‘Longevity for the Lazy’ argues that Americans die of preventable heart disease and cancer at unacceptable rates – limiting our societal lifespan. The causes are twofold; Americans tend towards laziness and are resistant to preventive interventions.
The book doesn’t stigmatize laziness. It explains that laziness is an intrinsic trait of the human species that has evolutionary benefits. Instead, the book focuses on the harm imparted by societal resistance to contemporary preventive measures.
A large portion of Americans remain at risk for cancer and heart disease by not taking risk-reducing medicines and/or seeking cancer screening. After quantifying the size of this phenomenon, ‘Longevity for the Lazy’ explores its roots. Amongst them are an aversion to the sick identity; suspicion of the medical system; denial of risk due to the stealthy nature of prevalent diseases; and paralysis brought on by a confusing medical landscape.
Acknowledging that laziness is a powerful feature of our culture allows ‘Longevity for the Lazy’ to categorize its recommendations based on effort and impact.
A longevity guide for the common person, 'Longevity for the Lazy,' provides evidence-based, low-effort lifespan-prolonging recommendations for those not motivated to lose weight, diet, exercise, or significantly change their existing lifestyle.
‘Longevity for the Lazy’ argues that Americans die of preventable heart disease and cancer at unacceptable rates – limiting our societal lifespan. The causes are twofold; Americans tend towards laziness and are resistant to preventive interventions.
The book doesn’t stigmatize laziness. It explains that laziness is an intrinsic trait of the human species that has evolutionary benefits. Instead, the book focuses on the harm imparted by societal resistance to contemporary preventive measures.
A large portion of Americans remain at risk for cancer and heart disease by not taking risk-reducing medicines and/or seeking cancer screening. After quantifying the size of this phenomenon, ‘Longevity for the Lazy’ explores its roots. Amongst them are an aversion to the sick identity; suspicion of the medical system; denial of risk due to the stealthy nature of prevalent diseases; and paralysis brought on by a confusing medical landscape.
Acknowledging that laziness is a powerful feature of our culture allows ‘Longevity for the Lazy’ to categorize its recommendations based on effort and impact.
A longevity guide for the common person, 'Longevity for the Lazy,' provides evidence-based, low-effort lifespan-prolonging recommendations for those not motivated to lose weight, diet, exercise, or significantly change their existing lifestyle.
Introduction
I have been interested in longevity my entire life. I’ve read all
the books I could find on how to cheat death. The more I
read, however, the more lost I felt. While there are countless
books on living longer, none seems to offer a basic framework
on the subject as you might find in an educational textbook or
reference work. Instead, most books spend a little time on
high-level theory before quickly diving into a new and exciting
diet, lifestyle pitch, or both.
Language offers a counterpoint. I have studied several
languages in my life. Each time, I began by learning some
basic rules. Afterward, I expanded my knowledge of the
language by adding more nuanced rules, idioms, and
vocabulary. Even when tenses or syntax became difficult, I was
always able to fall back on the basics to understand context. I
had a mental model upon which to build.
“A mental model is an interrelated set of beliefs that shape
how a person forms expectations for the future and
understands the way the world works.”1
Without a foundational mental model on longevity, I couldn’t
easily assimilate new information as I discovered it. For me, the
promise of increased longevity existed as a disorganized jumble
of ideas. I needed a guide to navigate the topic, and to
separate truth from fiction. It was not until well after becoming
a doctor that I began to have enough understanding to
organize my thoughts on the ways we can live a healthy life
for as long as possible.
What are the basic rules about life, death, the human
condition, societal behavior, scientific discovery, and longevity?
How do public health, lifestyles, medicine, and belief systems
impact longevity in our current society?
This book is designed to answer these questions for you. It
seeks to arm you with a contemporary mental model of how
humans create longevity in individuals and society. The
framework will be yours to help you assess new interventions,
pitches, and ideas as you move forward in your longevity
journey.
After introducing you to the Longevity Mental Model, I will tell
you what it requires of us, humans alive in the 2020s, to
maximize our healthy time alive. You will see that the model
doesn’t require much uncomfortable work. Optimal longevity is
available to even the laziest among us.
Why Should I Be Your Guide?
My background is that of a lifelong United States Army
physician. After medical school and internship, I practiced as a
general practitioner, flight surgeon, and dive medical officer with
the Army’s Special Forces (SF). I deployed frequently, learning
the crafts of disease prevention, public health, primary care,
and combat casualty care.
After developing the medical plan for Northern Iraq in the
2003 war, I jumped into Iraq with a thousand other
paratroopers. I was the Task Force North Surgeon, treating
combat wounded for months. In this role, I cared for many
soldiers on the worst days of their lives. With a team of
combat medics, I treated those affected by mines, rockets, small
arms fire, and improvised explosive devices. I remember each
of these soldiers with more clarity than any of the thousands
of noncombat patients I treated in my later career.
While these patients occupy vivid parts of my memory, the
patient who had the most effect on my life was not one I
encountered in combat. Instead, I met him on a remote
deployment prior to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was
the doc for a small group of SF soldiers conducting
humanitarian work in Africa.
On a beautiful day in a beautiful setting, I was called upon to
resuscitate a thirty-seven-year-old soldier known for his
unparalleled military skills and outstanding physical fitness. He
had complained of chest pain and then collapsed suddenly.
Working with my medics and his team, I did all that I could to
revive him. Sadly, our efforts failed, and he died in front of us.
I learned later that he had died of a massive heart attack
caused by widespread atherosclerosis in his heart vessels.
Neither he nor anyone else knew of this condition.
This death gave me the same feeling that I would later feel on
September 11, 2001. A sneak attack and a sucker punch; it
woke me from a false sense of security. I knew that death
existed, of course. But, in this soldier’s death, I encountered a
mortality moment—a glimpse of the reality that we are
vulnerable to hidden enemies—terrorists lurking inside our
bodies.
I specialized in cardiology to learn how to defeat the hidden
threats of prevalent diseases and how to sidestep common
disease-driven ambushes so that we can die the way we
envision—as beings completing a proper arc of life, dying in our
old age. I offer these lessons to you.
Serving in the Army trained me to become a primary care
provider, an SF battalion surgeon, and a combat brigade
surgeon. The Army also provided me with training in internal
medicine, cardiology, public health, and health system leadership.
Additionally, it offered me a specialized education in how to
execute military strategy. I took keenly to this knowledge,
earning awards for strategic thinking and accepting jobs in
strategic planning.
As the oft-quoted warrior and philosopher Sun Tzu noted, a
successful campaign requires a realistic and critical view of
yourself as much as it does of the enemy. That is why this
book is for all human beings, for laziness is our condition. It is
from this vantage point that I choose to find the keys to
longevity.
Our Campaign Plan: Offensive Weapons and Defensive
Measures
Specialized military knowledge is not required to learn from my
experience. If you do have military experience, however, you
may recognize my military roots. The book follows a structure
that one might encounter in a campaign plan, which is defined
as “a connected series of operations designed to bring about a
particular result.”2 Word choice or writing style might betray
my background. Most importantly, you will see that I have
developed a view of death and illness as enemies and our
passage through life as a conflict to navigate. You will notice a
recurring theme of balance and tension between offensive
weapons and defensive measures to defeat them.
I will dive deeper into offensive weapons and defensive
measures in Chapter 11. For now, however, you should simply
know that offensive weapons are specific interventions targeting
known, common, and high-risk enemies. They generally consist
of vaccines, medicines, and screening technology.
Defensive measures correct unhealthiness in general. You will
associate defensive measures with healthy habits. You will
recognize them as actions you already associate with
healthiness: eating well and exercising often, for example. If only
one approach is to be used, it should be offense. I do not,
however, recommend a unilateral approach. A well-executed
campaign plan incorporates both approaches.
How to Navigate This Book
Longevity for the Lazy is composed of six parts. Part I, “Our
Enemies and Ourselves,” is devoted to an education on our
enemies—the main diseases that kill us. It also seeks to evaluate
the human species to understand our strengths and
weaknesses. In this portion, you will learn that humans are lazy
by nature and evolution.
Part II, “Lessons from the Past: The Longevity Mental Model,”
the framework that was missing in my education and
worldview, assesses the lessons available in human history that
can inform a successful forward-moving strategy. It is designed
to convince you that despite our inherent laziness, we have
overcome natural causes of death to continuously increase our
lifespan. This concept is presented as a virtuous cycle repeating
through decades, enabling ever-increasing lifespans. The
Longevity Mental Model offers you a way of thinking that will
endure even as longevity recommendations change.
Definition of a Virtuous Cycle
Merriam-Webster defines a virtuous cycle as a chain of events
in which one desirable occurrence leads to another, which
further promotes the first occurrence and so on, resulting in a
continuous process of improvement.3
Part III, “A Campaign Plan for Longevity,” describes, on a
theoretical level, what we, as a lazy society, must do to
maximize our healthy time alive.
Part IV, “Campaign Update,” assesses where we stand in this
generation’s efforts to optimize our longevity. It provides analysis
of current strengths and weaknesses.
Part V, “A New Strategy for the Lazy,” dives into details,
providing you with low-work actions you need to take to live
for as long as possible. If the theory and philosophy of a
Longevity Mental Model is of no interest to you and you want
to start your longevity journey immediately, skip ahead to Part
Five.
The final section of this book, Part VI, “Forever Tools,”
acknowledges that all longevity tools have a limited lifespan. It
tells you how we can forever move in cadence with science
and technology to maximize our longevity.
Longevity for the Lazy Is Designed for the Lazy Reader
Acknowledging the existence of human laziness required me to
keep the chapters of this work short so you can read them
easily, in five to ten minutes each. Each chapter has three key
messages presented, as a review, at the end. Skip ahead to
these “Take Home Messages” if the chapter content bores you,
comes off as too theoretical, or simply if you want to save
time.
I have also included boxes of information and plenty of
graphics to explain concepts. I have used lists and bulleted
content where possible. I’ve used footnotes rather than
endnotes, so you don’t have to flip to the end of the book to
identify the references for important assertions. Even so, don’t
let the footnotes distract you. They only provide citations to the
source material. Read on and stop only if you want to check
the origin of an assertion.
Finally, for the laziest among us, I have provided a CliffsNotes
summary of the book at the end. You may choose to tear this
section out and take it with you. My goal is for you to be
enriched by this work, to learn from it, and to ensure that you
retain its key messages so that you may pass them along to
your loved ones. The summary is designed to facilitate that
goal.
I wish you the best of health moving forward.
1 Jodi Summers Holtrop et al., “The Importance of Mental
Models in Implementation Science,” Frontiers in Public Health 9
(July 2021): 680316, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.680316.
2 Merriam-Webster, “campaign” accessed May 21, 2024,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/campaign
3 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “virtuous circle,” accessed May 21,
2024,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/virtuous%20circle.
Who wouldn't like the idea of living a long life and being lazy about it? That's what the title of this book implies. While it isn't truly about doing nothing and still living for a long time, the author does have the idea that we don't have to work too hard to improve our lifespan.
The biggest statement in the book that I agreed with was basically the idea that we should do the best we can. That makes sense to me - at some point, if the effort to have a longer, healthier life makes a person miserable, then it isn't really worth it anymore. One other interesting idea was the difference between focusing just on high-risk versus focuses on people with low or moderate risk of certain conditions. Obviously people with high risk need to be taken care of, but the idea that some preventative measures would benefit the population that was lower risk as well, because by sheer numbers, many people in lower risk categories could still develop diseases or conditions. I also liked the division of life into stages based on what we need the most protection from (infectiou disease, degenerative disease, etc).
I'm still not completely in agreement with the author on every viewpoint; for example, I think the author emphasizes treatment for prevention more than lifestyle change. However, anything is better than nothing, so if someone prefers the idea of supplements or medication over the "harder work" of exercise and other lifestyle changes, then it can still prolong life.
If you are someone who doesn't like the idea of sticking to a rigid diet or exercise regimen, but still wants to be able to improve your lifespan using other methods to prevent diseases, then this book just might be worth the read for you.