The TRUTH About Death — Doctor Who’s Seen It Reveals What Really Matters (Dr. Vass)
ER doctor Dr. Vass says dying patients never regret missing money or status, only weak relationships and unfulfilled lives. He built a longevity pyramid where purpose and connection matter more than diet and exercise, and argues your gut instinct often beats what the data says.
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I have a cheat sheet, and the cheat sheet is when you work in the ER— I've been with a lot of people as they face their mortality, and I've learned a lot from them. But when people are dying, they don't have time for the BS that all of us fill our lives with most of the time. They speak truth, and I learned from those people. It's not your net worth, it's not some deal you made or didn't make, it's not your name on some university somewhere for on a building or whatever, it's not the car you're driving, it's the people you love and the quality of those relationships. That's what people regret on their deathbeds. And that's what they talk about with a complete stranger. And yeah, being the doctor and having, you know, an air of authority, like people are, I think, are able to be a little bit more open to the doctor if they fill the right shoes, have the right, you know, sort of interaction with their clients, with their patients. But that's what matters. Everything else is stuff we decide to fill our time with. So, yeah. Yeah, I think true wealth is how you feel about yourself and then the relationships and the quality of those relationships with the people you care about. That's it.
As someone who has witnessed a lot of people facing their mortality, what lessons can you pass to us and, and the audience for how to maybe mitigate some of those deathbed regrets?
I don't know. I mean, it's easy to say quality of your relationship with yourself. Like, what does that even Because I'll tell you personally, like, that's actually something that I'm working really hard on for myself. So the reality is you don't have to actually do anything. What I have had to do is to ask myself the hard questions, the questions that I'm not even necessarily aware that I need to ask myself, and get comfortable with what your answers are to those questions. Well, this one's going to sound too obvious, but I think particularly for men in our society, how do you feel? How do you feel right now? How do you feel? What are you feeling? Most of us can't answer that question. This is probably going over a lot of people's heads because I would have heard this maybe 20 years ago and thought, I know exactly how I feel.
My sense is people listening to this podcast are starting to wake up to these questions.
Yeah, I would challenge you to ask yourself how you feel and do you really understand how you feel and are you comfortable with how you feel? It's a way harder question for me to answer than than I think I would've thought 10, 20, 30 years ago.
Well, now I have a cheat sheet because I've heard you speak on stage before, but how do you bring some of these questions or thoughts into your practice? How are they intertwined with longevity?
I think longevity is the great catchphrase of the moment, and I love it. I like it. My current practice is called Longevity Health. The question for sort of the purposes of your podcast, like longevity is, I think in many ways, monetized, as we're fantastic at doing, and it's amazing about what we do. I would then sort of layer well-being, right? Because longevity is one thing, and there's an image of like, I'm going to live to 140 and I'm going to do all this stuff and run marathon. And that's what some of these talking heads are sort of promoting, have goals of doing. And I think there's nothing wrong with those goals, right? For the right person, like fantastic, awesome, good for you. What's the well-being of your humanity, your spirituality, your true inner self? I think a lot of this longevity stuff and performance stuff are, are the masks that we put over that sort of deeper level of the well-being. And I think a lot of people, their longevity might look pretty good on paper, but if you got into their well-being, probably doesn't look so good. And so for me, it's really how do you bridge that? I don't want to call it gap or divide. Or maybe misunderstanding around like what is real longevity. Longevity isn't living if you're not fulfilled, if you don't have quality relationships, and if you don't have a sense of purpose. And I think these are ways that we can articulate, well, what is true well-being? True well-being is being comfortable with yourself.
I like red light therapy and sauna as much as the next guy.
Yeah.
Kind of what I hear you pointing to is that a lot of times those are majoring in the minors.
Yes.
Right? So, what are the major factors in your view for the longevity, you know, stacking that pyramid.
Yeah. So the longevity pyramid that I guess you saw that. Yeah. This is what's so fascinating, which is we can intellectualize all we want. And there are certain things that are easier to measure than others. And therefore there's sort of a preponderance of data, like it may be the spotlight's pointing over in this direction just because we can measure it. But if you're willing to actually take a step back and look at the real fundamentals, the people who live the longest have a sense of purpose and a a sense of connection. And it doesn't mean like smiley, happy, joy, joy. It's they're happy with who they are and how they're being in the world. That is the longest lived people, the common thread that underlies all the other stuff. Because yes, I'm not trying to minimize diet and exercise and medical care and all, all these other things play a role, but the longest lived people have connection. They have purpose, and they're comfortable in their own skin. That's all you need to live a long, fulfilled life. You know, when I speak, I think it resonates with people because I do my best to try to connect the fancy things that we can do medically to these deeper, more meaningful subjects, and really try to really just bring awareness to that fact, let it into the room, acknowledge the importance of it. Can be incredibly powerful for people. Because in my day-to-day medical practice, I guess I'm not sure how that shows up other than I want to be true to myself and I want to be true to the person I'm working with. And so, you know, one of the things I'll say is, you know, I'm not dogmatic about any, any medical therapy or recommendation. And this I've learned, you know, from my clients and my patients in the ER over the years. I might think, and the medical data and the system, the algorithms might say this is the right thing to do. All the research could say, you have, you're in this scenario and you have these options. This is clearly the right way to go. And I can't tell you how many times I've had conversations with either patients or their families and their gut sense is no, like that's not right for me. This is what's right for me. And I'll go to bed thinking, well, they're going to be gone before the morning. And lo and behold, the science is not always right. And you have to trust that gut sensation. Like as a clinician, I've learned that. And as a patient, If your deeper inner sense is to go a different direction, trust it. It's more informed and more knowledgeable than like our frontal cortex and our data could ever be. And so just acknowledging that and bringing that in the room is sort of an important step because it's not how our system operates, not how any of it's set up to work. And I think, you know, bringing this back to the broader mission of the medical practice is how do we swing that pendulum? How do we get that back into how we take care of people, how we take care of each other in our medical system?
Yeah. I mean, if, if I can summarize what I'm hearing is at the base of everything before we get into medical intervention or diet or exercise or sleep, which is wildly important, you're saying relationship with yourself, relationship with others and relationship with source essentially as the, as the most fundamental piece of what creates wellbeing.
Yeah, absolutely. No question. And this is where we're so well conditioned to go to data and frontal court, you know, like these rational, linear, logical thinkings. And it's hard to sometimes debate or have what some would consider a true intellectual evidence-based conversation around this. And yet I can't tell you how many times in my personal clinical medical experience that when you trust that intuition, even when it flies in the face of the data, you're more likely to be right. Than wrong. And so there's real-world practicality and application for that, that we don't allow space for academically, I think, in medicine or in other professions and realms in our Western sort of trained minds and culture.
