"Early" Longevity Program by Peter Attia Launches

I admire Lustgarten for what he’s doing, and I’m subscribed to his YouTube channel. I just find him very hard to listen to because of his rapid yet halting speech pattern (lots of sudden, jarring starts/stops). That’s not his fault, I know. It just makes it really hard to get through his videos, at least for me.

5 Likes

I know what you mean… But he’s still better than Alan “sort of like” Green and Mikhail “mumble mumble” Blagosklonny!

7 Likes

New from Ford Brewer, MD.

Really? Because when you said this –

“Stanfield I noticed is full of bullshit and his opinion changes as much as the YouTube audience and comments. All three primarily take care of their own pockets and became money machines. They all show narcissistic tendencies and are more interested in being stars and admired.”

…it kind sounded like you did have something against him. It sounded like you were trashing both his personal knowledge and his personal motivations, without any supporting evidence. You also attempted to trash his educational background/degree before being corrected. Similar thing (albeit to a lesser degree) with Attia – zero on his ideas, just attempts to discredit him based on his medical residencies.

What’s your deal?

Clearly I don’t like his public persona and find that his advice based on his personal motivation and education and experience should be taken with a grain of salt. And it is my personal view. Not a fact.

2 Likes

Really a general comment only. Many on this forum spend $2500 every year or two, if not more, on supplements of which probably half or less actually do anything, and possibly some are detrimental.
I choose to hire a plumber to fix plumbing issues. I perhaps could figure it out with enough research, time, money for tools, etc. yet choose to hire an expert.
I find it interesting that some of us are willing to anecdotally think we have expertise we clearly don’t. If you think you can educate yourself cheaper, go for it. Value is clearly up to the individual. I for one don’t have the time to collate and interpret massive amounts of research, and remove the garbage (which is unfortunately big) in a rapidly changing field.
Dr. Attia’s ability to create an income stream with his team’s expertise is irrelevant.

8 Likes

I know this is practically a repeat of one of my previous posts. But it is an important point here. Your $2,500 does not buy you expertise. It buys you one experts opinions. Equally renowned "experts’ (Valter Longo is a perfect example) have almost exactly the opposite opinions about several extremely important facets of extending longevity or at least give significantly different advice about some facets. So, the $2,500 won’t buy you “a plumber to fix the plumbing issues”.

4 Likes

Yes - but I tend to look at Peter Attia’s advice differently than that of individual experts like Valter. Valter is an expert in one area where he’s done a ton of research.

Peter is a generalist, that has a team of well-educated professionals that review all the research and come up with solutions for a clientele base (admittedly a very wealthy clientele) so they have a breadth of knowledge and ongoing research that is pretty unique, and they are testing that knowledge with high-paying clients and monitoring the outcomes closely… so they have a good feedback loop for learning.

Individual experts like Valter just don’t have this type of experience and knowledgebase to draw from (in my opinion).

10 Likes

I especially find Peter Attia a problem in view of the fact that he, in my view, is 80% a product of the McKinsey company where he previously worked and 20% a truly innovative physician. It’s all about the “brand.”

3 Likes

I rely a great deal on Peter Attia. In actual practice 80 or 90 percent of the “tactics” I implement are in accordance with Attia’s views. I just realize that in some areas my practices are my best guess as to what to do as there is significant disagreement among the “leaders” in the field.

1 Like

Attia’s “superpower” IMO is his skill with communication. There are a lot of smart people out there, but he is (by a long shot) the most eloquent and easy-to-understand speaker I’ve ever heard in the field of medicine/science. He’s worked his butt off for years, and his podcast is free! I for one don’t feel entitled to anything from him, and I’m happy for him for his success.

7 Likes

That seems like a harsh judgement… I mean he was only there for 2 years, a small fraction of his time in medical school, residency, fellowship, and medical practice.

Is anyone really defined at age 50 by two years at anyone company they may have worked for?

5 Likes

It clearly shows he was not interested in practicing medicine any more at least not in hospital (he never finished his formal training and never got his board certification) and probably more interested in earning money in a easy(er) consulting 9 to 5 job. Maybe it shows that he is more of a business man than doctor. Several times in interviews he stated that he got into longevity field because of his own problems with metabolic health and anxieties around it. CVD disease runs in his family. I don’t want to criticize him, as I agree that he explains some complex medical phenomena in a understandable and relatable manner, he also uses his marketing platform (aka podcast) to educate but I believe his strong opinion and voice on some issues exclude other less strong voices that could add or change significantly what he believes. Or in other words he sounds like “he knows” and sometimes his knowing which is based on observational studies is just one of the hypothesis he is choosing to “market” (based on strong evidence, but excluding all the evidence that not support it).

4 Likes

Agreed. But by his own rather proudly stated admission on numerous podcasts, his time at McKinsey greatly influenced his way of reasoning. Notwithstanding that, we have to be in awe of what he has done for the Healthspan/aging space.

3 Likes

Furthermore, we shouldn’t forget that 90% of Attia’s podcasts are with expert guests like Matt Kaeberlein so for the majority of the time we are listening to the benefit of their expertise and not that of Peter Attia.
I think he is great at extracting all the important details from all his guests.

10 Likes

This is so incredibly far from what it is like to work at a place like McKinsey. In general the intensity is nothing like 9to 5 and he was doing engagements connected to financial markets during the middle of the greatest financial crisis the world has seen since the Great Depression when the intensity likely was significantly higher than even normal for McKinsey.

For what is worth: After having seen quite a few of your posts by now, and while many are very valuable, I have to share that it feels like you often make a lot of assumptions without enough data/information and then draw strong conclusions that you then share in a black and white way.

5 Likes

See, you make a very strong opinion about me, not knowing me at all, just reading few of my posts and I can’t have an opinion about a public persona, with countless public appearances, interviews, profiles written about him?

Consulting at McKinsey

Yes - from what I’ve heard, McKinsey (and similar consulting groups like Bain, BCG, etc.) are just like investment banks in that you eat, sleep and live to work. The hours are unlikely any different than what a medical resident faces. Its definitely not a cushy job.

3 Likes

He’s merely objectively describing your behavior. If he were modeling such behavior, he would have instead ascribed a nefarious and unknowable motivation such as (for instance) that you’re jealous of Attia’s success.

1 Like

I agree. I think Brad is a boy scout, trying to do best by people. I see him as different from the other YouTube personalities in that:

– He is a full time doctor in a typical practice, seeing 1000s of patients per year. He is not doing concierge medicine for the wealthy nor is he trying to make himself into brand.

– He is trying to raise money, but not for personal profit. Rather he is trying to crowd source a human trial study on Rapamycin for muscle growth in older adults.

– He does his own analysis of scientific literature and regularly revises his conclusions as new data comes to light.

I otherwise agree that we all have to question the pundits and make our decisions after weighing multiple sources.

8 Likes