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Welcome to BIOTECH NATION !!! With understandable interviews requiring no background in science, BTN attracts a wide global audience. From everyday people looking for hope in treatments in development, to bioentrepreneurs interested in the experience of their fellow travelers, to venture capitalists looking for possibilities in cutting-edge breakthroughs, to scientists simply interested in the work of others, BioTech Nation is the voice of human endeavor, driving science to new realities for everyone. These interviews are drawn directly from the public radio program, "Tech Nation", which also can be heard in numerous global radio and podcasting venues.
We're always on the lookout for the latest, greatest in biotech. Not just to intervene with the challenges we humans have, but also how it can tell us about ourselves. Doctor Daniel Kraft wants us to consider food as medicine. Not some specialized created food, but how different everyday foods can interact given our specific genetic makeup and how personal technology can easily help us measure it. In fact, constantly measure it.
Dr. Moira Gunn:And not just when we have a medical condition, this can lead us to significant changes in our very own lives. It may inform us, in fact, about how and what we feed our children, even from the earliest days when we first introduce food to our babies. Technation Health chief correspondent, doctor Daniel Kraft. Hey, Daniel. Welcome back.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Great to be back, Moira.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Now we have talked about and we want I wanna talk about today, food as medicine. I mean, as we all grew up, there was food and there was medicine. How does how does this how do the circles on the Venn diagram push that together to food as medicine?
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Well, I think what counts as food has changed in in my era as as a child. Twinkies were food. I'm not sure if they still count in that realm. And I think we've increasingly recognized everything old is new again, some ancient adages. Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician and philosopher said, let food by thy medicine and let medicine be thy food.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:And we're learning how important, nutrition is, something we don't get a lot of education in in medical school, by the way, and how it plays such a key role in all sorts of diseases or prevention or recovery. And we're now in this sort of, I think, emerging golden age of precision, nutrition, where we can start to take some of these new tools and technologies and really optimize our nutrition to both optimize our health span, prevent disease, and and manage acute and chronic conditions.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Now let's flip this on the other side. If we are eating a lot of ultra processed food, treated food, there may be chemicals in food from pesticides, Is that really gonna hurt us? Do we know?
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Well, I think there's a lot of, ties to our environment, to pesticides, to what hormones beef might be getting fed, or your chickens that develop the eggs you might have for breakfast. We know that plastics that we ingest in often what we think are safe water bottles are potentially playing havoc and catalyzing everything from cancer to autoimmune diseases. So I think, there's always room to improve. I think there's the old adage, you know, stick with the basics, not too much, the right balance. And what is being portrayed as the right balance by, nutrition cycles has changed over time.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:And I think like many elements of healthcare, we want to be a less one size fits all, but more tuned to the individual. And I think what's getting exciting now is we're ending the era of, it's often called metabolic health. You can wear a pretty low cost continuous glucose monitor, even if you're not a diabetic and get a flavor about how certain foods are impacting your blood sugar and the spikes. White white white rice might give you a much higher spike than, let's say, a whole grain rice. We're learning the impact of certain foods early in individuals' lives.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:So putting on my pediatrician hat, if you give a child at 6 months of age when they start to eat their 1st solid foods, you don't give them that, you know, white rice kind of low cost tasty Gerber cereal, you give them a whole grain version. The whole grain version changes the microbiome of their gut, their epigenetics, and their risk for obesity and diabetes downstream can go way down, just from a very simple early start in life or the like with the right food. So some of it can be sort of generalized, but now using tools like continuous glucose monitors, looking at someone's underlying genome, maybe even analyzing their microbiome, the bugs that live on their skin and their mouth and the gut, can really start to enable us to pick and measure the metabolism and optimize, a diet to lose weight or to train for a marathon or or to live a a longer healthier life.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Well, this can get pretty individualized. How do we measure what's going on inside us?
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Well, if you look on the app store, there's now thousands of sort of health related apps. Many of them are diet related. They enable you to log your meals, maybe do intermittent fasting if you think that might play a role in health or longevity. And now there's a whole next generation of AI empowered apps that can take a video or picture of your food in real time, tell you that that's broccoli or a banana or a doughnut, and, track that for you, which is important in some, meal planning. So So that's a way of measuring your your inputs.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:You can often even use a low cost spectrophotometer to tell you whether that food might have glutens in it or peanuts, which you might be allergic to. So you can measure inputs. And now we can measure our outputs. In the hospital setting, we we call them ins and outs. We use those to look at the, let's say, the fluid balance of a patient.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:But now we're starting to see censored toilets. I like to call them poopables, very,
Dr. Moira Gunn:exotic term. Alright.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:But now if you, if you're at the Consumer Electronics Show the last couple of years, you'll see next generation Toto toilets and platforms from companies like WeThink that will, be inserted in your toilet and track the health of your urine. Or cameras that can look at the number 2 and predict, how your diet's going or signs of cancer or maybe pick up blood or changes in stool habits that might be indicative. So no one wants to look at that data real time. It's a bit messy. But, when you can sort of quantify that and track, we might pick up problems early and, everything from early kidney disease to early GI issues.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:And that might be part of our sort of, censored, personalized, health and nutrition era, going forward.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Well, certainly, if it could pick up blood in the stool before anybody sees it, and or has other indications to go and look at that, that would be a really positive outcome.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Well, we know many folks skip their colonoscopies or don't even do the basic stool test. So if we can kind of hit the easy button, you know, all out of these new emergent digital health tools and technologies and medtech can start to pick up our vital signs, look at a picture of your face and pick up a challenge or a genetic issue. And as our sensor toilets and refrigerators, and those blend with AI and VR and augmented reality, we could start to potentially pick up issues earlier and use those as easy modalities to intervene. And for example, back to the diet issue, now with sort of simple tools, even those on Snapchat, you can see the ones that make you older or skinnier or more overweight. When you can see not just you of today in the mirror or in the app and see future you and can make yourself skinnier or fatter, that might be a good, motives for catalyzing that behavior change when you've decided to get on that diet and you wanna stick with it.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:So nutrition, of course, is very personalized. Sometimes it's driven by our genetics. We're obviously a whole other topic in the now and the era of GLP 1 inhibitors, which is a huge game changer for obesity and weight loss. But the ability to engage with your health and your data and personalize both your nutrition, your exercise, and your holistic care, is super tied to our nutrition. And I'm excited to see what's going to emerge as we kind of use, new modalities where you can even eat to beat disease or undo diseases using those modalities.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:One example where food is medicine has been pioneered by my friend, Doctor. Dean Ornish, who now has a a Medicare reimbursed diet plan to help, patients who have advanced heart disease reverse their heart disease with, certain diets, mindfulness, groups, love and connection. So we're starting to see the importance of, you know, going back to the basics for reversing disease and often folks who are excited in longevity and health span to use our diets to kind of, keep us at a healthy weight and to extend our our our healthy health spans, well into the nineties and beyond.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Well, it all seems to start with don't get off the path of eating really good food. Don't let it be bad. Be good.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Right. Michael Pollan, I think I'm gonna not get the quote right as you know. Eat lots of green foods like your mother told you and in a good variety. And, and pay attention also to feeding your microbiome, such an important part of our gut health. We can start to understand and measure the microbiome today, understand its roles and everything from inflammatory bowel disease to risk for cancers.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:We know that diseases like, ulcers are basically a microbiome disease caused by H. Pylori. So you treat that now with antibiotics, not surgery as it was done before. So, as we understand gut health and nutrition and holistic integrative care, it's an exciting time for everyone to get, involved in their nutrition and leverage that to improve their overall health and activity and and, and hopefully tie that to the health of the planet because we spend a lot of, of our energy and our greenhouse gases on on making food as well.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Well, Daniel, thanks so much for coming in. I can't wait for next time.
Dr. Daniel Kraft:Alright. See you next time.
Dr. Moira Gunn:TechNation Health chief correspondent, doctor Daniel Kraft, is the founder and chair of NextMed Health on the web at nextmed.healthanddigital.health. More information about Daniel at danielcraftmd.net.