Dr. Peter Attia wants you to live as long as humanly possible. The Texas-based physician, who trained at Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and the National Institutes of Health, has built an empire on preaching the science of longevity, aiming to help people live not only longer, but also healthier. That goal guides Early Medical, Attia’s members-only virtual program, which promises its clients a personalized playbook for tailoring their sleep, nutrition, exercise, medication regimens, and even emotions in pursuit of long-lasting wellness. Those who don’t have the $2,500 required to join can also—like a million people before them—consult Attia’s best-selling book on longevity, Outlive, or listen to his show The Drive, which consistently ranks among Apple’s top 10 health and science podcasts. Everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Chris Hemsworth looks to Attia for advice on how to live longer and better.
What seems to make Attia popular is the alluring promise of “optimization,” or building a lifestyle perfectly calibrated for peak physical form. He has helped popularize recent wellness trends—he may be the reason your friend is on a high-protein diet—and is fanatical about avoiding the processed-food-heavy standard American diet and getting enough sleep and exercise—specifically, a mix of strength, cardio, and stability training. In Attia’s world, every workout, every meal, every bedtime is a chance to set yourself on the path toward living, if not forever, as close as a mere mortal can hope to get.
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Write to Jamie Ducharme at jamie.ducharme@time.com