Plan for Your Healthspan

BY DAN COSTA

went to a doctor myself. Call it luck, more likely laziness, but I simply didn’t have the need. The incident in the jungle showed me the second half of my life would need a little more attention if there would, indeed, be a whole second half. I needed a doctor.

nutrition are the real secret to his success. Eti Ben Simon’s work at the UC Berkeley Center for Human Sleep Science shares her insights on how to sleep better. Dr. Beth Pegg Frates explains how the degrading of social connections may have been one of the most insidious effects of the COVID lockdown.

When I turned 40, I vacationed in Dominica, a relatively tourist-free island in the Caribbean. It has beaches to sit on, reefs to snorkel, and wild jungle trails to explore. One hike led down a steep hillside over rocks slick with rain that never stops to a stunning 200-foot waterfall. The trek down was treacherous, but it was the climb back up that broke me. By the time I made it to even ground, my heart was pounding, my lungs felt filled with water, and my vision started to cloud over. It was at that moment I realized I was no longer young. Also, I was going to die, possibly right here, right now, on the forest floor.

Of course, I did not die. However, I did hold up our hiking group for 15 minutes while I caught my breath. I also had to admit to my partner that she was in much better shape than me. It was embarrassing but revealing. Although I was diligent about taking my son to the pediatrician, it had been many years since I

At the time, I was working as a tech journalist, so I wanted a high-tech doctor. One Medical was a start-up out of San Francisco promising a new kind of healthcare—online scheduling, offices across the country, and they even had an app! I browsed through the available general practitioners and picked one (mostly) at random.

In our first meeting, he explained the five pillars of health: Not smoking, exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress management. After the pandemic, he added the importance of maintaining social connections. At every visit, those are the general areas he checks on. He is still my doctor today. When it came time for Worth to create a Health and Wellness issue, doing a story on those six pillars seemed like a great place to start. Worth found an expert in each of the six categories to share the latest research. Lane Norton certainly looks like a fitness expert, and he is a worldchampion bodybuilder, but his insights into energy balance and

Doing this issue also gave me the opportunity to talk to Dr. Peter Attia, Author of the upcoming book Outlive: the Science and Art of Living Longer. I’m a long-time listener of Attia’s podcast The Drive, where he talks to medical colleagues about topics like “The Metabolic Effects of Fructose” and “Understanding apoB, LDL-C, Lp(a), and insulin as risk factors for cardiovascular disease.” It is amazing.

Within these pages, you will find the best medical advice in the world. At the same time, living longer and better isn’t about medical advice. As Attia explains, “So much of what it takes to live a longer and better life does not actually require a physician.” Medical interventions are essential, but the actual practice of living better is on the individual. Knowing what the six pillars of health are is one thing, but holding them up is another. And that, ultimately, is on you and me.

— Dan Costa EDITORIAL DIRECTOR dan.costa@worth.com

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