392: Life, Death, Darkness, and Light. "OUTLIVE" with Dr. Peter Attia

The probability of any of us being here is infinitesimal. It can't even be calculated. It is so small ... The probability of your existence is so remote, we can't put a number on it. It's functionally zero.

Don't be over-nourished, and don't be under-nourished. Consume sufficient enough protein to support the anabolic activity of muscle. Derive sufficient micronutrients from your food—vitamins, minerals, things like that. Avoid toxins in food. That's about it.

We simply can't accept the finite nature of our lives. And that's why he really uses this 4,000 weeks thing. It's a very jarring thing. I keep a calendar in my office on the wall with one block for each week. So, it's got 52 blocks per row and it's got 88 rows—assuming I'm going to live to 88, which of course there's zero guarantee I will—and every Sunday, I color in a block.

Exercise is this really potent drug ... It's doing so much every single time you pound it. You're getting an endorphin raise, you're getting an immediate response to your vascular system, it's changing your energy levels, it's allowing you to do things here and now that make you better. There's a psychological component when you do something that is difficult in the gym...

Don't beat yourself up if you miss your workout for a day, but just don't miss it two days in a row; just get back in the gym the next day. Don't worry about it ... If you go on vacation and eat like crap, come back and start eating well. Don't let a mistake spiral into infinite mistakes.

Once you're 65 and up, if you fall and break your hip or femur, depending on the study, there's a 15-30% chance you're dead in a year ... What's equally tragic in my mind is of the 70-85% reduction of people who don't actually die, half of them will have a full level reduction in mobility.

If you're sleeping and you're mouth breathing, it is sending a message to your brain that your energy requirements are significant ... This is a physiological state you don't want to be in when you're trying to rest and recover.

We also just really don't understand death ... We don't understand the neurochemical process of death ... All of these people have near-death experiences come back and basically say the exact same thing. It's kind of hard to believe they're just making this up. There's clearly something really profound that's occurring neurochemically in those final moments.

The most important rule of working out is don't injure yourself doing it. Because once you get to a certain age, any time on the sideline is going to just make it harder and harder to get back.

Once you reach a certain age, it can take 6 months to 12 months to put on the amount of muscle you'd lose from 10 days of inactivity.

Every cancer that gets treated at an early stage when compared to the same cancer being treated at a late stage, even when they use the exact same drugs, has a dramatically different survival profile—and we don't need very fancy drugs to treat these early-stage cancers.

I don't like the taste of alcohol anymore at all. I don't have any desire for it. I've just seen it just destroy so many people that I just can't get on board. I can't give money to that industry. I'm becoming more and more anti-alcohol every every moment of my life now.

The marginal decade is just defined as the last decade of your life ... Nobody knows the day they enter it ... But most people know when they're in it.

Virtually everybody, if they're being honest with themselves... probably spend time worrying about things that don't justify worry.

Your brain takes up 2% of your body weight and yet it consumes 25% of your metabolic rate. 25% of the calories you eat go to feed that 2% of your body weight.

Even if you told me exercise was going to shorten my life by a year, it would still be worth it based on the dramatic expansion in quality of life.

The median life expectancy today in the United States for a male is probably hovering around 80 or just slightly below.