The Most Powerful Longevity Drug is Right in Front of You

I highly recommend getting the book Outlive by Dr. Peter Attia in hardcover. It's the go-to resource for everything health and wellness. Dr. Andrew Huberman calls it the bible of health and wellness. You'll want to flip through it with a highlighter and some stickie notes. His writing has had a huge inspiration on the founding of Map.

Peter says exercise is the greatest power to determine how you will live out the rest of your life. Not only does it reverse physical decline, but it can slow or reverse cognitive decline as well.

This should be particularly alarming if you have elderly parents or grandparents who you've seen cognitively decline over the years. It's almost like they become an entirely different person in their final stages of life. Don't put your grandchildren up to this.

Get to a body fat % in the low to mid teens and start sleeping good before you spend a dime on supplements. They're called supplements because they SUPPLEMENT. You wouldn't put a spoiler on a crumby run down car and expect it to perform better. Fix the car.

Study after study find that regular exercisers live as much as a decade longer than sedentary people. Runners and cyclists not only tend to live longer, but they stay in better health with less morbidity from causes related to metabolic dysfunction. Just as almost any diet represents a vast improvement over eating only fast food, almost any exercise is better than remaining sedentary. The more aerobically fit you are, the more energy you will have for enjoying what you're doing, even if your favorite activity is shopping.

Good fitness is a gateway drug to good habits in business and in your relationships.

If you're a total noobie, start with a 15 minute practice of walking each day. Do it first thing in the morning (bonus points if you leave your phone behind), or after lunch, or after dinner. If you don't have 15 minutes to walk, you don't have a life.

Start Exercising So You Don't Die Falling Down.

A great reason to get and stay strong over the long haul is so you don't fall over and die. Yes, falling kills. 800,000 (!!!) older people are hospitalized for falls each year. That's insane. My grandmother was one of the victims of those. Ultimately, that led to her dying this last November, RIP MJ. The fall is more often than not caused by weak muscle or weak bones. We need to be stronger. We need to move!

Thinking of kicking the can because you're young? Wrong. There's no reason to lay back and wait. If you assume you'll live til you're 90, and you're 34 now, here's a visualization of your time left. Start the habit TODAY.

The Baseline Test For Practical Fitness.

Dr Attia calls this the Centenarian Decathalon. It's a list of physical tasks you want to be able to accomplish at any given moment to predict if you'll be able to move around and be a highly functional person when you're older. If you can't carry your own groceries, squat to pick up your grandchild, or help put up the Christmas tree, well into your 60s, that's not a good life. The idea is you'd shoot to be top 1% in your 10 year age bracket. Your goal is not to lift more than the next guy or girl, but be highly functional in key areas.

The following 10 items are what Peter describes you should be able to do at any point in your life to maintain physical shape.

1. Hike 1.5 miles on a hilly trail.
2. Get up off the floor under your own power, using a maximum of one arm for support.
3. Pick up a young child from the floor.
4. Carry 2 grocery bags.
5. Lift a 20-pound suitcase into the overhead compartment of a plane.
6. Balance on one leg for 30 seconds. Eyes open. Bonus points, eyes closed, 15 seconds.
7. Have sex.
8. Climb 4 flights to stairs in 3 minutes.
9. Open a jar.
10. Do 30 consecutive jump rope skips.

The Best Performance-Enhancing Drug: Sleep.

It's almost a guilt trip at this point. You know you should sleep more. Some people can get by on less, but evolutionarily, it's never left us. Every animal engages in sleep. Horses sleep standing, dolphins sleep one half of their brain at a time (why can't we do this), and great white sharks, who never top moving, spend time in a sleep-like, restful state.

Lebron James tries to sleep 9-10 hours a night. Aim to get at least 7.5 hours. Typically we sleep in 90 minute cycles so if you CAN, wake up on a 90 minute interval. Eg. 6 hrs and 7.5 hrs is better than 7 or 8.

The easiest way to track sleep are the Whoop and the Oura ring. I recommend getting your sleep dialed in with a tracker for at least a year, then choose if you want to continue tracking or not. You'll learn a ton by having that immediate feedback loop.

Start taking sleep seriously. Parts of your brain shut off when you don't sleep enough. Your physical balance is off. Your emotions are less stable. Your physical endurance decreases. Cognitive function decreases. Response times slow. You are generally less pleasant.

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