The contrarian part here is that a culture can get healthier on paper while becoming thinner in spirit.
That’s what’s resonating. The problem isn’t fitness, sobriety, or wanting to live longer. The problem is when health stops being in service of life and starts becoming a second job that quietly crowds out friendship, spontaneity, and joy.
Feels to me like the real warning. A higher score isn’t always a better life.
Ironically, this comment about a higher score not always being a better life (1) got more than twice the number of likes than the next comment; and (2) looks a lot like AI to me (and Pangram put it at 100% AI with high confidence, although it and I might be wrong). Indeed, a higher score isn't always a better life!
It is of course possible to be active socially and still prioritize health/minimize alcohol. I'm 64 so perhaps have a different point of view since most of my friends are also drinking far less. As well, group fitness classes have a social element.
We tend to have a pretty intense bias against what we perceive as 'unnatural' solutions to things and 'enhancement' is something people tend to be quite wary of in medicine (vs, say, therapeutic uses or preventative). Derek, you tend to be an extremely thoughtful writer and you're right to focus on how much fun a night of drinks out with an old friend can be. But you're also kind of cherry-picking — even Bryan Johnson has made a post similar to you about how moments like that are what we live for — and this is one of the few times I've encountered you not really wrestling with the trade offs. That "decline of deviance" article would have been unthinkable in the 90s. Can you *imagine* someone in 1998 writing an essay saying "we'll miss teen drinking, pregnancies, smoking, and also *serial killers* because our movies will be boring?" I'm not saying I'm happy with the trade off, I'd prefer things just got better with no costs, but I'm not sure the real choice here is "live a long time or have a life worth living", though that's how you present it. I agree loneliness and selfishness are serious issues, but I'd rather think through how we address those, than present it as a necessary side effect of leading healthier lives.
Thank you for bringing up death in this essay. When I'm teaching young people (average age 30) I ask them to consider living to 150. That is not an impossibility as we discover more treatments for the maladies that kill us. The first thing they say they want from that world is the right to pull the plug when they are done, whenever they want. It isn't that they are afraid of dying. But they are like everyone else, they have a deep seated fear of living poorly. We all see the challenges of our parents as they spend years in decline. We see the aging industry keeping people alive longer to maximize the life time value of their clients (enshittification at its worst?). We see our society diminishing the value of people who are not 'peak' performers. And, we realize how precarious we are potentially being one step away from slipping through the net into homelessness.
I'm basically your age, but I'm still a little confused by this article. I admit I haven't kept up with much news over the last decade, but haven't Americans been generally getting less healthy for our entire lives? I know life expectancies recently declined in the US for the first time in decades (although I did not realize that they had since increased). Maybe people are drinking and smoking less, but obesity has skyrocketed for basically our entire lives (although there was apparently a SLIGHT reversal post-Ozempic, although not even close to the Silent Generation, which I suspect was actually the healthiest generation in terms of their lifestyle choices, even if they didn't live as long due to advances in medical tech.
I suspect this is one of those K-shaped things, where those who care about fitness are vastly more health-conscious and neurotic than they used to be (but this is still a minority of the population), but the number of people who wolf down processed foods in front of screens has probably never been higher. The Internet is a magnifier, so it enables the minority of the population that cares about fitness to hyper-optimize in a way they hadn't before (just like how the majority of people are probably reading less, but the people who read are likely reading more), but the majority of the population that doesn't exercise has probably continued to get steadily less healthy.
I don't think just eschewing smoking and alcohol by itself is making people healthier. I don't smoke or drink, but I'm autistic with ARFID, I eat terribly, and I am not healthy. I don't really think eating habits have significantly improved in the American population in general, even if hyper-optimizers are more health-conscious, but maybe I just haven't met enough Gen Z-ers in real life. I know there's that "looksmaxxing" trend that I'm probably too old to understand. If people are smoking and drinking less, it's probably just because screen addiction has become so pervasive that people have stopped doing basically ANYTHING not involving screens. Sure, some of it is good (smoking, drinking, violent crime) while some of it is very bad (working, reading, socializing). I would suspect people are drinking less BECAUSE they are socializing less, as from Bowling Alone I know that socialization in the US peaked around 1970, then declined, which is way before alcohol consumption declined. And obviously, the decline in socialization happened over exactly the same time period as the rise in obesity, so an increase in fitness leading to a decline in socialization feels spurious to me. (Ironically, anyone who is trying to optimize for health would need to optimize for socialization also, since loneliness can be as deadly as being a pack-a-day smoker or whatever, but I guess they aren't largely doing this?).
Ultimately, people are socializing less because consumerism distracts us from the things we used to do. Everyone blames it on tech and indeed, that is the largest aspect of consumerism, but the more things you buy at home in general, the more you have to maintain and the less time you have for socializing as well. Sure, baby boomers focused on collecting physical objects, while for millennials it was experiences and for Gen Z it was digital goods, but the focus on checking off a list of items to obtain or content to go through in every case was a distraction from interacting in the real world. And it didn't help, especially starting in the '90s, when people withdrew into their own worlds in public first with Walkmans, then cell phones, etc... Public spaces were increasingly privatized, first as like malls and arcades replaced lodges and community centers (which was already a step down), then they were emotionally privatized as people withdrew from other people while in public. Consumerism is the issue, and this kind of health optimization in my opinion is little more than another kind of consumerism, even if it is a healthier one.
Even though I am not healthy, I care way more now about connecting with other people in real life than I do about my physical health, although I guess improving the former would still improve the latter, even if I never learn how to properly eat unprocessed foods. If I was going to optimize anything, it would be that, but I suspect any of these things end up like the uncertainty principle, where attempting to measure them makes them somehow less tangible...
You can eat processed food and be totally healthy, the reasons why people think it’s bad are kind of confused, and exercise has a way larger effect than diet. As long as you’re getting a healthy mix of macros and not eating too much you’re gucci. So much of this health optimizing stuff is about eking out the last 1% or just downright counterproductive (ice baths are my favorite example). If you exercise moderately, don’t just eat sugar, and try to get mostly good sleep you will get nearly all of the positive health effects of this stuff without turning yourself into an anxious wreck.
The turn to "health promotion" (rather than disease prevention) started in public health in the 1970s and ramped up in the more conservative and individualistic 1980s. This was fertile soil for the tech innovations of recent years. I grew up in the Jane Fonda era, and believe me, we were counting leg-lift reps, aerobics minutes, and pounds lost! The tech-based self-monitoring is certainly more intensive, and I do think this is to some degree a qualitative as well as quantitative shift. But it didn't come out of nowhere. And vitamin supplements are a good example of pop-medical health promotion that has been around for a long time. Meanwhile, progressive reformers have long criticized formal medicine for only addressing disease and debility after the fact rather than offering preventives. I don't think the problem here is the turn to prevention rather than cure (and if anything, formal medicine could be paying a little more attention to prevention). It's the minute-to-minute self-maximization, based on metrics that are measurable rather than metrics we would choose in an ideal world, and the distraction, dependence, and sometimes anxiety that are side effects of these health-promotion measures. If we were more focused on environment-based health promotion, like pollution control, walkable cities, and accessible, healthy groceries, I think we'd feel less hesitation about health promotion as a cultural ideal.
Great piece Derek. It seems to me the self improvement obsession (and I have been a participant in ways myself) is a microcosm of the larger macro trend of a self obsessed society across the board. A lot of your work over the last several years highlights the different trends that lean towards the individual versus the collective. Call it atomization or whatever you like, it’s clearly not a great thing.
As a second thought, I still notice you circling, circling the world of faith as you contemplate these topics. When you’re ready, come on in, the water is fine 😉
Not to completely miss the point of the post, but….you can track the kind of social interactions you know are good for you too 😬
An old married couple that schedules intimacy, or keeps track of it monthly and makes time for it “to keep their numbers up” is still benefiting from the intimacy. And they’re getting a meaningful signal if the numbers drop off, which can at least catalyze a conversation.
Another good social measurable is a Priya Parker style commitment to host people, or go out, a certain number of times a month or year. Even if the thing that makes you do it is an arbitrary external measure, you know it’s worth doing. And if you don’t track it, for a lot of people it doesn’t happen.
Honestly, I’d live a fuller and happier life if Oura’s next software update included social goals…
As a 64-year old who spends too much time reviewing my cycling data on Strava, I can appreciate the good and the bad of obsession with health metrics. On the one hand, the availability of data makes it easier to set goals and measure performance improvement, while also (hopefully) providing a basis for increased self-esteem. On the other hand, obsession with data can be, well, obsessive, and can easily rob an activity of some of its simple pleasure. In my case, an afternoon ride on a nice day can become a source of depression if my power numbers are too low.
As with technology generally, the easy availability of health data appears to provide new opportunities to optimize our execution of tasks, in this case the task of maintaining good health. At the same time, adding to the list of tasks we feel obligated to optimize creates more responsibilities, which crowds out yet more of the activities that may make life worthwhile.
I find it increasingly hard to extract what is good about new technologies while avoiding the temptation to over-use them in a way that creates a net negative effect on life quality. Maintaining this balanced perspective is difficult, especially when much of our economy is built on destroying that balance. I am already concerned about by dependence on Claude, which I only started using a couple of months ago.
For me, with or without data, a focus on health gives me the sense that I can control an important aspect of my life as the world seems increasingly off the rails, even if that sense of control is ultimately illusory. Plus, importantly, most of the time I would rather go for a solo bike ride than go to a party. The availability of ride data may add interest to that activity that has the effect of reinforcing my introverted tendencies, but I am Ok with that, and there are many worse things I could be doing.
I think some of this depends on whether we integrate life priorities or create boundaries between them. Take another example, work-life balance: some people are satisfied with treating these areas as totally separate. Others integrate: they find community in their co-workers, start a family business, create a side hustle with their partner or kid, etc. Which approach you like depends on your identity, influences, beliefs and circumstances.
Similar with health: some people thrive by sticking with clear boundaries and giving protected time to exercise, nutrition and recovery. Others do better by weaving health into the rest of life. For example I exercise with many of my friends both in-person and through online communities. I like how playing tennis boosts the activity score on my fitness tracker, and that pairs beautifully with playing tennis with my son 2-3x per week. The best health-relationship balance depends on choosing the kind of separation or integration that makes both healthy behavior and relationships sustainable and meaningful. The specific formula varies a lot from one person to the next, but health optimization and community often work best when combined. They don't have to be a zero-sum game.
This article resonates and is prescient. I have found myself gravitating towards health optimization as the next frontier of personal self realization alongside my professional goals, seemingly inexplicably. But clearly as an unconscious gravitation towards the newly prevailing zeitgeist. Candidly, as a doctor, I am not sure this is a bad thing IF we can find a way to avoid the classism you mentioned and if we can subsidize the access to biometric data and self enhancement to the people in our country who might benefit from it most. Bonus points if we find a way that fitness can bolster a more social community. Wearables and the CMS ACCESS program should be covered benefits for Medicaid. And although the night cap has similarly died for me, I’ve wondered now about “gamifying” connectedness, committing to calling a friend or family member I haven’t previously and programming it into my expanding ai powered dashboard. I don’t know yet if we should resist this trend fully. Is it propelling a black mirroresque acceleration towards a loneliness plagued screen time obsessed dystopia? Or can it accelerate a public health and health upskilling paradigm shift?
I'm 75 and mostly don't give a shit! I have survived a multitude of experiences that should have killed me. I'm still here, relatively healthy, and my family and friends love me. What else is there when death is a certainty? The Stoics say that living well is better than living long.
I read this both grinning and contemplating in a San Francisco wine bar (drinking a nonalcoholic rose 🫠), waiting on girlfriends to arrive — a scene that felt like a quiet rebuttal to your own thesis, which I enjoyed even as you pegged me.
My father and his father both died at 64. I'm 40-something with little kids, so the math feels close, and a year ago I did what many San Franciscans do: Function panels, the Watch, the Nike/Strava/Spotify rig, the whole apparatus. My cholesterol is genuinely better for it. The gratitude is real and uncomplicated.
The complication is everything around it — and two things stuck with me.
First, the line I've drawn: I won't track sleep. With small kids it's a number I can't move yet, and I've found choosing not to know is its own kind of health.
Second, the essay you didn't quite write. The enhanced-self frame goes somewhere uniquely warping for women, because the body isn't only a system to optimize for longevity — it's also expected to manufacture more bodies. And framing fertility with the managerial mindset is maddening. Layer in the recent trad wife + concerns of global birth rates… it’s a whole other bi-product to keep an eye on.
So: thank you. For the laugh, and for the step back to think about how all this testing and tracking is quietly reshaping how we experience living, dying, and making life. Being seen might be the one number worth chasing.
I think that this, as with most things, is about finding the right balance. Taking proper care of our bodies and general health are positives for ourselves, our loved ones, and even society at large (through lowered healthcare spending).
As someone who has been Attia-pilled myself, it feels anecdotally like 75% of good health can be achieved with the simplest advice, done consistently: healthy diet, some exercise, decent sleep. Then as these interventions go deeper, you are spending more and more time and effort to achieve tiny percentage points of gain that *might* be good for you.
At a base level, I refuse to believe ALL of these things could possibly be critical for our bodies. From an evolutionary perspective, we had to be able to survive a fair amount of environmental variation, scarcity, etc. Our bodies can be just fine over a larger range of effort/performance than the maxxers would have us believe.
And last rambling thought, it always comes back to this: what is the purpose of your longevity enhancement? Is it to be in the world longer, with people and activities that you love? Or is it to merely keep playing the game of extending life even more? I don't want that extra 5 years if it costs me substantially, and those extra years will also be spent furiously trying to maximize. You never arrive at a goal or destination. This is where people need to work on some version of spiritual progression for themselves, but it seems like these health influencers often neglect that end of the discussion.
Banger essay. There is a very simple solution for people like me that are hyper social and also want to stay in shape: put the boring weights down and take up a damn sport.
The contrarian part here is that a culture can get healthier on paper while becoming thinner in spirit.
That’s what’s resonating. The problem isn’t fitness, sobriety, or wanting to live longer. The problem is when health stops being in service of life and starts becoming a second job that quietly crowds out friendship, spontaneity, and joy.
Feels to me like the real warning. A higher score isn’t always a better life.
Ironically, this comment about a higher score not always being a better life (1) got more than twice the number of likes than the next comment; and (2) looks a lot like AI to me (and Pangram put it at 100% AI with high confidence, although it and I might be wrong). Indeed, a higher score isn't always a better life!
1, Rude. 2, I didn’t use AI
It is of course possible to be active socially and still prioritize health/minimize alcohol. I'm 64 so perhaps have a different point of view since most of my friends are also drinking far less. As well, group fitness classes have a social element.
We tend to have a pretty intense bias against what we perceive as 'unnatural' solutions to things and 'enhancement' is something people tend to be quite wary of in medicine (vs, say, therapeutic uses or preventative). Derek, you tend to be an extremely thoughtful writer and you're right to focus on how much fun a night of drinks out with an old friend can be. But you're also kind of cherry-picking — even Bryan Johnson has made a post similar to you about how moments like that are what we live for — and this is one of the few times I've encountered you not really wrestling with the trade offs. That "decline of deviance" article would have been unthinkable in the 90s. Can you *imagine* someone in 1998 writing an essay saying "we'll miss teen drinking, pregnancies, smoking, and also *serial killers* because our movies will be boring?" I'm not saying I'm happy with the trade off, I'd prefer things just got better with no costs, but I'm not sure the real choice here is "live a long time or have a life worth living", though that's how you present it. I agree loneliness and selfishness are serious issues, but I'd rather think through how we address those, than present it as a necessary side effect of leading healthier lives.
Thank you for bringing up death in this essay. When I'm teaching young people (average age 30) I ask them to consider living to 150. That is not an impossibility as we discover more treatments for the maladies that kill us. The first thing they say they want from that world is the right to pull the plug when they are done, whenever they want. It isn't that they are afraid of dying. But they are like everyone else, they have a deep seated fear of living poorly. We all see the challenges of our parents as they spend years in decline. We see the aging industry keeping people alive longer to maximize the life time value of their clients (enshittification at its worst?). We see our society diminishing the value of people who are not 'peak' performers. And, we realize how precarious we are potentially being one step away from slipping through the net into homelessness.
I'm basically your age, but I'm still a little confused by this article. I admit I haven't kept up with much news over the last decade, but haven't Americans been generally getting less healthy for our entire lives? I know life expectancies recently declined in the US for the first time in decades (although I did not realize that they had since increased). Maybe people are drinking and smoking less, but obesity has skyrocketed for basically our entire lives (although there was apparently a SLIGHT reversal post-Ozempic, although not even close to the Silent Generation, which I suspect was actually the healthiest generation in terms of their lifestyle choices, even if they didn't live as long due to advances in medical tech.
I suspect this is one of those K-shaped things, where those who care about fitness are vastly more health-conscious and neurotic than they used to be (but this is still a minority of the population), but the number of people who wolf down processed foods in front of screens has probably never been higher. The Internet is a magnifier, so it enables the minority of the population that cares about fitness to hyper-optimize in a way they hadn't before (just like how the majority of people are probably reading less, but the people who read are likely reading more), but the majority of the population that doesn't exercise has probably continued to get steadily less healthy.
I don't think just eschewing smoking and alcohol by itself is making people healthier. I don't smoke or drink, but I'm autistic with ARFID, I eat terribly, and I am not healthy. I don't really think eating habits have significantly improved in the American population in general, even if hyper-optimizers are more health-conscious, but maybe I just haven't met enough Gen Z-ers in real life. I know there's that "looksmaxxing" trend that I'm probably too old to understand. If people are smoking and drinking less, it's probably just because screen addiction has become so pervasive that people have stopped doing basically ANYTHING not involving screens. Sure, some of it is good (smoking, drinking, violent crime) while some of it is very bad (working, reading, socializing). I would suspect people are drinking less BECAUSE they are socializing less, as from Bowling Alone I know that socialization in the US peaked around 1970, then declined, which is way before alcohol consumption declined. And obviously, the decline in socialization happened over exactly the same time period as the rise in obesity, so an increase in fitness leading to a decline in socialization feels spurious to me. (Ironically, anyone who is trying to optimize for health would need to optimize for socialization also, since loneliness can be as deadly as being a pack-a-day smoker or whatever, but I guess they aren't largely doing this?).
Ultimately, people are socializing less because consumerism distracts us from the things we used to do. Everyone blames it on tech and indeed, that is the largest aspect of consumerism, but the more things you buy at home in general, the more you have to maintain and the less time you have for socializing as well. Sure, baby boomers focused on collecting physical objects, while for millennials it was experiences and for Gen Z it was digital goods, but the focus on checking off a list of items to obtain or content to go through in every case was a distraction from interacting in the real world. And it didn't help, especially starting in the '90s, when people withdrew into their own worlds in public first with Walkmans, then cell phones, etc... Public spaces were increasingly privatized, first as like malls and arcades replaced lodges and community centers (which was already a step down), then they were emotionally privatized as people withdrew from other people while in public. Consumerism is the issue, and this kind of health optimization in my opinion is little more than another kind of consumerism, even if it is a healthier one.
Even though I am not healthy, I care way more now about connecting with other people in real life than I do about my physical health, although I guess improving the former would still improve the latter, even if I never learn how to properly eat unprocessed foods. If I was going to optimize anything, it would be that, but I suspect any of these things end up like the uncertainty principle, where attempting to measure them makes them somehow less tangible...
You can eat processed food and be totally healthy, the reasons why people think it’s bad are kind of confused, and exercise has a way larger effect than diet. As long as you’re getting a healthy mix of macros and not eating too much you’re gucci. So much of this health optimizing stuff is about eking out the last 1% or just downright counterproductive (ice baths are my favorite example). If you exercise moderately, don’t just eat sugar, and try to get mostly good sleep you will get nearly all of the positive health effects of this stuff without turning yourself into an anxious wreck.
The turn to "health promotion" (rather than disease prevention) started in public health in the 1970s and ramped up in the more conservative and individualistic 1980s. This was fertile soil for the tech innovations of recent years. I grew up in the Jane Fonda era, and believe me, we were counting leg-lift reps, aerobics minutes, and pounds lost! The tech-based self-monitoring is certainly more intensive, and I do think this is to some degree a qualitative as well as quantitative shift. But it didn't come out of nowhere. And vitamin supplements are a good example of pop-medical health promotion that has been around for a long time. Meanwhile, progressive reformers have long criticized formal medicine for only addressing disease and debility after the fact rather than offering preventives. I don't think the problem here is the turn to prevention rather than cure (and if anything, formal medicine could be paying a little more attention to prevention). It's the minute-to-minute self-maximization, based on metrics that are measurable rather than metrics we would choose in an ideal world, and the distraction, dependence, and sometimes anxiety that are side effects of these health-promotion measures. If we were more focused on environment-based health promotion, like pollution control, walkable cities, and accessible, healthy groceries, I think we'd feel less hesitation about health promotion as a cultural ideal.
Great piece Derek. It seems to me the self improvement obsession (and I have been a participant in ways myself) is a microcosm of the larger macro trend of a self obsessed society across the board. A lot of your work over the last several years highlights the different trends that lean towards the individual versus the collective. Call it atomization or whatever you like, it’s clearly not a great thing.
As a second thought, I still notice you circling, circling the world of faith as you contemplate these topics. When you’re ready, come on in, the water is fine 😉
Not to completely miss the point of the post, but….you can track the kind of social interactions you know are good for you too 😬
An old married couple that schedules intimacy, or keeps track of it monthly and makes time for it “to keep their numbers up” is still benefiting from the intimacy. And they’re getting a meaningful signal if the numbers drop off, which can at least catalyze a conversation.
Another good social measurable is a Priya Parker style commitment to host people, or go out, a certain number of times a month or year. Even if the thing that makes you do it is an arbitrary external measure, you know it’s worth doing. And if you don’t track it, for a lot of people it doesn’t happen.
Honestly, I’d live a fuller and happier life if Oura’s next software update included social goals…
As a 64-year old who spends too much time reviewing my cycling data on Strava, I can appreciate the good and the bad of obsession with health metrics. On the one hand, the availability of data makes it easier to set goals and measure performance improvement, while also (hopefully) providing a basis for increased self-esteem. On the other hand, obsession with data can be, well, obsessive, and can easily rob an activity of some of its simple pleasure. In my case, an afternoon ride on a nice day can become a source of depression if my power numbers are too low.
As with technology generally, the easy availability of health data appears to provide new opportunities to optimize our execution of tasks, in this case the task of maintaining good health. At the same time, adding to the list of tasks we feel obligated to optimize creates more responsibilities, which crowds out yet more of the activities that may make life worthwhile.
I find it increasingly hard to extract what is good about new technologies while avoiding the temptation to over-use them in a way that creates a net negative effect on life quality. Maintaining this balanced perspective is difficult, especially when much of our economy is built on destroying that balance. I am already concerned about by dependence on Claude, which I only started using a couple of months ago.
For me, with or without data, a focus on health gives me the sense that I can control an important aspect of my life as the world seems increasingly off the rails, even if that sense of control is ultimately illusory. Plus, importantly, most of the time I would rather go for a solo bike ride than go to a party. The availability of ride data may add interest to that activity that has the effect of reinforcing my introverted tendencies, but I am Ok with that, and there are many worse things I could be doing.
I think some of this depends on whether we integrate life priorities or create boundaries between them. Take another example, work-life balance: some people are satisfied with treating these areas as totally separate. Others integrate: they find community in their co-workers, start a family business, create a side hustle with their partner or kid, etc. Which approach you like depends on your identity, influences, beliefs and circumstances.
Similar with health: some people thrive by sticking with clear boundaries and giving protected time to exercise, nutrition and recovery. Others do better by weaving health into the rest of life. For example I exercise with many of my friends both in-person and through online communities. I like how playing tennis boosts the activity score on my fitness tracker, and that pairs beautifully with playing tennis with my son 2-3x per week. The best health-relationship balance depends on choosing the kind of separation or integration that makes both healthy behavior and relationships sustainable and meaningful. The specific formula varies a lot from one person to the next, but health optimization and community often work best when combined. They don't have to be a zero-sum game.
Surgeon, self proclaimed “enhanced self” acolyte and whoop wearer here. (Also fellow elderly millennial apparently?? Oof.)
This article resonates and is prescient. I have found myself gravitating towards health optimization as the next frontier of personal self realization alongside my professional goals, seemingly inexplicably. But clearly as an unconscious gravitation towards the newly prevailing zeitgeist. Candidly, as a doctor, I am not sure this is a bad thing IF we can find a way to avoid the classism you mentioned and if we can subsidize the access to biometric data and self enhancement to the people in our country who might benefit from it most. Bonus points if we find a way that fitness can bolster a more social community. Wearables and the CMS ACCESS program should be covered benefits for Medicaid. And although the night cap has similarly died for me, I’ve wondered now about “gamifying” connectedness, committing to calling a friend or family member I haven’t previously and programming it into my expanding ai powered dashboard. I don’t know yet if we should resist this trend fully. Is it propelling a black mirroresque acceleration towards a loneliness plagued screen time obsessed dystopia? Or can it accelerate a public health and health upskilling paradigm shift?
In any case— amazing article as always.
I'm 75 and mostly don't give a shit! I have survived a multitude of experiences that should have killed me. I'm still here, relatively healthy, and my family and friends love me. What else is there when death is a certainty? The Stoics say that living well is better than living long.
I read this both grinning and contemplating in a San Francisco wine bar (drinking a nonalcoholic rose 🫠), waiting on girlfriends to arrive — a scene that felt like a quiet rebuttal to your own thesis, which I enjoyed even as you pegged me.
My father and his father both died at 64. I'm 40-something with little kids, so the math feels close, and a year ago I did what many San Franciscans do: Function panels, the Watch, the Nike/Strava/Spotify rig, the whole apparatus. My cholesterol is genuinely better for it. The gratitude is real and uncomplicated.
The complication is everything around it — and two things stuck with me.
First, the line I've drawn: I won't track sleep. With small kids it's a number I can't move yet, and I've found choosing not to know is its own kind of health.
Second, the essay you didn't quite write. The enhanced-self frame goes somewhere uniquely warping for women, because the body isn't only a system to optimize for longevity — it's also expected to manufacture more bodies. And framing fertility with the managerial mindset is maddening. Layer in the recent trad wife + concerns of global birth rates… it’s a whole other bi-product to keep an eye on.
So: thank you. For the laugh, and for the step back to think about how all this testing and tracking is quietly reshaping how we experience living, dying, and making life. Being seen might be the one number worth chasing.
I think that this, as with most things, is about finding the right balance. Taking proper care of our bodies and general health are positives for ourselves, our loved ones, and even society at large (through lowered healthcare spending).
As someone who has been Attia-pilled myself, it feels anecdotally like 75% of good health can be achieved with the simplest advice, done consistently: healthy diet, some exercise, decent sleep. Then as these interventions go deeper, you are spending more and more time and effort to achieve tiny percentage points of gain that *might* be good for you.
At a base level, I refuse to believe ALL of these things could possibly be critical for our bodies. From an evolutionary perspective, we had to be able to survive a fair amount of environmental variation, scarcity, etc. Our bodies can be just fine over a larger range of effort/performance than the maxxers would have us believe.
And last rambling thought, it always comes back to this: what is the purpose of your longevity enhancement? Is it to be in the world longer, with people and activities that you love? Or is it to merely keep playing the game of extending life even more? I don't want that extra 5 years if it costs me substantially, and those extra years will also be spent furiously trying to maximize. You never arrive at a goal or destination. This is where people need to work on some version of spiritual progression for themselves, but it seems like these health influencers often neglect that end of the discussion.
We should simply cure hangovers
Banger essay. There is a very simple solution for people like me that are hyper social and also want to stay in shape: put the boring weights down and take up a damn sport.