Dr. Peter Attia And The Advent Of Medicine 3.0

Peter Attia is trying to help everyone live to 100. 

Even if the name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, it’s likely that you’ve stumbled onto Attia in some shape or form. You might have read his advice in Tim Ferriss’ book, Tools of Titans or seen him on National Geographic’s documentary, Limitless. You may have seen him quoted in articles from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Men’s Health or listened to him on a podcast, whether that’s The Joe Rogan Experience or The Doctor’s Farmacy. 

Either way, one thing is evident: Attia’s omnipresence is a sign that we’re entering a new era of health — one that’s focused on having everyone live healthier lives, for longer.

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The rise of Peter Attia

Who is Attia, exactly? First and foremost, he’s a doctor. Dr. Attia received his medical degree from the Stanford University School of Medicine and trained for five years at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in general surgery. (1)

It was during his residency that Dr. Attia started having a recurring nightmare, which he describes in his book, Outlive:

“In the dream, I’m trying to catch the falling eggs. I'm standing on a sidewalk in a big, dirty city that looks a lot like Baltimore, holding a padded basket and looking up. Every few seconds, I spot an egg whizzing down at me from above, and I run to try to catch it in the basket. They're coming at me fast, and I'm doing my best to catch them, running all over the place with my basket outstretched like an outfielders glove. But I can't catch them all. Some of them — many of them — smack the ground, splattering yellow yolk all over my shoes and medical scrubs. I'm desperate for this to stop.”

Reading this now, it might seem obvious that this dream was an allegory for the frustration Dr. Attia felt about the state of the healthcare system in the U.S. — a system that focuses almost entirely on treating problems as they arise, rather than taking a preventive approach to health. 

But, at the time, Dr. Attia didn’t connect the dots. All he knew was that he was feeling discouraged from seeing what seemed like a never-ending stream of sick, dying patients come into the hospital. As a result, Dr. Attia decided to leave medicine and joined McKinsey & Company, where he worked as a consultant on healthcare and financial system problems. (2)

Dr. Attia’s move away from medicine changed when he suddenly came face-to-face with his own health problems. As he describes in a TED Talk from 2013, he had always adhered to the conventional wisdom dispensed by healthcare practitioners in America: eat well and exercise. 

Despite following this advice, Dr. Attia noticed that he was starting to gain weight, which turned out to be due to metabolic syndrome, a precursor to diabetes in which a person becomes insulin resistant. 

That’s when Dr. Attia realized that there was more to explore about the root cause of his own health issues. This is around the time his dream of falling eggs finally started to make sense to him and kicked off his ‘second’ career in medicine — this time, in a slightly different direction. 

With his newfound interest in going beyond the surface level of medicine, Dr. Attia co-founded the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI) with Gary Taubes to promote  more high-quality, nutrition-focused research. He also spent two years as a surgical oncology fellow at the National Cancer Institute, where his research focused on immune-based therapies for melanoma, and he started a blog called the "The Eating Academy" that mostly focused on topics related to nutrition, physical activity, and longevity. (3, 4)

All of these pursuits led him to eventually founding his own private clinic, which is today known as Early Medical. The goal of his practice: to take a drastically different approach to healthcare by focusing on principles of what Dr. Attia has coined Medicine 3.0.

Introducing Medicine 3.0

According to Dr. Attia, there has been an evolution of medicine with three distinct phases: Medicine 1.0, Medicine 2.0, and Medicine 3.0. Here’s how he describes each phase: 

Medicine 1.0

This is the phase of medicine when the idea of science didn’t exist. The process of formulating hypotheses, designing experiments to test those hypotheses, and then measuring the results against the predictions was something that didn’t exist. That’s why, any time something happened, you had to come up with an explanation for it that wasn’t linked to any scientific fact 

— leading to crazy ideas like bad humors and spirits causing sickness.

Medicine 2.0

Medicine started to change in the late 17th century with Francis Bacon. There were three breakthroughs that defined this era of medicine, which include: 

1. The advent and acceptance of germ theory
2. The process of scientific thinking
3. The statistical machinery to enable randomized control trials

Thanks to these developments, Medicine 2.0 introduced the discovery of things like penicillin and antibiotics — and that’s where medicine has been up to this point. According to Dr. Attia: 

“It’s been very good at dealing with acute conditions. You get hit by a car, you have a life threatening infection, you suffer an MI, a myocardial infarction, and you want to make sure someone doesn’t die, and you want to keep somebody alive as long as possible in that acute phase. Medicine 2.0 is amazing for those things.” 

However, he believes we’ve hit a plateau with this phase. “We have reached the limits of medicine 2.0 capacity, and if longevity is something we are aspiring for, we need a new strategy,” says Dr. Attia. 

Medicine 3.0

Enter: Medicine 3.0. The biggest difference between Medicine 2.0 and Medicine 3.0 is that the latter pays far more attention to maintaining healthspan, rather than just extending lifespan. To be clear: we’re currently in the transition of moving into Medicine 3.0. Whether we arrive, according to Dr. Attia, is predicated on whether we can:

1. Move toward evidence informed vs. evidence based guidelines
2. Adopt early preventative measures for chronic conditions (not acute conditions)
3. Take a highly personalized approach to health

But the question is: who is going to move us toward these lofty goals? 

Why younger generations are at the heart of Medicine 3.0

As it turns out, Dr. Attia isn’t the only one eager for the advent of Medicine 3.0. It’s clear that there’s a growing culture and interest around this idea of aging better.

Whether Dr. Attia is responsible for starting this transition or is simply at the forefront of a movement that’s been itching to erupt for the past several years is unclear. What we do know for sure is that the newer generations — specifically Millennials and Gen Zers — are at the heart of this health revolution. 

A study by McKinsey found that Millennials prioritize health and wellness more than other generations. This trend is set to continue, with 35% of Millennials believing they will prioritize health more in the coming years, compared with 29% for other generations, on average.

Similarly, a study by the American Psychiatric Association found that, like Millennials, Gen Zers are more likely to prioritize eating healthy and getting regular exercise than previous generations. The latter are also more likely to prioritize their mental health, with Gen Z  being more likely to have received treatment or gone to therapy (37%) compared to Gen X’ers (26%), Baby Boomers (22%), and the Silent Generation (15%).

We can speculate all day about why the younger generations are so much more health conscious than prior generations, but the truth is that it’s the culmination of a million factors. 

Perhaps it’s because we live during a time when life expectancies are globally at an all-time high — driving a desire to make those extra years count. Or maybe it’s because we live in a world with potentially catastrophic, existential threats looming over us, and we want to exert control over one of the few things we can: our health. (5)

It’s also possible that Millennials are watching the effects of chronic illness in their aging parents and, combined with skyrocketing costs of healthcare, are determined to not follow that same trajectory. (6)

Whatever the reasons, what we know for sure is that there's a demographic that’s eager to usher in the new era of medicine  — and they’re happy to have Dr. Attia at the forefront of this transition. 

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Looking ahead 

A big question, of course, is whether we’ll see the shift to Medicine 3.0 in our lifetime. After all, it took us 300 years to go from Medicine 1.0 to Medicine 2.0. Will it take us that long to shift from Medicine 2.0 to Medicine 3.0? 

“We’re clearly not yet in Medicine 3.0 yet,” says Dr. Attia. “But we’re now in that transition and what I’m arguing is that we should be accelerating that.” And how fast that transition goes is going to depend on how quickly people adopt and demand change. 

Given the popularity of Dr. Attia’s work, along with the efforts of other notable figures in the space — from individuals like Dr. David Sinclair to entities like XPRIZE — as well as increased investments into longevity-focused research, it seems possible that change may be just around the corner.