In the wildly popular biohacking and longevity space, Peter Attia is often cited as one of the leading luminaries. His straightforward, science-backed approach seems to cut through the noise in a space dominated by fit bros and wellness grifters who always seem to have a product to sell. But the man who dropped out of residency at Johns Hopkins to found a private clinic focused on longevity has his share of critics, who are a bit suspicious about his self-experimentations—and the millions he makes counseling Silicon Valley insiders about experimental medicine.
This week we take a look at longevity broadly and Attia specifically. Derek kicks off the episode with a recap of his time at Eudemonia Summit, where, among other things, he got to debate another leading biohacker, Dave Asprey, about seed oils. As it turns out, longevity was the top buzzword there as well.
I Went to Eudemonia – a Wellness Summit with the Industry's Top Thought Leaders – Here's What It Was Like
Outlive: A Critical Review
A Review of OUTLIVE
Critiquing Peter Attia
Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia: Self-enhancement, supplements & doughnuts?
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Conspirituality 285.
Can Peter Attia live forever?
In the wildly popular biohacking and longevity space, Peter Attia is often cited as one of the leading luminaries.
His straightforward, science-backed approach seems to cut through the noise in a space dominated by Fitbros and wellness grifters who always seem to have a product to sell.
But the man who dropped out of residency at Johns Hopkins to found a private clinic focused on longevity has his share of critics who are a bit suspicious about his self-experimentations and the millions he makes counseling Silicon Valley insiders about experimental medicine.
This week we take a look at longevity broadly and Atia specifically.
Derek kicks off the episode with a recap of his time at Eudaimonia Summit where amongst other things he got to debate another leading biohacker Dave Asprey about seed oils.
As it turns out, longevity was the top buzzword there as well.
As you mentioned, Julian, two weeks ago, I traveled to Palm Beach, Florida to present at Eudaimonia Summit.
Interesting location as to paraphrase one former governor, I could see Mar-a-Lago from my backyard, or at least my hotel room in this case.
In its second year, the summit is largely wellness-based, though the organizers are attempting to inject critical thinking into the programming.
Besides my own presentation on misinformation, sort of recapped what we've been doing on the podcast for five and a half years, as well as a live podcast recording that I did with Dr. Jessica Nurik, and that's going to drop on our feed in the coming weeks.
Yeah, I debated Bulletproof Dave on seed oils, and I also had a debate with a biological dentist named Dominic Nishwitz on fluoride, and I'll get back to that in a moment.
While I was frolicking in the Florida sun, you, Julian, shared a clip of Peter Attia on 60 Minutes in our Slack, and you floated the idea of doing an episode on him.
This dovetailed quite well with what I was experiencing at the summit because the overwhelming majority of brands and influencers there were focused on this concept of longevity.
I mean, you couldn't walk 10 feet in the exhibition hall without seeing peptides, aminos, NAD plus precursors, various extracts.
There were talks about biological age and health span all over.
Andrew Huberman gave a keynote about human optimization.
Mark Hyman gave one about personalizing health for 100 years.
Chiropractor Will Cole at the crowd in on longevity secrets while discussing the microbiomind connection.
The speakers list was like a who's who of people we've covered on this podcast, and most of them have products to sell about the topics they were discussing.
I do want to point out, though, health writer Mercy Livingston was there.
She reviewed the event for Yahoo, and I agree with her about the inclusion of critics like myself at a wellness conference.
So in that write-up, which I'll include in the show notes, she writes, I respected the fact that the summit organizers felt there was room for different viewpoints, open discussion, and even debate.
In other sessions, Beres debated several of the most controversial topics in the wellness space right now, including seed oils and fluoride on stage in front of an audience.
I was really impressed by this dialogue, and I have a lot of respect for the people who made space for these important conversations.
Overall, I was really happy I was invited.
I believe debates are not only healthy, but necessary.
It's one thing to analyze and critique through podcasts and social media, but it's quite another to be in a room with someone you're critical of and go head to head with that person.
Not only that, in front of an audience that probably are on his side, right?
Absolutely.
Like the seed oils debate with Asprey was a lot more balanced than I thought it would be.
The fluoride, it was just mostly anti-fluoride activists.
So that kind of turned into a shit show at the end.
But, you know, I also want to say I missed Jessica Nurick debating Will Cole about Maha because that was exactly when I was debating Asprey.
But having these influencers face criticism to me is super important.
I know some people think it's boosting and or legitimizing that person.
In some cases, I do agree with that, thinking about like Neil, not Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye debating the creationist guy.
That's an example that I don't think it's a great idea.
But in this case, first, like I said, we were at a wellness summit.
So we were sort of the outliers here.
And then I had a conversation with an old friend of mine, Jeff Krasno, who was there and he actually moderated the Will Cole Jessica Nurik debate.
And he actually mentioned to me that we, the critics, are actually the contrarians now because Maha is in power.
And that's very interesting because the Maha people still pretend they're not in power and they are because that has to be part of how they sell their products.
But in a sense, he's right on that point.
Yeah, I agree.
I can't help but ask, was he including himself in the we that he referred to there of the critics?
From what I understand and from what I've heard on his one commune podcast, I do think he plays a pretty good role at trying to have conversations balancing both sides.
I don't always agree with where he lands.
He didn't say he was in that, but I would put him in that at some points.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is a weird turnaround regarding the mainstream versus the fringe, right?
We've been predicting this for the last few years, though, with pseudoscience and GRIFT now being institutionalized at the highest levels.
We've really transitioned into being the ones who are now saying you can't trust government health agencies.
But I will rush to add that we're still trying to be on the side of the actual scientific consensus.
You know, Derek, I told you privately, I think you particularly are well suited for this.
Like if I'm on that stage with Dave Asprey, I'm probably going to be super caustic and reactive because I'm not good at hiding contempt.
And I think folks would also clock me as, I don't know, soy boy, effeminate, out of shape, affected or whatever, or hyper intellectual.
But you, I think, are able to walk in there as kind of like the straight guy in several senses of the word, right?
Like gym guy, familiar with crypto and ayahuasca.
You can relate to people on a number of different levels.
And I think you can pass in that crowd and then code switch and deliver the facts.
So I think that's a really valuable role for you.
Thanks.
I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
Yeah.
I'll be honest.
Right.
I could be up there and not be malicious.
I don't act like I do on social media.
Most people don't act like they do on social media.
That's one thing.
Like, as I said when I posted the video, Dave was totally fine in person.
Like, I don't agree with what he does.
I don't particularly like him or his products or how he positions them.
But just having a conversation, we were just humans and civil to one another.
And I think that's really important for people to see overall.
I know that the viral moments will be people yelling at each other, like a Piers Morgan debate, but that's, that's also just not most of real life.
That's usually contrived, although some people really do hate each other.
And I think being able to actually logically lay out things as I did and I posted on our Instagram from that debate is more valuable to me than yelling at somebody.
So going back to a point you made, Julian, about being the contrarians and trying to be on the side of scientific consensus while pointing out that what's happening broadly in public health is terrifying and dangerous.
We have to point out that the CDC recently changed its website under direct command by RFK Jr., as it turns out, to say that the science has not conclusively found that vaccines don't cause autism.
Now, obviously, that's bullshit, but I've seen dozens of influencers this week posting about how the CDC is finally doing science.
So while they don't actually have scientific consensus, they have raw political power.
And that's really, again, terrifying to me.
And Kennedy's wielding it to implement his long-standing anti-vax activism.
All right, back to the summit.
In both debates, I hit upon the concept of food and healthcare access and the social determinants of health early in the talks.
I wanted to see how both Asprey and Nishwitz would respond and respond.
And they both had similar replies.
They believe food and healthcare, in the latter case, dentistry, should be available to everyone at an affordable price.
Now, I actually laughed a bit when Dave said that because, and I told him this.
It's the first time I ever heard him talk about access, considering his business model.
Dominic is in a bit of a different situation as he lives in Germany and they offer socialized medicine.
So I tried to be, you know, aware of that nuance.
Okay, here's what I want to tug on for this episode then, because it's the interim period that I believe they're incapable of addressing and which they really couldn't effectively address during our conversation.
So let me explain the ideal followed by the real.
Asprey doesn't believe seed oils are food.
He straight up said he thinks they're poison and not food.
Now, I don't agree with him.
Numerous studies show that polyunsaturated fats are healthier than his fat of choice, saturated fats from animal products.
Put that aside, Asprey said that people just shouldn't be eating them, shouldn't be eating ultra-processed foods at all.
Don't eat it.
And then markets will adapt to offer healthier foods.
Which, by the way, me and my friends happen to have the market cornered on, right?
Those quote unquote healthier foods.
Oh, absolutely.
That's, yeah, that was pervasive throughout the conference in the weekend.
Now, the same weekend, fellow biohacker Brian Johnson was on Jubilee and he was making the same exact argument.
Just don't eat these foods and companies will change their tune.
To me, it's obvious that neither man has ever lived in a food desert or ever been on SNAP because when challenged about what to do and filling the gap, all Dave could offer was this high-end olive oil company he likes that charges $27 a bottle.
They truly seem incapable of realizing that the lack of choices that people actually face and telling them to just stop eating foods they can afford means that they will actually literally starve.
Yeah, absolutely.
It also illustrates something here, which is that in lieu of scientific consensus, this whole wellness food kind of whatever you want to call it industry relies on the bandwagon effect.
And seed oils are the perfect example.
It's been the hot topic that all the wellness influencers have to suddenly embrace because it gains some traction on social media as the trending bad ingredient.
But Derek, can we also talk for just a moment about Asprey's jaw-dropping pivot in his debate?
You shared it on our Instagram account.
He suggested that anyone who objects to his false health claims should get a therapist because he believes in the First Amendment and it's too bad if you're triggered.
Okay, I have to set up some context for that because the talks were not recorded.
The debate stage was actually put in the exhibition hall where people were walking by and there was large crowds for them, which was great, but a lot of people just didn't even know what was going on.
And so that is to say, I saw someone recording the moment that you're referencing about the First Amendment.
And I went up to her after and asked if she could send me the video, which she graciously did.
But what happened was I was just talking about the responsibilities that influencers have because their rhetoric about like, don't eat this food, demonize that food can lead to orthorexia, which I suffered from.
And I stated that, which is the selective choosing or moving of foods.
That's what he was replying to.
And his reply was, I like the First Amendment.
And the First Amendment leads to the Second Amendment if you're not allowed to have the First Amendment.
Yeah.
Now, first of all, I didn't say this, but people pointed it out on the feed.
First of all, the First Amendment is about government censorship, right?
So it's just a complete red herring in the first place to bring that up.
Oh, secondly, the fact that that's what he came back with.
Like, and I, and I called him out.
I said, I thought it was an utter lack of responsibility to have a platform and then to say, I'm just going to say something which leads into his sales funnel, which it does.
So that, that really kind of was the one moment.
I got to say, we were on stage together for 45 minutes and I preempted a lot of what he was going to say because I listened to hours of his podcast where he talks about seed oils in preparation.
That one I didn't preempt and I was actually surprised by, but in reflection, it's not that surprising.
Yeah, I mean, what's amazing about that is: A, he's saying that criticizing my actual false, like, like unwarranted scientific claims is somehow violating my free speech.
And that B, he would, he would home in on out of a kind of, I don't know what clueless cruelty on the fact that you just shared something about orthorexia to saying, well, those people need therapists and it's not my problem.
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
And I'm not a contributor.
And I'm not a contributor or potential contributor to that problem.
Like that's, that's, yeah, that's how I'm going to wash my hands.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The uh, the complete unwillingness to engage or take responsibility for how you might help to foment that sort of problem in people is just, especially when you're literally promoting a product that for generations has been shown to be worse for your health.
Derek, just a point of debate preparation.
You said that you had been able to preempt, you know, a lot of the data that he was going to bring about seed oils, but that this surprised you.
And I could imagine it would surprise you because why would anybody bring up the First Amendment in relation to your personal story?
But is that the moment, having been through this circumstance where something like this could go off the rails?
Because I can imagine sitting there having done good preparation and then being hit with something like that and losing my fucking mind, right?
So is that did you feel like you were on the edge there of, oh, I'm going to get triggered by this and I'm probably going to take up too much space if I don't get it under control?
No, not personally.
Like there were two moments where we started talking over one another, but we did have a moderator who was the founder of Eudaimonia, Sean, jumped in at those moments.
And those were only those, even then, it wasn't, it wasn't yelling or anything of that nature.
I, if people want to see my reaction, you can see it.
You know, I, it's on our Instagram.
So I didn't get heated, but I did say what I wanted to say.
And to Dave's credit, when he replied, he also didn't get heated.
So, I mean, look, the dude's last book is called Heavily Meditated.
So he better fucking put that into practice if he, if that's what his thing.
And I actually, if you, if you do, if you zoom in, you can see him peek his eyebrows and his mouth start rolling his tongue around when I said what I said.
But to his credit, he did not lash out at me.
So in different situations, I could see that getting heated, but I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna let my anger get the best of me.
Dominic is an interesting one.
He was a bit more understanding.
He was a very level guy.
I don't agree with him, but if you go to his social media, he doesn't present things nearly at the fever pitch that people like Asprey do.
He personally doesn't believe anyone should use fluoride, which again, I don't agree with, but he actually recognizes low-income and rural populations are not going to have their problems solved overnight.
His belief is that people need better nutrition and then they won't ever have to see a dentist, which I don't know, is a little weird, but I get his overall point because nutrition does play a role in tooth health, but it's not the only factor.
So his stance is a bit hyperbolic.
As to the question of how those nutrition gaps are filled, though, he didn't have an answer.
Though, again, he's not American, so I didn't expect him to talk about policy changes and legislation.
Yeah, although he probably does support the moves to get fluoride out of the water.
And this fluor antifluoride kick, I think, is really idiotic.
It's going to wreak havoc on the teeth of an entire generation in this country.
Oh, absolutely.
And there were, like I said, a bunch of activists in the end who got a hold of the microphone.
And I actually had to catch a plane, so I just took off.
So it was a very good discussion until the last few minutes when I just kind of put my mic down and left.
Now, both men are heavily invested in the idea that food is the main driver of health problems.
And this belief is endemic at the summit overall and as well as online.
Seeing it up close really opened my eyes to Maha's impact.
The notion that basically every health problem is solvable by right nutrition.
And that creates a lot of cognitive dissonance.
Now, we've covered similar paradoxes before, but it was quite stark.
Wholesome nutrition is the key to a healthy long life, but so are all the products being sold in the marketplace.
And these influencers and brands want you to believe that your health problems can be solved with food, but also you need this peptide or amino or red light device to really exploit all those benefits of longevity.
And I really, I rarely hear anything about, for example, infectious diseases, which they think can be willed away with nutrition.
Now, they have no understanding of just how deadly infectious diseases were from the onset of civilization through World War II.
And ironically, thanks to the privileges they've had due to vaccines and antibiotics, they can make these wild claims with no understanding of the dangers of viruses and infections.
You know, with regard to this paradox of, you know, sales, sometimes I think that this whole sort of one simple trick to supercharge your nutrition idea can be a way of limiting the paradox of choice, which the entire marketplace can't help but provoke.
I think they're trying to solve a problem that they are aware of.
Yeah, actually, as a little preview of what we're going to do for the brief this week, talking about Black Friday sales, that is a phenomenon that increasingly ends up inevitably being part of the marketing competition within this space where people are trying to be like, oh, no, you don't need to take all of that stuff.
Just buy this one magical supplement.
And yeah, they've always exploited that paradox of choice for sure.
Well, as a speaker, I got a gift, a swag bag, and there were five different types of aminos in there.
Now, aminos for everyone doesn't know, I mean, if you, most Americans, and I'm going to say this later, most Americans eat enough protein.
So if you eat enough protein, which 98, 99% of Americans do, you don't need aminos.
They're not going to do anything for you.
But what happens is all five different companies had to pick a different lane of marketing how their aminos are better for you than their competitors.
And it's just, it is all marketing when you come down to it.
Yeah.
And I just wanted to add, Derek, based on what you were saying earlier about nutrition is the answer to everything, but then you need to take all of these additional things.
They're directly at odds with all of the science on nutrition, which, you know, anyone who's who really has a background in that field will tell you if you're eating a healthy diet, you do not need any of these supplements.
You only need them if you are malnourished or you have some kind of medical condition, right?
The term supplement has a meaning.
Exactly.
One last point here before we get to Atia, and I made this during the Aspirin debate.
When I worked with wellness brands over 20 years ago, the marketing was predominantly fun and empowering.
It was like living your best life ever.
Feel good in your body.
Yeah, there was some fear-mongering about food corporations and political systems, but those were generally outliers.
In recent years, and especially since COVID-19 started, that messaging has flipped.
At every turn, I'm told to be scared of something.
And this is yet another crossover in our conspiracuality field with right-wing politics.
And it makes sense given Kennedy is working in the Trump administration.
Be scared of X, here's solution Y.
Now, many fashion companies and diet book publishers have used this type of marketing forever, but it was stark seeing so many prominently in the formerly empowering halls of wellness doing the same thing.
And from the looks of it, it's very effective over here as well.
The tragedy is they're doing it under the guise of science.
There was a lot of science-y sounding language at the summit, but very few large-scale clinical trials were mentioned.
Tons of correlation, very little causation.
The key to a long life is a bag of boosts and hacks.
And as I said, longevity was the dominant theme.
Derek, would it be fair to say that this is in our conspiratuality lane?
Because in the absence of science and pointing toward the goal of longevity, the goal of longevity, I guess, we're really talking about a kind of religious event.
I think so.
I'm going to cover that a little in the third segment today.
But one thing that's apparent to me in a lot of this sort of rhetoric that happens in the wellness space is that humans forget that we're animals and they believe we're not subject to the biology and physiology of animals.
And we have this idea that we're an extra.
So there's a certain metaphysics that plays into a lot of this marketing and the beliefs that happen in this space as well, I would say.
There's also just one last comment.
You know, something about a conference that's basically about longevity going on at the same time as COP30 in Brazil is assessing, you know, how livable is our planet over the next, you know, 30, 40, 50 years.
There's, there's a real contradiction there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that plays into the metaphysics physics as well, which, which, you know, is generally what happens in the longevity space because the body becomes both this vehicle that should only be treated by nature, but also a laboratory for experimentation by high doses of synthetic vitamins and minerals, which is the perfect place to segue to Peter Atia.
Now, he wasn't at the summit, but I can imagine him being invited next year because he's certainly another player in this field running the cart way the fuck ahead of the horse.
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I've been anticipating bringing up Dr. Peter Attia on the podcast for a while.
As you mentioned, Derek, my ears perked up when I saw he was recently profiled by 60 Minutes.
He has such an elevated status in the wellness and optimization field that a lot of people who ask me about him do so because they think he's the real deal.
He's the serious science guy.
And the 60 minutes profile only adds to this perception.
But I'm going to argue that what he's doing is still a form of pseudoscience grift, even if the packaging and the affect is different.
But let's start at the beginning.
Who is he?
Well, for anyone unfamiliar, Peter Attiya is an MD who was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, and he now lives in Austin, Texas.
He's the author of a 2023 book titled Outlive, The Science and Art of Longevity, which has sold over 3 million copies.
The publisher's blurb calls it a groundbreaking manifesto on living longer and better that challenges conventional medical thinking on aging and reveals a new approach to preventing chronic disease and extending long-term health from a visionary physician and leading longevity expert.
You know, I have a question about these books in general that I don't think I've ever asked.
I don't think we've really talked about it.
Have any of these prescriptive self-help books been studied themselves as interventions?
Like if 3 million copies of a book sell, you could ostensibly track its health impacts on a certain number of readers, right?
You couldn't.
You couldn't because you would, all the variables, the confounding variables, I mean, you would actually have to do clinical, like people would have to stop everything and just do those things.
I mean, you could, sorry, you could, but it would be super expensive to actually do that.
Yeah, highly impractical.
I've never heard of anyone trying to do something like that.
But in a way, it sort of runs counter to the business model because once the book is sold, everyone sits back and counts the money, right?
Their job is done.
Well, plus, you know, and you take Brian Johnson, what we talked about after his Netflix documentary, like if you're doing even a dozen interventions, that you're still not doing science, right?
You're making your body a lab.
Yeah.
But to actually be able to do science and say this does this, you can't when you're putting so many different things or trying off, trying out all these new different exercise programs, for example.
Yeah.
And those confounding variables would include like who actually reads the book?
How much do they understand?
Which of the specific recommendations do they follow, et cetera?
So yeah, it just gets too unwieldy.
Critical reviews of the book agree that Peter Attia covers some topics really well.
Like they say things like insulin resistance and heart disease.
He does great.
But then that he makes some recommendations that overstate the evidence that may rely too heavily on anecdotes or that are only going to be possible for readers with an abundance of time and money.
So I'll link some of those reviews in the show notes.
Back to Peter Atia himself.
He's 52 years old and he presents online as a fit, healthy, calm, clean-cut medical professional who practices what he preaches, literally clean-cut.
He's got a completely shaved head.
How fit is he, though?
Well, Attia once swam the channel between Los Angeles and Catalina Island, becoming only the 120th person to have accomplished this feat.
He has a podcast called the Peter Attia Drive, which has over 100 million downloads.
His guests generally trend toward experts in their fields.
Most of them are not well known in the wellness circle.
So these are generally not people that we see circulating in a lot of the other podcasts and YouTube kind of conversations that we cover.
And topics covered include things like hypothyroidism, excuse me, fertility medicine, exercise science, and longevity.
And while the content leans towards novel insights and exciting new forms of optimization, it's actually a fairly cautious academic science-based guest list.
There are some notable exceptions, questionable internet personalities like controversial bodybuilding science influencer Mike Isratel, and then ketogenic diet proponent Rhonda Patrick, who's been on Joe Rogan a bunch of times, but to her credit, she's one of the few people who stood up to him on vaccines and told him he was wrong.
And then, of course, Peter Attia has hosted Andrew Huberman.
It's the most popular podcast in his feed.
Oh, and he had Marty Macery on multiple times to talk about COVID policy.
So that's one pretty big red flag.
Peter Attia's Drive podcast is self-described as a deep dive podcast that explores the science and art of living the longest and healthiest life possible.
And it goes on to say that each episode brings listeners closer to the cutting edge of what it means to thrive.
About the host, the description calls him a Stanford Johns Hopkins and NIH trained physician renowned for his expertise in longevity and health optimization.
Now, that all sounds pretty darn impressive, but there are some caveats missing.
Like friend of the pod and fellow Stanford alum Casey Means, Atia dropped out of his surgical residency.
He never completed a fellowship.
He never became board certified.
Upon abandoning his residency, Attia worked for the management consulting firm McKinsey and Company for about eight years before then establishing his first private longevity clinic.
So you have to wonder how much he learned from the world of finance that then ended up actually informing his next endeavors.
Now, don't get me wrong.
He's a very smart and accomplished guy.
Attia has a BS in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario.
He has his MD from Stanford.
He just happens to have also bailed out on residency, fellowship in a specialty, and becoming board certified.
And he doesn't seem to have any training or original published research in the fields he is best known for as an expert, nutrition, exercise science, or longevity.
So my question is, he's able to open a private longevity clinic, but is that as a manager of actual board certified clinicians who are able to sort of serve their clients?
Like he's not doing the treatments himself.
He's not taking the appointments or diagnosing?
You can practice in the U.S. without being board certified.
Oh, yeah.
Being board certified just means you've submitted yourself to the highest levels of, in a way, a kind of peer review of how effective your fellowship and your training and your specialty have been.
So you've jumped through all of the hoops to attain a certain level of elite status as a doctor.
Got it.
Okay.
Now, nonetheless, Peter Attia is operating on a totally different level than an outsider, non-toxic coffee salesman like Dave Asprey, or even a supplement huckster like his friend Andrew Huberman, who uses his legitimate academic background in neuroscience and ophthalmology research to imply expertise in health optimization.
I have to cut you off because Dave, first off, Asprey had four booths in a row at Unimonia, including Danger Coffee, which is the non-toxic coffee you referenced.
Now, in case listeners are like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Dave once wrote an entire book chapter about mycotoxins that infect over 90% of the world's coffee supply.
But guess what?
Dave's coffee is free from this mold.
Yeah.
Now, in reality, coffee is tested for these toxins and most are fined.
And even if a little is in coffee, it's not going to do any damage.
It's just another example of exploiting terms like toxin and mold.
And the irony is that many foods produced with mold strains are just fine to eat, like blue cheeses, soft cheeses, tempeh, soy sauce, and miso.
Well, and part of that irony is that it can go the other way with these people because, you know, a natural toxin could become the special sauce that everyone magically needs, right?
Yeah.
Natural immunity is going to arise from letting your kids play in the mud and not giving them antibiotics and not having vaccines because all of those toxins are actually going to help you to be strong.
But then there are these other toxins that are incredibly scary.
It's crazy.
Unlike either of the aforementioned guys, Dr. Peter Atia breathes the rarefied air of being a podcaster and author who's actually applying his longevity and optimization protocols in a medical setting.
He's branded as a forward-thinking doctor, a proponent of what I like to call medicine plus.
Like not only does he bring the full weight of mainstream medical expertise to bear, apparently, but he's also a pioneer who's able to reach into the future for additional information, diagnostics, and treatments based on his superior understanding of where the research is heading.
And Matthew, to me, this seems like another version of the portrait of charisma and how charisma ends up giving the person that halo effect of like, well, they know the special things that no one else knows.
Well, the halo that extends into the future, too.
It becomes like a seer prophecy type thing, right?
Yep.
Criticisms of his podcast include concerns in a detailed critique on the Hunger Artist website, which is written by researcher Emily Truscianko, about body dysmorphia and disordered eating.
And there are others like Eric Topol, who we'll talk about in a little more depth later, who worry that some listeners will follow Atiya's lead.
Even if he doesn't say you should do this, he's going to talk about what he's doing, right?
They'll follow his lead in whatever experimental practices, supplements, or off-label drugs he's taking, only to later have him change his mind.
And he's done this with both metformin and rapamycin, as we'll discuss in a little bit.
He also did it with fasting and lost a ton of muscle mass and was very sort of public about the fasting journey he was on and then decided, actually, maybe this is not such a great idea.
So who knows how many of his devoted listeners thought they would follow suit?
He's been criticized by our academic friends over at Decoding the Gurus and others for enthusiastically discussing research on the podcast that turns out to have weak evidence, small sample sizes, or is too preliminary to be definitive, like it's only been done with mice.
The podcast is free, but he also offers a kind of companion piece online self-optimization course called Early.
And the best I can tell, that sells for around $2,500.
And then the webpage for that course also offers a $60,000 annual membership.
But I could find no details without signing up for it about what that entails.
That's not a typo.
That's $60,000 annually people are paying to be members of the Peter Attia Club.
Well, that's being pitched to them.
I don't have any fixed data on how many have actually signed up for that.
Well, if you want to live forever, I mean, what do you, you know, it's going to cost you.
Well, it could be sort of like some restaurants have done this where they'll take the $3 Trader Joe's wine and they'll list it on the list for $1,000 at a restaurant, knowing no one will ever buy it.
But all of a sudden, the $200 bottle doesn't sound so bad.
I see, right?
Yes.
It's called price anchoring.
It's called price anchoring.
It's a marketing technique where you basically say, look, people don't know how much this should cost.
So if we offer three different tiers and one of them is like so far outside of the reach of what anyone could afford, the middle tier then suddenly seems really affordable.
And every now and again, there'll be a rube who says, I want the maximum.
I can value 60 grand.
That's amazing.
That's like taking the commodity fetish and like actually juicing it.
Like you actually say, okay, yeah, we don't know what anything costs.
Let me try to like, let me try to like, you know, scam you with that.
Totally.
So as is very apparent now, we've crossed over into the conversation about money.
And this is where I see a problematic intersection between his public charismatic profile, the endorsement of fringe medicine, and what I can only describe as a pretty epic sales funnel.
So Atia's medical practice has offices in Austin, New York, and San Diego, California.
We'll talk more in a moment about that business model.
But first, I want to mention that Atia is also the co-founder, along with a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named John Herring, of a preventative health startup called Biograph.
And that opened offices in San Francisco and New York this year.
They offer two tiers of annual membership that run either $7,500 or $15,000.
That's incredible.
On their website, Biograph describes providing tracking of over 1,000 variables across 30 different evaluations to, quote, obtain a holistic picture of clients' health profiles and optimize lifespan.
Now, what do you get for this?
The lower cost core membership only features 20 of those evaluations and what they frame as initial guidance.
So it sounds like you're going to get a battery of tests and one consultation for that $7.5,000 for the year.
If you double the fee to $15,000 and what they call the black membership, it gets you all 30 evaluations plus ongoing guidance.
So who knows how many consultations that adds up to.
Now, this style of complex and detailed biomarker monitoring has been widely critiqued, not only for prohibitive cost, but also for the risk of false positives, creating unnecessary anxiety or treatments which carry additional risks, as well as a kind of paranoid overdiagnosis of minor abnormalities.
And the problem is there's little evidence to support that all of this leads to improved health outcomes.
Dr. Eric Topol has also been very critical of the use of expensive full-body MRI technology in these screening models for similar reasons.
Yeah, you know, here as our socialized medicine continues to be attacked by privatization, we have commercials running for these full precautionary MRIs that will like put you at ease.
And our family doctor said, like they're creating huge stressors and queries and unnecessary procedures.
Yeah, the stressors contradicts the supposed focus on longevity as well.
I mean, Mark Hyman's function health operates under the same principles.
Tests for everything, treat every slight, seemingly abnormal marker, often with something another one of his companies sells.
You get a basic suite of tests for the core price, but why stop there?
You have all these a la carte add-ons that you really need to be tracking.
And it all sounds so damn science-y.
Yeah.
Personally, I feel the The intense anxiety that coincides with tracking every single health marker much worse for your health.
And that sort of stress is certainly not lengthening your telomeres.
Yeah, for sure.
And actually, I just came across this, so I haven't looked into all of the deep detail on it.
But one of Peter Attia's celebrity clients is Chris Hemsworth.
And he did an episode with him where he revealed to him through this kind of testing that he has a very, very high probability of developing Alzheimer's.
And there is now, if you go to your Apple TV and open to the homepage, there's now a little documentary there of Chris Hemsworth going and talking to his family, going on a trip with his family and sitting around a campfire and talking about the likelihood of him developing Alzheimer's.
And it's a whole celebrity-driven, emotionally engaging endorsement of this kind of diagnostic model in a way that I'm just like, I'm very uneasy about all of it.
I don't have all the facts in front of me, but it's.
Well, I was stopping with Angelina Jolie.
You know, her mother died of breast cancer and she has the markers.
And of course, it's something if you know it's genetic, you should be looking out for, but she had a preventative mastectomy, I believe.
And again, I'm not, I'm not going to, I don't know all the details, so I won't criticize it, but it is this idea that your DNA is going to reveal everything.
You know, and of course, lifestyle changes and all that diet all do play into it, but it creates this anxiety that can be paranoia.
And now hearing about Hemsworth and how that creates content out of that, which is monetized.
Exactly.
It's even more problematic.
It's monetized and it's more advertising for people like Peter Attia and what he offers.
So Biograph, speaking of what he offers, is backed by several venture capital companies, some of which have ties to Elon Musk, and they boast Balaji Srinivasan as an angel investor.
And as a quick aside here, Srinivasan has published a super controversial book expressing ideas very similar to those of his friend, Curtis Yarvin, along the lines of establishing a kind of multi-state techno-autocracy that excludes and persecutes Democrats and hostile journalists.
Of course, this doesn't make Peter Attia a techno-fascist, but he's certainly rubbing shoulders with some of them.
So it looks to me like the podcast and the book serve the purpose of building a prestigious profile that then draws the ultra-wealthy patients he's targeting into his bespoke practices.
Now, why do I say that?
Well, here, I'll let him speak for himself.
Here's how Atia responded when asked by Nora O'Donnell on that 60-minutes interview about how many patients he sees personally and what he charges.
In total, Dr. Attia sees fewer than 75 patients, and there's a long waiting list.
And how much does it cost?
It is a six-figure program.
Like $100,000 or $500,000 or $800,000?
Because there's a big range.
Much closer to $100,000 than $500,000.
That's a lot of money.
Yeah.
So speaking of free advertising, this was the moment at which I thought, huh, is this actually an infomercial for Peter Attia?
Everything else aside, he just got to advertise his concierge medical model on CBS.
Usually these programs are months in the making.
It does coincide with Barry Weiss taking editorial control, though, which is kind of interesting because he is certainly something, somebody she would have on, honestly.
So, but I'm going to guess it's actually was in the process for a while, but it is sort of problematic.
I don't, just from the clips I've seen, I didn't see any much pushback on what he's doing.
Yeah, I mean, on that, to Nora O'Donnell's credit, she does mention a couple eyebrow-raising things and asks him as part of the interview about what his critics have to say.
Let's talk about protein.
Dr. Attia wants his patients to eat a lot of protein, more than double what the current nutritional guidelines recommend.
The doctor and a handful of his patients have also taken a drug called rapamycin that's FDA approved for use by transplant recipients.
The drug has extended the lifespan of mice, but Dr. Attia stopped taking it for now because it gave him mouth sores, which can be a side effect.
When a fellow physician calls some of what you're talking about hocus-pocus.
People are entitled to think what they want.
And just because someone is a physician doesn't mean they're even remotely equipped to evaluate the merits of exercise physiology.
Remember, I went to Stanford Medical School, right?
How many hours of education do you think I received on exercise?
Probably a few hours.
Zero hours.
And how many hours did I receive on nutrition?
Zero hours.
It was 25 years ago, so maybe things have changed, but I'm pretty sure that if you're talking to other esteemed physicians, they're in the same bucket as me.
So, you know, they might not be the ones that are best equipped to be my critic.
All right.
First of all, it turns out that Atiyah's response to his critics is not really that different from the Dave Asprey pivot that I flagged from your debate with him, Derek.
He just takes the those guys are unqualified to have an opinion angle.
But I noticed two other things here.
Did you catch it?
He almost sneeringly refers to his critics as being esteemed physicians, which is interesting given his incomplete training and lack of board certification.
But here's a really interesting one.
He underlines how in his education at Stanford, he received zero training in diet or exercise, just like his critics who are unqualified to critique his claims.
Never mind that they know how to read research papers.
They can assess whether or not his claims are supported by evidence.
And after owning up to his lack of initial training in those fields right there, I got zero training.
He doesn't then say anything about why he's more qualified than they are because he isn't.
I would contend he's just running on charisma and vibes.
When Casey Means at the Maha Summit last year claims she got zero training in nutrition, I went and I looked up Stanford's undergraduate curriculum for MDs and there is nutrition programs.
Now, Atia does say it was 25 years ago, so I can't speak to that, but there is currently some.
But overall, you just notice this anti-expert strain that's running through this discourse.
Now, is he wrong that doctors shouldn't have more nutrition training?
Not entirely, because the average MD program in America averages 19 to 21 hours over four years.
But as some doctors have pointed out, they kind of have a lot of other things to focus on.
Yep.
Personally, I believe specialized training in nutrition as in registered dietitians are really important and they complement general practice really well.
The problem, as with most things in American healthcare, at least, is that it's fucking expensive to see a dietician and insurance isn't necessarily going to cover it.
People like Atia never bring that aspect up, at least not that I'm aware of, because it's easier and it's better for them to criticize doctors themselves than the system because the latter demands political will.
And Atia doesn't seem interested in that because you can't monetize regulations as an influencer.
Yeah.
So as to what Nora O'Donnell brought up in that question, protein and rapomycin, Atia has an ongoing public debate about protein with someone I've mentioned multiple times already, Dr. Eric Topol.
And he's about as decorated and qualified a medical science researcher, author, and educator as we have on the planet today, especially in the public discourse.
He agrees with Atia that the recommended daily allowance may be a little too conservative, but he argues that Atia's recommendations are excessive and could actually increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, inflammation, and kidney problems.
But that's okay because RFK Jr. is changing the nutrition guidelines, and the new guidelines will be one whole cow per person per day, raw.
So we are going to get our protein.
Yeah.
As it turns out, in addition to acting as an investor science advisor for highly questionable pricey green powder supplement AG1 and developing a so-called science-backed sleep program available on private flights through a charter company called VistaJet, Atia also moonlights as chief science officer for a high-protein zero-sugar bar company called David Protein.
Okay, so I didn't know about this one.
I went and I watched Atia's video on the David Protein site and I get why he's appealing.
I've listened to his podcast and watched his videos before.
He does have charisma and he is not as over the top as a lot of the influencers we cover.
He qualifies things way more than most people that I see.
Now, in this video, though, he says good nutrition relies on three things.
People like the law of threes because it's simple, clear, and actionable.
Now, is it true?
Not at all because nutrition is much more complex than that.
But a certain mark of an influencer is that they distill complex topics into very digestible items, especially if they're actionable.
So Atiya's three.
People consume too many calories.
This is largely true, especially in America.
Number two, people consume too much sugar.
Largely true, but here's the third: Americans don't get enough protein.
This is bullshit.
Protein deficiency, which is what you would supplement, is extremely rare.
But it's become a huge selling point for a variety of reasons: the carnivore diet, the lion diet, the idea that protein equals muscle.
You know what Americans don't get enough of?
Fiber.
But fiber is cheap.
It's easily accessible, especially through your diet.
So instead of pointing people to eating more fiber-rich foods, Atia is selling you on something you almost certainly don't need more of.
Now, that said, in that video, I want to give him props here because I was happy to hear him say that the company doesn't focus on natural versus synthetic ingredients.
And this is a big difference between fit fluencers and wellness influencers.
The all-natural trope is endemic in wellness, even though synthetic ingredients are chemically similar to natural ingredients.
Biohackers are generally like, fuck that, give me whatever gives me the edge, which is kind of refreshing in its own way.
Eric Topol also criticizes Atiya's public statements about rapamycin, saying that he has patients coming to him asking for a prescription for it based on hearing Atia's podcast.
Topol says the research just isn't evidence that it promotes longevity in humans, even though it seems to do so in animal studies.
Long-term use could actually suppress the immune system in ways that increase the risk of malignancies.
I'll close with this.
Longevity medicine is not currently recognized as a medical specialty by the AMA.
It's still considered a form of alternative medicine.
Why?
Because of the lack of substantive evidence, as well as its poorly evidenced reliance on supplements, off-label drugs, and risky treatments like HGH, human growth hormone.
Longevity medicine's concierge preventative emphasis on ordering extensive testing has significant overlap with that other unrecognized and unstandardized specialty called functional medicine.
The other thing they have in common is therefore not being covered by insurance, which as it turns out is a feature, not a bug, when catering to the wealthiest amongst us.
I have no doubt that Peter Etia knows a lot about medicine, that he's a very smart guy, that he reads the research, that he's an excellent charismatic speaker.
He gives a lot of common sense advice about the value of diet and exercise and even emotional well-being.
And hey, if some people need to hear that coming from a guy who positions himself as the cutting-edge expert on a podcast, I'll take it.
But the lack of qualifications in the fields he opines on the most, the high-priced bespoke concierge services, and the maverick contrarianism on things like off-label drug use, his involvement in things like AG1, all of that raises serious red flags.
For the last segment, let's get a little meta here because longevity precedes longevity medicine.
And in fact, some of our oldest texts are about the quest for immortality.
We have the Epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts, Plato pontificating over the immortality of the soul.
Even Old Testament writing introduces theories of resurrection and eternal life.
Ancient Chinese texts regularly revealed the quest for never-ending life.
Extending biological life is a long time human preoccupation.
And in fact, the very notion might be one of the defining factors of our species.
It wasn't just philosophy.
For at least 5,000 years, proto-chemists have been creating tinctures to extend life.
Taoists thought minerals and herbs would do the trick.
One Chinese emperor commissioned alchemists to manufacture mercury pills for this very reason.
Now, others thought that gold and sulfur would be the secret ingredients.
And during this time, Indian chemists mixed mercury with amla fruit.
In Greece, you had ancient elixirs that were tied in with the philosopher's stone.
Yeah, and let's not forget that what we call science today used to be called natural philosophy because these fields had not yet completely not really even begun diversifying sufficiently because we didn't have such a thing as the scientific method.
So this quest for immortality is such an ubiquitous human preoccupation.
My hypothesis is that as our ability to contemplate our own death emerged as a kind of side effect of brain development and social empathy, this seeded mythic and magical attempts to transcend death and you start getting all kinds of burial rituals.
Religious notions of souls and afterlives or reincarnation sprung up alongside experimentation with plants and herbs and rituals.
We shouldn't leave out how some branches of the yoga tradition, alongside promises of developing paranormal abilities and transcending the material world, also made claims about developing an indestructible body and slowing down aging.
And there's also that elaborate fantasy from like the 14th century tantric Chavist texts about driving the life force from the texticles up into the brain, where it could then be drunk as an elixir of immortality by learning how to fold the tongue back behind the roof of the mouth and into the nasal cavity.
Yeah, it's like OG biohacking.
And it was a real innovation from the earlier sort of atavistic stuff where you were supplicating the gods who were definitely outside you and beyond you for your own benefit.
One of the things that I wonder about all this stuff that comes down to us, however, is how much of it covers over more common people's experience of death and storytelling about death.
Every priest or proto-scientist we mention in histories like this, I would think, are from the super elite, you know, realms of society, if they're literate, if they have rudimentary labs, if they have materials that they can sort of play around with, if they can record their thoughts on paper and make potions and sell them to aristocrats and whoever.
But I think the vast majority of people would have little contact or even awareness with these historical oddities in their time.
So, yeah, it's a human preoccupation in general, but some people are really isolated, wealthy nerds about it.
And I think we should be aware that when we cite Paracelsus or Charaka from India or the Taoists, we might be getting the artifacts of those ages versions of Peter Thiel or Brian Johnson's health ideas.
I wouldn't necessarily agree that they're historical oddities because there's so many rituals that have come down through time.
I mean, the texts were mostly oral, so they were passed down through the generations, but we know that these stories evolved from observation as well, because these rituals, these agricultural rituals that it was personally my belief that led to the concepts of resurrection were practiced by the common people.
So I think if people didn't have the philosophy behind it, they were still practicing what would become the texts broadly.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I'm more thinking about like the sort of medieval ideas of alchemy and these proto-scientific efforts that are like really resource dependent, right?
Like certainly agricultural rituals would be as old as humanity and would teach us all kinds of things.
But actually trying to materially say, I'm going to figure out how to game death.
Yeah, how to turn base metal.
Yeah, I'm going to turn a base metal into gold and I'm going to like transform my body into a rainbow or something like that.
That seems to be a pretty nerdy process.
You know, like it just seems to be something that you would be able to do if you had a lot more time on your hands than scratching out wheat.
There's this concept in the ayahuasca community that the plants taught humans things.
And I would think it's more like humans were trying to eat everything for a long time, just trying to figure it out.
And that involved stews, that involved roots, that involved just using whatever was available.
And then observations were, oh, this does that thing.
And then those are the things, you know, some of those observations, well, that killed Julian.
So I can eat that one anymore.
And then other ones.
So I do agree about the chemistry aspect, but I do think there was precedent among the common people who were trying to figure out, you know, how the fuck to survive.
Yeah, there's probably some continuum there between a kind of ubiquitous human fascination, fear of death, a preoccupation with how can we figure out either through metaphysical means or through sort of proto-scientific means, how to live longer, live forever, gain special powers, et cetera, et cetera.
How can we explain the fact that when we accidentally ingested this psychedelic, it gave us these wild experiences?
What does that mean?
There's some continuum there between the common person and then the like esoteric text of the weird guy who was shut away with too much time and resources on his hands and got into some pretty wild theories, right?
Well, alchemy, which we've been talking about, did evolve into chemistry because science evolves and people started to conduct and track them thanks to writing and things of that nature.
You mentioned Paracelsus.
He was the OG chemist.
He wrote about a universal tincture that could extend life for centuries.
Gold chloride was his favorite ingredient.
And he still speculated about the immortality of an amorphous soul.
So there is a spiritual dimension that has persisted, and that changed as the concept of longevity pulled from actual chemistry and science leading to our day.
So we have longevity as a field of study, and it's over a century old.
It intersects with developments in biology, medicine, public health, and evolutionary theory.
Human life expectancy has experienced dramatic increases in the last two centuries.
While scientific thinking around what determines aging and how it can be altered keeps evolving to this day.
So in 1800, you could expect to live to be 40.
Now, by the 21st century, that number doubled in developed nations thanks to improved sanitation, antibiotics, nutrition, public health infrastructure.
The first scientific thinking on this topic focused on describing mortality curves by honing in on how mortality rates increase with age.
Now, evolutionary biology explains key differences in what is known as lifespan.
Species evolve longer or shorter lives based on environmental threats.
Animals with fewer predators evolve slower aging and greater longevity, which explains that doubling in humans.
Larger animals also tend to live longer.
Now, here are a few key markers in longevity research.
In the 1930s, experiments showed that calorie restrictions could increase lifespan in rodents.
And this theme in aging research has been with us ever since and accounts for why so many biohackers love fasting.
New interventions arose in the mid-20th century, such as serums being developed to extend life, though such efforts often failed or they were repurposed for other uses.
Now, by the late 20th century, the discovery of genetic factors influencing aging resulted in a whole new avenue of research.
Now, for example, research on worms in the 80s and 90s identified mutations that could extend lifespan.
Then we have telomerase research or prolonging cell life in vitro.
And this resulted in the creation of stem cells from mature somatic cells.
And the concept of resetting biological age became an area of focus.
And then finally, you get to the 21st century and there's a development of cenolytic drugs, which target senent cells.
Asprey talks about this one a lot.
You have the exploration of young blood factors.
Hello, Brian Johnson.
And then you have the use of genetic and AI-driven discovery pipelines to identify targets associated with aging and longevity.
Yeah, I mean, about Brian Johnson and sort of getting infusions of his son's young blood.
Even the mild asymptomatic case of COVID that he had in 2022 by his own accounts online seems to have reduced Brian Johnson's lung capacity by 15%.
And he calculates, and this is based on the kind of calculations he does in all of his biomarkers, that it aged his lungs by like 19 years.
So that's super humbling for a guy whose entire existence and waking and sleeping kind of day job is making himself as young as possible.
So much of the biohacking and optimizing content online does seem to come back around to longevity, ultimately, how to avoid illness and premature death, how to live longer and better.
All of that, up to a point, is fine in my opinion.
But there are longevity researchers like Aubrey deGray, who's been on Joe Rogan multiple times over the years to talk about never dying.
And that's also Brian Johnson's goal.
And then you have this guy, David Sinclair, who's been a Peter Ettia guest as well, who claims that the first person to live to 150 has already been born.
And we're on the cusp of again doubling human lifespan.
And he was a big proponent of metformin for doing that.
And that seems to have kind of fizzled.
I want to be fair to Peter Attia here and just mention that his main focus on health span is much more circumscribed.
His proposed goal is to make the last decade of life more healthy, active, and enjoyable, and to die without an extended decline.
But all of this really makes me think, seeing as we're getting philosophical here, about Ernest Becker's Pulitzer Prize winning book from 1973, The Denial of Death.
Becker was a cultural anthropologist, and this philosophical and psychological treatise says that our terror around death is central to human civilization.
He sees us as being invested in what he calls immortality projects that create heroic narratives inhabited by a self that is not limited to the mortal body, but is part of something eternal.
And this makes the charismatic figure who claims to have overcome death to one extent or another very appealing, be they the messianic cult leader, and Becker actually has a whole chapter on this, or the online wellness influencer, the foot-looking podcaster interviewing cutting-edge scientists, or even the transgressive larger-than-life strongman dictator.
We've said quite a bit about the anxiety of all of this self-monitoring.
And I just want to sort of circle back to, I'm still freaked out.
I'm a little bit haunted by the notion that, who is it, Helmsworth, who's creating content out of predictive hymns?
Yeah, okay.
I mean, there's layers and layers of commodifying the body that never end, paying attention to it, you know, generally for somebody else's benefit so that somebody else can make money off of it.
So you've got the MRI, the predictive genetics, and then we're going to generate content from the feelings that that produces.
It's really, really exhausting.
And I can't feel anything around that except for anxiety.
And that's why I think my longevity strategy is to just decide every day that I've already died.
It's over.
I have nothing.
You know, I have, it's, my death is a foregone conclusion.
I'm on extra time.
There's no, there's no effort that I'm going to put in, certainly unreasonably, to try to extend anything.
And I just feel a lot more relaxed that way.
That's all I can say.
And that's why you'll be the person to be 150.
You'll be the first.
Yeah, the guy who has already been, who's going to be 150 has already been born.
Well, yeah, he's 54 and he doesn't give a fuck.
He's sitting in Toronto right now in his basement.
I want to wind back here to close with the epic of Gilgamesh because I love that text.
I first read it when I was studying religion in college.
I always found it interesting that one of our oldest extant texts is about the quest for immortality, which to me is another way of saying the fear of death.
If you haven't read it, there's a lot of good translations.
It's as great as Indian mythology, like the Ramayana or anything that Homer wrote, albeit it's a bit more rudimentary and some of the translations are more flowery.
Gilgamesh briefly discovers the key to eternal life.
Then he loses it on the way home because he falls asleep and a fish snaps it up the plant that he plucked from the bottom of the ocean.
But then, as now, the real key is a life well lived, not an impossible feat.
And that's actually how I feel about so much wellness right now.
This obsessive focus over ideal foods and staying young greatly increases the risk that you miss the real pleasures in this world.
And as it turns out, the writer of Gilgamesh knew that too, when they wrote, quote, Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to?
You will never find that life for which you are looking.
When the gods created man, they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping.
As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things day and night, night and day.
Dance and be merry, feast and rejoice.
Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace,
