Mick Unplugged - Defying Aging: Preventative AI’s Game-Changer with Dr Eric Topol

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Dr Eric Topol is a relentless pioneer, a visionary cardiologist, and a groundbreaking scientist who is not merely observing the future of health but actively building it. With a keen focus on leveraging cutting-edge technology and evidence-based science, he challenges the status quo in medicine, pushing for a radical shift from treatment to prevention. His work is reshaping our understanding of longevity, healthspan, and the profound impact of AI, offering a blueprint for a healthier, more informed tomorrow.Takeaways:The "Because" of Prevention: Dr. Topol’s deep-seated motivation stems from witnessing preventable suffering and death within his own family, fueling his drive to transform medicine from a reactive treatment model to a proactive prevention paradigm.Demystifying Superagers: Contrary to common belief, the extraordinary health and longevity of "superagers" are primarily attributed to lifestyle choices and robust immune systems, not solely genetics, offering an empowering message that healthy aging is largely within our control.AI’s Triple Threat in Healthcare: Artificial intelligence is poised to revolutionize healthcare by enhancing diagnostic accuracy, returning valuable time to clinicians by streamlining administrative tasks, and most profoundly, by enabling personalized disease prevention strategies.Sound Bytes:"I just think we can do so much better to prevent the major diseases, not just there that I've been in for my career, cardiovascular, but also neurodegenerative, preventing Alzheimer's and also preventing cancer.""We now are empowered to go that route. And it's a lot like what I experienced in the early 80s, which is when a field within medicine went through a radical change. We need to do that more frequently than every decade or two.""I figured, well, I'm condemned to the same fate. So I've always been interested in genetics and health span, lifespan. And we did a study we called the Welderly. And the Welderly, basically another name for them, are superagers."Connect & Discover Dr Eric:Instagram: @erictopol1X: @EricTopolSubstack: @Ground TruthsBook: Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to LongevityLinkedIn: @eric-topolYouTube: @EricTopolSRTI🔥 Ready to Unleash Your Inner Game-Changer? 🔥 Mick Hunt’s BEST SELLING book, How to Be a Good Leader When You’ve Never Had One: The Blueprint for Modern Leadership, is here to light a fire under your ambition and arm you with the real-talk strategies that only Mick delivers. 👉 Grab your copy now and level up your life → Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million  FOLLOW MICK ON:Spotify: MickUnpluggedInstagram: @mickunplugged Facebook: @mickunpluggedYouTube: @MickUnpluggedPodcast LinkedIn: @mickhunt Website: MickHuntOfficial.comWebsite: howtobeagoodleader.comWebsite: Leadloudseries.comApple: MickUnpluggedSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, everybody. This episode with Dr. Eric Toppel is amazing. We go into AI in medicine. We talk about, you know, why we should be looking at our health span versus our lifespan. We're going to talk through some numbers that are going to be mind-blowing. But Dr. Eric is going to give you a lot of tips that you can use right now to increase your health span. We don't talk about or believe in reversing aging. We just need to make sure that we understand that it's going to happen. But what can we do to have a lot of? a prolonged health span. So without further ado, this is my good friend and someone that you're going to get a lot

of wisdom from, Dr. Airtop. You're listening to Mick Unplugged, hosted by the one and only Mick Hunt. This is where purpose meets power and stories spark transformation. Mick takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning, helping you discover your because and becoming unstoppable. I'm Rudy Rush, and trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get Unplugged. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged,

and today I have someone who I've been wanting to talk to for a long time, somebody that has really shaped a lot of thoughts that I have around AI and discipline and health and strategies. He has none other than the amazing, the brilliant, the guy that's going to change your life today. Dr. Eric Topple, Dr. Eric, how are you doing today, sir? Well, thank you. That's an awfully kind introduction. I'm very much appreciated.

I mean, I mean every word of it. You are definitely doing some game-changing things out there. I love to talk to my guest about there because, that thing that's deeper than your why, right? That passion that drives you. And you've done so much in your illustrious career. What's your because today? Why do you keep doing the things that you do? I just think we can do so much better to prevent the major diseases, not just the area that I've been in for my career,

cardiovascular, but also neurodegenerative, preventing Alzheimer's, and also preventing cancer. We are not taking advantage of all the golden opportunities, the knowledge, the advances, the innovation, and we should be doing it. It's frustrating, but we will. Eventually, we'll get there. Yeah, yeah. I love it. And again, you're doing so much, you have done so much, and you continue to do groundbreaking things in

your industry. When did you know that that was going to become a passion of yours? to make change and to make impact? Well, I guess when I was training, I was at UC San Francisco, and I was in the middle of really a revolution in cardiology where the beginning of angioplasty and clot- dissolving therapies and all sorts of things are happening very quickly. And that gave me a sense that, well, that's not a one-off.

You know, why don't we do this more often? Why don't we start to really take medicine to levels? that are not the status quo, which is typical. It's a slow-moving feel, and we need to get on the accelerator, and there's too many people that are suffering, that are dying, or have whatever disability. And that could be as cleaning up the problems of medical errors, or it could be coming up with new strategies to prevent diseases.

And we're just not doing that. Everything we do, essentially, in medicine, you know, treat, treat, treat. Where is to prevent, prevent, prevent? And so we now are empowered to go that route. And it's a lot like what I experienced in the early 80s, which is, you know, when a field within medicine went through a radical change. We need to do that more frequently than every decade or two. You know, again, all the things that you're doing,

you have a new book coming out, super agers. And what I love about this book and the things that you're talking about, it's evidence-based. Right? Like you're not just giving hyperbole. You're not giving theory. You're not doing the what-ifs. You're not trying to scare people. You're talking about evidence-based topics and help. Could you, for the viewers and listeners, talk about super agers, where the idea come from and where do you want people to get out of this? Yeah, I think many people in your audience are like me where they have a terrible family history. When I was growing up, I think I remember the most is going to. on all these funerals of my relatives and my aunts and my uncles, my grandparents, dying all at young ages. And I figure, well, I'm condemned to the same fate. So I've always been interested in genetics and, you know, health span, lifespan, and lifespan. And we did a study we

called the Welderly. And the Welderly, basically another name for them are super ages. We were able to find 1,400 people who were average age 89 who had never been sick in their lives. and they were on no medications. Now, that's a rarefied group, and we did whole genome sequencing on these people. And we found very little from their DNA sequence to account for their welderly superage or status. Now, there's a small genetic component,

but it's far less than we ever had assumed. And so that actually felt that's liberating. I might not have to, you know, succumb like my road is, And I think it's an eye-opening finding. And then the question is, what does account for healthy aging? And we do know, as you mentioned, the evidence, the body of evidence, of course, supports healthy lifestyle. You don't have to go to longevity clinics or take these anti-aging supplements that have no data or other very expensive things like, you know, plasmapheresis, unproven stem cells, all kinds of,

you know, supplement stuff. Actually, first off is concentrating on healthy anti-inflammatory diet and lots of physical activity, not just aerobic, but also strength resistance training. And sleep quality, really important. But the list goes on about being out in nature, having a purpose, you know, having lots of social engagement. So we've learned a lot about lifestyle factors. It's not all about that.

The other thing we learned that I reviewed in superagers is the immune system is really big. We need to keep our immune system healthy because as we old, this term immunosinessence, it's prone to promote inflammation, another term inflamaging, which is what sets off these age-related diseases to occur. So we have to get on top of that and not let our immune system lose its integrity as we age. Some people, the superagers, they're just naturally. got a great immune system. But most of us, we have not the ideal progression as time goes on where our immune system loses some of its protective capabilities or it gets dysregulated.

We got to prevent that if we're going to get our health span extended to the max. Yeah. So speaking of that with the immune system, for those that are watching or listening, what are one or two things that we can do to improve our immune system or help out our immune system so that we can become one of those super ages. Well, one great example. I mean, you're young, but if you're over 50, you better get a shingles vaccine. It's actually pretty incredible.

Now, as of this week, there will be four studies, natural experiments, large countries, U.S., Canada, Wales, Australia, you know, collectively millions of people. And the people who got the shingles vaccine had 20% or more reduction of dimension most of, of course, is Alzheimer's about 80%. And then today is a report about how shingles vaccine slows the aging process in people. Now, these are not related to that it's having a big effect through the herpesoster,

which is what causes shingles. But what we've now seen is that the immune system is really amped up. It's made healthier. And that's what accounts for this slowing aging and less risk of developing. Alzheimer's disease. So we got one thing right now, which if this was a drug, people would be taken this left and right. And, you know, Alzheimer's is probably the most feared, dreaded disease of all people. So we have something, and we're going to build on that, you know, medications, other vaccines. Maybe there will ultimately be a vaccine just to prevent neurodegenerative disease.

But that's a big jump in our knowledge base, and it's really exciting. And it goes beyond, of course, lifestyle factor. That's awesome. You know, one of the things that I've been passionate about as our society continues to evolve is artificial intelligence of AI. I personally believe that in the health space, in the longevity space, AI is actually more powerful than it is in any other spaces because people forget the intelligence part of AI, right? A lot of times when we're thinking AI, we're thinking of bot or we're thinking of automation, but that's not really AI. Those technologies have existed for years and years and years and years and actually decades

and decades. But in the health space, AI is making huge impacts. How are you viewing AI for the good, for the bad, or for the indifferent? Yeah. Well, there's kind of three big parts to that story, which I agree with you. Firstly, there's the ability to improve accuracy of diagnosis. We've already seen that proven for images like mammograms and colonoscopy, picking up polyps, and many other forms of imaging, of scans.

So that's one that is very clear cut, that the AI sees things that human experts can't see, won't see, ever see. So that's one. The second is the ability to give the gift of time back to, clinicians because they're very much burden with data clerk functions and they're not even looking at patients, they're typing on a keyboard. And now we're seeing how natural language processing and all the other downstream functions of an automated synthetic note. So there's total attention being paid one to one, I, I, I, and there's a presence back. But moreover, we're seeing randomized studies show that it provides a gift of time. It's a big morale booster. So we're getting back that patient-doctor

relationship gradually, and that's going to be big. But the one I think is the biggest contribution in the future is using AI to prevent diseases that is taking all the data of a person, many, many layers of data, and using that to know who's at high risk and getting all over that person so they never get an important age-related disease. These are the three big areas. Now, it doesn't mean that AI is perfect. There's liabilities, of course, but I'm very sanguine about all three of these being a big deal. Yeah. You often emphasize the importance of not just lifespan, but you talk about the health span. Break that down for us for those that are listening or watching. Well, the average American health span ends at age 64 because they have a major chronic disease, mostly age-related diseases,

heartivascular, a cancer, beginning of a neurodegenerative disease. The lifespan, as you know, in the U.S. average is about 79, a couple years more for women than men. So that's a 15-year age gap between the end of a person's average health span to the end of their life. Now, that 15 years shouldn't be. It should be that their health span and lifespan are close. That big loss of nearly 15 years, that's what we have to start to, you know, people want to have longevity and live to 120. That's not worth anything if you're basically demented and frail. I mean, we can do that today.

We could put you on a life support system and keep your life forever, but you're a functional. What good is that? So we have to get this maximal extension of health span and stop this terrible gap that exists today between health span. and lifespan. And this longevity craze is wrong. We shouldn't be going after longevity. We should have a health span interest. That's the primary objective. How do we, how do we achieve this, right? Like, how do we, I mean, I know you're doing your part in articulating this message, but how do we really just let people understand that this is a thing and steps that they can take in order to improve their health spent? Yeah. So, first of all, we could accept that we're going to age. You know, that's kind of a normal process.

Yeah. Instead of trying to block aging and your reverse aging, you know, we're going to age, but let's not accept the age-related diseases. So in the weeks ahead, we're starting the first prevention of Alzheimer's trial by taking all the data in high-risk people and that, randomizing to very intensive, continuous lifestyle improvement versus just providing some educational materials. and then in 1,200 people who are at high risk for Alzheimer's, will be able to tell whether we're making headway. And then we'll start with different medications that have a lot of promise on top of lifestyle. So we believe Alzheimer's ultimately will be a preventable disease, as will be most common cancers and heart disease.

But it's going to take a while. You have to have the proof of concept. You have compelling evidence. But we have to get started on this. You couldn't do this without multimodal AI because you've got to take the data from all these different layers and that includes genes and proteins and biomarkers. It's not very expensive, but it relies on great analytics. And I think that's what's the, that's why I'm so excited about the new era of prevention.

So in your estimate, and this is about to be a bad question, I shouldn't even ask it the way that I'm getting at. So I went to the doctor for a regular checkup a few weeks ago. And I was asking him. and the team about using AI to help with diagnosis or with symptom prevention and all this. And he said, that's not something I'm comfortable with. And I don't want to experiment with that. Like, why is that mindset still there?

And how do we change that mindset? Yeah, it's very hard to change anything in medicine, as I've learned over four decades. Unfortunately, it's lots of resistance among physicians to incorporate AI, especially when it's proven. I mean, there's many things that we're still waiting for, you know, that kind of compelling evidence. But it's sad because there are things that should definitely be part of daily routine medical practice and care. There's just a gap that's time and it's just really unfortunate because it's not delivering state-of-the-art care for patients. While, the AI is going to take over my role. Doctors are typically control freaks.

They want to control everything and here AI is coming in and encroaching. their control of factor. I mean, there's lots of things here that account for this reluctance to accept or embrace AI. So here's something you don't know, and I waited until we were live together to tell you this.

Ground Truths, your newsletter. My mom, who will unsubscribe to any and everything in the world, right? The one thing that she subscribes to that she can't wait for the latest and greatest is ground truths. I love to give you the floor to talk to us about ground truth, your newsletter. I'm going to make sure we have links to that and obviously

links to the book as well too. But I'd love to talk about that newsletter because my mom loves it. Oh, well, that's fantastic. Thanks so much for passing that along. Well, four years ago, I started reluctantly to do this newsletter, which is now kind of newsletter and podcasts, kind of alternating weekly or if not more frequent. And what I learned, was so much better than using Twitter or these other social media because you can really express yourself. It's not like, you know, 240 character. And I started to realize that this was helping people, you know, get the latest medical advances or talk hear from the, you know, the leading figures in the world of biomedicine. And it's been fun for me. I really, I love doing it.

I have another one I'm going to work on this week is the big jump in new shingles of vaccine that's happening just this week. But, you know, I really want to have people aware most of the time is stuff that's not covered in the media. And there's big things happening. And a lot of people these days are not very optimistic for various reasons. But I try to show, hey, you know what? We're making great progress. And we're going to get to the point of preventing these dreading.

diseases and a whole different practice of medicine. You know, whether that's changing how we screen for cancer, how we prevent cancer, all the things that we can do to get on top of preventing heart disease. I mean, there's something every day. I have to pick the things that each week that deserve spotlighting. But it's fun. It takes some time to do it, but it's so great to get the feedback from your mother. No, again, my mom will unsubscribe to anything, but she loves the,

fact that what you send out is informative. And this is me and me only. I'll say it because it's the truth. A lot of folks that have newsletters, they're trying to show you how smart they are or getting you to click into something else where you're there. Like, she feels like you were genuinely in your heart is to help people and to give them information that can help them. And so that's kudos to you. Well, thanks. No, I really appreciate it. It means a lot to me because, you know, I don't have any, uh, there's no sponsors. There's no ads. You know, it's free. It's free. It's something that is the main purpose is to spread, you know, the word, spread what's really important going on in medicine that a lot of people might not know about. Like, for example, the breakthrough test about Alzheimer's disease that still today, you know, I go into giving a talk and there's several hundred people.

I say, anybody here of the P.Tau-217 test, like one person raises their hand, you know? But, you know, I've written at least two newsletters about it. I say, anybody heard of organ clocks? You know, two people raised their hand. You know, it's just so much stuff going on that's exciting and people don't know about it and it's not covered elsewhere. So that's what I try to do. Awesome stuff. So what else do you have going on?

What else are you excited about any projects? I know the book and like I said, we'll have links to the book. But what else is Dr. Eric working on? Well, there are doing that, starting up that trial Alzheimer's to prevention. We just enrolled 1,000 people with long COVID to try to prevent or treat long COVID, which is not, there is no treatment validated. And we're testing a GOP1 drug bound for people versus placebo. So this is a direct-to-participant trial.

All of our clinical trials are direct-to-participant. We don't involve any medical centers. You know, we just go right to the people. And that's what we shouldn't be doing. And we shouldn't be doing trials like the old way. They cost too much and they're very inconvenient and very slow and extremely costly. And we can cut 90% of the cost just by going direct to participant. So that's something we do.

But, you know, basically the AI analytics, that is our main thrust, is being able to take many layers of data, including sensors, variable sensors. and bring that together to extract the most meaning so that we live in a new era. Now, everybody's talking about the information era for decade. Well, we're in a hyper-information era. We're in a tsunami of information, but no one really is analyzing it very well. So that's one of the things that we really work on. That's awesome. That's awesome.

So, Dr. Eric, where can people find and follow you and keep up with the latest, greatest of you? Well, thanks. I mean, substack ground truce. I named it ground truth as a double meaning. One is it's a big term in AI, how you tell whether the AI is performing versus the truth, the ground truth. But it's also, I'm on the ground that I'm trying to tell the truth, you know. I'm trying to get out there things that people should know about.

So that's one thing and, you know, that's easy to find ground truth. A superage's book is the fourth book I've written about the future of medicine and when I'm really, as I mentioned, very keen about preventing diseases. And otherwise, you know, we're publishing quite a bit in the main, you know, journals. And, you know, that's kind of what we believe. You got to have the evidence, got to have peer review. Don't give me these influencers that are hawking supplements and other crap. You know what?

If you're hawking something, then that means you're not credible, you know. You're never going to find me selling a supplement or anything. So, you know, that's, I think, something really important. important. And I wish we had, you know, a lot less of that stuff because it's got people very confused out there. They don't know who to believe. Being a trusted source, that's something you, you know, you have to work hard at gaining that trust and maintaining it. So that's what I try to do. And you do an amazing job. Again, I'm honored to to have you on. I'm a huge supporter and follower of all the things that you do. Just truly blessed to have you here and in the wisdom that you have, man. So I could

talk to you forever, but I don't want to do that. But what I'm going to do is this. I want to think of the right way to do it, but I want to provide 20 copies of your book to someone, so I'll make sure I purchase them. But the first 20 people that message me, whether it's LinkedIn, Instagram, my phone, whatever, the first people that message me super agers, I'm going to send a copy of this book. How about that? Oh, my gosh.

Well, thank you. Yes, sir. And I thank your mother for me, because that's really, wonderful to hear that she's a, he's a reader and avid reader. Yeah, I mean, that's what it's all about is connecting with people and trying to share worthwhile information and perspective.

You got it. Again, I'm honored to have you here for everybody that's watching or listening. Make sure you go to the show notes of the descriptions. I'm going to have links to everything that Dr. Eric has going on. Trust me, you definitely want to subscribe to the newsletter. If you're not on Substack, go on Substack right now

just for him. Forget anyone else because he's an amazing writer and information share as well, too. And for all the viewers and listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go Unleash it. That's another powerful conversation on Mick Unplugged. If this episode moved you, and I'm sure it did, follow the show wherever you listen, share it with someone who needs that spark, and leave a review so more people can find there because.

I'm Rudy Rush, and until next time, stay driven, stay focused, and stay. Stay unplugged.