Episode 28
The Hardest Problem in Longevity Is Human Behaviour with Dr Gil Blander, Founder of InsideTracker
Nearly two decades ago, Dr Gil Blander was trying to convince investors of an idea that, at the time, sounded radical: blood biomarkers should not only be used to diagnose disease, but to help healthy people understand what to change before disease develops.
Some thought he was crazy.
That idea became InsideTracker, the company he founded 17 years ago, which brings together blood biomarkers, genetic information and wearable data to give people personalised recommendations for improving their health.
In this conversation, Dr Blander traces the scientific journey that took him from the Weizmann Institute to MIT and eventually to founding InsideTracker. He explains what he learned from some of the early breakthroughs in longevity research, why collecting more health data is not enough if people do not act on it, and why he believes behaviour change may now be one of the biggest challenges in extending healthy life.
We also discuss his recent decision to step back from his operational role at InsideTracker and what he describes as his “second career”: taking personalised, preventative health beyond the longevity community and making it relevant to a much wider population.
Guest Bio
Dr Gil Blander is the founder of InsideTracker, a personalised health and longevity platform that combines blood biomarkers, DNA and wearable data to generate individualised health recommendations.
He trained as a scientist at the Weizmann Institute, where he worked with Professor Moshe Oren on p53 and cancer biology, before moving to MIT to join Professor Leonard Guarente’s laboratory during an important period in the study of genes associated with ageing and longevity.
After 17 years leading InsideTracker, Dr Blander recently stepped back from his operational role to focus on bringing personalised and preventative health to a much broader population.
About Dr Gil Blander
Principal: Healthspan Strategies Advisors and Founder and CEO of Stealth Health Tech startup
* Instagram: Founder of @insidetracker
* Instagram: Host of @beyond_healthspan_podcast
* LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/gilblander
* Company: insidetracker.com
* Longevity by Design: info.insidetracker.com/longevitybydesign
Episode Chapters
* 00:00 Welcome and Guest Introduction
* 03:07 Why Data Alone Does Not Change Health
* 05:02 Different People Need Different Motivation
* 07:01 The Scientific Roots at Weizmann
* 11:50 Inside MIT’s Early Longevity Research
* 13:24 Leaving Academia for Industry
* 16:04 The Idea Behind InsideTracker
* 19:25 How InsideTracker Works
* 20:35 Why Blood, DNA and Wearables Work Better Together
* 26:14 Why Behaviour Change May Be the Real Frontier
* 27:48 Taking Longevity Beyond the Longevity Bubble
* 30:43 What Actually Makes Healthy Habits Stick
* 34:58 What Real-World Data Can Teach Us
* 40:29 Stepping Back and Starting a “Second Career”
* 42:05 Longevity Hype, Science and the Limits of What We Know
* 44:27 Rapid Fire
* 47:20 Final Takeaways
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker A:Welcome to Beyond Longevity, the podcast that explores not just how we age, but how we can build a longer, healthier future for ourselves.
Speaker A:Nearly two decades ago, Dr. Gil Blanda was trying to convince investors that blood biomarkers could be used not just to diagnose disease, but to help healthy people improve their health.
Speaker A:Some of them, he says, thought he was crazy.
Speaker A:That idea became InsightTracker.
Speaker A:Dr. Gill founded the company 17 years ago.
Speaker A:Today, much of what he was arguing for then has become mainstream.
Speaker A:InsightTracker combines information from your blood, your genetics, and your wearable devices, then turns it into a personalized action plan, practical changes you can make to how you eat, sleep, move, and recover.
Speaker A:So rather than simply giving you more health data, it tries to answer a much more useful what could and should I actually be doing to improve my health?
Speaker A:But Dr. Gill's story started long before InsideTracker.
Speaker A:He trained as a scientist at the Weizmann Institute and mit, working at the forefront of aging and cancer research.
Speaker A:His original plan was a career in academia, but he realized that if he wanted to improve health at scale, publishing papers would only take him so far.
Speaker A:He wanted to take the science out of the lab and make it useful in people's everyday lives.
Speaker A:And today, collecting the data may actually be the easier part.
Speaker A:The harder problem is human behavior.
Speaker A:Most of us know the eat better, move more, sleep deeper.
Speaker A:Knowing it and actually doing it are two very different things, though.
Speaker A:Dr. Gill believes the next frontier may therefore have as much to do with behavioral science as biology.
Speaker A:How do you give someone the right advice at the right moment in a way that fits into their real life and helps them actually to follow through?
Speaker A:A few months ago, Dr. Gill stepped away from his operational role at InsightTracker.
Speaker A:He described what comes next as a second career, taking what personalized health has achieved for the longevity community and finding a way to make it work for everyone.
Speaker A:We talk about what years of real world data have taught him, where he thinks longevity is getting carried away, and what it will take to turn everything we know about better health into something that works in the real world.
Speaker A:Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Gil Blanda.
Speaker A:Hi Gil, thank you so much for joining me today on Beyond Longevity.
Speaker A:Rather than starting at the beginning of your career and going through everything you've done until now, I'd like to start with where we are today, because I think that gets to the heart of everything you've spent the last 20 years working on.
Speaker A:Today we can measure, you know, blood and our genetics and sleep and our activity and recovery.
Speaker A:But let me Ask you something that almost sounds a bit counterintuitive and odd.
Speaker A:Have we become better at measuring health than we haven't actually understood?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think that we are somehow trying to measure more and more and more.
Speaker B:And we are collecting a lot of information and you can see it with all the wearable, they are starting to add also blood and a lot of other variables, CGM and other.
Speaker B:But I think that the real need is what the heck can I do with that data?
Speaker B:What should I do tomorrow, what should I do today, what should I do differently than I did yesterday?
Speaker B:And I think that we are not there yet.
Speaker B:It's pretty easy to collect data and everyone collects it.
Speaker B:And it's good.
Speaker B:Collecting data is good because in the future we might be able to use it.
Speaker B:But I think that for us as the end user, as a consumer, we don't care about the data.
Speaker B:We care about what does it mean for me and what should I do next?
Speaker B:And I don't think that we are there yet.
Speaker B:That's in my opinion the next frontier is what should I do next based on all the data they too collected about me.
Speaker A:But from a scientist point of view, do you think we're collecting information faster than we can learn how to interpret it?
Speaker B:No, I don't think so.
Speaker B:I think that today we have, you've seen it with the Nvidia chip and everything that's happening, we have enough computing power, we have enough space to store it.
Speaker B:We need now to come with some way to communicate it to the end user in a good way.
Speaker B:And if you think about it, if we are thinking about wellness, everyone know that we need to eat better, to sleep better, to exercise better.
Speaker B:Everyone know that.
Speaker B:But only maybe 1 or 2% are doing it.
Speaker B:So it's not only about the data that you are collecting, is also how do you communicate it with the end user and how do you motivate it.
Speaker B:And all of us are not, we are a humankind, but each of us is a bit different.
Speaker B:There are some people that I call them more coin operated.
Speaker B:So basically give them a way to, to make some money and they will do everything about that.
Speaker B:Some are more motivated by being the best.
Speaker B:The type A, I want to be the number one in everything.
Speaker B:So we, we have a few different kind of people and you need to talk to each of them in a different way.
Speaker B:You cannot talk with, with the coin operator and say you need to be number one.
Speaker B:It doesn't care.
Speaker B:I care about how can I make more money.
Speaker B:And you cannot talk about money.
Speaker B:For the one that want to be the best.
Speaker B:So I think that we need to understand in a way separate between those different Personas and then they provide to them the specific information about them.
Speaker B:And I think that that's go back to the end of one because I made it very simple.
Speaker B:We have a few Personas, but actually each of us is a bit different.
Speaker B:So if we will know the person very well and we'll see not only what he can do better, but how to communicate with them better and how to, to make him engage and do the best about his health, that that's what we want.
Speaker B:But based on the what he is react to, I, I think that then we'll have a much better chance to make everyone in the world live better, longer.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's a little bit kyc, you know, know your customer.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, from the business side.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And we'll come back to that a little bit later.
Speaker A:And I love your answer because it's really particularly interesting coming from you because you've watched the field, you know, evolve from two completely different perspectives.
Speaker A:First, as a scientist working in some of the world's leading research environments and then as someone trying to translate that science into something millions of people can actually use before we get to Insight Tracker and everything else, I just love to understand the environment that shaped you as a scientist.
Speaker A:You trained at the Weizmann Institute and then worked at MIT and all that during a period when some of the biggest ideas in aging biology, sort of including work on, you know, situins and nad, they were gaining real momentum at that time.
Speaker A:What was it like to be surrounded by scientists like that every single day and how did that shape you?
Speaker B:So it was a lot of fun and I, I, I really enjoyed it and I'm, I'm still trying to go to a lot of scientific conferences and read the scientific publication, peer review publication and even writing some.
Speaker B:So every year I'm trying to write at least a couple of those and I think that that's important because at the end of the day the science give us the material that then we can communicate to the end user.
Speaker B:Because if it's not science based and I'm sure that maybe we'll discuss it later, there is a lot of noise around us from a lot of influencer that they're coming and read the one paper and tweak it a bit and then they're coming saying, I don't know, you need to drink orange juice five times a day and you'll be okay.
Speaker B:But, and I took orange Juice, because I haven't heard anyone saying that, but maybe there is someone.
Speaker B:The bottom line is that we need to follow science.
Speaker B:And when you follow science, you see that there is no silver bullet.
Speaker B:And all of those too good to be true are not true.
Speaker B:So we, we need to be very careful.
Speaker B:And it's hard for the normal consumer because he doesn't have the tools to evaluate whether this influencer is right or wrong.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:So my time at the Weizmann and at MIT was a great time because I worked with the best in the world in the longevity, aging research and also cancer research and, and other.
Speaker B:And it's helped me to, to shape my understanding and know that everything that I'm trying to, to sell to consumers should be science based.
Speaker B:And you always need to put their needs and their health before making money.
Speaker B:So, yeah, so it was a, a good time and I really enjoyed it and it was tough for me to live it, but I'm excited because I'm still feeling myself inside because I'm interacting with them and also writing paper and spending some time reading paper.
Speaker B:So that's my way to keep updated.
Speaker B:In the recent scientific discoveries.
Speaker A:Want to pick up on a few things you said because you sort of glossed over them, but they're quite fundamental and really interesting times, I guess, in your life or in everyone's life involved in the longevity field because it was so pivotal.
Speaker A:If I understand it correctly, you joined Professor Moshe Owen at the Weizmann Institute, who's one of the leading researchers in your P53 and cancer biology because you couldn't find a lab that was doing work on longevity.
Speaker A:And I think a little story, I don't know if it's so true or not, but tell me about that, if it is, that he sent you to a library to find projects that could address your interest because you really wanted to do longevity and he was doing cancer research and he said, find a project that can combine the two.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker B:So I joined him because at that time he used to be the best scientist at the Weizmann Institute.
Speaker B:My strategy was always go to the best and work with the best.
Speaker B:And as you said, he is a leader in the P53 and P53 is the, the most known and the most mutated the tumor suppressor in our body.
Speaker B:So around 50% of the cancer have a mutation in 53 and that's why the cancer grow and at the end they might kill us.
Speaker B:And I came to him and I said, I'm very interested in what you're doing but I'm more interested in working on the longevity or aging.
Speaker B:So yeah, he sent me to the library and I spent couple of there and then I found a protein that was just origin, that just was cloned.
Speaker B:That is the gene for the wellness syndrome which is a premature aging syndrome but affect mainly Japanese, very rare, but basically the patient there died from also cancer but the aging related diseases at the fourth or fifth decade of their life.
Speaker B:So that was an interesting discovery of a different lab.
Speaker B:And we looked at the what is the intersection between this protein and 53 and cancer.
Speaker B:And it was a.
Speaker B:A fun time to work together Moshe and published a few papers about that.
Speaker A:That work took you from the Weizmann Institute to MIT where you joined Leonard Granter's lab at a super interesting time in modern biology.
Speaker A:What did it feel like to arrive in a lab where aging itself was a central scientific problem rather than a question you had to fit around other research?
Speaker B:Yes, it was amazing.
Speaker B:And Lenny's a.
Speaker B:An amazing person.
Speaker B:He is like he cannot hear the.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:So everything and everything you can do.
Speaker B:And as.
Speaker B:As you said, he discovered a few of the key longevity gene that he basically cloned from east and showed that they are having a key role in aging in other model organism.
Speaker B:And then a former postdoc in the lab, David Sinclair, that I assume that everyone know, found the intersection between CO2 and the Resveritor that made a lot of noise.
Speaker B:And another postdoc in the lab, Shinny Mai, discovered that CO2 is actually NAD dependent.
Speaker B:That's ET layer.
Speaker B:So that's why everyone now is injecting NAD and the discussion about NR versus NNM and all of that.
Speaker B:So it was an interesting time and I really enjoyed it.
Speaker B:And I'm still in a great relationship with Lenny, trying to have a dinner or lunch with him with the family at least once a year and a good relationship with David and other lab members.
Speaker B:And all of them are basically the top of the top.
Speaker B:And it was great to spend time with all of them.
Speaker A:So he was literally the top of the top.
Speaker A:And what's fascinating is that you left that incredible scientific environment not because the science, I guess, has become less interesting to you, but because you wanted that science to reach more people than writing papers on the topic ever could.
Speaker A:And you made that transition from academia to industry relatively early in your career.
Speaker A:Many scientists hope their work changes the field.
Speaker A:And you chose a path where success would also be measured by whether it changed people's lives.
Speaker A:Was there a particular moment when you Realized that if you really want to improve health at scale, publishing great science just wasn't enough and you had to build something that people could actually use.
Speaker B:When I arrived to mit, my goal was to publish a few papers and then go back to the Weizmann and be a professor there.
Speaker B:But when I arrived to mit, I started to be exposed to.
Speaker B:It's called the Kendall Square environment.
Speaker B:Kendall Square is where actually MIT is located and around the radius of a mile around it you might have like 5,000 different companies.
Speaker B:Biotech, ITech, pharmaceutical and many other.
Speaker B:I started to either have a relationship with them or have some collaboration with some of them.
Speaker B:And then I realized that working in the lab is not the only thing that you can do in order to make the world better place.
Speaker B:But also maybe if you work in the industry and solve a specific problem, you can influence maybe much more people.
Speaker B:I can give you an example.
Speaker B:We had the COVID epidemic and a couple of company, for example Moderna, that is also in the Kendall Square area, they worked on that and they basically developed a vaccine in, I don't know, in less than a year that allow us to get out of our house and start have some social interaction which are super important.
Speaker B: ID But think about it like in: Speaker B:It was like that.
Speaker B:That's basically a life changing company and that show how much you can do in the industry and not only being in the academia.
Speaker B:So to cut long story short, I realized that even before Moderna was around and I decided to move to the industry, work there for a couple of years and then come with an idea for a that can help people live better longer.
Speaker A:That decision to leave academia for industry eventually became InsightTracker.
Speaker A:But the company we know today as InsightTracker is very different from the company you originally founded.
Speaker A:When you started Insighttracker, what was the problem that you believed almost everyone else was missing and you had to start.
Speaker B:This company at that time.
Speaker B:It's weird because it's 17 years ago, but it look like ages that you can use biomarkers in your body in order to help you to optimize your health, not just with disease, because at that time it was nobody thought even about.
Speaker B:Let's take a look at your blood cholesterol or blood glucose or hsclp, which is a marker of inflammation and instead to treat a disease help us people that are not sick to optimize our body and actually prevent the disease or delay the disease.
Speaker B:So that was the idea and it was very hard to convince people at that time.
Speaker B:So when I was trying to raise money I went to a venture capitalist and tried to explain it to them and they kicked me out of the room and said are you crazy?
Speaker B:Nobody will buy it.
Speaker B:Luckily I was determined enough that I said okay, they don't want, let's go to the next one and the next one.
Speaker B:And finally I found a few people that believe in what I was preaching.
Speaker B:But if you look at it today, the wellness domain every companies are now using blood biomarkers.
Speaker B:It's an amazing for me to see that my vision of 20 or 17 years ago become true.
Speaker B:And they now yeah, we are using blood biomarker not only for treat disease but also to prevent it.
Speaker B:But it's not only that we are at that time actually wearable were almost not around.
Speaker B:I remember meeting with one of the Fitbit founder in San Francisco in a small coffee shop and I remember he had like 20 people I didn't know about Fitbit at all.
Speaker B:They started with the small Fitbit they maybe had there, I don't know, a few hundreds customer and I said wow, wow, that's great.
Speaker B:Let's also integrate it into instatracker and a few years later we integrate Fitbit another so what I'm saying if we are looking at that the world changed so much in the last couple of decade in a sense that now everyone can easily collect a lot of data about themselves and try to use that in order to optimize the body.
Speaker B:I think that we are going back to your first question.
Speaker B:I don't think that we are doing good enough job in order to have the so what Question.
Speaker B:Okay, so what can I do with the data?
Speaker B:And that's how can I communicate is best for each user and also what should I do differently today or tomorrow based on what I done yesterday?
Speaker B:So I think that those are two points that that's might be the next frontier for the next few years or decade.
Speaker B:How can we take it from a lot of data to something that is easy and it's easy to integrate in your life because it's very easy for me to come and tell you hey Daphne, go and swim.
Speaker B:But if you don't have a swimming pool next to your home or if you are busy it's much better to come say hey, I see that Daphne is walking every day but she's only walking 20 minutes.
Speaker B:So let's find a way to increase, to add another 10 minutes for that.
Speaker B:So basically fit it into your life in a way that it's the least distraction as possible.
Speaker A:I think I should have explained a little bit more what InsideTracker actually does.
Speaker A:Can you just literally in a few sentences so everybody's on the same page just say what InsightTracker actually does?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So Insult Tracker is a platform that help human to optimize their health plan based on many biomarkers that we collect.
Speaker B:So it started with blood biomarkers, around 50 of them, DNA data.
Speaker B:So we are sending our user to genotype their DNA and based on that we know whether you have a high risk for specific biomarker or you have potential for something else.
Speaker B:Data from wearables and also food recognition so the user can scan his food and based on that we know what he have done.
Speaker B:We also asked the user many questions about his behavior.
Speaker B:We combine all together and then providing to the user an action plan that help him to basically to optimize his body.
Speaker B:Because okay is okay, but nobody want to be okay.
Speaker B:Everyone want to be the best.
Speaker B:So allow you to get from a okay state to a good state to a better state.
Speaker B:So that's high level what Elisotrancar is doing.
Speaker A:You know, I think most people understand why blood tests are useful.
Speaker A:But what's much less obvious is why blood on its own isn't enough these days.
Speaker A:Can you explain why is blood biomarkers, genetics and wearable each tell us something different and what becomes possible only when all three are combined?
Speaker B:That's a great question.
Speaker B:So first blood, I call it a liquid gold.
Speaker B:It's the most important because if you think about it, our clinicians are making medical decision based on that.
Speaker B:So it's something that was investigated in scientific community for maybe decades and centuries.
Speaker B:So there is a lot of data, you cannot dispute it and it's great.
Speaker B:The problem is today at least we cannot test blood biomarker every second.
Speaker B:There is a one exception for that.
Speaker B:The CGM contains glucose monitoring.
Speaker B:So today we can measure glucose all the time.
Speaker B:But still even for that it's not so comfortable, it's expensive.
Speaker B:And most people, I don't, I don't see them using CGM all the time.
Speaker B:So that's one point.
Speaker B:Another point, if we're going now to the DNA, the DNA is showing to you basically the risk and the potential.
Speaker B:And I can give you an example.
Speaker B:Let's assume that someone have high LDL Cholesterol.
Speaker B:If I know his genetic information, I can say that whether this person have a genetic predisposition for high cholesterol or he doesn't have it, if he have a high cholesterol and he have a predisposition for high cholesterol, that means that basically it will be hard for him to decrease it.
Speaker B:And also it means that I would maybe try to focus more on a pharmaceutical intervention than a lifestyle.
Speaker B:But if someone still have high cholesterol but low risk for high cholesterol, then there is a much better chance that he can manage or decrease his cholesterol using a lifestyle intervention.
Speaker B:So it's giving us Instead of a 2D view, suddenly you have a 3D view of the body of the person and you have a better clue or understanding what will work for him and what won't work for him.
Speaker B:Now if you look at wearables, what is nice about wearable data?
Speaker B:Let's say sleep data and the heart rate and resting heart rate and HRV and many of other it's that the frequency that is coming is very often.
Speaker B:So you can receive HRV data, let's say I don't know, every day while if you look at an HRV you can look at your stress level and so on.
Speaker B:But if you look at a real stress hormone like cortisol, you won't test it every day, you might test it every quarter.
Speaker B:There are now some companies that are selling strip of cortisol that you can actually use saliva and do it in 20 minutes.
Speaker B:But still it's not as easy as just to have your Garmin or Fitbit or Apple watch or Whoop or Aura and then receive it every day.
Speaker B:So basically it can be a proxy to what the blood biomarker is showing.
Speaker B:So blood biomarker validate and calibrate the fitness tracker giving you a daily reminder, hey, not only that you had the alcohol cortisol, also your HRV is too low.
Speaker B:So it sounds like you have a problem with that with a stress, either physical or emotional stress.
Speaker B:Also the data from Wearable can give us some hint about the behavior of the user.
Speaker B:So again let's assume that we have a user that need to exercise instead of coming to you Daphna and saying hey, have you exercised?
Speaker B:I don't need to ask you the fitness frackle showing to me that you exercise or you haven't exercised.
Speaker B:So I can tell you you haven't been a good girl yesterday and try to compensate on that today.
Speaker B:So it's allow us to basically call it A seamless feedback that they provide to us some information about what the user have done.
Speaker B:And based on that we can adjust the action of this user.
Speaker B:So I think that if you combine all of the three together, then suddenly you have a very deep understanding of the user.
Speaker B:And you can also do that in a way that it's not too intrusive to the user.
Speaker B:It doesn't need to fill a 50 questionnaire a day and doesn't need to spend half an hour a day of interacting with the app because at the end of the day all of us are lazy and we don't like to spend time or we are lazy and busy and we don't like to spend time on the, on something.
Speaker B:So if you can give me all the information in 10 seconds and collect as much as you want, but don't bother me and only bother me when you really need to bother me.
Speaker B:For example, oh, I have a very nice tool that when I going to be sick, suddenly I'm receiving a notification, hey, we detect something.
Speaker B:Be, be aware that you are getting into a sickness and why it's cool because then I can come say, oh, maybe today I won't go and do CrossFit session because I'm going to be sick.
Speaker B:Maybe I will rest today and somehow I can postpone the sickness toward the next time.
Speaker B:Or maybe I can decide, okay, let's sleep a bit longer or let's, I'm going to be sick, let's not make a very important business decision today or personal decision.
Speaker B:So that's exactly what Aura is doing for that.
Speaker B:That's exactly what I see that those wearables should do for us.
Speaker B:Or let's say the digital health solution is don't bother the user all the time.
Speaker B:But when at the time, at the moment, at the second that you see something important, the lighting surprise him and that's it.
Speaker B:And maybe two months later, two months, don't say anything and then say something again, that's enough.
Speaker B:You don't need to send 50,000 notifications a day.
Speaker B:Nobody want that.
Speaker A:You know, I think this is so important, the point you just made, because I think that changes from having something that can just give you information that is completely useless to the consumer to something that actually helps because like you said, AI, you know, and all this is so good now they can tell you every minute of the day what you could do better and how you can improve, but it's, it's useless because human nature doesn't work like that.
Speaker A:Do you think that maybe we have reached A point where the hardest problem in longevity is no longer knowing what people should do, but understanding really why they don't actually do it.
Speaker B:Yeah, I agree with you 100%.
Speaker B:And I think that the next frontier is more behavioral science than natural science, let's say.
Speaker B:So how can we take someone like you and me and make us thinking and obsess about their health as much as they are obsessed about my friend posting Instagram a post and he got 50 like, and I got only 29 like.
Speaker B:And I'm so frustrated about that.
Speaker B:So instead of focus on the meaningful, not on the meaningless and somehow we are, we are spending our time on the meaningless.
Speaker B:Who cares?
Speaker B:Okay, he got shirty.
Speaker B:He lied.
Speaker B:That's great.
Speaker B:Congrati.
Speaker B:And the focus on how can you make your body better and how can you stay in the on this planet for a longer time in a better health, it's hard.
Speaker B:I'm not saying that I have the solution, but that's the problem today, that we are not spending enough time on our health and we're spending too much time on useless activities.
Speaker A:So do you think the longevity community as a whole, so that include the consumers, the scientists, the researchers, anyone sometimes make the mistake of optimizing for health rather than living?
Speaker B:I see a couple of problems.
Speaker B:The first problem is the longevity community is pretty small.
Speaker B:I don't know, let's say a few hundreds of thousand, maybe few millions in the world.
Speaker B:And we are already pretty optimized.
Speaker B:We are no everything.
Speaker B:We are eating better than the normal population.
Speaker B:We are exercising better, we are sleeping better, we are talking about it.
Speaker B:So that's exactly for us.
Speaker B:My Instagram post is looking at scientists that they're talking about longevity.
Speaker B:So it's better than looking at Kim Kardashian, I don't know, doing whatever.
Speaker B:But we are a very small island in a population of 10 billions so the question is, what can we do in order to take and to expand it, to expand this population for hundreds of thousands of millions to tens of millions, hundreds of millions and billions of people.
Speaker B:And for them you need a different solution.
Speaker B:The solution for us, because we are more type A and we are usually wealthier and educator and we have more time.
Speaker B:And it's very hard to come to the single family mom that need to feed the five kids in the middle of Chicago and she's working couple of jobs and she sleep four hours a night and come and say hey, don't forget to eat the apple and you need to go and swim.
Speaker B:What are you talking about?
Speaker B:I Barely sleep.
Speaker B:What I'm trying to say, the solution that we are building are solution to the same hundreds of thousands of millions of users.
Speaker B:Because we are in the circle of ourselves, the investors, the entrepreneurs, the scientists, the population, all of us are in the same circle.
Speaker B:And we forget that this is not the world, this is a small island in the world.
Speaker B:So the question is, how can we disseminate it to the bigger population and allow them to enjoy from that?
Speaker B:I think that that's the big question.
Speaker B:And as we started at the beginning, it's a completely different Persona.
Speaker B:It's not someone that is very educated and have time.
Speaker B:Their motivation might be completely different.
Speaker B:I assume that their motivation is that this single mother, her parents just passed away, or her father had Alzheimer and.
Speaker B:Or whatever, and then she, she got the shock.
Speaker B:So for them it's more like the shock.
Speaker B:I don't want to be like my, my mother.
Speaker B:She's only 55 and she got Alzheimer.
Speaker B:What can I do in order to not to be like my father or mother in 20 years?
Speaker B:Then you catch them at that point and then you have all the attention that you want.
Speaker B:But if you'll come to her when she's taking care of her kids and coming from one job to another, you'll lose her.
Speaker A:You know what I find so impressive and so interesting about your whole career is that I think the way it looks to me is you've had really one main idea, and that's translation.
Speaker A:That taking good science, great science, and making it genuinely useful.
Speaker A:What do you think has been the hardest part of turning good science into something that genuinely improves people's lives?
Speaker B:I think it's exactly the translation.
Speaker B:How can you make it exciting and something that the user will be obsessed with?
Speaker B:So it's all about how do you communicate it to them?
Speaker B:Because the science is not easy.
Speaker B:But to find the science, especially today, everyone can open cloth and ask, okay, what should I do in order to sleep better?
Speaker B:And Claude will give it to you.
Speaker B:It might not be as good as Infatracker, but it will be 90% of that.
Speaker B:And then you can do that.
Speaker B:The question is, how can you make the person continue to do that?
Speaker B:It's very similar to when you go every, I don't know, six months to the hygienist in the dentist, so couple of weeks before you are brushing your teeth.
Speaker B:Well, because you don't want her to shout at you, say that you're not doing it, let's say a week later, you continue to do that, then you forget and then how can we fill up the five months that the dead five months that the person doesn't brush his teeth or taking a good action on his mouth hygiene to do it?
Speaker B:Well, it's very hard because even the dentistry domain haven't found a good solution for that.
Speaker B:So that's a very important point.
Speaker B:And I think that we can learn a lot from the social media, all the Facebook and what the heck, why are they obsessed with that?
Speaker B:People are spending, I don't know, five hours a day on that.
Speaker B:It's completely waste of time, isn't it?
Speaker B:But still they are doing that.
Speaker B:So how can we move them from Facebook to O and whoop and I don't know and Insta Tracker?
Speaker B:That's the big question in my opinion.
Speaker B:Or maybe go to meta and tell them, okay, let's inject into Meta the inside the King Kardashian and all of that.
Speaker B:Insert some health recommendations that will people anyway watching that.
Speaker B:So, so let them watch that and maybe you will make them addicted to that.
Speaker B:So I think that that's the big question, in my opinion.
Speaker B:How can you get their attention?
Speaker A:Well, how can you?
Speaker B:It's happened, it's happening, They've done it.
Speaker B:So I think that it's not a question of is it possible.
Speaker B:It is possible.
Speaker B:The question is how can we do that?
Speaker B:So we need to learn and understand all the tools that they are using and then translate it to the health and wellness and implement it in a way that instead of users spending five hours on Instagram, maybe we spend five hours on Insta Tracker or OA or whoop.
Speaker B:And that will be the solution because you know, we are making more than 200 nutritious decision in a day.
Speaker B:What to eat, how much to eat, where to eat.
Speaker B:We have 8,000 different kind of foods and those decision if you will educate the user enough.
Speaker B:Oh, I am, I'm really frustrated.
Speaker B:I need chocolate.
Speaker B:So at that time if you can catch the person come and say maybe meta is the solution because they have the meta glasses.
Speaker B:So when you see him running into the the chocolate cabinet or opening the ch them say hey, no, no, no, maybe, maybe take an apple.
Speaker B:So I think that finding the person at the point of a decision and then come I I think that if they will come to me and say hey, change the chocolate to apple.
Speaker B:I'm just giving the chocolate as an example.
Speaker B:I really frustrated.
Speaker B:I need a beer.
Speaker B:So at that time, okay, maybe drink water instead of that or whatever.
Speaker B:I think that that's what we can do because I think that if we will communicate it in the right way to the person at the right time at the decision point, there is a good chance that they will do that.
Speaker B:You know, our body is the most important machine that we have and it's not easy.
Speaker B:It's not like my dryer of the clothes got broken, so it's not a problem.
Speaker B:Now I can buy a new one and that's it.
Speaker B:I cannot do it with my body or my brain.
Speaker B:You cannot go to the shop and buy a new brain or a new body.
Speaker B:So we need to maintain, we have to maintain it well in order to have our brain or body for the next decades, if not longer.
Speaker A:Tell me something.
Speaker A:Very few scientists have had the opportunity to watch their own ideas tested against years of real world data from, from so many people that doesn't just confirm ideas, sometimes it forces you to abandon them.
Speaker A:What's one conclusion that you were genuinely convinced of 15 years ago or 20 years ago that the data has since forced you to rethink or behavior of people?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think that for example, I can give you a point about instatracker because we published a few papers and just recently, a few months ago, we published a paper on a cohort of 20,000 people that we followed them for some of them for more than a decade.
Speaker B:And you can see that if people are testing and then receiving some recommendation and then testing again, you can see that a lot of them are improving, but it's not for everyone.
Speaker B:So if you look at a specific person, you can see that some are improving and some are not improving.
Speaker B:And we have seen that there is a correlation between improvement and taking action.
Speaker B:So for example, we've seen that it's very easy to show it.
Speaker B:It's not a rocket science, but someone that started with low vitamin D and they consume vitamin D supplement, improve his vitamin D. But we also have seen that people that accumulated most steps on average improve better their cholesterol than people that haven't accumulated more steps.
Speaker B:So you are starting to see to open the Cremono and try to understand in the population, but also you can look at and of one experiment to see that there is really a action reaction.
Speaker B:And what is written in the scientific publication is true, but it's not always true to everyone.
Speaker B:So it's getting back to let's try to understand you better, how your blood look like, how is your DNA, how is your digital biomarkers look like and based on that to, to build a plan for you that is very personalized for you.
Speaker B:But at the end of the day.
Speaker B:Even if someone built you the best plan, you need to be engaged and do that if you want.
Speaker B:And nobody can take care of the plan.
Speaker B:So you need to do the plan to implement the plan and you need to continue to, to do that.
Speaker B:So I think that what I learned is for that are a few points.
Speaker B:First, what we build is great, but it's again focus on the let's say 5 million engaged type A population.
Speaker B:It's not something that the average person that walking the street of Boston or London will do it.
Speaker B:So we need to simplify it and we need to understand and we need to build.
Speaker B:The personalization is not only whether you have high cholesterol or high glucose, it's also how do you react?
Speaker B:Do you like to receive a feedback, a tough feedback, Someone that's shouting at you?
Speaker B:Some people like it or someone that oh, it's okay, yesterday was bad, but today will be better.
Speaker B:So there are, there are different way to communicate it and then there are also a different motivation.
Speaker B:So again, going back to the behavioral science and I think that it's very hard to do it.
Speaker B:I haven't seen anyone doing a good job in that.
Speaker B:There is one company called Noom that is more like a company that working on a diet that basically using some behavioral science but still there, even then they have a lot of room to go.
Speaker B:And I think that that's, that's the key.
Speaker B:How are you making the user of your digital health app addicted to the app?
Speaker B:And when he is missing something, he will feel so bad that tomorrow will do better.
Speaker B:And again don't.
Speaker B:You don't need to shame him because everyone is making a mistake.
Speaker B:But you need to make him feel that okay, it was today, that's okay, it's gone.
Speaker B:But how can I do better tomorrow and always think like that?
Speaker B:I think that that's the way to.
Speaker B:Because again if we are going to the basic.
Speaker B:Maybe 80% of our well has is based on our lifestyle.
Speaker B:Even if you got a very bad gene and all of that, even in Alzheimer, which is crazy.
Speaker B:I, I just Learned it recently.
Speaker B:45% Of the things that get you into Alzheimer can be controlled by you.
Speaker B:So if you will eat well and exercise well and keep your eyesight well and hearing well and so on, there are 15 different variable.
Speaker B:You have around 50% less chance to have Alzheimer's.
Speaker B:Think about it.
Speaker B:That's crazy.
Speaker B:That's amazing.
Speaker B:So what I'm saying again, a lot of it, not all, but a lot of it in our control.
Speaker B:But we need to Work for that.
Speaker B:And there is no silver bullet.
Speaker B:It's not like if someone comes to say, hey, just take this supplement, you are okay.
Speaker B:No, it's.
Speaker B:There is no something like that.
Speaker B:I haven't seen it.
Speaker A:Let me ask you a bit of a personal question.
Speaker A:Do you think building a company made you a better scientist or has remaining a scientist made you a better founder?
Speaker B:It's a good question.
Speaker B:I think that being a scientist allowed me not to go too far to commercialization and stay as close as possible to the science, but in another way.
Speaker B:And again, it's a question of what is your goal?
Speaker B:If your goal is to help people to live longer, better, that's good.
Speaker B:But I could make some changes that will make me a lot of money.
Speaker B:So the question is again, what is the end goal?
Speaker B:If the end goal is to help more people to live better, yes, it is.
Speaker B:If the goal is to make more money, the answer is no.
Speaker B:Because you are less flexible to take a direction that are more commercialized and might not be the best for the user, but it's the best for the company.
Speaker A:So that brings us to something very current.
Speaker A:Only a couple of months ago, after 17 years, you announced that you were stepping down from your operational role at InsightTracker.
Speaker A:I think you called it passing the torch.
Speaker A:I'm sure you didn't take this decision lightly.
Speaker A:Tell us why you took it now and what your plans are.
Speaker A:Must be something very exciting.
Speaker B:The reason for that is the company grew and you got to a point that the decision are more business decision and what need to be done is more business and they'd say less developing a new solution and getting into the thing that I'm better in is taking an idea and bringing it to the market and taking maybe a scientific idea and bringing it to the market and building it in the right way.
Speaker B:So that was the reason I still a big believer in Insta Tracker and I'm supporting it as much as I can and I will always be the founder of the company.
Speaker B:What is next is exactly what we discussed in the last, I don't know, 50 minutes or so is I'm obsessed of how can we bring what we brought in instatracker to the longevity crowd?
Speaker B:How can we bring it to every person in the world?
Speaker B:How can we communicate it?
Speaker B:How can we deliver it?
Speaker B:How can we make everyone in the world, not the wealthy healthy and the longevity obsessed, living better, longer?
Speaker B:I'm trying right now in my, let's say second career to do that to.
Speaker B:To take it to that point and Allow everyone in the world to live better, longer.
Speaker A:What a goal to have in life.
Speaker A:Let's zoom out a little bit just to finish off.
Speaker A:After spending almost two decades at the center of personalized health, what do you think the longevity field as a whole is currently overestimating, underestimating or simply just getting completely wrong?
Speaker B:Yeah, no, it's, it's a good question.
Speaker B:I, I think that I don't see us living to 200 years in the next decade or so.
Speaker B:So I think that there are some people that are claiming that I don't see an intervention that other than lifestyle intervention, basically food, supplement, exercise, sleep and so on that can allow us to increase either the, the lifespan or the healthspan.
Speaker B:So I think that that's one point that people overestimate or exaggerate and that's okay.
Speaker B:There are some people that that's their job because they need to be the beacon that they will follow it, but in more positive way.
Speaker B:I think that there are several development in the longevity domain that maybe in a couple of decade or more that might allow us to break the limit.
Speaker B:And the limit today is 122.
Speaker B:That's the longest lived human that we, we really believe that happen.
Speaker B:How can we cause that?
Speaker B:I think that it's possible, it's doable and there are a few interesting technologies that are under a study.
Speaker B:Some of them are even in the clinical studies.
Speaker B:But it will take time.
Speaker B:It's a.
Speaker B:And it's good that it's taking time because there is regulation because I feel that a lot of them might be toxic in some way.
Speaker B:And yeah, they will increase the lifespan, but they increase your cancer chance or other diseases.
Speaker B:So we need to be sure that everything is working well before we are bringing it to the mass market.
Speaker A:And what excites you most in the next decades?
Speaker B:You mean related to new technologies?
Speaker A:Anything.
Speaker B:For me it's again, how can we disseminate what we learn and what we build for the small audience of the longevity seekers, how can we expand it to everyone in the world and somehow by that allow everyone to live better, longer and allow us then to be more efficient and less diseases and allow us to enjoy life.
Speaker A:What a positive note to finish on.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:Before I let you go, I'm going to ask you the five rapid fire questions I ask all my guests.
Speaker A:What's the single best piece of advice you would give your younger self?
Speaker B:Yeah, do what you like and do it well.
Speaker B:So I know that today some people are choosing their occupation based on whether they will Have a job or it's good job or paying well.
Speaker B:I think that everyone should do what they like, because when you're doing what you like, you'll find you enjoy it.
Speaker B:And when you enjoy it, you will do a good job.
Speaker A:Name one habit everyone should adopt for a longer, healthier life.
Speaker B:One habit.
Speaker B:There are many.
Speaker B:But I can say that sleep is very important.
Speaker B:So try to optimize it and I can talk about it for five hours, but yeah, you can again run it in a cloth.
Speaker B:And you will find all of that sleep is underestimated as it's so important.
Speaker B:So sleep well and be sure that you are getting the most from your sleep.
Speaker A:The next one is a very tough one for you because I know you took that decision when you were 12 years old, but if you weren't in longevity science, what career would you have chosen?
Speaker B:Yeah, I was really interested in actually in physics.
Speaker B:And I remember as a young kid in Israel, I drove to Jerusalem to the patent office of Israel with an idea for how can we make energy better.
Speaker B:So I assume that I will be a physicist.
Speaker A:That's amazing.
Speaker A:How old were you when you did that?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:It was before, maybe before 12, so maybe 10 or something like that.
Speaker A:That's amazing.
Speaker A:What?
Speaker A:Microdose habit, sort of five minutes routine or small daily action yields outsized longevity benefits.
Speaker B:Most of us, I would say not all of us, are sitting too much.
Speaker B:So if you can move every hour for five minutes, that can give you a lot of value.
Speaker B:So don't sit all the day, but break it by some movement.
Speaker B:It's also good for your brain.
Speaker B:And people are saying, no, I'm too busy.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker B:And I'm saying, no, you're not too busy, because those five minutes will clean your brain and then you can be more focusing the next 15.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And last but not least, what's the craziest longevity myth you've encountered and is there any truth to it?
Speaker B:There are so many, but the craziest.
Speaker A:Pick one.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Yeah, there is.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I don't want to offend anyone, so maybe I will keep it to myself.
Speaker A:Okay, fair enough.
Speaker B:Let me be politically correct.
Speaker A:Yeah, okay, I let you off the hook.
Speaker A:Listen, thank you so much for being on Beyond Longevity today.
Speaker A:It was such an amazing conversation.
Speaker A:And, you know, like you said, we could have just talked about loads of things for hours on end, not just about sleep, but it was really amazing.
Speaker A:Hope to have you on again and especially with your new project.
Speaker A:So good luck with that and keep us updated.
Speaker B:Thank you so much, Daphne.
Speaker B:It was a pleasure.
Speaker A:Dr. Gil Blunder has spent much of his career asking how you take good science and make it useful in the real world.
Speaker A:And after 17 years building InsightTracker, the problem he wants to solve next may be even harder.
Speaker A:Because the next breakthrough in personalized health may not be another test, another wearable, or simply more data.
Speaker A:We already know that a great deal about how to live healthier lives.
Speaker A:The harder problem is human behavior.
Speaker A:How do you close the gap between knowing what improves health and changing what people actually do?
Speaker A:And how do you build something that works with human behavior rather than against it so people can make healthier choices and keep making them, not for a week or two, but for the long term?
Speaker A:This is where Dr. Gill is focusing his second career, taking what personalized health has achieved for a relatively small, highly engaged longevity community and finding a way to make it work for everyone.
Speaker A:Thank you for listening to Beyond Longevity, and I hope you join us again for the next episode.
Speaker A:Please rate, review and subscribe sa.
