Longevity Quotes

Assuming that you're not someone who engages in ultrarisky behaviors like BASE jumping, motorcycle racing, or texting and driving, the odds are overwhelming that you'll die as a result of one of the chronic diseases of aging that I call the Four Horsemen: heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, or type 2 diabetes and related metabolic dysfunction. To achieve longevity-to live longer and liver better for longer-we must understand and confront these causes of slow death. [2023] - Peter Attia

Rapamycin has been demonstrated to do something that no other drug has ever done before: extend maximum lifespan in a mammal. Even though rapamycin is already approved for use in humans for multiple indications, there are formidable obstacles to launching a clinical trail to look at its possible impact on human aging-mainly, its potential side effects in healthy people, most notably the risk of immunosuppression. [2023] - Peter Attia

With a few exceptions, such as glioblastoma or other aggressive brain tumors, as well as certain lung and liver cancers, solid organ tumors typically kill you only when they spread to other organs. Breast cancer kills only when it becomes metastatic. Prostate cancer kills only when it becomes metastatic. You could live without either of those organs. So when you hear the sad story of someone dying from breast or prostate cancer, or even pancreatic or colon cancer, they died because the cancer spread to other, more critical organs such as the brain, the lungs, the liver, and bones. When cancer reaches those places, survival rates drop precipitously. [2023] - Peter Attia

I'm cautiously optimistic about the emergence of so-called "liquid biopsies" that seek to detect the presence of cancers via a blood test. These are used in two settings: to detect recurrences of cancer in patients following treatment and to screen for cancers in otherwise healthy patients, a fast-moving and exciting field called multicancer early detection. [2023] - Peter Attia

The Galleri test looks at methylation patterns of the cell-free DNA, which are basically chemical changes to the DNA molecules that suggest the presence of cancer. In a study, the Galleri test proved to have a very high specificity, about 99.5%, meaning only 0.5% of tests yielded a false positive. If the test says you have cancer, somewhere in your body, then it's likely that you do. The trade-off is that the resulting sensitivity can be low, depending on the stage. (That is, even if the test says you don't have cancer, you're not necessarily in the clear.) Keep in mind this test still has much higher resolution than radiographic tests such as MRI or mammogram. Those imaging-based tests require "seeing" the tumor, which can happen only when the tumor reaches a certain size. With Galleri, the test is looking at cell-free DNA, which can come from any size tumor-even ones that remain invisible to imaging tests. [2023] - Peter Attia

In Medicine 3.0, we have 5 tactical domains that we can address in order to alter someone's health. The first is exercise. I break it down into its components of aerobic efficiency, maximum aerobic output (VO₂ max), strength, and stability. Next is diet or nutrition-or as I prefer to call it, nutritional biochemistry. The third domain is sleep, which has gone underappreciated by Medicine 3.0 until relatively recently. The fourth domain encompasses a set of tools and techniques to manage and improve emotional health. Our fifth and final domain consists of the various drugs, supplements, and hormones that doctors lean about in medical school and beyond. [2023] - Peter Attia

One key test in our movement assessment is to have our patients stand with one foot in front of the other and try to balance. Now close your eyes and see how long you can hold the position. 10 seconds is a respectable time; in fact, the ability to balance on one leg at ages 50 and older has been correlated with future longevity, just like grip strength. [2023] - Peter Attia

Just living alone, or feeling lonely, is linked to a much higher risk of mortality. While most issues around emotional health are not age dependent, this is the one emotional health "risk factor" that does seem to grow worse with increasing age. Surveys show that older Americans report spending more time alone every day-an average of about 7 hours daily, for those age 75-and are far more likely to live alone than people in middle age and younger. Feeling connected and having healthy relationships with others, and with oneself, is as imperative as maintaining efficient glucose metabolism or a optimal lipoprotein profile. [2023] - Peter Attia

The difference between a young person comfortable in shorts and a T-shirt in temperature that would send an elderly person reaching for a down coat is largely due to a difference in muscle mass. Our ability to synthesize energy, to remain slim, to resist disease, to stand upright-all are affected by the strength of our muscles. [2021] - Philip Shepherd

Researchers consistently found that greater muscle mass led to better outcomes across a wide range of conditions. Patients with more muscle had better overall survival rates, better responses to cancer therapies, and better outcomes where chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was a factor; they also showed decreases in Alzheimer's disease, length of stay in the ICU, and complications due to surgery. [2021] - Philip Shepherd

The ability to do push-ups in a cohort of men is more strongly associated with future cardiovascular risk than the treadmill stress test; and that cardiovascular adaptations actually take place primarily in muscle tissue, rather than in the heart and lungs. A study found that participants who had completed more than 40 push-ups were 96% less likely to suffer a cardiovascular problem than those who completed fewer than 10 push-ups. [2021] - Philip Shepherd

Strength training has a moderating effect on many conditions that increase the risk of cancer-conditions such as insulin resistance, chronic inflammation, and visceral fat. It also promotes conditions that decrease the risk of cancer, such as the functioning of the immune system. A myokine known as interleukin-6, for instance, reduces tumor volume by supporting the infiltration of the tumor by natural killer cells. Strength training also lowers the risk of cancer by activating two players that are crucial to cellular health-apoptosis and autophagy. [2021] - Philip Shepherd

The greatest indicator of life span isn't genetics, diet, or the amount of daily exercise, as many have suspected. It is lung capacity. Our ability to breathe full breaths is liberally a measure of living capacity. Any regular practice that stretches the lungs and keeps them flexible can retain or increase lung capacity. Moderate exercise like walking or cycling has been shown to boost lung size by up to 15%. [2020] - James Nestor

According to USPSTF guidelines, men younger than fifty-five or older than seventy should not be tested for PSA. Between ages fifty-five and sixty-nine, it is an individual choice. They note that “Screening offers a small potential benefit of reducing the chance of death from prostate cancer in some men. However, many men will experience potential harms of screening.” [2020] - Jason Fung

Most of the thyroid cancers detected in screening do not require treatment. Finding and treating early disease is not useful. Only reducing the incidence of late-stage disease is useful, and these are not necessarily the same thing due to the occurrence of early metastasis. By some estimates, as many as one third of all adults have evidence of thyroid cancer, but the vast majority of these cancers do not produce symptoms or cause health problems. Finding and treating cancers that don’t need to be treated is not a useful strategy. [2020] - Jason Fung

When cancers progress in an orderly manner from precancerous stage to small tumor to large tumor to metastasis, screening succeeds. Screening to remove early cancers prevents the development of late cancers, and this saves lives. But if removal of early-stage cancer does not reduce late-stage cancer, screening is unsuccessful, and overdiagnosis becomes a problem. Not every early-stage cancer needs to be destroyed, as many small cancers are contained by the immune system and will never pose a serious health threat. With toxic treatments such as surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, the treatment may be worse than the disease. [2020] - Jason Fung

Virtually any form of cellular or DNA damage may cause cancer, including chemicals, radiation, and viruses, but only under extremely specific conditions. The damage induced must be both sublethal and chronic. To cause cancer, cell damage cannot be too much or too little. An overwhelming injury will simply kill all the cells, leaving no chance for cancer to develop. Too little cellular damage, however, is simply repaired by the normal DNA-repair mechanisms. Chronicity is the second key attribute of carcinogens. A single large dose of radiation is far less carcinogenic than chronic low-level radiation. [2020] - Jason Fung

Autopsy studies find unsuspected prostate cancer in 30 percent of men over the age of fifty; 50 percent by age seventy; and an astounding 80 percent by age ninety. If he lives long enough, every man can expect to develop prostate cancer. An estimated 11.2 percent of the adult population harbors thyroid cancer. Despite this high incidence, thyroid cancer only very rarely causes death. Colonoscopy screening studies find adenomas (a precancerous lesion) in almost half of the general population by age eighty. [2020] - Jason Fung

The term cancer chemoprevention was introduced by the NIH in 1976 to denote foods, supplements, or drugs that may block progression of cancer. One of the most promising chemopreventive drugs is the old diabetes drug metformin. Studies have demonstrated that in type 2 diabetics, metformin may potentially reduce the risk of cancer by as much as 21 percent to 57 percent. Specifically, long-term metformin use in women with type 2 diabetes was associated with a more than 50 percent reduction in breast cancer risk. Metformin works by reducing glucose to the growing cancer without the pro-growth effects of the insulin/IGF-1/PI3K pathway. It also activates AMPK, an important nutrient sensor and growth pathway, which rapidly inhibits cellular protein synthesis and growth. Some research has indicated that this beneficial anticancer effect might extend to nondiabetics as well. [2020] - Jason Fung

Immunotherapy has several inherent advantages over conventional treatments. First, the boosted immune system is a dynamic system that can better keep pace with cancer’s moves. Second, the immune system has a memory, so it may prevent recurrence. Third, immunotherapy has fewer side effects than standard chemotherapies. Fourth, immunotherapy is a systemic treatment, which is crucial because cancer is a systemic disease. Affordability, though, is not one of the advantages of immunotherapy. Given the exorbitant price tag of these treatments, many providers question the feasibility of using these advanced drugs. [2020] - Jason Fung