00:00:00
I have so many of my friends that just
00:00:02
literally have everything except their
00:00:04
health and I just don't want that. You
00:00:08
know, there's a limited amount of time.
00:00:09
I'm not trying to live forever. I'm just
00:00:11
trying to live well. So, this week I'm
00:00:13
going to explore some questions that I
00:00:14
have about my health and I suspect that
00:00:16
many people out there have about theirs.
00:00:19
That's great so far.
00:00:30
My father lived a really unhealthy life.
00:00:34
He struggled with alcoholism for
00:00:35
decades. He was diabetic. He had heart
00:00:37
issues. And in the end, he died of a
00:00:39
cardiac arrest. We were expecting his
00:00:42
death, but he still left my mom, my
00:00:44
siblings, and me, honestly, to pick up
00:00:47
the pieces.
00:00:49
When my friend Dave died of a heart
00:00:51
attack, I wasn't expecting it. To me, he
00:00:54
seemed perfectly healthy and that was my
00:00:56
real wakeup call.
00:01:00
We were in Mexico and he had a heart
00:01:02
attack and it was a real tragedy to be
00:01:04
totally honest. But on the heels of
00:01:07
that, his wife asked his four best
00:01:12
friends just to like really try to, you
00:01:15
know, take care of ourselves better and
00:01:17
specifically to start going and seeing a
00:01:19
cardiologist.
00:01:28
Hey, welcome back.
00:01:29
Thanks. It's great to see you.
00:01:30
It's great to see you online on X, we
00:01:32
saw some uh interest about statins.
00:01:37
So, Dr. Carlsburg, he is the best
00:01:39
interventional cardiologist in the
00:01:41
United States.
00:01:42
When he discovered some plaque in my
00:01:43
arteries, he put me on statins. They're
00:01:45
supposed to lower bad LDL cholesterol,
00:01:48
reduce the risk of heart attack, and
00:01:50
stabilize plaque. But to some they are
00:01:52
controversial.
00:01:53
Well, you posted basically trying to do
00:01:56
something
00:01:58
um for cardiac health across all of
00:02:00
America and you tagged me and Bobby, but
00:02:03
the amount of commentary in Twitter or
00:02:06
in X rather was all about the whether or
00:02:10
not I should be on a statin and whether
00:02:12
or not it was just completely um
00:02:14
pseudocience. Look, what I've learned in
00:02:17
my career is I could talk about
00:02:19
anything. I could say the sky is blue
00:02:22
and there will be opinions that say it's
00:02:23
not. So, to be honest with you, I kind
00:02:26
of ignored most of it except to say that
00:02:28
the few people who are very thoughtful
00:02:29
in there brought up, I thought, a very
00:02:31
legitimate question. A lot of my
00:02:33
followers feel like statins might help
00:02:35
them in some areas, but also hurt them
00:02:37
in others. That's one of the reasons why
00:02:39
I've been coming to Dr. Carlsburg so
00:02:41
regularly to help me figure all of this
00:02:43
out. What's the most difficult part of
00:02:45
doing all this testing, would you say?
00:02:47
To be honest with you, it's the
00:02:48
cognitive load before you start it
00:02:50
because I think there's so many
00:02:52
incentives. There's little voices inside
00:02:54
of many people's heads that says don't
00:02:55
even start because of what you could
00:02:57
find.
00:02:58
And I do this test every four or five
00:03:00
years called a CT angagram with
00:03:03
contrast. It's basically a way of
00:03:04
injecting a die into your veins and then
00:03:07
imaging your heart so that you can see
00:03:09
all the arteries.
00:03:10
Breathe in. Hold your breath.
00:03:13
What it's also able to do now is image
00:03:15
it in such a way where you can take that
00:03:17
corpus of data and send it into a
00:03:19
machine learning model and then now you
00:03:21
can start to extract an even more
00:03:23
detailed sense of what's happening.
00:03:26
That young lady is a perfect study.
00:03:29
Absolutely beautiful.
00:03:32
I mean it's weird when the contrast goes
00:03:33
in your body.
00:03:34
Yeah.
00:03:34
Um I've had it done a couple times
00:03:36
before obviously
00:03:38
but I really I forget each time.
00:03:41
The heart is important, but it's only
00:03:43
part of the story. If you want a more
00:03:44
complete sense of your overall health,
00:03:46
you really need a prenal scan.
00:03:49
Good morning.
00:03:50
Hi,
00:03:51
how are you? Good. How are you?
00:03:52
Good, thanks. So, I reached out to
00:03:54
Chimath when we had just opened a clinic
00:03:56
in Silicon Valley during CO and I
00:03:58
thought I knew he was a bit of a hacker,
00:04:00
a biohacker, and I really wanted him to
00:04:02
experience what we were doing. He was
00:04:03
nice enough to come in. We developed the
00:04:06
friendship and he's been in for several
00:04:08
scans. Click. You accept right there.
00:04:10
In the 5 years since I met Chamath,
00:04:12
we've now imaged about 150,000 people.
00:04:15
We've saved or made about 4,000
00:04:18
life-saving diagnosis. And every day we
00:04:21
get stories from folks where we might
00:04:23
have saved their life or gave them
00:04:24
clarity or delivered peace of mind. So,
00:04:26
it's really great to be building a
00:04:28
company and at the same time having
00:04:29
positive impact.
00:04:32
Okay, let's do it.
00:04:34
So what makes us unique compared to
00:04:36
others is we operate our own customuilt
00:04:38
research grade MRI hardware. We have AI
00:04:42
that enables us to enhance image
00:04:44
quality. And then we have this
00:04:45
incredible team of radiologists and
00:04:48
medical professionals now over 100 that
00:04:51
deliver a tremendous stand of care for
00:04:52
our patients.
00:04:55
So I just did a full body advanced MRI
00:04:58
scan. Took like an hour and 15 minutes.
00:05:00
But it really didn't feel that way cuz I
00:05:02
just was lying in the machine watching
00:05:04
Netflix. So, it's actually like a really
00:05:07
it's really great actually.
00:05:10
Okay. Yeah. So, we just got in the car.
00:05:12
We are uh headed to Toronto Tech Week.
00:05:16
Our first stop is at the Shopify
00:05:18
headquarters for a fireside chat with my
00:05:20
friend Farhan Thoir.
00:05:23
Good. How is the AI?
00:05:26
[Music]
00:05:30
What's up?
00:05:30
Being on stage is something I like
00:05:32
because it allows me to tell people what
00:05:35
I think is going on right now and what
00:05:38
will go on.
00:05:39
I hate to say it this way, but like the
00:05:40
more success that you can have, the
00:05:43
easier it is to detach yourself from
00:05:45
real life. And then you start to miss
00:05:47
out on people.
00:05:48
And if enough people, you know, find
00:05:50
that truth credible, some subset of
00:05:53
those people will self- select and say,
00:05:55
"Hey, I want to work with you on this."
00:05:56
And then I, you know, feed them into
00:05:58
those businesses. It's a great
00:05:59
opportunity for them. But it's also how
00:06:01
we get one step closer to achieving our
00:06:04
dreams.
00:06:07
Now, we're going to jump in the car and
00:06:10
uh go to the 8090 office and have lunch.
00:06:13
Yeah. Just trying to say hi. Good to see
00:06:16
you again. Good to see you.
00:06:26
Okay, let's talk because I don't want to
00:06:27
run out of time. So, what do we have
00:06:29
till 3:00?
00:06:32
What I found is that early on,
00:06:34
especially when you're trying to do
00:06:36
something extremely ambitious like the
00:06:37
8090 team is trying to do, the biggest
00:06:39
problem is drift. Meaning, you just kind
00:06:42
of drift away. Everybody just drifts
00:06:43
away. they lose an understanding
00:06:46
and I think the responsibility of the
00:06:48
CEO in that early phase when you're in a
00:06:50
build cycle is to minimize the drift.
00:06:53
The way that I think a good CEO can do
00:06:56
that is just reminding people of what
00:06:59
they're there to do. And so, you know,
00:07:01
in Toronto is just a chance to just take
00:07:03
everybody and sit them down, whiteboard
00:07:06
something, just talk to them so that
00:07:07
they could feel a sense of what was
00:07:09
happening. It's one thing to hear it on
00:07:10
a Zoom or see it in slides, but it's
00:07:12
another to just be in the room and feel
00:07:13
that connection.
00:07:16
Super excited. Thank you guys.
00:07:22
Okay, so what's the plan today? We're
00:07:23
going to go and get a little readout of
00:07:26
the pre-nuvo scan. Um, and hopefully
00:07:29
everything is, you know, relatively
00:07:30
straightforward there. These health
00:07:32
tests may seem a bit like overkill, but
00:07:35
I feel strongly that people need to
00:07:36
advocate for their health and ask a lot
00:07:38
of questions.
00:07:39
What we know is that you lose about 3%
00:07:41
of your brain volume every decade on
00:07:44
average.
00:07:44
Is that right?
00:07:45
Yeah. And so the question is, how do you
00:07:46
compare?
00:07:47
Honestly, my stomach fell a little bit
00:07:49
when Andrew mentioned brain volume loss
00:07:51
because I knew the FDA label on statins
00:07:54
warns about memory loss.
00:07:56
All right, Sean, over to you. Tell me
00:07:57
the good news or the bad news. So, um,
00:08:00
this is the enhanced scan now. And so,
00:08:02
what what we're looking at here is just
00:08:04
blood flow throughout all the, uh,
00:08:06
higher functioning brain tissue. And
00:08:07
this is all very symmetric and normal.
00:08:09
Um,
00:08:09
well, I think what Dr. London is saying
00:08:11
is you're on a normal curve here.
00:08:15
Suck it, people. All the all the haters
00:08:17
out there.
00:08:18
Nothing worrisome, no change when it
00:08:20
comes to my brain. I'm really relieved.
00:08:23
But something that did confound me is
00:08:24
that I have some muscle loss, which is
00:08:26
concerning. This is the main thing I
00:08:28
wanted you to to focus on and to
00:08:30
highlight was the muscle the muscle mass
00:08:31
because we know how important
00:08:33
maintaining muscle mass is particularly
00:08:35
for you know brain health too over time
00:08:37
and it's harder to maintain as we get
00:08:39
older.
00:08:40
Plus the internet internet thinks that I
00:08:41
don't work out that I should be doing
00:08:43
more leg day. So this is going to really
00:08:45
feed the whole conspiracy.
00:08:46
I mean take everything with a grain of
00:08:48
salt too. You know like
00:08:49
they're going to love it.
00:08:50
I mean it it's not like a a terribly
00:08:52
concerning decrease. Yeah,
00:08:54
it was just it was just more notable
00:08:55
than the than the other uh fluctuations.
00:08:58
But the trolls are going to love it.
00:09:00
Like I told you, you don't work out your
00:09:02
legs.
00:09:02
It's not true, guys. I'm just tall. I
00:09:05
mean, every time I come, it just gets a
00:09:06
You're doing a better and better job
00:09:08
building this thing. It's so great. I
00:09:10
love being a guinea pig for stuff like
00:09:11
this.
00:09:12
Yeah.
00:09:12
And it's been really valuable for me.
00:09:14
The next like 10, 11, 12 years. I really
00:09:17
want to make sure I pack as much muscle
00:09:18
as possible.
00:09:19
Insulate myself going into my 60s and
00:09:21
70s. Seems like the right goal. Thank
00:09:23
you.
00:09:24
Thank you very much. Thanks for
00:09:24
visiting.
00:09:25
Great to see you.
00:09:25
Yeah.
00:09:27
Now it's time to check back in with Dr.
00:09:29
Carlsburg and face the music on my
00:09:31
heart.
00:09:34
Welcome back.
00:09:34
Thank you. Good to see you.
00:09:36
Uh you had a really busy day yesterday,
00:09:38
didn't you?
00:09:38
Busy day,
00:09:39
but a good day.
00:09:40
What I'm going to do now is present
00:09:42
something that's quite astonishing. You
00:09:45
have a zero calcium score and you still
00:09:48
have a zero calcium score.
00:09:50
Let's get out of here.
00:09:52
Not so fast.
00:09:56
We see that over the 10 years you had a
00:10:00
370%
00:10:02
increase in that material, which means
00:10:04
that you are on a pathway to
00:10:06
atheroscerosis,
00:10:08
but you're one of the few peoples on the
00:10:10
planet that have this kind of
00:10:12
information
00:10:13
and you're going to take advantage of
00:10:15
it. And so what we're looking at here
00:10:17
was a percent change that went from
00:10:20
total plaque volume fell from 24% a year
00:10:24
to 10% a year, which is consistent with
00:10:27
what we found in much bigger studies.
00:10:30
Now, given the first level of tears,
00:10:33
which is listen to your audience and
00:10:36
come off the drugs because they're
00:10:38
dangerous, or stay on the drugs, the
00:10:40
first level of decision on your part
00:10:43
based on what you heard is going to be
00:10:44
what?
00:10:45
Obviously, we're going to stay on the
00:10:46
drug. So,
00:10:46
okay, that's your decision.
00:10:48
Yeah.
00:10:49
Okay.
00:10:50
I think what I'm hearing from you is
00:10:53
we started this statin a decade ago. It
00:10:55
seems to have had a pretty meaningful
00:10:58
impact. we
00:10:59
in all of these other things that we
00:11:01
never would have known to look for had
00:11:02
this stuff not existed.
00:11:04
Exactly.
00:11:04
So, what I'm learning from you actually
00:11:06
is a big deal. You've done some good
00:11:07
stuff and that was actually pretty
00:11:10
preventative and good, but there's now
00:11:12
an even better leading edge for you
00:11:14
because you're fighting against a
00:11:16
genetic trend that will eventually catch
00:11:18
up with you.
00:11:19
It that's a secret. That's fantastic. I
00:11:22
want to know the secret. I want to know
00:11:24
the answer. Now,
00:11:24
there are no standard treatments for
00:11:26
you. I think that you could choose to
00:11:30
wait. Your calcium score is zero. Your
00:11:33
outcome is going to be fine for the next
00:11:36
5, 10 years. Chances of you having a
00:11:38
cardiac event are very, very close to
00:11:40
zero.
00:11:41
No risk of a cardiac event in the next
00:11:43
five years. Hopefully 10.
00:11:46
Uh that's my prediction. All right.
00:11:48
You're doing a great service. Thank you.
00:11:49
Thank you. See you soon. Have a great
00:11:50
summer.
00:11:51
Byebye.
00:11:52
You know, if there's one thing I've
00:11:54
learned through this process, it's that
00:11:56
there's no finish line. Honestly,
00:11:58
optimal health isn't a destination. It's
00:12:01
a journey. But at the end of the day, we
00:12:03
all face the same choice. Do we wait
00:12:05
until something breaks or do we start
00:12:07
listening now? Starting the health
00:12:09
journey can be scary. But in my opinion,
00:12:11
I think it's worth it because living
00:12:13
well is the best return there is.
00:12:15
Well, we're home. It's been a long week.
00:12:17
I hope you enjoy following me around,
00:12:20
but now it's time to get the out of
00:12:22
here.
