Over the years Dr. Peter Attia built a reputation as an influential voice in popular longevity medicine. He’s been pervasive online. And recently he was hired by CBS News based on his credibility. So, he’s big time. His podcast draws millions of listeners, and his book became a bestseller. People trust him with their health decisions. I was an active follower until about 2018 when his arrogance finally got the best of me and I just got tired of him. It wasn’t much of a loss for me to dump him because there are plenty of other excellent people in the field who question the established medical paradigm. But Attia kept going and getting rich in the process, which is common among the top tier people in the field. But apparently, he got himself in way over his head. Hopefully, he’ll come crashing down as fast as he rose. It’s unlikely. But I can still hope.

Check out this report about Attia from Joseph Everett — Hidden Data: How the Top Longevity Doctor tricked us all — that reveals a pattern of overconfidence, selective data presentation, and dismissiveness toward ideas that challenge his worldview. In the video, Everett analyzes Attia’s claims and public statements and does several on-camera interviews with Dave Feldman, Dr. Nick Norwitz, and Dr. Chris Masterjohn to provide some scientific context and to counter some of Attia’s most confident assertions. Here’s a review of Everett’s report. 

The Epstein Connection

I never thought Attia would fall based on his association with Jeffrey Epstein because until last week no one even knew he was hanging out with that crowd. But that’s where we are. The Epstein files revealed more than 1,700 PDFs mentioning Attia. The emails show a close relationship that continued even after Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes were publicly known. Attia met Epstein in 2015 through Epstein’s ex-girlfriend. He called Epstein “literally one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.” He expressed interest in visiting Epstein’s island, and he stayed at Epstein’s apartments. He attended dinner parties with Epstein and his so-called famous friends. 

Attia’s timeline with Epstein is particularly striking. According to Attia’s own book, on July 11, 2017, his wife rushed their one-month-old infant to the hospital because the baby had stopped breathing and his heart had stopped beating. His wife stayed in the hospital for four days, pleading with Attia to come home. He said he couldn’t because he was in New York with “important work.” The next day, July 12, Attia emailed Epstein confirming he could meet him. That’s difficult for any parent to imagine. But it provides a view into the dark space in which Attia lives so freely.

When the Miami Herald published its piece on Epstein in November 2018, Attia claimed he was “repulsed and nauseated.” Yet he stayed in touch with Epstein for at least four more months. In December 2018, he asked Epstein about the “fallout from recent story.” In February 2019, he was still emailing with the subject line “Where are you these days?” There are many other disgusting exchanges between the two in those files. Read them if you want.

The connection to Epstein itself might not be damning. Time will tell. Plenty of people got caught up in Epstein’s orbit but haven’t been implicated with crimes. But the same overconfidence that led Attia to maintain this relationship shows up repeatedly in his health claims.

The VO2 Max Problem

Attia built much of his longevity framework around VO2 max. He called it “perhaps the single most powerful marker for longevity.” He was emphatic. He brought it up on podcasts constantly. The claim appeared on 60 Minutes. It’s in his book. He says everyone should know their VO2 max and track it.

But there’s a problem. The studies he cites to support this claim never actually measured VO2 max. In Everett’s video, Chris Masterjohn, PhD, points out that you can search some of these papers for the word “oxygen” and find nothing. What the studies measured was how long people lasted on a progressively harder treadmill test. That’s not the same thing. I remember people online questioning Attia on this issue and many other issues. Attia generally ignored them. My impression was that Attia grew to be connected and protected. Or at least he was acting that way. 

And when Attia made a table for his blog showing VO2 max levels, he simply relabeled data from a paper that measured something else entirely. The table made it into his book. He tells people they should spend $200 annually to have their VO2 max measured at an exercise science lab, when all you actually need is a treadmill, according to Masterjohn. 

Masterjohn explains that most people in the general population can’t even reach their VO2 max during these tests. They give up because of heart palpitations, leg pain, or feeling like they’ll throw up. They’re never hitting their actual maximum oxygen consumption. But Attia presents this metric as if it’s the single most important thing you can measure. It shows how Attia grew to become totally disconnected from regular people just trying to get healthy. It’s clear in retrospect that Attia was focused on other clients who could pay him millions. Everett points out in his video that Attia would show up on video podcasts wearing several different $300,000 watches. 

The real problem is that focusing so intensely on VO2 max could lead people to spend hours doing one repetitive motion instead of diversifying their training. As Masterjohn says, gymnasts and pole vaulters have eight years on the general population for lifespan. That’s a testament to the breadth of functional training, not endless cardio optimization.

Hiding Inconvenient Data

Now let’s move to cholesterol and statins. When a major study in Cell Metabolism showed that atorvastatin (the most profitable drug in history) slashed GLP-1 levels while worsening glycemic markers and insulin resistance, Dr. Nick Norwitz (MD, Ph.D.) started discussing the issue online. Two weeks later, Attia published a newsletter that appeared to be responding to Norwitz’s analysis. That seems like Attia’s back handed style. 

But Norwitz noticed something strange. Attia’s newsletter tried to discredit the study, but it completely ignored the most relevant graph. As Norwitz puts it in Everett’s report, “There’s one graph of relevance. An 8-year-old can tell you what’s going on. There’s a big red line. It goes down.” Attia showed the figure that contained this graph but clipped out the specific panel that showed the problem. It’s hard to think that wasn’t intentional, Norwitz says. 

Nick Norwitz and the New Generation

Norwitz himself represents exactly the kind of rigorous, open-minded research Attia claims to support. At age 30, Norwitz has already published 54 peer-reviewed papers. His scientific impact score is higher than Thomas Dayspring, the lipidologist Attia regularly cites as his go-to cholesterol expert. And Dayspring is 50 years older. Norwitz is prolific online, too, but he embraces the conversation with both technical and non-technical people — unlike Attia. 

Norwitz recently gave some credibility to another researcher, Dave Feldman, who is a popular software engineer who has been researching LDL cholesterol for years now. Feldman developed an alternative cholesterol model by conducting his own personal experiments and publishing the results online and in scientific papers. Norwitz tested some of Feldman’s views and lowered his LDL cholesterol from 384 to 111 by eating Oreo cookies for 16 days. When he tried statins for 6 weeks, he only managed to lower his LDL from 421 to 284. The Oreos worked better than the drugs. Why the Oreos worked at all is interesting.

The point isn’t that people should eat Oreos instead of taking statins. The point is that our understanding of cholesterol metabolism is more complex than Attia presents it. And when young researchers like Norwitz demonstrate this complexity, Attia either ignores them or dismisses their work outright.

Dismissing Dissent

Perhaps the most revealing episodes with Attia involve Dave Feldman. When Feldman appeared on Attia’s podcast in 2018, the exchange revealed something troubling about how Attia pushes his influence and bullies people. He interrupted Feldman a staggering 66 times, according to Everett’s count. He called Feldman’s investigation “brain damage.” His treatment was arrogant and dismissive to say the very least. He told people interested in cholesterol questions to “sit down, shut up for a minute, and pay attention.” I remember listening to that episode. It was infuriating. And it was clear that it was actually Attia who was out of his league — not Feldman. I mean, when a software engineer goes up against an MD you’d expect the engineer to lose in a fair fight. But Feldman more than held his own in the match. In fact, he was really impressive. Ultimately, though, when some so-called “expert” reacts like Attia did, it’s likely an indication that they have been exposed. I was mostly done with Attia at that point, at least on the cholesterol issue.

The irony is that Feldman’s questions were reasonable and backed up with some excellent, albeit early, data. According to Feldman and Everett, Most research showing that LDL cholesterol is dangerous comes from studies of metabolically unhealthy people. But what happens to people who have high LDL and also have high HDL and low triglycerides, which are both markers of good metabolic health? Do they still die early? What about the many other biomarkers that demonstrate good health in these people? These questions were totally dismissed by Attia.

Attia further said that this line of inquiry was pointless. He challenged Feldman to crowdfund research if he thought his ideas had merit. Feldman, always up for a good challenge, did exactly that. He raised $350,000 for the Lean Mass Hyper-Responder study. The results showed that metabolically healthy people on a keto diet with sky-high LDL didn’t develop more arterial plaque in their hearts. Imagine that. Attia’s response? Silence. And when invited to co-author a journal editorial about the findings by his own former head of research, Bob Kaplan, Attia declined and said there were people “far more reputable” to discuss it with. 

Meanwhile, Feldman went on to publish eight peer-reviewed papers on the subject and continues to work closely with Norwitz on cholesterol research.

The Real Issue

The pattern is clear. Attia presents himself as committed to open-minded scientific inquiry and he strongly lectures people about that. Yet his own behavior says otherwise. He once stated we should “go back to our original ideals: open minds, the courage to throw out yesterday’s ideas when they don’t appear to be working, and the understanding that scientific truth isn’t final.” But when faced with obvious data that challenges his positions, Attia either ignores it or attacks the messenger, many times in childish, unscientific ways. You can see him online repeatedly rolling his eyes, smirking, shaking his head, raising his voice, and using harsh language when he’s simply questioned by anyone. From his powerful platform, he still maintains extreme confidence in his claims, which seem more shaky than ever. That’s not science. That’s ego. And it’s the same attitude that kept him emailing Jeffrey Epstein months after the world knew what Epstein had done.

I wonder how many online health gurus who called him a friend will come out publicly and question Attia now. So far, too many are silent. I wonder, do these people think we’ll not notice?