Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity

“The reason why goes back to my dream about the falling eggs. In short, it had finally dawned on me that the only way to solve the problem was not to get better at catching the eggs. Instead, we needed to try to stop the guy who was throwing them. We had to figure out how to get to the top of the building, find the guy, and take him out.”

Attia begins Outlive with a reoccurring dream he had while he was a cancer surgical resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital because it embodies the crux of his book: Longevity is about The Importance of Living Better for Longer and not just longer. In Attia’s dream, catching the “eggs” represents removing tumors or cancerous cells, which helps patients live longer. However, these patients often do not live better since cancer treatment comes with other side effects and the cancer often returns (see Chapter 8). Attia likens this situation to the eggs inevitably hitting the ground. Attia vehemently disagrees with the notion that modern medicine just needs to get better at catching cancer (or catching the eggs). Instead, he believes we need to focus on early detection and prevention.

“But in every case, we are intervening at the wrong point in time, well after the disease has taken hold, and often when it’s already too late—when the eggs are already dropping.”

This passage highlights one key theme of Attia’s book: The Failures of Modern Medicine (Medicine 2.0). Despite decades of trying, modern medicine fails to stop most people from dying of the Four Horsemen (metabolic dysfunction, heart disease, cancer, and neurogenerative diseases).