April 10, 2019

Dr. Peter Attia: Incident Report with ZDoggMD

Check out the ZDoggMD Episode Page & Show Notes

Key Takeaways

• Doctors and researchers spend most of their time learning how to treat illnesses rather than prevent them
  • “Prevention, proactivity, and looking at root causes is not something we do in American medicine” – Zubin
• There are 3 parts of healthcare: Cost, Access, and Quality
  • You can’t change one without affecting the others
• Zubin and Peter both practice meditation and have seen great results
• Do vaccines work? – Yes!
  • Both Zubin and Peter recommend them
    
• Almost any diet is better than the SAD (standard American diet)
  • “You couldn’t come up with a better way to kill someone than throwing them on that diet” – Peter

Intro

• Zubin Damania (@zdoggmd) aka ZDoggMD, is a UCSF/Stanford trained internal medicine physician and founder of Turntable Health, an innovative primary care clinic
• Peter Attia (@PeterAttiaMD) is the founder of Attia Medical, a medical practice focusing on the applied science of longevity, he earned his M.D. from Stanford University
• He is the host of The Peter Attia Drive podcast – check out some of the Podcast Notes

Books Mentioned

• Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
• The Mind Illuminated by John Yates
• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
• Waking Up by Sam Harris
• Altered Traits by Daniel Goleman
• Nudge by Richard Thaler
• The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis
• Switch by Chip & Dan Heath

Background

• Peter and Zubin met at Stanford during medical school
  • What they don’t miss about med school – people lacking humor, non-realistic training, and power hierarchies
  • “It really is about kissing the ring of the authority figure so one day you will be the ring that’s kissed” – Zubin
  • During the first 2 years of med school students are “fed a bunch of information – 50% of which is wrong, but they don’t tell us which 50%”
  • Hierarchies in the medical field are important, but there should be room for subordinates/med students to question authority figures in order to make sure the right decision is made
    • Peter and Zubin both found themselves in situations where they were confident in how a patient should be treated, but they ended up listening to their superior instead, who had a different answer as he/she was the authority figure
  • Doctors and researchers spend most of their time learning how to treat illnesses, not prevent them
    • “Prevention, proactivity, and looking at root causes is not something we do in American medicine” – Zubin

Finding Your Passion –

• Zubin has enjoyed the connection he had with patients, but over time he saw that hospitals were becoming more like businesses
  • They focus on patient volume/throughput and revenue over building deep relationships with patients
  • He was also burned out, couldn’t leave his work at home and had a young child during this time – he became depressed and unhappy with his job
• Around this time, Zubin met Tony Hsieh, and Tony convinced him to try something new that would make him happy
  • Zubin made a few parody videos and put them on YouTube as an experiment
  • It wasn’t until Zubin had a transformative drug experience with a guide, that he learned his ego was attached to the identity and prestige of being a doctor – once he realized that he put his ego to rest and started making more videos
• Peter also left standard medicine – he loved operating on people but couldn’t stand the system
  • Terrifying side note -There is a bell curve to surgeons, Peter wouldn’t let 20% of surgeons operate on his cat

The Benefits of Meditation

• Zubin and Peter both practice meditation and have seen great results from it
  • A good book on the topic – Altered Traits by Daniel Goleman
    • Peter says he feels “infinitely less aggressive, infinitely more empathetic”
• Zubin says meditation has allowed him to become more mindful and less reflexive in various situations

Thoughts on Free Will

• Picture someone riding an elephant – the rider is a person’s rational side while the elephant is a person’s emotional side
  • People have to be rational and control their emotions (the elephant) or they will simply act on emotions alone and likely not get the ideal outcome
    • The elephant = a person’s unconscious
• Does free will exist?
  • Peter says he’s in the middle
  • Zubin believes there are “sub-minds” (unconscious minds) inside people that feed input which are combined with a person’s conscious input
    • Much like the elephant and the rider – a person’s actions are a combination of their unconscious and conscious thoughts

What drives Peter?

• Finding out the appropriate dose of caloric restriction/fasting and frequency and the molecules that mimic such phenomena (like rapamycin)
  • Several animal studies have shown that caloric restriction increases longevity
    • The question is exactly how many calories should people eat, at what time should they eat, and for how long should people fast?
• Extending quantity of life and quality (how to be 100-years-old, but with the body and mind of a 50-year-old)

The Health Care System

• There are 3 parts of healthcare – Cost, Access, and Quality
  • You don’t get to move one without changing the others – if costs are brought down it may result in more access but lower quality of care
    • Ex. – Canada has low costs and high quality, but low access (it may take months to get an MRI scan for an injury)
• “Medical cost is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy” – Peter
  • Zubin would like to see more medical officials get rewarded for helping patients prevent illnesses, and have doctors and hospitals compete for quality of care
• Read The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis to learn more about how the government operates and what it does and doesn’t do well
  • Peter read the book in a day and a half and says it was a great read

Additional Notes

• Zubin explains a theory from Dr. Donald Hoffman that states species who see reality for what it is, go extinct (see his TED talk)
• Do vaccines work? Yes! – Both Zubin and Peter recommend them
• Almost any diet is better than the SAD (standard American diet)
  • “You couldn’t come up with a better way to kill someone than that diet”
    • Keto, paleo and vegan diets are all better than the SAD diet

These notes were edited by RoRoPa Editing Services