Peter Attia is one of the authorities I turn to for greater understanding of diet and health. His podcast “The Drive” is consistent in its message with what I say on supplysideliberal.com about diet and health, but often gets much more technical than I ever get here and often adds nuance. (As an example of nuance, I now believe, based on listening to Peter Attia that 5-20% of people have their low-density lipoprotein particle number shoot up when they eat a lot of saturated fat and that this minority of people should avoid saturated fat. Relatedly, I also learned that a testing of low-density-lipoprotein particle number is a much better test than low-density-lipoprotein mass tests that are all most of us usually get at the doctor’s office.)

I plan to discuss many of Peter Attia’s podcasts in depth in the future. But I thought the recent podcast above deserved to be highlighted immediately because of its relevance to the current pandemic. Please don’t try to make any use of the implicit suggestion in the title of this blog post without (a) listening to the whole podcast and (b) talking to your doctor (ideally after getting your doctor to listen to the whole podcast). Both rapamycin and metformin are drugs that your doctor should have the authority to give you a prescription for, if warranted. Note that rapamycin has an inverted-U-shaped effect on immune function: a little bit aids immune function but larger doses are routinely used to suppress immune function.

One intriguing thing about rapamycin and metformin in relation to Covid-19 is that (1) the danger of Covid-19 goes up dramatically with age and (1) rapamycin and metformin are some of the best bets Peter Attia knows of for general anti-aging drugs.

Postscript: My son-in-law Erik Berlin is a cofounder of Breaker. Breaker is the best podcast search app in existence on our planet. Try it! You can easily find it free in the app store. I listen to Peter Attia’s podcast using Breaker.

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:

• Miles Kimball on Diet and Health: A Reader's Guide