1 day Ago By Nina Agrawal
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.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
If you are in Reader mode please exit and your Times account, or for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? .
Want all of The Times? ..
