Longevity
I love me some Peter Attia (a podcast host and MD specializing in longevity, if you haven’t heard of him) but I have to disagree with him regarding the most important factor regarding longevity. He recently had the actor Hugh Jackman on his podcast, and Jackman asked him what the most important tool for longevity was. He answered “exercise.”
As someone who suffered a heart attack when they were probably in the best shape of their life, that doesn’t quite ring true to me. It could be argued that I survived my heart attack because I was in really good shape, and I’m sure there is some truth to that. But I am convinced that my inability to deal with chronic stress is what took me down—and I believe stress is the driving force for most chronic diseases.
Don’t get me wrong—I believe in exercise! But as I’ve written about in other blog posts, I was treating my chronic stress with really stressful CrossFit workouts, and it created a pressure cooker where something was going to blow—whether it was a knee, my lower back, or, as it turned out, my heart.
Exercise used to be the most important part of my day. Now the most important part(s) of my day are the times I use my tools to combat stress. The way to combat stress is really very simple. As we’ve mentioned in other blog posts, the vagus nerve is a large cranial nerve that winds down through your body, connecting to every major organ (including the heart). It is the nerve that signals a “flight/fight/freeze” response in your nervous system. When your nervous system is chronically in this mode, your vagus nerve lacks “tone.” This is a state where chronic disease prospers.
There are things you can do to increase your vagal tone, so that if you go into flight/fight/freeze mode, your body can come back out of it better and relax faster after a stressor. These are the tools to live a long and healthy life:
Meditation
Breathwork
Moderate exercise (not ending up in the fetal position on the floor!)
Cold water immersion/cold showers
Chanting or singing
Meaningful connection with others/laughter
For many of us, there are underlying factors that are a part of what leads to chronic stress--unmet needs or trauma that originated in childhood. Even if you don’t think this applies to you, it can’t hurt to take a look at one of the many great books that focus on reparenting your inner child. It is a powerful form of self-care to take a look at this stuff. I can’t recommend either one of these books enough:
How to Do the Work (Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, Create Your Self) by Dr. Nicole LePera (The Holistic Psychologist)
Homecoming by John Bradshaw
My experience is that once you start caring for yourself in all these ways, it has a ripple effect throughout your whole life and all your relationships (including your relationship with yourself). You can actually feel that this type of self-care is the way towards health and longevity.
Let’s live long and prosper!
—Scott