Transcript of Defying Aging: Preventative AI’s Game-Changer with Dr Eric Topol

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Hey, everybody. This episode with Dr. Eric Tople is amazing. We go into AI in medicine. We talk about why we should be looking at our health span versus our lifespan. We're going to talk through some numbers that are going to be mind-blowing. But Dr. Eric is going to give you a lot of tips that you can use right now to increase your health span. We don't talk about or believe in reversing aging. We just need to make sure that we understand that it's going to happen. But what can we do to have a prolonged health span? So without further ado, this is my good friend and someone that you're going to get a lot of wisdom from, Dr. Aire Top.

You're listening to Mic Unplug. Unplugged, hosted by the one and only Mic Hunt. This is where purpose meets power and stories spark transformation. Mic takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning, helping you discover your because and becoming unstable. I'm Rudy Rush, And trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get Unplugged.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mic Unplugged. And today I have someone who I've been wanting to talk to for a long time, somebody that has really shaped a lot of thoughts that I have around AI and discipline and health and strategies. He is none other than the amazing, the brilliant, the guy Why This is going to change your life today, Dr. Eric Tople. Dr. Eric, how are you doing today, sir?

Well, thank you. That's an awfully kind introduction. I very much appreciate it.

I mean, every word of it. You are definitely doing some game-changing things out there. I love to talk to my guests about their because, that thing that's deeper than your why, right? That passion that drives you. And you've done so much in your illustrious career. What's your because today? Why do you keep doing the things that you do?

I just think we can do so much better to prevent the major diseases, not just the area that I've been in for my career, cardiovascular, but also neurodegenerative, preventing Alzheimer's and also preventing cancer. We are not taking advantage of all the golden opportunities, the knowledge, the advances, the innovation. We should be doing it. It's frustrating, but we will. Eventually, we'll get there.

I love it. And again, you're doing so much, you have done so much, and you continue to do groundbreaking things in your industry. When did you know that that was going to become a passion of yours to make change and to make impact?

Well, I guess when I was training, I was at UC San Francisco, and I was in the middle of really a revolution in cardiology, where the beginning of angioplasty and clot dissolving therapies and all sorts of things are happening very quickly. And that gave me a sense that, well, that's not a one-off. Why Why don't we do this more often? Why don't we start to really take medicine to levels that are not the status quo, which is typical? It's a slow moving feel, and we need to get on the accelerator. There's too many people that are suffering, that are dying, or have whatever disability. That could be as cleaning up the problems of medical errors, or it could be coming up with new strategies to prevent diseases. We're just not doing that. Everything we do, essentially in medicine, treat, treat, treat. Where is the prevent, prevent, prevent? And so we now are empowered to go that route. And it's a lot like what I experienced in the early '80s, which is When a field within medicine went through a radical change, we need to do that more frequently than every decade or two.

Again, all the things that you're doing, you have a new book coming out, Super Agers. And what I love about this book and the things that you're talking about, it's evidence-based, right? You're not just giving hyperbole, you're not giving theory, you're not doing the what ifs. You're not trying to scare people. You're talking about evidence-based topics and help. Could you, for the viewers and listeners, talk about Superagers, where the idea come from, and where do you want people to get out of this?

Yeah, I think many people in your audience are like me, where they have a terrible family history. When I was growing up, I think I remember the most is going all these funerals of my relatives, and my aunts, and my uncles, my grandparents, dying all at young ages. I figured, Well, I'm condemned to the same fate. I've always been interested in genetics and health span, lifespan. We did a study we called the Welderly. The Welderly, basically another name for them, were super-agers. We were able to find 1,400 people who were average age 89 who had never been sick in their lives, and they were on no medication. Now, that's a rarefied group. We did whole genome sequencing on these people, and we found very little from their DNA sequence to account for their welderly super age or status. Now, there's a small genetic component, but it's far less than we ever had assumed. And so that actually felt that's liberating. I might not I have to succumb like my road is. I think it's an eye-opening finding. And then the question is, what does account for healthy aging? And we do know, as you mentioned, the evidence, the body of evidence, of course, supports healthy lifestyles.

You don't have to go to a longevity clinic or take these anti-aging supplements that have no data or other very expensive things like plasmapheresis, unproven stem cells, all kinds of supplement stuff. Actually, first off is concentrating on healthy anti-inflammatory diet and lots of physical activity, not just aerobic, but also strength resistance training and sleep quality, really important. But the list goes on about being out in nature, having a purpose, having lots of social engagement. So we've learned a lot about lifestyle factors. It's not all about that. The other thing we learned that I reviewed in Super Agers is the immune system is really big. We need to keep our immune system healthy because as we owe this term immunosinnessence, it's prone to promote inflammation, another term, inflammation, which is what sets off these age-related diseases to occur. We have to get on top of that and not let our immune system lose its integrity as we age. Some people, the super-agers, they're just naturally got a great immune system. But most of us, we have not the ideal progression as time goes on, where our immune system loses some of its protective capabilities or it gets dysregulated.

We got to prevent that if we're going to get our health span extended to the max. Yeah.

So speaking of that with the immune system, for those that are watching or listening, what are one or two things that we can do to improve our immune system or help out our immune system so that we can become Come one of those Superagers.

Well, one great example. I mean, you're young, but if you're over 50, you better get a shingles vaccine. It's actually pretty incredible. Now, as of this week, there'll be four studies, natural experiments, large countries, US, Canada, Wales, Australia, collectively millions of people. And the people who got the Schingles vaccine had 20 % or more reduction of dementia. Most of, of course, is Alzheimer's, about 80%. And then today is a report about how Schingles vaccine slows the aging process in people. Now, these are not related to that it's having a big effect through the herpes zoster, which is what causes shingles. But what we've now seen is that the immune system is really amped up. It's made healthier. That's what accounts for this slowing aging and less risk of developing Alzheimer's disease disease. So we got one thing right now, which if this was a drug, people would be taking this left and right. Alzheimer's is probably the most feared, dreaded disease of all people. So we have something, and we're going to build on that. Medications, other vaccines. Maybe there will ultimately be a vaccine just to prevent neurodegenerative disease. But that's a big jump in our knowledge base, and it's really exciting.

And it goes beyond, of course, lifestyle factor.

That's awesome. One of the things that I've been passionate about as our society continues to evolve is artificial intelligence, so AI. I personally believe that in the health space, in the longevity space, AI is actually more powerful than it is in any other space is because people forget the intelligence part of AI. A lot of times when we're thinking AI, we're thinking of bot or we're thinking of automation, but that's Not really AI. Those technologies have existed for years and years and actually decades and decades. But in the health space, AI is making huge impacts. How are you viewing AI for the good, for the bad, or for the indifferent?

Yeah, well, there's three big parts to that story, which I agree with you. Firstly, there's the ability to improve accuracy of diagnosis. We've already seen that proven for images like mammograms and colonoscopy picking up polyp and many other forms of imaging of scans. That's one that is very clear-cut, that the AI sees things that human experts can't see, won't see, ever see. That's one. The second is the ability to give the gift of time back to clinicians because they're very much burdened with data clerk functions. They're not even looking at patients. They're typing on a keyboard Now we're seeing how natural language processing and all the other downstream functions of an automated synthetic note. There's total attention being paid, one to one, eye to eye, and there's a presence back. But moreover, We're seeing randomized studies show that it provides a gift of time. It's a big morale booster. We're getting back that patient-doctor relationship gradually, and that's going to be big. But the one I think is the biggest contribution in the future is using AI to prevent diseases. That is taking all the data of a person, many, many layers of data, and using that to know who's at high risk and getting all over that person so they never get an important age-related disease.

These are the three big areas. Now, it doesn't mean that AI is perfect. There's liabilities, of course, but I'm very sanguine about all three of these being a big deal.

You often emphasize the importance of not just lifespan, but you talk about the health span. Break that down for us for those that are listening or watching.

Well, the average American health span ends at age 64 because they have a major chronic disease, mostly age-related. Diseases, cardiovascular, a cancer, beginning of a neurodegenerative disease. The lifespan, as you know, in the US, averages about 79, a couple of years more for women than men. That's a 15-year age gap between the end of a person's average health span to the end of their life. Now, that 15 years shouldn't be. It should be that their health span and lifespan are close. That big loss of nearly 15 years, that's what we have to start to... People want to have longevity and live to 120. That's not worth anything if you're basically demented and frail. I mean, we can do that today. We could put you on a life support system and keep you alive forever, but you're afunctional. What good is that? So we have to get this maximal extension of health span and stop this terrible gap that exists today between health span and lifespan. And this longevity craze is wrong. We shouldn't be going after longevity. We should have a health span interest. That's the primary objective.

How do we achieve this? I know you're doing your part in articulating this message, but how do we really just let people understand that this is a thing and steps that they can take in order to improve their health span?

Yeah. So first of all, we could accept that we're going to age. That's a normal process. Instead of trying to block aging and reverse aging, we're going to age. But let's not accept the age-related diseases. So in the weeks ahead, we're starting the first prevention of Alzheimer's trial by taking all the data in high-risk people and that randomizing to very intensive, continuous lifestyle improvement versus just providing some educational materials. Then in 1,200 people who are at high risk for Alzheimer's, we'll be able to tell whether we're making headway. Then we'll start with different medications that have a lot of promise on top of lifestyle. We believe Alzheimer's ultimately will be a preventable disease, as will be most common cancers and heart disease. But it's going to take a while. You have to have the proof of concept. You have compelling evidence. But we have to get started on this. You couldn't do this without multimodal AI because you got to take the data from all these different layers, and that includes genes and proteins and biomarkers. It's not very expensive, but it relies on great analytics. I think that's why I'm so excited about the new era of prevention.

So in your estimate, and this is about to be a bad question. I shouldn't even ask it the way that I'm getting at. So I went to the doctor for a regular checkup a few weeks ago, and I was asking him and the team about using AI to help with diagnosis or with symptom prevention and all this. And he said, That's not something I'm comfortable with, and I don't want to experiment with that. Why is that mindset still there? And how do we change that mindset?

Yeah, it's very hard to change anything in medicine as as I've learned over four decades. Unfortunately, it's lots of resistance among physicians to incorporate AI, especially when it's proven. I mean, there's many things that we're still waiting for that compelling evidence. But it's sad because there are things that should definitely be part of daily routine medical practice and care. There's just a gap that time. It's just really unfortunate because it's not delivering state-of-the-art care for Oh, wow, the AI is going to take over my role. Doctors are typically control freaks. They want to control everything. Here AI is coming in and encroaching their control factor. There's lots of things here that account for this reluctance to accept or embrace AI.

So here's something you don't know, and I waited till we were live together to tell you this. Ground Truths, your newsletter. My mom, who will unsubscribe to any and everything in the world, The one thing that she subscribers to that she can't wait for the latest and greatest is Ground Truths. I love to give you the floor to talk to us about Ground Truths, your newsletter. I'm going to make sure we have links to that and obviously links to the book as well, too. But I love to talk about that newsletter because my mom loves it.

Oh, well, that's fantastic. Thanks so much for passing that along. Well, four years ago, I started reluctantly to do this newsletter, which is now newsletter and podcast alternating weekly or if not more frequent. And what I learned was so much better than using Twitter or these other social media, because you can really express yourself. It's not like 240 characters. And I started to realize that this was helping people get the latest medical advances or talk, hear from the leading figures there's in the world of biomedicine. And it's been fun for me. I love doing it. I have another one I'm going to work on this week is the big jump in new shingles of vaccine that's happening just this week. But I really want to have people aware. Most of the time, it's stuff that's not covered in the media, and there's big things happening. And a lot of people these days are not very optimistic for various reasons. But I tried to show, Hey, you know what? We're making great progress, and we're going to get to the point of preventing these dreaded diseases and a whole different practice of medicines. Whether that's changing how we screen for cancer, how we prevent cancer, all the things that we can do to get on top of preventing heart disease.

I mean, there's something every day. I have to pick the things each week that deserve spotlighting, but it's fun. It takes some time to do it, but It's so great to get the feedback from your mother.

No. Again, my mom will unsubscribe to anything, but she loves the fact that what you send out is informative. And this is me and me only. I'll say it because it's the truth. A lot of folks that have newsletters, they're trying to show you how smart they are or getting you to click into something else where you're there. She feels like you are genuinely in your heart is to help people and to give them information that can help them. And so that's kudos to you.

Well, thanks. No I really appreciate. It means a lot to me because there's no sponsors, there's no ads, it's free. It's something that is the main purpose is to spread the word, spread what's really important going on in medicine that a lot of people might not know about. Like, for example, the breakthrough test about Alzheimer's disease that still today. I go into giving a talk and there are several hundred people. I say, Anybody here have the P hour, 2: 17 test. Like one person raises their hand. But I've written at least two newsletters about it. I say, anybody heard of organ clocks? Two people raise their hand. It's just so much stuff going on that's exciting reading it, people don't know about it, and it's not covered elsewhere. So that's what I try to do.

Awesome stuff. So what else do you have going on? What else are you excited about? Any projects? I know the book, and like I said, we'll have links to the book, but what else is Dr. Eric working on?

Well, there are doing that, starting up that trial Alzheimer's prevention. We just enrolled a thousand people with long COVID to try to prevent or treat long COVID, which is not... There There's no treatment validated. We're testing a GLP-1 drug bound for people versus placebo. This is a direct-to-participant trial. All of our clinical trials are direct-to-participant. We don't involve any medical centers. We just go right to the people. That's what we shouldn't be doing. We shouldn't be doing trials the old way. They cost too much, and they're very inconvenient, and very slow, and extremely costly. We can cut 90% of the cost just by going direct to participant. That's something we do. But basically, the AI analytics, that is our main thrust, is being able to take many layers of data, including sensors, variable sensors, and bring that together to extract the most meaning so that we live in a new era. Now, everybody's talked about the information era for decades. Well, we're in a hyper information era. We're in a tsunami of information, but no one really is analyzing it very well. That's one of the things that we really work on.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Dr. Eric, where can people find and follow you and keep up with the latest, greatest of you?

Well, thanks. I mean, Substack Ground Truce. I named it Ground Truce as a double meaning. One is it's a big term in AI, how you tell whether the AI is performing versus the truth, the ground truth. But it's also I'm on the ground that I'm trying to tell the truth. I'm trying to get out there things that people should know about. That's one thing, and that's easy to find, ground truth. Super Ages' book is the fourth book I've written about the future of medicine, and when I'm really, as I mentioned, very keen about preventing diseases, And otherwise, we're publishing quite a bit in the main journals, and that's what we believe. You got to have the evidence, got to have peer review. Don't give me these influencers that are hocking supplements and other crap. You know what? If you're hocking something, then that means you're not credible. You're never going to find me selling a supplement or anything. So that's, I think, something really important. And I wish we had a lot less that stuff because it's got people very confused out there. They don't know who to believe. Being a trusted source, that's something you have to work hard at gaining that trust and maintaining it.

So that's what I try to do.

You do an amazing job Again, I'm honored to have you on. I'm a huge supporter and follower of all the things that you do. Just truly blessed to have you here in the wisdom that you have, man. So I could talk to you forever, but I don't want to do that. But what I'm going to do is this. Yes. I want to think of the right way to do it, but I want to provide 20 copies of your book to someone, so I will make sure I purchase them. But the first 20 people that message me, whether it's LinkedIn, Instagram, my phone, whatever, the first people that message me Superagers, I'm going to send a copy of this book.

How about that? Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you. Yes, sir. I thank your mother for me because that's really wonderful to hear that she's a reader and avid reader. Yeah, I mean, that's what it's all about is connecting with people and trying to share worthwhile information and perspective.

You got it. Again, I'm honored to have you here. For everybody that's watching or listening, make sure you go to the show notes in the descriptions. I'm going to have links to everything that Dr. Eric has going on. Trust me, you definitely want to subscribe to the newsletter. If you're not on Substack, go on Substack right now just for him. Forget anyone else because he's an amazing writer and information share as well, too. And for all the viewers and listeners, remember, your because is your superpower. Go unleash it.

That's another powerful conversation on Mic Unplug. If this episode moved you, and I'm sure it did, follow the show wherever you listen. Share it with someone who needs that spark, and leave a review so more people can find there because. I'm Rudy Rush, and until next time, stay driven, stay focused, and stay Unpluged. Ugged.