In conversation with Joanna Bensz, Peter Diamandis talks longevity clinics, use of wearables, motivation for change and longevity mindsets.
The Roundtable of Longevity Clinics took place at the Buck Institute in California recently. Organized by the International Institute for Longevity, the event brought together leaders and innovators from all over the world intent on identifying effective diagnostics and recommendations for longevity-focused interventions, supplements, and therapies, exploring and implementing the latest longevity trends and solutions and establishing gold standards for longevity clinics, diagnostics, and interventions.
Longevity.Technology: In attendance was entrepreneur, futurist and New York Times bestselling author Dr Peter Diamandis. Diamandis, who is also Founder & Executive Chairman of XPRIZE Foundation, sat down with Joanna Bensz of Longevity Center to share his thoughts on data, wearables, quantified self and really how AI is going to be a key tool in longevity, both at a macro level, but also at an n-of-1 level.
Peter Diamandis on…
The future of longevity clinics
There are two different parts to this future: there’s the diagnostics and the therapeutic side. The diagnostics today are expensive and involve large MRI and CT scan machines. I think that eventually, we’re going to see the same road that we’ve seen with every other technology. When we digitize something, we can dematerialize, demonetize and democratize it. This is what I call the 6 Ds of exponentials.
Much of the diagnostic side will move out of the hospitals, doctor’s offices and clinics and into the home, collecting data about you 24/7. So, I think a lot of that diagnostic side will dematerialize.
The therapeutic side, where we’re going to be delivering a whole set of advanced therapeutics, will likely be delivered in longevity centers. Today, most of these centers are 90% diagnostics and 10% therapeutics. The therapeutic side is currently limited to advice, hormone treatments, and lifestyle recommendations, but we are not yet delivering stem cells, epigenetic reprogramming, or advanced genetic treatments. I believe we’ll get there – this decade, even – and meanwhile, much of the diagnostics will occur at your home or on your person, uploaded to your AI, which is gathering data and monitoring small, micro changes throughout the day.
The role of wearables
Clinics that don’t embrace their clients’ wearable data will lose their members to those centers that do. The idea that you go once a year to get uploaded to the cloud is too infrequent – every day my data is being collected which is much more effective. I have a large venture fund that’s investing in wearable technologies, and they’re getting better and better, and more and more accurate.
Client motivation
Motivation needs to made so convenient, so easy. We’re going towards a world where we are wrapped with AI everywhere – on our bodies, in our homes, in our offices and in our cars. If you’ve ever seen the movie Iron Man, there’s Jarvis, the AI. Imagine Jarvis as your health coach. You’re going to be talking to it all the time. It’s going to help you, recognize people’s faces, remember birthdays, and make your life automatic and magical. You can turn on your health coach, and it’s going to say: “Peter, instead of taking the elevator, there are stairs right over there. Listen, don’t eat so quickly; slow down and chew your food 20 times. And before you take your first bite, take a deep breath in to activate your parasympathetic system.”
Now, imagine a future in which you’re being monitored 24/7. Your blood chemistries are being uploaded to your kitchen, and the robot in your kitchen is preparing food specifically tailored to your biochemistry that day. The food you get meets exactly your needs – your caloric intake and dietary restrictions. The idea is to make it so convenient, so easy, that you’d have to go out of your way to be unhealthy. I think that’s a future we’re looking for.
The role of mindset
I think mindset is the single most important thing. If you have a world in which your future is bigger than your past, you’re looking forward to the life you’re living into, and a longevity mindset is the understanding, the belief, tat science is getting more and more capable of extending your healthspan. At some point in the future – maybe it’s 5 years, maybe it’s 10, 15, or 20 – science is going to begin to extend your life for more than a year for every year that you’re alive.
If that’s the case, then you are going to want to take care of yourself to intercept those breakthroughs. There has to be a mindset motivation that keeps you getting up out of bed at 6 in the morning or 6:30 to go to the gym, or that has you refuse dessert, or that has you refuse an extra glass of wine.
People should stop being afraid of dying and start actually living.
