"At 75, both men and women fall off a cliff.... At the population level, it's unmistakable what happens at the age of 75."
October 26, 2025
I only have 3 months left before I fall off a cliff.
Here's this character Dr. Peter Attia, "an innovator in longevity medicine," platformed on "60 Minutes," declaring:
Posts
75 comments:
Hey, for a change I'm ahead of schedule!
Avoid taking selfies at the Grand Canyon and you can push that back a few years.
Don't worry, meade will surely catch you before you hit the ground...
Diving off a cliff into a wild expanse is a coming of age activity. Look forward toward an evolving experiment in life.
I can’t download the video, but I think the cliff comes at 80. It’s possible that I have just forgotten 75, but I certainly remember 80. ☹️
I think it's important to surround yourself with mentally sane people who have integrity, a good character and understand importance of learning. If you have people like this in close proximity, you will live a happier life. Being around assholes shortens the life span even if you do all the things that prolong life, like exercising, healthy eating and so on.
Then there is that 80 year old woman who just finished an Ironman. Amazing at any age, but 80?
75 is the new 40.
Connie Mack says fuck off
Aren't Trump, Bob Dylan, etc. all living proof that the "Cliff at 75" doesn't exist? Anyway, we all gottta go sometime, and nobody at 74 is what they were at 50.
This is nonsense. There is no single magic age at which one falls off a cliff cognitively and physically. It is all dependent on genetics, eating habits, and maintenance of a physically and mentally active lifestyle (tennis/golf, hiking, calisthenics, sex, and reading/learning/intellectual pursuits, etc.). You have significant control your quality of life and your degree of mobility and mental sharpness as you age.
I suppose if want to run a triathilon, hike mount everest, or write a best selling novel, then the decline at 75 might be tragic. But most of us will just be going for walks and playing golf. And surfing the net. So I don't know how much this "cliff falling" will affect us. BTW, Trump "fell off the cliff" IN 2021. I didn't see much decline after that.
this isn't Just True.. It's SOOO TRUE.
meanwhile, my rich Brother in-law, the Vice President of Engineering for a major firm, with literally SCADS of money..
continuing working until he was 69 years old (last year)..
And, OF COURSE, held off on starting social security;
because: "It pays MORE Money each month that way!"
This year, he's retired, and laying in bed taking chemo for his cancer.
I hope he gets better, i enjoy visiting them (and their huge house)..
But; No Matter how you figure it; the clock is counting down.
I retired early, so that i could fish while i could
I've known people who did fall off the cliff at 75, in the sense that they developed diseases that rapidly decreased their ability to enjoy life. Most of them ended up dead at 80, or living full time in a nursing home.
Its just a matter of luck, or the will of God. You can increase the odds by eating right, exercising etc, but ultimately we're all ending up dead, and when we go, isn't up to us.
Eat well,
Stay fit,
Die anyway,
I wish most of these old coots would get off the golf course. It isn’t assisted living…
He's not a 'character'. He's pretty brilliant. Extremely knowledgable in the vast arena of medical science. And the best thing about him and his podcast is that he has, for years, brought out some of the best minds on various topics to dig deep into those topics. The top people in various fields. (His podcast is very interesting if you like this sort of thing.) And one area he has spent a load of time studying is life extension.
My wife and I saw this yesterday and we were both exclaiming that we (early 70s) appear to be on track to blow that number away. Well, at least she does. I hope that stays the case. But we don't know. Things happen.
And as I look around at some of my friends in ages ranging up to 80 and down to the mid-50s, I see all kinds of health levels. Mostly not great stuff as some of them creep up on 75.
Going further, looking at the people I see in airports, grocery stores, mall, restaurants, I think Americans in general are working to push that number lower. Many are getting a great head start on 75.
But...he's not saying people die at 75. He's saying that's the age his practice and the data from others is showing him as the age of cascading decline. That is the time when "things" start happening.
Keep up the morning walks, Ann.
Reminder - Ann turns 75 in January. I keep track of her age easily, since she is 3 months younger than I. I have been using .75C all year for my friends, and now for myself.
I’m 79, and I don’t recall “falling off a cliff” in terms of health or cognitive ability four years ago. Since I’m a mathematician I like to start each day working some word puzzles or logic puzzles or Sudokus (gold or silver, not bronze) just to jump start my brain. That may help.
I fell off the cliff seven years ago. So far, so good. These are just probabilities. Just because most people die, doesn't mean you have to. Just keep a positive attitude, eat leafy greens, and, who knows, you might defy the odds and live forever.
Althouse and many of the commenters here remain active, both physically and mentally. Obviously that makes a big difference. I've seen too many people disengage around age 70 and literally wither away.
Here's what Chat GPT said when I asked: "in population terms, age 75 is a time when the aging process accelerates in the sense of higher risk, faster deficit accumulation, shorter remaining life, and more years lived with disability." The obvious point here is that what ChatGPT calls the "inflection point" at 75 is a population level phenomenon, and not a prophecy for any single individual. No one is saying that Althouse will "fall off a cliff." But those of us in the class of 1951 surely know peers who have done/are doing so. (I have lost one of my 4 1951 cousins in the past 2 years and another is in hospice.) May Althouse, and all who comment here, have good luck.
My dog is exactly the same age as me.
Here's my fave...
KrazyDad
https://krazydad.com
sudoku
Another long time follower of Dr Attia. This is a summary of long conversations with very knowledgeable researchers who note that the classic "use it or lose it" kicks in hard at around 75. Not only does it become harder and harder to add or recover essential muscle mass, you tend to loose what you have faster. I.e., it "falls off a cliff", and that affects every aspect of your health.
What's misleading is that it isn't a steady decline. Instead, anything that keeps you inactive, like forced bed rest due to an illness or accident like a fall, causes muscle loss that may not be possible to recover. And each incident makes the decline worse. Some theorize it's one of the major reasons people who fall and break a hip often die soon after. You never fully recover from it.
Dr Attia's point is that the more muscle you have, the younger you acquire it, the longer you have before age and cumulative illnesses and accidents take it away from you. If you want to be healthy and active in your 80s and 90s, get fit as young as and stay that way as long as you can. Never too late to start, but the later the less impact it can have.
My dad was gone to dementia by his late 60s, so I always figured I’d beat the game if I got into my 70s. I’m going to be 76 soon, still working part time as a church musician, still being a granddad. It’s all been gravy. Thanks, God.
all i'm trying to say, is that aging is like bankruptcy..
first gradually.. then suddenly
Neither of my parents cared for themselves by remaining physically active.
In my father's case, he ceased all phyical activity after a major surgery to remove a large benign growth from his spine in 2012- while he recovered a bit in the following year after the surgery it rapidly ceased again in 2013 and he declined rapidly after that dying in the Summer of 2018 at age 73 while bedridden.
My mother quit all physical activity when she retired in 2014 at age 66 as a home healthcare nurse. However, she had not really taken care of herself even prior to that being morbidly obese for most of the previous 30 years. She was diagnosed with Type II diabetes with all the various follow-on ailments of slow kidney failure and loss of vision. She spends 23.5 hours/day in a recliner and can barely make it to and from the bathroom. I honestly don't expect her to live very much longer- I expect she is going to be bedridden inside of the next year if we can't get her to increase her activity level. The falloff in her condition definitely aligns with the age of 75- she is 77 right now and has been unable to get out and do anything on her own for the last 2 years.
I don't know if it will do me any good but I will maintain a very active lifestyle as I transition to 60 years old next Summer. I know I am in much better physical and mental condition than either of my parents were at the same age I am today and, hopefully, I don't fall off a cliff until I am in my 80s, at least.
Where was this guy when Joe Biden ran in 2020? He was 78 at the time.
Trump is now 79. This is an indirect swipe at Trump and contrary to the evidence. Trump flew to Asia and is working all the time there. He calls people all the time from 11 pm to 1 am.
Bari Weiss asked the "60 Minutes" people why doesn't America trust them. Here's another example.
He's talking about population statistics, not individual experience. But, yeah. It's definitely a dig against Trump.
I am certain he's correct statistically, but, of course, it all varies widely from person to person. I'm 68, and I feel the physical decline started 10 years ago. This is despite doing everything I could for my well-being. My father died young, at 55, and my mother made it to 80. I just lost a younger brother to a sudden heart attack in January, and my sister is in bad shape, too.
We all have to play with the cards we're dealt. Have fun, people!
At a population level, he's probably correct. But, at an individual level, it depends. It could be 40 or 90, or 20 or 110. It all depends. Currently, not last month before they changed the way they calculate it (needed to increase the number of people eligible for weight loss medications) a large majority of Americans are obese. Un-medicated obesity puts you much closer to the cliff. Medicated (managed, as they like to say) you're still close, but slow walking towards it, instead of on a rocket sled.
My mother in law accompanied me on a trip in Utah canyon country a few years ago. Hiking miles in the desert.
Last month she celebrated her 99th birthday with all six children, their spouses, and a flock of grandchildren and their SOs. Magnificent.
What I really noticed, as I've started the inevitable loss of muscle mass, is how much easier it is to injure oneself. I never really thought about how muscle absorbs shocks and dampens blows or over extensions. But once you start losing muscle mass, you really start to get it. Sprains come much more easily. Tendonitis strikes more often. Over-extension of joints seems to happen all by itself if you're not being careful, leading to a painful and slow recovery of range-of-motion. I always thought that loss of overall strength would be the most felt feature of aging, but for me it's the loss of resiliency that has had the biggest felt impact.
Ms Althouse probably doesn't need to worry much about falling off this particular cliff.
And I'll conclude by saying, philosophically, that cliffs don't matter if you've learned to fly.
Why are they telling us this? They want mandatory euthanasia. They don't want to pay for the votes they already bought. Can't afford it. Prog answer? It's a messaging problem. Let's get them to ask us to kill them.
I predict you'll start noticing a pro-euthanasia message a lot in your entertainment and "news" and from influencers. I'm already seeing it. For example I just watched '28 Years Later', the zombie movie sequel. Big pro-euthanasia message among other lefty propaganda, pro-open borders, LGBTQ, feminism, etc. Kind of ham-handed really. Ruined the movie. I liked the first ones. This one pretty much sucks. Disappointing.
My father got remarried at 87. No cliff in his horizon.
Don't drink alcohol, juice or cokes hardly ever, lift weights, eat whole some food, hill hike in a forest, interact with people, stay trim, don't sit too much, eat fermented foods every day fire your Gardener and housekeeper.
"Why are they telling us this? They want mandatory euthanasia."
Has Ezekiel Emanuel offed himself yet?
Keep up the positive joyful vibes, Bob Boyd!!
Yesterday I watched a documentary on Netflix, "The Only Girl in the Orchestra" about a double bassist who was the first woman to play with the New York Philharmonic. She recently retired at 87. I marveled at how young she sounds. She also looks much younger than 87, but it was the way she talked that surprised me. I'm sure she was physically active all her life but also stayed active mentally through playing and working with students.
It's a short documentary, well worth watching.
I lived a brutally difficult young life, physically, with 'young' meaning up to age 70, and I'm thankful that only some of it started to catch me up in my mid-70s.
A few examples -- In my geology years rucking 80 kg of rock samples 1000 metres down a steep mountain slope, then lugging them 10 km out to the truck, several times. Or football [lineman] and hockey [goalie] through high school and college, followed by several years in minor league hockey, back when goaltender equipment was primitive [hit in the ankles thousands of times by 150 g of frozen rubber at 140 km/h, with a single 3 mm layer of leather for protection]. Frozen feet, hands and face in the Arctic.
Plus all the injuries from 40 years of farming when you're kicked and stomped and head-butted by 700 kg cattle, along with 20 years of schlepping 20,000 25 kg boxes of veggies every year, moving 500,000 kg of glacial rocks out of upir fields by hand, and on and on.
My "cliff" at 75 was a mix of venous insufficiency, mangled lymph system, and neuropathy from mid-calf down. I'll take it, and be very thankful for some "old-guy problems", because three of my Army ROTC buds came home from Nam in bags.
They never got to have old-guy problems. Perspective is in order.
Oh goody, another expert! Is he selling any products geared to slow this cliff falling?
The reason lib "60 Minutes" ran this piece:
1. "Voluntary" euthanasia like Canada is doing now.
2. Swipe at Trump.
Temujin: You are too generous to Dr. Peter Atia. He's selling his services and scaring people is part of it.
That being said, yes, we should all work to "keep the old man [or woman] out."
My dad said he did just fine till 90 but did not enjoy his last two years much. I am 12 years away from the 90 Mark but doing okay so far--eating and drinking whatever I want, moderately obese, only exercise is twitching fingers on my computer and Kindle touch pads. Genes, it's all genes.
Bart Hall @1:11pm… you wore my old ass out just reading that. You are one tough old bird!
"There's something out there waiting for us, and it ain't no man...
We're all gonna die."
"Whoopee! We're all gonna die."
Country Joe McDonald: 83 years old.
Barry Melton: 78 years old.
David Cohen: Died of heart failure, at age 42.
Bruce Barthol: Died February 20, 2023, at age 75.
Gary "Chicken" Hirsh: Died August 17, 2021, at age 81.
@Bart Hall: some 45 years ago I found an ammonite fossil the size of a birthday cake among rocks in the shallows of Nepal's Gandalki river, at the foot of Mt. Dhaulagiri . It weighed about 15 pounds.
To bring it back with me I would have had to carry it in my backpack and trek some fifty miles toward Pokhara.
So I took pictures and left it there.
Your story makes me feel like a wimp, a wuss, total pussy.
"I am not worthy...!"
p.s. the film roll with the ammonite pics got crushed, so I don't even have them as memories!
The obvious media bs aside, I fell off a cliff when I turned 50 (and was back in the dating game). Then I fell off a cliff when I turned 60 and met my next wife.
Luckily I married a woman who was 10 years younger. Now I am in my early 70’s and feel as young as most 50 year olds.
You all need to think and act like you are younger and you will be younger. That does not mean you will live a lot longer, but you won’t become some miserable old bitch who becomes the mainstay of the Democrat party.
It's scaremongering. I'm 78, sound like I'm a young man, and the only thing that I've really noticed is a loss of some stamina and I'm a couple of clubs shorter on the golf course. The cliff comes at a different age for all of us. In the words of some great man or another, "No generalization is worth a damn--including that one."
Attia is just the tip of the iceburg.
The entire US Healthcare system is a farce. It is actively trying to shorten our lives and make us fat and dependent on big pharma drugs.
Health Care, Processed Food Makers, Insurance Companies and Big Pharma are all tied at the hip. They paid for all of the research that blamed "High fat" diets for all of our health problems.
No fear. No envy. No meanness. Good advice from the late Liam Clancy. I would add; Be curious. An open mind is an empty mind if you don’t keep feeding it.
In past month spent two weeks hiking alps, driving 1,000+ miles for multi- generation cousin social and now spending weekend with daughter in NYC (John’s Pizza on Bleeker St. still The Standard. 82 and not counting :-)
Howard said...
-Don't drink alcohol, juice or cokes hardly ever
She doesn’t
-lift weights
She does
-eat whole some food
She does
-hill hike in a forest
She does
-interact with people
She does
-stay trim
She does
-don't sit too much
She doesn’t
-eat fermented foods every day
She does
-fire your Gardener
Now wait just gosh darn minute!
My cousin literally fell off a cliff at the age of 94. Possible suicide? Then I found out older adults are far more likely to die falling off cliffs, largely due to age-related balance impairments that worsen with sudden standing.
So stay away from cliffs, you people.
BTW:
Yosemite National Park (2010–2019): 23 fatal cliff falls; median age 58, with 70% over 50. Rangers noted many victims stood up abruptly near edges.
Grand Canyon (2023 NPS report): 60% of edge fatalities were 65+, often after “standing to pose.”
Three months until you fall off the cliff. 25 years until you look back. Here's to a centennial celebration.
I’m just an impartial observer, Howard. No point in sugarcoating it.
What fermented foods are you eating?
If Bari Weiss really wants to clean up CBS News and 60 Minutes so that America could trust them, she needs to hire some real conservative news readers and producers. And axe some of the worst libs.
This calls to mind Zeke Emanual's Why I Hope to Die at 75". He was perhaps unfairly criticized and mischaracterized as advocating euthanasia (which he opposes) and death panels. But there's nothing magic about 75.
My parents both worked until their mid-to-late 80s. They hit that cliff within a few years after that, but 75-85 was a good decade for both. Just an anecdote, but the point is that generalizations aren't particularly useful for individuals.
continuing working until he was 69 years old
My Dad retired at 92, and did say that he should have retired earlier. He died at 95. I recall he agonized over taking "early" retirement in his 80s. He declined a lot in strength between 80 and 90, and then had balance problems, and the decline from 90 to 95 was steep. Many of us here will probably die in the next 10-15 years, that is just how it goes. If exercise and healthy eating could overcome aging, Jack LaLanne would still be with us.
I noticed this looking at times for distance running sorted by age. Call it a deflection point, Call it the bottom falling out, something changes in that age range.
You old farts are making me feel quite young… ;)
Has Ezekiel Emanuel offed himself yet?
@Original Mike, Ezekiel Emanuel is 68. He’s got 7 years to go.
The old saw used to be that people aged 60 to 70 were in the go-go years, 70-80 the go years, and 80+ the no-go years.
I don't like sugar either Bob. I have made and tried all sorts of fermented foods from kimchi pickles sauerkraut kombucha kefir yogurt etc. after doing a bunch of research on probiotics tested in random human trials, I purchased three of them one for the brain one for hormonal boost and one for generalized gut health. And then made yogurt using these relatively expensive probiotics as the starter. It's been going about two and a half years now. After 6 months I was able to stop taking all asthma medication. I also find that where they got healthy diet I have a very constant and elevated energy level. Trust me I know we're not going to live forever I kind of buy into the whole concept of health span over lifespan.
"So stay away from cliffs, you people."
No worries here, got that covered. When I was around 30, a friend and I went to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite. You could walk right up to the edge if you wanted, I got down on hands and knees and crawled the last 6 feet to look over.
“-eat whole some food
She does”
I like to choke down a burger every now and then myself, but it’s better for your digestion if you cut your food up in small bite size pieces.
“3 months left before I fall off a cliff”
Why walk when you can drive?
Why be unable to walk when you can be unable to drive?
A friend of mine who is 95 told me 75 is the age when the wheels start to fall off.
Chi com Covid - big push.
@Mason G. AAAAGH!!!!
Technically, what this guy says is BS. There is no particular "cliff" at any age.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
Yes, older people have health problems and die, and yes, as people get older it becomes more likely they will have health problems and die. But, this is a gradual increase. The probabilities get gradually larger with age. Nothing in particular happens at age 75.
Each person has their own "cliff" when their particular health problems get them, but this happens at all ages, not just 75.
“ 3 months left before I fall off a cliff”
Unscientific stupidity. Does he say - on a list of certain traits associated with age related decline there is at the mean within a given confidence interval, among persons in the US, an extreme point in the derivative of decline with time centered at the 75 year point? No, he says, in three months I am doomed. What an ignorant scientist.
Quality of life in decline/improvement is a function of many variables including substance abuse, illness, injury, diet, activity, etc. Over your life the value of this function varies widely. Making age the dependent variable makes no difference in the data, your quality of life goes up and down all the time. If you get a good hip replacement at 74 you will have a higher quality when you are 75.
This is mystic folklore.
In the eighteen months after I reached 75 I had a cardiac ablation, a prostatectomy, a heart valve replacement, removal of a benign lipoma crowding one kidney, and a gastrointestinal stromal tumor removed. Now I feel better than I have in years, and I hope to outdo my father, who made it to 95 with all his marbles. I am thinking of giving up skiing, though. I am not the problem. It is those darn kids.
"@Mason G. AAAAGH!!!!"
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Don't know if I'd do it again, though.
Lost my wife of thirty-seven years at the beginning of 2024. I'm seventy-three. Don't care if I see seventy-five.
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