Everyone’s talking about Peter Attia this week. I’m not here to litigate his past associations—though aligning with someone like Epstein is reprehensible for anyone, especially someone who took an oath to do no harm.
But the conversation has surfaced something worth examining: What has ‘lifestyle medicine’ become? Or is it even a thing?
And is any of it actually making us healthier—or has it just given us another way to measure ourselves as not doing enough?
Attia charges $100,000/year for concierge medicine. He’s not alone. The cost isn’t a bug—it’s a feature. It signals commitment, insider status. ‘You can’t put a price on your health’ becomes justification for any expense—and simultaneously excludes most people.
When medicine becomes lifestyle-ism
Lifestyle-ism is the sibling of ageism and sexism. It feeds on and reinforces the idea that aging is a failure of optimization. It turns “age vs. agency” into “optimize or decline”—a false binary that punishes people for getting older unless they can afford the protocols to “age successfully.”
Women have always faced pressure to perform maintenance on their appearance. Now the wellness industry has extended that same pressure to health optimization and exploits it ruthlessly.
And if we can’t afford the protocols or don’t want to perform optimization? We’re “letting ourselves go.”
You can’t optimize a weak foundation
You’ve likely heard me use the word optimize—optimize your vitamin D levels, optimize protein intake, optimize your sleep. That’s different. I’m talking about getting fundamentals into healthy, functional ranges. Not maximizing. Not perfecting. Not chasing endless marginal gains. I’m talking about: Is your vitamin D truly optimal (50-70ng/ml) vs what Western medicine says is optimal? (30 – 50nh/ml)
Is your blood sugar balanced rather than spiking wildly, leading to insulin resistance and metabolic ill health?
Are you getting restorative sleep? (Not just 7 – 8 hours per night but deep sleep and adequate REM.)
Are you eating enough protein to maintain muscle?
That’s optimization in service of health. Lifestyle-ism is optimization as performance—there’s no ‘enough,’ only ‘more.’
I use the term “optimal health” to differentiate from Western medicine’s law of averages “,free from disease” and what they call “normal.”
And look, I literally have ‘Rebellious Wellness Lifestyle’ as my podcast name. I’m not against making the best lifestyle choices. I’m against lifestyle-ism—the moralized, expensive, performative version that creates anxiety instead of health.
Tools vs. performance
Here’s what I recommend:
Strategic supplementation based on testing via blood work (Vitamin D, magnesium, genetic testing)
Feedback tools that change behavior (Oura for sleep, CGM to understand your response to food)
Testing for markers that matter (insulin resistance, inflammation, etc.)
Tracking nutrient data (protein, fat, carbs) using a CGM or online program
A Fitbit or other tracker for steps and heart rate on the go
- Here’s what I DON’T:
BMI as a health measure
That everyone needs a detox protocol
Supplements as an insurance policy without testing for creating a strong foundation (Think Power of 5 tenets)
Optimization because someone with a million followers says this is how you do ageing
The distinction
Tools are useful when they give you information that helps you make better decisions about the fundamentals. They’re useless—or worse, anxiety-inducing—when they become the point.
The body’s wisdom (when you give it what it needs)
- Your body wants to be healthy. It will heal itself when given the right conditions
- Those conditions: real food, movement, sleep, stress management, connection [the basics]
- Sometimes you need Western medicine’s intervention—and that’s fine
- But the frame matters: repair and restore, temporary support, not lifetime dependency
- Medicine should return you to agency, not replace it
Vision directs action
- What you believe about aging determines what you do
- Vision: “I can be strong, capable, engaged at 70, 80, beyond” → leads to one set of actions
- Vision: “Things start happening at 70” or “This is just how it is at my age” → leads somewhere else
- The expensive protocols won’t save you if your vision isn’t driven by agency
- The basics work because they’re basic, and maybe a little bit boring. 🥱
- Sleep, real food, movement, stress management, and connection. Not hacks. Not optimization. Not bleeding-edge protocols. The stuff humans have needed forever.
Back to the Power of 5
The Power of 5 isn’t flashy. It won’t get you on podcasts talking about your longevity stack. But it’s the foundation every legitimate longevity program is built on anyway. Listen, you don’t need $10K and a PhD to be healthy. You need to know what moves the needle—and you need to believe you’re worth the effort.
You’ll find that in the power of 5.
It isn’t complicated, and it isn’t a designer protocol. It doesn’t even cost anything. But don’t mistake all of that for ineffectiveness. It’s the most effective plan you can use to add more life to your lifestyle. And this is what rebellious wellness is all about.
