367: Medicine 3.0: Preventing Disease and Optimizing Your Health with Dr. Jared Pelo

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 367.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host Amber Brueseke. And today we are having a conversation that could literally change the course of your future because we're talking about your health in a way that most doctors don't. Let's be real. Most of us, myself included, grew up in a healthcare system that's very reactive. You go to the doctor when something goes wrong, right? You get a prescription, you get treatment, maybe some advice, then you're sent on your way. This is what Dr. Pediatia calls medicine 2.0. It's the old school model of waiting until disease shows up and then trying to fix it. But you're probably already seeing the problem. By the time you feel the symptoms, the damage is already happening. And that's why today's guest, Dr. Jared Pelo is on a mission to really change how we think about health. And he is part of a broad movement called Medicine 3.0, which is a proactive-prevention-first approach that isn't just about treating disease, but about how can we avoid it altogether. I mean, if you think about it, would you rather patch holes in a sinking boat or reinforce it before the storm ever even hits? If you would like to do the latter, that's what this episode is all about, about taking back control of your health before those problems even arise. So in this episode, we're diving into what are some of the small shifts that you can start to make today that will impact your future health? What is the data that actually matters? Because man, it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the data you could be gathering. So what is the most important data? Why cardio and strength training aren't just about aesthetics and how we look, but they're really about how to stay mobile and independent for years to come. And then how do you create those lasting health habits that don't just fizzle out after those first two weeks? Now I know preventative health can feel a little overwhelming because listen, there's so much information out there, but don't worry. Dr. Pelo is breaking it down today in a way that's very clear. It's very doable and hopefully it feels even empowering and exciting to you. So if you've ever thought, gosh, I know I should take my health more seriously, but where do I even start? This episode is going to be your guide. So let's get into it. 

Amber B 03:09

I am so excited to welcome to the podcast today. Dr. Jared Pelo. Welcome. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 03:15

Amber, thank you so much for having me. 

Amber B 03:17

I'm very excited about the conversation we're going to have, because it is right in the realm of the thing that I think I love to talk about a lot is a little bit unique about me. And that's the background of medicine that I have being a nurse and then having my husband be a physician. And that's actually how the two of us know each other is my husband did fellowship in North Carolina and that's where we met. So give us a little quick introduction of yourself and a little bit about what you do.

Dr. Jared Pelo 03:42

Yeah. So I'm an Emergency Medicine Physician by training. And 10 years ago I got this entrepreneurial itch and I started a company and we recorded doctor-patient conversations with the idea that someday AI would write notes for doctors. And that happens now, if you go see your doctor, they might use a phone to record you and AI will write their notes so they can pay attention to you instead of their computers. And then something happened like, let's see, it was four years ago now. My brother-in-law who was a great friend of mine, he married into the family when I was 10 years old. He was like my brother. He was on a bike ride in Southern Utah. He was super fit. Uh, 62 years old, had a heart attack and died. And, uh, it, like it was kind of a wake up call to me, like because I've been at the beach with him a few weeks earlier. And he had even said, Jared, you know, I'm not riding as good as I used to, like something's going on. He had this family history. Like he was actually like one of the older people in his family. Like people had died of heart attacks and strokes, but he was always bugging me about green smoothies. And I was like, this guy's fine. Like it's totally fine. Um, but that happened in this was like this kind of wake up moment for me around like, Hey, he didn't have to die. Like we could have prevented that. And so it started me on this journey of trying to figure out like, how can we prevent more deaths? How can we help people live longer, healthier lives? And so that's what I do today is I am a co-founder of a company called Bionic Health, and we are a virtual medical clinic and we work with people to help them live the healthiest, longest life they can have. 

Amber B 05:24

So good. And it's, I feel like we're really moving in. We talked before we hit record about Peter Tia's Outlived. And I think we're really moving into this, this next phase of medicine. He calls it Medicine 3.0, where it's really about, let's stop just treating the things that happen. And can we start preventing them? And I think preventative health is such a buzzword these days, um, because the way we use medicine has always been, let's treat it when it goes wrong, but if we can prevent it, that's, that's so much better and not even have to get to the treatment. So can you kind of, that was just like really high level of like medicine. Can you give us a little bit deeper idea of the shift that's, that's kind of currently happening in the medical field? 

Dr. Jared Pelo 06:05

I mean, you really kind of nailed it. It is like, let's prevent disease. Let's not just wait until it happens to treat it. And, you know, being in the ER, I felt like I was always too late. Like somebody came in, had a heart attack. I remember I diagnosed this woman with lung cancer and she starts crying. And she's like, I just went to the funeral of somebody that was in here two weeks ago. And I was like, you're not going to die in two weeks. She was like, they got diagnosed two weeks ago with cancer and now they're dead. And I was like, you're not going to die. And you know, the ER gods like listened. And two weeks later, I actually took care of her when she died. Um, and I just like that kind of disease and waiting until disease happens. I just think why, why in this day and age when we have so much science that tells us how to detect disease, how to think about risk differently. And I know it's a, it is a big mindset shift for physicians because we're treated or we're trained to recognize the disease, then treat it. 

And so it's a big mindset shift to say, okay, let's actually just think about risk and what's somebody's risk of disease and then identify those risks and decrease those risks and try to make it so they never have the disease. Um, so that's really the goal is like, can you make it so that people don't get diseases, especially the most common diseases like heart disease, dementia, diabetes, cancer, like how do you prevent those diseases as best possible? 

Amber B 07:40

Yeah. I'm curious your thought, because we both experienced the medical institution and the medical training system. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 07:47

Yeah, yeah.

Amber B 07:47

And there is a lot of entrenchment in the medical training system. It's very long. It is run by people who were a generation older than you. So there tends to be a little bit of like lag in terms of what's happening now and what's being taught to the trainees. And I wonder if you have any insight into how, like what that shift can start to look like. Because until we start training doctors in this way, it's not going to bleed out into how medicine is actually delivered to patients. Do you have any insight as to how, if that's happening yet or what we can be doing to be able to make that happen a little bit more? 

Dr. Jared Pelo 08:28

Yeah, no, that's, that's a great question. And I mean, it's true. Medicine is usually practiced 10 years behind the science. 

Amber B 08:36

Yeah. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 08:36

So, um, and training is, is far behind. There are some good shifts. Like I'll give an example, like the American College of Cardiology, they used to use a 10 year risk calculator for heart disease. Now they have a 30 year risk calculator, which I think that's helpful. Instead of waiting until your risk is super high at 10 years, I can look at it at 30 years and start making adjustments. Um, and, and then I think there is this movement with Peter, people, people like Peter Atiyah talking. There are a lot of physicians listening. And in thinking through this, but then you asked like, what can we do personally? And I really think it's like educating ourselves and preparing ourselves to talk to our physicians when we go in and having the right questions to ask. So it might be reading Outlived by Peter Atiyah might be engaging with a service like bionic health. It might be, you know, finding something that helps you educate yourself and know how to talk about it. It's really hard as a healthcare like a consumer though. Like it can be so overwhelming to know, like, what do I do? Like even Peter Atiyah's book can be overwhelming. 

Amber B 09:42

It’s super overwhelming. Well, yeah. And this was, this was one of my things that I wanted to kind of pick your brain about is that, I mean, I think one of the reasons that medicine has stayed on the treatment model so long is that we can see if it works right there. There's feedback really quickly of like, is this tumor getting smaller? Is it not? So we can get that feedback where that feedback is a lot harder to attain with something like prevention because if it works, you don't really know because we're just always waiting for like if it doesn't work. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 10:10

Right. Yeah.

Amber B 10:11

And, and there is a lot of, there's a lot of data out there. There's a lot of different perspectives. There's a lot of how much zone two you should do versus how not. And it can be very confusing for consumers. I was actually on a Reddit thread just recently and someone was saying that they had dropped like over a hundred thousand dollars over the last year trying to do different like MRIs and all this, you know, all the like spending as much money as possible to get as many answers as possible in this realm. And he was left at the end of that a hundred thousand dollars saying, I don't really, I still don't really know what I'm doing well, what I need to improve on. So how can we as consumers in a very confusing field, in a very confusing space with lots of people who are really loud and not a ton of real answers, how can we navigate that too? Cause I think we all agree prevention. Good. Yes. We want prevention. The question becomes how do we prevent and how do we navigate that as consumers to be able to not lose our minds, but start to make good progress in that way?

Dr. Jared Pelo 11:11

It's such a good question because everybody is so loud and most people who are loud, they, they have something they want to sell and some of it I think is great. Like obviously I have something I want to sell. You have something you want to sell. And I both think we're selling like really important things. Um, but I think as a consumer, it's good to realize like people are motivated by different things. Uh, number one, number two, I, I like frameworks. And so for like preventative medicine, I'll generally use a framework similar to Peter Atiya and, and the way that I kind of say it is like, there's two things if you do well in life that you're going to live a long, healthy life. One is don't die. So identify what's going to kill you. And prevent it. And number two is stay strong and mobile as long as possible.

Amber B 11:57

Yeah. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 11:58

If, if you do those two things, that's the key. Now both of those things, you know, as you dig into it become much more complicated. So like the guy who spent a hundred thousand dollars, he was trying to figure out how not to die. Um, and so then it's good to use a framework, like read Peter Atiya's book, which is hard. Um, and that's really why we started Bionic Health is we're like, you know, it's so confusing out there. What if we made a system that was just like step-by-step, like you sign up with us and trust us and we're going to step you through like how to prevent these diseases. And we're going to have doctors in the loop. We're going to have coaches and we're going to help you make lifestyle changes. And so like, that's one way to do it. If you're going to do it on your own, I think it just takes a lot of education. 

Amber B 12:41

Yeah.

Dr. Jared Pelo 12:42

Um, and that's hard, but I think doable. 

Amber B 12:47

Yeah. I'm curious your insight into making lifestyle changes. It's, it's easy to say and very hard to do. So what insight do you have for people who are in the realm of trying to make those lifestyle changes? They're coming up against all of the mental emotional reality challenges that come with actually not just doing something for two weeks, but actually making that lifestyle change. What insight do you have as to how we can actually make lifestyle changes stick? 

Dr. Jared Pelo 13:17

Well, it's funny. I send out an email every two weeks and this week I sent out the one about how by now 80% of people have stopped their new year's resolutions. Um, and so like, yeah, how do you make lifestyle changes? And to me, I kind of like to use a few things. So number one, progress before perfection. So I really liked Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset and the not yet. So you say like, I didn't eat healthy today yet or I'm not eating healthy yet. I don't exercise yet. Like you leave it open. Like it's going to get, you're going to work on it. Um, that's number one. Number two, I like to think of habit change rather than goals. Um, and so coming up with systems and I really liked tiny habits by BJ Fog or Atomic Habits by James Claire. And I think they're both great books. I actually like BJ is a little bit better. It's a little bit more science-based. Uh, James Claire has a bunch of stuff from BJ in his book, but both layout, like you make small changes, you come up with like little, you know, stacking habits and different hacks to like make it easy. Um, and then number three, self-compassion, uh, know that you'll fail and that you have to like forgive yourself and get back on, on the horse. And I think if you do those things, which is like a lot of learning in life, but if you do those things, then you can continue to make changes. Like I imagine when you first started like deadlifting compared to what you could deadlift then to what you can deadlift now, it's tremendously different. 

Amber B 14:57

Yeah. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 14:58

Um, and so expecting that we're going to reach that point in one step, like we're going to go from not eating healthy, not exercising to being awesome at it. It's kind of crazy. 

Amber B 15:08

Yeah, no, it's so good. I love those. Those are three really concrete things and things that I teach like all the time. So it's always wonderful to have someone else repeat, repeat them from a, you know, the mouth of two witnesses. Um,

Dr. Jared Pelo 15:20

That’s right.

Amber B 15:21

One thing I'd love to talk about is the difference between like when we talk about longevity, a lot of times people just think it's like living till we're older, but, but that's not really the goal because if we're living till we're older, but we're in a nursing home and to your point, we're not strong and we can't feed ourselves or be there ourselves or anything. That's not really the life that we're wanting to live. So how do we really focus on not just living longer and extending that period that day we die, but actually living better? 

Dr. Jared Pelo 15:49

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Cause we've all seen people like, we've seen the 70 year old who's like running at the track or going on a hike and we're like, Oh, and then we see the 70 year old who's already in a nursing home. 

Amber B 15:58

Right. Yeah. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 15:59

And those are two very different existences. Like they're both experiencing life at the same age, but totally different existences. And so I think one is like understanding that that's what we want. We want something called health span. Like it's not just lifespan, it's health span. We want to keep our health as long as possible. And then number two, deciding that we're going to actually make changes to work on it. And I would say it's never too late to start, but it's always better if you start earlier. And so the earlier you start thinking about these things, making the habit changes, like the easier it's going to be for your lifetime. But that's how I like to think about it is yeah. Longevity, like I don't want to be in a nursing home. I don't want to be on a ventilator. Like I want to be running around with my grandkids as long as I possibly can.

Amber B 16:46

Yeah. I've shared this story before, but it was such a shift for my husband that, you know, you know, you know, Jared going through med school and residency, it's like a lot of time and it encapsulates your whole life basically. And so there wasn't a whole lot of working out going on during that period of his life.And during fellowship, he took care of a patient. He had a woman come into his office and she wasn't even really that old. I think she was in like her sixties, maybe early seventies. And he needed to do an exam on her and she literally could not lift her own leg up. So they had to have, you know, AIDS come in to be able to like literally one at a time, lift her legs up into the stirrups. And it was that moment that my husband realized how important strength was and, and seeing that, you know, strength is going to decline as we age. And if we don't have a basis of strength, as we go through that, then you're going to get to the point where you're 60 years old and you can't even lift your legs up by yourself. You need help. And that was such a defining moment for him to see that in a patient. Uh, and he started lifting after that. That was, that was the turning point for him of saying that this is something I have to prioritize. And of course he was in fellowship. So he had a little bit more time than he did prior in his training. But it was, it was a moment for him of realization of like, I need to build a reservoir of strength and he's lifted ever since. But I think that goes to show that again, the goal is not to extend your life. The goal is to extend your quality of life. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 18:06

That's right. 

Amber B 18:07

That was very different.

Dr. Jared Pelo 18:08

Totally agree. Yeah. 

Amber B 18:10

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, one, one thing that I would love to talk about is data. Cause I love to talk about data, right? It's one of the things that I'm helping women to become a macro scientist and really be able to look at the data that their body's giving them, get familiar with that data and then make adjustments based on off of that data in the longevity space, in the health span space, there's a ton of data that you can gather, right? This guy spends a hundred thousand dollars on different data gathering things that he can get to understand his body more. There's wearables. Now we almost have like so much data that it's almost overwhelming for people. What it, what are really good data points that we can start with that are kind of the actual baseline data points that everybody should know or everybody should be familiar with before we get into the deep dive data points of, I don't know, where would you kind of draw that line of someone who's just tiptoeing into the space? What are the first data points that they should know about themselves that kind of reflect where they are in their, in their health? 

Dr. Jared Pelo 19:07

Great question. So I'll try to make it simple cause I can, there's so much data. I could do so many different things. Um, I think when you look at wearable data, the easiest is resting heart rate. Um, so if you can get your resting heart rate below 60 as male or female, like that's pretty good. 

Amber B 19:24

Yes. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 19:25

Um, now let's look at a step up. Like the best thing would be to go do a VO two max test. And that's where you're on a treadmill or on a bike and you wear a mask and it's measuring how much oxygen is moving in and out. And the reason that's the best is it's actually the best predictor of lifespan. Like that's going to tell you like it is the best. If you picked any biomarker that we have, that is the best at picking mortality, like how long you're going to live. And the reason is because you can't fake it. It's not like you can just like start taking a medicine and raise your level. Like you actually have to like build up to that over time. And so VO2 max is a really good measure of telling you where you're at and where you need to go. And I'll generally recommend, you want to be like 75th percentile for your age on a VO2 max. 

Amber B 20:11

Where do you get the VO2 Max done? 

Dr. Jared Pelo 20:13

Yeah. So you can usually just like Google search. There's a service called fitness city that like tries to like bring these services together. Cause the other service I like is a DEXA scan, which is a body composition scan to see like how much muscle you have, how strong your bones are. Um, and you know, this like weight is only one, one data point. It's, and it's honestly not that helpful of a data point. If, if you're full of muscle, you might be heavy, but like, that's awesome. Like your body is made of muscle. Um, so I really like a DEXA scan as well. And fitness city also is, uh, you could find DEXA scanners through that. And then blood work, I would say it kind of depends on, so let's just go through the diseases. So number one, heart disease, biggest killer. Uh, the best blood test is called apolipoprotein B or APO-B. And uh, the second test that I recommend is LPa. LPa is a protein in your blood that is six times worse than LDL, but it's genetic. So not everybody has it. 20% of the population have it. And so if you have a family history of heart disease, you're actually supposed to get screened, but almost nobody does. So 20% have it. 1% of the population gets screened. So if you have a history of heart disease, you need to ask your doctor, Hey, can you screen my LPa, um, and then, you know, diabetes, I would say you can hemoglobin A1C is okay, but now there's over the counter continuous glucose monitors. Uh, Dexcom has one called Stella has one called, I'd have to look up there's, I can't remember what it's called. I actually use the Dexcom one. And then, um, cancer I'd say the best test today is probably the gallery test, which is a liquid biopsy test that we'll check for. It's called cell free DNA of cancer. So it's a blood test you can do and it'll screen you for almost every type of cancer from a blood test. Um, and it's really interesting how they found out that this works. It was supposed to be a test that was used in pregnant ladies and they, it was to predict sex of the child. And they started seeing these weird spikes in the test and all of those women had tumors. Uh, and so that's how they figured out like, Oh, you can see cancer in this test. And so that's an expensive test. It's a thousand dollars today. Um, but for cancer, that's what I do. And then for dementia, I'll say we don't have great tests yet. At least not that like predict way far out. There are blood tests now, uh, from lab core that we'll look at those. Uh, their panel is called ATN, which is amyloid, which is one of them. How is the other and neurofilament light protein I believe is the last. And so those are showing to be able to show if you've got like, if you're close to having Alzheimer's, but that's kind of too late. Like you want to, you want to prevent that earlier. Um, and you can do a genetic test that will do some of that prediction for you. But the best thing for Alzheimer's is honestly good metabolic health. So getting your glucose and exercising a bunch, uh, lactate seems to be really good for your brain. So zone five. Um, so anyways, that was a really long answer on best biomarkers, but yeah. 

Amber B 23:43

Yeah, no, I mean, it's great. And the, the thing that I was thinking the whole time that you were talking is, gosh, we're just going to require such a shift in the way that we deliver medicine in this, in this, in this country to be able to get to a place where that is accessible to a large amount of people. Right. Because right now, financially, my guess is that most insurances are not going to cover all of this preventative care. And it's like, so then you're paying out of pocket. And then how often do you need to do these? Right. It's like because the point in time that we are right now, you're going to be at a different point in time a year from now. So now we're repeating these. And it just made me think, man, like we're on this precipice. And I hope we go there. Like, I hope our healthcare system really understands that if we can prevent things from a monetary standpoint, it is going to make you more money. And I think once that aligns, then things start to move. Once people realize they can make more money than it, then it will start to move. But just getting to that point where this can be something that, that a majority of the population, not just the elite or not just the rich can afford to be able to understand where their health is and then be able to make changes from that. The second thing that I was thinking about was are, do I just imagine myself that I went and did all of these tests and then I got all the data and the feedback from them, my ability to be able to analyze what needs to happen now is, is quite low. And I also think that if I took it to my, my primary care physician, their idea of what I should do might be quite low. So how does, how does one, if you do have the financial resources at this point to take the, to do those tests, how do you then take the feedback and then do something with it to be able to improve your health? 

Dr. Jared Pelo 25:26

I mean, so if you stated really good points, like this, this kind of medicine is not available to everybody today. Our insurance isn't set up this way. Like you said, incentives are to treat disease, not prevent disease. And maybe someday we get to a point where we want to prevent disease when incentives are aligned there. So if you have the means to do it, then most likely it's looking for a physician that practices medicine 3.0. And if you find that physician, then they can, they can guide you through and know like, this is how often you should have this test done. And there's always trade-offs and often monetary trade-offs. Like do you do a gallery test every year, a thousand bucks a year to screen for cancer? But if it catches cancer at stage one, which that's the thing with cancer, like preventing is very difficult, but screening is the most important. And if you catch stage one, it's almost always curable stage three, not so much. And so, yeah, there's, there's always those trade-offs, but that's what I'd recommend it. If you're really interested in this kind of like receiving this kind of medicine, then you need to search out somebody that can deliver it for you. 

Amber B 26:40

Yeah. I love that, that even that point of trade-offs, I think sometimes we just think it's like a panacea and there is always trade-offs and maybe currently there is a monetary trade-off and that's going to be worth it for some people and not for others. I mean, I think even if we can just get to the basis of like, like you said, resting heart rate is free. We can get that for free. A lot of insurances will cover something like an A1C or a lipid panel or things like that. And then the other thing I think is really helpful to mention right here is like, you don't actually even have to have that data to start making the changes that we just know are going to improve your health, right? Like, even if you don't know your VO2 max, you going out and doing some cardio is going to benefit your health. So whether or not you have the data to pack that up, like go out and do some cardio. And I think you and I would both agree that it's like, if we can get more people doing more cardio, strength training, eating better, like that's, that's most of the battle drinking less alcohol, right? Like those things is like, we concretely know that the more cardio you do, the more weightlifting you do, the better you eat, the less alcohol you consume and the more less stress you have in your life, the more healthy you're going to be. And so it's like not getting hung up. If you, if you just listen to that list and they're like, Oh gosh, I can't afford that. Or that's way too much. It's like you can still make the changes that are going to impact your health without the data. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 27:58

Yeah. I love that point. Yeah. I mean, I like good data. 

Amber B 28:03

Same.

Dr. Jared Pelo 28:04

I like the best data, but you don't have to have it. Like you said, and even like VO2 max, there's what's called sub maximal tests. And you can do this just with a heart rate strap or a smartwatch. And it's a walking test. You walk, um, and you see what your heart rate is, and then you can estimate your VO2 max. And, uh, there are all sorts of ways to do this. But like you said, the most important things are all of those fundamental things that you have to do. And I know it's hard and overwhelming for people to think, well, I have to start eating healthy. I have to start exercising. I have to like make these changes. But then I think it goes back to, like you said, you say these things that I say all the time, like small changes, progress over perfection. It's okay. We'll get there eventually. 

Amber B 28:52

Yeah. Yeah. All of those things. Exactly. Yeah. I think it's really, it's really easy to get excited, to get excited. And I think a lot of people don't do it from a place of excitement of like, Oh, I'm going to, I want to, I want to prevent disease. I want to be healthier. And so I need to do five things to be healthier. And so I'm going to try and do all of them. It comes from a place of excitement, but when you recognize that even if it comes from a place of excitement and motivation right now, it's not going to create, it's not going to create the long-term change that you want and doing it slower may not feel as exciting to you, but it's actually going to be more sustainable and it's going to be better for your health in the long run. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 28:23

Exactly. Yeah. 

Amber B 29:25

Okay. I'm super curious about your answer to this question because you had mentioned that when you were doing the scribe stuff that you had already seen in the future, that like AI was going to be something that we were going to be able to utilize. I didn't even know what AI was. And someone told me about Chad GPT two years ago and I was, I was floored, right? So my, my brain's not thinking like that. Sounds like yours is and technology is evolving so fast. So what do you see as like, what are we on the edge of or what are some of the next things that are coming in terms of preventative health, biofeedback, biomarkers, medicine, things like that. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 29:58

It's going to be so interesting because there's, there's going to be two things happening at the same time, better tools for clinicians and better tools for patients. 

Amber B 30:06

Yeah.

Dr. Jared Pelo 30:07

And so for clinicians, it's going to be lots of the busy work, the stuff that caused the burnout, like that, that's going to be helpful for them. So for patients, this is going to be really interesting. So there's a few things happening right now. Uh, over the next couple of years, patients will be able to get their own medical records easily. And what I mean is it's not just like going and logging into your patient portal. You'll actually be able to like say, Hey, I want to send all my patient records to this service or this app. And now you can imagine, okay, what if that service or app had a really great AI that could look at all of my health data and all of my wearable data and everything, and then analyze it and give me feedback, tell me exactly what I should be doing and what I should be changing. I don't know if it'll make it any easier for people to change. Like it comes down to people needing to change. 

Amber B 31:00

Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, that's fascinating because one thing that AI really is good at that you just pointed to is AI is really good at taking a ton of data and synthesizing it. Right. And being able to break it down from a ton of data that is very overwhelming for our brains to be able to come from this data. Here's the next steps. So yeah, I can absolutely see that as being, um, my husband and I were just talking about, um, how I think diagnosing is going to, diagnosing is taking a whole bunch of data and trying to come up with a differential diagnosis of what this thing could be. I think AI will really help with that. But to your point as well as like, even if we know what to do, the doing it doesn't become any easier with AI. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 31:41

Right. Yeah.

Amber B 31:42

And so that's where a lot of the work that we have is like, once we know, we've known we need to eat healthier and exercise for like long, long time. That's not anything. Nobody's like, Oh my God, I'm so shocked. That's what you just said that we need to do. It's the actual implementation of it. And that's where we go back to, how do we build habits? How do we do this slowly? How do we make the lifestyle change? How do we, how do we change the way that we're thinking about this? That's a lot of the work that I do with my clients is it's helping them think about it differently. Think about the habits that they're doing. Think about the choices that they're making in a different way that makes it easier to stick to. And I guess what I'm, you're saying is my job isn't, isn't going anywhere with AI.

Dr. Jared Pelo 36:17

Yeah, your job isn’t going anywhere with AI. Probably be more people coming to you saying, Hey, the AI said I needed to change this. I need your help. 

Amber B 32:25

Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's so good. Okay. So if somebody let's, let's wrap this up with a really actionable takeaway. If somebody is listening to this and they are on board with this idea of, I want to prevent more disease, I want to take that preventative health measure. What is something actionable that they can do today, that just is like that first little step that like gets them on the road to making these changes over the, over a long period of time?

Dr. Jared Pelo 32:52

So I'll maybe give two things. One, educate yourself. So read Outlive, or you could go, find my podcast Medicine 3.0. Listen to that. Number two, it would be focused on a small change you're willing to make around exercise or nutrition. And if I had to choose between the two, it'd be exercise. I think that is the most important place that people aren't making changes today that they need to make changes on.

Amber B 33:20

 I love that you've said a small change you're willing to make. That was such like an important piece of that. What is a small change you're willing to make? I love, I love that. Because it really, that the willingness has to be there. The desire has to be there. It cannot be a forced thing or it's never going to stick. 

Dr. Jared Pelo 33:40

Exactly. 

Amber B 33:40

Well, this has been fantastic. Jared, where can people find you if they're wanting to explore more, learn more about what you do? 

Dr. Jared Pelo 33:46

Yeah. So bionichealth.com, uh, podcast Medicine 3.0. And yeah, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me, Amber. 

Amber B 33:56

I hope today's conversation with Dr. Pelo opened your eyes up to what's possible when we stop just waiting for problems to show up and you start taking action even before they do, because here's the truth. You don't have to wait until something is wrong before that wake up call happens to actually start caring about your health. You don't have to wait for the doctor to say, we need to talk about your cholesterol or your bone density is declining. You can start making changes now that your future self is going to thank you for. And that is the difference between reactive and proactive healthcare between medicine 2.0, where we wait for disease to happen in medicine 3.0, where we take charge of our health before we ever even reach that point. So now it's over to you. What is one small thing you're going to do differently after today? Maybe you're going to finally make strength training a priority. Maybe you're going to track your resting heart rate or schedule that checkup with your provider. Or maybe it's as simple as swapping one processed meal this week for a more whole nutrient dense one. It doesn't have to be overwhelming. In fact, it won't work if it's overwhelming. It just has to be a start. And if today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to hear about it. You can DM me on Instagram or Facebook. You can tag me in anything that you share, or you can just simply forward this episode on to a friend who maybe would love to hear this. Let's keep this conversation going because the more we talk about this, the more we normalize the idea that women deserve better health care, not just when something goes wrong, but before it ever happens. 

All right, friend until next time, keep showing up, keep making those small, powerful shifts and keep building a strong, healthy, happy life. Because my friend, you deserve it. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.

Outro

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