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Notes -
I'm looking for a chart which appears in Peter Attia's book Outlive. The chart shows that the only reason that life expectancy in the U.S. has increased since 1920 is because we eliminated 8 infectious diseases via vaccination, antibiotics, and sanitation.
I want to find the original source and study for this chart. The author of the study is Robert J. Gordon.
Where is it? Why is this impossible to find? Google, you suck.
The references in Outlive lists it as being from the book "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War" by Gordon. You can find it on libgen. It appears to be an updated version of a study from the seventies by John and Sonja McKinlay. Maybe it is this study?
Is Outlive worth reading? I haven't gotten around to it, but I heard Attia say he didn't want himself be part of the book, but the publisher more or less forced him to. I'm a bit fed up with pop science books, but I would probably read this one at some point, if the personal anecdotes aren't egregious and platitudes about the importance of the subject matter are kept to a minimum.
p.s. Thanks for the link!
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I think he has a valuable message: If you want to be healthy and active at age 80, you need to be strong, lean, and fit at age 40. There's a strong correlation between VO2 max and muscle mass in middle age and overall life expectancy.
He also has some interesting things to stay about different blood tests that can predict heart attack risk much better than a standard lipid panel. It's something I will be discussing with my doctor as I have hereditary high cholesterol and my dad is on statins.
That said, I'm currently about halfway through and I'm starting to get into skim mode.
He posted a Reddit tier chart about the Dunning-Kruger effect, ignoring the actual study and posting an exaggerated version from Wikipedia. Shame, shame!
He is also extremely hand-wavy at times. For example, he wants people to undergo frequent colonoscopies, despite acknowledging the lack of good evidence in their favor. His response: we need MORE colonoscopies and also ask your doctor if he's ever punctured anyone's colon. Another episode of handwaving occurs when discussing functional stability (for example squat form). He says its very important, but doesn't say anything about how it can be achieved. Apparently his own squat form was fixed by a wündergirl named Beth. According to Beth, there are three types of breathing, all of which are wrong and need to be corrected.
I'm with Hanania here. This book is about 2000% too long. Should be about 20-30 pages.
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