By the last decade of our lives, many of us are already in ill health. But Dr. Peter Attia, a physician and longevity influencer, doesn’t believe it has to be that way.
Our later years, he argues, are something we can start training for now.
At the New York Times Well Festival on Wednesday, Dr. Attia said that the way to increase your odds of enjoying that decade as much as possible was “to be very deliberate about how you would prepare for it.”
Dr. Attia said he talked with his patients about training for “a centenarian decathlon.” The idea is to make a list of the 10 most important — and most difficult — physical activities or movements you want to be able to do in the last decade of life.
For him, these include being able to walk easily, drive a racecar (Dr. Attia is an avid Formula 1 fan) and sit on the floor to play with children without needing help getting back up.
For many of his patients, he said, sex, dancing, and living independently are often high on the list. “To be able to dance is actually a very complicated physical and cognitive task as you age,” Dr. Attia said.
Depending on where they are starting out, he said, people in their 40s might need to do certain types of training now — jumping exercises, for example, or balance-building activities — to be able to still dance in their 80s.
Many widely recommended health habits, such as exercising often, eating well, getting enough sleep and managing your emotional health, can help people achieve their decathlon goals and enjoy their last decade.
But it can be difficult to do all of that in a busy life, he acknowledged. To prioritize the activities that will deliver the greatest benefit, he said, “take stock of how you’re doing on each of those things.”
A person who is sleeping only five hours a night is likely to get the greatest benefit from increasing that to seven hours a night. Going from no exercise to 90 minutes per week, he added, could significantly reduce a person’s risk of death.
“There are very few things you can point to that will have that much of an effect,” he said. “Whereas if somebody is exercising seven hours a week, going to nine hours a week is very marginal in its gain.”
Dr. Attia emphasized the benefits of strength or resistance training with heavy weights, which he said were just as important as cardiovascular or aerobic exercise. He highlighted its importance for women in particular. Women’s bodies produce less estrogen with age, which leaves them more susceptible to osteoporosis, injury and ultimately, death.
Not only can this kind of training reduce your risk of death later in life, he said, but it can also improve your quality of life.
“I mean, have you ever met a person at the end of their life that said, ‘God, I wish I had less muscle, I just wish I wasn’t so strong’?” Dr. Attia asked.
“It makes an enormous difference,” he added.
Nina Agrawal is a Times health reporter.
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