Special AMA: Peter on exercise, important labs, building good habits, promising longevity research, and more

**Peter Attia** (0:10)
Hey, everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com/subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Welcome to a special rapid fire Ask Me Anything episode. I'm once again joined by my co-host, Nick Stenson. In today's AMA episode, we thought it would be fun to do an end of year bonus AMA in a more rapid style manner to answer many questions that are commonly asked that have come through over the past year across a wide range of topics and frameworks. We discuss questions on exercise such as grip strength, exercise while traveling, the importance of strength training, and why I don't believe exercise is an ideal strategy for weight loss. We talk about labs including the quote, top five most important biomarkers unquote, that everyone should know for themselves. Spoiler alert, I hate that question. We talk about new research on longevity that has come out and that has been particularly exciting, and I answer the question if I have changed my mind on anything recently as it relates to longevity. We speak about some of the frameworks that I use and the importance of using the objective strategy tactics model as an approach versus a one-size-fits-all approach. We close the conversation by talking about building good habits and my recent reading list. If you're a subscriber and want to watch the full video of this podcast, you can find it on the show notes page. If you're not a subscriber, you can watch the sneak peek of the video on our YouTube page. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy this bonus AMA rapid fire.

**Nick Stenson** (2:01)
Peter, welcome to a special bonus AMA. How are you doing?

**Peter Attia** (2:05)
I'm doing well. Thank you for having me back.

**Nick Stenson** (2:08)
Anything new going on in your life?

**Peter Attia** (2:12)
Just a few things.

**Nick Stenson** (2:13)
I say that with not knowing anything, but just anything that jumps out to you.

**Peter Attia** (2:18)
No, but I did wake up to an awesome text message today. I've got this car that I'm trying to do something to the stereo system, and the guy who really, really knows what he's doing has been working on it for six weeks. He cannot figure out what's wrong with this thing, and it's super complicated. And he sent me this video this morning, and it was like a video of him moving through the car, and he says, I figured it out. And he hits the stereo, and all you hear is the beginning of ACDCs back in black, like full beams. And I was like, that is an awesome video to wake up to.

**Nick Stenson** (2:55)
That's amazing. Back in the day, the younger days, did you ever put like one of those big subwoofers in your car ever?

**Peter Attia** (3:02)
No, I did not. You know, believe it or not, I didn't actually own my first car till I was in med school. I kind of rode my bike and took the bus everywhere.

**Nick Stenson** (3:10)
Well, that's fair. Maybe we'll get to it. You told the story, I think, in the book too, and I think it's come up on another podcast, but whenever I think of you, med school and driving, I think of you falling asleep in the park in Baltimore.

**Peter Attia** (3:23)
That was residency.

**Nick Stenson** (3:24)
Oh, residency. Residency, yeah.

**Peter Attia** (3:25)
Med school is not that exhausting.

**Nick Stenson** (3:27)
I love it. So for today's AMA, it's gonna be kind of a little different style, just more conversational, a little bit covering questions that come through that we haven't covered before. Some of it will be conversations that we've had internally, that we were like, ah, it'd be great to record this and kind of put it out there. So, it's gonna be a mix of specific questions, more framework, organizing principle questions. We'll cover things like labs, prioritization as it relates to actions, what you're excited about in the field of longevity, books you've maybe read recently, and a bunch of other random stuff. So, with all that said, we'll get going. First topic, your favorite, exercise. And within it, we're gonna cover grip strength. So, it's something you've talked about before, the importance of. But I don't think we've ever really covered a little bit in depth on how you train for it, and how you think about it in the weight room. So, before we get to that, do you just wanna remind people why you think grip strength is important?