00:02:27
And so what are the challenges there? What may I as a normal person, living daily life have to watch out in the near future, probably? Well, I think there are a lot of things that we can think about, which again, you can either view as a challenge or you can view each of them as an opportunity. So I guess when we think about our big health challenges, the big buckets, I would say, are detection, detection, treatment and prevention. And when we're talking about those sort of big buckets of health and wellness, we're talking about infectious disease. We're talking about chronic disease. And then I'm going to put a special category as diseases of ageing. Or if you flip that on its head, ways to age well throughout your lifespan.
00:03:20
And the good news, the exciting news is that. Thanks to a lot of exponential technology development, not just in the biotechnologies, but in a lot of other tech, too. We are better and better at diagnosing early and treating in a way that doesn't just treat symptoms. But now we're getting to the point where we might actually treat diseases and by treat diseases. I mean, cure diseases. That's really exciting. And then the prevention angle, I hope we'll get a chance to talk about longevity and the future that I see as being possible. We're so many of us live longer, healthier lives. What does that actually look like? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to live a good life? So not just surviving, but thriving during our time on Earth?
00:04:06
That's what I think is really exciting about where healthcare is headed. So, what does it mean to live a good life then? Well, I think that answer is different for each of us. Right. And there's been some really interesting work, whether you're talking about philosophers, whether you're talking about mindfulness practice or whether you're talking about things like the Blue Zone studies that have gone around to these places around the world where people seem to live longer on average and say, what's going on in those communities that can help lead to these longer lives? And I'll give you the headline. It's not more healthcare spending. That's not what does it. It's things like having a really strong community, having dinner with your family every night, being able to walk places in your community, eating really fresh food, not processed food, not a whole lot of meat.
00:04:59
And I joke a lot, but I think it's true. We see these headlines that say things like 'red wine is key to a longer life.' And so people think, well, I should drink 10 glasses of wine a night, which is obviously not true. Or they might think, oh, I should take the supplement, the resveratrol supplement, so that I'm getting whatever that thing is in the red wine. I can take it in pill form. But the third option is that it's actually the act of sitting down with people and having a glass of wine, having a conversation, talking about your day. That's really exciting. Is that your fire alarm going off? Yes, but I think it's stopped, so I will just ignore it for now.
00:05:39
But if it comes back, then we will have probably a podcast while I am running. But it's fine. Yes. Excellent. So all of these things that I've just said, it's to me, it's a mindset thing. Obviously, I'm a big believer in tech, but I'm a big believer in technology that serves us, that is helping us live whatever we define a good life as being. And I would actually love for folks to put in the chat what their definitions of a good life are. What does it look like to be happy and healthy to you? What does it feel like? And can you picture yourself 80 years, 100 years? In the future, living those things, that's the promise of technology. But we have to make decisions today that lead us in that direction.
00:06:27
Yeah, I really liked what you said that the technology can help us with identifications of the toxins, for example, in the food, with diagnoses, etc. However, for example, I don't see a lot of governments going or navigating that way because you said that it's also not inside the health system. That we are having the good life in that. It's usually like we have to start first within ourselves with the strong connections, with a strong community, and probably even invest in some measuring technology, like, for example, our rings and the others to actually understand how our biology is working ourselves. But for example, if the people because like the innovation and the technology started to be prevalent. Yeah. Yeah. And they are working in the civil society really recently.
00:07:21
How do people who are actually not inside these innovations or are not really keeping up? They actually have done the gap of because like the innovation can help us to really sustain the longevity, to really get more years because we understand how our biology is working. Can you actually say that if the people don't jump on the board of the innovation? They can. can then see challenges in living longer or understanding these aspects of life? Well, the good news, which I guess is also the alarming news, is that there are so many things that we could change starting today to help make our lives longer and happier. And some of those do involve technology, but a lot of them don't. And so I don't actually think it's a problem that that technology adoption is not even among society.
00:08:18
For one thing, as a scientist, I think, okay, well, that gives us a chance to run some natural experiment to see what's the difference in sleep quality between people who wear an ROA ring and people who don't wear an ROA. I mean, I wear one, right? So clearly I have an opinion. I'm running the experiment on myself. But if you have these large groups of people where there's that sort of heterogeneous adoption, you actually have a chance to leverage that. They're really interesting insights. I would also say when you're asking about regulation and government, why aren't we seeing more of this? I think there's a fundamental issue there between what government is supposed to do and what the private sector or innovation is supposed to do.
00:09:01
And if I were to just say it in one sentence, government's supposed to work slow, innovation is supposed to work fast. And when you have that disconnect and that tension, there's always going to be a gap where people don't know what's going on. And so I think that's a really interesting thing to think about. And I think maybe some folks out in the audience are like, come on, come on, go faster, go faster. Why aren't we doing this? But that's not actually what government is for. I feel this really keenly in the healthcare scenario, because in the healthcare industry, again, I want as many people as possible to have access to these types of innovations. But healthcare, at least responsible healthcare, traditionally has been slow-moving, right?
00:09:41
The FDA wants years and a billion dollars worth of evidence before it says whether a drug actually works, whether it's safe and whether it's effective. Similarly, our large healthcare systems generally want a lot of evidence before they're willing to say, 'this is safe, this works, we should be using this in people.' Because I think that there's a difference, right, between talking about TikTok or something that you see on this app, and maybe that's a bad example. And I think that's a different example, because of potential health effects there, versus something that you put in your body, or something that you put in your family's body or your children's body, I would say the burden of proof is much higher.
00:10:26
So I like that there are people like me, who are like, 'give me the thing, I will try it, just tell me that I have a way to figure out what's going on.' But then there are also people who are like me, who are willing to say, 'Wait a second, I'm willing to wait for the data on this.' Or I either spend money, or I expose my family to it. So, you know, an example of this right now, which is a bit controversial is stem cell treatments, right? So I live in the United States. So I'll just speak briefly about the US's regime. But there's quite a bit of similarity in the EU, which is that in the United States, stem cell treatments are only approved for a very small number of diseases or conditions.
00:11:11
And most of those have to do with blood disorders, right. And yet, you can go places all around the world and get a stem cell treatment that is unregulated. And it promises to make your joints feel better, help your kids autism, like whatever it is. If I'm being generous, I want to say these are innovators who are ahead of the curve, and who are looking to see how we can use stem cells quickly. If I'm being cautious, I say, wait a second, you're trying to sell me a medical product, and people don't have the right equipment. But let me remind you that there might be challenges toiera to another side that hasn't been shown to be safe or seem to be effective.
00:11:47
So and then again, like I'm, I'm this person, I'm technology forward, but I'm also a mother, so I might be willing to take a risk on myself in a way that I'm not willing to take a risk with my kid. So again, there's the whole landscape of opportunities and what I'd love t to invite everyone in the audience to think about is, where are you on that landscape? Are you a pioneer? Are you a, you know, a pioneer meaning like, you're an alpha tester? Are you a beta tester? Are you an earlier adopter? Or are you a, you know, I'm going to wait for the iPhone 14 to go on sale because the 16s are coming out. That is also me. Or are you the kind of person who's like, slow down.
00:12:30
Let's think this through. Is this really safe for me? Is it really what I want? Will it really make my life better? And there's a place for each of us, I think, in all of those spots. Yeah, it's like, it's like an axis. It's like a scale, like where you can actually write between zero to 10, where zero is being super cautious about the impact of the body. If you would, for example, not go for the stem cells in, for example, Turkey or in other countries, where it's not yet seen as a medical treatment, or if you are the person who would go for it, because you heard about the benefits, and you want to benefit from it right now, because it's innovative.
00:13:10
Do you also have, do you also have the same opinion about, for example, Elon Musk chips? Neuralink? So it's funny, just yesterday, I was at a conference here in San Francisco, and I was talking with a company that's working on brain-computer interfaces. And so I was talking to the neurobiologists and looking at; they didn't have brains, they had brain models, but they had the actual implants. And we were talking through use cases about this. And so what this company is doing is targeting the restoration of speech or movement, if that part of the brain has been damaged, for example, through a stroke, or Parkinson's, or something like that, right. So that is a therapeutic application that I don't think people would say, you know what, it's just better if people who've had strokes can't speak.
00:14:03
I don't think anybody's going to say that, right? Like there's, it's a therapy for human suffering that will make lives better. And that is something that is achievable in the near term. There's been lots of really great research knowing like, which portions of the brain interface with speech, which portions of the brain interface with movement. So there's, there's a lot there, right? In contrast, when we think about things, there are BCIs, brain-computer interfaces, where the idea is much more ambitious or long-term. Maybe it's an enhancement effect. Maybe it's so that you can control your computer or a robot or something with your brain. Maybe it's so that you can exert action over a long distance. I would say those are far more speculative applications.
00:14:47
And where I land on this personally is where I suspect a lot of people land, which is therapy. Great. Do it. Ease human suffering. Enhancement? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not so sure about that. I have questions about privacy. I have questions about accessibility. I have questions about price point. I have questions about essentially giving superpowers to people who can afford them, and everybody else is just kind of screwed over, right? Like I have, I have questions. That doesn't mean I'm a hard no. It means I have, I have questions and I want to talk with them, people, about them and find out what questions you have. Did you watch the Black Mirror TV show? You know what I'm talking about? Yes. Everyone who's interested in technology in the future should watch Black Mirror.
00:15:33
In the U. S., it's on Netflix. So see where you can find it streaming. The thing that I really liked about that show is that in each episode, which is standalone, they take a concept that today is achievable, reasonable. We're not there yet, but it's not impossible. And then they take that idea and they blow it out to a logical extreme and then hold you in that place and look to see what does it mean to be human in that logical extreme. Now, because it's TV, most of those logical extremes are terrifying, right? And awful and not the worlds that you want to live in. That's the Black Mirror part of the exercise. So when you watch that show, also try to get in the habit of asking yourself, what's the white mirror version of this?
00:16:20
What's the version where, yeah, we have these brain implants and it's awesome, right? And what's useful for that kind of thing is that you can watch the Black Mirror TV show. And if you watch the Black Mirror exercise is, this is something that we call retrocasting, where you look at this future and you have this scenario in your head of what the future looks like. Let's say it's 50 years from now. And then you ask yourself, okay, that's where I want to be in 50 years. What has to happen 30 years from now to make that happen? What has to happen 20 years, 15 years, 10 years, five years? What can I do today that makes that preferred future more likely? And Elon is known for doing this kind of thing.
00:16:57
But it's a way of really not just inhabiting the future in your mind, but building a path to build your future. That's fantastic. It's really funny because I had this kind of mindset I developed recently when I started to travel and jumping from one country to another and seeing really big differences in the different countries in different cities. Some are more innovative. Right now I'm in Dubai, like super futuristic. And it's really nice to see. And I started to imagine like the world in 50 years where we, for example, no longer take the Uber as a video driver. There is like a really autonomous vehicle which is driving you. There is like different infrastructure for the vehicles. There is also like flying cars, etc.
00:17:48
And it's just so revealing also for your vision to just acknowledge that you know where the world is. The world is leading and how you are imagining. Of course, it can like shape differently based on the decisions of the government, of the people, etc. But just when you're imagining where the world is leading and like what kind of issues we are having in the current life, it's just then like some of the issues that you are dealing with on daily basis, it's then just a small piece that just doesn't matter at the end. Because, for example, right now I have issues like I don't know with email list. And in the future, like do you think that there will be such a thing like as an email list?
00:18:34
I think that there will be like other alternatives to, for example, reach your audience to do the engagement. And it's just like really revealing with the things how fast we are approaching the technology. But on the other hand, some people can get scared because it's-it can mean that their position will no longer exist. It can mean that, for example, the things that we are investing in will no longer be relevant because nowadays people are building $2 million department in marketing. And in the future, they will just have AI agents who will need like okay, maximum of dollars. And it's, it's really interesting to develop this mindset and to really let yourself have a vision of the world how it will be tomorrow and then work for it.
00:19:23
So like, also, like when you when we were speaking about, how to access if you define yourself, either being really cautious and like, questioning everything and not trying a new things or like being number 10 of really jumping by the head to the ocean of not knowing what is there. It's I would say like, if you are between zero to three, maybe like a really open up a bit this vision of what is the world tomorrow? Because it's, you can then cause being really blind about where we are leading, and it can also cause them potential troubles, then for the business also for the innovation in longevity.
00:20:10
And here I have a question for you. Because we know that the technology is super expensive sometime, especially when it's a new technology, like new smartphone, there were a lot of people who could afford it in the past, nowadays, it might be for example, your own robot. or your new car, autonomous vehicle, etc. So how does longevity then, like innovations in longevity correlates with price, will all of us be able to benefit from the longevity driven by the innovation or is it really just for the people who have money that they can afford longevity? The short answer is it depends on the incentives that we put in price in place for these things. And I think it depends on what sort of level of technological intensity that we're talking about, right?
00:21:07
So for example, on the high end of the pricing spectrum, you have folks like Brian Johnson, who is famous for spending millions of dollars a year trying to extend his biological life, right? And there's been some really great interviews with him where he's talked about the importance of what that actually feels like to be that intensive about your own health. And the short answer is it doesn't necessarily make you happy. So that's another issue. We can set that aside. But when I talk about the intensity of the interventions, there are things you can do today that can help with your biological ageing, your longevity and your wellness. And they don't require fancy biotech or other types of interventions. The three big categories are, what you eat, what you do, and how well you sleep.
00:21:56
And if I, so I say to people like 'what's the number one thing that I can do starting today to help with my longevity?' And I say, the number one thing you can do is stay alive. And that sounds like a joke, but the longevity revolution, if it's coming, it's not here yet. So you need to stay alive long enough for the gold standard science to get worked out and to become accessible to you. So don't die in a car accident now, right? Don't overdose now. Don't do that. Wear your seatbelt, go see your doctor, get your vaccinations, get enough sleep, high-quality sleep every night. That's a place where a lot of people can do work is on their sleep. Think about how to eat, what your eating choices are.
00:22:45
I think Michael Pollan said it best, eat food, real food, stuff that was alive at some point in the recent past. Not too much, mostly plants. Like those are all things that you can do starting today. Several years ago, I was down in Sao Paulo in Brazil, talking to some of Brazil's largest healthcare providers. And they said to me, 'What should we invest in in order to help the people on our plan live longer, healthier lives? Should we do CRISPR? Should we do stem cells? What should we be investing in?' And I said, 'Honestly, you should send a box of vegetables every week to every family on your plan. You can just start there.' And you know, the joke that I make, is we talk about low-hanging fruit in these innovation spaces.
00:23:27
Sometimes low-hanging fruit is actually fruit when it comes to health and wellness. So these things are already accessible to us today: food, sleep, exercise, right? That doesn't, and by the way, so while we're taking advantage of those things we can access today, the more fancy high-tech stuff is becoming safer, more effective, and cheaper. So you keep yourself, you keep yourself alive to get to that point where now you can afford it. That's the goal. But it also means, I think, we have to really set in place the incentive to have it be accessible to as many people as possible. Because when we're looking at private companies to drive these innovations, and I believe in the commercial sector, I believe in free market economies, I believe in the power of markets.
00:24:19
But if we, remember, we get the behavior that we incentivize. So after World War II, for very, very good reasons, the food systems were incentivized to deliver cheap food, right? Cheap food that's super accessible and stable for a really long time. What we got was processed food, which ticks all those boxes, and processed food is killing us. We know that now, right? So you get what you incentivize for, and if you, any folks out there are in government, you're working within a company or you start a company yourself, really think about your incentive structure. Because that's what you're going to get on the other end. Yeah, I'm always saying that the health is multiplier of your purpose and also happiness.
00:25:07
Because like when you are healthy, you can then invest more of your energy to your business, to your startup, or even to your relationships. Because if you are not healthy yourself, you then cannot make other people healthy because it's also in the airplane, right? Like the first, you should save yourself and then help other people. So it's really important that you as a startup owner, as the person working or not working, you always need to take care of the health. And these are the three things: what you do, what you eat, what you do, and also how you sleep, the quality of sleep. I cannot highlight it more than enough that we need at least, depends if you are a man or a woman, and what is your actually biological cycle, because each, people, each person has it different.
00:25:56
But the sleep, quality sleep is really a game changer. You said that there will be a gold standard science that we should not die yet, that we should at least live until the science reaches the point when they can, for example, I guess that it means like that there will be innovation which will be able to replace the certain parts of our body and like that there will be probably, like more innovations also in terms of the health. Do you have some estimate how long we should keep alive? Like, it’s three years or? I mean, as long as possible, every heartbeat counts. So, okay. So I think what you’re really asking me is when do I think we’re going to start seeing some of these safe and effective longevity supporting treatments come onto the market?
00:26:46
So, okay. It depends which ones you're talking about. So there are two interventions today that, that have the most evidence for them as being supportive of longevity. And one you’re not going to like, I predict, and one you are going to like. So the one you’re not going to like, let’s start there: calorie restriction. So, in everything from yeast, all the way up to humans, restricting calories does all kinds of things for your body at the molecular and cellular levels that lead to longer lifespans. I'm going to just digress for a second here. When I say lifespan, I'm talking about the number of years your heart is beating. When I talk about health span, I'm talking about the number of years you're healthy and active and living that good life.
00:27:36
They're not necessarily the same thing, right? And I would say in the last hundred years, we've done a really great job extending the human lifespan, but we haven't always done a great job extending our health span. So, okay. So that's the first one, calorie restriction. You can do that today. That takes a variety of forms. Some of you guys might be familiar with intermittent fasting, time-restricted eating, full fasts. All of these are ways to do calorie restriction. The key is that it's actually a surprisingly large number of calories. So the studies that I saw most recently were talking about a 20% reduction in calories, which doesn't sound like a lot, but is really hard to sustain. So calorie restriction is tough. I'm not going to lie. It's hard, but it seems to work.
00:28:28
The second intervention, which is near-term to us getting having really good data on, is actually metformin. Metformin is that type two diabetes drug that is available all around the world. In some places, it's available over the counter and it's pennies in order to have these metformin pills. And so, you know, the way this was found was that, like there were studies being done with metformin and type two diabetes, which is the use that it's approved for. And statisticians noticed a longevity effect, buried in the data as like a side effect of taking metformin. These folks seemed to live longer, right? And so now there is the first clinical trial going on today. It's called TAME. Taming, Aging Through Metformin. I don't remember what the E stands for.
00:29:17
But that is actually using longevity as an end point. And it's tricky doing clinical trials for longevity because if death is your end point, you have nothing to compare it to and it takes too long to do the clinical trial, right? So nested in here is actually an interesting issue. What we would really like are biomarkers of ageing, things we can measure in spit, in blood, in sweat, in cerebrospinal fluid, like, you know, things that you can actually measure and say, are you ageing faster? Are you ageing slower? There's a whole bunch of these. I think the field would really be revolutionized if we had a panel, a gold standard panel where scientists all over the world can say, these are the 20 things you need to measure in blood and spit and sweat to get a sense of what ageing is.
00:30:05
Because then you can actually do the experiment, right? You can test something and then look to see what happens to those biomarkers and see if what your intervention is doing is really working using the scientific approach. You can placebo control it. You can do all of those, all of those things. There are some groups that are doing that now, but there's no like gold standard panel where everyone's making the same measurements all the time. So it's really hard. It can be really hard to do longevity studies. Okay. So that's the stuff like you could probably do right now. I would like to pause here because I can imagine that, for example, in the future, like it's also more normal that people will take their health as a priority, because I can still see around.
00:30:50
Even like around the people who are well-educated, they have a really well-paid job, but still they don't prioritize number one, their health. But I can imagine that in the future, the more we speak about it openly, because we are educating ourselves about the things that you are just saying. Also like by the innovation, like having, for example, also like the Apple watches, which are like closing the circles, like you can see it among the young generation. Like I cannot go sleep because I need to close my circle. And it's like amazing gamification of actually teaching the young people of like, what does it mean to actually move? What does it mean to actually eat properly, etc. But I can still see around me that people are not that much interested in the health until the problem comes.
00:31:38
But let me give you an example. And this is something that I think they, the rings on the Apple watch do a nice job of. If I tell you that you can never have another glass. Of wine, but 45 years from now, you'll get an extra six months with people that you love. Are you going to sign up for that? Right. What I need personally, and I imagine I'm not different from a whole lot of people is I need you to give me something every single day that says, Hey, Tiffany, you did this thing today. Good job. Here's what we're going to do tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, here's how, you know, it's helping. So as a scientist and, you know, someone who works in this space.
00:32:20
Folks are always trying to hand me products to try, right? Like, Hey, Tiffany, try this supplement. And what I always say to them is thank you. How do I know if it's working? And they'll say, what? And I say, what are we measuring to see if it's actually improving my health? And if they don't have something I can measure, I don't know what we're doing. Right. Again, I'm a scientist. So that's the way I think. But imagine a future in which it's not just people talking about their health, but that you actually have a way to see. How the things you do impact the way you feel and the way your body is working. That's the real exciting part. And think of it like an innovation cycle.
00:33:00
Like right now, we've got a lot of products will say, 'Hey, Tiffany, you're doing this wrong. Try this thing.' But what I really want is the last part of that loop, which is to say, 'Is it working? If yes, let's do it again. If no, suggest something different. Right.' And there's massive opportunity in those actionable insights. And closing that loop for personal health. So I invite everyone to get out there and close that gap because it's just, just waiting to be closed. Yeah, it's really, by the way, I don't drink now for almost 12 months. So I embarked on this journey of not drinking just because exactly what you said. If you imagine like how alcohol is impacting your life. So I decided the first January this year to stop drinking.
00:33:47
And I have to say that I have a challenge for one year. But I don't see me coming back into drinking because I just see so many benefits of not drinking, it doesn't even really, I don't have even motivation to drink again, because you even have so many nice alternatives, like non-alcoholic champagne, etc., that it's really rewarding in many different ways. So I also encourage other people to do so. I'm glad you highlighted reward. First of all, congratulations. Well done. I'm going to hypothesize that your sleep. Sleep has improved. Has that been a big one? Yes, especially hard. I did it especially because I could see that my heart rate was like really bad after, for example, drinking because like you cannot sleep properly.
00:34:32
Yeah, so I did it mainly because I could see on our ring that she or he, I don't know what gender I should use for this, doesn't like my heart rate is not good in terms of the alcohol and I then I decided to just decision based on the science of what you said. If I don't know what we're measuring, I don't know what we do here. So I measured and I took the next steps accordingly. It was also really funny because I was in a Health Optimization Summit earlier this year and there was a guy who was really asking me about the review of our ring and he was really against it like that. It's just toy that he has it on his hand and he doesn't know what to do with it.
00:35:14
And I was like, yes, this is exactly it because you don't know what to do. With it, you don't know what the measures are telling you if there is HRV, if there is heart rate, if there is, for example, oxygen levels, et cetera, and you don't know how to interpret it. You don't know what the data is telling you. And this is where the scientific mindset should start to work. You should be doing your research. And this is also something that I see in terms of the innovations and the technology that it's really that it's really badly interpreted sometimes that the people get technological stress that they don't know how to use it because they don't understand this language and somebody needs to interpret it for them.
00:35:56
And this was really a unique way of like when I could see why people sometimes don't jump on a journey of the new innovations and AI because they just don't understand what it's trying to tell them that they don't know how to interpret it. So, right. And this is where I think as well, it's exciting because. I think you still would want people at some place in this cycle, right? So I often ask the audiences that I work with, you know, would you be open to having AI look at your cancer results to see if you have cancer, right? Because there are algorithms that do a wonderful job of diagnosing cancer. A lot of people in the room, self-selected room, they say, yes, I'm totally down with that. The algorithms do a great job.
00:36:43
And then I ask how many of you want to be told by an AI that you have cancer? And of course, zero, right? So the idea is harnessing technology in order to bring the human element back to these areas, I think, is really important. So, you know, imagine a future and it might be a short future while we're training even more algorithms. But an algorithm like, for example, right now, I have all of these data. I have DNA data. I have blood data. I have metabolite data. I have microbiome data. I have aura data. I have data, data, data, data. And I. Try to show them to my doctor and she says, 'I have no idea what to do with any of this.' And I'm like, 'I came to you because I thought you were the professional.' She doesn't know what to do with it either.
00:37:28
Right. And so. Interpreting all of this information is going to be a powerful combination of humans and algorithms, because at the end of the day, tell me what to do. Tell me what to do and tell me how we're going to know if it's working, then I'm in, then I can do anything. But you've got to tell me what to do. I just want to put a little pin in what you were asking me about. How long do we have to stay alive? It's kind of a. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So where the what an interesting wildcard that has happened in the last year and a half, of course, has been the semaglutide drugs, ozempic, manjaro, those types of drugs. And right now there's so.
00:38:13
In many ways, these drugs seem to target the reward centers in the brain. Which is why it was interesting when you said, I don't even feel compelled to drink another glass of wine. I don't want it anymore. There's no reward. A friend of mine who is taking it, she said, 'yeah, she doesn't ever have more than one glass of wine because she's-she's just not interested.' The drug has turned off that little kick you get from having that second glass of wine. And that's why we're seeing hints that these drugs could be useful in things like other types of addiction, and addictive behavior. And things like that, as well as, you know, people just don't overeat. They've just lost that reward that you get from having the next tasty potato chip.
00:38:58
So look for these drugs to be investigated for their longevity effect. They're already approved for other uses. So the early use cases are like stuff that's already been approved. We already know it's safe for something else, like Metformin, or ozempic, and then pivoting that to a second indication, like longevity, which brings up actually an interesting question: whether ageing is a disease. Right. Some people say it's not a disease because it's just the way things are. And so it's not a disease. You don't like contract ageing. And then other people say, no, actually, ageing is a series of specific molecular and cellular processes that look like. It's not a disease, but it's something that you can intervene in actually sounds like a disease, right?
00:39:52
And if you treat ageing as a disease, then not only does it open up funding sources to do the research and do the developments, but you might say it also opens up a moral imperative to actually target ageing as something that you can intervene in, right? You wouldn't tell somebody who, at least I think, you wouldn't tell somebody who has cancer, this was just supposed to happen. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. But that's what we tell people right now during ageing, right? And so we're still not quite there yet to say for sure ageing is something that, in humans, we can target, we can slow, we can stop, we can reverse. There is very interesting, compelling data in mice and other non-human primates that the biological clock can be slowed and maybe stopped and maybe even reversed.
00:40:41
But it's going to be a while until we see those things, whether they work in humans and whether they're safe. So that is more, in my opinion, like the 20 to 30-year timescale where you will get gold standard, conservative doctors agree, this is the stuff. In the meantime, between now and 20 to 30 years, look for things like whole person digital twins to really have insights into what's going on in your body. Look for things like exercise and fasting in a pill. That's a real thing. And not just the semaglutide, like there are these other things. You might be tempted to say, well, that's not fair. Then that's just telling people they can't exercise. Like, how does that make sense? But think about people who have mobility issues or people who are very frail.
00:41:30
Again, like should they just have the negative effects of not being able to exercise or should they have access to things that can actually give them the benefits of exercise? And if them, why not me? So that's another area. That's another area where you'll see, you'll be looking for that, and that could be in the five to 10 year timescale, five years, maybe to have exercise or fasting in a pill. And again, the semaglutide is kind of turbocharged that. So there are several other things that I mentioned, looking at other drugs that are already approved to see if they also work in longevity. That's a shorter time span, right? Because you don't have to start the clinical trials all over. You've already got a whole bunch of data where you can start for this new indication of repurposing drugs.
00:42:17
Things like that. So I think we're going to see some really exciting action, even on the two-to-five year timescale, but I wouldn't go out and find a blood boy for the next two-to-five years. It would be a little bit longer than that to show parabiosis, which does work in non-human animals, which is crazy. If you guys saw that in Silicon Valley, the blood boy jokes, like that's a real thing, actually, that the blood of young animals. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking about. We're talking about a process called parabiosis, and there were these experiments that were done years and years ago that are kind of crazy, where these researchers took young mice and old mice, and they hooked up the circulatory systems of the young mouse to the old mouse.
00:43:04
And so based on a series of markers, and again, I'm skipping all the science and just getting to the headline here, the old mouse got younger when it was exposed to the blood of the young mouse. And also the young mouse got older when it was exposed to the blood. That's what Brian Johnson is doing with his son, right? Exactly. That's it. The blood boy, the parabiosis. So that sounds like a crazy pants, Silicon Valley billionaire bananas thing to do, except it seems like it works in animal models, at least. So, again, like to avoid a system in which, you know, you pay poor people to take their blood to make rich people younger. Like, I'm not thrilled about that as an outcome, but there's clearly something in the blood that is causing that.
00:43:52
Is it molecules? Is it growth factors? Is it hormones? Like, what is actually in there? And if I can figure out what's actually in there, can I just put that in a pill or in a transfusion and take the blood part completely out of it? Right. And so the people who are parabiosis researchers, you know, don't picture mad scientists in a basement hooking up blood. Like, that's not what's going on. What's going on is people are trying to figure out what's the mechanism of this effect that we can see by doing this crazy thing. It's really interesting. So, you know, keep your eyes open for that. And I'll tell you one more case that illustrates something that we talked a little bit about a little while ago where we were talking about how adventurous are you?
00:44:39
Are you more conservative? Are you willing to try something or do you want to wait for it? Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. And I think that's really exciting, how adventurous I'm willing to be is what is the potential for this to harm me? Right. Because in health, it could work. It could work a little. It could do nothing or it could actively harm you. Right. I am willing to be more adventurous in places where the experiment, the intervention, the therapy doesn't have a whole lot of potential to harm me. It might not work. Fine. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But, like, it's not going to make me worse. Right. Right. Right. So, one of the things that I've noticed as well when we're talking about healthy ageing that I would love for everyone to take a look at is this thing called gamma therapy.
00:45:22
So, in 2016, a lab at MIT in the U.S. Published data from mice that showed, and again, I'll skip the science and go to the headline, that exposing mice that were genetically predisposed to Alzheimer's disease, A, if you showed those mice a flashing light at 40 hertz, the amyloid plaques. And tau tangles cleared out of regions of the brain by showing them a flashing light. When the researchers added a clicking noise, also at 40 hertz, even more areas of the brain cleared out these plaques and tangles that seem to be the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. Whether they're driving Alzheimer's disease, that's a separate question, but are often associated with Alzheimer's disease. So, as you might expect, five minutes later, these people started a company.
00:46:16
It's called Cognitotherapeutics, and they have a, they got breakthrough device designation from the U. S. FDA last year, and they have a headset that they are testing in clinical trials now that for an hour, you see the flashing light, you see the clicking noise, and they're looking to see in clinical trials whether it does things that are markers of Alzheimer's disease progression. So, brain volume loss, the tangles are a little bit trickier, but measuring some blood level things, like they're doing the work now. So. So, back in 2016, when I saw this, we had early onset Alzheimer's disease in my family, and I thought to myself, okay, listening to a clicking noise, watching a flashing light, yeah, maybe it works in mice and it doesn't work in people. That's completely possible.
00:47:01
But what are the odds that it's actually going to harm me to have a flashing light? I'm not epileptic, so it seems pretty low. So, you can buy these light bulbs online right now. They're like $60, right? Clicking noise, if you go onto YouTube, there are these tracks that have the 40 hertz clicks, that's free. And listening to a clicking noise is a little bit annoying, but it's not likely to harm me. So, for years, I've been using the lights and listening to the clicking noise while waiting for the clinical trial data to see whether this thing actually works. And I did that because it's cheap and it's unlikely to harm me. So, again, like when you're looking for interventions to try, I would say that the safest place is things that are not going to harm you.
00:47:47
Vegetables are never the wrong choice. Meditation is never the wrong choice. Taking care, like good sleep, it's never the wrong choice. You can intervene in those today while waiting for these more technologically rigorous drugs, stem cells, CRISPR, like that kind of stuff to come onto market. I really love how you gave like a really concrete example of how people can make decisions when it comes to their health and how they can try different, different and new things. I also heard from one person, for example, 'metal in blue.' I used it earlier this year in London where it's used quite a lot. And then after I was in Mexico and I heard that, oh, my God, did you see this study, which is saying that after using metal in blue, the people's brain turns blue.
00:48:40
And then we actually don't have then like the results of the study. What does it actually do with the body, et cetera? But I didn't know this. I actually like was researching about metal in blue. What does it what does it do with the body? Why people are doing it for the benefits, etc. And I have my own opinion after using it. It was like taking a shaving gum in my whole body. It's really refreshing. Lots of oxygen, et cetera. But it was really intrusive because I put it directly into my blood streamer. As you can, for example, take the pills. Like they get absorbed easier, but it was just during the health optimization summit where we had the chance to actually try this technique and I decided to go for it.
00:49:25
And here I would also probably next time be more cautious about like not putting directly into my bloodstream something like this, that it's like rather to try to use it first by supplement. If I'm, for example, allergic, if there are some reactions of my body. Okay. And if it doesn't do something wrong with me, then I would go for more intrusive treatment. Like, for example, putting it through the infusion because I didn't realize that it was also not the smartest way to try new things because I didn't know that there is also metal in blue available in the supplements. And if the person who was actually offering me this infusion would like educate me about maybe you should first try the supplement and then try the infusion. I would then make my choice.
00:50:15
I would then make my choice. But I actually didn't know. So next time I would be also looking for the different powers of how to actually try the things that not necessarily you need to go to the most intensive stuff and try maybe the supplements first or also other different means of how you can try the supplement. I want to make one point here and I swear it is not in judgment of you. So please do not take it this way. But I feel like I need to say this. Also, always remember when you're considering trying any of these things out, how intrusive they are or not intrusive. Consider the source of where the recommendation is coming from.
00:50:59
Right, before I started this clicking light, flashing noise business, you know, I had read a paper that was published in Cell, a top-tier science journal from folks at MIT, top-tier research university. And I so didn't believe it that I actually downloaded their data and reanalyzed it to convince myself. But this was actually a thing. I am not the kind of person who gets health recommendations off Instagram or TikTok. If this is my body, if this is about health, if this is about science, I want to go to actual scientists, actual doctors who are doing this and not influencers. Now, I am of an older generation. I have access to the scientific literature and I have the capacity to understand it. So I am advantaged in that system of like really going to the science.
00:51:45
But. But there are plenty of places that you can go online where you can get really reliable health and science information from reputable sources rather than just like something that you find on Instagram or TikTok. So it's worth that extra step when you're talking about your body and you're talking about your health to just really find stuff that's safe and find stuff that works. Yeah, this is a really important because also one of my friends, Karenta, like she saw something on Instagram during the. Flight that you should put your seatbelt around your ankles during the long flight because it's really comfortable for the sleep that your legs will not fall down from from the seat. But then after like eight hours of her not moving from the seat, there was like a blood luggage, you call it.
00:52:36
So then she needed to see the doctor because there was like really bad blood flow after this. And she made a really big like announcement, like. Because I saw this stupid TikTok, I tried it and I think that this is really like when we said like try to not die, like just don't take every advice from the Instagram, from the TikTok and from these things and really try to search for the researches around like what does it mean? Because the metal in blue, which I tried, I research about it on on the Google inside the different research papers, et cetera. And I saw. And I saw the benefits of it. And this is why I decided to go for it.
00:53:19
The only thing that I didn't consider during my research was to actually research about the different possibilities of taking metal in blue. And then when I actually had the infusion, I was like looking at the table next to me and there was a supplement of metal in blue. Then I was like, 'OK', but it was it was really like I was I knew about the benefits of the metal in blue. But the person who was like actually selling is like that. This is certified metal. In blue, in the UK, and in London. So it was like really under it was certified that she could maybe tell me more about rather their product, that it's not necessarily immediately. You need to go under the infusion and put it in your bloodstream.
00:54:00
So but definitely Instagram and TikTok are the worst. It's a lot of young people. They're consuming it instead of reading books or trying to understand the research. So this is definitely a good point. My last question will be about the space. I know that we didn't have really time to go in depth of it, but you are working in the space industry. So are there, for example, some trends that are helping you in your everyday life? That is space somehow helping us in like people to understand more the longevity, the health and how however biology is actually working? Oh, my gosh. Yes. So first of all, if you want to know more about the space industry, you can go to the space industry.
00:54:44
And if you want to see what it would look like a day without space, just Google that. There are some videos that will show you what a day without space would look like. Mostly has to do with weather and telecoms and things like that. But, yeah, let's think about our health. So, you know, our bodies evolved for life on Earth. And so when you take the human body or any Earth life off of Earth, then suddenly it's under a whole set of constraints that we did not evolve to be under. So if it's microgravity, it's higher doses of radiation. There's there's. There's various things that happen. And then that's if you're talking about like low Earth orbit, if you're talking about the moon or you're talking about Mars, there's even more gradations of differences in what the body is being exposed to and how it responds.
00:55:28
So one of the things that's really interesting about that is when you encounter an environment in space that you would never encounter on Earth, it's like doing a different experiment. Right. And it's doing an experiment that you would literally never be able to do on Earth. You can't get rid of these very fundamental things that we have evolved to to to adapt to. And in fact, they're so fundamental that we often don't even think of them until, you know, when you're inside the box, you can't see what's in the box. Right. You have to get outside of the box. So just briefly, a couple of the places where I think biotech and space and life on Earth are going to be really seeing a lot of value all the time are things like synthetic biology and circular ecosystems.
00:56:13
Right? So, you know. So here on Earth, we have a lot of our manufacturing, our energy, our food, all of these things come through extractive processes that are largely petrochemical based, things like that. On Mars, there are no petrochemicals and you are not going to take stuff to Mars and then like throw it in a landfill. It doesn't make any sense. Like even if you don't care about the Martian environment, it's too expensive. It doesn't make any sense. You can't just keep bringing things in. So innovating for space can make life on Earth better. Innovating for space means we're already innovating for sustainability. It's not a choice when you're off Earth. It's not a self-renewing system. You've got to take care of it.
00:56:53
So what are the things we can do for sustainable food, sustainable energy, sustainable housing, all of these things that we have to use in space, but could also really benefit from seeing those things at work on Earth? So synthetic biology is one of those platforms. So synthetic biology is using living things as. Hardware to execute instructions that are written in DNA or RNA code. You will already know about this if you've taken an RNA COVID vaccine. That's the same type of principle. Your body was the hardware that booted up the vaccine instructions. So, that was all sort of done biologically. It's also how folks who are type one diabetic have been taking insulin for decades. That was grown in bacteria instead of being like ground up dead pigs or, God forbid, ground up dead human bodies, right?
00:57:48
It's using a living thing to make or do something. And right now we're seeing a lot of interest here on Earth on synthetic biology for sustainability, for reusability, for getting us off petrochemicals. And I recently did some work with my nonprofit, Explore Mars, looking at how synthetic biology innovation for space could be really useful for space, but also deliver value on Earth as well. So keep your eyes open for things like that. And in the space community, if you are interested in sustainability, if you are interested in innovation and technology, please reach out to me. Let me know that you heard me on this podcast, because there is a place for you in the space community. And that is really the long future, right? Artemis is happening now.
00:58:35
There could be Mars landings within the next decade, within the next 10 years, which is awesome and amazing. And I can't wait to see it. But that's only the first step. Building a peaceful and prosperous space economy, space workforce, space products, space services. All of that has the potential to help life on Earth as well. And you all can be part of that. I'm definitely already down. So after this podcast, I will be speaking with you about how to be part of the space community, because I am really interested. And yes, so this is also a wrap up for today's episode of Create the Future Now. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and gained some valuable insights. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments.
00:59:16
Also, I really enjoyed, for example, if ageing is a disease, we also get valuable insights, opportunities, and challenges. What is the health of the future and how our life will look like in the future. And then we dive into a space a bit. Maybe there is also an opportunity for another episode just about the space, because this one was definitely also one of the favorites. And as always, we are here to help you navigate the evolving digital landscape and create an impactful future with technology. If you loved today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and join our community of Innovatology. You can also follow Innovatology on social media for more updates, tips, and behind-the-scenes content. So, thank you again, Tiffany, for joining us today and sharing your expertise. And thank you, our listeners, for tuning in and being so active during our podcast today. I'll be really looking forward to seeing you next time. So, thank you so much, and have a nice rest of the day. Bye.
