Extended Conversation: How To Live Forever With Dr. Sanjay Gupta

you know, socialization, et cetera. But you've been writing particularly about some breakthroughs and some examples of real successes as it relates to longevity and wellness that give I think, distill a sense of well being at least people like me that with an aging grain population, that we should be more optimistic than I think some of us have painted the future.

a lot less. They do pretty simple things. They walk to their meet friends as opposed to driving. They eat right, They fresh foods, healthier foods. They sleep well. Some of the healthiest communities in the world have either non existent healthcare systems, are very very small healthcare systems. So and that's heart disease, that's dementia, that's diabetes, all at a fraction of the rates that we have in the United States.

They don't have anything that we don't have. What's happening to us is not because of what we're not doing. It's because of what we are doing to our bodies. But I'll tell you something interesting, Governor, if you talk about longevity overall or aging sort of as a construct, what scientists will stay, including Eric Topol, who you may know in your state, aging is really made up of

several different things. It's not just revolutions of planets. It's how well your immune system is working, how much inflammation you have, how much something that you have known as senescence, how many cells that are in a sinesseence stage. There's seven different things like this that you can sort of think about that actually make up aging that will determine your health span, far more important than your genetics. We

can control many of those things. We can improve our immune function, we can decrease our inflammation, we can decrease sinessence, and there's all these different ways to do it now

that have great data behind that. There are certain medications and I'm not you know, Hockey any medications here, but like something like met Foreman even, which is something that's gotten a lot of attention Nil's Bursley, who's a longevity research out of SINAI will say met Forman is probably the closest thing we have to targeting all these different cardinal issues of aging, which I find really really interesting.

I wouldn't call it a breakthrough. I would call it a recognition of what aging really is, what is really happening to the human body, especially as we get older, wire function decreases, and what can be done about it. You're quite right, it comes down to the big three, how we nourish ourselves, how we move, and how we rest. But you know, there's there's more nuance to it now based on a lot of the data people like Eric and Nill's are collecting.

But are these sort of these foundational in terms of addressing particularly issues around Alzheimer's and dementia. I mean, I know Dean Ornish is out here in sas Alito. Uh, California has been pushing a lot in that space. What's what's your sense on the basis all your research and work, well.

liver like a tsunami. And I think what's what's rising to people is that because the body can handle all that sugar, it turns out these byproducts, which are typically what are called LDL particles low density lipoprotein particles. You would typically think my LDL is going to go out because I ate a cheeseburger, which is true, but it might go up even more from a sugary drink. That's how toxic sugar can be to the body. So sugar I'd almost put into its own category. But I think

with regard to the other things darian even meat. I do eat meat. I'm not a total vegetarian. I hope Dean's not listening because he's you know, he's vegan. But I think it really has to do with how those foods are processed. It's all the other junk that's added to a lot of those foods that I think make

them really problematic and increase inflammation. What Dean was able to show, and I thought it was fascinating, was that going on a vegan diet was greatly associated with decreasing inflammation in the body and in the brain, and could if it could stall and potentially reverse Alzheimer's disease. That that was a big deal. I mean, people, once you get diagnosed with dementia, it is a downward spiral from there on out. He was able to show that you could at least stall it, if not reverse it, by

simply changing diet and increasing activity as well. But diet was the big thing, and we've anecdotally sort of known this to be true, but I think he was really able to show this, and I think that's that's certainly made me reconsider my eating. So I've cut back on meat. But you know, I I we you know, I got three teenagers. You got to you got to balance your your life with what you know. I mean, if we were going to live forever, Kevin, if that was a can I call you Gavin, by the way.

started drinking coffee. I was waking up at four thirty in the morning every day and working till eleven thirty at night, you know, for a couple of years in a row. And my wife actually introduced me to this coffee. I don't know if we're allowed to talk about brands, but I really like it. It's called Purity Coffee and Pure coffee. It's just it's it's got no none of the additives that we were talking about. It's it's pesticide free,

and to me, it tasted really clean. When I drank coffee and the asked it, I always felt like I could almost taste the aftertaste to it, and this was just a really good coffee. And then I started really doing a deep dive into coffee, and I think, you know, it's associated with all these different health benefits, cardiac dementia, inflammation, overall. So I drink a cup of days, sometimes two cups a day, and I think it's I think it's been really good for me.

in your skeleton weak. It can cause dental fluorosis. I don't know if you've ever seen governor people who have white streaks in their teeth. Yeah, sometimes that is a dental fluorosis. That's an indication of high fluoride levels. And I think most recently and interestingly, there's been concerns about neurotoxicity.

There were studies done, all of them outside this country where fluorid levels are much higher than the United States, where they showed that moms, for example, during pregnancy, if they had high fluorid exposure, their kids later in life was associated with a lower IQ. So that was obviously concerning. These are hard studies to do, and there was some you know, getting the methods right on these studies is challenging, but I think there was enough of a concern about

that for people to really start paying attention. To give you a little bit of context, the levels that we're talking about are at least twice as high as the levels in the drinking water in the United States, so quite a bit higher. And in medicine we always use this phrase the dose makes the poison things in any just about anything in a high enough dose could potentially be problematic. But it's you know, it definitely gets people's attention.

What I would say when you talk about the fact that it's touted as one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century. I saw that as well, and I think that there's a kernel of truth to that. But the nuance is most of the data that exists on the benefits of fluoride exists before nineteen seventy five.

Nineteen seventy five was a timeframe when dental care became much more widely available and fluoridated toothpaste, So prior to that, fluoridating the water probably had an incrementally a much bigger benefit than it does today, So it doesn't provide as much benefit. I think it's low risk because the levels don't get as high as they used to, and they don't get as high in the United States, as I

should say, as they do in other countries. But it's also lower reward, So fluoride today lower risk, lower reward than it used to be. Iceland does not fluoridate their water. England does not floridate their water. Israel does not fluoridate their water. In Iceland, the kids all do twice a month fluoride rinses, and England, interestingly, they fluoridate milk, so

it's not water. So you're floridating milk. They like, we don't want to put it in the water supply kids you know, who drink milk, they should still get their

florid That was sort of their thinking. Calgary in Canada, they stopped fluoridating their water back in twenty eleven, I believe, but then brought it back because cavity rates went up and there was a new study that said, in the United States, how much of an impact would it have to take a fluoride out of the water, And they said it could potentially be, you know, twenty five million more cavities within the next five years, fifty million cavities

within the next ten years. So, you know, I think we need better dental care overall, and this is almost a policy discussion. I think people it's hard to get dental care. It's hard to get dental coverage. But I think if we had fluoride rinses, if kids got better dental care, then I think the incremental benefit of fluoride goes down even more. Sexually, Kennedy's been talking about florid for a long time, heavy metals in general, but fluoride

in particular for a long time. And you know, as with these other things we're talking about, there's a nuance to it. I don't think it's as big a public health issue now as it was fifty years ago, sixty years ago. But and we can even model how much of an impact it would have. But I think it really speaks to the fact that we need better dental care overall.

and anxiety. And you know, obviously our politics has been I think profoundly shaped sort of post COVID framework, and I think in some respects significantly so obviously with RFK as HHS Secretary in terms of health care policy today, what's your you know, as you reflect back and you know your own experience living through sort of helping us all through the pandemic experience in COVID, how do we get back to the kind of platform that we need in order to row in the same direction as a country,

to be prepared again, my gosh, for another novel virus moving forward, where we're not at each other's throats, we're not talking down to each other, past each other. Help give us a sense of how we get back into the trust and truth space.

health recommendations. There was a fair that was supposed to take place, I believe in Saint Louis and or maybe in Philadelphia. Philadelphia and Saint Louis were the two cities. One city said, how can we possibly do a big fare like this in the middle of a pandemic? And the other city said, we don't think it's a big deal. We'll do the fairs. They took it on, and they had twelve times the rate of fluid deaths as the

city that chose not to do it. Point being that there has been this skepticism that I think exists just in human nature forever, you know. And I'll go so far as to say this Governor, maybe some of that skepticism is necessary, you know. I think that I think that, you know, if we look at human beings like organisms, some people just have their antennas raised really really high. And I think when you're antenna's raised really really high,

two things happen. You see things that aren't there. You just see things and the blurry off in the distance, and you think that there's an attack coming and it's not coming. But on the other hand, sometimes you see things before everyone else does as well. And so I think there are people whose intendos are raised really high, who are just concerned citizens. I think there are you know, SCHD starters who sort of fall into that category as well,

but not all of them. It's a heterogeneous group of people who are who are going to be resistant to basic public health measures. It's it's a much more diverse group of people than I think I realized. That's one thing I think with regard to misinformation and even disinformation, purposeful misinformation, I think my largest concern right now is that we're getting to the point and I hope it changes,

and I'm optimist. I'm an optimist. I think it will change, but I think right now we're at a point where nobody believes anything. Yeah. I was talking to my youngest daughter. It's about a year year and a half ago, and I was very close to Senator John McCain and she showed me some meme on TikTok or Instagram or something

about John McCain. She knew that we were close, and especially after he had his brain tumor and things, and this was a funny meme, but it somehow suggested that he was alive and that his whole death was a hoax, right, crazy, crazy stuff. And I said, hey, Sole, okay, funny, right, but you know that's not true, right, And she said, yeah, it's here on Instagram whatever. And I said, yeah, but

you know it's not true. And she said to me, Governor, she said, any of this stuff is true, Dad, And it really got me thinking, like what happens to a generation of people that grow up without a locus of trust? I mean, forget who they trust. You know, they should trust you, they should trust me, they should trust experts. I think, I really do believe that, But maybe they

don't trust anybody. And I think unless you can touch somebody, unless you know somebody personally, you don't really trust them anymore, which I think is is really problematic, and I think that's where we're headed. It starts to hyperlocalize suspicion of everybody,

and I think that's where we're headed. So I think, for me, you know, as as a reporter, instead of constantly combating misinformation, which is like playing whack a mole all day long, just continuing to try and put out good information and explain things in a way that is accessible to people, and you know, leans into the nuance

and the uncertainty of things as a country. If the question you're asking is about preparing for the next pandemic, I would say the precautionary principle is important, and that is that is how we do many things in our country. We have, you know, more than a dozen aircraft carriers right now that are circumnavigating the globe and they're keeping us safe. We don't pay a lot of attention to that. It's not something we have in the forefront of our minds,

but they're out there basically displaying the precautionary principle. A virus is a national security threat. We saw what it did to our country. If we're able to apply the precautionary principle at a policy level, so things just go into effect, as opposed to Seattle's doing this and New York is doing this, and Alabama's doing this, and Florida is saying we're not going to do any of that,

and it was just a mess. Instead, if we actually applied the precautionary principle as a country treated as a national security threat, which it is, I think we'd be much better prepared. But you know, right now we're in a position where you have people who believe COVID was a hoax the entire thing. So we have some work to do, I think before we get there.

gonna be tough sledding for them for a while. How do you convey that at a societal level, you know, closing schools. The impact of that, you know, that was tough on my kids, you know, so so to really I think be very mindful of the the the impact. I'm not saying that the decisions are wrong, but being really mindful of the impact of those decisions on people. It's it's tough, you know. As doctors, I think we're a little bit more trained toward it, and because we

have to like look at risk reward for everything. But I think assessing risk and balancing that reward as a country is hard. And I think that gets back to where we started, this precautionary principle. We don't know, Let's be cautious, let's be careful, Let's not accelerate around the blind curves here, Let's let's hit the brakes a little bit, you know. And I think that's that's still to me, that still makes sense.

it over hyped in terms of research and discovery? Is it under hyped as it relates to imaging benefits and just sort of supercapacity to address chronic disease and solve for some of life's great evils and cancers.

Do they get an operation? Do they not get an operation? I could ask ten different spine surgeons and maybe get eleven different answers. AI could look at nine billion pieces of data within a fraction of seconds that here are fifty thousand other people who are just like the person you're describing, and here are their various outcomes based on evaluating their medical records and doing this all in a

de identified way. My resident's already walking around talking to their phones as they're walking into a patient room to figure out the best approach to to, you know whatever whatever al's they're they're patients, you know, so it's it's already changing. I think, I said on the Subcommittee for AI for the National Academy of Medicine, and I think one of the things that really struck me is we were creating these these guardrails, was this idea that we still have to think of AI from a trust but

verify sort of model. It's it's wildly effective at finding breast cancers, for example, on mammograms, but sometimes it airs wildly as well. And you know, these hallucinations as people call them. I think they're already starting to get better about that. I think it's gonna you know, we we've been talking about big data, you know, for decades now. AI is actually going to be able to make sense of that big data and I think make it valuable

for patients. I'll tell you a quick anecdote. You know, if you've been to the hospital lately or a clinic, and you got a letter from you know, sort of summarizing your care. It probably was generated by an AI platform.

That's interesting. And most of and when they when they blinded these letters and they compared them to actual letters written by doctors or nurses and then gave them to random people, what they found was the AI letters were often referred to as more human the human letters, which I.

human touches. You had these moments where humans were looking at these AI letters and they were pausing at the moment that they read these human touches, and it was almost like humans learning from machines how to be more human. I think. So I'm bullish on AI. I think, and you know, I think one thing about New technologies. Is that there's always a disparity in terms of haves and

have nots when they first come out. Before mimmography, black women and white women had similar rates of breast cancer. After mimmography, breast cancer rates went down overall, but much more so for white women than Black women. We see those disparities with AI already, so we have to address disparities, make sure this is very available and accessible to people.

But I think it's gonna it's gonna change healthcare. We're gonna come up with new treatments and the right clinical decision making much more quickly as a result of AI.

of operations that we do. But look in cardiac surgery and prostate cancer surgery, you have Da Vinci, you have robots that that stuff. For a while, we'll get there. I'll be retired, I think by that point, hopefully. I don't know.

It's crazy what's going on in this country. But I will say, though on a serious note, just you know, it's also remarkable how just trying to just absorb what's happening with healthcare policy from the MEATA, we didn't even get into medicaid cuts. We didn't even get to the broader issues associated with the quote unquote reorg at HHS and all the cuts to you know, just people out

there promoting vaccines, HIV issues and treatments. I mean, this is a lot going on, and it's hard to absorb just one hundred plus days in.