Peter Attia (born March 19, 1973) is a Canadian-American author, licensed physician and former researcher known for his work in longevity medicine. He is the author of Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity.
Early life and education Attia was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is the child of Egyptian Christian immigrant parents. As a ten-year-old he hoped to become a professional ice hockey player. As a teenager he took up boxing, which, as he later recounted in Outlive, gave him an outlet for the anger left by a difficult childhood, and he went on to compete at an elite junior level.
He studied at Queen's University at Kingston, graduating in 1996 with a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics. While at Queen's he taught calculus and helped revamp the university's calculus curriculum, and he volunteered at a shelter for abused children. He then entered Stanford University School of Medicine, from which he received his Doctor of Medicine in 2001. Attia has described how, determined to be ready for the operating room, he spent every Thursday night as a medical student practising suturing at his desk.
Career
Surgical training and cancer research From 2001 to 2006, Attia began a residency in general surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He left his general surgery residency at Johns Hopkins in 2006 and spent two years as a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, studying immunotherapy for melanoma.
Consulting After dropping out of his residency program, Attia joined the consulting firm McKinsey & Company in the Palo Alto office as a member of the Corporate Risk Practice and Healthcare Practice. After the birth of his daughter, medical tests showed that Attia, although still in his thirties and exercising heavily, already had risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The finding prompted him to change his own diet and to make the prevention of chronic disease the focus of his work. Attia also created the blog "The Eating Academy" (later "War on Insulin" and now peterattiamd.com) that mostly focuses on topics related to nutrition, physical activity, and longevity. Subsequently, he launched the podcast The Peter Attia Drive, in which he interviews experts each week, covering topics such as longevity, metabolic health, and medical research.
Nutrition Science Initiative In 2012, Attia co-founded the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI) with Gary Taubes, with a primary focus on promoting nutrition research and tackling the growing health challenges linked to obesity, diabetes, and metabolic diseases. In 2013, Attia was a speaker at TEDMED, where he shared insights on longevity.
The organisation secured a $4.7 million seed grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in 2012 and a further $35.5 million commitment in 2013, raising more than $40 million in total to test whether "all calories are created equal". By 2013 NuSI was coordinating three major research projects across six academic institutions. Attia stepped down at the end of 2015 to return to research.
Longevity medicine In 2014, Attia returned to medical practice and founded a private clinic dedicated to longevity medicine, a practice built on what he calls "Medicine 3.0": a proactive, personalised approach that aims to extend both lifespan and healthspan rather than waiting to treat disease once it appears.
Attia contributed a chapter of advice to Tim Ferriss's 2016 book Tools of Titans. In 2017, he posted on his YouTube Channel, with his first set of videos being instructional exercise videos. It now has more than a million subscribers and focuses on longevity content. Subsequently, in 2018, he launched the podcast The Peter Attia Drive.
In 2022 Attia served as the longevity physician on Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, a six-part documentary for National Geographic and Disney+ starring Chris Hemsworth and directed by Darren Aronofsky. In episode 5, Attia told Hemsworth that he carried the high-risk APOE4 allele, which places him at elevated risk of neurodegenerative aging of the Alzheimer's type.
On March 28, 2023, Attia (with coauthor Bill Gifford) published his book Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity. According to The New York Times Magazine, the book "has been a runaway best seller since it was published this spring [of 2023]"; it was No. 3 on the Amazon Charts for nonfiction as of August 24, 2023. Attia was named in Times 2024 list of influential people in health. By October 2025, CBS News reported that Outlive had sold nearly three million copies and that The Peter Attia Drive had been downloaded more than 100 million times. The Guardian called the book an "exhaustive, lucid exploration" of Attia's ideas while noting that the lifestyle changes it proposes could appear onerous and complicated. GQ described it as exhaustive and clear, while observing that it raised more questions than it answered.
In October 2025, Attia appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes, where he discussed the role of structured exercise and preventative health strategies in extending health span.
From January to February 2026, Attia was a contributor to CBS News. Personal life Attia currently lives in the Austin, Texas, area with his wife and three children. In 2005, Attia swam across the channel between Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles, the 120th person to achieve that feat.
He trained for the crossing by swimming roughly 20 to 30 miles per week alongside a surgical residency that at times reached 100 hours per week, and drew on his undergraduate training in mechanical engineering to analyse the physics of his stroke. He said at the time that the swim was intended in part to draw attention to the Terry Fox Foundation's cancer-research work. He has since completed the channel in both directions. Attia has also boxed, cycled competitively and competes in archery.
Controversies In 2012, Attia co-founded the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI) with science journalist Gary Taubes to fund research into the carbohydrate–insulin model of obesity. The organization received a funding commitment of about $40 million from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Attia stepped down as president in 2015. NuSI later lost its research partners following disagreements over study design and the interpretation of pilot results, lost its principal funding, and largely ceased operations by 2018.
Attia was introduced to Jeffrey Epstein in 2015 through Eva Andersson-Dubin. Epstein's appointment calendars, released in 2025, recorded several meetings involving Attia. Emails released in connection with the Epstein files documented communications between Attia and Epstein concerning patient referrals, accommodation, a hiring decision at Attia's clinic, and health and longevity. According to Bloomberg, the last meeting between the two documented in the emails took place on September 28, 2018, while Attia was in New York for a cancer meeting he had invited Epstein to attend.
On February 3, 2026, David founder Peter Rahal announced that Attia had stepped down as the company's chief science officer, and Attia's name and image were removed from the company's website. Biograph, the testing startup Attia co-founded, declined to comment on his status. Attia also publicly apologized for the content of some of his emails with Epstein.
Oura litigation Attia began working with Oura in 2017 as an adviser and promoter of its smart ring, and invested in the company in 2018. In February 2019, he entered into a stock option agreement signed by then-CEO Harpreet Rai. According to Attia's court filings, it gave him the right to acquire 20,000 shares at €1.76 per share in exchange for advisory and promotional services. After Rai's departure in December 2021, Attia sought to exercise the options in January 2022. Oura declined to honor the agreement, and Attia filed a breach-of-contract suit in the Northern District of California in 2023.
Oura has argued that its board never authorized the grant and that the agreement is invalid, citing the Finnish Companies Act, under which option rights are issued by the shareholders' general meeting or an authorized board rather than the CEO. The company sought to move the dispute to arbitration in Helsinki under the shareholders' agreement Attia had accepted as an investor. The district court denied the motion in 2024, finding that Attia's investment and advisory agreements were separate. The Ninth Circuit affirmed on 21 March 2025, and the case has since proceeded in federal court in Oakland.
Attia's suit is one of three similar claims over options allegedly promised by Rai. The others were brought by former NFL quarterback Drew Brees, whose case was sent to arbitration in 2025, and early investor Gurinder "Gordy" Bal.
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