Agile and Physical Health - Part 1 - Beginning

"It doesn't take much to convince us that we are smart and healthy, but it takes a lot of facts to convince us of the opposite." - Dan Gilbert

Dec 23, 2024

When we are young, there is so much we take for granted about our health. Even though I worked in numerous nursing homes to pay for undergraduate school, I can still look back and recognize an abundance of attitudes and beliefs with which I shrouded myself from the fact that my health would deteriorate as I got older.

Having walked this path for many years now, I've arrived at an age where I'm now observing many of my more clueless peers don a stunned countenance when they can no longer deny the evidence that their bodies have begun to betray them in ways they didn't think possible. The assumption that loosing the extra 30 pounds they've been carrying for as many years would be as easy when they are 60 as it might have been when they were 20 makes a tremendous thud when it lands on the cold, hard floor of facts, GLP-1's notwithstanding. It isn't just the weight. It's everything else the biological system has had to deal with over time. GLP-1's don't clear clogged arteries, repair damaged joints, or reverse osteoporosis. With the aging human body, things fail slowly and then all the sudden.

Over the past five or six years, what had been an intellectual understanding in my youth has become more of a direct experience to my 60 year old self. Beyond the aches and pains that have become more persistent, there were other signals telling me that I had crossed into a phase of life where the buffers to injury and systemic imbalance are less robust and the margins for recovery are thinner.

Science affirms my observations. Recent research^1,2 claims to have identified two major shifts in our biochemical health. The first occurs in our mid-40's and the second in our early 60's.

“Most people think of aging as occurring gradually, constantly, and linearly,” senior study author Michael Snyder, PhD, a professor of genetics and director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University, told Health.
But “we’re not just changing gradually over time; there are some really dramatic changes,” Snyder said in a news release. “It turns out the mid-40s is a time of dramatic change, as is the early 60s. And that’s true no matter what class of molecules you look at.”³

From the perspective of my physical health, I'm in trouble. Not hole-in-the-hull or dead-in-the-water trouble, but listing hard to port trouble. For the past decade I've been sailing close to the wind while working to avoid crossing the Type 2 diabetic line. The recent set of comprehensive blood tests show the line has been crossed. Unfortunately, my strategy and tactics over the past ten years are no longer sufficient to work the sails on this boat. Fortunately, it has been demonstrated this diagnosis can be reversed, but I need help.

Last Spring I decided to make understanding the changes I'm experiencing my new full-time job and I set out to complete a list of medical test aimed at a better understanding of the current state and possible future risks. More recently, I signed up for Dr. Peter Attia's Early Medicine program. It's taken me two months of daily effort to work through all 12 modules of the Early Medicine program and I'm still working through the supplemental content. In hindsight, I'd have to say I merely skimmed the material. There are mountains of information organized within a set of frameworks defined by Dr. Attia.

Much of the information is biochemical and as such has reignited my interest in biochemistry. The program has challenged me to leverage every ounce of what I learned for my undergraduate degrees in biochemistry and cell biology. The depth and breadth of what's been discovered in the past forty years is truly breathtaking. The program also presents considerable anatomical and physiological information essential for understanding the modules on exercise. Other broad areas of inquiry and evaluation include sleep, nutrition, medications and supplements, and emotional health.

I was drawn to the Early Medicine program after listening to Dr. Attia's podcasts for the past several years. I greatly appreciate Dr. Attia's thorough and pragmatic approach to exploring the science around two pillars of his approach to health and longevity, which he refers to as lifespan (how long you live) and healthspan (how well you live, your quality of life.) What good is living to 100 if the last thirty years are spent hobbled by illness and propped up by machines and medication? Better to take charge of your health now and coordinate healthspan with lifespan so that your marginal decade is as healthy as it is long. It's a choice. I'd rather live a healthy life for the next twenty years and die at 80 than live crippled by numerous maladies for thirty years and die at 90.

The plan for this series of articles is to chronicle my second journey through the Early Medicine program, this time putting in the effort to fully understand the information and elucidate how it applies to my situation. I'm not sure how relevant the perspective and experiences relayed in this series of articles may be to someone in their 20's or 30's except as a trail of cautionary tales, a warning to them of what's to come should they be fortunate enough to live into their 70's and 80's.

I won't be divulging any of the program details beyond what is already freely available on Dr. Attia's website. I do plan on sharing the following:

Demonstrate how Agile methodologies can be applied to squishy analog projects such as personal health.
Causal loop diagrams to illustrate the importance of system thinking, the elements that keep health in balance, and the factors that work against maintaining that balance.
The evidence that supports or refutes any decisions I make regarding personal health.
Use of a Kanban board to coordinate the lifestyle and therapeutic interventions and changes I need to make.

Disclaimer

The author has Bachelor degrees in both biochemistry and cell biology but is not a licensed practitioner of medicine or psychotherapy and nothing presented on this website claims or should be construed to provide medical or psychotherapeutic advice. This series of articles is presented as a personal reflection by the author on work he's done to improve his health and as such is relevant to the author and no one else. The author makes no recommendations as to any course of action the reader may chose to follow other than to encourage the reader to work closely with qualified health professionals when making healthcare decisions relevant to their personal lives.

Footnotes

¹ Shen X, Wang C, Zhou X, et al. Nonlinear dynamics of multi-omics profiles during human aging. Nat Aging. 2024;4(11):1619-1634. doi:10.1038/s43587-024-00692-2
² EurekAlert! Massive biomolecular shifts occur in our 40s and 60s, Stanford Medicine researchers find.
³ Higgins, L. (2024, December 20). Science says your body starts “breaking down” quicker at these 2 ages. Health. https://www.health.com/study-aging-peaks-8756326

Agile and Physical Health - Part 2 - Goals →