Aging well: Peter shares strategies for improving longevity with residents at a senior living center

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, and we've established a great team of analysts to make this happen. It is extremely important to me to provide all of this content without relying on paid ads. To do this, our work is made entirely possible by our members, and in return, we offer exclusive member-only content and benefits above and beyond what is available for free. If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level, it's our goal to ensure members get back much more than the price of the subscription. If you want to learn more about the benefits of our premium membership, head over to peterattiamd.com/subscribe.
Welcome to a special episode of The Drive. This conversation is a bit different from our usual format, as my daughter, Olivia, trades places with me to take this seat as the interviewer as we visit a senior living center to discuss all things longevity as it relates to an aging population. A bit of background, Olivia spent part of her summer last year volunteering at this center, where she connected with a number of the residents who had an interest in curiosity about healthspan, lifespan and strategies for living well as they age. And through that experience, they invited me to speak with their audience, and we decided to record it and release it to you as well. In this conversation, we speak about all of these topics, but with a particular focus around an aging population. So we talk about what longevity really means, not just adding years to life, but life to years. We talk about the four horsemen of chronic disease, talk about why it's never too late to start making changes for better health, talk about the critical role of exercise, especially strength training and maintaining mobility, preventing falls and preserving independence and how to approach exercise later in life. We talk about the importance of protein intake and nutrition principles for aging. We talk about sleep optimization. We talk about emotional health and social connection, purpose and why relationships matter as much as physical health. So without further delay, please enjoy this special episode of The Drive.

**Olivia Attia** (2:32)
Welcome, everyone. My name is Olivia Attia, and I'm here with my dad, Peter Attia. We are here to talk to you today about longevity. So over the summer, I volunteered at a senior living center called Querencia, which is where I met Sally, who unfortunately couldn't be with us today because she's sick. But we got to talking and I discovered that she's very interested in my dad's work, as I'm sure all of you are. So we decided that we'll be here today and we'll be doing 45 minutes of conversing between us two to keep it interesting, and then a little bit of time at the end for you guys to ask him things that you're interested about. So with all that being said, are you ready?

**Peter Attia** (3:10)
As I'll ever be.

**Olivia Attia** (3:11)
Okay. I think it'll be helpful to start talking about the actual word longevity because it can mean different things to different people. When you talk about longevity, are you talking about living forever or how are you defining it?

**Peter Attia** (3:24)
Definitely not living forever, although understandably that's probably what some people think of when they think of longevity. I'm talking about it in terms of two things. One of them is called lifespan and the other is called healthspan. And lifespan is the part that I think most people think of. It's the how long you live part. But then there's healthspan, which is the how well you live part. And both of these things are important. I would argue that they're of equal importance and an extreme of one without the other is not ideal. In other words, I don't think there's anybody sitting here who says, I'd love to live to 100, but I want to spend the last 20 of those years unable to move. I mean, that wouldn't be ideal. And similarly, I think the idea of living an amazing healthy life, but that life being cut short prematurely at 50, nobody would think that that's ideal. So when I think of longevity, what I'm really thinking about is maximizing both the length of life and the quality of life. And again, quality could be further broken down into sort of a physical piece. So am I free of pain most of the time? Am I able to physically do the things I enjoy doing? And that could range from just the activities of daily living and self-care to recreational activities. If you like to garden, how long do you want to be able to do that? If you play golf, if you like to go for walks and hikes or swim, and then there's a cognitive piece. So I don't think anybody would fully expect, even at my age, that my brain is kind of as sharp as hers is, but I still want to believe that my mind is pretty sharp. And I think we all sort of want that for as long as possible. And then the final piece is an emotional piece that deals with happiness, sense of purpose, connection to others. And again, you can imagine a scenario where somebody has perfect physical healthspan, meaning they can do anything they want to do physically. Their brain is sharp, but they have no friends and no relationships. And I think we would all agree that that's not really an ideal life, and I don't think anybody would aspire to that. So that's a lot there, but when you put all those things together, to me, that's what longevity is.