This is an important dividing line between the gurus who claim to have found a lifestyle that gets you to 100 and beyond, and those who argue you can simply live your life better — and, as a result, live longer.
Everyone knows that those who treat their bodies well are more likely to prevent disease and enjoy greater wellbeing. Outlive puts the focus on the role medicine can play in all of this, paying more attention to prevention than to treating symptoms once they’ve appeared.
Drawing on his years in hospital general surgery and oncology, Dr Attia has come to see that there are two kinds of death: fast and slow.
Fast death is mostly caused by accidents and sudden events that don’t trace back to pre-existing factors.
Slow death is what ends people’s lives, statistically, around 70, 80 or 90 years of age. The main causes are the Four Horsemen that threaten our bodies: heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease and diabetes.
Medicine trains its professionals to intervene with patients in order to reduce mortality. We are still a long way, though, from any definitive way to cure cancer, Alzheimer’s or diabetes. We can repair or replace a heart, but despite the millions invested every year, progress is slow.
The real question is when doctors should intervene.
Only when a bone is broken or a disease has just been diagnosed? Type 2 diabetes, for example, is the visible face of a set of metabolic dysfunctions. Even catching it at the pre-diabetic stage is already too late to keep the patient clear of the condition.
The shift Dr Attia asks of the medical profession is a move away from being reactive — acting only when faced with a diagnosis — to being proactive. Following the example above, that means making sure patients never develop type 2 diabetes in the first place.
Living longer makes sense if it means living better. For that to happen, we have to prevent disease. This is why the work of doctors needs to start sooner.
Outlive is about much more than simply outliving your life expectancy. Despite the literal meaning of the word, it’s about getting more out of life — better health, so you can spend more time enjoying it.
