The Dr. Hyman Show - What To Do Today To Be Healthy At 100

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

With deliberate attention, we can create the physical, mental, and emotional health we desire at any age. The first step is identifying where we want to be at “X” age. In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman speaks with Dr. Peter Attia about his personal action plan for longevity, and as he likes to put it, training for the Centenarian Olympics. Dr. Peter Attia is the founder of Attia Medical, PC, a medical practice with offices in San Diego and New York City, focusing on the applied science of longevity. His approach focuses on increasing lifespan by delaying the onset of chronic disease, while simultaneously improving “healthspan,” or quality of life. To do this, his practice applies nutritional biochemistry, exercise physiology, sleep physiology, techniques to increase distress tolerance, lipidology, pharmacology, and endocrinology. Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length interview with Dr. Peter Attia here: https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/DrPeterAttia

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. This isn't just about suffering until you get to be 100 so you can do all these feats when you're 100. I feel better. I feel infinitely better today than I did two years ago physically because of the journey. Hey, everyone. Before we get into today's mini episode, I want to tell you about my new cookbook, Food, What the Heck Should I Cook? Now, for those of you who know me, you know that I love to cook for my friends and family, and I believe that cooking delicious and nourishing meals using food as medicine for your loved ones is one of the greatest gifts you can give them. And also learning to prepare meals using real whole foods paves the way for you to achieve your best health and to help reverse so many chronic diseases.

And that's why I put together my brand new cookbook, Food, What the Heck Should I Cook? It's a beautiful cookbook. It has over 100 real food recipes that I put together my brand new cookbook, Food, What the Heck Should I Cook? It's a beautiful cookbook. It has over 100 real food recipes that I use in my own kitchen. It's also filled with tips for overhauling your pantry, a grocery shopping list, and tips for recipe-free cooking. Think of it as a definitive guide to cooking your way to better health. I think you're going to love it. For more information about the cookbook, you can go to foodthecookbook.com. That's foodthecookbook.com. That's foodthecookbook.com.

Thanks, and I'll see you in the kitchen. Hi, I'm Kea Perot, one of the producers of the Doctors Pharmacy podcast. Earlier this year, Dr. Hyman sat down with Dr. Peter Attia to discuss how, with deliberate attention, we can create the physical, mental, and emotional health we desire at any age. Let's listen in. I think genetically, I'm probably the guy who's wired to make it to his eighties. Um, so I use a hundred as a mental model because I can picture how old my kids will be when I'm a hundred and how old their kids will be and probably how old their kids' kids will be. And I've mapped all this out, not because I have any belief that I have some control over this or that, you know, somehow like the world is, you know,

predetermined in that way, but it allows me to think about how to reverse engineer this problem. Yeah. So, you know, you, you talked about sort of the centenarian Olympics, which is this idea that I've developed about a year ago as a way to kind of communicate this to my patients, which says, you know, so back up for a second. Four years ago, I basically just stopped doing competitive sports. You know, I stopped, you know, doing like bike races where, you know, like you're trying to like win a little trophy or a medal or swim races or all these sorts of things. And, you know, I sort of felt a bit of a void in my life when I stopped in 2015, which was, this is the first time in my life since I was 13. So that's almost 30 years where I don't have a goal. Like there's not a specific purpose that's

taking me to the gym to do this thing, to train for this event. Right. And what I realized is actually I do, I have a much more important goal than I've ever thought of before, because those other goals were quite arbitrary. Like how fast can you ride 40 kilometers on your bike? Or, you know, can you swim to Catalina Island? Those are interesting, but quite arbitrary, but a much more interesting goal to me is how could I be the most kick-ass 100 year old to make sure that, you know, when my kids are in their sixties and their kids are in their thirties and their kids' kids are the age of my kids today, what is the life that I imagine living? And I mapped out 18 things that I need to be able to do physically to feel fulfilled.

Wow. Yeah. Very, very specific. Okay. I need to be able to carry four bags of groceries up a flight of stairs. Oh, pardon me. Four bags of groceries up four flights of stairs. All at the same time.

Yeah. Carry four. Cause I could do that today. And I love the fact that I don't have to take an elevator to walk up to my apartment. Okay. Like I like that. I need to be able to get up off the floor. Which you have to do in New York, by the way. Like we have no elevator in our buildings. You have to walk up the stairs with

your groceries and your luggage. Yeah. I need to be able to get up off the floor using a single point of support. And why do I realize that? Because I realized like my boys who are two and five, we play on the floor a lot. Like we're playing with stuff and I have to come to their world. They're not going to come sit at the table and play with me. Right. I have to get on their floor and play with their toys there. And I love doing that, but you have to be able to get up after doing that. And it, I mean, how many hundred year olds do you see that can actually stand up on their own with a single point of support? Or even get up out of a chair. That's right. I have to be able to put. Which by the way is why most people end up in a nursing

home. They're not because of a disease because they can't get up out of a chair anymore. Yeah. This, what I call, well, there's a whole larger discussion, but I'll give you a few more. So I have to be able to put a 30 pound bag in an overhead compartment of an airplane. In other words, I want to be able to like travel through an airport and actually put my stuff away. And I noticed I travel a lot and I noticed how many people can't actually put their bag up or take their bag down. And I just don't want to be that guy. And not because they're short. No, no, no. It's just like there's something wrong. Their shoulder, their back, something like that, their neck. I want to be able to pull myself out of a swimming pool without stairs. So you got to be able to like lift yourself up um so so anyway i've got 18 of these things and

look they're subject to change i'm sure i'm going to think of other things um but they basically come down to a level of physical exertion that i want to be able to have and and by the way there's a lot of things i'm not going to be able to do when i'm 100 that i can do now you know we before we started this i was showing you some pictures of places in hawaii where we're hunting and some of the terrain is the most complicated terrain in the history of the world. I mean, will I be able to hunt like that when I'm a hundred? Probably not. And I'm willing to accept certain things, but these 18 things became my bottom line. Like I want these things. And now, even though I'm only 46, that gives me 54 years to train to do that. And each of these things then projects back into milestones. So if you want to be able to do those things I just described when

you're a hundred, you do what's called backcasting. Well, what do you need to be able to do when you're 90? And then what do you need to be able to do when you're 70 and 60 and 50? So right now I'm very fixated on what the 50 year old version needs to be able to do to make sure I hit those 18 things when I'm 100. And so that becomes the centenarian Olympics is this event that I'm training for. So I now do have an event in life and it requires a totally different way of training. And it's totally foreign to me. Well, it's a much, much greater emphasis on stability, which gets virtually no attention. So mobility is the big buzzword. Everybody wants to talk about mobility, this mobility, that flexibility,

balance, all of those things matter. And they're all a subset of stability, but stability is the thing that most of us have lost generally by the time we're five. Um, so if you look, I'm lucky, I have a two year old, so I get this beautiful firsthand view of what amazing movement is meant to look like. And when you look at the things that they can do, you realize that every inch of them is connected. So when they're moving their arm, when they are doing something on the floor, when they're rolling, when they're turning, everything is connected. They are transferring force across their body through the muscles and not the joints. And then something happens. I mean, there are a lot of things that happen that I won't get into just for the sake of time. But one of the biggest insults is we start doing this. Sitting down. Yeah. Once we

start sitting, we lose our connection to our pelvic floor. And it's this cylinder that sits within our body from our diaphragm to our pelvic floor and around all of the muscles that line this tank. As we lose that connection, all of a sudden we start to lose the ability to connect what's happening here to what's happening here and what's happening here to what's happening here. And all of these chronic injuries start to crop up. So you have to be clear on your objective. And if your objective is to win a race, then you have to train at that zone. But if your objective is to do all these things that I have on my list of 18, which- What's more functional life, physical fitness. Right.

Physical fitness is incredibly efficient mitochondria, incredibly fit aerobic base with the capacity to take very hard short-term bursts. Amazing. Okay. So back to the other aspects of the Centenary olympics so it's not just the physical part it's all the right so the physical piece is one part of it then so that so we talk about sort of physical or exoskeleton demise and then there's a cognitive piece and then there's

an emotional piece so for you um what does your day look like how do you construct all the things you've learned about these five pillars of health and longevity? How do they integrate into your daily life? For me, the right day is I wake up and I meditate before I do a single other thing, before I make a coffee, before, certainly before I look at email or anything like that. And, you know, for the past few days, I think I, I was just, you know, something came up. And so there's a little bit of an issue going on in my life and it sort of pulled me out of my routine a bit. But, but in many ways, I think the bottom line is you, it's, these are all things that whether it's exercise, nutrition, meditation, sleep, you have to prioritize them. Yeah. You know, you, and people don't want to do these things. And

they, you know, one of the exercises I do with patients is I sit down and we look at the 168 hours in a week and look at where they're allocating time. And I say, look, let's say you run a hedge fund or something. I say, your whole job is capital allocation. You're an asset allocator. You take money and your job is to decide where to put it and to which companies to generate the right profile of return, liquidity, volatility, et cetera. So you are an asset allocator. Well, I said, well, everybody's an asset allocator when it

comes to an even more precious commodity than money, which is time. And this is one where we're all the same. We all get 168 hours in a week and you got to figure out how you're going to spend them. I think it really takes intention. We spend so much intention on so many things that matter far less in designing and figuring out what we want, but not about these things. And when you do, it's not that you're really training for this centenary Olympics. You're training for the quality of every single moment in your life, which dramatically enhances when you do these things. It's not about, oh, I'm going to do these things so I can get to 100 and be able to get up off the floor. Yeah. The process itself is beautiful, right? I mean, I feel better. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a fair point, which is this isn't just about suffering until you get to be 100 so you can

do all these feats when you're 100. I feel better. I feel infinitely better today than I did two years ago physically because of the journey. The choices we make for our health today will define our ability to stay active, sharp, present, and independent tomorrow. With a little thought and planning, and of course, the right actions to make it happen, we can achieve the quality and longevity in life we truly desire. I hope you enjoyed this week's mini episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Thanks for tuning in. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's mini episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Thanks for tuning in. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode.

Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed

healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.