Review by Jean Moroney
I recommend Outlive to you, my readers, in part because you are generally interested in self-improvement, but also because I think you’ll appreciate the individualistic, logical, value-oriented approach the author takes.
Peter Attia shocked me with the statistics of how many people have a bad 5-10 year end of life — especially now, given that modern medicine is designed to keep people alive as long as possible. Based purely on statistics, it’s more likely than not.
But of course, statistics are not a prediction of anything. The main message of the book is that you can influence your health span, but to do so, you need to put in effort now to prevent and/or delay the four most problematic diseases that lead to horrible final years: Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer, and Senility.
In the book, he explains how these four diseases are interrelated. For example, if you become inactive and weak due to cancer or heart disease or diabetes, you can expect a mental decline to follow forthwith. If you don’t hold the full context of how one treatment affects another area, you can inadvertently shoot yourself in the foot.
