Like most people I want to live a long time. But more than life span I am interested in health span. I want to feel good and be autonomous as long as possible. Fitness, especially good muscle mass, is an important part of that.
Nobody wanted to live a long time but be unhealthy in their older years.
It wasn’t until health and fitness podcasters started holding up the “healthspan” term as something novel that we had to hear about the supposed difference.
It’s also unfortunate that the “healthspan” influencers frequently get into health trends that have the opposite effect. The main example I can think of is Dr. Peter Attia, who started out praising ketogenic diets (recently shown to have very negative effects on cardiovascular health, not surprisingly) and later Rapamycin (briefly praised by lifespan influencers until they all decided it was hurting more than helping).
I think one of the best things people can do for long-term health is limit their consumption of health and fitness influencers who are pressured to constantly invent and push new things to keep themselves relevant.
If nobody wanted that, then why have we spent so much effort keeping older people alive and in agony for a couple more days, often in direct opposition to their preferences and DNRs?
If nobody wanted a medical system that caused such suffering for such little reason, then how come the excellent How Doctors Die[0] needed to be written?
[0] https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2013/03/how-doctors-die/
The top metastudies on a simple google search both conclude positive effects on CVD.
The most recent example is the KETO-CTA paper, which was released in April to loud claims that high LDL in a keto diet was not really bad. It got picked up by various news outlets as vindicating ketogenic diets. The authors posted long Twitter threads full of meme animated gifs celebrating their victory over keto skeptics.
Yet when people started looming into the study they noticed that the study failed to report the data from the pre-registered trial endpoint. This is highly unusual because if you establish an entire clinical trial, you are expected to publish the primary results you pre-registered.
After a lot of prodding, people finally got the authors to release the percent change in non-calcified plaque volume (NCPV) values that they pre-registered for and they were extremely high. Even higher than seen in certain serious medical conditions. It became clear that they chose to hide the values because they were so incredibly bad.
> The top metastudies on a simple google search both conclude positive effects on CVD.
There are a lot of die-hard keto defenders who produce papers, blogs, and podcasts claiming it’s either neutral or good for CVD. You have to look past the SEO optimized content and go to actual CVD experts who do not have their internet presence tied to promoting keto diets.
I initially gave keto a shot for two weeks, and I found unexpectedly high benefits in increased energy, weight loss and an end to some long-standing stomach ulcer issues. So my two-week trial has ended up lasting 3 months.
It's been frustrating that trying to learn about keto is like drinking from a firehose of bullshit, because I'm really rather enjoying my extra energy, weight loss and lack of stomach pain and ulcers. I actually feel 20 years younger.
I'm quite skeptical of the long term elimination of whole grains though, so soon I'll be easing off keto with some vegetables and whole grains.
Obviously, but they operated (and continue to) under a medical paradigm where preventative medicine means just avoiding a few major harm factors and getting just enough exercise to maintain the average observed health metrics for their age group.
People increasingly do not want to wind up like average 70 or 80 year olds, so it is absolutely appropriate that they start shooting for upper 10% or 5% -ile attributes now while they are younger so that in their old age the relative decline still keeps them at those same upper percentiles they will objvetively need to do the things in old age they want to do.
He went into quite a bit of detail on exercise though, focusing on the predictable ways you'll lose capability as you age, if you don't work really hard on avoiding that.
Bryan Johnson quit using it, but he’s on 40 other things and there are bound to be drug interactions.
That said, limiting consumption of health and fitness influencers is bound to be good for lifespan: you’ll have more time to live.
And yes, it’s hard to make a living as an influencer saying “eat food, mostly green, move your body, and spend time with friends and loved ones.”
I suspect that something similar can be said of not doing enough exercise.
We are commenting on a press release from a university, i.e., written by professionals whose job is to increase the prestige of their employer. It is rich for you to criticize Peter Attia, M.D., and ignore that little gem. At least Attia is trying to understand some aspect of reality more fundamental than impression management and increasing the public's awareness of whatever their employers tasks them to target.
Low muscle mass is correlated with shortened lifespan, though. Very low muscle mass is known to be a high risk for early mortality.
> It is a rich for you to criticize Peter Attia, M.D., and ignore that little gem.
I don’t feel bad at all for criticizing Peter Attia, especially after his ringing endorsements of the Oura Ring and claimed “investor” status were revealed to be a contractual deal where he got shares in the company in exchange for promoting the Oura Ring. He’s been revealed to be very oriented toward fame and self-promotion, as evidenced by his recent claims that Kevin Spacey’s accusers were all wrong and Kevin Spacey was totally innocent after Kevin Spacey’s team set up a promotional dinner between Attia and Spacey. I know a lot of listeners develop sorts of parasocial defensive relationships for their podcasters, but you can’t deny the irony of a CVD-focused podcaster starting his podcast career deep into Ketogenic stuff before he saw the writing on the wall and backed off.
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/mar/11/older-adult...
TL;DR: In the 1980s, Maria Fiatarone got 9 patients in their 80s and 90s to do 2 months of progressive resistance knee extension training. The minimum increase in 1RM strength was 61%.
(I will say that a morning workout still supercharges your day!)
And you'd be wrong. It does not supercharge my day. Maybe it superchargers your day. Just finished my morning workout and now I feel like I've been drugged and need a nap. I do not feel "supercharged"
I just noticed that in my 53 year existence, only by the past 10 years, a morning workout (which I didn't do prior to that) was figuratively and literally eye-opening, not just physically but mentally.
Specifically, it was the Orangetheory workout.
And I regretted not discovering it sooner, and mainly I blame people who didn't emphasize not just the physical but the mental boost
I thought semi-starvation was the one and only strongly evidenced way too extend lifespan? Which obviously doesn’t require, and in fact destroys, muscle mass.