#872 - Dr Mike Israetel - Exercise Scientist’s Masterclass On Longevity

In Being Mortal, surgeon Atul Gawande considers our experience of aging and dying in the 21st century. In his view, the modern approach to these stages of life undermines our ability to live well up to the end—to do better, we need to accept death as a natural part of the human experience and prioritize the well-being of the dying.

Critics praised Being Mortal and considered it one of the best books of 2014. It’s since been adapted into a TV documentary and a feature film.

We’ve divided our guide into two main sections to explore Gawande’s theme. The first section examines some of the ways we approach aging and death in our modern era, and the second explores Gawande’s ideas about how we might improve our experience of these profoundly important aspects of life.

In our commentary, we’ve contextualized Gawande’s ideas by citing relevant statistics about end-of-life care in the modern healthcare system and by exploring psychological insights on how we experience our mortality.

If you haven’t thought about your inevitable death today, Jodi Wellman suggests it’s time to start. In her book You Only Die Once, Wellman champions the principle of memento mori—the intentional recognition of our mortality—as the key to leading a better life. According to Wellman, regularly meditating on your mortality motivates you to live more deliberately and meaningfully, balancing vitality and meaning.

In this guide, we’ll explain why Wellman argues that contemplating death will help you live a better life. We’ll then discuss what it means to live a good life and how to reflect critically on the life you’re living, before outlining Wellman’s steps to improve the quality of your life right away. We’ll also provide additional commentary on the history of memento mori, different cultural perspectives on death, and insights from other experts in positive psychology, including Martin Seligman (Flourish) and Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning).

How do you want to spend the last decade of your life? Do you want to be weak, bedridden, and mentally foggy? Or busy doing whatever brings you joy, flexing the body and mind of someone decades younger? According to physician Peter Attia, you can extend the active and fulfilling part of your life by building the right healthy habits—and the earlier you start building these habits, the better chance you have of circumventing mental and physical decline.

In this guide, you’ll learn Attia’s recommendations for how best to eat, exercise, and otherwise take care of your body and mind. You’ll also understand how one chronic condition, metabolic dysfunction, can cause four of the most deadly diseases known to man. In our commentary, we’ll supplement Attia’s explanations of human biology and modern medicine with information from recent research. We’ll also use additional health and fitness tips to paint a broader picture of the current consensus in the complex field of wellness.

For all of recorded history, people have seen aging as an inevitable fact of life. Biologist and geneticist David Sinclair disagrees: He believes that old age is a deadly disease, and he’s dedicated his life to curing it.

Sinclair is a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard University. He argues that it’s not only possible—but inevitable—that we’ll learn to overcome the aging process. New medicines and technologies will increase our maximum lifespan and years of health until eventually humans won’t have a maximum lifespan—we’ll stay young and healthy forever.

In Lifespan, Sinclair discusses why aging happens, how we can prevent it, and how we might create a world where nobody has to die of old age. This guide explains Sinclair’s ideas and provides background information to make complex biological concepts more accessible to the average reader.

Imagine a world where our lifespans aren’t limited by illness or aging, where people could live for as long as they wanted to. This sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, but according to Tony Robbins, Peter Diamandis, and Robert Hariri, such a scenario may be more fact than fiction. In Life Force, the authors explain how ongoing development of new technologies and information in the medical field may extend our lifespans beyond what we ever thought possible. Robbins is a bestselling author and speaker, Diamandis is a bestselling author and scientist, and Hariri is a neurosurgeon and scientist.

In our guide, we’ll explore the lifestyle changes you can make now to increase your lifespan and overall health. We’ll also look at new technologies that are rapidly improving our healthcare and upcoming technologies that have the potential to bring us even closer to the ideal of immortality. We’ll supplement this with elaboration on some of the authors’ more complex ideas, and we’ll contextualize the guide’s information in the fields of science, technology, and sociology.

Scientists have learned why people suffer the effects of old age. In The Telomere Effect, biochemist Elizabeth Blackburn and psychologist Elissa Epel explain that your telomeres, the tiny protective caps on your DNA, dictate how fast you age: Longer telomeres keep your cells youthful for longer and therefore grant you a longer and healthier life. This book offers insights into how everyday habits like sleep, diet, and exercise can help slow down aging by keeping these crucial little caps from wearing out too quickly.

In this guide, we'll begin by explaining what telomeres are and their key role in aging. We'll then discuss how and why telomeres fray under persistent stress. Finally, we'll explore some strategies to protect and rebuild your telomeres, helping you stay youthful and healthy for as long as possible. Our commentary will provide additional background information and scientific evidence that supports or contradicts the authors’ assertions.

A growing number of billionaire entrepreneurs are investing in research and innovations to try to increase the human lifespan, some even aiming for immortality. While this investment could lead to breakthroughs that benefit everyone, there are risks, including unforeseen health consequences and public resentment if treatments are made available only to the wealthy.

The rapid pace of technological change has impacted our lives and our world in many ways, and our headlong rush into the future may have staggering implications for our species. In The Singularity Is Near, computer scientist Ray Kurzweil predicts that a profound technological shift will change everything about how we live, how society functions, and even what it means to be human. From using genetics to reprogram the body to having the power to digitally augment our brains, the technological Singularity will lead to a future in which even death may one day be forgotten.

In this guide, we’ll explore the ongoing revolutions that together may overturn our current order—bioscience, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. We’ll examine Kurzweil’s predictions for these technologies, as well as some of their potential dangers. As the book was published in 2005, we’ll also look at how well Kurzweil’s predictions hold up and the different paths that some technologies have taken.

For all of recorded history, people have seen aging as an inevitable fact of life. Biologist and geneticist David Sinclair disagrees: He believes that old age is a deadly disease, and he’s dedicated his life to curing it.

Sinclair is a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard University. He argues that it’s not only possible—but inevitable—that we’ll learn to overcome the aging process. New medicines and technologies will increase our maximum lifespan and years of health until eventually humans won’t have a maximum lifespan—we’ll stay young and healthy forever.

In Lifespan, Sinclair discusses why aging happens, how we can prevent it, and how we might create a world where nobody has to die of old age. This guide explains Sinclair’s ideas and provides background information to make complex biological concepts more accessible to the average reader.

For all of recorded history, people have seen aging as an inevitable fact of life. Biologist and geneticist David Sinclair disagrees: He believes that old age is a deadly disease, and he’s dedicated his life to curing it.

Sinclair is a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard University. He argues that it’s not only possible—but inevitable—that we’ll learn to overcome the aging process. New medicines and technologies will increase our maximum lifespan and years of health until eventually humans won’t have a maximum lifespan—we’ll stay young and healthy forever.

In Lifespan, Sinclair discusses why aging happens, how we can prevent it, and how we might create a world where nobody has to die of old age. This guide explains Sinclair’s ideas and provides background information to make complex biological concepts more accessible to the average reader.

Author Tim Ferriss has spent years studying how to improve the human body—he interviewed and trained with experts, studied scientific literature, and tried out what he learned on himself. In The 4-Hour Body, he distills the most effective 2.5% of what he discovered into programs you can use to improve six aspects of your body: losing fat and gaining muscle, enhancing sex, improving sleep, managing injuries, improving sports performance, and living longer.

Imagine a world where our lifespans aren’t limited by illness or aging, where people could live for as long as they wanted to. This sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, but according to Tony Robbins, Peter Diamandis, and Robert Hariri, such a scenario may be more fact than fiction. In Life Force, the authors explain how ongoing development of new technologies and information in the medical field may extend our lifespans beyond what we ever thought possible. Robbins is a bestselling author and speaker, Diamandis is a bestselling author and scientist, and Hariri is a neurosurgeon and scientist.

In our guide, we’ll explore the lifestyle changes you can make now to increase your lifespan and overall health. We’ll also look at new technologies that are rapidly improving our healthcare and upcoming technologies that have the potential to bring us even closer to the ideal of immortality. We’ll supplement this with elaboration on some of the authors’ more complex ideas, and we’ll contextualize the guide’s information in the fields of science, technology, and sociology.