I recently started reading the book “Outlive” by Peter Attia, and it has completely and literally changed my life. It started by finding myself fascinated, reading about all the diseases that have killed my loved ones.

Even a few years ago, just thinking about these diseases would make me anxious. I was so terrified that I would end up dying of cancer in my 40s like my mother, or Alzheimer’s, like my maternal grandmother, or a stroke, like my maternal grandfather. I did not even want to know how my paternal grandparents died until I started reading this book. 

But since I became so interested in longevity, and my physician recommended this book, which was so captivating from the start, a new desire awakened in me to learn about the things that scare me the most. The amazing thing was that the more I read about them, the less they scared me. 

I found, for example, that according to research, genetics accounts for only 20–30% of lifespan and has an even less significant impact on healthspan — the period of life spent in good health. This was highly reassuring. 

The book clarifies that to live a long life and remain healthy and functional in our later years, we must start acting now. The reason is that all the diseases that kill us or limit our ability to enjoy our last decades develop in our bodies over the years. The existing medical approach intervenes only when we start showing symptoms, and in this stage, it is usually too late.

I was inspired to review the results of a recent blood work I conducted through another longevity enthusiast, Bryan Johnson. Thanks to “Outlive”, I gained a better understanding of them.

One of my biggest discoveries was that, despite eating a gluten-free, plant-based, vegetarian diet, cooking most of my food at home, and consuming a lot of vegetables and sufficient protein, I was still not far from pre-diabetes in terms of my sugar levels. This important revelation has made me change my diet and significantly reduce my sugar intake. 

I’ve also started using a health tracker (first Fitbit and now WHOOP) to evaluate other important parameters I’ve learned about from the book, such as VO2 Max, the maximum rate at which your body can take in, transport, and use oxygen during intense exercise. According to extensive research, this biomarker has a direct and significant link to both lifespan and healthspan.

In the past, I’ve bragged about my great sleep habits. According to my tracker, however, my sleep results have been in the sufficient zone, and very rarely ideal. But when I go to sleep earlier and take some new supportive supplements, I start seeing improvement, such as an increase in my deep sleep, which helps with physical restoration, and REM sleep, which helps with mental restoration.  

On top of that, the tracker’s scores indicating activity level have motivated me to exercise more. 

It’s a lot of new information that I am learning to digest, analyze, and process. I am still reading the book, I got a premium membership on the Peter Attia podcast, and I plan to conduct further screening and testing as advised (I hope my physician won’t regret recommending me the book :))

But there is no doubt – less sugar, more exercise, and better sleep have surely soothed my nervous system big time. 

Another by-product of this process is that dealing with all the new information and adjusting my habits, while being busy with building and teaching my Planetary Balance Live the Life You Love program, has made me pay almost no attention to the horrible news about antisemitism that is flooding my IG feed and the news sites I usually consume. In this case, not knowing was so soothing. 

Virgo is the part of us that always seeks to know and act based on knowledge. Pisces is the side of us that trusts that everything will be okay. 

For Pisces, all this longevity and tracking madness feels totally nuts. Pisces wants to trust, believe, have faith, and know that everything will be all right. It is more concerned about spiritual wisdom and couldn’t care less about loads of analytical information.

But there are two problems with this approach. 

• One is that many times we say that we trust, but we don’t really trust. We act as if we believe everything will be okay, but the anxiety of not knowing is brewing within us. 
• The second problem is that sometimes we feel like we are okay, and we aren’t, like what happened to me with my sugar level. 

In a world where the availability of knowledge grows at an exponential pace, we must be aware of when knowing causes anxiety and when not knowing does. We must also cultivate healthy habits to support us in dealing with this stream of knowledge. 

This is the week of the Full Moon and Lunar Eclipse in Pisces, with the Sun in Virgo. It’s a great time to ask yourself:

• What do you need to know to reduce your level of anxiety?
• Where do you fake trust, while anxiety is brewing inside? 
• What do you not need to know? Where does knowledge generate anxiety? Can you stop consuming this type of information or reduce your consumption of it?  
• What health habits can you change to support your nervous system better? 

Wishing you a happy full moon and lunar eclipse and a wonderful week,

With love,

Yael