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Most medical imaging happens after a symptom, injury, or abnormal test gives a clinician a reason to look. But what changes if imaging becomes a more routine measurement, creating a record of the body before something goes wrong? In this episode of Next Level, Mike Haney talks with Dr. Daniel Durand, chief medical officer at Prenuvo, about whole-body MRI as a test case for a broader shift from episodic medicine toward longitudinal health data. Whole-body MRI is controversial, and Durand is clearly an advocate. The conversation takes the skepticism seriously, then asks a larger question: as measurement gets cheaper, more frequent, and increasingly visible to patients themselves, how should medicine decide what is worth knowing? Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ What We Cover: How X-rays, CT scans, ultrasound, and MRI differ, and why radiation matters when you start thinking about repeated imagingWhat whole-body MRI sees well, and where CT, colonoscopy, or blood-based approaches may still be betterThe concerns around incidental findings, overdiagnosis, anxiety, and unnecessary follow-up, and Durand’s response to themWhat the current cancer-detection evidence for whole-body MRI does, and does not, establishWhy having prior scans could help distinguish a stable abnormality from something genuinely newHow faster scans and AI interpretation could eventually connect imaging with genomic, proteomic, and other health data 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Daniel Durand is chief medical officer at Prenuvo and president of the Prenuvo Medical Group. He trained at Johns Hopkins, is board-certified in adult and pediatric radiology, and previously served as chief clinical officer and chief innovation officer at LifeBridge Health. 📍What Dr. Daniel Durand & Mike Haney discussed: 03:32 - Why imaging belongs in a series about continuous measurement15:32 - Imaging 101: X-rays, CT, ultrasound, and MRI28:57 - How AI is shortening MRI scan times38:52 - Screening versus surveillance40:26 - Which cancers whole-body MRI can miss46:39 - The case against scanning healthy people52:40 - What the cancer-detection data actually shows54:39 - "We're all going to get a body scan"1:03:31 - What would make routine imaging more useful?1:11:49 - Building a baseline of the healthy body1:17:43 - When AI can see more than a radiologist1:21:28 - Is it better to know, even when you can't treat it? 🔗 Helpful Links: Dr. Daniel Durand, Prenuvo: Prenuvo medical leadershipMeta-analysis behind the ~9,000 participants and ~1.6% detection figures. It notes limits, including incidental findings (European Radiology, 2026): PubMedPrenuvo-associated study of 1,011 people, 2.2% confirmed cancer detection (Cancer Research/AACR, 2025): AACR abstractIncidental findings in whole-body MRI and their psychosocial effects (European Journal of Radiology, 2021): PubMedPrenuvo's research overview, including Polaris data (company-reported): Prenuvo clinical research Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/rFZVbzUPSaA Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📲 Connect: Connect with Dr. Daniel Durand at LinkedIn 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

Alcohol has spent the last 40 years bouncing between two health narratives: a little is good for your heart, or any amount is dangerous. The science doesn’t really support either slogan. Dr. Tim Naimi has spent decades studying the health effects of alcohol and, just as importantly, why the research is so difficult to interpret. His read of the evidence is less dramatic but more useful: there’s no good reason to start drinking for your health, very low intake may carry little measurable added risk, and risk rises as consumption does. Understanding why earlier studies made moderate drinking look protective helps explain a lot of the whiplashing headlines. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ What We Cover: Why alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen causally linked to at least seven cancersWhether small amounts of alcohol really protect your heartWhy researchers still don’t have a definitive randomized trial of drinking and long-term healthHow the “sick quitter” problem, selection bias, and confounding made moderate drinkers look healthierWhy two major recent reviews of alcohol and health produced such different headlinesHow the risk changes with dose, including Naimi’s estimate of a 1 in 25 lifetime risk of an alcohol-caused death at 14 drinks per weekWhy alcohol consumption is falling, and whether GLP-1 drugs could be contributing 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Tim Naimi is a physician and alcohol epidemiologist who directs the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, where he is a professor in the Division of Medical Sciences. 📍What Dr. Tim Naimi & Mike Haney discussed: 00:45 — Why the science on alcohol is so confusing05:48 — How alcohol damages DNA and raises cancer risk09:43 — Is alcohol actually good for your heart?14:22 — Why we still don't have a definitive randomized trial20:30 — The "sick quitter" problem24:56 — Selection bias and the problem with "healthy" moderate drinkers29:35 — Why two major reports produced different headlines31:37 — How alcohol risk changes as drinks per week increase38:21 — Industry funding and conflicts of interest46:15 — How much alcohol is too much?49:48 — Why younger generations are drinking less51:53 — Health consciousness, GLP-1s, and the decline in drinking 🔗 Helpful Links: Alcohol Intake and Health Study: No Protective Effect at Low Levels, With Mortality Increasing to 1 in 25 at 14 Drinks Per Week (Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 2026) PaperReview of Evidence on Alcohol and Health (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2025) ReportAssociation Between Daily Alcohol Intake and Risk of All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-analyses (JAMA Network Open, 2023) PaperDo “Moderate” Drinkers Have Reduced Mortality Risk? (Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 2016) PaperAlcohol Abstinence in Drinkers with Atrial Fibrillation (New England Journal of Medicine, 2020) PaperCanada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health (2023) Guidance and supporting researchAlcohol and Cancer (World Health Organization / IARC) WHO overview Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/8GNmcjPfg7U Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📲 Connect: Connect with Dr. Tim Naimi at University of Victoria 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

From a single blood sample, new proteomic tools can now measure thousands of proteins at once. Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray’s lab is using that flood of data, together with machine learning, to build a much higher-resolution picture of what’s happening throughout the body and where someone’s health may be headed. The early signals are striking. In one analysis of people who appeared healthy by conventional measures, every additional 4.1 years of estimated heart age was associated with nearly 2.5 times the risk of heart failure over the following 15 years. Wyss-Coray sees this kind of measurement eventually becoming a “health compass”: something that could show which parts of the body are changing fastest, then help track whether an intervention is actually moving them in the right direction. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ What We Cover: How a drop of blood can now reveal information from thousands of proteinsWhy aging appears to happen in waves rather than at a steady rateWhy one part of the body may age faster than the restWhat young-blood experiments in mice taught Wyss-Coray about proteins and brain agingHow the work is moving from whole organs down to individual cell typesWhy the field’s biggest constraint may now be data collection rather than better AI 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray is the D.H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University and director of the Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience. 📍What Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray & Mike Haney discussed: 04:03 Proteins 101: the building blocks hiding information about your health05:09 How one blood sample can measure thousands of proteins09:07 Using machine learning to find patterns in the proteome12:17 Can blood reveal what’s happening inside the brain?13:11 What happened when young blood was given to old mice19:45 Why aging may happen in waves rather than at a steady rate29:24 How stable are protein measurements over time?32:37 Can proteins predict disease years before it appears?40:35 Why one part of your body may age faster than the rest46:31 The missing test: does an intervention actually change the measurement?51:04 Going from whole organs to individual cell types54:10 Why more data, not better AI, is the current bottleneck57:18 A future “health compass” for the body 🔗 Helpful Links: Organ aging signatures in the plasma proteome track health and disease (Nature, 2023)PaperThe foundational organ-aging work discussed in the episode, using plasma proteins to estimate aging across 11 organs.Plasma proteomic signatures of cellular aging predict human disease (Nature Medicine, 2026)PaperThe newer study extending the approach to more than 40 cell types using over 7,000 plasma proteins.Undulating changes in human plasma proteome profiles across the lifespan (Nature Medicine, 2019)PaperYoung blood reverses age-related impairments in cognitive function and synaptic plasticity in mice (Nature Medicine, 2014)PaperUK Biobank Research resourceThe large longitudinal cohort used for much of the disease-prediction work discussed in the episode. Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/1dfMBAZiP8o Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📲 Connect: Connect with Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray at Stanford 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

Aging science has gotten much better at describing who appears to be aging faster or slower. What medicine still lacks is a reliable feedback loop: a way to tell whether something we do is actually changing the biology that drives age-related disease. Dr. Nir Barzilai argues that solving that measurement problem could turn geroscience from an interesting field of research into something doctors can actually use: measure where you are, intervene, measure again, and learn what works. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ What We Cover: What centenarians reveal about living longer and spending less time sickWhy changing one hallmark of aging can affect several othersHow TAME was designed to test metformin as an anti-aging drug and to convince the FDA to treat aging itself as an endpoint—and why it failed to get off the groundWhy metformin, SGLT2 inhibitors, GLP-1 agonists, and some osteoporosis drugs are being studied as potential gerotherapeutics, or anti-aging drugsHow FAST is searching existing clinical trials for biomarkers that change when an intervention affects aging biologyWhether aging needs continuous monitoring or can be meaningfully tracked a few times a year 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Nir Barzilai is the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair in Aging Research and a professor of medicine and genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he directs the Institute for Geroscience. 📍What Dr. Nil Barzilai & Mike Haney discussed: 05:10 - Aging is a condition, not just a label05:59 - Why aging is what drives disease08:19 - Should we call aging a disease?10:20 - Why the species may have a ceiling around 11514:34 - Why changing one hallmark of aging changes the others23:08 - Metformin was anti-aging before it was a diabetes drug31:55 - Centenarians live longer and spend less time sick40:12 - How TAME tried to make aging an FDA endpoint48:17 - Metformin, SGLT2s, GLP-1s, and osteoporosis drugs as gerotherapeutics52:26 - FAST: finding biomarkers that actually change with treatment56:49 - Whether aging needs continuous monitoring, or a few checks a year1:01:16 - Where behavior still fits once we have anti-aging drugs 🔗 Helpful Links: Hallmarks of Aging: An Expanding Universe (Cell, 2023) PaperCompression of Morbidity Is Observed Across Cohorts with Exceptional Longevity (JAGS, 2016) PaperMetformin as a Tool to Target Aging (Cell Metabolism, 2016) PaperGeroscience-Guided Repurposing of FDA-Approved Drugs to Target Aging (Aging Cell, 2022) PaperBiomarkers of Aging for the Identification and Evaluation of Longevity Interventions (Cell, 2023) PaperFAST: Finding Aging Biomarkers by Searching Existing Trials FAST InitiativeARPA-H PROSPR / FAST award ARPA-H FAST project Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/HbeGjwCw6vk Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📲 Connect: Connect with Dr. Nil Barzilai on X: https://x.com/NirBarzilaiMD 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

Medical AI is already getting good at doing things doctors do. Dr. Ziad Obermeyer thinks the bigger opportunity is using AI to discover things medicine doesn’t yet know. His work shows both sides of that future: algorithms can amplify bad assumptions when trained on the wrong targets, but they can also uncover signals in medical data that humans miss. Obermeyer argues that as more health data is collected outside the hospital, AI could turn it into a continuous picture of health rather than a series of isolated snapshots. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ What We Cover: Why AI should learn from patients and outcomes, not just doctorsHow an ECG model found hidden risk of sudden cardiac deathWhy medical data access is still a major bottleneckHow more measurement could actually mean fewer unnecessary testsWhy healthcare may be entering a “mainframe to PC” transition 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Ziad Obermeyer is an emergency medicine physician and an Associate Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He also co-founded Dandelion Health and the non-profit Nightingale Open Science. 📍What Dr. Ziad Obermeyer & Mike Haney discussed: 02:43 Why better data is fundamental to medical AI05:54 The problem: There’s no variable called “get sick”09:27 Algorithms optimize exactly what you tell them to23:03 Why teaching AI to copy doctors limits what it can discover26:28 How AI could create a new science of medicine28:40 Could AI predict sudden cardiac death before it happens?34:14 Can an algorithm teach us what it sees?36:50 Medicine’s biggest AI bottleneck: access to data49:00 Healthcare’s “mainframe to PC” transition55:08 Why more measurement could actually mean fewer tests58:46 Why medical AI is aiming too low1:02:13 What the next generation of wearables needs to measure 🔗 Helpful Links: Dissecting Racial Bias in an Algorithm Used to Manage the Health of Populations (Science, 2019)https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax2342An Algorithmic Approach to Reducing Unexplained Pain Disparities in Underserved Populations (Nature Medicine, 2021)https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01192-7An ECG Biomarker for Sudden Cardiac Death Discovered with Deep Learning (Nature, 2026)https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10674-6Predicting the Future — Big Data, Machine Learning, and Clinical Medicine (NEJM, 2016)https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1606181Nightingale Open Sciencehttps://www.nightingalescience.org/Dandelion Healthhttps://dandelionhealth.ai/ Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/WDo-iL6O5nU Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📲 Connect: Connect with Dr. Ziad Obermeyer on https://ziadobermeyer.com/ 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

Why do we crave some foods the more often we eat them? Are we addicted? Dr. Dana Small’s research suggests that food craving reaches far beyond taste or willpower, and that “addiction” isn’t a helpful descriptor. Every time we eat, unconscious signals from the body teach the brain which foods deliver useful nutrients, and train us to want more of those. In other words, we don’t eat crave foods because they taste good; foods taste good because our body craves them. Understanding that means we can rethink overeating. It’s not a matter of addiction or self-control; it’s our body behaving the way nature intended it to, but in the setting of foods not found in the wild, like those high in both fat and carbohydrates. But we may also be able to train our brain away from these cravings. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ What We Cover Taste vs. flavor, pleasure, motivation, and food rewardHow gut nutrient signals teach the brain which foods to seekWhy fat + carbs produce an unusually strong reward responseWhat eight weeks of high-fat, high-sugar snacks did to the brainHow GLP-1s may cut food wanting while preserving pleasure 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Dana Small is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Metabolism and the Brain and a professor at McGill University, with appointments in Neurology and Neurosurgery and Medicine. She directs the Modern Diet and Physiology Research Center, and her research examines how sensory, metabolic, and neural signals interact to shape food reward, eating behavior, and metabolic health. 📍What Dr. Dana Small & Mike Haney discussed: 02:44 - Is food actually addictive?05:02 - Taste and flavor are different senses08:21 - Why “hedonic” vs. “homeostatic” eating is misleading10:42 - The reward from sugar begins after you swallow it22:32 - The “high road” and “low road” of food reward27:41 - How scientists teach the brain to associate a flavor with calories38:30 - Why combining fat and carbohydrates produces more reward47:34 - How beliefs about food can change physiological responses50:02 - Eight weeks of snacks changes how the brain responds to food57:51 - What this science means for people trying to eat differently1:03:50 - How GLP-1 drugs may change food wanting1:07:30 - Can GLP-1s help retrain eating behavior for the long term? 🔗 Helpful Links: Habitual Daily Intake of a Sweet and Fatty Snack Modulates Reward Processing in Humans (Cell Metabolism, 2023)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36958330/Supra-Additive Effects of Combining Fat and Carbohydrate on Food Reward (Cell Metabolism, 2018)https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(18)30325-5Integration of Sweet Taste and Metabolism Determines Carbohydrate Reward (Current Biology, 2017)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28803868/Rethinking Food Reward (Annual Review of Psychology, 2020)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31561741/In Defense of Pleasure: We Need to Rethink Food Reward and Obesity (PLOS Biology, 2025)https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3003497Mind Over Milkshakes: Mindsets, Not Just Nutrients, Determine Ghrelin Response (Health Psychology, 2011)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21574706/ Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/lXlCqNqjgHY Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

Twenty-five years ago, sequencing the human genome seemed poised to usher in an era of personalized medicine. Dr. Euan Ashley helped turn that promise into an actual clinical experiment, leading one of the first efforts to interpret an entire human genome in the context of a real patient’s health. The challenge quickly became apparent: medicine could suddenly generate billions of data points about one person, but making sense of them was painfully slow. That history feels newly relevant. Ashley recently gave an AI system his own 15-year-old genome data and watched it reproduce most of an analysis that had originally required months of work by a team, in about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, genomics is being joined by wearables, multi-omics, and other technologies capable of tracking far more of our biology over time. In this episode of NextLevel, we use the genome revolution as a case study for what happens when our ability to measure the body advances faster than our ability to interpret and use the information. The next leap in personalized medicine may depend less on collecting another mountain of data than on building the tools, reference datasets, and healthcare systems capable of turning that information into decisions. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Euan Ashley is Chair of the Department of Medicine at Stanford University and the Roger and Joelle Burnell Professor of Genomics and Precision Health, with appointments in medicine, genetics, and biomedical data science. He’s also the author of The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them. 📍What Dr. Euan Ashley & Mike Haney discussed: 03:33 What happened to the promise of personalized medicine?06:33 The first clinical interpretation of a human genome11:26 AI interprets in 30 minutes what once took months21:25 Why genomics still needs better, more diverse reference data27:41 Building a molecular map of exercise with MoTrPAC32:01 Exercise changed nearly every organ researchers measured39:05 Why your personal baseline can matter more than a "normal" range42:46 How wearables opened a new era of longitudinal health data47:48 The biggest barrier to continuous, personalized healthcare51:39 What medical AI needs to become genuinely useful57:05 How AI can ace medical benchmarks for the wrong reasons58:20 The heart measurement Ashley considers a medical "holy grail" 🔗 Helpful Links: Clinical Assessment Incorporating a Personal Genome, The Lancet, 2010. Landmark integrated clinical analysis of a complete human genome.Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC), NIH Common Fund. Large-scale project mapping how exercise changes tissues and organs. MoTrPAC: Human Studies Design and Protocol, Journal of Applied Physiology, 2024. Human study of molecular responses to endurance and resistance training.The Mitochondrial Multi-Omic Response to Exercise Training Across Rat Tissues, Cell Metabolism, 2024. MoTrPAC study on molecular changes across organs after exercise.Harmonizing Standards and Resources for the Medical Genome, Nature, 2026. Ashley et al. on genomic reference standards and clinical-grade sequencing.Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/bD2YVGdwviE Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠ 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

Is intermittent fasting biohacker wellness hype or legit health intervention? Some studies show real benefits, others find nothing, and the occasional headline calls it bad for your heart. Dr. Courtney Peterson has spent nearly two decades running some of the field's most tightly controlled feeding trials, and her data points to a clear pattern: there is a real effect to a restricted eating window, but when you eat may matter as much as how long you fast. Her studies found that eating in a short window early in the day lowers blood pressure and improves insulin sensitivity, even without weight loss. A physicist by training, she brings that same rigor to a field built mostly on people's own food diaries. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Courtney Peterson is an Associate Professor of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She holds a PhD in physics from Harvard and leads clinical trials on intermittent fasting, meal timing, and circadian rhythms. 📍What Dr. Courtney Peterson & Mike Haney discussed: 0:00 Introduction02:39 The three types of intermittent fasting05:29 The 2012 mouse study that started the field11:24 Why fasting works through appetite, not extra calories13:48 Her six-hour study: lower blood pressure, no weight loss25:34 Why results depend on who's being studied28:45 The shift worker whose health got worse36:45 Her theory: timing over fasting length43:08 Heart attacks, blood pressure, and the body's clock45:55 The camping trip that reset people's body clocks58:11 Early findings from her unpublished aging study1:08:16 Should you eat ice cream for breakfast? 🔗 Helpful Links: Time-Restricted Feeding without Reducing Caloric Intake Prevents Metabolic Diseases in Mice Fed a High-Fat Diet (Hatori et al., 2012) — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2012.04.019Early Time-Restricted Feeding Improves Insulin Sensitivity, Blood Pressure, and Oxidative Stress Even without Weight Loss in Men with Prediabetes (Sutton et al., 2018) — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2018.04.010Early Time-Restricted Feeding Improves 24-Hour Glucose Levels and Affects Markers of the Circadian Clock, Aging, and Autophagy in Humans (Jamshed et al., 2019) — https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11061234Calorie Restriction with or without Time-Restricted Eating in Weight Loss (Liu et al., 2022) — https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2114833 Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/dKauIgX3IH4 Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠ 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

What if we could measure the human body the way engineers monitor a jet engine? For nearly two decades, Stanford geneticist Dr. Michael Snyder has been trying exactly that. By continuously tracking everything he could possibly track in his body—genome sequencing, metabolites, wearable data, whole-body imaging—he has turned himself (and ~100 study subjects) into one of the world's largest experiments in continuous health measurement. The point wasn’t mindless biohacking. It was to answer a question: Are there clinically useful signals in all that data? This conversation suggests the answer is yes. Snyder’s experience and that of dozens of his study subjects offer some of the first real evidence that continuous measurement intelligently analyzed can reveal that you’re getting sick before you have symptoms, help find solutions to medical conditions that work for your unique biology, and help you refocus on prevention of disease rather than management. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Michael Snyder is the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Genetics and director of the Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine, where he previously chaired the Department of Genetics for 15 years. 📍What Dr. Michael Snyder & Mike Haney discussed: 03:10 Why Dr. Snyder started measuring healthy people instead of waiting for disease09:18 Living in the future: tracking his own biology for nearly two decades15:02 Why "normal" isn't enough: the importance of personal baselines22:48 Discovering his own genetically unique form of type 2 diabetes32:06 How wearables detected illness before symptoms appeared39:18 Whole-body MRIs, incidental findings, and why change over time matters46:55 Why everyone has abnormalities, but not everyone has disease55:41 The promise of metabolomics, proteomics, and continuous biological sensing1:06:52 Why AI is essential for interpreting thousands of health signals1:15:34 What continuous measurement could mean for preventive medicine 1:23:10 The next decade of personalized health and what's still missing 🔗 Helpful Links: Personal Omics Profiling Reveals Dynamic Molecular and Medical Phenotypes (Chen et al., Cell, 2012)https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(12)00965-3Longitudinal Multi-omics Profiling Reveals Dynamic Personal Health Status (Price et al., Nature Biotechnology, 2017)https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3695The Integrative Personal Omics Profile (iPOP): A Decade of Progress in Precision Health (Snyder lab review)https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-021-00409-3Wearable Sensor Data and Self-reported Symptoms for COVID-19 Detection (Mishra et al., Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2020)https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-020-00640-6All of Us Research Programhttps://allofus.nih.gov/Connect with Dr Michael Snyder: https://med.stanford.edu/snyderlab.html Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/eUEYmLC1CcE Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠ 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

For decades, we've been told that eating less fat is one of the healthiest things we can do. That advice reshaped the foods we buy, the way we think about weight loss, and even how parents feed their children. But what if we misunderstood fat in the first place? In this episode, nutrition researcher Dr. Arne Astrup traces how the war on fat began, why many of its core assumptions haven't held up under decades of research, and what we've learned instead. Rather than asking whether fat is "good" or "bad," he argues that the more useful questions are: What foods actually keep us healthy? Why do some people gain weight more easily than others? And what happens when we reduce nutrition to single nutrients instead of whole foods? Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Arne Astrup is a physician, nutrition researcher, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Copenhagen whose research focuses on obesity, appetite regulation, dietary fats, and cardiometabolic health. He previously chaired the Danish Nutrition Council and helped lead Denmark's landmark ban on industrial trans fats. 📍What Dr. Arne Astrup & Mike Haney discussed: 00:00 Introduction01:03 How fear of fat became public health policy07:40 Did low-fat advice help create today's processed foods?10:20 Denmark's trans fat ban and one lesson nutrition got right14:00 "I was wrong." Why dietary fat isn't the main driver of obesity18:45 Why your body fat isn't simply the fat you eat27:00 Why fat can help you eat fewer calories32:00 Are nuts actually easy to overeat?36:00 Cheese, yogurt, and why whole foods don't behave like nutrients41:00 Why insulin resistance changes carbohydrate tolerance55:00 The LDL debate: what saturated fat actually changes1:01:00 Why it's time to stop talking about "saturated fat" as a single thing 🔗 Helpful Links: Diets with High or Low Protein Content and Glycemic Index for Weight-Loss Maintenance (DIOGENES Trial): Landmark randomized trial led by Dr. Astrup examining protein, glycemic index, and long-term weight maintenance. New England Journal of MedicineWeight Loss Maintenance in Overweight Subjects on Ad Libitum Diets with High or Low Protein Content and Glycemic Index: The DIOGENES Trial (12-Month Results). One-year follow-up of the DIOGENES study. International Journal of ObesityDietary Saturated Fats and Health: Are the U.S. Guidelines Evidence-Based? (Astrup et al., 2021): Consensus review arguing that current saturated fat recommendations should place greater emphasis on whole foods and dietary patterns than saturated fat alone. Nutrients (2021)Walter Willett's research on industrial trans fats and cardiovascular disease: Early epidemiologic work that helped establish the harms of industrial trans fats and ultimately informed policy changes worldwide. PubMed search for Walter Willett trans fat publicationsWorld Health Organization: REPLACE Trans Fat Initiative: Background on the global effort to eliminate industrially produced trans fats from the food supply. World Health Organization REPLACE Initiative Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/ajqg7LdM0PM Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠ 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

Almost everything your doctor knows about you comes from a snapshot: a blood pressure reading, an annual lab, a handful of numbers meant to represent a constantly changing human body. That's beginning to change. New sensors promise far more continuous health data, and AI may finally give us the ability to interpret it. But medicine has been through a data revolution before, and almost none of what people initially promised actually happened. In the first episode of NextLevel, Mike Haney sits down with Dr. Robert Wachter, Chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF and one of medicine's leading thinkers on technological change, to ask what healthcare's messy transition from paper to electronic records can teach us about the AI era. Wachter explains why digitizing medicine didn't transform care on its own, why your doctor is already overwhelmed by data, and why simply sending them continuous feeds from your watch, ring, or future sensors would make the problem worse. The missing piece is an intelligence layer: a system capable of deciding what matters, helping patients act when they can, and pulling clinicians in when they're actually needed. They also explore how AI is changing the balance of knowledge between doctors and patients, the danger of trusting systems that are usually right, what healthcare can learn from airplane cockpits, and why collecting more health data may be much easier than figuring out what any of it means. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Robert M. Wachter is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He’s also the author of six books, including the 2015 bestseller The Digital Doctor, which examined medicine's transition from paper to electronic health records, and 2026’s A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, his examination of generative AI's arrival in medicine. 📍What Dr.Robert Watcher & Mike Haney discussed: 0:00 — Dr. Wachter and medicine's technological revolutions7:00 — How healthcare finally went digital12:40 — Why digitizing healthcare didn't fix it19:00 — AI is fixing problems computers created29:40 — Does AI know more medicine than your doctor?33:00 — The hidden danger of trusting computers42:30 — What healthcare can learn from airplane cockpits56:15 — Why medicine has to move beyond the office visit58:20 — Healthcare's missing intelligence layer1:04:20 — Why more health data isn't enough 🔗 Helpful Links: Dr. Robert Wachter, UCSF Department of Medicine: https://medicine.ucsf.edu/people/robert-wachterA Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future: https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-giant-leap-how-ai-is-transforming-healthcare-and-what-that-means-for-our-future-robert-wachter/e6a7ecb6556f9f02The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-digital-doctor-hope-hype-and-harm-at-the-dawn-of-medicine-s-computer-age-robert-wachter/9187727Pattern Recognition, Dr. Wachter's newsletter on AI and healthcare: https://robertwachter.substack.com/Dr. Robert Wachter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-wachter-3102b963/ Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/762DTOa7uTY Find us on YouTube: ⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

Healthcare is entering a new era. AI is improving faster than our ability to measure the human body, while a new generation of sensors promises to change that. Together, they’ll reshape how we understand health, disease, and medicine itself. NextLevel is our new series inside the podcast where we try to make sense of that future through conversations with the people building it. Our first episode, featuring Dr. Bob Wachter, arrives this week. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health.

You probably spend more time thinking about protein than friendships. According to today's guest, you’ve got it backward. In this episode of A Whole New Level, Mike Haney sits down with Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, one of the world's leading researchers on social connection and health. She explains how data now unequivocally show that social isolation drives early mortality. And why simply not feeling lonely doesn't necessarily mean you're getting enough social connection, as well as why even weak connections matter a lot to a healthy social life. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University and one of the world's leading researchers on social connection and health. Her landmark meta-analyses involving millions of participants established social isolation and loneliness as independent risk factors for chronic disease and early mortality. 📍What Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad & Mike Haney discussed: 0:00 — Introduction1:18 — How Dr. Holt-Lunstad began studying social connection and health3:00 — Why relationships belong alongside diet, exercise, and sleep4:10 — Social isolation vs. loneliness vs. living alone11:45 — How researchers measure social connection and health outcomes16:20 — The biological pathways linking isolation to disease27:30 — How scientists study social connection without randomized trials33:00 — Family, friends, weak ties, and what kinds of relationships matter|37:00 — AI companions, loneliness, and whether technology can replace human connection46:15 — Is there a minimum effective dose of friendship?58:10 — Why Americans are participating in fewer clubs and community groups1:03:20 — Why objective isolation predicts health better than loneliness1:10:40 — Making friends as adults and overcoming the friction of connection 🔗 Helpful Links: Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad BYU Faculty Profile: https://psychology.byu.edu/directory/julianne-holt-lunstadSocial Connection in America Survey: https://www.socialconnectionguidelines.org/U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on Social Connection: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdfKey Research Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010): https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015): https://perspectives.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.201500160Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation (U.S. Surgeon General, 2023): https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdfBowling Alone (Robert Putnam): https://bowlingalone.com/ Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/g6D2CIpB2n4Find us on YouTube: https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

High cholesterol. Elevated ApoB. A positive CAC score. Now what? Most people quickly find themselves trapped between two extremes: simplistic advice to “cut saturated fat” and online influencers insisting cholesterol doesn’t matter at all.In this episode of A Whole New Level, Mike Haney sits down with clinical research scientist Dr. Kevin Maki to cut through the confusion. Drawing on more than 35 years of cardiovascular research, Maki explains why heart disease risk is about much more than LDL cholesterol alone. He breaks down the roles of inflammation, blood sugar, family history, kidney function, and lipoproteins, while also making a clear case for something many people resist: LDL and ApoB still matter. A lot. The evidence increasingly suggests that when it comes to atherosclerosis, lower for longer is better. That has important implications for diet, statins, and how early we should intervene. Mike and Dr. Maki also tackle saturated fat, seed oils, red meat, industry-funded research, and how to separate evidence from online nutrition debates. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Kevin Maki is founder and Chief Science Officer of Midwest Biomedical Research and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Public Health at Indiana University. A former president of the National Lipid Association, he has spent more than three decades designing and leading clinical trials focused on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, nutrition, and lipid management. His research has included studies on cholesterol-lowering therapies, dietary patterns, red meat, seed oils, inflammation, and cardiometabolic risk reduction. 📍What Dr. Kevin Maki & Mike Haney discussed: 0:00 — Dr. Maki’s background in clinical research4:30 — How industry-funded nutrition research actually works15:00 — The Framingham Heart Study and the “Big Four” risk factors20:00 — FLASH-GLICK: the ten factors that drive cardiovascular risk26:00 — Why inflammation may be the next frontier in prevention33:00 — LDL, ApoB, and the “lower for longer” principle42:00 — Particle size, ApoB, and what advanced lipid testing adds47:00 — Why everyone should know their Lp(a)51:00 — Saturated fat, seed oils, and the “compared to what?” problem62:00 — What the red meat evidence actually shows72:00 — Statins, lifestyle, and LDL treatment goals82:00 — Why earlier LDL lowering may provide the biggest benefit 🔗 Helpful Links: Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/l8QzuuTYxLIBeef Consumption and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11621491/Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Lowering and Risk of Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events in Primary Prevention Trials: A Meta-Analysis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1933287426000395PREDIMED Trial (Mediterranean Diet & Primary Prevention): https://www.nejm.org/doi/abs/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303CORDIOPREV Trial: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35525255/The Framingham Heart Study: A Historical Perspective: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)61752-3/abstractMidwest Biomedical Research: https://midwestbiomedicalresearch.com/National Lipid Association: https://www.lipid.org/ ✅ Subscribe here on YouTube: https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

What are GLP-1 drugs actually doing in the body, who are they for, and why might some people want to think twice before treating them like a six-month shortcut? For years, obesity treatment focused largely on behavior: eat less, move more, stay motivated. Yet many people lost weight only to regain it. According to obesity medicine pioneer Dr. Robert Kushner, that wasn’t a failure of willpower. It was a failure to fully understand the biology driving weight regulation. In this episode of A Whole New Level, Mike Haney sits down with Kushner, one of the leading figures in obesity medicine and a lead investigator on the landmark STEP trials, to discuss how GLP-1 medications are changing the field. He explains why these drugs may be the first treatments capable of helping patients “fight biology with biology,” why appetite regulation appears to work differently in different people, and why many patients describe a dramatic reduction in food noise after starting treatment. But this conversation goes beyond how the drugs work. Kushner also addresses one of the biggest questions facing obesity medicine today: who should actually take these medications? He explains why obesity specialists evaluate far more than a number on the scale, why someone hoping to lose a modest amount of weight may want to think carefully before pursuing treatment, and why successful long-term health still requires changes that no medication can provide. They also discuss obesity as a disease, the promise and limitations of telehealth prescribing, and why maintaining weight loss often requires something deeper than motivation: a shift in identity. Free course: Improve your metabolic health Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Robert Kushner is Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Medical Education at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and one of the pioneers of modern obesity medicine. He is a past president of The Obesity Society, founder and former chair of the American Board of Obesity Medicine, and a lead investigator on the landmark STEP clinical trials that helped establish semaglutide as a treatment for obesity. 📍What Dr. Robert Kushner & Mike Haney discussed: 2:06 — Why obesity is more than willpower 4:34 — The benefits and drawbacks of calling obesity a disease6:27 — Clinical vs. preclinical obesity 17:36 — What obesity medicine misunderstood about weight regain 18:44 — “Fight biology with biology” 25:07 — Why weight maintenance is a different challenge than weight loss 26:49 — The identity shift that helps people keep weight off 27:52 — How GLP-1 drugs actually work 31:09 — Why some people experience constant food noise 34:09 — Why GLP-1s treat obesity but don’t cure it 42:17 — The STEP and SELECT trials 44:15 — Who should consider GLP-1 medications? 45:44 — Why obesity treatment is more than an online prescription 50:44 — What happens after you stop taking GLP-1s? 🔗 Helpful Links: Watch the conversation: ⁠https://youtu.be/qdssFUAWVck Dr. Robert Kushner: https://drrobertkushner.com/about/ Northwestern Faculty Profile: https://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/faculty-profiles/az/profile.html?xid=11686 STEP Trial: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032183 SELECT Trial: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2307563 👋 Who we are: Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.