In the upcoming National Geographic series Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, the actor explores various methods to extend his life as well as improve his quality of life as he ages. Through the series he meets with various experts. We had the chance to speak with one of those experts, Dr. Peter Attia, a longevity physician at Early Medical, who teaches Chris the science of aging and how to combat it through different techniques.
Laughing Place:
You are known as a longevity doctor. Can you talk a little bit about how you got into that particular area of medicine?
Dr. Peter Attia:
There's no such thing technically as longevity as a specialty, so it's always a bit of a funny title to have attached to your name. The reality of it is longevity, if you're practicing it in a meaningful way, it’s about prevention. So it's practicing something that I would describe as Medicine 3.0 as opposed to Medicine 2.0, which of course, we could contrast that with what Medicine 1.0 was. But Medicine 2.0 is kind of what we live in now, it's the really good system of reactive medicine, taking care of problems when they arise, taking care of acute problems especially. And then Medicine 3.0 is asking how do you evolve that? How do you truly act in a preventative manner, which means how do you do things when a person is potentially completely healthy to achieve your goals, which are to extend life, to live longer, and to live longer at a higher quality, which is called improving health span. And so that's really what it is. That's so much of a mouthful that I think it's just easier to default into, well, that's what longevity medicine is.
Laughing Place:
How did you get connected with this project where Chris Hemsworth is trying to really push his boundaries to eventually have those health successes later on in life?
Dr. Peter Attia:
Well, I'm really good friends with Darren Aronofsky, who is the director. About three, maybe four years ago, Darren sort of asked me about this as an idea. Which was, "Hey, I really want to do a documentary and I wanted to talk about this transformation in a person's life." And so what started out as kind of a discussion about how to do that eventually morphed into the series that ultimately Darren created.
Laughing Place:
One thing that is great about it is it's not just Chris Hemsworth pushing his limits. You talk about the science behind the techniques you're using. You're not doing it just to have Chris get really cold or really hot or hungry. How was the science integrated into the planning of the series?
Dr. Peter Attia:
I don't know that I can speak to how thoughtful the team was around this, but if I think back to my first discussions with Darren and with the Neutopia team at the beginning of this, we talked about it through the lens of, "Well, how do you do this in real life? What is the practice in real life?" And it really comes down to understanding what are the variables that can be manipulated to alter the biology of a person? So, we put them in buckets. One of the buckets is all the things that have to do with nutritional biochemistry. Everything you eat has an impact on your health. The second has to do with everything around how you exercise and move. The other one has to do with everything that pertains to sleep and recovery. You also have a lot around all of the medications, supplements, drugs that can be taken to help in things.
Then you have a component around mental and emotional health, including psychological resilience, and as I'm sure you've seen the whole series by now, if you look at the last episode, it really deals with a very important part of that, which is how we prepare for the end of our life, and how we think about that and how the knowledge of that can actually help us live better. So, I think loosely that was the hope, was that we could structure this in a manner that paralleled what we do clinically to try to make these changes in people's lives.
Laughing Place:
Chris Hemsworth gets to do some incredible things on the show, like swimming in the Arctic, but the conversation also includes practices that viewers can implement to achieve a similar goal, like taking cold showers. Did you have a hand in the at-home curriculum for viewers?
Dr. Peter Attia:
Yeah, some of it. But as you know, there's lots of people that are involved in this show that each were experts in their own area, so I think it was probably an integration and assimilation of what every person who contributed thinks is the right way to do it. And of course, the challenge of this is it is difficult to create a prescription for a person without knowing who that person is. I mean, so much of what we did in the show was really tailored to Chris. That's the thing about the show that I think is pretty cool, is I really did get under the hood of everything in Chris's life, and Ross really got to know everything about Chris and what his injuries were. And so each of us really took it as though we were taking care of Chris, and then the implication of that is then we can be more prescriptive and precise in our recommendations for Chris. And so the question is, of course, can we at least provide some guidance for a person without knowing every detail about them as the viewer?
Laughing Place:
As a National Geographic project, there are elements of the show that explore other cultures. Can you talk about what we can learn from other cultures outside of our own about longevity, end of life enhancement and things?
Dr. Peter Attia:
There's a lot. I would just pick one example right now for the sake of brevity, and that is just the importance of physical activity. We have this incredible blessing of modernity in our world, where technically, we don't have to do anything. We really don't have to do anything. We don't have to carry anything, we don't have to exert ourselves in any way. And I think we're really seeing what the cost of that has been. And so when you look at other cultures that are incredibly active, just a normal part of their existence is being very active, and of course the most extreme version of that would be the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies out there, such as the Hadza, where they literally still have to hunt and gather for their food every day. So you might say, "Well, look, they're not in the gym working out, but they're very active and they're very healthy as a result of that." Now, of course, they have things that work against them. They don't have some of the modern marvels of medicine that we have working for us. So of course, the challenge becomes how do you take the best from the Old World and the best from the New World and combine it? And I think in some ways, that's probably what the show is trying to do.
Laughing Place:
Well, I think the show does a great job, and I think you do a great job of explaining these things in ways that are accessible to the audience without overwhelming them or becoming preachy. I appreciate all your time to talk to me today, and congratulations on the launch of the show on Disney+.
Dr. Peter Attia:
Thanks so much. Really appreciate the time as well.
All six episodes of Limitless with Chris Hemsworth debut on Disney+ November 16, 2022.