Increasing Healthspan and Lifespan in Retirement
A few years ago, I saw this viral Christmas ad. After ridding myself of the onions nearby, I reflected on why prioritizing health and fitness holds such significance to me. As my first son turned three, I couldn't help but notice how swiftly time was passing. It dawned on me that he'll probably have his own children someday. If I want to actively engage and play with my grandchildren meaningfully down the road, what I do for my health now matters.
Around the same time, I came across the idea of a “Centenarian Decathlon” by Peter Attia. We live longer with modern medicine, but our last decade or two often have substantial physical limitations. His idea of the Decathlon is to come up with 10 functional movements that you would like to be able to do in the last decade of your life. From there, figure out what you must do now to have that ability later. For example, if you want to be able to walk around the block with your grandkids when you’re 80, you probably need to be able to run a few miles in your 60s.
Our fitness compounds over time, like our finances. The work you do on your personal health now will be felt in future years. After all, what good is all the money saved if you don’t have the health to get out and enjoy it?
Peter Attia's book "Outlive" offers valuable insights into extending our health span and optimizing well-being as we age. The book is a dense read, so I’ve summarized my key takeaways for you below.
The goal should be to increase health span as much as possible. Much of modern medicine is about increasing the length of time you live and not as much about increasing your health during those years. Medicine must evolve to solve for health span too. Ideally, instead of health decreasing substantially in our 60s, 70s, and 80s, resulting in decades of pain and discomfort, our health would decrease slowly until the last few years, when it would decrease rapidly before we die.
2. The Four Horsemen – The diseases that kill over 80% of people over age 50 who don’t smoke include Metabolic (diabetes, fatty liver, etc), Heart Disease, Cancer, and Neurodegenerative (Alzheimer’s is the most common). While many can be diagnosed with these diseases in their younger years, medicine is very good at extending life regardless of quality. If you optimize your health to avoid these, you reduce most health risks as you age.
3. To combat the “four horsemen,” there are 3 big areas to focus on -
Duration – It turns out that people who say, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” may very well die sooner. 99.7% of the population needs 7 or more hours of sleep. If you consider latency (time to fall asleep), we all should be in bed for at least 8 hours.
Consistency – If you go to bed normally at 10 and wake up at 6, your mind and body will not sleep as well from 11 to 7. Your REM and deep sleep cycles will get distorted, and the sleep will be poorer despite being unconscious for the same number of hours.
Get outside for 5+ minutes first thing in the morning. When you do this, your brain tells your body to start your circadian rhythm so that by bedtime (16 hours later), your body knows to start releasing melatonin.
Food and Alcohol: Your body temperature rises as it digests food or metabolizes alcohol, making it difficult to get restorative sleep if you eat or drink within 3 hours of bedtime.
No technology in bed - Those bright lights are yelling to your brain, “It’s daytime! Stay awake!”
A chilly bedroom - Many people associate warmth with sleep, but that is the opposite of what our bodies need to fall asleep.
2. Exercise - exercise is the wonder drug. There are 3 main areas to focus on.
Stability – Injury is the biggest reason we stop working out as we age. Maintaining proper functional movement of our body is essential to avoid injury. He recommends 5-10 minutes daily and one longer 30–60-minute session weekly. This includes stretching, balancing, and other movements.
Strength – We lose muscle mass as we age, regardless of how much we work out. Strength training slows this down. 2-3x a week for 30 minutes.
Cardio— It’s important to incorporate low-heart-rate (Zone 2) and high-heart-rate (Zone 5) workouts. Zone 2 should be done for 90 minutes a week (i.e., 3x 30 minutes on an incline treadmill), and Zone 5 should be done for 20-30 minutes a week (i.e., 4x 4 minutes fast on a Stairmaster, 4 minutes slow, repeat).
Calculating Zone 2 – roughly 70% of your maximum heart rate. A rough estimate of your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age. (example for a 65-year-old: 220-65= 155 (max HR) X 70% = 110. For Zone 2, you should be targeting a 110 BPM heart rate.
Calculating Zone 5 – 90% of max heart rate. (example for a 65-year-old: 220-65= 155 (max HR) X 90% = 140 BPM heart rate.
c. Nutrition
Diets – He has no strong opinion on which diet is best and discussed how different body composition and chemistry determine the best diet. He is a data nerd, so he would have said so if there was a diet that was conclusively the best.
Protein intake – Because we lose muscle strength at a rate of 1-2% per year after age 65, eating in a way that preserves muscle is important. He recommends .8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, far higher than the USDA recommendation of .4 to .6.
If you weigh 180 pounds, you should get roughly 150 to 180 grams of protein. If you try to implement this, you will notice two things—it takes a conscious effort to get that much protein, and if you get that much protein, there isn’t that much room left for extra calories. I’ve found it nearly impossible to get this much protein without having a high-protein breakfast and supplementing with a protein shake at some point.
The three tactics above and the accompanying links are from Peter Attia’s website if you want to dive deeper. I hope you can have a healthier and happier retirement by implementing some of these!
Happy Planning,
Alex
This blog post is not advice. Please read disclaimers.