Training for the Centenarian Olympics

It’s easy to take simple parts of youth for granted, like endurance or strength, but it’s functions like these we should really consider if we want to age optimally.

I want to live to be 120, and I want to do it well. That means I’d like to ski and hike with my kids, stay strong and flexible, and keep an active sex life with my wife well into the later years of my life.

And with the right training, I believe that’s possible.

If you missed this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy, I was joined by Dr. Peter Attia to talk about enhancing our own “healthspan,” using an integrative approach that involves everything from nutrition and movement to pharmacology, distress management, and endocrinology.

Dr. Attia likes to consider his action plan for longevity as training for the Centenarian Olympics. If we look at the functions we want to retain in old age, or even excel at, we can reverse engineer our lives to take the right steps today.

One of his personal goals is to be able to get up off the floor with a single point of support—this might sound trivial, but think about how many 100-year-olds you know who can do that! And achieving this kind of movement at that age comes along with so many other benefits as well.

With deliberate attention, we can create the physical, mental, and emotional health we desire at any age. Dr. Attia explains how.

Throughout this episode, we talk about modifiable risk factors to reverse chronic disease and why it’s possible to exceed our genetic potential. We also dig into the topic of cholesterol, which is an important one considering it’s present in every cell of the body. Dr. Attia explains the four ways LDL cholesterol is driven, his experience using different statin drugs with patients, and why intermittent fasting can benefit so many of us.

We talk about all this and more on this week’s episode. I hope you’ll tune in! You can find more details right here.