage as well as I did. I think I did very well with those three tools. I was very lucky. Kids that I was very close to growing up ended up in jail and are still in jail are dead. So I got, I mean, I really got lucky. But you know, what I sort of realized in the fall of 2017 is you're not going to get any more value out of those three tools.

You know, I don't think I realized it intellectually that way, but I came to the realization, which was you've gone as far as you can go with this, these adaptations, they've now become fully maladaptive. So, you know, I sort of realized I'm going to have to go someplace to figure this out. So if I'm, let's see if I can restate that just fact check me here. It's sound, what I'm hearing filling in some of the blanks here is, so you made this, I think what we can all agree was a suboptimal decision, being polite, not to go home. By the way, I relate to it as somebody who struggled with a lot and continues to struggle

with a lot of self-centeredness. So hopefully you're not getting emanations of judging off of me here because this is something that I dealt with and deal with a lot. So you made that decision. I would imagine there was a no small amount of upset on the other end of your relationship. And you decided, okay, I'm gonna step back and take a look at what's going on. Why am I like this? And that led you to taking a look at primordial wounds early from childhood trauma.

And hence the rehab. Is that the correct order? Yeah, essentially. I mean, there were obviously, not obviously. There were a number of other awful things that I had done, even after that event in the summer of 2017 that ultimately led to this. So it wasn't even just that one horrible insult that were many, many more. And yes, I think what I finally accepted when I decided to go into therapy was,

up until that point, I had viewed the things that I had been through growing up as all benefit. Because I had a very strong narrative for how those things made me the person I was or gave me the good traits that I had, my ability to work hard, my ability to be disciplined, my ability to persevere. All of these things that are sort of name plate values, I could directly attribute them to what happened. I could say, look, this happened, but it made me insecure. And when I was hurt, and I responded by doing this in volleyball, and if it weren't for that, I wouldn't have this.

And there's a grain of truth to that. There is a grain of truth to this resilience that comes from this stuff. And I've been struggling with how to write about that because, you know, there's a book that I read recently, maybe six months ago, a year ago called the Codling of the American Mind. And it talks about how we've really gone too far. And I mean, most of what's in that book I completely agree with, but it would be easy to misinterpret it and go too far and say, well, therefore, all wounds are beneficial.

And I don't think that's true. And to me, a litmus test, this is the best I can come up with. And I better come up with something better by the time I write this book, because I don't think this is good enough. But here's, this became my litmus test. If you can look at an experience that happened to you and be okay with it happening to your child, then it's probably a lump that's worth taking. But if you look at a wound that happened to you and you would never want it, you would never stand for it happening to your own child, then it might cross the line and become actually unhealthy traumatic event

So in other words not getting picked to play on the soccer team Yeah, that's probably a good thing for you like if you're not good enough to get picked on the soccer team You shouldn't get picked on the soccer team or you know getting benched because you you know don't hustle or you're not good enough I mean Those are the things that we probably do need to continue to allow our kids to experience. So going away was sort of the first time I realized, what if that's a lie? What if you've been telling yourself a lie? What if this whole thing's a myth, this idea that those things were good things? What if for a moment you just accept the fact that maybe something bad happened and maybe

some good things came of that bad, but some bad things have come of that bad. Can you fix that? How do you want, are you comfortable talking about what it is that happened to you? Would you prefer just calling that childhood trauma generically leave it at that? I mean, I'm still kind of working through the ability to talk about it publicly at least. I mean, obviously through therapy, it's been the first time I finally acknowledged it was a year and a half ago.

And so yeah, I'm probably not quite ready to talk about it. Well, it's incredibly brave that you're going this far, so respect. I just, a couple of things came up when you were talking. One was this wrestling you're doing, if I hear you correctly between trying to figure out, well, there were some good things that came out of this horrible injury. Yes, I wouldn't, I would fight and die to prevent my children from going through this, but it provided me with some rocket fuel. There was fissile material in there that was somehow useful.

And yet there was a lot of bad in there too. And then what came up in my mind was have you heard of this idea of the loyal soldier? No. I heard it from, it's not his, but I heard it from this previous guest on the show by name Jerry, a guy by the name of Jerry Kallona. He's friends with your friend Tim Ferris, who's also been on the show. Jerry is a sort of high flying CEO coach. High flying is probably unfair for a really grounded guy, but he used to be a high flying

VC, dropped out of that, became a, what's known, he's now known as the CEO Whisper. And so he does a kind of executive coaching that's quite basic. Behind the scene, you know, sort of he's the guy behind the guy. Yes. So he's my coach too. And not that I'm the CEO of anything, but I'm a co-founder of a little company and he's he that's what he does. He helps co-founders and CEOs and board members and stuff like that. And he does it by really forcing you to get in touch

with your ancient emotional structure so that because his theory is that stuff unseen drives you blindly, seen, you can start to manage it like a grownup. And the loyal soldier is the kind of the ghost in the machine, this unseen code that got injected to us early on. In my case, anger, self-centeredness, selfishness, judgment, impatience, that I refer to kind

of as a collective as Robert Johnson, who was my grandfather, who was a really nasty fellow, but really smart. But just, you know, kind of vassuvial in his temper and could be quite unpleasant to be around. And I have his blood running through my veins. And Jerry's point is you got to look at, add it like those soldiers that held out on the rocks and the Pacific 30 years after World war two ended

defending the japanese homeland when they were found they were welcomed home warmly uh... and they took the gun away and said thank you for your service the war is over and that is what he the attitude he's argument is that's the attitude we should have

toward our own loyal soldiers so when robert johnson comes up because somebody in the room says something that I feel for my own perverse reasons threatens me, you know, I'm working on a project I really care about and somebody comes up with an idea that I don't like. I can snap at them. Well, I can see through my meditation the urge to snap come up and I can be like, hey Robert, the war is over. This, you got me far, you got me pretty far, but it's not serving you now. Does that land at all in terms of the balance you were trying to strike there?

Yeah, 100%. So with Terry Real, who's one of my therapists, he's in Boston and he wrote a book that is called, I don't wanna talk about it, which I've talked about a lot on my podcast. And at some point I can't wait to interview Terry. He talks about this a lot, and in fact, these are exercises we actually do.

In fact, we did this exercise in Kentucky, and I've done it several times since, we write letters to the wounded child, and we write letters to the adaptive child, we write letters to the adaptive child and the letters to the adaptive child are effectively what you're describing, which is incredible gratitude for what that child did, for how much that child protected us, for how much that child got us through awful things. It is exactly as you describe it is a, but here's the deal.

A couple things I need to do today. You're not quite helping me there. I don't dislike you. I love you. I'm grateful for you. You will always be with me, but I need you to sit in that chair over there. I just need you to chill for a little bit. And look, there are, I would say half the time I'm able to do that.

And half the time I'm not. That's my goal. Great. In two years, can we be at three quarters of the time I'm able to do that? Okay, so just going back to Edge now. That to me strikes, I don't, how do we want to define Edge? Like you wanted to find it in terms of like pure performance in athletics, metrics, pure business metrics, or should we start adding in metrics around ability not to be a jerk and to have positive

relationships because at the end of the day, having a positive relationship, as you said, having positive relationships, plural, is the biggest predictor of a happy life. So, to me, I guess what I'm getting at is it feels like we need to think more holistically about what we mean by edge. Yeah, you know, I've never really contemplated it through that lens, Dan. I don't know that I'm the guy to be thinking about it, frankly. You're the perfect guy to be thinking about it, frankly. You're the perfect guy to be thinking about it. Well, I mean, again, semantics aside,

I just know what I want and I know what I don't want. And I just know that I got really tired of being miserable. And for me, the type of edge that I was pursuing was synonymous with misery. And so you're happier now, and although not perfect, and you may not have as many visible veins in your abs, and that's a trade-off you're willing to make. Not only is it a trade-off you're willing to make, I think it's actually beneficial.

I think it's actually very important that I learn to stop worshipping things that should not be worshipped. And if my body and my intellect, all of which are already in decline, I'm 46 years old, my intellect peaked, you know, again, if you believe what Arthur Brooks has written, we probably peaked intellectually in terms of pure raw horsepower in our late 30s or early 40s.

So I am in decline by every metric that I've ever worshipped. So the sooner I come to see that decline, accept that decline, embrace that decline, and pivot towards the things that are not in decline, which are, for me, relationality, I think the better I'm going to be. Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this. Hey, I'm Aresha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wundery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families

and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threatened to veer Rue off course. In our series, Rue Paul Bornnaked,

we'll show you how Rue Paul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. Okay, so we've come very far in this interview and not really talked about your medical practice. And we can continue to do that because I am not, I have to talk about my medical practice all the time and I love not talking about Well, let's do a little bit, okay?

Because it's really interesting you are is the term a longevity Specialist what's the right? No, I don't think there is a term, you know because I trained in surgery I trained in cancer surgery actually and I you know, I became really disillusioned with medicine and I left and surgery actually and I became really disillusioned with medicine and I left. And actually when I left I went into finance, like I went as far away from medicine as I could when I left. And it was really only after my daughter was born that I, for the first time in my life, even contemplated mortality and realized, oh, I actually want to live longer because I love this little baby, even though

that was sort of counter to the ethos of loving something. And so, no, I sort of gradually became interested in this, and that eventually turned into a practice whose philosophy is sort of in a constant state of evolution, but today I would basically explain as follows that longevity is the product of two vectors, the first is lifespan, which is just how long you live piece, the second is health span, which is how well you live piece. I think early in my tenure, I focused obsessively on the first one, the lifespan one.

So what does the death certificate say? How much longer can you make that? And it turns out that is mathematically not the most conceptually difficult thing in the world. If you want to live longer, it turns out you just have to delay the onset of chronic disease. Now embedded within that is lots of stuff that we could talk for hours about

and we should not talk for hours about it. But if you can delay the onset of atherosclerosis, if you can delay the onset of cancer, you can reduce the risk of accidental death and you don't smoke, you're kind of 80% of the way there. Okay, park that. The other piece which really has become, and they're not mutually exclusive, which a lot of people confuse this.

A lot of people say, Peter, I don't care about living longer, I just want to live better, to which I say, here's the good news. If you do all of the right things on living better, you're going to live longer as well. So can we just accept that we're going to do both? It's called squaring the longevity curve. You know, this won't make any sense to the listener because we're, but for you, if your life looks like that and you want to make it look like that, that's called squaring the longevity curve. You know, this won't make any sense to the listener because we're, but for you, if if your life looks like that and you want to make it look like that, that's called squaring the curve. Living better and longer. The that is basically, it goes for well, then drops, but you can go longer and then

drop. And drop quicker. I want that nice quick drop at the end that is both longer and quicker. Right, so you're suffering. Living healthy longer and then suffering less at the end. That's correct. The living better part in my model has three pieces. It has the cognitive piece, the physical piece, the exoskeleton and the emotional piece. And now two of those three predictably decline with age, the physical and the cognitive piece to climb with age.

The third one seems a little less coupled to age. Obviously there's research that would suggest that people reach the nature of their happiness and emotional health in their late 40s, early 50s. And for a number of people, it sort of continues to decline for others. It's sort of J curves and rebounds back up. But again, for the most part, that's a little less couple days. So you and I, I'm in 48. We're in our, we're at the bottom of the motion. We're theoretically in the native. Yeah. As we're still really striving for our professional

success, probably not spending as much time and energy as we should with the people who matter most. And then hopefully, I mean, at least according to those statistics, in about another five years, we're going to get our heads out of our asses and be like, wait, we've already become as successful as we need to be successful. Our kids are growing up. We want to, you know, we sort of realize our legacy is going to actually be in our, you know, our immediately, you know, the people who are closest to, not the people who are watching you on TV that you care so much about. I'm being deceased just a little bit, but I'm saying this about myself, right? So, so just as much of the practice, if not more of the practice focuses on, okay, what is

cognition mean? Well cognition has three pieces, you know, it's executive function processing speed and memory, okay, how can you utilize everything within nutrition, sleep, meditation, bubble all of these things to enhance those things? And then similarly, on the physical side, what does it mean to be physically, meaning the exoskeleton, the outside of the body? What does it mean to live a fulfilling life for the duration of your life? And this is, I mean, I could talk for hours about each of these pillars.

So I don't wanna go to, you know, far end them unless you have a specific question, because otherwise I won't shut up. And then on the emotional side, I think that's sort of what we've been really talking about. All of this stuff feeds into that emotional health piece. It does that, does the emotional health piece affect longevity? Absolutely.

Because there's been some studies that look at, you know, telomere, lengthening among meditators, telomeres are like the caps of our chromosomes. Of our chromosomes, and they get longer. Yeah, I don't know if it's... I think telomeres are, I mean, I'm going to upset a bunch of people by saying this. I think telomeres are kind of nonsense.

They're sort of like hair color. Like, yes, your telomeres get shorter when you age. Just like your hair gets grayer when you age, but you can color your hair, and it doesn't really change your age. And there are lots of things that, you know, for example, like there was an experiment then recently it was published a few months ago

when two astronauts who were twins once spent a year in space, once spent a year on the ground. And the telomeres dramatically changed in length of the astronaut that was in space. I believe they got dramatically shorter within two days of him being back on Earth. They were the same length as his brothers.

So generally factors that move that quickly are not, I think, biologically all that relevant. But the real point is I would, I would make an even darkerarker point. Even if being happier didn't extend your life one day, even if it shortened your life a day, wouldn't it be worth it? I mean, if you really start to understand the nature of suffering, and that was the irony I had, and it took me a while to accept it, because it was the first pose to me by one of my therapists,

Esther, so Esther Perala is a woman I work with here in New York, and Esther said to me about two years ago when I was really in the midst of all this stuff, she said, do you not find it ironic that your entire professional existence is around living longer, and yet you're so miserable, like why would you want to extend this? And I mean, I'm laughing. Yeah, it's so obvious, right? Well, it strikes me thinking about the fact that you have three therapists and have described as one of your three modalities for forward momentum earlier as obsessiveness.

You're attacking the growing up job little on the worship with a level of session. I mean, in this case, I mean, God bless. So it sounds like it's working for you. Okay, but so back to medicine for a second, because I think on one level, it's surprising. My listeners may be a little surprised that I would have somebody like you on, because we do a lot on the show talking about the taboo of death.

Getting people, I think it's very important and the Buddha happened to think it was very important to talk about and think about and contemplate death because it happens to be true. So therefore, and unavoidable, and having that in your molecule, understanding this on a cellular level makes day-to-day life much more vibrant, you're less prone to taking it for granted. But here we are with a guy who specializes

in extending life. And so do you see a contradiction there? Not at all, actually. So first of all, I have no delusions of immortality. There are lots of, you know, that's why I sort of bristle at the notion of, you know, when people say, are you a longevity doctor? I mean, I just, in fact, if I'm at a party

and people ask me what I do, it's either shepherd or race car driver. I mean, there is, there is, there is, there is, is that from Fletch? Yes, okay. You're the first person to fully understand why I say that. You know what I want to do? I'm hoping to get the, you know, that, you're the first person to fully understand why I say that You know what I want to do. I'm hoping to get the you know that you know It says like a doctor's name outside their office. Yeah, I'm I'm in the process of negotiating to get the entire

Fletch panel of all the Dr. Rosen's Dr. Rosen, Fetus Dr. Rosen, Rosen, Dr. Rosen And they'll be like three people that get it, but it'll be our age. Yeah, male. Yeah. So, but unfortunately, the term longevity has so many cockamamee connotations that I just sort of say, look, I don't know what kind of doctor I am, what I'm interested in is the following. I really believe that if you optimize these five variables or these five tools, you can probably live 10 to 15 years longer than you're slated to live

and add a much higher quality, physically, cognitively, and emotionally. And I don't see that at all at odds with the Buddha. In fact, you know, really my motivation for this is doing the simple exercise of thinking about the relationships that can be made in that last 15 years in my life because you do the exercise, which I would encourage you to do. So you write your age down, you write the age down of your children, and then you just start adding tens to each of them. And what you figure out pretty quickly is that the difference between me dying at 80 versus 95

and more importantly, not just dying at 80 versus 95, but being kick-ass at 95 versus decrepit at 80. The difference is a generation. It's another generation of... It's the difference between grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It's the difference between being able to hopefully impart some of the stuff I've learned in this life to another group. And truthfully, there's a selfish component to it, which is truly the happiest moments of my life are with my kids when I'm not in my head. You know, I mean, the bliss of being, like, you know, we took our youngest camping

for the first time two weeks ago. I mean, I didn't know what to expect. I mean, that had the potential to go so far off the two year old, yeah. Oh, no, no, sorry, we didn't take it. We took the four and a half year old, almost five year old. But still, he's kind of a funny kid. So that had the potential to go so far off the rails.

And not only did it not go off the rails. He was so in his element and You know, I I just shot a video of him and I do this sometimes and it bugs my wife that I take videos of the kids instead of being there with them But I'm like I'm torn because I want to be able to relive these things sometimes too But he picked up a dandy lion and he was just blowing it everywhere and I was like, you can't, you know, like those moments matter so much to me and to have another generation worth of that type of moment matters. So I have no delusions about my mortality and I have no delusions about the fact that I could get hit by a taxi cab leaving here today.

I understand that fully. And so I see a slight bit of tension, but it's a healthy tension between the idea of being present and living in the moment and completely appreciating the gift that is mine only for the next minute. And I don't know when it, versus having a plan in place to live longer and live healthier. And really, an analogy is it's not that different from saving. Why do we save? Why do we save?

We save because we have, you don't know. You don't know if all the money you're stocking away and putting away and investing is going to matter. Maybe it won't matter. Maybe you'll have a windfall that will nullify all of that need, or maybe you won't live long enough to actually spend all that. But the responsible planning to either live longer or have enough money in retirement is not at odds with the ability to enjoy taking a vacation today and use the money that you've earned to have a wonderful experience.

Yes, but as it pertains to the body, it seems to me that the tricky bit here is doing all the stuff and I want to get into a little bit more, like what, you know, in a brief way, what are some of the key things we can do to live longer? And then not falling into what you've fallen into, which is body worship, naval gazing quite literally, that makes you, that degrades the quality of life while you're extending life simultaneously.

That strikes me as maybe one of the key balances here. Yeah, no, I think it really is. And for me, you've talked about how I've had these competitive obsessions, whether it was boxing or marathon swimming, cycling, all of these things. When I was 42, I basically hung up the sport, right? So the last thing I did obsessively was cycling. So when I put the bike away and decided, I'm not gonna race anymore,

I'm not gonna train like, I'm a professional athlete, although I'm not, and nobody cares about me. It became very hard because, at that point, I was left with only one thing to obsess about, which was my body, as opposed to my times and my other things. The good news is I kind of had an epiphany about a year ago, and it was many years coming, but a year ago I went to the funeral of the mother of a friend.

And she had been suffering with Alzheimer's disease for a very short period of time relative to her death, about nine months. So she went from being reasonably cognitively intact to pretty severely demented to dead. Or at the funeral, I think she had died at about 89. I knew her well for many years. I mean, I remember her 70th birthday like it was yesterday.

But I hadn't seen her in about a decade. And I met the funeral and I realized something, actually, before the funeral, because we were all talking. The last decade of her life, the things that she cared most about, which were gardening and golf, were gone from her life. She physically couldn't do those things anymore.

So she spent a decade of her life, basically, between 80 and 89, unable to physically do the things that really defined a big part of her. And, you know, sort of retreated and regressed into the person that sort of stayed inside most of the time, and then, of course, gets struck with all time-risk disease in his dead in nine months. Well, I sort of reflected on how many times I've heard that story. And it turns out the answer is, more times, I would need scientific notation to count the number of times I've heard that story. In fact out the answer is more times I would need scientific notation to count the number of times

I've heard that story. In fact, that's arguably the most common path I've seen to death. I said, well, part of the problem is we don't know what we're training for. We're too busy training for stupid things today that don't matter. And again, I'm going to say this an upset a ton of people. But unless you're getting paid because you're a professional athlete to be winning the Iron Man, I don't really understand the purpose of training to do a triathlon. I really don't. Because it comes at a great cost. It's not really ultimately what's going to set you up for success in your ninth decade. And so I realize that what I want to train for is for success in your ninth decade. And so I realize that what I want to train for is this thing called the Centenary in Olympics,

which is this event that I made up, which is what are all the activities I need to be able to do in my 90s to appreciate all the things we just talked about. Like, do I want to be able to take great grandkids camping? Yes, I do. And what would that imply? What would I need to physically be able to do to do that? So I basically wrote out all of this stuff and it collapsed into 18 events. And these 18 events became my Centenarian Olympics. And so now my training is based on that. So it's really not at all about my abs, right? It's actually about my pelvic floor. So the ability to generate concentric intra-addominal pressure from the diaphragm obliques around the pelvic floor is far more important to my longevity than the rectus abdominis muscles that form my abs. They turn out to be almost unimportant.

And so, yeah, you could say I'm still physically pretty obsessive, but it's not with the external, it's more with the internal, and it's more with the functional piece of, how is that going to enable me to continue to do what I do today with my kids, with their kids, and with their kids' kids, which is my aspiration. So last question along these lines,

given that many of us are not going to be able to have the time or the means to access your services as a physician, what are, you know, can you just drop a little knowledge for all of us regular folks about things that we can do that up the likelihood of living longer, of being able to do the centenary in Olympics. I would say, okay, let's talk about maybe one possible thing within each of the buckets, right?

So within the nutrition bucket, I would say probably the most important thing you'd want to do is start to get familiar with periods of fasting. I think fasting is one of the most important tools. If not the single most important tool we have in nutrition. It's far from the only one. Our framework in nutrition is elaborate. It has sort of six different states of which intermittent fasting is one. But if a person can get comfortable creating greater and greater gaps in between the time

that they eat, so for some people that means daily doing something called time restricted feeding where you might only eat between say noon and 8 p.m. So you have an eight hour feeding window in a 16 hour window where you're not. I would say that's a tip of the iceberg, but that's a very important place to start considering things. So within the world of nutrition, I would say if I could make one recommendation to people, it would be start thinking about how to expand that. Within sleep, I would say, and we could talk about sleep for hours, you and I have spoken

about this, I know, at length. The average American is sleeping about six hours and 40 minutes a night. Every single shred, this is the least ambiguous piece of medical research right now. Every shred of evidence suggests that we need between seven and a half and eight and a half hours of sleep a night.

So if the average American is at 640, you get the sense that we're at least an hour off the pace. So when it comes to sleep, I would say, fixing a, having a fixed wake up time is very important and adjusting the bedtime to hit that metric. And knowing that at least half of the, half an hour that you're in bed, you're not sleeping.

So I keep very early hours in California. So, I go to bed between 8.39 and wake up between 4.35 and in New York. I keep a later shift, but the same applies. With respect to emotional health, how can I resist sitting here and saying, if I can give one piece of advice, it's a meditation practice.

It's valuable to everybody. I have become biased based on my own problems and I think I'm mindfulness-based practice. Probably is in the vernacular of exercise the best sort of, it's the bicep curl that works the best for my problems. But I'll throw in one caveat, anyone who's ever suffered PTSD, probably mindfulness is not the best place to start. I actually think TM is a better place to be for those that have suffered PTSD. With respect to exercise, this is one where I don't even know how I could offer one piece

of advice, but I would say that there are four pillars of exercise and you have to be participating in at least three of them. I'll tell you what they are and which one is the bonus one. The first is stability. So the earlier I was talking about that whole pelvic floor stuff, that's all about stability. That's basically working on the types of exercises that take us back to what we had when we were infants, which is a total sense of connection between our upper and lower body, between ourselves and the ground. So anytime we wanted to exert a force on the outside

world or vice versa, it was transmitted through us safely by our muscles, not transmitted loosely through our joints, which is sort of what most people have. So back pain, neck pain, virtually every injury a person has is due to an instability. It's due to forces leaking out of the body because we can't hold the body in its correct place. And this is brought on by sitting and a whole bunch of other things that are sort of not native to our species. The second component, so I think that's essential for everybody. The second component that I think is essential for healthy aging is strength training. Like at a lump it you've got to lift weights. You have to do resistance training. And again, within that there's a whole rabbit hole of all the different ways

you can do that. The third piece that I think is essential is this kind of mitochondrial training or zone to aerobic training. And this is sort of missing from a lot of people's world because most of the classes and things that people take generally have you at a higher level than that. But to really have this ability to maximize your mitochondrial efficiency and practical terms what this means is, this is kind of a level of exertion where you're pretty much at the limit

of your ability to talk if you had to. So you can sort of relate to what that is. So pre-breathless. Pre-breathless, but you don't really want to talk. Right, right. And that corresponds to, I mean, there's a, again, we have a much more technical definition, which is based on actual lactate production,

but it corresponds to probably 75 to 80% of a person's maximum heart rate. I feel like if I'm doing a Peloton spin class, I'm gonna hit breathless a bunch. And then I'm gonna hit what you're talking about a bunch as well. Yeah. And the fourth piece is the all-out kind of neuromuscular anaerobic peak piece that doesn't need to be done in any high duration, but small amounts of that

probably once to three times per week become an adjunct to this huge foundation of zone two, which, you know, my view today, which is always subject to change, is that three hours a week of that zone two stuff are really an important foundation. Wow. Yeah. So I think there's one macro tip on each of them. That's awesome. This has been great.

Is there anything I should have asked you, but didn't? Not that I can think of. Can you plug everything, please? Can you just plug how we can learn more about you, social media, your podcasts? Sure, yeah, thanks. I have a podcast that's called The Drive. Fittingly, even what we've just discussed.

Yeah, although it's more based Drive. Fittingly, even what we've just discussed. Yeah, although it's more based on the cars. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's more based on my love of motorsport. And that comes out every single Monday. And let's see, and then on social. All my handles are peteratia-md. You know, whatever.

So peteratia-md.com is a website, and then Twitter and Instagram or all pdmt. And when's the book coming out? Current pub date got pushed back because I didn't want it to come out during the election season. So we're looking at February 21. Okay. Something to look forward to. You can come back. And I think what we should do is one of the things that you said in there that struck me as potentially massively interesting to this audience,

sleep. So, just mental note, among other things, we can take a deep dive on that. And then I'm very interested to hear more about what you, how you write this outstanding chapter that you're waiting on, which sounds like a toughy. Such a pleasure to have you on, really appreciate it. Dan, thanks so much, it's an honor. All right, it was great to talk to Peter you on really appreciate it. Dan, thanks so much. It's an honor. All right, it was great to talk to Peter, really appreciate his time.

And don't forget to check out him interviewing me on the Peter Atia Drive. That's his podcast. It's called the Peter Atia Drive. Time now for your voice smells this week. I'm getting a break because we're bringing in a ringer. Oran J. Sofer, as I mentioned at the top of the show, this guy is really a popular on the 10% happier app. By the way, if you're interested in more about Orrin,

he's been on this show twice. So if you go back to episodes 28 and 165, you can hear much more from him. But for now, here he is answering your questions. Hey, Dan. This is Ed from Dallas, Texas Love Podcast, and I also enjoyed your book with Jeff Warren. So, this is a question about meditation for insomnia. I had a couple episodes recently, wake up 3 a.m. and just can't go back to sleep.

The bad thing about insomnia, of course, is that on top of the million thoughts you already have in your head, you pile on with things that I am about insomnia itself. It kind of feeds on itself. You're letting me think, oh no, I should be sleeping, I've got to get a burly, et cetera, et cetera. So the question is really, you know, is there the thoughts on mindfulness for insomnia or meditation for insomnia? I know that mindfulness is usually about awareness in the moment,

sometimes called waking up like Sam Harris's book, but that's kind of the opposite of what we're trying to do, we're trying to actually literally go back asleep, but to hear your thoughts. Thanks for the question, Ed. I can really relate someone who's also had insomnia on and off during my life So it's a tough one I Think that you're you're pointing to a few things intuitively in terms of how mindfulness can be used So you know, I think the first benefit of the meditation and the mindfulness is that removing or

unplugging that extra layer of stress that we add by worrying and thinking about, oh no, how's it going to be tomorrow? And I really should be sleeping. And why do I have insomnia? And all of the ways that we make it worse. So mindfulness practice and meditation can help us to become more aware when we're in a place of insomnia or any situation in life of what we're adding that's extra that's not helping. And the more clearly we see that, the more flexibility and choice we have over whether or not to feed it. So I would say that's kind of the first layer of the benefits there is. So I'm sense of being able to surrender. And I know for myself, in times of insomnia that I've really found, when I can just let go and accept, like, well, hey, I'm awake. All right, might as well have a cup of tea, read a book, or get up and meditate, like, go sit and meditate. Why not use the time well? That usually that shift

from fighting and worrying and resisting or, you know, trying to fall asleep, which never works, to fully accepting it and surrendering, that starts to help the mind and the body and the whole nervous system shift gears and calm. And then I find after 20, 30 minutes, sometimes I'm able to start to move back to sleep. So that's one avenue, one approach. The other you allude to, which is meditation is about waking up, right? It's about cultivating awareness. Yes, absolutely. And meditation has this component of calming of tranquility. So we can train ourselves to use those calming aspects of meditation to counter some of the insomnia, whether that's focusing on the out breath and really tuning into the sense of ease and tranquility there,

or doing a body scan where you consciously, intentionally relax each and every part of your body one part of the time from your feet all the way up to your head or vice versa from your head all the way down to your feet. So those are a few of the ways that I've found the meditation itself to be helpful getting back to sleep is focusing more on the calming and tranquilizing side to sleep is focusing more on the calming and tranquilizing side of the meditation. Last thing I would say is, you know, we've got a bunch of great content in the app. I don't know if you use the 10% happier app, but if you do, I've got a bunch of guided practices on sleep and a bunch of my colleagues do as well. And so, you know, that can also be supportive.

So there's not that feeling that it's all on you at 3am to get back to sleep. You get that support from someone else kind of guiding your awareness. And you know, I find when I'm really having a hard episode of Insomnia that hearing someone else's voice tends to quiet the mental chatter and just that sometimes allows the mind to begin to drift off to sleep more. So hope this is helpful. Thanks so much for your question and hope you get some good rest, Ed. Take care. Hello, Dan.

This is Maryville from Texas. I'm a big fan of yours. I've read your two books. I'm a subscriber to the 10% happier app. And I listen to your podcast every week. I have been meditating for about four years. I started with TM and within the last year have moved to mindful meditation using mostly the breath as my focus.

My question is, why do I feel sleepy during and after meditations? I feel sleepy regardless of the time of the day I do the meditations and I sleep well at night. So I was wondering if that is common or if you have experience of something similar. Also, have you ever thought about doing TM? Thanks for all your great work. Bye.

Thanks so much for the question, Maribel, and for your meditation practice. So glad that you're finding benefit from all of Dan's work and a 10% happier app. There is actually an episode that Dan did on Transadental Meditation, so you can look in the podcast to find that. Yeah, sleepiness is really, really common in meditation, and I'm so glad that you're sleeping well at night. That's a real blessing. And if we're not sleeping well at night, that can be a

cause for feeling sleepy in meditation. But it sounds like for you, it's coming from somewhere else. So let's look at a few of the possibilities there. One thing that can happen is we're just not used to sitting with our eyes closed, being still calm and quiet. So it's like our nervous system gets the message, oh, it's time to go to sleep. So it can take time to get used to meditating, feeling really relaxed and peaceful with our eyes closed,

while still being alert and awake. So that's the first thing I would say is, continue to give it time and recognize that your body's probably still sorting out how to stay awake and alert while feeling calm. This brings me to the second thing that can be happening, which is an imbalance between energy and concentration. So when we start getting calm, concentrated quiet things begin to get still. If there isn't enough energy, either in the mind or the body

That's when we can start to get sleepy, heavy, drowsy and kind of drift off. So I would invite you to look Ask the question when you're meditating. Is there enough energy here? And if there isn't try seeing what would it be like to bring in some more energy? Can I get more interested? You know try sitting up a little bit straighter or take a few deep breaths. Maybe focus on your in-breath a little bit more, which tends to have more energy and a liveness to it than the out-breath. You could even try opening your eyes or standing up while you're meditating. Now another reason why we might feel sleepy during meditation can be more mental or emotional. If we are avoiding something, if there's something that we don't want to feel or deal with,

the sleepiness can be a defense mechanism or a strategy to not deal with something. So on that front, again, you can ask yourself, really investigate, is there anything that I'm avoiding here? Is there something I'm not wanting to feel? And you don't have to so much think about it, but really ask the question in a sincere way and just see what comes. If you do all of this and the sleepiness still persists, you could try meditating in a different posture, try doing some standing, some walking meditation. You could even change up the technique that you're doing. So try using a technique that requires a little bit more energy,

like using loving kindness phrases or practicing the body scan. Those can help to bring more energy in and counteract some of the sleepiness. The last thing I'll say is that sometimes we understand why something's happening in our meditation practice and other times we don't. All kinds of things can happen and sometimes we just go through phases. So I would really encourage you to be patient with it, allow the sleepiness to come, allow it to go, and over time it will shift on its own.

So thanks so much for your meditation practice and for calling in Maribel. Be well. Big thanks to Orrin for answering those questions. It's great to have actual teachers on the show doing that. And I do want to mention, as we close out here, that if you like Orrin and a lot of people do, he has a bunch of great meditations for sleep in the 10% happier app. So go check out his sleep meditations. I got a long, long email from a colleague here. I won't name her because I didn't ask her permission, but a long call email from a colleague here at ABC News about how she's tried so many things over the years to help her teenage children fall asleep. And it was Orin's meditations in the app that has, that have finally done the trick. So he's got a little bit of magic to him.

Big thanks again to Orin, big thanks to Peter Atia for being our guest this week. Big thanks to you for listening. Always want to give a big shout out to the podcast insiders who just, you know, dozens of people who spend their valuable time to give us feedback on each episode, it really makes a big difference. Also I always want to thank our producers, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Johns, and Grace Livingston. I'll see you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members.

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