The Dr Louise Newson Podcast - 75 – Can technology help us live healthier for longer?

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

We often talk about living longer, but what about livingbetter?In this episode, Dr Louise Newson is joined by award-winning technology journalist, broadcaster and author Lara Lewington to explore the difference between lifespan and health span, and why the future of healthcare needs to focus on preventing disease rather than simply treating it.They discuss how advances in technology and artificialintelligence could transform the way we understand our health, identify disease risk earlier and personalise healthcare in ways that were previouslyunimaginable.Louise and Lara also explore the growing role of wearable technology, health tracking and genomics, as well as the challenges that come with having more information about our bodies.We hope you love the podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow us, leave a 5-star rating and share it with someonewho might find it helpful.LET'S CONNECTSubscribe here 👉 https://www.youtube.com/@menopause_doctorWebsite 👉 https://www.drlouisenewson.co.uk/Instagram 👉   / @drlouisenewsonpodcastLinkedIn 👉     / https://www.linkedin.com/in/drlouisenewson/TikTok 👉   / https://www.tiktok.com/@drlouisenewsonSpotify 👉 https://open.spotify.com/show/7dCctfyI9bODGDaFnjfKhgLEARN MOREDownload my balance app 👉https://www.balance-menopause.com/balance-app/Order my new book 👉https://bio.to/ThePowerofHormones

On the podcast today, I've got Lara Lewington, who wrote the book, Hacking Humanity. We talk a lot about AI and how that can improve our health and knowledge going forwards. But the most important thing we spoke about today was the difference between lifespan and health span, how we can keep us healthy for as long as possible. It's something we all need to be thinking about doing. So, Lara, welcome to the studio. Thank you. So I met you a couple of times at different events actually.

And we met in Oxford at quite an alternative conference. Well, alternative for me because there's lots of marquise and outside, whereas I'm used to lecture theatres. They wanted to call it a festival. Yeah. A health tech festival. Yeah. It was lovely.

It was a great day. So that was really good. We were on a panel together and that was great. And in fact, you spoke we had, was it five minutes at the beginning? We had to just or 10 minutes like really quick. And it was great because as soon as you started talking, everyone was listening. and just your command of the stage is brilliant. But what you're saying is really important too.

And then we met again a couple of weeks ago at another sort of longevity type event. Yeah, we seem to be doing the circuit of the same events. But there are so many brilliant events now in this space. I think in the health and longevity field, finally there are lots of get-togethers where they're talking about real science, really interesting stuff.

It's not the stuff on the fringes anymore. Just for the listeners who might not know you, just tell me a bit about your background if that's okay. Of course. For the past two decades, I've been covering technology, spent 15 years presenting the BBC's technology show Click. I've made numerous documentaries on health tech over the past few years for BBC, ITV, Radio 4.

And this all culminated in the writing of my book, Hacking Humanity. Which is great. I mean, it's such an achievement writing a book. It's a relief when you're this side of it. But tech means different things to different people. Longevity means different things to different people. So let's just start with their longevity because it's a bit weird, I think sometimes when I talk about preventing disease and keeping well, because as a doctor, I was trained about diseases and treating diseases. Absolutely. And that's kind of the thing which needs to shift. And we're increasingly getting the power to do that. So I think first of all, your question on longevity, because the word can cover lots of different things. It can cover people doing extreme stuff hoping they're going to live to 150 or whatever.

I'm not interested in that side. I'm interested in the problem that exists right now, that there is a huge gap between health span and lifespan. Women are spending a quarter of their lives in poor health. Men, 20%. We need to close that gap. And I think we have the AI and innovation to take us in the right direction to help us do that.

We're at the beginning of a journey, but there is a lot that is becoming possible in ways it never has been before. Which is very exciting, isn't it? I mean, it's exciting and sad at the same time. I mean, I grew up in the 1970s, and people were just healthy then. I think back to 1977 because it was a Jubilee and we all had streets parties. And no one was overweight really occasionally, but not really.

People had really simple food choices. It was very hard to get fast food. You know, my mother had just cooked for us. It was just, that's what it was. It was cheaper to cook at home than to go out. We hardly ever went out for meals. We were active. I'm not, I don't think we really, people didn't really have members of gyms then. They weren't really gyms. But people did a lot of gardening, a lot of cleaning, a lot of cooking. As children, I was out in the street all the time. I don't really know, like, obviously didn't have a phone. I'd go off to the park. I'd get home when it was getting dark or for supper. You know, it's very, very simple but different lifestyle. But I have a feeling that people were healthier then, than now. If we're thinking about keeping well, there is, definitely a problem with modern life. It is not good for us. It doesn't cater for us getting the

right amount of sleep for switching off early in the evening. The food environment's really bad. Nothing around us is helping us. Yes, there are plenty of exercise classes and gyms, but we're also all pushing ourselves to our absolute limits, which makes it really difficult because it's one thing to know what we should do to help ourselves, but another thing to actually be able to do it. It's not just wanting to do it, but being able to do it. And the other thing is, You know, I went into medicine to, obviously, to help people. But I'm not here to help wealthy people get healthier. I feel very strongly that everybody should have a chance with their health.

But it's become a real divide, you know, even just thinking about, this is a generalisation, but people that go to gyms are generally healthy because it's expensive to have a gym membership. To eat really good, organic, fresh food, it's harder. You go into areas of deprivation or you can find the takeaways. You know, you can't find any fresh food. No, and this is one of the big challenges in looking at future health, because AI has the ability to be able to bring better health care to all, especially in the UK where we've got the NHS,

a lot of the AI platforms that we're looking at are things that are being brought into the NHS. So just to put this into the context of actual things it can do, AI could, for example, be an extra pair of eyes on a scan, searching out tumours. It could be helping a doctor take note to allow them to have the more human experience, or it could be looking at micro movements in the face changes in gaze pattern to be able to quantify depression in a way that no human ever could. So it can be lots of different things. There are many trials in the NHS that seen these things are successful, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they roll out because not every successful pilot can.

So the hope is that this is something that can democratise healthcare, make better healthcare for everyone. But obviously there are challenges because there will be access to some. things for those who can afford it first, and that is the sad reality here. And there are many people working in different ways trying to stop that from being the issue. For example, I was talking to someone who was talking about biological age tests. So these are tests that assess your chronological age, but your biological age, and it's very, very early days for them. So the idea being, when they get better and more accessible, if they were to be subsidised and available at supermarket level, as this expert put it, they could be available in some of

the most deprived areas where people need them the most, they would pay a couple of pounds for them, and this is to make sure there's adherence, because if people don't pay something, they're less likely to use it, they then get the money back off their shopping after they've done it, and it will give them tips on their specific health, because a lot of the possibility of the future comes in personalisation. So how do we make that personalisation available for everyone? And this is the case across all sorts of health issues, really understanding our risk. and there's a lot of science that is still unfolding in terms of genetics and disease risk. I mean, there's so much that AI can pull together to understand more about our individual risk.

And we're at the beginning of this journey of understanding it. So we're really in the future going to have a much better picture of who is at risk of what, when, so we can scream better, we can prevent or we can treat things earlier in kinder and more personalised ways. Yeah, which is so important. One of the reasons I developed, balance, you know, the free app is, really for information for people because I can educate one person or a million people and it's the same energy if it's through the app.

But I feel very strongly that people should be advocates for themselves as well and they have to take responsibility. You know, as a doctor I can only advise. I can't dictate. I can't force, you know. And actually, you know, the app is never doing consultation so it's not something that's ever going to be giving treatment. But I think, you know, using technology and AI to really personalise the information that's been given

in the right ways as well because I've been to so many conferences where people talk about AI but they don't really know what they're talking about. Even longevity, it's about trying to find this new supplement or something and people are talking about this. Then I see them in the evening

and they've got really bad food choices and they're drinking loads of wine and I'm like, hang on a minute. It's hard not to judge. No, I think it's very true and people want to know what they can actually do to help themselves And one of the things that was critical to me when writing my book was,

I'm not a doctor or scientist, but I've travelled the world meeting some of the greatest people on the planet doing the most innovative work, future of cancer, future of heart disease, lab grown organs, so many different areas. But the thing for me that's important is people understanding what is possible, what do we understand now with science, and what isn't possible. There are plenty of self-help books out there,

plenty of very good self-help books. But mine is kind of the book you need to read alongside it to tell you what you can really expect, what can you do for yourself and what can the healthcare system do for you? Because we're at the beginning of a real shift in how this is going to work because things can become far more personalised.

Even when it comes to our activity data, we can see through long-term patterns if there are changes. It can recognise, are you tired or unwell? It can see for women the hormone tracking, being able to track by temperature and having that period tracking can be really useful

because when things do change, you start to see those patterns. And whilst they're not medical devices and you can't diagnose with them, there are lots of people who have felt something's amiss, gone to a doctor and ended up being diagnosed with something serious. Changes can be meaningless, but they also can sometimes represent something that needs looking at. So this ability for 24-7 data is something that's going to become increasingly useful, also built into the bigger picture of all of the other data that we can collect on ourselves. Yeah, and I do think the tracking,

is really important and it's quite individualised as well. But on the other side of the coin, I'm in a group with some doctors who absolutely hate this. They hate the fact, as I'm sure you've probably heard from others, they hate the fact that people wear wearables. They think it's terrible because they think people are being overdiagnosed, that there's all these worried well people. But I think it's all again about education as well

and what you do with the data. Well, that's absolutely it. It's so important, isn't it? It really is. It's understanding. what the data means. There are a whole load of postal kits that we can all do with DNA tests,

all sort of blood tests. But we need to understand what the results really mean. Where is the science right now? We can all sequence our genome for a few hundred quid. It would cost three billion back in 2003 to sequence the first persons.

But there are only very small elements of that that are meaningful to us right now. And for many people, they're going to end up with pages and pages of data and be utterly confused. But for the people, where there is something important,

and one expert described this to me as how we should go with the grain of the healthcare system we're in. It's really difficult, but then also it's known what you do with that information. I remember many years ago, one of my patients had Huntington's disease, which is usually in herited condition,

and it causes some unusual, it's a movement disorder, and it can cause early dementia as well, and the sort of, the movement that people get, you can't control the limbs, and it can be very distressing for people. Thankfully it's not too common, but this lady was in this dilemma whether to be tested or not. I can't remember whether it was a mother or father who had Huntington's and she had children

that she had to look after. But she knew that if she was tested, the chances are her children might go into care sooner than if she wasn't tested. And she did have Huntington's and we could see quite early on she what she knew and we knew, but she didn't want to be tested, which was fine. But it is this thing, if it's so easy to test, you've got to make sure you know what you're for and the consequences. Somebody offered me like a full body scan recently. And I went so much company. And I said, well, I'm interested to see.

And they said, oh, yes, we can give you your own suit, you know, that you go into the scan and have your name embroidered on it. And then you could just put it on your social media. And I was like, well, stop right now. I said I wouldn't put anything on my social media. Certainly before I've come and experience what you were going to do, what your staff are like, what the experience is like. but actually what do you do

because there's always going to be little things that you would pick up on a scan and I've got enough medical knowledge to know what is relevant and what isn't and what's significant it isn't but for some people every day they would worry about a tiny cyst that was on their liver or something

you know so it's hard isn't it? And that is one of the challenges and I wonder if we will get to a point where this all becomes more normalised that we know so much about ourselves that we're no longer questioning whether we should know it or not But this is definitely an issue. The chance of overdiagnosis, people finding out about things they never needed to know about. All of this is very real.

Yet at the same time, people will be diagnosed and lives will be saved. So it's quite hard that balance. But talking about those scans that are available and there are numerous different ones that do different types of scans, some being MRIs, some being more surface level. And I think it's important that if anybody is paying for these scans, that they really understand what they're looking at and what they're looking at and what. they're not looking at and have absolute clarity on that because having tested so many of these things I really see what is seen in what scan, what isn't and we really need to understand what we're being told and what that means to us. And this may all sound terribly obvious, but I'm not sure that it is in practice. If you've ever felt confused, dismissed or just left to figure out your hormone health on your own, that's exactly why I created my free balance app.

It's designed to educate women about their hormones at every stage of life. You can track your symptoms and periods, if you have them, read evidence-based articles and connect with a community of women who are asking similar questions that you might be asking. I see every day how powerful knowledge is. When you understand what's happening in your body, you can make informed choices about your health and your treatment. And you can advocate for yourself when you speak to healthcare professionals. If you want clear, trustworthy information without the noise or the misinformation, then download my balance app today. It's there to educate, support and help you take back control of your hormone health.

Even if we think about something like cervical screening that's been around for many, many years, it's not actually screening for cervical cancer. It's something that could go to cancer in the future. And then actually, what do you do if you're diagnosed with? CIN 1, for example, it goes 1, 2, 3, well, the chances are it might go back to normal, or it could go to CIN3 or it could go to cancer. What do you do? How do you live with that? Do you know what I mean? Absolutely. And I've seen a lot of people that I'm pretty sure that have been overtreated.

And then they have cervical incompetence. They have difficulty with their pregnancy. And you think, oh, well, but as a doctor, we don't have a crystal ball. You know, if you're found with something that's pre-malignant, what do you do? How do you live with a You know, there's a lot of pressure. And I think this is also about understanding of diseases and what they mean. And it's very hard to express all of this array of information to people because we don't know what disease we're going to be struck by. So I look at the future as being so much better

because we have all this information we can understand so much more. But I also think that this is really crucial to be kept safely within the realms of medicine in most cases. So a lot of what I talk about is that people want to know what they can do to help themselves. So I do go into sleep, exercise, food and the role that technology and AI plays in driving us to do the right thing. And it's not just a matter of tracking what we do, but we can actually now get the feedback from our bodies to see how we respond to any changes that we make. And that's quite useful information. But a huge amount of the stuff I cover in hacking humanity is a look at what's happening in healthcare in research as well. and what's becoming possible because it's absolutely remarkable where we're going.

And the changes in, I mean, as you've just mentioned, when it comes to cancer, cancer means so many different things. And it's because of the fact there are so many different variables, the type of the cancer, the location of the cancer, the genetics of the tumour, the genetics and microbiome of the person being treated. There's so much in it that as we have more data, we'll understand more about kind of treatment and how we can target the tumour harder and hurt the patient less. and the many oncologists I spoke to, and even though it's one chapter in the book,

I would say I spent half the time writing the book on the cancer stuff, because there were so many complexities, and I spoke to so many different oncologists, and I really came away from all of them with the exact same view that there was a transformative future coming in terms of diagnosis and treatment, and that is quite simply a uniform aim for all of us. So forget the wacky fringes of longevity, albeit it's interesting and funny to talk about,

but actually if we just look at what we really want day to day, and if you talk to some 80-year-olds about how they'd like to feel, then we have a far more realistic picture of what we might want. And we've got to be responsible and wake up to this, because, you know, on average, the last 10 years of a woman's life is in poor health. So you talked at the beginning about health span versus lifespan. And it's really important that people know the difference because it's not the age we die, it's a just,

journey to that age. And because so many women more than men, but women and men, have poor health when they're older, we have to be thinking, well, I'm 55 now, so I'm a bit old, but we have to be thinking a lot earlier than me, how are we going to keep healthy? Because it's so important. Many of the aging scientists I spoke to talked about this idea of how we're aging all through our lives from the time we are conceived and what a difference it makes everything we do throughout our entire lives. And so there's different focuses at different ages. And this is kind of the real practical look at longevity. And the research that's going into frailty, for example, when you look at what affects a lot of older people and is very, very real, that cycle of

ending up having a fall in a hospital. And then, you know, you can end up really in trouble, just going round in circles. And the idea of having some protein, then doing something to stimulate some basic muscles. These things can be very tiny. People don't necessarily know about them. So sometimes just the importance of those minor changes. And that's something, one study that I talk about in the book that is really that simple, but it's actually tackling something that's so important that so many of us will face in our final decade or decades. And it's so crucial. I mean, one of the things that I learned probably about 15 years ago that hormones are the most anti-inflammatory medication that we can give. And when people think about sort of anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, especially anti-aging,

they think it's a cosmetic thing. Oh yes, it's very easy for people to think that's what you're talking about when actually like, no, you need to keep your body young on the inside. Well, that's right. And I'm very interested in this whole inflammation, this increase inflammation that occurs as we age. So when I'm talking about something that's anti-aging, anything that reduces inflammation that keeps us biologically younger, that keeps ourselves functioning as well as possible. Of course we're going to age. It's not a stop aging treatment,

but if we can slow down that inflammation, we will have less chronic diseases. And if you look at the number of men and women as they age, the number of drugs that they're on, the number of diagnoses of chronic diseases, and then when you think, well, what diseases, you know, all the commoner diseases, like you've mentioned dementia,

cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers, what's associated? What's a link between them all? Well, it's inflammation. And people have to be thinking, how do we reduce inflammation in our bodies? And obviously, our hormones, testosterone, progesterone, esteriskedare will all reduce inflammation. So will our lifestyle, you know, so will our sleeping better, reducing our stress, all of those things. And it's multifactorial, but also our genes. And we can change our genetic structure by having the right hormones, the right lifestyle and everything else as well. And I think so often people think they can't change and that it is important to know that we can change our future.

Yeah, well this is why the field of epigenetics is so important. It really is. And I visited one of the Blue Zones. In California, I went to Loma Linda. And these places on earth where people are having longer than average life expectancy, I don't think they hold any great secrets. What I saw was really obvious. This Seventh-day Adventist community see looking after their bodies as a duty of religiosity. So they're eating well, sleeping well, exercising. I was waiting for 99-year-old Esther to finish at the gym. She's 99, still at the gym.

But whilst I was waiting for her, there was a sign in the lift that said only three walking frames at a time. And this really stuck with me because this community is doing really, really well. But they're not superhuman. They're just living really healthy lives and aging a bit better. I actually interviewed a lady called Mildred, who was 103. and she'd had enough. She said she didn't recommend living to this age to anyone.

She was physically well. She had no disease. She was of sharp mind. But she'd lost her daughter 30 years before. Some was bedbound. Every time she stood up, she was nervous she was going to fall over. And she didn't know who was going to visit her next. She's in the midst of a community where there's lots of activities.

It's catering for people to be able to interact with each other. But she still just didn't know who she was going to see when. And she didn't seem to have the sense. of purpose she'd had as a doctor in her youth and she wasn't happy as a result. And so I think we also have to really think about what it is we're aiming for. Because be careful what you wish for sometimes. Yeah. And it's not just being physically and mentally well.

We need the whole picture, the companionship, those relationships, everything. And it seems like a lot to ask for and dream of. But actually, that's what makes us happy as humans. And it's all very well to talk about AI and technology and what it can do for us. we've got to make sure it does things in the right way that actually make us happy. Yeah, and I think it's also living in the presence as well. It's so easy to either look in the past and think about things that you done or haven't done or should have done, but then also worrying so much about how I'm going to be in 20, 30, 40 years time.

Yeah, true. And this is very much the case, I think, when people are talking about longevity. Because I've had quite a few conversations with people who's saying, well, you'd live all these terrible lives, trying to get all these terrible years of your life whilst you're trying to make yourself healthy later in life. I'm not quite sure that's what's happening. I think actually, if you're living healthily, you're probably feeling better at the moment as well.

You should be. I think if you're doing something that's so extreme to try and keep yourself as young as possible for as long as possible, then you're probably not doing the right thing. No, well, when I went to film with Brian Johnson, this tech entrepreneur who's doing everything trying to reverse his biological age,

he has now found love incidentally. So that's good. Oh, that might help then. That pops his tick, so hopefully he's good. His assistant who has been working with him for years, but I think they've been very happy together. But I left his house off first time filming with him and I was the first person to go and do an interview with him

on his longevity regime. So at the time, no one was familiar with this and it all felt terribly exciting. And I noticed that the whites of his eyes was so sparkly. I'd never noticed how imperfect the whites of most of our eyes were, but they just looked so sparkly, amazing posture. He looked like he felt amazing. And whilst there was no way I wanted to fast 19 hours a day or be doing the exercise that looked like he's going to burst that he's doing every day, I left his house and said to my colleague, I really want to be a little bit like him because it looks like he feels great.

She was having none of it and said it looked joyless. But I thought it would be nice just to take away enough that you could feel great without it being your thing you do all the time. And obviously, most of us have jobs and busy lives and that is his job doing that, so we can't all do what Brian Johnson's doing. But all of us have sort of limitations as to how much we can fit in. You know, it's often a squeeze to fit in the exercise before work. And if you leave it to the end of the day,

then you're too tired and don't. and we have real life challenges. And when it comes to sleep, it's great if you can get it, but not if you're an insomniac, have small children, are caring for someone, or just are busy.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it is being realistic. It's so important, but I think we can all be honest with ourselves and think about things that we could do. But make the difference now, not thinking about in a few years' time, or once I get diagnosed with arthritis,

or if my blood pressure goes up, then I will do. I think we have to be, have real ownership, for our future health rather than any diseases that might come. And it is changing the way that we think, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. And I think people are very conscious of the fact that they can't take on every challenge.

You can't read an article, these are the best things that you need to do to look after your long-term health and go away and do all of them. But there's little things you can take away. There are the little things that stick with you. It's like you read a book, you come away with a few takeaways

that you actually put into your life because they're the things that work for you. Yeah. So thinking about things, three things that you think people listening today can do realistically to improve their future health and longevity. One of my favourite things that a few people said to me was they set their alarm clock to go to bed at night

instead of to get up in the morning. I like that. I haven't actually followed it through, I have to say. But conceptually, I thought it was a good idea. I'm a big advocate for activity trackers and I know not everybody agrees on this, but I find mine really useful. on the basis of long-term patterns

rather than how many steps I did yesterday, I don't obsess over my steps. But when I'm feeling unwell, last week I had flu, it was useful to see the data. It was useful to see when things had gone a bit awry. And as I started to feel better, how was it looking?

Sometimes just really nice to quantify things. And actually that data in the long term is going to become increasingly useful to us as well. And I think for women, the period tracking is really useful. So I would say that. And my third tip is, can I say read my books? Yes, of course you can. Of course you can.

Absolutely. This should have been my first tip. It should have been number one. But I'm saying this because I think it's really useful for us to understand where science and technology are right now for our health. There are huge advancements coming. We need to know what they mean for us. This is a really human story about why, what is possible,

matters to you and me and which bits are worth taking notice of right now. Brilliant. So definitely recommend the book. And just thinking differently about your current health, your future health, but not just yours for other people around you as well, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Laura. It's been great. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for listening. It would be amazing if you could follow me or subscribe because it will really make a difference to grow numbers, enable this to reach even more people. Thanks so much.