Exploring the Role of AI in Healthcare

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Transcript: Exploring the Role of AI in Healthcare

Season 11, Episode 7  | August 19, 2025

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Welcome back to another episode of Life Time Talks. I’m David Freeman.

And I’m Jamie Martin.

In today’s topic, we’re going to be talking about exploring the role of AI in health care. Artificial intelligence is poised to reshape just about everything in the industry, including health care. Many experts see a significant opportunity for AI in health care with potential for efficiency, improved diagnostics, and better patient care.

However, we also are seeing a call for careful implementation of the technology and an emphasis on the importance of human oversight, especially when it’s used in the medical setting. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about, with a great expert, the potential benefits of AI in health care, how we can make it accessible for all, and how it might be in the meaning for both patients and medical professionals going forward. Jamie, who do we have today?

Yes, we’re so, so thrilled to have Dr. Sanjay Gupta with us today. He is the multi-Emmy award winning chief medical correspondent for CNN and host of the CNN podcast Chasing Life. A practicing neurosurgeon, Dr. Gupta plays an integral role in CNN’s reporting on health and medical news for all of CNN’s shows domestically and internationally and regularly contributes to CNN Digital.

Since 2001, Dr. Gupta has covered some of the most important health stories in the United States and around the world. On March 9, 2020, Dr. Gupta penned an op ed, announcing the network would refer to the novel coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic. ahead of the WHO and the CDC. Throughout 2020 to 2021, Dr. Gupta reaffirmed his role as a trusted guide to viewers worldwide on navigating between facts and fiction surrounding COVID-19 and the pandemic.

In addition to his work for CNN, Dr. Gupta is an associate professor of Neurosurgery at Emory University Hospital and associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. He serves as a diplomat on the American Board of Neurosurgery. And in 2019, Dr. Gupta was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, considered one of the highest honors in the medical field.

His forthcoming book, It Doesn’t Have to Hurt — Your Smart Guide to a Pain-Free Life, is coming out in September of 2025 from Simon & Schuster. Dr. Gupta, thanks so much for joining us today. We’re so thrilled to have you.

Thank you. I’m such a fan of your podcast. I’ve listened to a bunch of episodes. And I’ve learned a lot. So I’m really honored to be here.

Awesome.

Well, thank you. So yeah, we’re going to jump right into it. So one of the main topics we want to dig into today is AI, the role that it’s playing in health care. You sit on the National Academy of Medicine subcommittee of artificial intelligence. So what do you see being the most significant impact for AI in health care?

I think it’s going to have an impact on every aspect of health care. But I think the biggest sort of impacts that people will feel and recognize, I think, is the ability to look at just large, huge amounts of data, very, very quickly synthesize that data, and turn it into something that’s valuable for patients. So for example, someone comes into the hospital or to the clinic with back pain and leg pain.

And they have a herniated disk. And one of the questions is, what is the best treatment for that patient? A lot of people may suggest an operation; other people, physical therapy; other people, anti-inflammatories. And a lot of that’s just because it’s sort of been this somewhat haphazard approach to things.

Patients then go try that therapy for a period of time and see if it works and try something else. If you look at billions of pieces of data and you look at lots and lots of people that had that exact same scenario — back pain, leg pain, around the same age, same MRI findings, same overall lifestyle — there is a best answer for that person. And I think because AI can look at so much data so quickly, you can start to get best answers for people very, very quickly.

Studies that would have taken decades to complete, you can ask AI platforms to essentially synthesize that data within seconds. And I’m not exaggerating that. So I think that that’s going to be a significant leap forward for how we treat patients overall.

When you say best, is that referring to the idea of individualized? Because there are so many data points, it’s like, I can take this data based on this and this, and then compare it to you as an individual. That’s how it’s sounding a little bit like. But I want to confirm that’s what you mean.

Yeah, that’s right. And, I specifically didn’t use the word right or wrong. Because I think in medicine, it’s very difficult to classify things as right or wrong. What may be right for one patient may not be right for another patient.

So I think best. I think there’s an ideal way for you to live, Jamie. There’s an ideal number of steps for you to take. There’s an ideal way for you to eat, ideal time for you to wake up.

How do you know those things? How would you know those things? I think AI — that’s lifestyle. But AI can start to really penetrate deeply into figuring out the best ways, either to approach a medical problem, like that leg pain, or the best ways to live your life in terms of sleep and nourishment and activity.

Absolutely. And we’re definitely going to get into those pieces. When we think about AI currently, it’s been in the last couple of years that we’ve started to see more of the adoption and implementation. What is that currently looking like on a day to day basis in the health care space for patients and medical professionals?

I think that if you have had any kind of interaction with the hospital or a clinic or even probably getting your blood drawn, you have probably interfaced with AI in health care in some way. It is doing all sorts of things sort of behind the scenes. It is generating notes that go to patients after a visit. It is doing credentialing. It is doing insurance adjudication.

Just about every film, whether it be an ankle X-ray or an MRI of the brain, probably has an AI platform looking at those films in some ways. Mammography — there was a big study that came out showing that AI actually did a better job than certain radiologists at evaluating mammograms for the presence of breast cancer. So it’s affecting you.

I’ll tell you one interesting thing, though, because I’ve been diving deep into this. And I found this interesting, is that you ask, what is the objective of AI in health care? And for a lot of clinicians, they may say, to help improve efficiencies and save time. And that’s one area where it’s not clear AI is really doing that.

If you look at the amount of time spent still for clinicians who are using AI versus those who aren’t, it’s pretty similar, which I thought was really interesting. And yet, at the same time, satisfaction scores among clinicians who use AI were really high. They’re happy with their AI.

So it does raise this question. It’s not saving you time. It’s not making you more efficient. Why are you so satisfied by it? What is it offering you? And what the answer seems to come down to is that it seems to decrease what they refer to as cognitive burden. So how much time you have to spend thinking about things like writing that note, like that insurance claim, and whatever it might be, AI can offload that for you.
Now, I would dare say, just like the phone in your pocket, which probably doesn’t save you time or increase efficiency either, because you’re interacting with it a lot more than you otherwise would, I think AI sort of is falling into that pattern as well. So it’s not time or efficiency. But I think it’s allowing humans to do human things more than things that an AI platform can do.

That is interesting in a lot of ways. So the next question we want to throw at you is, what are your thoughts around making sure that AI technology is accessible for everyone?

Yeah, that’s a big question. Some of these programs, some of these platforms are expensive. I think whenever you have new technologies, you do see this schism initially between the haves and the have nots. That happens with any new technology even if you go to mammograms or new imaging tests.

In the beginning, there’s only certain people that have access to these things. I think that will change. I think a big way to change that — and I see this even within my own family — is looking at kids and making sure they’re really facile with AI. If there’s a lot of AI literacy starting at a young age, I think that will certainly democratize the use of AI as those people get older.

My parents, who are in their 80s, less likely to use AI. I use AI a fair amount. But I’m also a neuroscientist and a reporter. It intersects with a lot of my life. My kids, I think, will be using it all the time. So I think they’ve got to know how to use it. I’ll tell you a quick thing. I have three teenage daughters, by the way. So a big part of my life.

We relate in that way. I’ve got two.

I mean, it’s the best part of my life. It really is. But my second daughter just was applying to college. And one of the essays that they asked her to write, they said, for the first part of your essay, give the AI platform a prompt. And have the AI write the essay for you.

Wow.

They asked her to do that. And then the second part was to offer up a critique of that AI essay. And I thought it was really interesting because it’s sort of getting at this idea that AI is here. It’s here to stay. How do we interact with it? How do we make it beneficial for people?

I think that starts with literacy at a young age.

Yeah, and we’re starting to see that already with kids from middle school on up right now, like starting to see how it’s being integrated, or hoping that they’re teaching them how to use it with — to understand how to use it and prompt it in different ways, which is interesting. It’s so fascinating to me how it’s just part of their lives already in a way that it’s different than for us.

Yeah, prompts are really interesting. It’s like the conversation. How do you have a conversation, in this case, with an AI platform? But I think initiating conversation even with other humans is part of what they’re learning as well.

Absolutely, absolutely. You already alluded to the lifestyle choices and the topic of prevention. We talk about regular sleep, stimulating mental activities, prioritizing sleep. How does AI fit into the equation with those things, do you think, as we move forward?
I think this really does get at this idea that based on the number of things that maybe you guys measure about yourselves in any given day — certainly, I have various measurements that I wear. Based on those things, there is a lot of data there that can be analyzed and essentially given back to you in a way that really improves your life. Tuesday mornings are always your best time of thinking. Never call your mom until you’ve had breakfast. Don’t schedule any meetings Thursday afternoon because that’s your worst circadian rhythm.

We all have this about ourselves. And some people are self-aware enough to know not to schedule an important meeting before lunch because I’m walking in hungry to the meet. Whatever it might be, we develop these patterns about ourselves. I think that if you start to give all of your data — and I think some of that’s scary for people to just relinquish data like that, although I think it’s very generational.

Again, my parents are not comfortable with relinquishing data. They won’t even have an Alexa in their house. I’m more comfortable with it. My kids are super comfortable with it. So I think it’s generationally changing.

But regardless, sharing that sort of data with an AI platform, whether it’s your Apple Watch or your Oura, Whoop, whatever it might be, all the data you have — your sleep wake cycles, your diet — it can very quickly, and again, within seconds, generate something that would say, here is an ideal week for you. Here’s how you perform best.

So I think most of us are not nearly optimized in that way. And that’s not a criticism. That’s life. But some people are self-aware enough to be more optimized. I’m sure you guys are pretty optimized. But for a lot of people, having that kind of data that is frictionless, just sort of fed to you — 10,000 steps isn’t the right amount for you. 9,000 is actually your sweet spot. Whatever it may be, I think we’re going to get to that point.

Yeah, I even think about just the basics. I have a sleep accessory that helps me determine my HRV. And it helps me determine, how am I going to train tomorrow or today based on what I did yesterday and how my sleep is helping to determine that? So it’s those little things. It doesn’t seem that significant. But yet, it is helping to drive behavior in different people and things.

I think so. I mean, I track my sleep very carefully as well. And it’s part of the reason I pretty much eliminated any kind of alcohol from my diet. It was a sleep killer. Even when I thought I slept, I was not getting any deep sleep, even if I had a single drink in the evening sometime.

But I think, ultimately, to just have the insights — it’s kind of like when you search for something on Google, you’re not getting all of the thinking behind why you’re given certain search results. You’re just given the search results. I think the AI can do that for your lifestyle as well. I just want to know how to live my best lifestyle.

It may not say, well, your HRV went up. And therefore, that was good. And we correlate it with this. It’ll just give you the guidance of life. And it may even give you nudges along your day. Or it may track that you’ve walked into a certain restaurant and tell you this is the ideal food that you should now order and all those kinds of things.

Or you had a run on your schedule, Dave. You missed it. I’ve geolocated you to still sitting in your office. I’m just going to stream you a picture of some sneakers that I know you’ve been looking at online for some inspiration. Whatever it might be, I think it’s going to influence our lives in ways that we can’t even put in a conventional box right now. It’s not like prescriptive from a doctor. It’s integrated into your life like a best friend who knows you better than you know yourself and is constantly giving you this guidance.
Now, on the flip side of it — I mean, you always spoken about some risks relying too heavily on AI, including the need to take a trust but verify approach. So why is it important, too, when we’re looking at this technology, it doesn’t replace the human judgment and expertise in this space?

Yeah, I think that’s the big concern. Sometimes, these AI platforms arrive at some wild conclusions. They’ve been referred to all sorts of ways, like hallucinations. They just seem to do these things.
And in some ways probably more similar to humans than a computer. If you search something on your computer when was the war of 1812, You don’t then go to another computer to verify that. You assume your computer is correct.

AI is not a computer as much as it is an entity that’s trying to mimic human consciousness. So it can error. It can make mistakes. And I think humans can make mistakes as well. But I think that gets to the trust but verify model.

One thing I think is really interesting in this regard is autonomous vehicles because they are essentially AI computers on wheels. And I think that people have a really, really high expectation of autonomous vehicles but low trust, meaning if an autonomous vehicle gets in an accident — I mean, humans get in accidents all the time. It’s one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
But if an AI vehicle gets in an accident, that’s almost an existential crisis. That may disrupt the entire industry. So we have this incredibly high expectations of these AI platforms. But we have low trust at the same time. So I think that’s part of the reason that there’s this trust but verify approach that a lot of people are taking.

It’s interesting. Doing the journalism work that we do, there’s a lot talk about how is it being used in journalism as well. And that trust but verify approach is so critical. We talk a lot about that with Experience Life Magazine on our team about how do we make sure that — for brainstorming for SEO, maybe insights in those pieces, how are we using AI in a responsible way?

And even from a research standpoint, like perplexity — you can go and find research studies and all those pieces. But then you still have to do the human work of verifying everything. And that’s part of what is so important for us in our specific space but I’m sure with doctors and everything too, when they’re looking at results getting kicked out and different things like that in this space.

Yeah, no, it’s going to be very interesting to see how that plays out because, again, just generationally, I spent so much time talking to my teenage kids about this. And I think the two things that have always struck me about this aspect of things is that one is that we think of privacy as paramount. I’m in my mid 50s. Privacy is key.

But sometimes, this idea that privacy above all else — again, like my parents won’t have an Alexa in their house. Where do you draw your lines of privacy? My kids, when I talk to them about privacy, they basically say, why would, fill in the blank, the Chinese government be interested in me? So that’s one area that I think is very different for our generation versus the other generation.

But also, with regard to AI, I think there’s a sense that all of it is potentially made up when they go online. All of it. Even the real stuff, they think, is potentially made up. And I think, unfortunately, it has taken away a lot of trust in stuff that they see online.

It’s not that they’re not entertained by it. It’s not that they’re not engaged by it. Do they trust it? Not necessarily. And I worry about that. I think if you have a generation of people who grows up without a specific locus of trust, that’s a problem. But I think that’s potentially where we’re headed.

There are some that are doing a good job. I think there are certain platforms that just say, we’re only going to train our platforms on really high-level, quality evidence. So whatever’s generated by the AI is totally trustworthy. But others say, hey, open up the aperture of AI to the whole world, be it a Reddit conversation, be it an AI-generated image, be it whatever. We’ll just put it all out there. And people can decide for themselves. And it’ll be interesting to see which way we head.

Right, yeah.

Let’s stay in the same vein there because artificial intelligence is only as good as we program it to be. So with that, do you want to touch on that and unpack that a little bit more?

Yeah, I think it does get at this idea that for a lot of these platforms, they’re consuming whatever we feed them. And so there’s this old adage. Garbage in, garbage out. If you feed the platform a lot of garbage, you are likely to get a lot of garbage out.

But what does that mean exactly? I think in health care, maybe it’s a little bit more clear cut that you want studies that have been replicated, reproduced, that are large studies, peer reviewed, all that sort of stuff. I’m only going to accept that sort of data. And then when somebody goes on and asks a medical question of some sort — my kid has mumps, what is the best thing to do — you feel pretty confident in that.

So that’s a, somewhat argue, a well-trained platform. But other people might say, look, at some point, AI has to be a window to the world. As opposed to just like this stratified peer-reviewed data, let’s look at everything. Let’s look at what’s happening in a small, little retrospective study out of a small city in France or in Africa or wherever it might be and combine all of this data together to arrive at these conclusions.

And that’s where I think it’s not clear to me exactly where this is going to land. I think it will probably be a combination of things. There will be platforms that will be just really more tightly trained. And there’ll be other things that are just open eye to the world.

You have talked a little bit about another kind of AI that I want to just jump on for a second here. It’s authentic intelligence. And I want to know when you’re thinking about AI and authentic intelligence, what are your thoughts on that? And what do you mean by it?

Yeah, I was sort of trying to get at this idea. Artificial intelligence — first of all, that just doesn’t sound good. It’s artificial. You don’t want to put artificial things in your body. Why is artificial intelligence the thing that people are sort of really gravitating around? And what is the alternative to that?

And I think the alternative is authentic intelligence, things that are uniquely human. Anytime there have been huge technological advances, even going back to just the plow, humans were displaced as a result of that new technology. And then they were, in many ways, forced to do things that were more uniquely human because the plow could do that work. I no longer need to do that work. What should I do instead?
And in many ways, that’s the evolution we’re seeing now. AI is going to do a lot of things that humans do. So for some people, it sounds very ominous, very threatening, which I get. But at the same time, it may afford people to actually gravitate towards uniquely human things, things that require authentic intelligence, things that require judgment, that human connection.

I’m a doctor. I operated on somebody who was 93 years old the other day, who had fallen off his roof after taking a leaf blower up to the top of his roof, a very, very independent, living 93-year-old. If you had fed historian to an AI platform, they probably would have suggested not operating on him, given his age. I did that operation a few years ago. And I still get a card from him every year on my birthday.

So I don’t think an AI platform could have predicted that. So that is the more judgment, nuance, authentic intelligence that I think we need to gravitate toward. I think in the arts and I think certain scientific disciplines, I think authentic intelligence will become even more important.

Yeah, absolutely. I like to play on that, the authentic intelligence. So yeah, I love that.

Dipping AI.

So going back to the health care and the health space, what are some next iterations that we’ll be seeing in this space that you might be privy to? And then as we move forward, is there any advice for the people who are adapting this that you want to give them a heads up on?

With regard to the health space, I think a lot of it’s going to be this very, very consumer-focused AI, this idea that if you give me some insights into your life, what your life is like into the AI platform, I can create a best way of life for you. I think that’s really exciting. And it feels very democratic because you think of health sometimes as being something relegated.

We spend $4 trillion a year on health care. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about whether you should be eating carbs versus fats in the morning and how many steps you should be taking and how much sunlight you should get on your face and the ideal time for you to sleep and wake up. These are simple things. And people know they’re important.

But I think the way that we’ve approached it is to say, everyone, eat five servings of this, do this amount of this. And for some people, they may need a lot more of that. They may need less. Or they may need to do these things at different times of day or combine certain foods with other foods.
I think that that’s very exciting for me. I saw a technology just based on voice patterns. So just as I’m talking to you, an AI platform can determine, am I stressed? Am I nervous? Is my blood sugar about to go low? Am I going into a depressive episode?

It can even diagnose disease, like early onset Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. These things are all knowable right now with a lot of the metrics that we already collect on people, which is fascinating to me. But we haven’t known what to do with all this data. You guys are good about looking at your data. But most people really aren’t. And they just want someone to digest all that data for them and give them the best way to live. An AI platform can do that within seconds. I find that really exciting. I mean, I want to live a long time. And I want to live a very healthy life for a long time. I think AI can help me do that.

Yeah.

That’s awesome.

I think back to — you mentioned the 93-year-old that you just did a surgery on recently. And I think of my grandfather who is 93 and actually was like, ooh, I better check to make sure that wasn’t my grandfather because he would do that exactly. He would climb on that roof.

But I just think of the advancements that he has seen in his lifestyle or in his life span. He was born in the 30s. And what he has witnessed from the automobile evolution. He was a farmer. Like how farming changed for him over the years to now.

He is a great user of technology, which amazes me. He’s one of my favorite people to talk to or text with. But I think about the evolution that we’re seeing right now. What do we envision that being when we’re 93? When you think ahead to that, is it even possible to imagine what’s possible?

I don’t know. I don’t think so. And I find that delightful as opposed to alarming. Again, having kids and imagining grandkids myself, I’m starting to get to that age. You can start to make these predictions about things. But it’s happening so fast. The pace of change in your grandfather’s life over the last roughly 100 years versus the pace of change of people who are being born today is just so much more rapid. It’s wild to me.

I remember my wife and I were driving — this is several years ago. And I was driving. And she was next to me. And my daughter called her on FaceTime. And so she’s sitting next to me now, looking at this device, and FaceTiming with my daughter, which I didn’t grow up with cell phones, let alone the idea that — and the only question my daughter had was, where is the sweater that she wanted to wear?

So for something as relatively mundane as that, we were using Star Trek like technology. And I don’t know that I could have imagined that. I think there’s some real visionaries out there who are probably pretty good at being predictive of these things. But I just like to let the mind go crazy and just imagine anything that is possible. And I think there’s a lot on the table.

Absolutely, yeah. Well, switching gears for just a second, I know you have a new book coming out in September. And we can switch over to that for a moment, if you don’t mind. We’d love to hear a little bit about what your new book is about. It’s called It Doesn’t Have to Hurt — Your Smart Guide to a Pain-Free Life, which I think is something that — we’re in the health and wellness space. We have people coming into our clubs every single day, a lot of people coming in with maybe back pain or other pains that they’re trying to figure out what to do with. I’d love to hear more about your book and how it might help many people.

Yeah, thank you for asking that. I’ve been thinking about this book for a long time. I think so much of what we do in the health care industry is in some way treat pain. I mean, pain is often the first signal in people’s bodies that something’s going on.

And we don’t have a great understanding of it. 20% of the US population and, frankly, the global population suffers from chronic pain. That number was alarming. This is for people whose pain just doesn’t go away — sometimes after some sort of trauma, a lot of times for no discernible reason whatsoever. They just develop pain. And the pain stays.

I think opioids sort of sucked up a lot of the oxygen in the room for a long time. So everyone got an opioid for any kind of pain. And as a result, I think pain got minimized because you just threw a really powerful, sedating, potentially addictive medicine at it.

And we haven’t made a lot of progress in terms of trying to understand how to measure it, how to know when we’ve succeeded with treating pain. So I just really wanted to write a book about this. There were so many things about it that interested me. I’ll give you a quick one.

I had read this study that basically said after an injury, say, it’s an ankle sprain or something like that, usually a fitness-related injury, the people who had the lowest levels of inflammation in their body right at the time of that injury, they were the most likely to have chronic pain. So let me just say that again. If you had really low levels of inflammation in your body after your injury, you were more likely to have chronic pain.

Now, why is that interesting? Because what do we do if someone has an ankle sprain or something like that, is we do everything we can to reduce inflammation. We Rest it. We Ice it. We Compress it. We Elevate it. RICE.

So we’re, in effect, lowering inflammation. So part of the reason we do that is to try and ease discomfort at the time. But what we now know is that it increases the likelihood because you’ve lowered inflammation. It increases the likelihood you’re going to have chronic pain, which is just fundamentally so interesting to me.

Because if you let the body do its job, which is to circulate these inflammatory cells and heal the way that it should, even though it may hurt more in the moment, the idea of mobilizing your ankle, as long as it’s not broken or something — but mobilizing as quickly as you can, getting back to exercise as quickly as you can, doing activity as quickly as you can, and treating only if necessary, that is a much better approach. And that’s the MEAT approach — Mobilization, Exercise, Activity, and Treatment — versus the RICE approach.

So very fundamental thing but makes a world of difference when it comes to chronic pain. A lot of times, we’re setting ourselves up for chronic pain. So there were all kinds of examples like that just kept coming to me as I was starting to think about this book that I thought would be good to share with people, the latest science on pain.

Well, we want to give the listeners the best of the best tips because you have a crazy, busy life. So if you can, what are some of the health and lifestyle habits that are most important to you and how you activate them daily?

I think there’s a lot of things that I do that are going to be a common denominator probably for a lot of your listeners. I try and be intensely active for a portion of my day every day. That would be run, bike, swim because I like triathlon. So those are usually the three things. I’ll do resistance training two to three times a week.

But I think the things that are less obvious and that have become clearer to me, especially as a guy in his mid 50s, is that the intense activity — probably pretty good for my cardiovascular health. But I’ve realized it generates a lot of cortisol, which is not as great good for my brain health. So in addition to intense activity time, having moderate activity time, taking a brisk walk, that kind of movement is particularly helpful for the brain.

I wear a rucksack now whenever I do those walks because putting that axial load closer to the top of your body on your shoulders — so good for your bone health and really good for your lean muscle health as well. So here’s a weird one.

But one of my neurologists — I did this documentary on Alzheimer’s disease. He suggested wearing toe spacers when you’re just at home. Do you ever do that?

I have toe spacers. I do.

You got toe —

Now, I want to know more.

Well, the nerves that go from your toes and your feet to your spinal cord are some of the longest nerves in the body. And because we wear shoes a lot, we’re really not activating a lot of those nerves very much. So just even going barefoot and letting your toes and your feet move to the ground or wearing toe spacers, as was suggested to me, that can go a long way towards activating these nerves, which helps activate your entire central nervous system.

So those are some, I guess, a little off the beaten path things besides the common denominator ones. I talked to my parents a lot on the phone. They live in a different state. We Zoom call a lot. I think that’s really good for my health.

When I talk to them, I often in some way, shape, or form ask their advice on things. I ask for help on things. And what I’ve learned is that the display of vulnerability is almost a hack for a more profound relationship. If you can be vulnerable around people, it’s usually a sign of a quality relationship.

So that’s not something you think about when it comes to fitness very often. But me calling my parents and asking for help in some small way is a part of my fitness routine, which is a little weird. But it works. And it’s good for them as well. I mean, they’re my parents. They want to feel like they’re helping their son even though he’s in his mid 50s. So besides the obvious things, these are some of the other things I do.
Well, I think you’re leaning right into that, the importance of connection and relationship. And when we’re really real with people and authentic and we’re willing to put ourselves out there with what’s really happening with us and when we need that help, it’s huge for us to be able to have authentic connection with people.

Yeah, absolutely. And it gets your head in the right space. After I have a wonderful conversation like that with my parents, if I go work out after that, my workout’s better. My head’s in the right space. I’ll lift more weight. I’ll run faster, whatever it might be because I had that connection. So your physical health follows your brain health. Get your brain health right, the physical health will follow.

Mind right, body right. I say it all the time.

Yes, that’s your go-to phrase — go-to phrase.

I love it. I love it.

Well, Dr. Gupta, is there anything else you want to make sure we cover before we jump into just one final question we have for you? We call it our surprise question.

Oh, surprise question. No, I think it’s great. I really appreciate it. And thank you for letting me talk about the book. I think there’s a lot of people who suffer from chronic pain out there. It’s the fastest growing disease class in and of itself in the United States, faster than diabetes, heart disease, dementia.
So people hurt out there. And there’s more and more of them. But I think there’s things that we can do with what we already know. So a lot of people who are listening are probably athletes and people who deal with pain here and there. When it turns into chronic pain, there’s things you can do. I’ve learned these lessons and hopefully and happily going to share them.

Awesome.

All right, so our last question. It’s probably not a huge surprise question, honestly. But what is one way that you are personally using AI outside of the health care space that might be unexpected or has surprised you even?

That’s a good question. I got to think about this for a second. All right. I do use it in health care a lot. And I do use it in the ways that I’ve been describing in terms of trying to optimize my life. But I think you mean something different.

I get asked a lot by my own kids for advice on things about their lives, like what they should wear for an event or something like that or to sometimes suggest things for them. And I have done this. I’m not proud of it necessarily. But I’ve done this a few times, where I’ve put in images of certain dresses that they’re showing me and putting in information about 16 years old does this, does that, whatever. Here’s the event. Which of these is the best for me to recommend to my daughter?

[LAUGHING]

OK, but that’s like a connection thing right there. They’re asking your advice. It’s another way for you to connect with them too. I think it’s really important that we find those ways, whatever they are.
I know. And it’s like everything I said about authentic intelligence just sort of flies in the face of that. I get it. But sometimes, teenage girls are delightful and mysterious creatures. So I can’t always figure things out. And sometimes, I need the AI platform to give me a little nudge.

But that’s something that I’ve done a few times. Sometimes, I’ll use it to help generate ideas, just if I’m working on something and I’m just sort of stuck to get going. Just to ask for a paragraph if there’s a lot of papers or a lot of articles that I’ve put into my to-read file.

And so these are articles that I haven’t read yet. But I should get around to reading at some point. Sometimes, I’ll load several of them into a platform that I like, NotebookLM. And I’ll say, generate me a podcast about this, about these articles. And I’ll go for a walk. And I’ll get a 30-minute podcast on several articles that I’ve wanted to read.

Wow.

So I’m an embracer of technology. I think a lot of neuroscientists are. I think it has caveats. But I’ve started to use it in my own life in lots of different ways.

That’s super interesting. I just wrote down that platform notebook. That sounds great. There’s always something to read and never enough time to get to all of it.

Yeah, totally. It’ll do books too. But of course, I think you should read the book personally. I think that’s better.

Exactly. Well, Dr. Gupta, thank you so much for joining us. We want to make sure people know where they can follow you. You’re @drsanjaygupta on Instagram. Obviously, your new book is coming out. We’ll make sure to link to that in our show notes. And then also, you have your podcast, Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, as well, as we’ll point to that.

Thank you very much. I try to do what you guys do, try and put some good information out there, good knowledge out there. Like I said, I really appreciate your podcast. The two in particular that I listened to recently were on ketones and on overall resistance fitness.

And I think that the points about resistance fitness becoming even more important as you get older, not less, I told my parents about that. Because I think you get to a certain age, and you’re like, am I still going to go lift weights? If I’m in my 70s or 80s, that’s still a thing for me? Should be and maybe even more of a thing than it was in your 30s or 40s. So I love that.

Yeah. Well, it’s that whole functional fitness throughout your health span of your lifespan.

Yeah, absolutely.

Awesome. Well, thank you again. We will be in touch soon. But thanks again.

And we appreciate you.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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