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It's an exciting time to be alive with so much incredible medical technology affecting our lives. As a transhumanist, I couldn't be happier about that fact. But understanding all that we can do to our bodies both now and in the future is complex business. I had a chance to catch up with Dr. Bertalan Mesko, and ask him to tell us about his new book, My Health: Upgraded, which covers the field of modern and futurist medicine. Mesko is a medical futurist with a PhD and MD in genomics from the University of Debrecen, Medical School and Health Science Center. His work has been covered broadly in major media.
Q. What made you write My Health: Upgraded?
A. I kept receiving amazing questions about the future of medicine after my talks. I wrote them down to understand the general public’s interest in health technology and innovation better. When I realized that I had over 50 really exciting questions, it was time to answer them. That was my aim with My Health: Upgraded. I firmly believe that it's time for humanity to step up and prepare for the technological revolution in healthcare. We must keep the human touch in medicine, and live healthier lives. Both goals are important, and neither should come at the expense of the other. In My Health:Upgraded, I present how I have upgraded my health in the last decade with innovative, but affordable technologies; and what the most exciting, important and alarming issues are when it comes to the future of medicine and healthcare.
Q. Who else is involved in creating the book? Who have you talked to while writing it?
A. I asked the opinion of visionaries such as Eric Topol, Ian Pearson or Lucien Engelen. I interviewed experts such as E-patient Dave deBronkart, Professor Robert Langer, Professor Anthony Atala, among others. I also asked companies to weigh in, from AliveCor and Withings to The Personalized Medicine Coalition, Intouch Health, MC10, Organovo, and Ekso Bionics. Their insights helped make the book as comprehensive and up-to-date as possible.
Q. How can we start upgrading our health today? Where would you start?
A. It's important to point out that buying devices is not the first step towards upgrading our health. First, we need to find what is wrong with our health, disease management or lifestyle. When I was a teenager I got fed up with the mood swings that every teenager suffers. One day you can happily focus on what’s important, the other you are downbeat for no real reason. As a pretty rational person I decided to change that. But I needed data to do so. I started assigning a score between one and ten to my daily emotional, physical, and mental state in order to track changes over time. I thought it might reduce my mood swings. It worked. And I still log my ratings every day. Since July 21, 1997, I have not missed a single day. Early on I used simple notes. Now I save my data in a Google document. It takes me seconds a day. This way I can adjust my lifestyle whenever I notice trends, or a decline in the graph of my life. I found that my physical score is generally stable and high (meaning good) during the weekdays, my mental score declines over the weekend, and my emotional score is highest on Friday and Saturday. I further found a strong correlation between more exercise and mental performance - now I exercise every day so I can focus. Such a simple thing led to important consequences. The data helped me decide what to add or remove from my routine. It helped me live differently and find the balance that so many people are looking for.
Only after you know what to improve should you start looking for the right technology to help measure results. I published a video guide to help people find the best wearable for any purpose.
Q. Which technologies do you think will help the transhumanist movement now?
A.The majority of disrupting health technologies will help the transhumanist movement in the long run. But the two most interesting areas for transhumanists are health and disease.
In terms of monitoring health, the size of health trackers is decreasing fast and can measure more and more parameters from blood pressure to stress levels. The Japanese digital tattoo and similar thin electronics will make data collection even more seamless. Robots of micrometer size have been introduced to the general public in 2015. If they keep on shrinking, nanorobots could soon be living in our bloodstream as Ray Kurzweil has described.
Artificial intelligence algorithms could organize healthcare much better. As we start to understand how our neural system works, we might be able to upload information straight from our bodies. Martine Rothblatt brilliantly explained how such “cybertwins” would look like in her new book, Virtually Human. Such cyber minds would be algorithms having the same set of skills, thoughts and emotions we have.
There’s reason to be excited for every transhumanist, but the challenge will be making technology safe to use, upholding individual privacy, and teaching the general public to accept and embrace the technology.
Q. What is the most heartbreaking / surprising story you uncovered while looking for the future of medicine that was about a "layperson" building technology to upgrade their health?
A. I'm always moved when I see examples of empowered patients taking matters into their own hands. In 2012 a boy was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. His father left his career in finance, relocated with his family from London to Massachusetts, put a team in place, raised seed capital and founded Solid, a biotech company with the purpose of finding a cure. There are literally hundreds of similar stories, proving that the future of medicine is not only created by physicians or researchers, but also by laypeople. And I'm always excited when laypeople design cutting edge technology to solve everyday problems, even though the tech in question has not been deemed “safe” yet. I’m talking about people who have implanted RFID chips under their skin to control laptops or garage doors and serve as a universal password to services and other devices. I should note that though sterile microchips are available online, we don't have long-term data about their safety.
One of the most exciting new areas for wearable technology is about literally upgrading how we think - how our brain functions. Should we start using these gadgets right away for getting feedback about how our brain works or are there things to consider and warnings to heed before we do?
When I want to relax I put on my Muse headband and open the related application on my smartphone. It guides me through the process of meditation. Then gives me feedback about how successful I was compared to myself before starting meditation. For example, I have to think of as many members of a category such as cars, books, or movies as I can in one minute. This is how it measures my active brain. Then I can set the length of the session and begin. The beach sound alone can make me relaxed, but I really start focusing on the reward, which is bird song. I couldn’t do anything with an EEG graph therefore I need such a device to translate my EEG into digestible results. The app tells me when my brain was active or calm. This is the only distinction it can make. I’ve been meditating with it for over a year. And I can see how calm I mentally am while relaxing. When I need to focus, I browse focusatwill.com and choose music types from lounge to up–tempo, which helps me focus for longer periods. Developers behind the freemium–based service checked the EEG signals of participants and filled the database only with the kind of music that supports focus. I switch to up–tempo when I need to work fast and to café creative when I need to come up with ideas.
Only a few ideas of what methods and devices are already available. What matters is we should be conscious about using them, and only use them when they are advantageous.
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For more information, follow Dr. Berci Mesko on Twitter or check out his website The Medical Futurist:
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