AI and Your Health: What You Need to Know (And Why You Shouldn’t Be Scared!)

32:53So head to adobe.ly slash Davina to get started. Did she really use the generative AI to turn back at some DJs? She loves Adobe.

33:07You're talking about fMRIs and I feel like it's only a very, I mean, maybe one place or very quite a, that's got this AI technology around this area. How soon before you think it will be seeing it kind of everywhere? Yeah. How quickly will it be rolling out? Well, access is a really important question. And I have spoken to scores of the world leading scientists and experts in this and doctors. So people in the healthcare perspective and people from the scientific community. And the question is always this. It's always about access and who gets what when. So there are smaller MRI scanners being developed.

33:46There are wearables being developed. the resolution is often a lot lower, so they're not necessarily useful right now. But I think what's happening is the technology is getting better and is starting to be able to tell us a lot more. The patterns and AI recognition is getting a lot better as well. So we're getting to this place where you can understand more from tech, which is more achievable. But there are still a lot of questions over access. And in fact, something else I talked about at Stanford was the percentage of people who suffer from migraines is actually lower than the percentage of people that suffer from depression.

34:18And people with migraines can be referred for MRIs. So it's not out of the question to imagine the idea that people with depression could be once this technology has proven it's worth longer term because a lot of stuff is still at trial stage. It's a big, huge game changer. It is. And this is what we need to really embrace with preventative medicine. It can save enormous amounts of money. It will also be much, much kinder. But if you look at the National Health Service here and very different challenges in the US with the way insurance works because their insurance companies investing in prevention are not necessarily going to gain benefit from people not getting sick because they may have changed insurance company.

34:57But we need to look at these challenges and they're not always the same pots of money. But we are already seeing incremental changes of where this is happening and prevention is being embraced. And as we start to be able to understand so much more about who is at risk of what when this is by pulling in our behavioral data even lifestyle air quality with our genetics with our understanding of disease we start to know who is at risk so we screen better we start to find disease earlier we can then treat things in kinder ways in more personalized ways more gently if it's earlier because we mustn't forget quality of life here that's that gap between health span and lifespan.

35:40Yeah. Can I ask you something? Because you're talking a lot about wearable tech. Yeah. And so it's a good thing then that somebody would be able to access all of our health data from a piece of wearable tech. Should we all be considering getting some piece of wearable tech? I think it's a controversial question. Yeah. It's very easy for me sitting here now to say, Yes, and they're going to be prescribed on the NHS, by the way. This is part of the government's 10-year health plan. Within 10 years... Is that actually... It is part of the plan that within 10 years, people with chronic health conditions for preventative health and leaving hospital after acute treatment will be given wearables.

36:21There's a huge scale of wearables. There are plenty that are very cheap that can do a really adequate job. So democratising access to wearables is one thing within there. But there are also ethical questions here. In countries where abortion is not acceptable, people don't necessarily want to be doing period tracking. They're worried about who is going to be accessing that data. Oh, God. And there's so much to get at. There is. There's so much to get at. And there are big societal and ethical questions here. And many people bring up these issues. And I hadn't even thought about that. Well, yes, these things exist.

36:58And they exist in a bigger picture, worldwide picture. and I think I have to give a nod to that but actually the question as to whether you me and most of the people listening to this are going to benefit from a wearable well my personal opinion and I've got nothing to benefit from anybody doing this is it's incredibly valuable unless you're a person that becomes anxious about the data right so if you don't want to share your data don't wear one well in terms of sharing the data you're sharing anonymized data so I'm not sure if people are worried that tech companies are going to benefit from their data and they don't like the idea of that financial gain.

37:35But if they're just worried about it being personal information, well, it's anonymized and it's not hugely useful to anybody that data if you're just looking at those patterns. Data is valuable on large scales of large numbers of people. But when you said that about abortions or periods being tracked. I can understand if there is a criminal case for somebody getting pregnant and somebody doesn't want anybody to know, I think I can understand people being nervous if their health is a matter of legal fear. Yes, this is anonymised data. It shouldn't be getting out to anybody. We know the way that we hear about data breaches.

38:23We know things that can happen. But this is anonymized data that is collected from all of these devices. And when it comes to health care, because a lot of the things that I've talked about, whether it's AI being used on scans, AI within health care is being strictly regulated within that health care remit. So we already trust our doctors with our data. And in fact, there was a study into how much more people trust the NHS than they do tech companies. And a large part of that is because they don't want tech companies benefiting from their health issues. But in health, data needs to be kept safe.

39:02And it's a bit like with the mental health chatbot stuff that's going on. Oh, I want to talk to you about that. Sure. Mental health. Yes. So massive. So the chatbot idea of a chatbot being able to talk to somebody and basically give them therapy. Yes. And there are chatbots that are built for that with safety and privacy at their core, which are designed to be safe and provide a service and escalate to the human help that would be needed where it's obvious that it's there. But we also have to accept that we live in the real world and people have their own way of wanting to do things. And people know large language models can be really, really engaging to have conversations with.

39:44So this is things like ChatGPT, Claude, Grok. And people are likely to go to those platforms and have conversations when they're in their time of need, which don't have the privacy built in because what they're saying is going back to train the model. And they're not medical bots. they are general there have been there have been some very sad stories of things that have happened and there's one recently right exactly and the tech companies are trying to do what they can to build in the safety that's needed open ai is making some changes now especially over parental access to teenagers accounts to know more about what they're doing and to flag if there seems to be an issue but i've done some experiments with this and i can tell you that not all chatbots come back with safe answers always and a lot is in the prompting and we are still at a point of needing to make these platforms safer because they are not designed for that purpose but inevitably people will use them for that so let's discuss the kind of conversation that a parent should have if they've got teenagers in the house teenagers are accessing all of my kids i've got three kids They are all accessing chat GBT, ad infinitum about everything.

40:58What kind of messages do we need to get over to our teenagers? What kind of prompts should we not be giving or be aware of or be careful around? Yeah, a lot of this takes us back to the conversations on internet safety that we've been having for years. And I think that there was a generation where it was the first time parents were having to deal with internet safety. And I think now there's a generation of people having to deal with AI safety for the first thing. Me. I have no idea what to say. Yeah. And one of the really big challenges is we've just talked about the issues over the dangers with mental health that exist.

41:36But what is true? Understanding what to believe and what's real, I think, is one of the biggest challenges of the age right now. And the problem with this is you teach people, teenagers, anybody to question everything because you don't know what's real or not and question what the sources are. And you don't want them to end up in a place where they trust nothing. So understanding what sources are reliable and checking that things have truly come from those sources, because sometimes on social media, there are videos and posts that are designed to look like they've come from major national broadcasters that they haven't.

42:13So, disinformation is a huge threat out there right now. And it's a challenge that we are grappling with and has only just begun. And as video recordings, sound recordings, you can record eight seconds of someone's voice and turn it into anything that sounds believable. So, knowing to question things and knowing to question the sources is, of course, critical. we also a bit like with ai safety need to actually be aware that our children are going to face information come information is going to get to them that we don't necessarily want it to how are they going to deal with it so we actually need to try and teach them resilience and what they do when they come up against something that doesn't seem right because we can't protect them from it forever.

43:06Ah, so painful that. Well, it is. And a lot of the worries people have over jobs and what are people going to do when they leave school? How are they going to deal with this world? Well, one of the most important things is that kids need to finish education, understanding AI and understanding the role it plays within everything. What's often said is it's not people that are going to lose their jobs to AI, it's people that don't understand AI that are going to lose their jobs to people who are better with AI. Yeah. So we do need to understand it. And that's really important. It comes with its challenges.

43:36And in 10 years time, we'll probably all be a lot wiser as to how we deal with those things. Is it is it all right for me to mention what happened to this boy with open AI and chat GBT? This is allegedly what happened was a 16 year old boy was talking to chat GBT. We don't know. I don't know what the conversation was, but something happened and he ended up taking his own life. This is a phenomenon known as AI psychosis, which has grown out of the fact that AI can be incredibly sycophantic. Unless you use one of the models that's deliberately abusive to you for entertainment, then it tends to support your thoughts and how you're feeling quite a lot.

44:19And in some instances, that's not an ideal thing. yeah safe so that's what happened to this boy and then now his parents are taking open ai to court because they lost their son so there are some serious ramifications and that's why it's important that we as midlifers don't try and close our eyes to ai because it well i guess there's a lot going on you'll know about this about brain health and learning new things we need to keep learning new things it's good for our brain health we mustn't kind of think oh I just don't want to learn about that because it's too complicated Michael my partner he's brilliant because he makes me learn new things he made me learn about the metaverse I went to a meeting it was brilliant I was a bit like I can't I just can't be asked like it's too big a thing but he he made me learn about bitcoin um he made me learn a lot of subjects he's choosing yeah well it's all things that It's new to me and a bit, oh God.

45:22But he's like, we have to learn it because this is the future. And it's been a brilliant experience for me. But you're really helping me actually realise that I can't turn a blind eye to AI. No, that's right. Us humans built it and we built it to better things, to better our experiences, to do things more efficiently and be able to learn more from the knowledge that we have. We have never been more knowledgeable or powerful than we are right now. Yet still, we are questioning our very future as a result of AI. I think what is interesting is that, like you just said, we're more knowledgeable and powerful.

46:05We have all of this incredible technology at our fingertips. And yet there is literally an epidemic of a worldwide epidemic of poor mental health. Yeah. Why is that? Well, technology can also be seen to be one of the drivers for it. Lots of people will say that the smartphone generation has been enormously damaging for it. The always on sense that we have, we don't switch off enough. Yeah. And I mean, look, I'm no expert in this. I can't vouch for what has caused it. But I certainly know that one of the things that people often bring up is technology. So whilst it may be blamed for a lot of the problem, it's also hopefully going to play a part in actually being able to improve it as well.

46:48And one of the other things that I was absolutely horrified by, because cancer rates are increasing. So I remember, I think it was kind of one in three, one in four. But now it's 50 % of us at some point during our lives will get cancer. And obviously, AI is going to play a big part in that. Can you tell me a bit more about that? It really is. And this has been one of the big drivers for the various programs I've made over the last few years, looking at longevity and the future of health and for why I've written the book. We'd all like to age better. We don't want to get bad knees. We don't want to get a bit forgetful.

47:30But we really don't want cancer. And the power here to be able to delay and possibly prevent disease is incredible. and it is agreed upon by all experts and I spoke to scores of people 1500 citations from medical papers when I handed this over to Penguin because I really needed to get into the nitty-gritty here of what was going on the change in the future of cancer is the biggest change that we're probably going to see within health care now this is for many reasons there's so many variables cancer is so many different things there are so many types so many subtypes there are the genetics of the tumor, not just the location of the tumor.

48:11And there are also so many different risk factors. And as we understand more about our genetics, the impact of lifestyle, which is huge on so many elements of our aging and our overall health, and what we understand about the genetics of disease and the prevalence of disease, then we are going to really start to understand more about who is likely to get what when and with cancer finding it early can make the real difference so if this is a matter of being able to diagnose more cancers at stage one or two which in the UK and the US is an absolutely huge mission there are the blood tests that are happening there are loads of different things happening in this space then a lot more cancer should become treatable but something that I thought was really interesting whilst doing this research as well was Genomics England is doing a lot of really interesting genomic testing and one thing what is genomic testing so this is understanding based on the human genome which cost three billion dollars back in I think it was around 2003 to sequence the genome of the first person now any of us can sequence our full genome for a couple hundred quid questionable how useful it is to us as individuals but at a health care level it is really going to become increasingly so oh really And some of the research they're doing is on, for example, on newborn babies to find rare diseases.

49:31Rare diseases are actually fairly common, albeit each disease is quite rare. One in 17 of us has one. And with some of these conditions, discovering a baby has it means they can avert blindness because they can be treated at that point. But what they're doing in terms of cancer, which I thought was absolutely fascinating because I hadn't heard this anywhere before, was they're not just looking at someone's likelihood of getting cancer, but why are people getting it in their 30s, 40s? Yes, it does feel like people are getting it much younger nowadays. Particularly with colon cancer has been happening.

50:04And so they're looking at what is causing that and how they can start looking for it. Because obviously we can have the greatest screening programmes, even if everybody actually stuck to them, which sadly isn't the case, but even if everybody went to the screen that they could. But there are going to be the anomalies. those people who didn't fall into the age groups. And so this research is really interesting because they are hoping that in time, they'll start to understand not just someone's risk, but their risk at what point in their lives, because that would also be critical as well. So you could take more care at that time, get tested more regularly.

50:38Exactly. From a certain time in your life. Wow. And this raises a little bit like what you said with the data from wearables, that some people may just feel anxious to have this information. If you're told you're going to die at 50 and there's nothing you can do about it, well, the chances are you wouldn't want to know that. That's not great information. But actionable insights where you can do something about it is what is useful. And as time goes on, more things are going to become actionable. And that knowledge is going to provide us with greater power as to things that we can actually do for ourselves.

51:08You pointed out that younger people are getting particularly, did you say colon cancer or stomach? yeah colon cancer the rates of colon cancer have really increased i don't know the exact figures no but are they but are they you said that they were looking into the reasons for that did they give you any indication of what they think that might be now well a lot of what people suggest is this comes down to ultra processed food so a lot of it's based on diet and actually the the impact of diet and processed food is absolutely huge i talked earlier about this blue zone in California and Okinawa, the blue zone in Japan, is effectively losing its blue zone status.

51:43It has lower life expectancy than most other parts of Japan because there's a high rate of processed food being eaten there. So diet is having a huge impact and the research is still underway at the moment into what's going on with these figures on colon cancer. I think, and I would suggest somebody checks this afterwards, but I think that the rate in the under 50s of colon cancer may have doubled. Now that is from a thankfully very low base, but why is it rising? Yes. And you don't want to see that as an exponential rise, but we do need to check that because I'm not actually sure on the figure.

52:15You know what's funny about processed food is, you know, I used to see it as kind of a treat sometimes, you know, it's something I'd have occasionally. Now I can't even look at it anymore. No, I'm with you. I walked into a petrol station in a hurry to eat something And I don't actually fancy a chocolate bar or pack and crisps. I'm not that extreme generally, but just those things, not into them anymore. It's like I don't want to do it to myself. No. It's quite interesting how it's going to change people's perceptions. It's become like a poison. Yeah. The ultra-processed foods and the way we talk about them is going to change everybody's perception of foods that we've seen as treats.

52:57I know. And we've learned so much. Sometimes it is just little nuggets of information that can really change our behavior. And that's what I think a lot of this technology and a lot of the research in terms of the stuff that we can do for ourselves does. It just pushes you a little bit in the right direction. And we all have busy lives. People have kids. People have people they care for. People work shifts. We can't live life permanently. So it's taking away the little bits. And for some of us, that's not wanting to eat crisps and chocolate anymore. Some people might set that alarm clock to go to bed.

53:29I thought it was interesting when I was testing a continuous glucose monitor. I didn't want to change my entire diet as a result. But I did start to feel like, well, actually, if my vegetable juice is giving me a bigger spike from having it before lunch than having dessert after dinner, I just won't do that anymore. Yes. And some of this information that used to be available to elite athletes so that they could have their best performance now is available to all of us. So we can just pick and choose our elements if we want. It is interesting because there's been quite a kickback sometimes from people going, oh, you know, say people that aren't diabetic wearing glucose monitors and this is a fad.

54:08But actually there are a lot of health benefits to being able to see what kind of, because we are all different, right? Yes. And that's what a lot of this drives us to be able to do. We are. And we all react differently to things. and some of us need more sleep than others. There's a huge amount of variation between us. So our ability to be able to track it all and to see how our body is responding to the changes that we make is incredibly powerful. And for our energy levels as well, something like blood sugar, I think for our energy throughout the day is huge. I used to sometimes eat a jack-eat-potato for lunch at work and feel so lethargic afterwards and feel like, well, it's not that bad.

54:48It's only a jack-eat-potato and cheese. But I felt sleepy. I didn't feel great and I didn't even need to log it to know that. But some people may not feel quite as sleepy as I did. But it's funny because we never knew why. No. And at school you'd often have a jacket potato. When I was at school I used to have jacket potatoes for lunch. I probably wasn't listening in the afternoon. Yeah, well, I used to call it a carb coma. Yeah. But I didn't know what, like, why or what it was. But that's what I'd call it. I've got a carb coma. That's it. And just changing the order of the food that we eat, eating the same food in a different order, can even mean that people lose weight.

55:18So there is so much that can be gained by having that knowledge, by understanding a bit more about how our bodies are functioning and also separating the science from snake oil because there's a lot out there that is being pushed at us. How do we do that? I did it by 1 ,500 citations from medical papers and talking to these people. But I think, I mean, actually, genuinely, through making, I made a few documentaries on longevity, through click that I was doing every week when I was looking at various different health technologies. Can we just explain to anybody that's watching Click is a programme that's on the BBC about technology?

55:51Yes, it was the BBC's technology show. It'd run for 21 years up until early this year. I'd done it for 15 years. And so I had travelled the world covering the most incredible innovation on Earth. So this could have been sustainability, the latest smart glasses, but a lot of stories about health. And these were the ones that I just really felt were changing the world so dramatically and were real and were happening. and we're changing things now and we're going to increasingly do so. So that's kind of where my focus went. But I've always really done a lot of deep research into the stories behind the claims that companies are making and what they're claiming is possible because you can claim you're doing anything, but it needs to be possible to start with.

56:35And so when it comes to health, this meant a lot of medical papers, a lot of scientific papers, and not everybody's got the time to go through all of that and it would be an absurd thing to do. I really did it for us. But I did it for the book. I've done it for everyone. And, you know, I hope the book is a really human, digestible, easy to read story of what this means for us as people. This is what it means for you. It's not a list of takeaways of things you should do for tomorrow. It's about how your body functions and what we can do to best support that. The role technology and AI is playing in it It shouldn't be seen as scary.

57:11There's enormous positives. These are the questions we should ask, and this is what it means. This is just a little bit of demystifying it. But actually, we are looking at a far better future for our health. We've managed to increase lifespan. We need to now be able to increase healthspan to match that. And I think AI and technology are driving us to a place where that's possible. I mean, you know, obviously menopause affects all women. and we've talked a bit about the way that our health can decline, starting in perimenopause and menopause. We've talked about brain health and how important that is.

57:45But cardiovascular disease is an absolutely massive one. It's the biggest killer, I think, of people, men and women, worldwide. And it's genetic. It can be lifestyle. it can be um a bit of anything and what kind of ways because i was i was thinking earlier um how brilliant it would be if you could come up with an invention ai if you're listening it's always listening this is like me being paranoid i know you're listening um if they could in the uk we've got like a drain cleaner called calgon um i seem to remember the advert washing machines live longer with Calgon isn't that frightening how old was that advert 20 years or something I mean that's how good that advert was that song is completely memorable that you need like a Calgon for veins and arteries and you know to clean out the plaque that gathers there but what way I mean joking apart But can AI help with cardiovascular disease?

58:58There's actually quite a few things in this. One of them is gene editing. There's a gene that means people are at increased risk of high cholesterol, high cholesterol increasing your risk of heart disease. And editing that gene is something that's being looked at as a potential future. I think I've read about that somewhere. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I've read about that where you'd be done. Yeah. So that would mean a lifetime of taking heart medicine would be a thing of days gone by for people who have that as their high risk factor. Yeah. Lifestyle we know is huge. So a lot of the tracking to assess our lifestyle is important.

59:37There are various devices like an ECG is a really old way of measuring and it's been around for years. But actually, the data from that is now being processed by AI to learn a lot more about people's risk. So we're starting to understand more. So when people are in hospital or having checkups, we can understand more about future risk as well. And so there are various things going on where AI is taking patterns and data and understanding more. Also, the GLP ones. You can't write a book about the future of health without talking about weight loss drugs. Laura, can I just say, I love the way you're like the GLP ones.

1:00:17I'm like, I want to whisper to someone, I don't know what that is. Because you were like everybody. Sorry. You said it like everybody knows what that is. And I was suddenly like that. I don't know what that is. The weight loss drugs. Oh, those. The weight loss drugs. I was just going to pull my trousers down. I'm coming in, Laura. Done. We're at a really interesting point with what is going on with the weight loss drugs. because what is being seen is they are having huge benefits in reducing cardiovascular risks, in reducing risks of dementia, Parkinson's. There's a whole list of diseases. And that's because weight gain is a risk?

1:00:58Yes. Look, so I think there's a few things here where being overweight or having obesity are risk factors for a lot of things. What is currently trying to be unpacked is how much is the mechanism of the drug reducing these risks and how much is the weight loss reducing it. Right. So it could be the drug. And the research is still going on in that place. It could be. And right now that is being looked at. It's a really active conversation because we have seen the huge difference these drugs are making for individuals. And also we can't underestimate this at population level for healthcare systems.

1:01:32Wow. Because people are getting less sick. It massively helps healthcare systems. and obesity is not a choice it's a condition and it's a really tough and complicated one and the numbers are staggering the numbers are staggering here in britain even more staggering in the u.s so the impact of these drugs is absolutely huge and there's many questions about how long term this plays out because people are taking them for say two years being a vice what happens after that and there's some data to show that a lot of weight is being put back on by a lot of people afterwards so how do they keep the weight off and how do they maintain the benefits some research was actually showing the disease risk benefits seem to last longer than uh some of the weight loss benefits but it's still really early days for a lot of this diabetics have been taking them for years we know that they've been seen to be safe in the diabetics that have been taking them and there's a lot that we can learn from that but in non-diabetics taking them we still need to see a lot of this unfold.

1:02:34I mean, they've been proven to have very few side effects for a lot of people. It's crazy, isn't it? It just feels like an explosion is happening because of AI in health. And there is so much new information to unpick and AI is going to help us do that. Yes, absolutely. I just had a quick moment of thank God for that. Good. I think that's my first moment. I think having arrived here today and you told me how scared you were. Yeah. And you wanted to be reassured. Yes. I in some ways may have reinforced some of the concerns that you had because it would be naive to suggest they don't exist. Yeah.

1:03:18And I actually think it gives more credibility to the fact that I am on balance an AI optimist, the fact that I do recognise the challenges as well, because they are real. This is a whole new world. And human error has always existed in everything from love to war and everything in between. And AI error will also exist. The mistakes it makes will be very different to human mistakes. They may be some very futuristic mistakes and we may be less accepting of what a machine does wrong than a human. But self-driving cars should be safer than humans driving. We won't be as accepting of accidents that happen.

1:03:48There's no one who's got to live with it for the rest of their life. There's a whole world of new thinking that's to come, but there's also incredible promise, and especially when it comes to healthcare, incredible hope. I mean, this idea, I'm still kind of marvelling at the heart health and the difference that that can make to people. But these injections, do you know Johan Hari? I know who Johan Hari is. He's a journalist. He wrote a brilliant book called Magic Pill. Yes. Have you read it? Yes, I have. Very good. Yeah, it was so fascinating because it had the pros and the cons about it. But now I think even since the book was written, so much more has been discovered.

1:04:31Yeah. Something in that book that I loved, actually, was the point that for many people, food is a comfort blanket. What happens when the comfort blanket gets taken away? Therapy. Yeah. With chat, GPT. Well. Is it, you know, if somebody is watching this and they feel like they do want to talk to someone and perhaps they can't afford to go and see a therapist or the NHS has got such long waiting times to have therapy, is there an app that you would recommend? Wiser, that have built for this purpose. Tell me about Wiser. I mean, I know this isn't an advert because you're not paid by Wiser. No, no, of course not.

1:05:12And there are other platforms out there as well. but Wiser is available. It's a chatbot. There's a free to use version. There's an upgraded version where you can interact with a human therapist. And if it sees somebody is in acute stress, it will escalate it saying that they need to go to a suicide line, for example, and it has those protocols in place for safety. But it also offers someone to talk to 24 seven. Appointments with humans can be hard to come by. And I don't think anybody is trying to claim that an AI chatbot is overall better than a human, but there are some instances where people may feel more comfortable to talk to the AI than a human.

1:05:49And this has been seen within certain communities, within the trans community, this has been something. And this is something which I think we need to recognise. The AI does actually serve a purpose in being there 24-7 when anybody needs it. And it's not replacing a human, it's not doing the job a human does, but often it's an alternative to nothing. Yes. So AI has a role there when it's used safely and sensibly. And the risk is, of course, that people just feel it's easier or preferable to go to one of the platforms like Claude or ChatGPT, where you just have an instant chat and that's where they want to do it.

1:06:33And when I did some research into this and I looked at what people were talking about online and Reddit community, a lot of people were doing this and the reason that they were doing that rather than using these safe built-for-purpose platforms was because they felt it was more engaging conversation so we really need to address human behavior amidst this we want the ai systems to be perfect we also need to make sure that we use it in the right ways and that it's safe yeah i mean it's utterly mind-blowing um thinking about the future and i was thinking about people using AI as company or for comfort or to go to in a moment of darkness.

1:07:16And then I was thinking, but what's funny is that this darkness, sometimes you were talking earlier about technology creating this mental health epidemic in young people because you're constantly connected to your phone you're constantly findable traceable contactable um and I started thinking about starting a hippie commune with no phones like yeah somebody going to the country for the weekend you know or staying in a in a airbnb somewhere for a weekend just get away from it yeah we'll turn into it could be amazing we'll turn into a leave your phone at the gate in the lockable thing and come and spend the weekend on our commune with animals and hoedowns and line dancing or clubbing.

1:08:07People would feel slightly anxious maybe about doing it, but it would be amazing for so many of us. It would be mad, wouldn't it? I'd love that. I went to a club the other night where everybody had to lock their phone at reception. No phones in the club. It was brilliant. I mean, number one, I guess, like people, you know, you could dance like no one's watching because no one was watching. It was absolutely it was mega. You know, you could go in some outrageous outfit because there's not going to be photographic evidence for your boss to see. You could I don't know. It was like so free. It is.

1:08:49And we can all really benefit from that. the weird thing is there's this anxiety I think of what if something bad happens well many years ago we didn't used to have smartphones and people were out of the way of contacting you yeah but that was what was so nice we didn't know if something bad happened well yeah maybe it's beneficial weirdly I feel like I'm also very caught up in the news cycle I listen to the news so many times a day what would I do if I didn't do that well I'd probably have a better day so there's a thought to be said for it and that importance of human interactions and actually when it comes to technologies pass in this and it not taking away from these really important human interactions.

1:09:25One of the big things is frictionless technology. So for example, if you've got an elderly relative and you're worried about their safety at home, they don't necessarily want a camera on wheels following them around, seeing what they're up to because they feel like they were being spied on. It's a little bit creepy and it's very there. Whereas if you had a sensor on the fridge that tracked how many times they were opening it so you could assess when they were eating or having a cup of tea and you had a sensor in the bathroom so you knew how often they were going in there and you had a full sensor so you knew if they'd fallen over you're collecting that data pretty seamlessly they're not feeling it the ai is digesting what's going on you're getting an alert if something seems amiss if the patterns have changed and it's these kind of ways that ai can be built into what's going on around us and the technology can be used in a frictionless way so in terms of looking after older relatives that's something but there's also when you talk about loneliness and companionship and the importance of that and it is something that's so crucial and we really must remember i think when talking about technology and what it does what it means for us our behavior how we feel about it every day and one thing that i filmed with which I think was possibly surprising was a robotic puppy that looked like a cute furry Labrador.

1:10:48How like a cute furry Labrador did it? You knew it wasn't real. Jim Henson's puppet shop had created it so it was you know it's pretty nice. It was better than an magic toy. Now let's tell you something if Jim Henson made it I am gonna love it. I wish it was here today. It's called Jenny and it can sit down on the floor or it can sit down on a table next to you and its sound is the recordings of a 12-week-old Labrador puppy and they've tried to make it move the little head movements just like an actual puppy does to make it as true to life as possible and when you stroke it it would react in the way a sweet loving well-behaved puppy would.

1:11:28now I took this to a care home in the US and I thought it was really cute I thought it was a really nice bit of tech and I filmed with plenty of robot dogs that don't really look like dogs apart from the fact they have four legs plenty of humanoids and we all have this emotive response but it's clearly not a person but the thing with the dog was it really made people feel many of the things that having a dog pop in to visit could have done and I believe that was the case people were so happy they were so drawn to it they were stroking it they were chatting about it they were smiling they were laughing and there was one group of people who were at the early stages of dementia there was another group of people who weren't and just seeing the joy that this dog could bring them and it was a bit of tech and these are this is an environment where they couldn't have a real dog yeah the dog is designed for that i was just thinking why wouldn't you get a real dog yeah i I think if you've got somebody with Alzheimer's, you can't look after it, you'd forget to feed it.

1:12:27Yeah, although I do have to say there was one point where this went terribly wrong. They had to reboot it. The technology froze. And luckily, I sort of stood around to the side so no one would see it because it was like having to put it down for a moment and bring it back to life. So you don't want to see the resuscitation of the dog. But there are benefits that you can get from things that, look, I am not suggesting. And I think any real dog lovers will be hearing this probably wanting to shout at the podcast. Of course, it's not the same as my dog. And of course, it's not the same as having a dog.

1:12:56But for somebody who can't take you away, can't have one. Exactly. And so it may seem odd to have that engagement with the technology. And the founder was really, really quite forcefully saying, we're not trying to trick anybody at all into believing it's a real dog. We're trying to make it as realistic as possible so you get the benefits. And I saw how happy those people seemed to be made by it. That's not me playing with a gadget doing a review, which I do on plenty of things, assuming how people might feel. That was actually seeing it. I mean, what is interesting, let's face it, as parents, I'm sure all of us have bought our kids one of the little yappy play dogs.

1:13:34Yeah. You know, and that made our kids happy because it's like having a little dog, but not having a dog. It's so much easier. Yeah. I mean, I personally, I love real dogs, but I can see if somebody can't look after a dog. That. Yeah, that would be amazing. Yeah. And these kind of pets are now being used for children with developmental disorders. There's lots of different purposes where they're being used to try and help soothe and engage in ways that a real pet might do, but isn't necessarily practical. in in writing your book i know this is a big ask really for you to think about but what was your biggest kind of maybe overall discovery oh we've talked about the cancer stuff and how we need to close this gap on health span and lifespan i think i felt like i learned a lot from mildred who oh i'd like to go back to mildred i don't want to be mildred and i understand completely what mildred saying yeah I don't want to be 103 and in great health but just not not have the zest and people that I love dying yeah exactly and losing my kids I don't want that I want I want to go basically if you hear a story on the news that I have popped my clogs on a dance floor dancing to EDM music at At your festival with no phone?

1:14:56With no phone. Be happy for me. Yeah. And know that I've had a fab life. But I started this podcast to try and help people live a life that they love so that they can die happy. I want everybody to have that opportunity.

1:15:19And, yeah, that's how I want to go. So tell me about what Mildred did for you. Yeah, well, this is it. And I spent a week filming with Brian Johnson, the tech entrepreneur who's spending millions doing everything trying to reverse his biological age, which is fascinating and fun. And each individual thing rooted in science. It's all really interesting. I've been to the leading universities across the US, seen the latest research, things like being able to identify depression on the brain in an fMRI scan. And then I went to Loma Linda. I met a lady who was 99 who had just been to the gym and amazing absolutely amazing I was waiting for her and they said oh she's not back from the gym yet incredible I want to see her good uh not yet I'll wait another 50 years um but it was utterly brilliant but Mildred was the solid reality check of all of this this is what science and innovation makes possible but what do we the humans the most important bit of all of this want out of our lives?

1:16:19Well, we want to feel 40 at 80. We ideally want to suddenly fall off a metaphorical cliff. We want to be able to be healthy as we can for as long as possible. We don't want to spend decades in drawn out decline. And I think that is where this idea of longevity and future health is something that all of us can agree on, that it's not just for the elite. It's not some wild expectation. We would like to be able to live very healthily and well until 85, 90, whatever seems realistic. There are plenty of people who might want to go just about into their hundreds, but Mildred really, really told me that it's not just about existing, it's about living.

1:17:02And at the very end of the interview, she slightly furiously said, it's very important that you must eat well, you must have a good lifestyle, but I'm not all about you must absolutely do this, this and this. And then I said, you've got to live. And she said, yes, you've got to live. Wow. That's a beautiful place to end this interview. So thank you, Lara. It's been absolutely fascinating and I do feel better about it. And I do also realise that, you know, your book, I think because it's based in science with all the paper. Leverage varies by plan. View contract and exclusions at endurancewarranty.com.

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