Ken's Reviews > Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity

Under the gimmicky name of "Medicine 3.o" (vs. present-day 2.0), Dr. Attia advocates for a much more proactive approach toward what he calls "The Four Horsemen":

* Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease
* Cancer
* Alzheimer's disease and related neurodegenerative conditions
* Type 2 diabetes and related metabolic dysfunction

Probably one of the horsemen is coming for you already and has begun its advance work (you just don't know it), so his idea is to use tools and strategies available sooner than your regular doctor would recommend (2.0 being more reactive than proactive when it comes to the We-Mean-Business Horsemen, you see).

In addition to tips on what tests to get and how to live longer than you are presently destined to, Attia also dives into familiar territory like exercise, diet, sleep, and so forth. Especially exercise, though. Work, people! If you want to be able to open a jar as an elderly person, keep your balance and not fall, get up out of chairs, walk from A to B without tumbling into C, and so on.

Yes, he has a website with some how-to videos but only a few. Like most writers concerned about your health or your pain or your short and anguished life, he wants to make some money off you too, so here you can...wait for it!...SUBSCRIBE to get more videos!

Introducing the Fifth Horseman: Ka-ching the Kapitalist.

As for the diet and the sleep stuff, I was mostly familiar with it already. Especially sleep. I read a lot about sleep, but there are no sure-fire answers to insomnia, just helpful things you can do, like not go on Goodreads the hour before bedtime and certainly by not taking your phone or other blue-lit screens to your bedroom. (Come on, amateurs!) And keep the bedroom temp at 65 degrees Fahrenheit, why don't you! Easy in winter, but rather brutal in the air-conditioned summer when setting the thermostat THAT low would make you look like a selfish climate-change apologist (who sleeps well and the devil take the hindmost --- read: the rest of the tornado, hurricane, flooding, burning, heating-up world).

The worst part of the book was Attia's personal story. I guess it was meant to humanize him, but it all came across as a bit narcissistic, given how he turned around his life (while turning around the Horsemen, too, including that Fifth One which is doing wonders for his mid-life crisis summer home, sports car, and yacht -- you'd want to live longer, too!).

Anyway, in the end, I have greater faith in the ART than in the SCIENCE. It's the liberal arts major in me, I guess. As for you? If you want to hang around a bit longer, you, like me, might put on your farmer hat and separate the wheat from the chaff here. It's smoothly written (thank you, visible ghost writer Bill Gifford) so goes down easily enough.