Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - The Truth about American Healthcare | EP #74

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Starting point is 00:01:20 If they could live to 200, 400, 500 years old, why can't I? It's either a hardware problem or a software problem. There is a future in the near term in which there is no genetic disease. What are you likely to have that might be a problem down the line? And how do you prevent that from being a problem down the line?

Starting point is 00:01:41 Science is extending your life by about a third of a year for every year that you're alive. Hi everybody, Peter Diamandis here. This episode is brought to you by XPRIZE. I want to tell you we're about to launch the most extraordinary prize ever in human history. This is the largest cash prize ever offered and it's for one of the most audacious goals ever.

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Starting point is 00:02:38 Give us your email and we'll send you the details. We are living in the midst of a healthspan revolution. You know, for most of human existence, for the last 100,000 years, we only lived till about age 27, 28, 29. Because back during the days of cavemen and cavewomen, you'd go into puberty at age 13. You'd be pregnant by age 14. By age 27, 28, your kids were having kids and you were a grandparent. And back 100,000 years ago, when our mission as a species was to pass on our genes to the next generation and food was scarce before McDonald's and Whole Foods was around, the worst thing you could do to help your species succeed was steal food from your grandchildren.

Starting point is 00:03:26 So you die and give your bits back to the environment. So as we look back on the historical records, most of humanity only made it to age 30. Today, what we know from medical science is that your body begins a very slow decline from age 30 down through, well, depending how long you're going to live. But things are about to change. So when I ask people, how long do you think you could live? What's the oldest person you can imagine? Most people know someone who's 100 years old. And today we have more centenarians than any time ever in human history. And making it to 100, while it's special, it's not something too unusual. The eldest person that we know of is probably made it to about 122 years old. And we call super centenarians those who make it to around 110. But the question is, how long might we live? Is 100 years old really the ceiling? Is 122 years the ceiling? Well, if we

Starting point is 00:04:26 look at other species on planet Earth, it turns out the bowhead whale, one of the largest mammals on the planet, routinely makes it to 200 years old. And, you know, it turns out that the Greenland shark can make it to 500 years old and have babies at 200 years old. I remember learning about this when I was in medical school. I remember learning about this when I was in medical school. It was a Saturday afternoon. I was watching a documentary on long-lived sea life. And I remember thinking, if they could live to 200, 400, 500 years old, why can't I? And I remember thinking to myself, it's either a hardware problem or a software problem. And I said, someday, we're going to be able to fix that challenge. And I believe, and I hope to share with you, that that day is this decade,

Starting point is 00:05:13 that we are within striking distance of being able to extend the healthy human lifespan. So what do I mean by that? Well, let's take a look at this image here. On the left, you see a newborn baby, that baby at age 20, if you're a guy, maybe you have a six-pack. But by the time you hit 50, you're getting a beer belly. And if you make it to 100, you're beginning to wither. Now, it turns out that you get 3.2 billion letters of your genome from your mom and 3.2 billion letters from your dad. And your genome does not change over the entire course of your life. So the question is, if your genome is not changing over the course of your 100-year lifespan, why do you look different? Why don't you have a six-pack when you're 50 or 100? And it turns out it's not the genes that you have. It's not the letters.

Starting point is 00:06:06 It's not your genomics. It is which genes are on and which genes are off. And we call that the epigenome, epi from the Greek word for above. And it turns out that as we're aging, as we're getting to our peak state of health in our 20s, up until 30 thereabouts, the right genes are on and the correct genes are off. But as you get older and older, the epigenome, the controls of which genes are on or off begin to blur. And it blurs for a number of reasons. We'll talk about that later. But that's part of the issue. And what's gone on right now is an extraordinary amount of research and funding into epigenetic reprogramming. Literally, the question is, can you turn back the clock of time so that you can put the

Starting point is 00:06:55 right genes on and the right genes off back to when you were 20? Can you make something like this happen, right? Where literally you're turning back clock of time, where you're reversing the aging of not only your skin and your muscle and your cognition, but your entire physiology? And this work would have been considered a heresy a decade ago. Today, it's the hottest topic of research. hottest topic of research. Individuals like Dr. George Church and David Sinclair are investing heavily from their research labs and their PIs into epigenetic reprogramming. And the concept today is not a matter of if, only a matter of when. The idea that aging is a disease, a disease that can be slowed, stopped, and potentially reversed.

Starting point is 00:07:45 Having said that, we're in the midst of a healthspan revolution. The question is, why now? Why this in the midst of our 2020s? Am I saying we're in the healthspan revolution? Well, there are four reasons. The first is capital. During this time in human history, people are beginning to invest heavily into the idea of extending the healthy human lifespan, the concept of longevity.

Starting point is 00:08:10 And in 2022, there was over $5 billion invested. We're going to see that go up tenfold this decade. Here's an example. There is a foundation called Hevolution, which has been funding to the tunes of billions of dollars research in longevity breakthroughs, really funding cutting edge research. You know, the old adage, you can't take it with you. It's very valid today. The second area, and I'm not going to talk about this. Maybe we'll talk about it in a different conversational video, is the impact of artificial intelligence and quantum technologies on AI.

Starting point is 00:08:46 We as humans, we have 40 trillion human cells in our body, and every cell is doing about a billion chemical reactions per second. It's entirely a quantum system. We're beginning to understand how the body works. We're using AI to understand on a molecular basis the chemical interactions and quantum chemistry to understand how we can modify cellular features. It's an extraordinary age ahead, but I won't go into this, but what we'll talk about is the third reason of what's going on, which is the biotech revolution. So it turns out that in the late 1990s, the US government spent a little over $3 billion to sequence the first human genome. Then in 2001, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Craig Venter sequenced his own genome, spending $100 million and doing it in nine months.

Starting point is 00:09:42 Remember, that's $100 million in nine months to sequence all 3.2 billion letters in his genome. Today, it's gone from a hundred million dollars to 200 bucks and from nine months to seven hours. So we're in ability today to sequence everyone's genomes and literally, you know, for a couple hundred dollars. But it's not just the sequencing of your genome. It's also the ability we have today to edit your genome. There is a concept called CRISPR. Hopefully you've heard about it. Two incredible women won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry back in 2020. And this technology, which by the way is, you know, three years old, there's a whole set of new editing technologies that have come out since then. This field is moving at an exponential rate. But CRISPR is being used to go and edit the genome of individuals with genetic diseases. So if you have a blood disorder, thalassemia, sickle cell anemia, a particular kind of cancer, an inherited eye disease,

Starting point is 00:10:42 and if that has been a genetic disease that's passed down generation to generation to generation, all you could think about in the past was hoping you don't get it before you have kids or hoping that you can get a drug to reduce the impact of your genetic disease. Guess what? Now we're doing something biblical, which is with a single injection, being able to go in and edit your genome, an injection to the back of the eye to cure blindness, an injection to cure sickle cell anemia or thalassemia. This is incredible capabilities. And today we're seeing over 200 people have been successfully treated with CRISPR therapeutics, and it's only going to increase from here as the price comes down, making it available.

Starting point is 00:11:28 There is a future in the near term in which there is no genetic disease, which every genetic disease and the support group has funded researchers to go and create the edits to fix that situation. It's biblical in nature. You know, I'm super passionate about longevity and health span and how do you add 10, 20 healthy years onto your life? One of the most underappreciated elements is the quality of your sleep. And there's something that changed the quality of my sleep. And this episode is brought to you by that product. It's called Eight Sleep. If you're like me, you probably didn't know that temperature plays

Starting point is 00:12:05 a crucial role in the quality of your sleep. Those mornings when you wake up feeling like you barely slept. Yeah, temperature is often the culprit. Traditional mattresses trap heat, but your body needs to cool down during sleep and stay cool through the evening and then heat up in the morning. Enter the Pod Cover by 8sleep. It's the perfect solution to the problem. It fits on any bed, adjusts the temperature on each side of the bed based upon your individual needs. You know, I've been using Pod Cover and it's a game changer. I'm a big believer in using technology to improve life and 8sleep has done that for me. And it's not just about temperature control. With the Pod's sleep and health tracking, I get personalized sleep reports every morning.

Starting point is 00:12:49 It's like having a personal sleep coach. So you know when you eat or drink or go to sleep too late, how it impacts your sleep. So why not experience sleep like never before? Visit www.eightsleep.com. That's E-I-G-H-T-S-L-E-E-P.com slash moonshots. And you'll save 150 bucks on the pod cover by 8sleep. I hope you do it. It's transformed my sleep and will for you as well. Now back to the episode. Here's another example. My father-in-law used to be one of the senior VPs at the Red Cross. And what does the Red Cross do? It goes, collects blood to be able to supply it to those in need.

Starting point is 00:13:30 We're now using lab-grown red blood cells. It will create O negative, the universal donor blood, and produce an abundant supply. So you have all the blood for transfusions that are needed without any risk of infection. Again, this is just part of the biotech revolution occurring. Those with gray hair, well, guess what? Here's a technology by restoring the motility of melanocytes. Those are the cells in your skin that generate melanin that darken your skin during a tan or darken your hair. Well, this is technology this past year to help potentially reverse the graying of hair. This is a company that my venture fund, Bold Capital, is invested in. And it turns out you have 28 collagen genes in your skin. And when

Starting point is 00:14:18 you're a newborn baby, all 28 collagen genes are on. Your skin is elastic, smooth as a baby's behind. Well, as you get older, those genes begin to get silenced and your skin becomes less resilient, becomes stretchier. Well, what if you can use CRISPR technologies and epigenetic reprogramming to turn back on those collagen genes and in this case, rejuvenate your skin by 30 years. You know, I find this, again, something that just blows my mind. Here's a technology. It's called induced pluripotent stem cells combined with 3D printing. You ever heard about someone who needs a heart valve replacement? What do they do? First of all, you have to go and take a pig valve that's removed. Then the pig valve, it's the right size for you. You have an open heart surgery. You place

Starting point is 00:15:12 it in. You go on immunosuppressing drugs, but your heart has a valve that's working. Here's what happens now. We take an MRI of your body. We take a 3D imaging of your specific valve. We take a skin cell from your skin. We turn that skin cell into what's called induced pluripotent stem cells, IPS cells. Dr. Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize for that about 15 years ago. And then we grow those cells into the right cartilage cells made from your DNA. And then we use those cells and 3D print you a heart valve that's exactly the right size for your heart,

Starting point is 00:15:50 made of your DNA and your cells, so there's no immune reaction, and then transplant that in. Again, it's miraculous. If you got hearing loss as you're getting older, this is a gene therapy to reverse age-related hearing loss. Out of Tufts University, a brilliant physician, a brilliant researcher, Dr. Michael Levin, has learned how to literally stimulate the growth of limbs and the growth of organs.

Starting point is 00:16:19 If you go to Dr. Michael Levin's website, you'll see how a frog that has had its leg cut off could be stimulated with the right electroceuticals, he calls it. This is opening up ion channels in the right way. Stimulate that frog to grow a new leg. This is a future of limb replacement. This is the work of Dr. David Sinclair out of Harvard University, one of the most brilliant researchers on the planet dealing with epigenetic reprogramming. He wrote an incredible book called Lifespan, which I commend to you. He published in January of 23, 13 years of work in which he was able to show how he could

Starting point is 00:17:02 accelerate the aging of mice and then using three out of the four Yamanaka factors reverse the aging of that mice. Now, here's what's exciting. This research, which was done in mice, is now being done in primates. This is one step away from being done in humans. So again, we're on the verge of this extraordinary revolution. Now, for many people, COVID gave vaccines a bad name. And I don't want to get into the conversation of whether you should or should not have been vaccinated for COVID. But what I can tell you is that other than the brain, the most extraordinary part of the human physiology is your immune system. Your immune system protects you from cancer, protects you from infectious disease.

Starting point is 00:17:50 And there are vaccines now being used to protect you from other things. So I have two 12-year-old boys. Literally, we got a flyer in the mail the other day about some drugs being found in the neighborhood of the school. And there was concerns about these drugs being laced with fentanyl. Now, if you don't know, fentanyl is a killer. It's 50 times stronger than heroin. And it's so addictive. And it's something that is a plight.

Starting point is 00:18:12 It's killing 150 people per day. So what's going on here? Here's a vaccine that if you vaccinate someone with it, it prevents that individual from getting a high from fentanyl. It literally protects your brain because this vaccine binds with that molecule. One of the companies I'm proud to be a co-founder of, Vaccinity, has been producing vaccines against Alzheimer's, against Parkinson's, and most recently against hypercholesterolemia. So it turns out that if you have high cholesterol, in particular LDL, low-density lipoprotein, the bad cholesterol,

Starting point is 00:18:50 that that can cause strokes and heart attacks. Well, Vaccinity produced a vaccine, it's in human trials today, that goes and binds to an enzyme in the liver called PCSK9. I have no idea who makes up these names, but if it binds to PCSK9, it actually reduces the amount of LDL in your body. And the equivalent monoclonal antibody costs something like $10,000 a year. But this vaccine, which instead of taking the monoclonal antibody every two weeks, you know, literally 28 times a year, you take this twice a year and not $10,000 a year, it's 50 bucks a year, right? To prevent heart disease and stroke. Amazing things going on.

Starting point is 00:19:36 Here's a vaccine against melanoma, one of the most deadly of all cancers, just got FDA breakthrough status. Over the years, I've experimented with many intermittent fasting programs. The truth is, I've given up on intermittent fasting as I've seen no real benefit when it comes to longevity. But this changed when I discovered something called Prolon's 5-Day Fasting Nutrition Program. It harnesses the process of autophagy.

Starting point is 00:20:04 This is a cellular recycling process that revitalizes your body at a molecular level and just one cycle of the five-day Prolon fasting nutrition program can support healthy aging, fat focused weight loss, improved energy levels and more. It's a painless process and I've been doing it twice a year for the last year. You can get a 15% off on your order when you go to my special URL go to prolon life.com Pro lo n li fe comm Backslash moonshot get started on your longevity journey with prolon today now back to the episode now I'm gonna play a short video and I would love for you to listen to this video.

Starting point is 00:20:46 This is Dr. George Church and Dr. David Sinclair speaking about what they see coming in terms of extending your healthy lifespan. All right, listen carefully. This is for me just magical in what might be possible. It is quite possible that some of the people alive today will see no upper limit. Imagine having a treatment, perhaps a viral delivery of these three genes when you're 45. Everything's good. You reach 50. Biologically, you can measure that. And then you get a course of doxycycline.

Starting point is 00:21:26 biologically, you can measure that. And then you get a course of doxycycline. Three weeks later, many, if not all, parts of your body are rejuvenated. And then you reset the clock. So what's the implication of making people younger? It's awesome. This is a study that was done at Harvard, Oxford, and London School of Business about a year and a half ago, which said the economic value of just one year increased in healthspan is worth $38 trillion to the global economy in terms of people remaining productive in society, in terms of people continuing to generate revenue, reducing healthcare costs. So here's a question. Why do people retire? Well, they retire for one of three reasons. Number one, they're forced out because it's the retirement age. Number two, they're in pain and they can't go any further or they're out of

Starting point is 00:22:22 energy. But if at the age of 65 or 70, you're at the top of your game, you've got all the same energy you had when you were 30 or 40 or 50, but you have all the connections and the capabilities, why would you ever retire? You know, I'd love to have folks like, you know, Einstein still around generating new breakthroughs in science. All right, here's the fourth reason why we're seeing this healthspan revolution right now. And it comes from the fact that we are in the midst of a diagnostic revolution. One of the companies I'm proud to have co-founded with Tony Robbins and others is a company called Fountain Life. We have these diagnostic centers we have built

Starting point is 00:23:02 throughout the U.S. and we're growing this now globally. These centers you go and you've got the most advanced diagnostics ever. It's a full body MRI, imaging all parts of your body, your brain, your brain vasculature. Being able to find an aneurysm or being able to find the beginning of a cancer or any kind of fatty deposits. We have an AI-enabled coronary CT. If you've heard about something called a calcium score, I want you to get rid of that from your mind. If your arteries are calcified but not blocked, you're fine. Calcium is like cement on the side of your arteries. It's going to stabilize

Starting point is 00:23:43 things. We heard many times in the past people with a zero calcium score having a heart attack. Why is that going on? Well, it's not the calcification. It turns out what gives people a heart attack is soft plaque in the sides of your arteries. And the soft plaque evulses, it comes out, and it blocks the artery, and boom, you've got a heart attack. So what we are able to do now using AI, there's a company called Clearly, for example, love the CEO, James Min, who runs that, is able to image soft plaque in the walls of your coronary

Starting point is 00:24:20 arteries and then tell you, hey, you've got some soft plaque, got to reverse that. But at the end of the day, that's just one of the technologies. You DEXA scan, 100 blood biomarkers, a blood biopsy for cancer. We are literally today able to upload 150 gigabytes of data about you in a six-hour session and understand two things. Is there anything going on inside your body right now that you need to know about? And if there is, what do you do about it? If there isn't, you say, fantastic, but then what's likely to happen to you, right? Based upon your genomics, based upon all your physiology, what are you likely to have that might be a problem down the line? And how do you prevent that from being a problem down the line? Now, here's the challenge. All of us are optimists about our health. We think we're fine. You know, it turns out we know more about what's going on inside our cars or refrigerators

Starting point is 00:25:15 than we do in our bodies. And so here's some of the numbers from our first 5,000 members going through Fountain Life. 2% of the people who are seemingly healthy adults, right? They think they're in great shape. They just want to check. Guess what? 2% have a cancer. 2.5% have an aneurysm.

Starting point is 00:25:38 I just had a close friend of mine who I gifted going through Fountain Life to went through and found two aneurysms in his brain. Now, it's early and he's going to have the surgery to fix them, but this is the sort of thing that can kill you in your sleep. 14.4% of seemingly healthy adults have an actionable life-threatening finding. So, at the end of the day, you don't actually know until you look and people say, I don't want to know. You know, honestly, you do want to know. You want to know as early as you can so you can take action right now. We're living in a time where you can take action about your health. So I commend to you whatever kind of diagnostics you can do, please go and look. If you're young, fantastic.

Starting point is 00:26:20 But, you know, sometimes it's great to get a baseline. If you're older in life, this is the biggest investment for your longevity you're going to make right now. I like to say don't die from something stupid. It means wear your helmet when you're skiing, wear your seatbelt, don't text while you're driving, and please look and find out what's going on inside your body. Everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love. The company is called Fountain Life and it's a company I started years ago with Tony

Starting point is 00:26:50 Robbins and a group of very talented physicians. You know most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists. Until that day when you have a pain in your side you go to the physician in the emergency room and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on. And, you know, it didn't start that morning. It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time. But because we never look, we don't find out. So what we built at Fountain Life was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers. We have four across the U.S. today, and we're building 20 around the world. These centers give you a full

Starting point is 00:27:31 body MRI, a brain, a brain vasculature, an AI-enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque, a DEXA scan, a grail blood cancer test, a full executive blood workup. It's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive. 150 gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning. When it's solvable, you're going to find out eventually. Might as well find out when you can take action. FoundLife also has an entire side of therapeutics. We look around the world for the most advanced therapeutics that can add 10, 20 healthy years to your life. And we provide them to you at our centers.

Starting point is 00:28:12 So if this is of interest to you, please go and check it out. Go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter. When Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller Life Force, we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain Life memberships. If you go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter, we'll put you to the top of the list. Really, it's something that is, for me, one of the most important things I offer my entire family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends. It's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans. Go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter. It's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. All right, let's go back to our episode. All right,

Starting point is 00:28:58 I'm going to close on this idea. I truly believe it. Life is short until you extend it. And we do have the ability to extend our life. So I hope this has inspired you a little bit to understand the healthspan revolution that is coming. I'm going to close on one last idea, and it's the concept of longevity escape velocity. This is an idea that comes from Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil, two good friends of mine. Now, it turns out that as science is making progress every year today, science is extending your life by about a third of a year for every year that you're alive. And there's going to be a point in the not too distant future that for every year alive, science begins extending your life for greater than a year. That idea is called longevity escape velocity. Now, if you don't know Ray Kurzweil, he's considered one of the most brilliant scientists

Starting point is 00:29:50 on the planet. He's my co-founder of Singularity University. He's on my board at the XPRIZE Foundation. He is the futurist at Google. I mean, you can't get any cooler than that. And if you Google Ray Kurzweil's name, you'll see he has an 86% accuracy rate in his predictions. Well, what is his prediction about when we're going to reach longevity escape velocity? Last time I spoke to him, he said it's between 10 to 12 years from now.

Starting point is 00:30:19 Amazing, right? What does that mean? It means your job is not to die from something stupid in the interim. Take care of yourself. We're in the midst of this revolution. It's coming. There's no greater wealth than your health. The man or woman who has their health has a thousand dreams and the man or woman who does not has but one. I wish you health and I hope this inspires you to take care of yourself and those that you love. See you soon. I want to take a moment to tell you about Abundance360, my year-round leadership mastermind.

Starting point is 00:30:50 For people who want to go big, create wealth, and impact the world. It's also Singularity University's highest level program. A key focus of Abundance360 is helping my members develop their Massive purpose, or MTP, and also to define and execute on their moonshots. You're listening to the Moonshot Podcast, so question is, do you have an MTP? Do you have your own moonshot? For example, my massive transformative purpose, my MTP, is to inspire and guide entrepreneurs just like you to help you create a hopeful, compelling, and abundant future for humanity. My MTP drives everything I do. It guides me. It inspires me. My books, my companies,

Starting point is 00:31:37 the XPRIZES we launch, it's all born out of that MTP. As an entrepreneur, you need to have an MTP. It's your highest level aspiration. It connects your emotional drive with the moonshots you take on. Your MTP drives the direction of your moonshot. It allows you to pursue your grandest dreams. It fuels you to go 10x bigger and impact the world. So the question is, where do you go to discover your MTP to hone your moonshot? Join me at Abundance360. It's a global community of world changers, entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropists, all of whom have an MTP and a moonshot. We support each other in making a dent in the universe to positively uplift humanity. Our mission at A360 is to give you the tools,

Starting point is 00:32:26 the network, and the inspiration to go big, again, to create wealth and to uplift humanity. If hearing this has you thinking, I want to be part of that, I need someone to help support my MTP and Moonshot, then consider joining us. Submit your application at A360.com. That's a360.com. See you there.

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - The Truth about American Healthcare | EP #74

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