Speaker 1: On this episode of Newts World. Ninety five percent of
Speaker 1: Americans over sixty have at least one chronic disease, and
Speaker 1: almost as many have two chronic killers. Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, cancer,
Speaker 1: and neurodegeneration are all diseases that need treatments to begin
Speaker 1: long before middle age. In thirty years, will have five
Speaker 1: times as many people at least one hundred years old,
Speaker 1: and they will be healthier than ever because of new
Speaker 1: medical breakthroughs. In his new book, super Agers and Evidence
Speaker 1: Based Approach to Longevity, doctor Eric Topol provides a detailed
Speaker 1: guide to a revolution transforming human longevity. And let me
Speaker 1: say I've been through several briefings and meetings over the
Speaker 1: years that doctor Topel is one of the most brilliant
Speaker 1: and extraordinary people I've ever had the privilege of learning from,
Speaker 1: and I'm thrilled that he's here. His unprecedented evidence based
Speaker 1: guide is about how you and your family and friends
Speaker 1: can benefit from new treatments coming available at a faster
Speaker 1: rate than ever. From his unique position as a leader
Speaker 1: overseeing millions in research funding, Doctor Topel also explains the
Speaker 1: fundamental reasons from semaglutides to artificial intelligence that we can
Speaker 1: be confident these breakthroughs will continue. I'm really pleased to
Speaker 1: welcome my guest, doctor Eric tople. He is the executive
Speaker 1: vice president and a professor of molecular Medicine at SCRIPTS Research,
Speaker 1: the largest nonprofit biomedical institute of the United States. He
Speaker 1: is also founder and director of the Script's Research Translational Institute,
Speaker 1: and a practicing cardiologist. He is one of the top
Speaker 1: ten most cited researchers in medicine, known for his groundbreaking
Speaker 1: studies in AI in medicine, genomics, and digitized clinical trials.
Speaker 1: He was named the Time one hundred list of the
Speaker 1: most Influential People in Health in twenty twenty four. Doctor Topel,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you. It's wonderful to be with you and
Speaker 2: to have a chance to have another conversation.
Speaker 1: In well in super agers, you expand the definition of
Speaker 1: healthy lifestyle into what you call lifestyle plus. Why is
Speaker 1: this broader approach factoring in things like pollution, loneliness, posture,
Speaker 1: and even social connection so important to living longer and better?
Speaker 2: Right, So, we have been traditionally just thinking of diet, exercise,
Speaker 2: and in more recent years sleep health as the big
Speaker 2: lifestyle factors, but we've learned so much about these other
Speaker 2: layers of data and factors, as you mentioned, the environmental
Speaker 2: burden of air pollution, microplastics and nanoplastics, the forever chemicals,
Speaker 2: the consumption of ultra processed foods, but the good things
Speaker 2: about social interactions, avoiding isolation, being out in nature. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's so many different things now that add to the mix,
Speaker 2: and that's why I try to come up with a
Speaker 2: term to encompass it all. Because lifestyle factors was the
Speaker 2: best one I could come up with, and they are
Speaker 2: really important as part of our path to prevention. We
Speaker 2: are in a position now to prevent the three major
Speaker 2: age related diseases cancer, cardiovascler neurodegenerative. We've never been able
Speaker 2: to do that. It's been a fantasy for millennia in medicine.
Speaker 2: But we now, not just because of the lifestyle factors
Speaker 2: that we understand at a much more granular level, but
Speaker 2: because of other ways that we'll be discussing. This is
Speaker 2: a really propitious moment in medicine now.
Speaker 1: You suggestin I found those fascinating good The idea of
Speaker 1: a one size fits all healthy diet is fundamentally flawed.
Speaker 1: Why is it flawed and should we be looking at
Speaker 1: a more personalized focus on nutrition.
Speaker 2: Well, everything about us is unique. I mean even identical
Speaker 2: twins are unique. So the fact that we would prescribe
Speaker 2: a diet or anything for all people is really a miscue.
Speaker 2: So a lot of work being done right now for
Speaker 2: this whole concept of personalized nutrition for certain foods that
Speaker 2: are really exacerbating the health of people because of promoting inflammation,
Speaker 2: whereas others it doesn't have that effect. So in the
Speaker 2: years ahead, a lot is being done to understand what
Speaker 2: is the best diet at the individual level.
Speaker 1: By recently going through a series of briefings on the
Speaker 1: whole concept of making America healthy again, and they keep
Speaker 1: talking about ultraprocessed food, and you make a case that
Speaker 1: clearly ultra processed food has a huge impact on cardiovascular
Speaker 1: metabolic diseases. I'm absolutely fascinated by the degree to which
Speaker 1: ultra processed food is a major problem.
Speaker 2: It is in the United States is the worst defender
Speaker 2: in the world. The problem here is that we have
Speaker 2: allowed a big food to spike their foods with all
Speaker 2: sorts of things that are alien. If you look at
Speaker 2: the ingredients on packages. You'll see things will never seen
Speaker 2: before that aren't in our kitchen. And it turns out,
Speaker 2: whether it's to promote texture, whether it's to get a
Speaker 2: rush of the food that is absorbed more quickly, these
Speaker 2: are things that are in a classification. There's a classification
Speaker 2: called Nova Nova four. These are things that are really
Speaker 2: promoting inflammation throughout the body and in the brain, and
Speaker 2: it's really bringing on a much higher risk of these
Speaker 2: age related diseases. So we have to get arms around this,
Speaker 2: and very little has been done because the food industry,
Speaker 2: of course, as opposed to it. What's really interesting is
Speaker 2: that when people are taking these DLP one drugs like
Speaker 2: ozembic and when jarrow, it changes their reward circuits and
Speaker 2: they eat less ultra processed foods. They shift to healthy food.
Speaker 2: It's amazing, you know. It isn't just using a way,
Speaker 2: It isn't just about less inflammation and their body and
Speaker 2: their brain. But they actually, somehow or other, they don't
Speaker 2: get rewarded like they did previously by these I would
Speaker 2: say contaminate or alien foods that are really bad for
Speaker 2: our health.
Speaker 1: I've probably gotten into this recently. I've been sort of
Speaker 1: startled as you talk about the big food spends so
Speaker 1: much on lobbying and such a huge impact that it
Speaker 1: has been able to basically block efforts to get nutrition
Speaker 1: in a serious way back into the core of the
Speaker 1: decisions of the government.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. You know, one of my colleagues in the UK
Speaker 2: as a great physician scientist named Christan Tellican. He wrote
Speaker 2: a book called Ultra process People. And in that book
Speaker 2: he did an experiment on himself which is representative. I mean,
Speaker 2: a healthy guy who is not overweight. For thirty days,
Speaker 2: he took as much ultra processed food as he could.
Speaker 2: Before he started, he took a brain scan and all
Speaker 2: these blood has for inflammation, and by thirty days his
Speaker 2: brain structures showed mark inflammation. All his blood tested he
Speaker 2: gained twenty pounds. So this is a huge problem in
Speaker 2: this country because we are way out in front of
Speaker 2: the rest of the world on our consumption of ultra
Speaker 2: processed foods, and that's going to really impede our ability
Speaker 2: to prevent diseases. I mean, we have a path now
Speaker 2: to do that, but the fact that our food supply
Speaker 2: is so poor, particularly it's consumption of these food it's
Speaker 2: because they're made to help people want to eat more
Speaker 2: of them and not be satiated, and so we have
Speaker 2: to do something about it.
Speaker 1: I haven't sort of thinking this may be goofy that
Speaker 1: you almost need to have an end factor for nutrition,
Speaker 1: because the same tomato, depending on where it's grown, be
Speaker 1: radically different in how much nutrition it has, And there
Speaker 1: has to be some way for an average normal person
Speaker 1: in the same way you could pick up a package
Speaker 1: and look at calories, you ought to be able to see,
Speaker 1: you know, is this one hundred percent nutrition or twenty
Speaker 1: percent or ten percent? Because a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: that we buy, this inexpensive is mass produced in a
Speaker 1: way that actually makes it less healthy.
Speaker 2: That's right. I mean, I think if we stick to
Speaker 2: fruits and vegetables, whole grains. There was a really big
Speaker 2: study of over one hundred and five thousand people followed
Speaker 2: for thirty years, and only nine percent of them made
Speaker 2: it to this super agor status without the age related diseases.
Speaker 2: And what did they eat. They ate this diet, you know,
Speaker 2: a Mediterranean like diet low in red meat, not necessarily
Speaker 2: you know, absent, but mainly concentrating on a plant based diet.
Speaker 2: That is what correlated with their ability adjusting for all
Speaker 2: other factors of how they could go to their seventy
Speaker 2: eight seventy five and not have these diseases.
Speaker 1: Do you bring a lifetime of study and I'm really
Speaker 1: regard you as one of the leading students of human health.
Speaker 1: What are the practical steps listeners to this podcast could
Speaker 1: take to ensure healthy agent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it isn't just the lifestyle factors as we've
Speaker 2: been discussing. You know, ways to improve deep sleep because
Speaker 2: that gets reduced during our aging as we get older,
Speaker 2: and exercise being paramount and not just aerobic, but you
Speaker 2: know resistance, strength, core, exercise, balance, positive, all that. But
Speaker 2: what we really need to do is to define the
Speaker 2: risk of people because we have twenty years before any
Speaker 2: of these diseases actually take hold in our body and
Speaker 2: show up. So with twenty years and inflammation being in
Speaker 2: the common thread, we have a way partly using lifestyle factors,
Speaker 2: but first we have to identify so we have to say, what,
Speaker 2: if any disease are you at risk for in your
Speaker 2: forties and fifties ideally, and then how are we going
Speaker 2: to prevent that from ever occurring in your lifetime. We
Speaker 2: have a way to do that now because what's happened.
Speaker 2: You know, there's this amazing science of aging progress. Some
Speaker 2: of it, of course, is being directed to the private
Speaker 2: sector startup companies to try to reverse aging. Now that's exciting,
Speaker 2: but we're not there yet. We're good at that in mice,
Speaker 2: but not in people, right, and it carries risk. The
Speaker 2: other part of the science of aging, which is extraordinary
Speaker 2: that most people don't know about, are these clocks organ clocks.
Speaker 2: So if I could draw a tube of your blood,
Speaker 2: I could say, you know what, I got eight organs
Speaker 2: on tracking and your immune system from these plasma proteins
Speaker 2: up to eleven thousand plasma proteins in your body, and
Speaker 2: I can say, you know, you check out well, all
Speaker 2: your clocks are at your real age, your chronologic age,
Speaker 2: or one of them. Let's say your heart is out
Speaker 2: of sync and it's accelerating of aging. That gives me
Speaker 2: a clue as to what I need to zoom in
Speaker 2: on and find out are you at risks for let's say,
Speaker 2: heart disease and get all over it long before you
Speaker 2: ever would have a significant artery problem. So this is
Speaker 2: a capability we have right now. We have markers for
Speaker 2: Alzheimer's that show up more than twenty years before a
Speaker 2: person would have mild cognitive impairment. We have a capability
Speaker 2: now to really make a huge den in these big
Speaker 2: three age related diseases, and we're not taking advantage of it.
Speaker 1: One of the points you make is that strength training
Speaker 1: is really important at a level you had not understood before.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what's interesting. As a cardiologist, I was always
Speaker 2: big on only aerobic and when I had patients come
Speaker 2: in with these big beach muscles, I'd say, well, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, now, what about the aerobic exercise. Well, it
Speaker 2: turns out strength training is equally important and its association
Speaker 2: with healthy aging is vital. As we get older, we
Speaker 2: lose muscle mass and we also have a propensity for falls,
Speaker 2: and this is not good for longevity, particularly healthy agent.
Speaker 2: So now the data show unequivocally that we should be
Speaker 2: doing some resistance strength training at least a couple of
Speaker 2: sessions a week, and that is a really important part
Speaker 2: of the story to promote healthy aging.
Speaker 1: One of the things you talk about is the importance
Speaker 1: of deep sleep. I have sleep appness, so I actually
Speaker 1: use a seatpap machine and I've been sort of surprised
Speaker 1: that the machine has trained me. So I actually go
Speaker 1: to sleep faster with my machine than I would if
Speaker 1: I were, say at a hotel and did not have a
Speaker 1: with me, And presumably it's really helpful over the long one.
Speaker 1: I can report now as a witness that it seems
Speaker 1: to have a very positive effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's two things there that's really important. First,
Speaker 2: there is a lot of sleep apnue that needs to
Speaker 2: be treated, and a lot of people aren't aware of that.
Speaker 2: But secondly, even if you are not having these spells
Speaker 2: of slowed or stopping breathing, there's another part of the
Speaker 2: deep sleep, so that during our sleep, particularly in the
Speaker 2: early part of the night, we need to slow wate
Speaker 2: sleep because it's during that where we clear our metabolites
Speaker 2: from our brain, our waste products through a system that
Speaker 2: we now know of as glim fattics, not limphatics, but
Speaker 2: glim fatics, And so these glimpatics, these channels in our brain,
Speaker 2: they basically get rid of all this toxic waste on
Speaker 2: any basis. Now, what's amazing is we've learned now that
Speaker 2: drugs like ambient you may feel like you slept, but
Speaker 2: as it turns out, it actually backs up these metabolizes,
Speaker 2: it prevents them from getting out of the brain. This
Speaker 2: is one of the biggest risk factors for Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 2: So what we have to do is if we knew
Speaker 2: that somebody had a risk for that, which we could
Speaker 2: know decades in advance, we would really work on their sleep.
Speaker 2: In fact, everyone should because as we get older, you know,
Speaker 2: our deep sleep could get down to just single digit minutes,
Speaker 2: which is really bad, and we want to get it
Speaker 2: up to as high as we can, ideally close to
Speaker 2: an hour people seventy and older. And so with tracking it,
Speaker 2: that is you can either ring or smart watch, you
Speaker 2: can find out exactly how many minutes each night you're
Speaker 2: getting in deep sleep. It's pretty accurate, and then you
Speaker 2: can work on it, like what is it that you're
Speaker 2: doing in exercise or lack of it, What is it
Speaker 2: you're eating, how late in the evening are you eating?
Speaker 2: How do you handle? All these things will affect it.
Speaker 2: And one of the biggest thing is regularity is sleep.
Speaker 2: Our body wants to go to sleep at the same
Speaker 2: time every night, but we don't let it. And sleep
Speaker 2: regularity has a big association with all three of the
Speaker 2: age related diseases.
Speaker 1: We've noticed that we tend to go to bed earlier
Speaker 1: then we used to, and I think it's probably helped us.
Speaker 1: I notice you have a ring on your finger. Do
Speaker 1: you believe in wearables and are they helpful?
Speaker 2: I am using this R A ring. There are several
Speaker 2: other rings like this, but what I found with it,
Speaker 2: it helped me quite a bit to get deep sleep
Speaker 2: more deep sleep. So basically a smart watch and a
Speaker 2: R ring and I wear them every night just because
Speaker 2: now I'm tracking how many minutes of deep sleep, knowing
Speaker 2: how important that is to prevent Alzheimer's, which is something
Speaker 2: I don't want to get. I was a poor sleeper.
Speaker 2: I started with less than fifteen minutes a night, and
Speaker 2: just by learning about all these things like sleep regularity,
Speaker 2: like the interactions with what I was eating when I
Speaker 2: was eating, what exercise when I was exercised, all these things,
Speaker 2: I was able to get it up to over forty
Speaker 2: five minutes tonight on average. For me at least, it
Speaker 2: has help. And I think this is something that people
Speaker 2: should think about, particularly as we get older, because that's
Speaker 2: when the deep sleep becomes a big issue. We want
Speaker 2: to get that stuff out of our brain those waste products,
Speaker 2: and the only way we can do it is with
Speaker 2: these glim fatics during deep sleep. That is the restoration
Speaker 2: of sleep, the magic that we need. You know, you
Speaker 2: could sleep maybe just six hours or even less, but
Speaker 2: if you have forty five minutes to an hour of
Speaker 2: deep sleep, that's a golden From.
Speaker 1: A mental health standpoint, just having thirty minutes a week
Speaker 1: in outdoor green spaces leads to lower rates of depression
Speaker 1: and less high blood pressure.
Speaker 2: It's true. That is the data for being out in
Speaker 2: nature is striking. I was not aware of this until
Speaker 2: I went in deep on this research and reviewed all
Speaker 2: the papers. I have really struck by it. And now
Speaker 2: we're talking about nature prescriptions for patients. We never talked
Speaker 2: about that. This is another part of that lifestyle factors
Speaker 2: that we have to acknowledge that it's really great when
Speaker 2: you're with other people. That's even a double benefit because
Speaker 2: social interactions and being out of nature are quite important.
Speaker 1: This reminds me we currently have a sick care system
Speaker 1: when what we actually want is a healthcare system that
Speaker 1: simple breakpoint. This is a good example. If I can
Speaker 1: get you to go out for thirty minutes or more
Speaker 1: a week, and that actually lowers the likelihood of depression
Speaker 1: as opposed to taking a drug for it. Some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that you've put together is I assume it's
Speaker 1: all true, but it sure is astonishing.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you another thing related to that, which
Speaker 2: is astonishing. There's a graph and a book and also
Speaker 2: texts associated with it. There's a study so striking on
Speaker 2: people with depression taking these ssri I drs which are
Speaker 2: pervasive like prozac and all the others, and every form
Speaker 2: of exercise was better than the drugs, whether it's dancing
Speaker 2: or walking or you name, it was better than the
Speaker 2: drugs for reducing depression.
Speaker 1: So a doctor who prescribed physical activity as opposed to
Speaker 1: giving you a drug.
Speaker 2: It's such an extraordinary study. And now one of the
Speaker 2: biggest things it isn't that we don't know about these
Speaker 2: lifestyle factors, but we in the US. You know, we're
Speaker 2: great with technology. We're a leader, we're a leader in AI,
Speaker 2: and what we want to do instead of trying to
Speaker 2: treat diseases is truly prevent them. We couldn't do that before,
Speaker 2: we couldn't do it. But now the combination of lifestyle
Speaker 2: factors with AI, you know, we couldn't do this without AI.
Speaker 2: You have to assemble billions of data points on each
Speaker 2: person to say this is your risk and this is
Speaker 2: what we're going to do about it. And so it
Speaker 2: isn't just the lifestyle factors. We got to use all
Speaker 2: the layers of data the AI to give us the
Speaker 2: accurate and temporal So used to be let's say you
Speaker 2: did a gene sequence and you say, oh, you're at
Speaker 2: risk for Alzheimer's disease. Well, we didn't know from that
Speaker 2: whether it's at age ninety eight or sixty eight. Now
Speaker 2: we can pinpoint the time, not just the risk, and
Speaker 2: it's very precise. So the whole idea is that we're
Speaker 2: in a different time right now when prevention, which is
Speaker 2: so attractive for its potential, right now, we need to
Speaker 2: go after this and we're the perfect place to lead
Speaker 2: the way.
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer that artificial intelligence is going to
Speaker 1: empower us both in efficiency and in the ability to
Speaker 1: aggregate huge volumes of data and pinpoint things that you
Speaker 1: just literally couldn't have done before. How do you see
Speaker 1: that getting applied to the system, right.
Speaker 2: So what we want to do now is to prove
Speaker 2: that when you have all these layers of data. Obviously,
Speaker 2: things like the Electronic Health rugty of all that, labs
Speaker 2: and whatever skins AI can pick up things that we
Speaker 2: never see, for example, normal labs. You've had normal labs
Speaker 2: throughout your life, but it sees trends. We just look
Speaker 2: at it normal or not. But this so called set
Speaker 2: points for you. Then we add things like apologenic risk score,
Speaker 2: which we have that for all common diseases, the common cancers,
Speaker 2: heart disease, Alzheimer's, so we have that. And then we
Speaker 2: have these clocks body wide clock it's called a methylation
Speaker 2: epigenetic clock. We have organ clocks. We have all these
Speaker 2: biomarker proteins. All these are inexpensive. When you put it
Speaker 2: all together, along with a person's current lifestyle, you can
Speaker 2: say this is your risk, whether it's a particular type
Speaker 2: of cancer, heart disease, or neurodegenerate. And that's what we're
Speaker 2: not doing. We're not doing these well before a person
Speaker 2: ever has a disease. For example, the marker for Alzheimer's
Speaker 2: it's called p COW two seventeen, that has been available
Speaker 2: in the US for two years. Nobody knows about it,
Speaker 2: but it's as good as a cerebral spinal fluid assessment.
Speaker 2: It's as good as a PET scan. And this marker
Speaker 2: is lowered by exercise and by healthy lifestyle, So it's
Speaker 2: like an LDL cholesterol for heart disease. So why aren't
Speaker 2: we using this? Why aren't we preventing Alzheimer's? You know
Speaker 2: very well how much it costs to care for a
Speaker 2: person with Alzheimer's who would want to get that dread
Speaker 2: of disease. And that's why lifespan is not what we're after.
Speaker 2: It's health span free of these diseases. We can do this,
Speaker 2: but we haven't set our minds yet on our priorities,
Speaker 2: our resources to do it. And we have the tools,
Speaker 2: and the immune system is the common thread, and we
Speaker 2: now have an immune system clock that we can use.
Speaker 2: So why aren't we doing this? That's really what the
Speaker 2: book is about, reviewing the lifestyle actors, but providing a
Speaker 2: blueprint for how we can change the face of what
Speaker 2: we call the elderly. That you started with, how many
Speaker 2: people are sick to the welderly, which is the study
Speaker 2: we did of fourteen hundred people with whole genomes, and
Speaker 2: we didn't find anything these people, it's not their genes
Speaker 2: that are doing it. It's their lifestyle, their immune system,
Speaker 2: not in your DNA. For the most part.
Speaker 1: You make the comment in your book that we're stuck
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties in our approach to cancer. But
Speaker 1: that's true almost across the border. I mean, we have
Speaker 1: somehow culturally in the medical professions, financially, in these big companies,
Speaker 1: including the insurance companies in the hospitals, have gotten locked
Speaker 1: into a model which we objectively now know makes you
Speaker 1: less likely to live longer and less likely to be healthy.
Speaker 1: How do we get the transference to get the average
Speaker 1: doctor to decide they can offer you a prescription to
Speaker 1: go exercise instead of giving you an antidepressant. That's a
Speaker 1: revolution that will be culturally very challenging.
Speaker 2: It will be because we have such reliance on antidepressant
Speaker 2: medications that don't work very well and can be superseded
Speaker 2: by things like exercise. But I think the bigger problem,
Speaker 2: and you allude to this with the cancer. You know,
Speaker 2: this reactive rut that we're in. We stream for cancer
Speaker 2: based on only age, you know, So if you're a
Speaker 2: only in age forty or forty five, you're just to
Speaker 2: have mammograms on a frequent basis. Well, eighty eight percent
Speaker 2: of women, eighty eight percent will never have breast cancer
Speaker 2: in their lifetime. Why do we put all these women
Speaker 2: through all the waste? We can determine a person's risk
Speaker 2: and partition the screening, but we don't do it. We
Speaker 2: have so much more knowledge that we are implementing in
Speaker 2: the daily practice of medicine. How is that going to
Speaker 2: change if we don't really articulate the priorities, the opportunities,
Speaker 2: and make for the compelling evidence. So the whole medical community,
Speaker 2: all the clinicians, buy into it and change their practice.
Speaker 1: You are extraordinarily knowledgeable. Ten years from now this has happened.
Speaker 1: How did it happen?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could happen if we said, you know what,
Speaker 2: we're going to be the world leader in preventing the
Speaker 2: Big three age related diseases. That is what accounts for
Speaker 2: our health span limits. And this is how we're going
Speaker 2: to do it, and our investment in prevention is going
Speaker 2: to be so extraordinary compared to where we are today.
Speaker 2: We're going to make this accessible to all that is
Speaker 2: this risk assessment, and we're not going to to do
Speaker 2: it on stupid grounds of just age. It's not about
Speaker 2: age only. There's other things here, and we're going to
Speaker 2: have a systematic assessment of people as part of their
Speaker 2: annual checkup to prevent diseases. And when we discover that
Speaker 2: a person does have a high risk for one of
Speaker 2: these three age related disease, we're going into high prevent mode.
Speaker 2: We're going to pull out all the stops. We're going
Speaker 2: to work with the person on their lifestyle. The excitement
Speaker 2: regarding these drugs like azempic is not just because they
Speaker 2: have such a remarkable weight loss. They have potent anti
Speaker 2: inflammatory effects in the brain and in the body, and
Speaker 2: they're being tested in Alzheimer's in thin people, large trials,
Speaker 2: and there are so many other drugs that are coming
Speaker 2: in the pipeline. These gut hormones that talk to our
Speaker 2: immune system in our brain that are going to be
Speaker 2: in pills, not just injectables, so it be inexpensive. We're
Speaker 2: going to be having ways to modulate our immune system
Speaker 2: like a riostat. We can do that. That's how we
Speaker 2: prevent these diseases and we get all these super agers.
Speaker 2: We want to have superagers. We don't want to have
Speaker 2: people like we have today, which are just so much
Speaker 2: chronic disease. I mean, there's an article in today's Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal about how we're the outlier of chronic diseases
Speaker 2: among all the rich countries in the world.
Speaker 1: That seems to be a combination of our cultural behaviors
Speaker 1: and things like big food and the degree to which
Speaker 1: we've talked to ourselves out of being an active country physically,
Speaker 1: then we have undervalued the importance of being outdoors.
Speaker 2: Those things are absolutely true, But we also want to
Speaker 2: adopt a new strategy that is getting ahead of people.
Speaker 2: When you think that we have twenty plus years before
Speaker 2: these three diseases strikes, that gives us an amazing runway
Speaker 2: to work with, but we're not using it, you know,
Speaker 2: we're just, oh, well, the person had a heart attack
Speaker 2: that we're going to really get on their LDL cholesterol.
Speaker 2: A person has cancer, we're going to treat it and
Speaker 2: hope for a remission. That's not when we want to
Speaker 2: get all over. We want to just from MPs from happening.
Speaker 2: We couldn't do it before, frankly, but we sure can now.
Speaker 1: Do You talk as an example of all this, about
Speaker 1: the breakthrough that the twenty twenty four Nobel Prize in
Speaker 1: chemistry sort of outline and really dramatically changing things. As
Speaker 1: a person who doesn't have nearly your knowledge, could you
Speaker 1: explain to me why it was such a big deal
Speaker 1: and what it means.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the work by Demis, yesabas John Jumper at
Speaker 2: deep Mind, they basically figured out that we could predict
Speaker 2: at atomic resolution the structure three D of essentially all
Speaker 2: proteins in the universe, but hundreds of millions of them,
Speaker 2: and that used a type of AI transformer AI now
Speaker 2: known as large language models generative AI. And it was
Speaker 2: a breakthrough because it started with protein structure and now
Speaker 2: everybody's jumped on that to you name it, antibodies, small molecules, RNA.
Speaker 2: There's now models for all this. So what that's doing
Speaker 2: is accelerating drug discovery, and of course, you know throughout
Speaker 2: the world there's now so many different efforts to bring
Speaker 2: drugs that will help prevent these diseases. And that's why Demis,
Speaker 2: who won that Nobel Prize, said recently on Sixty Minutes
Speaker 2: that he thinks that we could eliminate these diseases in
Speaker 2: the next decade. I'm not quite as optimistic, I can
Speaker 2: say it, because we don't change easily. You know, we
Speaker 2: are very kind of sclerotic in our medical community. I'm
Speaker 2: representing the medical community here, and I know it takes
Speaker 2: much longer than it should to affect the change, but
Speaker 2: I do share the optimism.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. I just got a briefing this last
Speaker 1: week for about two hours on the whole concept of
Speaker 1: making America healthy again, and the parallelisms are hearing. And
Speaker 1: I think that the President and Secretary of Health Human
Speaker 1: Services Kennedy, are going to do a joint event maybe
Speaker 1: next Thursday and lay out that you have to have
Speaker 1: this fundamental revolution and how we think about it, and
Speaker 1: that if we do it right, we actually dramatically lower
Speaker 1: the cost are sick care because people just stay healthy. Frankly,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest fights they're going to have is
Speaker 1: big food. I mean, big food is going to go
Speaker 1: nuts at the idea that we're going to try to
Speaker 1: transition the country off of ultra processed food.
Speaker 2: Absolutely we've never tackled them. That's just incredible, really, And
Speaker 2: you know what if we provided incentives for people to
Speaker 2: do these healthy lifestyle things and we just promoted that
Speaker 2: like we've never done, you know, that's not been something
Speaker 2: and that's a great opportunity, and I'm glad, of course
Speaker 2: that that's a goal. Now. I hope that Big Food
Speaker 2: will we put in their proper place.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think this will be one of the great
Speaker 1: historic fights. This will be comparable to taking on the
Speaker 1: railroads in the eighteen nineties or standard oiler at and T.
Speaker 1: As I think about this, you know you could in
Speaker 1: fact have this is just blue sky, but you could have,
Speaker 1: for example, an annual tax credit. If in fact you
Speaker 1: had a health score for every person who avoids Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: the amount we say would be staggering, So you could
Speaker 1: over time bend the curve by creating incentives for health
Speaker 1: rather than just payments for sickness. And I think if
Speaker 1: you said to people, I'm going to minimize your risk
Speaker 1: of heart disease, minimize your risk of cancer, and minimize
Speaker 1: your risk of Alzheimer's. But that means this program you
Speaker 1: might have astonishing uptake.
Speaker 2: We should be right getting on it, because you know
Speaker 2: these are easy to track. You don't have to be
Speaker 2: a spartan athlete, just go for a walk. But if
Speaker 2: you do these things and you work on sleep health
Speaker 2: and you have a healthy diet, I review this in
Speaker 2: the book, you can get seven to ten years of
Speaker 2: healthy agent without these three age related diseases. Just that
Speaker 2: it's extraordinary, and so to prevent these diseases at the
Speaker 2: individual level and at the American population level, that should
Speaker 2: be objective number one.
Speaker 1: And I think in that sense, making clear that we
Speaker 1: are now for the first time, going to create a
Speaker 1: healthcare system, not a sick care system, that could become
Speaker 1: a very very exciting effort that I think would attract
Speaker 1: an amazing amount of attention.
Speaker 2: I'm excited about it. I'm bringing with optimism about what
Speaker 2: the opportunities are right now, knowing you you'll potentially help
Speaker 2: to make it actualize it to a reality.
Speaker 1: Your book is coming out at I think an amazingly
Speaker 1: almost miraculous moment. I think because you're providing a scientific
Speaker 1: basis a lifetime of investment, and it's pretty hard for
Speaker 1: people not to say that you are a serious person
Speaker 1: with a serious understanding. This is real, this is not
Speaker 1: just rhetoric. I hope we can work together in some
Speaker 1: of these things. I think we could be right at
Speaker 1: the edge of an extraordinary revolution that moves us decisively
Speaker 1: towards being a much healthier country with much longer lives
Speaker 1: and as a consequence, a much less expensive health system.
Speaker 2: You nailed it. I hope we can seize the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Really, Look, Eric, I want to thank you for joining me.
Speaker 1: As I said at the beginning, every time I'm with you,
Speaker 1: it is an exhilarating experience. You are a remarkable person.
Speaker 1: Your new book, Superagers and Evidence Based Approach to Longevity
Speaker 1: is available now on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere, and
Speaker 1: it's a very important book. I recommend everyone get a copy,
Speaker 1: read it and then apply it to your life. It's
Speaker 1: not just a book to be read and say less interesting.
Speaker 1: It's a book to be read and say wow. It's
Speaker 1: a cookbook for living longer and healthier. For listeners who
Speaker 1: want to follow your regular work, they can subscribe to
Speaker 1: your newsletter Ground Truths on substep. And I really appreciate
Speaker 1: your being with me today.
Speaker 2: Oh I've enjoyed the conversation immensely. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you to my guests, doctor Eric Topel. You can
Speaker 1: get a link to buy his new book, super Agers
Speaker 1: an Evidence Based Approach to Longevity on our show page
Speaker 1: at Newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by Gingristree sixty
Speaker 1: and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsi Sloan. Our researcher
Speaker 1: is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created
Speaker 1: by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Gingridtree sixty.
Speaker 1: If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to
Speaker 1: Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and
Speaker 1: give us a review so others can learn what it's
Speaker 1: all about. Right now, listeners of Newsworld can sign up
Speaker 1: for my three free weekly columns at Gingrispree sixty dot
Speaker 1: com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.