Dopamine, Healthspan, And Connection

Gopi 0:00

If you don't have that social interaction or like whatever your dopamine head is, and then you find it through alcohol or other forms of addiction, like mine was definitely food. Our lifespan has expanded, but our health span is declining.

Vu 0:12

The opposite of addiction is connection, right? So if we are now entering a world where people are less connected with each other, with other humans than ever before, then you end up in a situation where that gets compensated with addiction, right? Compensatory behaviors. You are trained in medical school that when Bob walks in and you're writing up what Bob has come in for, the first thing you must write out, the patients presenting complaint. It is the doctor's problem to be able to make sure we can communicate in a way and engage in a way where we do use our training and skills appropriately while also at the same time having an open mind.

Meet The Guests And The Mission

Don 1:15

Always happy to be here, and I'm your solo ferret co-host. More than anything else, I'm happy to continue this conversation we started last week.

Magnus 1:23

All right, today we're joined by two men who just don't talk about the future. They're building it. Dr. Vu Tran is a doctor, founder, entrepreneur, and business leader operating at the intersection of medicine, technology, and AI, from healthcare innovation to national defense and data. Vu is focused on one thing: helping Australia think bigger and move faster in a world that's changing at speed. Gopisara is an entrepreneur forged through the immigrant journey. He's considered an expert in startups and heavily involved in high-stakes business growth. He understands risk, resilience, and what it takes to build something from nothing in a competitive space. Together, they bring lived experience across health, technology, enterprise, and the future of work. This will be a conversation of what it truly means to master the modern world. Welcome, boys. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Gopi 2:17

Love the intro.

Vu 2:18

Man, that intro sounds like we're about to just get in the ring and go for a fight, right? Do you have to add in our weight and height as part of that as well? There's not much missing.

Magnus 2:25

Ready to rumble. We'll leave that to the uh to the editor. Let's just kick things off.

Making Fitness Fit Real Life

Magnus 2:30

What uh what do you guys do personally in the health and fitness type space to uh to look after yourselves?

Gopi 2:36

Yeah, look, so my health and fitness journey has started many, many years ago and kind of had its ups and downs. But what's most recent times been super consistent was hitting the gym three times a week. Um I'm fortunate to have a really close friend who's a personal trainer who's kind of written up my program. I got to a point where I was about 27 kilos and then went up to like almost 81. And it was just over like six or seven years. And then um working with Matt, kind of bringing that down to 72 now and just kind of being around there. Um, but for me, health and fitness has always been like a secondary to work. And so it was always trying to find the time to fit it. And in recent times, my priorities have changed to making it the most important thing, actually.

Magnus 3:19

I love that. It's it's something uh I work with a lot of people my age, and they've spent their entire life building wealth at a consequence to their health, and then they spend the latter part of their life paying for it. So I'm a big believer that it's a the foundation. And Don's a uh a master's athlete, I believe the fastest 400 meter runner in the country at 48 or 49 years of age. Is that right?

Don 3:43

Not not sure this year yet. So this year the nationals are on in a couple of weeks because I've I haven't actually run a 400 meters this year. So um I've had a couple of injuries and a few things happened, but um looking forward to getting back.

Gopi 3:57

I think for me, it's like the hardest bit around health and fitness is when it doesn't fit with who you are as an individual. So I go to the gym three times a week. I hate it. Honestly, it's like and and I always feel heaps better after it. And you know, we were talking about earlier around you know, what I do now to get through my days is to like book everything in, and then I kind of like rolled through. So before coming here, I kind of like booked in the gym and just kind of went through and always feel good afterwards, but leading up to it, I struggle. And one of the things I struggle with is the gym is very lonely, right? Like, you know, um, there are a lot of things I've done in life that have been um amazing for my mental health, like squash, surfing, and golf. I never think about work in those three things. But gym for the 45, 50 minutes I do it, I constantly think about work. But it's my only way to fit in this resistance exercise that I need to, you know, make it.

Don 4:55

That's interesting. Like you go into a gym, it's a very social place with a lot of people.

Gopi 5:00

Well, I I don't talk to anyone, right? Because I'm on a shot clock. Like I go in and I'm out within 50 minutes. So um I'm not trying to like socialize. But I have like we've jammed, we've gymed many times, and that's been amazing, right? Like we still do it in 15 minutes, but we go really hard and we, you know, um take turns, etc. It's just hard to find people that fit around your to go.

Don 5:19

Yeah, I think that's been the challenge for us, right? Finding uh times that match and it's a lot of people.

Magnus 5:24

I'm impressed by that because the amount of times I'm a little bit of a gym junkie myself, and a lot of the gyms you go to, you look around, and the guys they do one set and then they're sitting there on their phones. Yeah, and then I've done three sets, they're still sitting there, they're still playing around in their phone. It's like, why are you here? And getting in and getting out, a huge believer in that.

Gopi 5:46

Everyone takes it differently, right? For some people, it's like that those are the only two hours they might have to just enjoy and you know, doom scroll while they're doing the gym, etc. Yeah, it's right. They're kind of like little getaway. I think it's whatever you need to do to kind of survive and keep moving forward.

Vu 6:05

Vu, how about you? Yeah, it's funny you mentioned the phone bit. Um, I think about it now. When I'm at the gym, it's the furthest distance I'm from my phone at any point in time, probably at any point in my life, right? Because when we get when we get in, we put our phones on these shelves. And then if you're at the leg press, which is right at the back, it's probably as far as I'm ever going to be from my phone during the week, right? Um, for me, I'm I'm really fortunate. I think what you raise about the gym is super, super important and and super relevant to me. So Andrew Barnes, who I started go on with, he picks me up four days a week. He comes across to my side of town, picks me up, and we go to the gym 6:30, 6.45 every morning, uh, four days a week. So four days if if he doesn't do that, I'm not rocking off the gym. That's the first part. Second part of it is we both train together with our personal trainer who we've had for about three and a half years. It doesn't show because what happens is we often go out for breakfast afterwards and I do it all. But it's the routine of it. It's that, it's it's that sort of my heart rate, I don't think, at least with the exception of say the stress that we have as founding a business, would not go above a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty unless I rock up to the gym those three, four days a week with Andrew, right? Like it really it that routine we've built over the last three or four years is super important. And what we do is we will go to the gym, we'll do whatever the session is today that Nassim our PT has done, and we've had him for three plus years, and we will train together. But the thing is, it goes like that, right? The session goes so quickly. You're training with someone else, we super set, and so there is no break in between. Next person's on, that person's off, and we do that, and we can smash out, you know, whatever it is, 30 exercises in that sort of half an hour, 40 minute session because it's just super intense. And we do that, and then we'll go for if we have time, we'll go for a walk afterwards and get a few thousand steps in. And for me, the really big part of it is that I know up until the last few years I didn't actually have time to exercise at all. It was a really big challenge that I had, especially having young kids, right? We've experienced that, where just suddenly personal care and exercise just goes further down the ladder in terms of time. Like, you know, one of the sports that I loved playing is tennis, right? I love tennis. But I can tell you it's been at least four years since I've picked up a racket because that's how old my youngest son is. Right. Like that just gives you an example of it. So again, that's a time thing. That's that's a it's a it's a commitment thing. But having this opportunity to catch up with Andrew four days a week, we go to the gym, he he goes out of his way to pick me up. So I can't not go, right? Nassim, our PT, is sitting there at the gym waiting for us. We can't not go. So there's this sort of what I call an accountability cascade, which kind of stops us from cheating, if you will. Even if we're traveling interstate for something, yeah, we have to WhatsApp Nassim and be like, hey man, I'm not gonna be in on Tuesday and Thursday this week. That's still a form of accountability. I still remember Nassim as our PT, he was doing Ramadan while preparing for a bodybuilding comp. So, you know, think about that. You're fasting and you're meant to eat this many calories and doing this, all this sort of stuff at the same time. And Andrew and I, anytime we would say we can't be ass turning up, we're like, come on, man. This guy's going through Ramadan and doing a bodybuilding comp at the same time, and we're just sitting there going, can't bother getting up. So there's this piece of for me, I would I will guarantee you, unless I had that accountability with Andrew and with our trainer, I would not be training at all. Because it is a lonely thing to

Food As Comfort And Control

Vu 9:40

do by yourself.

Gopi 9:40

And I think sometimes like you, I mean, we just talked about like the physical aspect of like being healthy. Like um in December, I um was going through a little bit in terms of like uh I had like in a full circle moment of life. So I made a a presentation at an event that I went to, you know, 15 years ago, and that kind of got me into the startup world. And so it was like this full circle moment, and then I got influenza at that event, and that kind of wrote me off for a very long time. And then coming out of that, I was um, you know, struggling with uh a few things, motivation, et cetera. And I started to sort of like control things around the house, you know, how um, you know, around Christmas time, how much you know toys my kids might get, etc. Um, but but it all kind of came back to me having this realization that I have a food addiction problem. And so I um I think that's called being Sri Lankan. Well, I think I think it's one of those things where like, you know, um the you know, the the the input output. And so the output is kind of like the weights, etc. And like doing the work, et cetera. But then the input as well, it's it's just um hard to stay on top of both. And and for me, it's like something that I've just been trying to get better and better at.

Vu 10:55

Well, E and you raise a really good point. Um, you know, when I've got my GP hat on and I'm seeing patients, so today's a Monday, I saw patients yesterday on a Sunday morning, and you know, I've got all these patients who are coming in wanting to be on GLP ones and all these sorts of things. And one of the things I'll often talk to them about is the psychology and the relationship with food, right? And I use my own example all the time with my patients, in that I grew up in a household that wasn't very well off. And so when you're in a household that's not very well off, what's the best way to reward your children? If you're good, you'll get treated, right? If you finish your veggies, you can have ice cream, right? So the way as humans that we uh celebrate and commiserate usually come back to similar vices that we've established throughout our lives. So for me, the best treat you could give eight-year-old Vu is KFC with his siblings, right? So if I had an absolutely crappy day as an adult now, guess what I feel like? KFC. This is not an ad for KFC, by the way. Um, and if I've had an awesome day and I want to celebrate, I also would celebrate with food. It's a cultural thing to an extent as well. And so for me, I always talk about the fact that I'm hardwired to commiserate and celebrate with food. The concept of food being comfort is very, very true. When I'm sick as a dog, I want the congee that my mum made when I was a kid. And lo and behold, she only lives 20 minutes away. So 6 30 in the morning, there is a pot there at our front door, right? But I guess what I'm just trying to say to you is that that food relationship is a super, super big part of the challenges that we have with weight and fitness and exercise. The human body has evolved over 100 to 200,000 years, right? But for only the last hundred years have we had calorie excess available to us. So you've got to remember for 99.99% of our evolution, the idea of having excess calories was not a thing. And so our bodies really haven't adjusted to that yet.

Alcohol, Rituals, And Addiction

Magnus 12:53

Just on top of that, what's uh what relationship do you guys have with alcohol?

Gopi 12:58

So I haven't drunk in three years. Um I yeah, I I think it got to a point in life where I couldn't be hung over, I couldn't be afforded to be hung over because I didn't have the time. But second one was I started to view alcohol as like a drug, and I was like, this is probably one of the worst drugs in the world in terms of like you have a glass of wine and you feel like you know, awful the next day. And so um I actually had that's not true. I actually had my first um I had KFC for the first time in three years on Friday, and I had a glass of wine for the first time in three years on Friday. Um when the Forbes magazine came out, that was like because I bought a bottle of wine for my wife, and I was like, oh, like I'm surely not gonna make a drink alone. And so I had a glass of wine for the first time.

Magnus 13:41

Um, but otherwise I'm it's interesting, just touching on what Vu said, because I can I can relate to that. Um, like my mum made this soup dish, and when I'm unwell, that's exactly what I go back to crave. But what I noticed, particularly in the corporate world, was just around alcohol, everything had to come around alcohol. And towards the end, I started just trying to organise breakfast meetings because it was the only time of the day where I didn't feel pressured to write, no, we need to have a drink. And I think culturally as a country, and you talk about calories, that that is, I think it's a it's a huge problem. And do you find that even as a as a GP? Oh man, we could have a whole different podcast on this one day.

Vu 14:18

I deal a lot with addiction um in what I do in general practice across the board. So, you know, doing a B2B enterprise sale into government is nothing compared to to detoxing a methadic, Don. I think I've talked about it.

Don 14:29

I think you yeah, you just I I I've got to say, Vu was probably one of the best sales managers that I've ever worked with. And I asked him, you know, where do you think that comes from? You're a GP. How is a doctor this good at finding solutions for people, right?

Vu 14:45

And then you ask it's like that's our job as doctors, right? And and but to your to your question there around sort of do I see that, I see that every day, and I see it more than ever before, right? I've only been a GP for 10 years, but I'd say I see it more today than I did 10 years ago. And man, there's a whole bunch of reasons why that occurs. But the important thing it comes back to is that there's this great TED talk where the speaker talks about the opposite of addiction is connection. Right. So if we are now entering a world where people are less connected with each other, with other humans than ever before, then you end up in a situation where that gets compensated with addiction, right? Compensatory behaviors. Gopi was just mentioning before, you know, when you were a bit more anxious at the end of last year, anxiety is uh is a feeling of lack of control. That's the way I define it. So if I have a patient who comes in and they see me for anxiety, the first thing I do is try and help them define it, understand it. So in psychiatry, we call that insight. The more insight I can arm you with as a patient, the more you can recognize your behaviors and why they occur, and then potentially head them off the path when you develop the skills. So if you define anxiety, which is a feeling of lack of control, and more people in Australia will have anxiety, then depression, full stop, right? Anxiety, one in five people in Australia will have clinically diagnosable anxiety this year in the next 12 months, right? So, what that really comes back down to is if you think of it as a feeling of lack of control, to maintain homeostasis, to get the balance back, what do we all try and do?

Gopi 16:10

Get it back, get control back. Get control.

Vu 16:13

So if you're not feeling like you're in control, you then exert time and energy into things that give you control. Yeah. Christmas presents, getting the house cleaned, checking the door 30 times before you leave the house. In other circumstances, it is rituals and habits. So the example is you're saying, you know, work, alcohol, all these sorts of things. I guarantee you a big chunk of it is not I've got the shakes and I need a drink. It's the habit that you form. So smokers, it's not about the nicotine. It's about the ritual of being uh being able to zone out six times a day for two and a half minutes and meditate over a cigarette, right? The ritual, even for someone who's drinking a bottle of wine, I was talking to a patient literally yesterday morning where he was going, I think I do drink a bit too much in that my partner and I will crack open three bottles a night. And I say there's a chunk of that that is the self-medication, but there's a chunk of that of the ritual of buying the wine, ordering the wine, unpacking the wine, opening the bottle, pouring the glass, right? And so just to answer your question, man, there's a whole conversation around that. But the first part of it is addiction is not the chemical addiction, it's the habitual side of it. And the second part of it is what we're trying to compensate for with those behaviors. Lack of connection is one, and those rituals and habits is another. So sorry, not mean not mean you go all cycle and you know.

Gopi 17:40

That's a really good one because I think if you think about the, you know, the last week the conversation we had around, you know, working with friends, right? I think that um if you uh for me, uh the way I always think about it is if you boil it down to like where do you get your dopamine hit.

Vu 17:54

Yep.

Gopi 17:55

And so for us, we get it our dopamine hit from socializing, hanging out with people, et cetera. And so the more that we can do that in day-to-day, the more we're getting our dopamine hit, et cetera, that um, you know, you don't have time for the other things like alcohol, et cetera. But you can imagine that if you don't have that social interaction or like whatever your dopamine hit is, and then you find it through alcohol or other forms of addiction, like mine was definitely food, yeah. Like I think it's the hardest thing about life is that nothing is good unless it's in moderation. Even working is not good. There are certain things that are not good at all.

Vu 18:31

But but but if I come back to it, right? Like, so I don't drink coffee. It's not an active choice. It's just so sorry, man. That's no, it's just we go out for coffee, we go out for a coffee, I'll be like a hot chocolate or a tea, please, because it's just it's just it doesn't taste good to me, right? If you gave me a choice between a mojito with the white rum in it or without it, man, I'll take the one without it because I I'm a child. I'll just drink the lemonade, right? Yeah, like so. For me, the choice is not like an active choice not to drink alcohol or not to have caffeine. Like, look at me, I don't really care. It's actually going, actually, which one's more yummy, right? Like that's the child in me that actually comes back to it. It's going, you know, we'll go out, we'll go out, and everyone be like, I have a beer, I'll be like, I have a coconut sugar, please. Like it's it is one of those things where it's just genuinely the preference for taste.

Magnus 19:17

And I managed to convince 20 blokes last year we did a dry 25. And for the entire year, going without alcohol. Now, a lot of people do the dry July or the dry February, and you're literally just abstaining for a month and then you'll binge. But when you go without alcohol for 12 months, it'll change your life because you actually realize and you build up a degree of self-confidence that I can actually go to a wedding or I could go to a birthday party and I can still actually have a conversation and interact with people before I have and I don't need to have three beers. How much weight did they lose and how how much better sleep did they have? Well, most most of them did have a a uh a decrease in weight, and a lot of them actually made a big comment on on a Saturday morning. I actually woke up and and felt really good and went for a run because they didn't wake up and I wasn't hung over. So I think again what we talked about is quite systemic of society and it has become a drug of choice for most people. And I completely agree with you, Vu, about the connection piece, and I think that is hugely missing in society, and people turn to other things.

Vu 20:19

But but but what I come back to is that it's really it is so hard for anyone to break a habit, right? And it's again it's not the can it's not the chemical side of it, right? It is the ritual. And I think we shouldn't underestimate the importance and the value to us as humans of routine and ritual, right? The the fact that you might go home every day and your ritual is cracking open a bottle of wine because that is your wine down. It doesn't matter if that wine's a bottle of water, a bottle of orange juice, or a bottle of wine, it's that process that you go through. And so for me, you know, there is that routine. And so those people you're talking about, I guarantee you, they replaced it with other routines. Correct. Right? They built something else into it, and that's the byproduct, that's the one plus one equals six equation that occurs. They didn't just remove alcohol from their diet, they replaced it with something else. I always say to I always say to patients who smoke as an example. I'd say I always do the math, you know, I love doing the math in front of them where I go, how much do you smoke? How many packets does that equal a week? How much is a packet of smokes? How much does that equal in a year? How would you feel if you had $18,000 in your pocket today from last year and $72,000 in your pocket from the last four years as a result of just choosing to stop smoking post-tax? What would $72,000 do to you today if you had that? And I'm talking to someone who earns $60,000 a year. And that that talking to them around that is more so just saying, what's the opportunity cost of whatever the habit is? What can you replace that with?

Lifespan Up, Healthspan Down

Don 21:52

Something you said before. You said, you know, we are now in a society of abundance. Do you think that The way the society is designed is changing how we sort of approach health. We were having this conversation earlier today. Our lifespan has expanded, but our health span is declining. If you asked an average person, you know, you would live 80 years, and how much, how many of those 80 years are you living healthy? Um I think it's it's scary, right? And it's getting worse. With you guys, you know, you you've taken a very proactive approach as business leaders. You guys have invested in in the right areas. Has that made your decision to invest in those areas? Have you done that consciously because of that? What's happening right now in society?

Vu 22:40

So I'll let Gopi chime in on a bit uh in a tick, but if I can start off. My dad is 77 years old, right? And if I took him, so again, I I think I've mentioned to you guys before, let's say humans have been around for about 100,000 years, right? And human civilization, people say, started in Mesopotamia about 6,000 years ago. Okay. So if I take my dad back to 6,000 years ago to ancient Mesopotamia, where civilization started, like where we started living in cities and and whatnot, I take my 77-year-old dad back then and plonked him in that society, he'd be a mutant, right? Because the average human was probably only meant to live for like 30 to 40 years max, right? If you just think about it. So what has allowed us to increase our lifespan or for a dog's lifespan, a domesticated dog's lifespan to increase more than it should be in the wild or whatever it might be? The answer is innovation. The answer is technology, the answer is learning everything from washing our hands through to penicillin through to how to do surgeries, through to how to treat and cure cancer. Yeah, we've created some in the process, but net net, zooming out, if you think about it like a graph, sure in the last five years or 10 years it might have changed. But if you zoom out to the last 6,000 years, it's like straight up and to the right. And if you think about what causes that area under the curve, it is innovation. It is technology, it is humans doing what humans do and not animals just magically learning how to live longer, right? I doubt the lifespan of a wild animal has changed significantly in the last hundred years compared to what a human has, right? And so the reason why I bring that up is the only thing that is causing humans to live longer than we're naturally meant to live for is science. That's that's that that's that's a core principle for me, right? Then come back to your question around longevity and your question around sort of where that preventative health movement's coming from. So as a general practitioner, I'm from the world where uh Medicare pays a lot of my bills, right? In the GP land. The problem is that I'm a big fan of Medicare as a universal safety net. I'm not a big fan of Medicare when people view it as it is the standard. What we get through Medicare, what we're entitled through Medicare, should be the minimum standard that any Australian should be entitled to. But we should never view that as to be the standard, right? There should always be a delta there, which is pushing that and changing that, right? So I'm on the board of what's called Metro South Hospitals here in Queensland. Our board oversees five hospitals here in Queensland. We have a $4 billion budget, we have 20,000 staff and we service 1.2 million people. Wow. Now that those hospitals that we oversee, those but that $4 billion budget is managed to 0.5% of the budget a year. So we have to land that, and our CFO has to land that on a dime, plus or minus $20 million on a $4 billion budget. Tell me any other organization that has to do that, right? Now here's the thing that it comes back to. If we take a dollar and put it towards prevention, studies have shown, and we've we've looked at these articles, your return on investment's about $14 to $15. But Don, where do you want me to take it from? Emergency department, palliative care, cancer, pediatrics? Where do you want me to take that from, right? You can't you'll break society.

Don 26:07

I could answer that because I think No, but you'll break break society as we know it. Well, no, the and if I can the politicians are gonna be a very good thing.

Vu 26:13

But if I can jump forward, yeah. My answer is that it's not about saying to the government, do something. Yeah. It's about the consumer driving it. It's about the consumer going, you know what? I'm gonna be responsible for prevention. I want to live longer. I want to live better, I want to live healthier and happier, right? Because at the end of the day, if you think about what's happened since November 2022, Chat GPT, OpenAI, all that sort of jazz. Government didn't create that, right? It was creating a commercial incentive with consumers taking this technology up and wanting to drive. If if consumers never wanted to use AI, then it would never grow, right? And so the part that I'll come back to, it's a long-winded way of saying that prevention of disease is actually the onus is on the consumer, not on the government, not on government policy. Government policy should be government should be handling how do we deal with people who have heart attacks, how do we deal with people who get hit by a car, et cetera. Great. That's where that money should go. Dollars towards getting you to live till 90 as opposed to 80, dollars to go towards how do you live to 120 as opposed to 80. I think that is up to consumers to drive. Now, I'll get a lot of people turn around and go, yeah, but the average punter, how are they going to afford all this stuff? And the answer is we have to look at how technology gets adopted. How much was the first Tesla? You needed a $300,000 electric car to turn the doorknob for us to now have $20,000, $50,000, $20,000, $15,000, God knows what they are in China, right? Yeah. And so for me, what it comes back to is that early adopters in this space will subsidize the mass adoption of longevity. Now, the question would be why now? Why not five years ago? Why not 10 years ago? And there's two things that are occurring. Number one, post-COVID. COVID got us to really rethink and understand where our health sits, regardless of whether or not we appreciate it or not. That's just a thing we're never taking back, right? The second part that it will come back to is what has happened since November 2022, which is AI. Consumers have an access to an abundance of information and almost an abundance of horsepower, intellectual horsepower, that we've never had in humanity before. So I have consumers who are coming to me and saying, Doc, have you heard about this? Do you know what this is? And I go, I've got no idea. Let's sit down and figure it out. You tell me what your experience has been like, right? And so we're entering a world where the clinician will actually be led by the consumer in a lot of ways, right? Where the consumer will drive industry in a lot of ways. And if you think about it, if the outcome we're looking to create for the consumer is longevity, better health, happiness, and those sorts of things, that is a good dopamine hit, right? Like, and so I'm I'm very bullish on this space because the the why now is really, really clear. The why now is that I used to have doctors come to me and say, you know, I remember one doctor she came to me and she said, my someone needs to do something about Facebook because they trust my patient trusts a Facebook group more than they trust me. And I said to her, dude, that's a you problem. The fact that this person trusts strangers on the internet more than they trust you is not because of the internet. It's the dynamic and relationship you have with them. The fact that it's probably transactional in terms of how you engage with them, the fact that, and you know this from our sales training, that you're probably not a trusted advisor, right? It's harsh me saying this. But it is one of those things where the world's shifting, where doctors have to be less transactional and more trusted advisors. Doctors better communicators, that's better communicators and be more open to thinking, you know, am I trained to do the bare minimum or should I be more open to understanding more? So that that's the world we're trying to tap into. And that's the better, that's the flag we're putting in the sand.

Magnus 29:59

I've actually heard with um a lot of people go into it. I think you're a little bit um different than some I had a blow up with my GP 18 months ago over optimization. Um, I don't consider myself average. I don't think I do what average people my age do. So I was looking at optimal health, not just looking at at the at the average. But a lot of them, there's just not the time. There's you get 15 minutes from a consultation, so they they they treat the symptom rather than the cause. And it's really it's really great to hear you saying that you've sat down with your patient to try and get an understanding.

Gopi 30:34

This is the crazy thing about medicine, right? I think there's a notion that medicine's black and white, whereas medicine's always been great. I'll give you an example. First child being born in the birthing suite. My wife's going through tremendous pain, about to, you know, going through labor, and we asked for the epidural. And an hour went, two hours went, three hours went, no epidural. And then we realized that the nurse, when we kind of kept back going back to it, she's like, look, let's just give it a go for a little bit longer with that epidural. Because the nurse had a view that, sorry, the midwife had a view that, you know, epidurals are not really needed all the time. And so I think um, just like in everything in life, you're all you're always gonna get the opinion, it's always gonna be, you know, gray. You, you know, as the consumer, you have to make a decision on what's right for you. And you know, that's what I think the democratization of all like the information through the AI tools is going to make it more and more accessible for someone to form an opinion without too much

When Consumers Start Leading Doctors

Gopi 31:34

bias.

Vu 31:34

Well, and and and Gopi, you and I talk about this all the time, and it's a foundational principle of what we do at OneMRI. Like, um, Don, if you go and see your orthopedic surgeon, he or she is writing a letter to whom? Your own GP. Sorry, yes. You go get a blood test or an X-ray, an ultrasound, who is it addressed to? Your GP. GP, right? Always, yeah. Do you exist as a consumer in that interaction? The answer is no. And what I'll come back to is twofold is that we're entering a world where your doctor is unlikely to be the driver and more likely going to be a driving instructor, or if not, like you know, passenger. There is another big part that I'll come back to, and this is just to give you an example of how our healthcare system is geared. So, what do we call a place where you go get a blood test done? Pathology? Pathology. What does pathology mean? A medical problem, right? Places where you go get x-rays and radio radiology services done under Medicare, you know what they're defined as? Diagnostic imaging services. So the place where you go get X-rays done are diagnostic imaging services. The place you go get blood tests done are pathology labs. What are both of those words indicate? What are those both of those names indicate?

Gopi 32:49

Doom day.

Vu 32:50

Problems, problems, right? Pathology. Yeah, not testing, it's like pathology. We're looking for a problem. Diagnostic imaging. We're trying to diagnose something. How much of those two terms, which pretty much encompass 99% of testing in Australia, pathology and diagnostic imaging? How many of the uh do those two terms to you sound like prevent prevention at all? No, it's about finding disease, not necessarily preventing.

Don 33:15

Can I ask in that then, right? Like the system is designed in a way to be reactive. Like when you have a problem or when you have an injury, you go and see a doctor. And and I think I would like to ask you as a GP, is that how you're trained as well? 100%.

Vu 33:29

I'll give you a simple the simplest way to tell tell you. Anyone who's listening to this who is a doctor, right? You are trained in medical school that when Bob walks in and you're writing up what Bob has come in for, the first thing you must write out, the patient's presenting complaint. Okay. What is the patient's presenting complaint? What does that assume? That the patient has a problem. That's a problem, right? So nowhere is there. And so don't get me wrong, as general practitioners in primary care, we get lumped with prevention, but that sits alongside all the problems that people come in with.

Gopi 34:05

And I think what's what's been, I guess, um, the most interesting part is since the dawn of time, right? Like people have always been interested in their health. You have stories of pharaohs, you know, getting scientists and all that stuff, trying to like live longer, etc. And so I think, you know, while this trend has been probably proliferated over, you know, the last five years, this trend has been there for a long time. And this wanting to for to live longer, to be, you know, um solve, like, you know, be preventative has kind of been there for a long time. What has really made that unlock now is that if you look at the entire cost of service, before the clinician cost of it might have been 80%, and then the supplement might be 20%. But with the rise of AI, the clinician cost has now dropped to 20% and the supplements kind of like the remainder, and the whole cost has come down. But then the other thing is also the products got better. Like whole body MRIs two years ago was a two-hour scan. Today it's 45 minutes with a bunch of our clinics, and at the U University of Queensland, we can do it in 23 minutes. Yeah, wow. So the product is also getting much and much better. So we are in this sort of massive technical.

Full Body MRI Without The Hype

Magnus 35:18

Can you let me just explain for our listeners? So that one MRI full body scan, who does it and what are you looking for?

Vu 35:25

So with a full body MRI, what we do is we're not looking for disease. We are scanning your body, and it's one of the only sorry, when I say not looking for disease, I should call this out. As a GP, if I send you for a scan of your knee, I need to know what the problem is with your knee to know what I'm looking for.

Don 35:42

And you've got to say exactly what you're looking for, right?

Vu 35:44

And what exactly what we're looking for. Whereas a full body MRI is very different. It is a mind shift for everyone from the doctors who are reporting it to actually the mindset of why you're ordering it, right? Because what we're looking for is Is it full body, by the way? And that's a really good question. So we we one of the things that we came back down to was we understood that actually we have to balance two things. One is the sort of veracity and the fidelity of the scam we get.

Don 36:10

Yeah.

Vu 36:10

And two, you've been an MRI machine, Don? For my legs, I have every now and then.

Don 36:14

Yeah.

Vu 36:15

Noisy. So for those who are listening or playing at home, the MRI is the tunnel and the CT is the donut. So we're talking about the tunnel. So as Gopi was saying before, two hours in that tunnel with all these with all these things on you, not great. So what we did, and what we spent a lot of time doing, was refining the scan to get that balance between high fidelity and actually comfort with being able to actually get the scan done. And so what we realized that actually where the value stops is around about your mid-thigh. Your knees and your ankles will not provide too much value when it comes to the things you're looking for. Screening for solid tumors, cancers, those sorts of things, right? So what we decided was we said, you know what? No knees, no ankles. Why? Because that would add an extra 30 minutes, especially knees. Knees are very, or you've had that's what I said.

Don 37:01

I've done my legs. The legs itself takes like 30 minutes.

Vu 37:04

Exactly. And so for us, what we decided to do was actually remove everything below the thigh, because if you've got problems with your knees and your ankles, you're probably getting a targeted scan for it anyway.

Magnus 37:14

You'll know about it.

Vu 37:14

You'll know about it, right? And so if that's the case, go see your doctor, get a targeted scan of your knees, your ankles, etc. So what we do is from the top of your head to the mid-thigh. In that circumstance, it is the only single investigation, at least I can think of, that looks at multiple body systems in one hip. So there is no, tell me a blood test that tells me, gives me an idea of how your brain and your testicles are going. No, there's no other test that does that in one sitting, right? And so what we do is we scan your organs from the top of your head down to your mid thigh. And one of the things we spend time doing is talking to our users, our consumers. We don't think of them as patients. We think about them as users, right? And we we we talk to them about sort of what the benefits of it are and what the downsides of it. Downside's really simple. We might find something you might not like. On one hand, it might be something you don't like that is scary, that could be cancer or something that's underlying. On the other hand, it might be something that actually ends up being nothing. But you have to go through a few hoops to actually understand that it's nothing. Say we find a spot on Don's liver, don't know what that is. Don goes through all these tests, finally finds out it's benign. Now, Don said that's like, great, you know, it's nothing. But we've opened up can of worms for Don to actually have to go through and go through that journey. So for us, what we really focus on is it's those that are looking for peace of mind and those who are looking at this scan as part of their broader look at their entire bodies. It's not there to replace your bow screening, your your mammograms for women, your lung cancer screening that you get if you've been a smoker for a long time. It's not there to replace any of that.

Don 38:48

But can they cover all of that or or so it's not there to replace it?

Vu 38:52

Yeah. We scan all those areas.

Don 38:53

Yeah.

Vu 38:54

But I'll give you an example. With your bow, so we'll scan your bow, we'll scan your lungs. But the gold standard for your bow is always going to be a colonoscopy. Because if you think about the bow, it's a hollow pipe. We need a camera to look on the inside of those walls to see what's going on. And uh, and a cross section of it won't tell us enough detail as to what's happening there, especially if it's small. Then when it comes to the lungs, the lungs are like two giant sponges, and you need, and all it takes is for these little nodules that for us not to see that could be an early lung cancer, in which case, for example, an MRI is not great for, right?

Magnus 39:28

CT.

Vu 39:28

Yeah, but we do scan all those areas and we have found cancer in the lungs, in the bow. It's is it the best gold standard for it? No. But it are things that we've incidentally picked up as part of this scan. But more importantly, and what we find is really interesting, is people will come back to us and say, surely you're focused on the worried well? And the answer is no, because the worried well are seeing their doctors getting investigations out of the wazoo. The people we're focused on, the people who are coming to us, are those who are actually incredibly fit and well, and those who are sitting there going, I want one more piece of data to add to this entire catalogue of what's happened with my body. So it's optimization. It's optimization, as you were saying before. And to an extent, it's people who have never seen the most intimate parts of their body before, understood what their brain looks like, understood what their spine looks like, right? And I get a lot of criticism from my medical colleagues who go, aren't you just doing this test on people that will either A, create a whole bunch of other questions and problems because you find stuff that ends up being nothing? Or that you're actually going to find something way earlier than it should be and it you've kind of altered its natural course. And I go, probably. But that shouldn't be my choice. That should be Don's choice.

Don 40:40

That should be the consumer's choice. So can I ask is it a um fundamental shift in how we operate and change, right? Like if you if you if you wanted to go and fix something, or if you have an injury, you go to a doctor, and that's how you've mentally been sort of taught to do, and that's how doctors are trained from what you said. If you wanted to be preventative, or if you wanted to have a better quality of life, you've got this whole ecosystem that's created, whether it's a PT or a nutritionist.

Gopi 41:11

Because I think I think what's happening, what we're seeing, is that consumers are starting to take health in their own hands. And as kind of Vu mentioned, like if you look at what GPs treat towards, is usually towards the MBS schedule. Um, but also there's also not that many GPs coming out as a kind of the rise in population as well. So consumers are starting to take health in their own hands, and society is getting wealthier. And as people get wealthier, what do they focus on? They focus on their health. So, you know, today you'll see a lot of people wear glucose monitors. Like glucose monitors wasn't an everyday thing just five years ago. People are kind of getting blood tests more often. And so more and more people are getting more data on their health to, you know, live better, live longer. And it's not a fad. It's something that since the dawn of time, people have always been interested in. But now the product is way more accessible, it's way more affordable. It's yeah.

Don 42:03

But how do we change the mentality of the people to go along with that that shift? And how do we change? Which people you're talking about consumers? Uh consumers, yeah. And also the the the the doctors. When you when we go to a doctor and say, Well, I want to know more about my uh preventing these markets.

Vu 42:23

Can I throw something out there? The consumer, I think, is as I said before, is going to lead the doctors, right?

Don 42:28

Yeah.

Vu 42:29

Like the number of people who come in to say, Hey, can I be on the fat jab, right? They're them saying, I want to be on a GLP one, that's what they say, right?

Don 42:36

Yeah.

Vu 42:36

And and I'll sit there and I go, okay, cool, help them understand it, understand whether it's right for them, and we go through that whole process. That's not me suggesting it to them. They're coming to me and wanting it as a trusted advisor, wanting to engage and go, is it right? Can I go on it? How's appropriate? How do we manage it? Right. I really want to come back to the fact that that's what I mean by the clinician is being led by the consumer more than ever before, which I think is actually a positive thing because it does two things. One, it forces us not to treat to an algorithm and to think of the person in front of us when we're dealing with them. And two, it actually makes us more open to what else is out there, right? Like I would come back to the fact that as doc, like if you ask me going, Vu, if Gopi comes in with high blood pressure, what medication am I going to put him on? Right. I'm not going to base that on his age, his height, his weight, his ethnicity, anything like that. I'm going to base it on the drug rep that I saw when I was a first-year registrar who said, hey, this is the drug to treat blood pressure. That's me being brutally honest with you, right? It's habitual. It is not like it's fact based in that I should start him on an ACE inhibitor as the first line for blood pressure treatment. But which potential one and how and what I remember to do, a lot of that comes down to habit more so than evidence. And if that is the case, then a big part of it is how do we learn new habits? And one of the best ways to do it is getting exposed to more. I think to answer your question. Question of how do we get the consumer to that point? I think the consumer's going to that point anyway. Right. I think just think of EV adoption as that analogy that I was mentioning before. The second part that I think it comes back to is that a key sign of that, and Gopi and I talk about this all the time, is curiosity. Consumers are more curious about their health than ever in human history. And I think that again, with the abundance of knowledge and access to information, that is if if you think about what Google did, Dr. Google did for giving consumers information about health, what the hell is AI gonna do? Right. And then that's the whole thing, right?

Don 44:36

Like when Dr. Google first came out, doctors were like, oh, they've gone and read Dr. Google, you've come in. And there was a huge negative conversation around people educating themselves, right? And people are still finding that when they go to see a doctor, but more of the research, now the information that's available, they're a lot more legitimate and it's becoming more and more abundant. But that's a doctor's problem.

Vu 44:59

I guess what I'm trying to say. That's not Google's problem, that's not Chatchi BC. It is the doctor's problem to be able to make sure we can communicate in a way and engage in a way where we do use our training and skills appropriately, while also at the same time having an open mind. Because if I have a patient, or if you have if you go see a doctor, and I guarantee you, you've all seen good and bad doctors, right? And I guarantee you, your definition of a bad doctor was not based on their skill or how smart they were or how good an operator were. Your impression of whether they're a good or bad doctor was how they made you feel, how they listened to you and engaged with you. And a big part of it for me is those soft skills, those human skills, are going to be what's really important to doctors in the future because AI will take the rest of it.

Magnus 45:43

I think they're going to be generally very important. Doesn't matter what role that you play under. That humanization piece is because everything else is getting commoditized. Do you find what sort of demographic are you guys finding? So that curiosity around health, is there a particular age bracket? Is it men, is it women?

Gopi 45:59

Yeah, so I think we've kind of like now seen a good sort of, you know, um, so probably 35 to about 65 is kind of where we've seen like the chunk of the cohort pretty even split between male and female. Um and so just kind of address your thing around um Dr. Google and a couple other things. So, you know, one of our biggest belief is like being great corporate citizens, right? So whatever we do, make sure that we do it in an ethical way, et cetera. So we invest a lot of our time building out the journey and the process we have. So not anyone can rock up and do a one MRI scan. One of the first things they have to do is have a conversation with us where we explain the scan, understand their motives, and make sure that the scan aligns with what they're trying to do. Then what they do is they go and have a scanner with the partner clinics. We have a team of radiologists who are trained to write the report in a certain way because they see more than what other radiologists might see and their report on it. But we also have a GP and the a doctor in the process giving back the post-scan feedback. Okay. So they actually speak to someone who walk them through the results rather than just handing over a report and saying, hey, good luck. So we do believe in that there is really important in the consenting process and there's really importance in the playback process, which is exactly what happens in medicine today. Yeah. Where we believe that autonomy and choice should sit is with consumer. They should be able to choose what they want to do rather than having to work through gatekeepers.

Scaling Tests Like A Marketplace

Magnus 47:24

And what's what's next, do you think? As far as I know you guys do the blood test as well. I personally get my bloods done every three months and have educated myself a little bit through with a bit of assistance from AI to understand what's optimum for myself and in my journey. And obviously the MRI is, I think is is brilliant. But you mentioned before, you could go and do the pathology, but any of the imaging, you've actually got to get a referral.

Vu 47:52

So I think, you know, for lack of a better term, Gopi, they've got to watch this space, right? Yeah.

Gopi 47:57

Well, I can yeah, sorry, you go.

Vu 47:58

But but like yeah, and I'll let you uh kind of expand a bit more on it. But the direction that you think we should go is the direction we're going in, in terms of if you think about sort of some of the principles that that my myself and Andrew have brought to table from Go One, right? Back in the days when we started Go One, where it was around bringing, giving people the best of online learning from combination of Harvard to the best compliance training providers in the world, et cetera. That is about trying to bring this choice to the user, to the consumer, to whoever it may be, even the practitioner who's doing the prescribing, right? So for me, I think you're gonna end up with a few different worlds. You end up with a world where you'll have the practitioner at the front door. So longevity clinics and optimization clinics who sit there and they go, I need inventory for my patients, right? And it's going, how do we help them with that? And then the second part of it is you're also gonna have a whole bunch of consumers who are gonna sit there and go, No, I'm gonna optimize myself. Right. And I think you'll end up with those two worlds. And you know, a big part for Gopi, Andrew, and myself that we talk about all the time is how do we provide the picks and shovels to that world? It's super, super important because that is a world where there will be a thousand front doors, ten thousand front doors, even the way the consumers will access things. But the one important thing about in a and again, I'll just bring it up, in a in a world that is AI abundant is testing will always be needed.

unknown 49:25

Okay.

Vu 49:25

Testing will always be needed, right? Like it's it's gonna be really hard for an AI that is, you know, for for a server over in over in San Francisco to know what your hemoglobin level is today without you getting a physical test of some wave. It might be a home test, right? It might be a ping pinprick test, it might be Tharanos 2.0, right? But I guess what I'm trying to come back to is that testing bit, that physical world interaction in medicine is always going to be an important component. So I go Peter.

Gopi 49:52

No, no, I was just gonna say, I think it's for us, it's like um it's not even where it's heading, it's where we're getting pulled to, right? Because I think for us is like, you know, we started OneMRI as a way, you know, this was one MRI like whole body MRI.

Don 50:04

What was the journey for one MRI? How did that whole concept come? Did you guys see an opportunity that had a hole and applied technology to it?

Gopi 50:14

I mean, this was in the US for about seven years, right? So, you know, there was even in um, you know, November 2024, um I'm I'm not even asked to say, but like like famous Australians like Mark Boris, for example, is flying to the US to get a whole body MRI scan, which was pretty wild when you think about, you know, we have 450 MRI machines in Australia. About 200 of them are utilized 20% of the time. So 80% of the time, they're just sitting there, not even being used. And for someone to get the service, they kind of had to go overseas. And so, you know, when we started the business, we originally thought us creating a service that consumers want, you know, build one MRI. All of a sudden, the inbound we had from clinicians was overwhelming. We had people who were providing longevity services going, hey, you know, we want access to the whole body MRI, whether it was Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Dubbo, et cetera. And so our vision kind of went from just having, you know, six or seven clinical partners around Australia to today having 60 clinical partners all around Australia. So whether you want a whole body MRI in Geelong or Melbourne, it's the same service, it's the same product, et cetera. And then what kind of blew us apart was the clinicians going, hey, beyond your whole body MRI, can I also get an access to a CT? Can I get access to this novel brain scan? Can I access to this genomic test, this, that? And so they're kind of pulling on us, saying, what else can you provide that we can kind of provide to our customers? And so um, it's not even us seeing where things are going, it's just what we're getting pulled into.

Magnus 51:47

That's the question because that's driven again by the consumer. So if somebody wants that whole optimization themselves, they can bypass the practitioner like you can now with a blood test. And that is, I find personally very beneficial. Previously, I'd go and have to make an appointment with a GP, then I'd get sent and I'd do the test, then I've got to make another appointment to go and get the test reviewed. Now I can just jump online and go bang, get the.

Gopi 52:12

Even in this world, it's the clip, like the consumer still going to a clinician, might not be like a general practice doctor, but they're going to a you know a longevity doctor. And even that doctor is struggling to put together the best testing package for that individual.

Don 52:28

So, Vu, can I ask? You've invested in more than just one MRI. You've you've got my bloody test and a couple of other ones. So, in your mind, what is the perfect ecosystem here? And also, second part to that question is where do you think AI is going to have the biggest impact in the next five years in medicine?

Vu 52:46

So I think where if we just think about the venture landscape at the moment, literally, if you just call time out today on the venture landscape here in Australia, you have eucalyptus that just got acquired, right? A one point whatever billion dollar acquisition that occurred for you, right? You have Everlab, which full disclosure, I'm an early investor in, is just growing at a clip, right? And the way that I think about them is they're going to be the front door for the sort of you rock up and get the whole conscience service where they'll do it all for you, right? But the thing that kind of is sitting there is that these all sit in that sort of D2C sort of world, right? There's a whole direct to consumer. There's this whole other world that will that is starting to proliferate under the surface, right now.

Gopi 53:32

But it's also still 80% of medicine today, which is through a clinician, right? Only 20% of medicine goes consumer direct.

Vu 53:39

I think we're going to see a proliferation of these proactive um clinicians and providers who will be that sort of B2B provider of, or sorry, B2C provider of healthcare. And they're going to need the inventory in the marketplace to do it. So if I think about sort of leaning back on the experiences of Go One, just to relate it for you, Don, the those channel partnerships are super, super important and they're going to proliferate. We are going to see a thousand ships launch in this space where they will carve out their niche, whether it be geographically, is I'm going to be the longevity clinic for the eastern suburbs of Sydney, or I'm going to be the longevity clinic that focuses on this area or this place or whatever it is. All of them will need inventory when it comes to testing. All of them will need the the ability to order tests to be able to get them done. And for us, full body MRI is that beach head, right? Because it is something that is so novel that no one else does. But I guarantee you it's a tip of the iceberg in terms of what's there.

Gopi 54:42

So just going back to your point there is just And also just kind of touching on the bid, which is around like, you know, why is this even a problem? Well, all of medicine has been built around proximity, right? So you have a GP clinic, you have the pharmacy right next door, you have the pathology, and you probably have the radiology right there as well. So as we move into this digital world, the GP or the doctor might be in Perth, but the consumer might actually even be in the US. And so all of a sudden, it's like this clinician wants to provide the service, but doesn't know the um landscape, whether it's in Perth or Melbourne or Sydney and who they should go to and how they provide the referral. So they're looking for access and they're looking for to make their life, consumer's life easier. I'm sure we've all signed up to various tests and they've sent the test home to your house and you're sitting there and you're probably, you know, six months in haven't done it because that level of friction. So clinicians are looking for ways to short circuit things, make things easier. So if they can go, hey, I've got the platform to access whole body MRI, you know, let's just get you set up, it's more likely the consumer is actually going to take the steps to look after their health.

Vu 55:50

And and the really abstract analogy I'll give you is Don, tonight we're gonna play poker and we're gonna inevitably open up Uber Eats.

Don 55:57

Yeah.

Vu 55:57

And we do not care where that restaurant is, we just care, does it deliver it to Don's house? Right. And so as Gope's point there is incredibly important around reducing friction, right? Because we are entering a world where the expectation, if you think attention spans are short today, think about what a generation who grows up without TV ads is going to look like, which is gonna be our kids, right? Like my kids do not know what a TV ad on free-to-wear TV is because they're used to just being out of fast-board anything.

Gopi 56:24

But also having the expectation, it's like, hey, you've asked me to do something, you should be able to tell me where the closest place is, what's the availability, what's the price. Like, I think the whole side of medicine um hasn't had to disrupt purely because you know it was always a um localized engagement.

AI, Productivity, And The Future Clinic

Vu 56:42

And so to your second question, sorry, Don, around where is this going with AI, and I'll zoom out a little bit more on this. Wage inflation and the just inflation in general is real and it's not going back in a whole bunch of circumstances, right? So in the health service that I'm part of, we have 20,000 staff, and rightfully they should get paid more every year for the great work that they do. But that is money, the government's not increasing the funding every single year. So we have to do more with less every year. If the budget's $4 billion this year and $4.01 billion next year, and we have to spend an extra $50 million on staff just in pay rises, right? In the statutory pay rises, we got to find that extra $40 million delta elsewhere. So, really, in real terms, health budgets are shrinking once you take into account wage, inflation, all these sorts of other things, right? The actual productivity we get is decreasing unless AI comes into play. It is the thing that could potentially help us get more like the biggest problem we face, particularly in Australia, is productivity. This is just in general. Are you talking about AI automation or AI? Everything, right? Okay, everything from ambient to growing to building to growing to listening to like ambient listening to consultations so the doctor's not having to type up the notes so that those notes automatically get created, the doctor reviews it and it gets sent off to the GP. Suddenly that is 10 more minutes that that doctor has free to be able to spend seeing a patient, right? But that patient, again, what's the automation that gets involved in that? So that's one end of it. On the other end, that it comes back to is this going, will we ever see a world where there's AI doctors as an example, right? And my answer is there has to be. And the reason why I say there has to be is there won't be enough doctors to be able to give great care to consumers. And the other side that it comes back to is that the one thing you can then do is standardize a lot of care because you're removing a lot of the human elements from the stuff that doesn't need human interaction.

Gopi 58:36

But even like in the world where you go where you've got the AI doctors, you even challenge the world where do you need even specialization?

Vu 58:44

Exactly.

Gopi 58:45

Because why wouldn't a doctor that's giving you the first triaging be able to actually solve the second level of triaging?

Vu 58:51

And I come back to it and I go, every single part of medicine that I can think about, we treat to an algorithm. Don comes into the hospital with chest pain, we have a chest pain algorithm, right? A lady comes in in labor, we have an algorithm we follow with labor. That's how that's we're literally taught the way an AI or a machine learning algorithm is taught, right? And so what it really comes back down to is that you distill that all down. And if we can actually automate a big chunk or or or actually digitize a big chunk of that, what's left over once the tide goes out are the human elements that become more important.

Don 59:28

So anything with a looped sort of a decision-making process can really be replaced.

Vu 59:33

And that's and that's the world that it's not even going to be, oh, won't it be great when that happens? It has to happen, or else our healthcare system just won't be able to cater for the acute care, let alone the proactive care.

Don 59:44

Right. I think I agree with that friction piece, right? Like Magnus and I have spoken on like he's a huge proponent of you know staying fit and going and getting all these tests done and doing everything, right? I my dad passed away recently. He was a severe diabetic. Um, he had heart conditions, my mom's got now dementia, right? So there's a lot of markers that I could be testing myself for, but I don't have time to do it. And and the friction is too high, right? For me to actually proactively, and someone as healthy as I am, and I have the resources to do it, I still don't have time to get it done. If the process was easier, I'll I'll get it done. You, on the other hand, has gone and got all of your blood tests done, and and I would like to actually see what your experience is like in this space right now where we are, and for you guys to say, well, what's how is it gonna make it easier for someone like me who genuinely should be getting some of these tests done? I am turning 49.

Magnus 1:00:44

I I I think idealistically it'd be good if it was a one-stop shop that you could go in and get your bloods done, get a DEXA scan, get an MIDI.

Don 1:00:52

But how is it for you right now?

Magnus 1:00:53

What um, you know, I just religiously I get my bloods done every three months, simple as me just jumping online and I'll vary it every every quarter and I'll add some tests on. Um my father had prostate cancer, for example, so I get my PSAs done regularly. And then on top of that, I've not done the full-body MRI, but um I had pneumonia um last year, so then I've had all the chest scans done, but and I'm a I'm a fan of the of the DEXA scan. Um, not I don't get that done every single year, but I think it's good just understanding because with your bloods and whether it be the MRI, to me, awareness is a catalyst of change. And for people, I just encourage people to go and get your bloods done because there could be, and I I work in the macro and not the micro. So I think it's just also understanding, which leads me to my

The Simple Basics Most Ignore

Magnus 1:01:44

next question. I was wanting to understand, Vu, just for the average punter out there, what are the the top three or five things that we all could be doing to be healthier?

Gopi 1:01:54

Yeah, but before you jump into that, what one more thing just to uh share afterwards or before is also how the disruption is changing the cost of healthcare, right? Because today, you know, one of the things Vu and I bondered over early on was around the cost to actually have a blood test through the actual Medicare system. You go to the GP, what's the GP cost to the system?

Vu 1:02:15

So let's say it's $90, $45 to the system, $45 to you.

Gopi 1:02:19

So $95, whoever is paying, but that's $90. Blood test will be like $50 to the system. But then you have to go back to the GP to get the results. That's another $90. $230 down? Just for a blood test. And if you go direct to consumer today, well, we don't even think about it.

Vu 1:02:37

Oh, it's and the place you're taking up in the waiting room twice, right? And so they're the inefficiencies that the old world carries through. But to your point around what are the three things we could be doing, none of this fancy stuff, to be really frank with you. Not full body scans, not blood tests, none of this shit. Walk 10,000 steps a day, get fiber in your diet, and drink two liters of water. Sounds really basic, but do you know how many people don't walk 10,000 steps a day? Sleep eight hours?

Magnus 1:03:02

Well, if you're not sure. I'm not gonna say the sleep is a big thing I found, but it's a bit weird.

Vu 1:03:07

I I like I I I can't I find it difficult to sleep more than four or five hours. Just naturally, that's a thing for me, which is a bit odd. But like I'll come back to it of just going, you'd be surprised how many people don't drink two liters of water a day. Just water, right? I'll have two people who drink two liters of icebreaker iced coffees a day, but not water. You'd be surprised how many people have zero fiber in their diet. Not even like a little bit of fiber, like zero fiber in their diet. Oh, is that even possible? You'd you'd be surprised, right? And the third thing it comes back down to is that when I have a patient who'll come in, they say, Doc, I've done everything, I can't lose weight, right? Especially if they're a bloke, right? If they're a dude. They'll come in and go, Doc, I've done everything. Just put me on the put me on the jab. I I just can't lose weight, right? Then I'll go, you got an iPhone? Okay, cool. Give me your iPhone. Cool. Let's open up the health app. We open up the health app and I go, do you take your phone with you everywhere you go? And guess what? Every bloke says, Yes, including to the toilet. So we take our phones with us everywhere, right? Pull up the phone, pull up the health app. Nine times out of ten, they've never opened up the health app before. I open up the health app on the iPhone, we go through, we do the continue bit, and then we get to the steps. Pull up the steps. And I and I hold the phone away from them, right? With the camera facing them, and I'm looking at the screen. I go, Do you know how many steps a person should be doing just to maintain weight? About eight to ten thousand steps a day, right? How many do you think you do? They go, Oh, probably closer to eight than ten. And I'll turn it around and very often it'll be under three. Yeah, wow. And I show it to them and I go, here's your average for this week. Here's your average for this month. Oh, and by the way, here's your average for the last two years. And it's all recorded there on your health app on your phone on your iPhone. And they look at that and I go, look, before you spend $600 a month on Manjaro or $500 a month on Magovia or whatever it is, can we see if we can get you to 10,000 steps drinking two liters a day and adding fiber into your diet and see what happens? And you would be surprised. The difference. I told you, Nassim, um Myan Andrew's personal trainer that he was doing a bodybuilding comp once, right? And yeah, he does these natural comps, and we're talking to him, and he's like, the only thing I need to do to bring down body fat was to get to 20,000 steps a day. Like everything else, like yes, it was about diet and all that sort of stuff, but he's like, I have to get my 20,000 steps. That was the biggest thing that it came back down to. And so I it's again, we can do all of these things, but to be able to make the most of these things, you've got to get the basics right.

Magnus 1:05:36

I could not agree more.

Vu 1:05:38

Yeah. I know I'm being a bit preachy about it, but it's very simple. It's so simple, man. It's like yeah, my grandma and grandpa lived to 97 and 99, and they grew up in like war torn Vietnam, right? With no food or anything. And at the end of the actually, as a s there's a tangent, do you know who the second longest demographic like group of Living of people when it comes to longevity in the world outside of the Okinawans in Japan. It's up in the Himalayas, isn't it? In the Andes? First generation Greek Orthodox Australians. And part of what they think that is due to, you can look it up. Part of what they think that is due to is the fact that the number of vegan fasts that occur in the Greek Orthodox calendar. So that's a completely different part of it, right? But my grandma was a devout Buddhist, and so there's lots of vegan fasts that she did. She lived to 97. My grandpa lived with my grandma and would eat whatever she'd make. So just by default, he lived to he lived to 100, right? Marry well, and then he lived. I'm just saying they didn't have access. They lived close to 100 each. They lived in some of the most poverty-stricken times that we had. My grandpa was born in like 1915 or something like that, right? In Vietnam. And I would say to you, it's like he didn't have access to epigenetics, full body scan, any of this stuff. He had access to whole food. He had access to no cars and had to walk and ride his bike everywhere. Like there's just some basic stuff.

Don 1:07:06

But unfortunately, most of the world lives outside of that sort of world where we are exposed to fast food every five minutes of the day. And that's and you're targeted depending on your demographic, you're targeted by Man. I told you about my relationship with food, right? Growing up as a kid, right?

Gopi 1:07:25

So and I think this would go back to earlier conversation around, you know, the change in society, right? Like one of the things you spoke a lot about is the abundance of food today wasn't there even 50 years ago. The other thing is also just the nine to five environment. That's a very new construct with the you know industrial revolution. Um, and so a lot of times when I talk to a lot of friends and someone's tr struggling with something, there's always this lack of stepping back and kind of going, Hey, we're not supposed to be doing what we're doing today. Therefore, what has actually been taken out of our day-to-late life that we need to kind of enter back in? And what does that mean? Walking to work as a way of just purely getting exercises in or getting fresh air in.

Don 1:08:06

Um, yeah, it is, I think we're fresh air is hard to find these days too. And this is what I'm saying. Sometimes the the product of necessity is those kind of tests and everything else. Like if you can't find any other ways of the case. I always joke.

Gopi 1:08:19

The thing is you've got to prioritize it, right?

Don 1:08:20

Yeah, correct.

Vu 1:08:21

I always joke, I always say to Andrew when we sit in the gym, we just go, hey, look, just step back, particularly when the gym's really busy. We just step back and go, imagine describing this whole room, the purpose of this room to someone 600 years ago.

Gopi 1:08:33

Yeah.

Vu 1:08:34

But you're picking up and it's like, hang on, what does your PT do?

Gopi 1:08:37

Yeah.

Vu 1:08:38

Tells you to pick up weights, right?

Don 1:08:40

Like you know, work you go to a treadmill and walk in one spot for half an hour.

Magnus 1:08:45

It's just but it's that whole farming community, right? So not only are they doing all their steps, not they're ploughing fields and you're running around fetching water.

Vu 1:08:52

Have you ever shaken hands with a farmer? Mate, like they are strong. Yeah, right? Like you those hands, right? And that that's where I'll come back. And actually, you know, you mentioned dementia and whatnot. Grip strength is one of the best indicators in a whole bunch of different things of kind of where you will where your physical yeah, where your physical health is going to be.

Magnus 1:09:10

Another one I heard to add to that is your ability to get up off the ground without using your hands. Yep. Is a is a sign of longevity. But we have run out of time again, Don.

Don 1:09:18

I think, yeah, we we could this is it's this is sub this subject that we could talk forever. But I think you know, you you guys are doing some good work, um, regardless of yeah, and and I think it's it's necessary to build these technologies and and bring this to the the mass population. And I'm glad that it's you doing it, right? Because I think the intention has to be right. And one thing we learned from our first conversation with you guys, and this one is the intentions are pure. And you know, I'm glad that a team like you is actually putting this together. And and I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to the solution that you're gonna build. I think it's uh what you're doing right now is at the infancy of where it needs to go. And I'm really looking forward to seeing the final product and how it's gonna serve humanity as a whole.

Magnus 1:10:07

Yeah, well said, Don. And I'd just like to reiterate your point, view, that you know, it's just getting some of those basics right for the majority of people, and a little bit of simple movement and um a bit of water and a bit of uh fiber. Away we go. It's been an absolute pleasure, guys.

Quickfire Round And Where To Find Them

Magnus 1:10:23

Should we rip and do the quick fire questions, Don? Go for it. Um we'll just alternate these. A movie you've watched more than three times. Short tank redemption. One skill every 15-year-old should master.

Gopi 1:10:34

Oh, chop on. Uh uh reading a book.

Magnus 1:10:39

Worst advice you've ever received.

Vu 1:10:43

Go go and do all my specialist training and don't don't start a business. What are you completely useless at?

Gopi 1:10:51

Um completely useless at um He's pretty good at everything by the same. There's probably a lot. Uh probably golf two years ago. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, putting in golf.

Magnus 1:11:07

Favorite hobby or sport you enjoy? One thing you think most of us are getting wrong right now about longevity. I think complicating it. A book that changed your thinking.

Vu 1:11:19

Oh my god, Gopi and I love the hard thing about hard things, right, mate?

Magnus 1:11:22

Yeah. If you lost everything tomorrow, what would your first move be?

Gopi 1:11:26

Uh see my family's still around.

Magnus 1:11:29

One habit that's had the biggest impact in your life. My to-do list that I've had since I was a kid. If you could have dinner with anybody in the world, who would you choose?

Gopi 1:11:38

Uh, Vu and Andrew.

Magnus 1:11:40

A technology you're most excited about. Oh man, it's pretty obvious to say AI. This is pretty easy. A technology you're most concerned about. AI. Are we heading toward a more connected human race or a more fragmented one?

Gopi 1:11:55

Look, from my one, I think we're heading towards a connected human race.

Magnus 1:11:58

What should we all be investing in now? Ourselves. Must have trait to be a successful entrepreneur.

Gopi 1:12:06

Aspiration.

Magnus 1:12:07

Well said.

Don 1:12:08

Thank you very much, guys. It's been an absolute pleasure. Before we finish up, I've got to say we are going through this huge quantum shift globally with, you know, not just health, politics, and everything else. What do you think is going to be the biggest impact over the next 12 months? In your opinion, that's going to imp impact humanity.

Vu 1:12:31

Um man, that's going to be such a cliche. It's not going to be geopolitics, it's not going to be anything that's happening on the other side of the world or our side of the world. It is going to be every single release that occurs in AI over the next 12 months, right? All you have to do is just look at what happens on the markets, what happens because of different things. Every time there is a release of a new feature, what's going on? If you think about what's come out in technology in just the last three months alone, it my mind boggles what the next 12 months will look like. Right. So I'm just going to say anything that's released by Anthropic, by OpenAI, and God knows who else is out there over the next 12 months, it's like strap yourself in.

Don 1:13:06

I think you're spot on. I think Anthropic, one of the Anthropic um releases dropped IBM by 38 billion overnight ones. It's it's and IBM has never lost money. So that's spot on. I think you know, if I could have another our a lot of people wouldn't know who's actually invested in um defense and a um aerospace company. I'm gonna say that's a story for another day, Don. But yes, yeah.

Magnus 1:13:32

So it's another podcast on its own. That's right.

Gopi 1:13:34

Mate, what's your thoughts? Uh I mean, I can't go past AI. I think just the proliferation of the tool and how it's getting better and better every single day. It's um, yeah, I don't think that's gonna be anything that's gonna change society as much as that.

Don 1:13:47

Guys, thanks for your contribution and it's been amazing. If people want to find you, um, where can they look for you? oneamri.com.au.

Vu 1:13:56

Go sign up for a scant. Sorry, that's just uh look, you know, not sponsored by one MRI, by the way. What I'll come back to is um you guys know I'm prolific on just posting whatever comes into my brain as a uh as a bit of a brain fart onto LinkedIn. So yeah, add me on LinkedIn, always happy to chat.

Gopi 1:14:11

Yeah, likewise LinkedIn as well. Yeah, nice.

Magnus 1:14:13

Thank you. Cool. Thanks for having us, guys. Hope you enjoyed this exciting episode of the Mastering Podcast. If you got value from today's conversation, hit that subscribe button now and share this episode with a friend. Until next time.