106. Progress Note #9: Neuralink, Dr. GuPTa, Bryan Johnson & Social Connection

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined. A podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in health care. Alright guys, welcome back to another progress note, progress note number nine to be specific. On today's agenda, we have AI. We're talking about artificial intelligence, specifically neural link, for those of you who don't know, these are in the category of brain machine interfaces. So we'll talk about that, it's medical applications, our thoughts, and all the exciting things in the future. We're also going to talk about Dr. Gupta. We've been hearing a lot of noise about Dr. Gupta and what that means for us, our jobs, our thoughts on that. And if you stick around to the end, we'll also give you the blueprint for anti-aging. You guys a matter of her to Brian Johnson, and all the shenanigans he's up to. So make sure you listen through and enjoy the episode. What's up, man? Hey, buddy. How's it going? Good. Good, man. I can't complain. Well, I can't complain a little bit. I just got a lot of call to look forward to this weekend. I just got off call last night. So I'm a little tired, but excited to be here, always excited to talk about. I think what today's theme is going to be at least the future of health care a little bit and technology. So isn't that what we've been doing for doing half years? I think that's what we were doing, true. I guess that's what the arrow represents in our in our logo. All this time offline, we were talking about the future, and I guess it's the first time we'll do it. No, no, different technology. Yeah. I'm trying to think like if we had, I don't think we've done our fair share of technology stuff. We did talk to Rummy, right? A little bit about health tech, although that was more philosophical in terms of how to think about it. Yeah. We'll touch on that a little bit, but we've got to get somebody. Some wearable stuff. Yeah. Wearable stuff. We've done some wearable stuff. That's fair. Yeah. Hopefully, yeah. I mean, for the audience, we'll have some AI episodes coming out, coming out hopefully soon. Yeah. Getting some like biomed engineering or something as far as the futuristic kind of stuff that people are working on. I actually had a lecture today for Grand Rounds about, it was from like a aerospace hand function, perspective of a researcher just looking at kind of prosthetics and different things about hand function and kind of the future of it. So that was kind of interesting. Yeah. Believe it or not, I've had at least two people who are in the healthcare space reach out to me. Some colleagues and ask for AI related episodes, they're like, hey, do you have something in the pipeline coming for this because maybe patients are asking them about it and other people. I'm like, yeah, yeah, they were not so, but where there is demand. So anyways, I think you reached out to me a couple of days ago and we're like, hey, let's talk about some of the current trends, we're just kind of what we touched on a couple of a pns ago that we're going to do, but really bridging into AI is something that's really really hot right now. Touchy PT is almost all new at this point and then you have all the ones that are coming up. The most recent one is Dr. Gupta, right? Yeah. Medical perspective. And a little bit. What that means for our jobs, job security. And then neurolink, neurolink is around for a little time. So wherever you would like to start, the second one, it's more interesting to me. Neuralink is a punchline, but yeah, yeah, I think I think that's more meaningful to me. Maybe the first one's to be honest with you. The first one's more terrifying. And the second one's more interesting if I had to put one adjective to both of them. You know, it's funny. I think if you ask a lay person or a patient, they'd say the opposite. They'd probably say neurolink is terrifying, but yeah, just somewhat hopeful. But let's start with neurolink. Maybe let's start. Oh, yeah, we want to start. Yeah, I was going to say the exact opposite, but no, no, let's start with neurolink. But I will come back to, but that makes sense to me because Dr. Gupta is just the natural trajectory of where things are going, right? Yeah. Since the advent of the internet, WebMD, Google, being able to figure like, you know, Google your symptoms and whatnot. Dr. Gupta is the next step, it's the next logical step. But anyway, let's talk about neurolink, right? If you what I'll do is maybe I'll just kind of defy what for those who don't know neurolink is a specific company, but essentially it's, I don't want to say it's the first one, but it was founded in 2016 by Elon Musk, right? So a neurotechnology company, the primary goal was to develop implantable technology and what they call these are brain machine interfaces or brain computer interfaces. And basically, you have artificial intelligence that interacts with human brains, right? And maybe even other external devices. And at least the vision behind Musk's company and really a lot of these is to kind of enhance human cognition and address some of the neurological disorders and disabilities by harnessing the capability of artificial intelligence. And so some key points I think worth understanding is so maybe a brain machine interfaces, you know, implicitly, I think we understand what that is. It's, it's a communication pathway right between the brain and the external devices and the artificial intelligence. And the way that they work is like they have, they will use the signals from every single neuron. And I think different companies might work slightly differently. I don't, this is where we need an expert to come in, but they'll use signals from neurons and this implantable device could be in a part of your brain or it could be somewhere, I don't think it'd be in the peripheral nervous system because that wouldn't make sense. So it has to be somewhere in the central nervous system. Specifically for neural link, right? They have these electrodes which are like tiny little threads, the size of a human here, that can be planted into the brain. And so that it's like quote unquote minimally invasive, although what brain surgery is minimally invasive. And they do this by the surgical robot, the specifics of that are worth it. But what is interesting to me specifically is the brain mapping component of it, right? So what we know is the brain I think more so than any other organ in the body is the most complex, right? And not only is it the most complex, but really there's no part of the brain that doesn't have a profound function. Yeah, every organ does, but there are a lot of different organs that maybe if you lose a part of it or you lose an organ entirely, like you can do without IE kidney, right? You can do without a kidney. You can do without an adrenal gland. You can do without a lot of different things like that. You lose some part of the brain, you're losing, you're going to have some type of dysfunction, right? And so every single part of the brain has a critical function in terms of how we interact with the environment, how we optimally behave. And so brain mapping creates like different blueprints, so to speak, and helps us understand how different regions of the brain communicate with each other and how we can analyze this activity to decode and interpret the signals that can be sent out to external devices and how we can use that to enhance our lifestyles. And we can imagine how these can have lots of medical applications, which we can talk about, and also ethical considerations, which is kind of the scary part that you were alluding to that the general lay pop might have. So yeah, back from, yeah, I'll start with, Musk is absolutely probably my favorite tech leader entrepreneur, just because he's always pushing the limits, right? And, you know, a lot of people are terrified and, you know, hate him or love him, people have their opinions based on kind of how he handles things in a political sense, his home sense, technology, Twitter, all that. But if you put that all aside, I just think his vision is all about making humanity thrive, right? And I think the cool thing about Neural Link is that it relates closely to what we do, right? I mean, through our residency, we're seeing patients where, if you take Musk's vision, I mean, he's looking at spinal cord patients, right, those who are paraplegics, tetraplegic, hoping that an implantable chip can at least get them to process, move their arms, move their limbs and also work like he said externally with a prosthetic limb. You can also look at patients with like ALS or other neurological disorders where if they're going to be, you know, losing their ability to speak or something, they're now can control their thoughts kind of with an interface. And so they can now communicate to whoever they need to just by their thoughts. You can also see this with like cerebral palsy. So now you're seeing, hey, I have a child with cerebral palsy having difficulty with walking. Well, maybe this chip can at least train them. And when you can map out the neurons, understand exactly to a teal most what it takes to get somebody to learn and then also walk. So I think the possibilities that are super cool. And you know, just for the audience to realize Musk, he says it's like having a fit fit in your brain, right? So it's just like you said, you have this internal device that's kind of maneuvering all the neurons within your brain and the circuits and the mapping, but then it also kind of has like these updates from the outside, which are collecting data, but then also can input the data in there. So obviously, I mean, this is way beyond our pay grade and to understand kind of the engineering and all that is way beyond, but I just think it's so fascinating and currently they're working on animals, you know, dogs, pigs, mice, obviously there haven't been any human clinical trials that was got rejected by the FDA. I think they last year tried to try to get FDA clearance for at least starting human clinical trials. And this I guess leads into the kind of the ethical components of things. Well, so that's what's interesting, right? So Neuralink hasn't made progress on it, but there are other companies, competitors who actually have made, have come further along in terms of getting FDA approval. So another competitor when I was googling this was like parodromics or somebody that came one step closer to getting FDA approval. There's another company based out of Utah or somewhere in the Midwest, where BlackRock, and they've implanted a couple of these devices in a few dozen people. I don't know if you heard about that. And it sounds like, you know, they're doing it for all the people that you mentioned. I did read the case study about an individual with the ALS who had this implanted, you know, things that are even quote unquote simpler than that neurological issues. You know, when we, something that's been pretty hot right now, when it comes to neurological disorders or conversations about Alzheimer's disease, right? When we, when we talk about the health and all this space and influencers and all the kind of stuff, talking about apoe and especially, you know, with the limitless series that came out. Yeah. And of course, Alzheimer's disease where it impacts your memory, but it also robs the individual of their personality and a lot of other aspects of, you know, their neurology, right? So other, you know, in terms of how they behave, in terms of how they function, in terms of just how they interact with the world, in terms of what their daily tasks, in terms of how they behave, you know, just their personality and their affect and whatnot. And other diseases that are very, very common in neurodegenerative, such as Parkinson's. But even, even more basic than that, cerebral vascular disease, right? We see people in stroke patients. I mean, think about all the kinds of aphasias that we see and we learn about that's how you'll for us. So for those who don't know, aphasias are just like, um, I speech disorders. Is that a fair way to say it? Yeah. Speech impairments. In a way. Speech impairments, right? And so, um, often times when somebody has a stroke, a part of your brain is going to be affected where you're going to have difficulty with expressive speech, right? Or you might have difficulty with receptive speech. So you can imagine things like a broken sephasia where expressive speech is a problem. But these individuals understand everything perfectly fine. But that connection between understanding and getting it out, that one is the one that's interrupted. If you had a device like this, you could completely circumvent that, right? Same thing with an oenomic aphasia where somebody has difficulty coming up with the exact word that they're trying to communicate. I feel like I have this all the time. But, um, right, if you had something like this, this, this BMI brain machine interface where you can completely circumvent that situation, what that might mean for somebody in terms of interacting with society and their function is, it could be pretty profound. And this one is, it kind of hits home with me because again, you know, you know, this that I am become familiar with this with somebody in my family who's kind of struggled with this. And so that's, that was something that I'm like, hey, I'm incredibly excited with this. It is a double ed sword though, like the ethical condition that you're talking about in terms of invasions of privacy, right? Because like, yeah, who is going to be able to, like anytime you have artificial intelligence or your technology, that's hackable, right? That's, um, you can monitor that and it's like, all right. So if you can, if the output can be interpreted by everybody, then, you know, not only can I communicate with you through this BMI, but somebody, three miles from you can listen to that conversation and then what does that mean? So that's a scary piece of it. Um, I don't know. You know, I agree. You know what's funny? So I don't know if you saw this recent, um, these article about how they're finding DNA, like in the air, like human DNA in the air. Like in the water. So apparently they've like, some research team has found like human DNA that in the middle of the air that you can just collect. And that's a raising privacy concerns, right? So like for people to just think about, if that is a huge issue, as far as like where people are or what they've been doing and who it is, I mean, this is like on another level given that it's your thoughts, you can trace like once we have the, have the knowledge and the understanding of kind of how these brain patterns work and it's kind of like almost reading braille, right? Like you know a certain sequence of function equals X. And so if you hack that, if you hack that code, which your brain produces, you now can create a story out of that with the wording. And so I think it is, it's pretty, it's pretty freaky to think about kind of like the sci-fi. But I mean, hey, that's, that's the way the world's going. Yeah. And then the next, maybe not the logical progression, but the malicious progressions would be is then you can manipulate those thoughts too, right? Right. Which is kind of why I thought it was interesting to use them and maneuver. I wouldn't use that word right now because I think maneuver has the implication that you can manipulate, right? If you're actually maneuvering, maybe maneuvering around neurons, so to speak. But but that's actually Elon Musk has brought up these concerns with open AI and chat GPT about how, hey, actually that's, that's my understanding is one of the reasons he's pushing this is because he's saying we have to evolve with artificial intelligence. Otherwise, it's going to be, it's going to destroy us all, right? So I don't know. I haven't really heard him speak on it. I've only just read about different things, so yeah, I got to look more into it. But certainly cool. I did listen to the episode of this gentleman. It was a neurosurgeon on Hubertman's podcast who came and talked about neurolink in detail who who has an implantable device apparently in his fingertips somehow where he opens. Yeah, yeah, he, well, I don't think it's specifically a BMI, but he can open doors and like locks with that thing. Wild. It's just crazy to think. Yeah, he's never, it was funny because he said that he hasn't like for years now or for some time, he hasn't had to use a key and show his wife asked him to put one in her as well. And so he did that. What is he like there what he says in his words, their version of wedding rigs? Wow. Is he quote unquote normal? Like he doesn't have any type of dysfunction or. No, not at all. Wow. He just, yeah, normal guy walking around with a chip. Health experimentation. Yeah. Wow. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm just excited to see how this develops. We're going to hear more about it throughout this year next year as AI develops. This will develop. So we'll probably have another PN on this down the road as far as updates go and kind of what we can educate the audience on with what we learned. Absolutely. Hopefully an expert. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. We'll show you transition then to the second topic that we alluded to, which is Dr. Gupta. Yes. Screly. It's from Martin Screly. That guy. It's come back. It's what most people would refer to. So I guess I'll just give the intro here since I started. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You already have a biased opinion. That's right. So, okay. Dr. Gupta, the first time I heard about this, I thought they were talking about Dr. Sanjay Gupta. And I was like, wait, this guy is now like an artificial intelligent, like person just given out medical advice. I think that's the normal rational thought that most people would have. But you look more into this and it's called Dr. Gupta because the letters GPT are in Gupta. Right. So it makes for a cool name there when you go on the website and those three letters are capitalized. But for those who don't know, Martin Screly is the guy who created Dr. Gupta. And his backstory is that he's essentially a tech biotech bro. Farma bro is what they call him who recently got sentenced to prison. Just got released. But because he was creating a monopoly on a drug, and I believe the drug was for toxoplasmosis. And he had some illegal activity. A lot of people were angry because he was just selling the drug at such a high price and nobody could really compete. And so, you know, the court obviously found him guilty, sentenced him for, I believe, seven years. And he kind of recently got out and this was his first, this was his first creation coming out of prison. He was like, you know what? I need to create a medical chat GPT for people to be diagnosed because WebMD and Google just aren't doing it apparently. Right. Yeah. And I think there's some good to it. Well, you've tried it. His point is I did. Yeah. I played around with it. Only five questions. But I wasn't that impressed to be honest with you because I think. Well, what was I knowing about it? I don't really know what the paid version is. Maybe it's just more enhanced and more comprehensive and faster. One, it was very, very slow. And two, everything, every single response had a disclaimer after it. So I thought that was a little bit annoying. I was like, oh, check with your healthcare professional. Did you check with your healthcare professional? I was very annoying. And I also promise you the follow up questions. So it's very, it's very, what's the one? It gives me that that feel of like when I'm going to talk to Verizon and I go through their chat. Yeah, yeah. The customer service chat like it gave me that type of feel it. So it didn't really quite feel like it made me feel like my job was secure. But he, he did mention that, you know, he. His, in his opinion, like a lot of physical professionals in terms of our. Our profession like physicians and whatnot are not going to be necessary. I think maybe I read a quote at some point where he's saying that, you know, my kids or the kids of the future generation are going to ask why physicians were necessary or like, why, why we ever needed them, which I thought was interesting. And, and so that, that was the part that I was coming out. I was like, how's the little terrifying? Because, you know, we, we talked, we had Joe Pacti come on and I was like, hey, man, are we not going to have physicians? And in my initial thought was, there's no way, there's no way that they're going to be able to replace us. But then I, if I've been thinking about this for quite some time. And I do think there are a lot of things that could be streamlined from this, right? So if we think about, especially in the COVID era, where a lot of practices had and just urgent careism, what not triage medicine, right? Where you can say, hey, is this an emergency? Those types of people will, we can do tele visits. You can make an assessment visually and just from symptoms in terms of respiratory things and just infectious stuff. Does it need to be checked out or not? Does it just need a quick course of antiviral? Does it need hydration? That kind of stuff. That's pretty straightforward. And if everything is, which unfortunately, this is another knock of, we talked about Peter Valenzuela about this, is that if things are start ahead towards this algorithm based approach, well, why can't a machine just follow the algorithm? Right? Where is the thought provoking conversation? Where is the nuance? Where is the calculator decision making that a human brain actually needs to do, where a machine can do that just, easy to just follow the algorithm? And I think for a lot of different things, it's going to be possible. So I, I could see it having some utility. I could see it, the case being made that health care is too expensive. And this is going to help cut some of those costs and the long run will be better for society, particularly in areas where there is a physician shortage, right? Yeah, speaking about algorithms, right? I mean, that's kind of already happening from the insurance standpoint. When it comes to insurance companies trying to dictate how long somebody has a rehab, right? I mean, they're just plugging in the metrics, the plug in the labs, the plug in the age, the ICD-10 codes, and spitball out a number. And there's no human thought behind this as far as actually this person could probably do really well with about three weeks of therapy. So I get, I don't know, we'll give them two days. You're like, okay, and then there's nothing you can do to fight it because the insurance companies have a proprietary algorithm, right? And that's what they're going off of. So you're arguing against AI now, which to them is 100% always going to be right. So I guess that's kind of the downside of where that algorithm comes into play. But there's always been, you know, this tussle between insurance companies and kind of doctors, etc. But I did want to ask you, when you did the, when you did Dr. Gupta, did you just ask free range prompts or did you actually input like some of your data, age, all that labs? I put my, no, I didn't put my labs and stuff. I put my age, my height, my weight. I didn't want to put all like the protected health information because that has been one of the concerns. I remember we had an article in my health lot. Yeah, the attorney to do that and that can get especially tricky. No, I didn't, I didn't go, I didn't maybe get the full user experience that was anticipating. I just put free prompt of like, hey, what should I expect from something like this? And so that being said, I do have some friends, though, who recently been mentioning that they put it in for some stuff and it's been quite helpful. So it also, you know, it also depends on what, where it's your background, like where you coming from, what's your baseline level of knowledge? If you don't know anything, then you're going to ask some, you know, pretty rudimentary questions. And it's going to give you those answers, right? But if you ask more in-depth or complicated questions, it's going to say, oh, you know, follow up with the healthcare professional. It could be this, it could be this. Like, okay, that's not helpful. I already knew that. So. Absolutely. Yeah. One of the, so I told you I was speaking of mirror about this, right? After our conversation with Joe Bucky, we're talking about like, hmm, will AI replace doctors or not? And I was kind of in the camp of like, I think they will. And one of the concerns that people say is that, well, they, I can't really show empathy, right? But there are companies out there who are trying to solve the mental health problem and try to come, try to create a human interface at least a human software that can read emotion and give back emotion as well. Just so, you know, the number of mental health people out there suffering from mental health, I should say, are able to see somebody, even if it's AI. But my wife, me, I brought up a good point in the sense that a lot of people are afraid to disclose information to another human being, right? It's almost like, although doctors take care of vulnerable patients, there still might be this, you know, somewhat of a something in the air that doesn't feel comfortable. And obviously from a male to female perspective, so like today, I'm on the pain clinic, worked with a physician who primarily deals with pelvic pain. And so I have like a 17 year old come in and just like very flat affect with me, did not want to divulge head down. And then obviously as soon as the female attending comes in, she kind of perks up and able to speak. I mean, you'll see that anyways and given the age, but I wonder if you substituted me with, let's say a male AI or even a female AI, how much would that patient just be willing to interact with that, especially growing up with technology being on phones all the time and stuff. It's almost second nature. So I know just kind of a thought that we were discussing. Sure, saying be more willing to be more vulnerable, right, right, maybe disclosing more information. Yeah, I can, I can see it going either way. Really, I suppose it depends on the person. Yeah, I think for people of the older generation who are not as intimately familiar, I didn't grow up walking around with their phones step to their face very much like we are in the generation below us. Kind of what must because you're right, that's his point is like, hey, everybody's we're walking around like zombies anyway, so we have to. So for the older folks who are still willing to pick up the phone and call people, it's so funny that we do that I was on my way here and I had to call one of my students, one of my mentees for for something for a project we're working on and I picked up the phone call her and we're playing phone tag back and forth. And when we finally got in touch, I told our media, I said, hey, don't ever feel pressured to pick up the phone call when I call you or call me back immediately, but it's you know how it is, like for the 10 calls you, you're like, oh my god. And I don't want to pressure like that is I said, just because I'm the person I like to pick up the phone call, I'm not a huge fan, we talk about this, you're not. And I'm not, I'm not like huge on texting, especially because I'm driving and doing things and so I let that point I'm like knocking out phone calls. Yeah, so, so it don't just it don't matter. And so for me, you know, I could, it would depend on if I was actually talking to robot or not. But for me, that human connection is very, very meaningful, which is why I think that, you know, in past when I've tried to identify talking to somebody like a therapist, I've gone through multiple people's because I think building that connection is very, very important. Yeah. But yeah, I could also see the conspiracy theorists in the back sense saying who's who's behind the robot listening, you know, yeah. So and then like even more reluctant to share their information because there's certainly somebody's, you know, pulling the strings of that robot. So I don't know, that's that's very, very interesting. Yeah, and I'm with you on the sense that like for me talking to patients, I mean, it's, I can talk about things outside of medicine too, right? That builds that rapport, you know, I had an older couple yesterday as well, 67 years married, asked in the secret, we joked around for a little bit. And that, you know, just elevated kind of the happiness in the room, whereas if you're doing the AI, you can't really divulge it to the personal life of the AI. It's just strictly going to be algorithmic and just black and white into the point, which, you know, some people are going to prefer that. But like you said, I think the old timers are going to want to have that rapport, enjoy kind of just talking up somebody and then getting down to what the nitty gritty is. Yeah, yeah, we talked to Sarah Post was about this way back when right because in her field of psychiatry where I think I asked her how, how quick is she or how often does she become vulnerable with her patients where she'll share her own personal story, right? Because she's had a backstory and we've all been through some hardships and I forget who I saw maybe was on Dr. Mike show or somebody talking about patients, particularly with chronic disease. Like for it's I think the the anecdote this this physician on on social media gave was that he, you know, if he's telling a patient that who has diabetes and that they need to do their finger sticks and they need to check their glucose and and monitor that because that's going to be important. And the next time the patient comes in and says, hey, I didn't do it. And when you ask that patient, how come the patient might say, well, you have no idea what it feels like to stick your finger all day every day to be able to check that. And in that moment, he's he shared with the patient that, hey, actually, I do have been doing for the last 20 years. You've shared with the patient that you are a diabetic or you have metabolic dysfunction of some sort, right? But when you unveil the curtain in that respect, all of a sudden that therapeutic alliance, right, the phrase that we love at least I love is you built that instantaneously, which I'm not really sure any amount of time spent else could do that. Because now the person is like, because again, we've talked about this. We're so tribal in nature, no matter what we do, no matter how open minded we do is just I don't know, it's so innate. So, yeah, I can't do that to your point. So I'm just kind of elaborating further on that, which is why I'm not sure. Does that make sense? What do you think about that? Yeah, I see it both sides, right? I think like as a society as humans, we're there's a race now, right? To longevity and to anti aging. So there's a true race to figure out a blueprint, right? And so let's you just want to go into like our next segments, because I can talk about this at least as far as like a story that people should at least keep their eyes on. Let's see that. All right. So something new that we're going to do on this podcast, ultimately, we'll come up with a story, I'll come up with a story, it can be a gripe, something happy, something we're doing, whatever. We're going to share it with each other, and then we're just going to have our thoughts. So this actually leads in perfectly. So you know about Brian Johnson. Yes. I just, yeah, just listen to him on the podcast the other day. Oh, with Colbert. Gotcha. Yeah. So he's also like a trending guy right now, right? So for the past like year, he spent about $2 million on trying to solve anti aging, not necessarily longevity, I'd say, but really anti aging. And I think this is the way the world is moving towards is trying to solve how we can live longer and how we can live better because we're finally at the tipping point where we believe it's possible. Like I don't think people 20 years ago thought about like they have the idea about it, but they probably never thought practically that, okay, we're at the cusp where we can solve technology to make this happen. But now you're seeing people do this, right? And so Brian Johnson for people who don't know he created Venmo sold that to PayPal. And now has gone on a trans transformative journey to really solve anti aging. And so if you look at pictures of him from like 10 years ago to now, it was drastically different. He looks like Christian bail from American cycle, most like porcelain skin has this routine down. And again, he spent $2 million, he takes 100 supplements a day, and he's really tracking everything he does. And so his vision and his goal is solving anti aging and creating a blueprint for every individual. So it's not just what he does is going to work for you or it's going to work for me or whoever else is listening, but looking at the metrics, looking at the biomarkers, what are the things that we have to do to now look at it as more of a complex picture. But also seek again, AI algorithms code, what is the code if I input this, what comes out, right, when you have enough of that, you get more and more answers, which is essentially is what deep learning is. And so I think Brian Johnson is merged together this field of AI, this field of futuristic thinking as well as now medicine and health and kind of combine them all to really just figure out what he can do to live longer. And he was biological age now is like five years less than what it was his testosterone like 20 years less than his normal age, I think he's like 50 years old or something. The dude looks like he's like 25 30 I should say, but it's pretty impressive. I had never seen a picture of him. I'm yeah, I just Google them right now. He's actually shredded. Yeah, you know, he looks great. I don't know how yield he is, but I would not guess he's more than I would not even say he's in his 40s by looking at him. So that's fantastic. Yeah, the other thing I think he had mentioned. Yeah, we got to look this up, but the other thing that I do recall him mentioning is his rate of aging, he had decreased it by 31 years or something like that, which I'm not really sure exactly what that means. Oh, this is an interesting that he he's sharing all his shares at all data after 18 months of adherence with the parent. Yeah, on the actual website. Yeah, yeah, so LT BMI follow him on Twitter too, man. So he just posted today. He's like 800 pound like press one rep max. He just did a 240 bench press one rep max his VO to max is like a 50 and he compares it all to an 18.6. Yeah, compares it all to an 18.6 is very, very good. Yeah, it's insane. He's in the top 1% of like 18 year olds, right? And he said the reason he does 18 is because that's when the ACSM uses that age as the point of decline for a lot of metrics. So he's trying to be obviously at the elite level 18 and it's just very impressive what he's doing. He's got a lot of haters out there because, you know, I mean, people are going to hate on anything obviously about living his life and stuff. But yeah, I mean, what's what what's the biggest like the grape that people have for him? Like what like I understand like, I think he's spending too much money. I mean, I can imagine. Yeah. So there's a constant following him. Yeah, there's a couple things. One is this guy spending two million a year on himself and he expects that everyone else can afford the same thing. Right. So he's like, why are we even doing this experimentation? I think Eric even said I think you're a little bit too far ahead of the market and stuff. But the thing is, does he expect that everybody can do this? So yes and no, right? Cause his biggest thing is you can take one step at a time, even if it's a little bit of a step, it's something in the right direction. But with anything of technology, the price is going to come down to whatever it is, right? And but somebody needs to start somewhere. So like in my perspective, I'm for it. Like I love seeing that he's trying to advance our knowledge on anti-aging through, again, everything supplements working out all this stuff and increasing the science. And knowledge that we have in order to one day make it commoditized to everyone else. So that's like one gripe that people have. The second is kind of just like, you know, people are instead of living his type of life. They want to go out party all the time, do things like do just live your life like why are you doing this? Why are you making your family do this? Because his son is like completely bought in to his lifestyle as well. Like he'll go to school with like three pounds of edges and stuff. But he's like, it's the sun's joy and it sounds like 16 or 8 something like that, but it's like completely bought in. Interesting. Yeah, I thought it was interesting. You know, the question that that I've texted you or the inside that I've texted you do a couple of times, maybe something that that Lex Frieden was the first person who I heard who it made sense to me is like all these people that, you know, if you hadn't grind it early on in his life, because when Eric asked him, like what was your, you know, what was a reason? What was the motoring factor for this? He talked about just grinding and hustle culture and shitty marriage and being depression. What would he call it? Like nighttime Brian. Yeah, evening, evening Brian. Evening Brian. Yeah. So evening Brian was a manifestation of his unhealthy relationships with his wife, with his children, and really with his self, right? And presumably, if he had taken care of those relationships from the start, he wouldn't be spending so much time at this juncture overcorrecting, right, letting that pendulum swing so aggressively to the opposite side. And that really spoke to me, and I think tends to be interesting because it's a double it sword in terms of having to grind early on so you are in a position enough where you can do something like that down the road. Maybe I should elaborate a little bit further because there might be some people who are wondering what the hell is he talking about? Well, I'm referring to all these wellness influencers and everybody, maybe not influencers because that tends to be a bad word, but all the respectable individuals, like, you know, people we talk about often, late Norton, we talk about Peter Tia, we talk about Heberman. And even folks in the academic sector who are leaders in the field of scientists who are pushing the bounds when it comes to redefining health care and making more of a health based model rather than a sick based model. They're in the position that they are is because they made the sacrifices of not taking care of their health. I don't want to make a broad brush, you know, paint everybody with that type of statement, but they are pretty open with their journey and how hard they work and how they gain these experiences in their in their 20s, maybe even in their 30s, which puts them in a position to be interesting enough where they have a platform where people want to bring them on for conversations for interviews for the lessons that they've learned for the wisdom that they've acquired. Right. So had they been spending their 20s and deflecting some of those experiences to be able to care for their health, to be able to go to bed at 9.30 at night, to be able to get eight hours of sleep, they wouldn't be in that position down the road. You know, I heard Saul Bloom talk about this earlier this morning on Chris Huckins show where he's in a position in life that if anybody offered him $50 million to work 80 hours per week, he would not do it. He wouldn't even think about it twice. And I paused for a second. I said, wait, hold on a second. You're telling me that if I get $50 million for this year and just to grind it out for 80 hours per week, and then you don't have to do anything after that. And so it's short term sacrifice for long term gain. I mean, this is something that we're so capable of doing. Hey, we've done $50,000 for 80 hour weeks, right? Yeah, we've done it. Exactly. So bringing it back to Brian Johnson, I wonder if he had taken care of himself, his relationships, his priorities, because one of the things I do remember him mentioning of that his relationship with his son is so important to him. And I think he does have multiple children. So had he done a better job in his youth, would he have to as aggressively course correct, would he have to go to the other side of taking your his body, spending $200. For sure. Getting all the blood work, spending as much time on his sleep and guarding that as aggressively as he does say that he does. So these are the things that I think about. Right. And so his thing is like he's never been more conscious or quote unquote woke since doing this, right? And he's really like dude, he has 100% sleep performance over the last two months streak. It's absolutely insane, right? Just to think about that. So I mean, I'm like, I would never do what he's doing, even if I had the capabilities I would never do what he's doing. Because for me, I really do care about like the people I'm with, the people I hang out, like I just can't give up that lifestyle because I do crave social connection in a way, right? I don't know how much he would feel aloof being around people doing things like it seems like his heart and soul is really just into blueprint, which hey, if that's his thing, that's his thing, I think in advances and somebody's got to do the work and maybe that's why he's doing it. You're right about a privileged position, right? Like you look at subtle blue. I mean, the guy I was already pretty, I was saying wealthy because that's a very subjective term, but I mean, he has enough money to think about what 50 mil means, right? I mean, he makes more than a million now, which just advertisements and his newsletters and stuff like that. But if he wasn't it was not an investment banker or he was somebody just making 50 60 K. I don't know, I think that answer might change to do 80 hours a week because there are people out there who are working two, three jobs and not even closing in around 50 60 K. Yeah, the social connection piece is very important for us to understand because the people who've been successful, who've made the money, time and time again will tell you that that's not enough. That's not the key to happiness, so to speak. And the realization that they keep coming to is that love and connection are critical in terms of happiness. We do know that one of the key components for longevity and when we look at the blue zones across the world are these individuals who have deep social connection, right? They have tribes, they have a community that gives them purpose. Despite what their diets are like, what their movement and physical practice and activity is like, what their sleep patterns are like, whether or not they're eating more fat and more saturated fat or more vegetables or drinking alcohol or not, I think those are the minutia sometimes and the grand scheme of things that we're worrying about. I've been thinking about that piece of it a lot more and trying to emphasize that because all these other things will take too much of your energy and oftentimes will leave you more exhausted than energizing you. And, you know, not again, not every single person to your point is like that and some people are more introverted and that's not how they get energized and the data and all those things tend to energize them. And so I think everybody has a little different of a purpose in life and whatever yours is if you find it, then you keep going after it. And the thing is not everyone wants to live long. I mean, there are people out there who think the world is going downhill at this point, like legitimately they are afraid of humanity. And so there are people who, yeah, do the proper things, but then they feel like, oh, once their loved ones are gone, they also want to be gone around the same time. I mean, I think Peter Tia talks about this, right, about like the emotional component of health is like, what's the point of living longer if you're not going to live with the best mood, if you're not happy. Why would you want to live longer and you're depressed? So, you know, it's definitely a gray zone. But like to each their own, right? I think if you have the option, you have the option. But yeah, I don't know. Couldn't agree more. You've got the time and the money. Why not? Cool. Well, this is a good good PN. And yeah, we'll probably have to do some updates down the road. Maybe next year we'll see what Dr. Gupta turns it to neural link. See what Brian Johnson's biological age is. So we'll have some updates. Looking forward to it. All right, man. Thank you for tuning into another episode of Medicine Redefined. As always, we are highly appreciative of your support. And if there are any other topics that you want us to cover, or if you have any feedback for us, or just want to say hi, we are at MedRedefined at GMMA.com and also MedRedefined on all the social platforms. So please feel free to reach out to us. And lastly, we want to thank our team, Ethan Jew and Rita Yeppery, for the help and production of this podcast. And before you sign off, do remember the important disclaimer that everything in this podcast is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute the practice of medicine nor should it be considered as medical advice. No physician-patient relationship is formed and anything discussed in this podcast does not represent the views of our employers. 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