April 6, 2025 • 35 mins
From smart rings to glucose monitors, wearable technology is everywhere. But how much is too much? Titi and Zakiya unpack the promise, the privacy risks, and the hype with Wall Street Journal tech writer, Christopher Mims.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm TT and I'm Zakiah, and this is Dope Labs.
Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship. Girl,
let me tell you about this Apple Watch and how
(00:26):
it saved my life. Okay, I didn't have a fall
or anything, but I got a high heart rate notification
when I was dating this man.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
He was stressing me out, and for the Apple Watch
to say to me, Hey, you have an elevated heart
rate even though you're not moving around, it was like, Wow,
you in danger, I said, this man trying to kill me?
An Apple Watch knows? Okay, where your fitness devices save yourself?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Good God, But that just makes me think of about
all of this wearable tech that a lot of us
are wearing and the notifications that we get. So I
think that that is a great topic for us to
talk about today. Let's jump into the recitation.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, I already told my story, but what do you
want to know? What else do you want to know?
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I think it's good to start from the beginning, like
who started all of this and what made it boom
the way that it has. It feels like everyone has
some type of device on their body.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yes, And when did it become cool? Because I remember
when people are like, can't believe you're dressed up and
got on an Apple Watch. It you got on a
wiz Kid watch or whatever.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
You know. They still saying that. They're like, oh, leave
that Apple Watch at home when you're going to someplace fancy.
I'm like, well, how am I supposed to get these
steps at this work dinner?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Huh mm? And along with steps, there's also like heart
rate information, breathing. Some of this wearable technology is letting
you tell if your stress level is high. I want
to know how useful all that information is when it
comes to like healthcare and your PCP or a primary
care physician looking at it and saying, hey, here's what
(02:03):
you gotta do next.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right, And the engineer and me like, I want to
know how this stuff works because sometimes I look down
in my Apple Watch and I see that green light
glowing and I'm like, okay, what are you doing? So
I want to know how all this stuff works like
inside of these devices.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yes, And the consumer in me, okay, the gadget.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Girl and me knows my friend loves a gadget.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I do Apple watch or ring. I remember the fit
bit yep, I remember whoop? But like, what are the
other ones out there? What's new, what's coming? And what
do I need to buy next? And what's capturing which
data points? Because that really, I feel like, determines what
you should have right.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And my friend she also loves a lot of data
on herself. She wants everybody to send their numbers in.
But I feel like there might be a little bit
too much information, you know, And so I want to know.
Is there a such thing as too much data? Is
it overwhelming us? It's overwhelming me?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Not me, I'm throwing in Google sheets, let's look at it.
But for the people that are collecting their data like me,
is somebody else collecting it? Is somebody else possibly selling it?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
That's scary mm hmm. I want to know because we
saw what happened with twenty three and me companies up
for sale along with your data.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, I think that's a great start of questions.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Absolutely, let's jump into the dissection.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Our guest expert today is Christopher Memes. He writes about
technology for The Wall Street Journal, and he's the author
of Arriving Today.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Christopher We are so excited to have you back on
the show. Me az Akiya are people who wear wearable technology?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
You see?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
She has her ring on where did wearable technology begin?
How did we get here? Who started this? And was
there an inflex point when it started to become popular.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I think it all came from our phones in the
first place, right, Like we take it for granted that
there are these sensors in our phones. My favorite way
to describe it is we all remember the first time
we picked up an iPhone and or a iPad and
you know, you do this and you turn it ninety
degrees and it was like magic because you're like, oh,
now the YouTube video or whatever is full screen.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
So that little attitude sensor in there that was key
to enabling these fitness devices because it, I mean, that's
kind of a miracle technology itself. It's a literal form
of nanotechnology. So the real precedent of that technology is
this thing that was the size of the basketball which
flew on the first missions to the Moon, and it
(04:48):
was attitude sensor so that they could orient the spacecraft
as it was coming down to land. And you know,
it was a very early computer. It was built by IBM,
and that has been so miniaturized now that it is
the size of a poppy seed on one microchip inside
your phone, and so then of course it's easy to
put it into like a fitbit or an Apple Watch,
(05:08):
and it's super accurate. You know. That's why your watch
can identify different exercises that you're doing without even telling it.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
An attitude censor. The key needs one of those, and
not just for orientation.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Well, I think when they came out with the Apple Watch,
there was a lot of skepticism. Everybody was like, you know,
the iPhone is enormous. You're never going to build a
business that's on the same scale, So why are you
even trying? And then I think maybe five years into
sales of the Apple Watch, somebody did a calculation and
they were like, you know, if you broke this business
out on its own, it would be a fortune one
(05:49):
hundred company by itself by revenue. But Apple's so big
that it's like to them, it's like a rounding error
because it's five to ten percent of their iPhone revenue.
I mean, Cook famously is extremely focused on health. He
has said in interviews, I think better health is going
to be Apple's greatest contribution to humanity, like that he
(06:09):
wants that to be his legacy.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
And it seems like doctors are buying into that idea.
In your article, you mentioned that some doctors are recommending
the Apple Watch to patients to help them manage their
health conditions. Could you elaborate, aside from the attitude sensor, like,
what are some of the other specific features that make
this particularly useful for a medical setting. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
So, obviously, as America's population ages, we've overcome the big
killers of the past. People aren't dying from pneumonia anymore,
and so, you know, we age, and obviously heart disease
and cancer become the big killers. So you just have
tons of especially boomers, now aging into that time of
life when they might need intermittent or continuous monitoring of
(06:54):
their heart. And one of the kind of really pivotal
innovation for the Apple Watch as a medical device was
giving it the ability to do a live essentially EKG.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Right, you can take a recording and if you're having
like an abnormal event or your doctor wants to look
out for, you know, something's wrong with the rhythm of
your heart, you can just record it. On your watch
and email it to your doctor. And that's such a
breakthrough the fact that you can do that on the
cheapest Apple watch, the Apple Watch. See, doctors are basically
prescribing it. They're saying, this happened to my own mother. Actually,
(07:30):
the doctor said, just go get one of these watches
and then do this monitoring so many times per day
and send me the results.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Chris, you and Zakia are ring wearers, and Zee you
have the or ring, right yep, and Chris you have
the ultra humans. So let's talk about rings. They feel
like the next step in the technology. Zeqia is the
first person that I know personally, so I could see
the ring on their finger and she was explaining to me.
She was showing me all this data and I was like, Okay,
(08:00):
my Apple watch cannot do that. What do you think
sets this new ring technology that people have sets it
apart from the Apple watches and the fitbits. What was
the change in the technology that helped the ring, the
or ring, or the ultra human ring become what it
is today.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Well, I think it's pretty simple actually, So like here's
my ring and the sensors are on the bottom and
the sensors go on this bottom part of your finger,
and you know what do we have right there? Actually
I'm not an anonymous, so I don't know. I don't
know if it's a vein or an artery. I think
it's an artery.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
You're right, it's an artery.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
And that is a really great place for a sensor,
is right on the bottom of your finger where you
have an artery, Whereas if you have a smart watch
and it's sitting on top of your wrist, this is
actually a terrible place for a sensor because this is
your veins. There's so much information you can get when
you put this light sensor right up against the artery
that is close to the skin. So that's really the
(08:57):
key thing. Like I think in theory, the best possible
device would be like a choker and it would be
like right on your carotid artery right here. I mean,
you would get so much data be like, oh, your
brain is low on oxygen right now, like you need
to stand up or something. It's as simple as that,
which is why it blows me away that Apple hasn't
tried to make a ring yet. I mean, again, I
think the watch is good enough. They're able to gather
(09:19):
a lot of data. But the other thing you can
get from putting a sensor right here on your finger
is this measure of basically how hard your arteries are,
which predicts, you know, heart disease.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, and it's because what they do is there's.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
A measure of like how fast the blood is flowing
during a particular period in the cycle of your heart beating,
and by measuring the velocity of the blood at that moment,
they can get it's a proxy for her, like how
hard your arteries are.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So you tell me they're looking at it, say too
much cholesterol in there, yeah, or if there's a plaque
build up.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
But it's really about the elasticity of you or blood vessels,
because that is a really big factor in terms of
your health. But Tekia, I really want to hear how
this ring has changed your life, because I'm like a
collector of these stories. It always blows me away. How
wearing one of these rings for tt if you want
to talk about the watch change your behavior, how did
(10:17):
it change your behavior? Because this ring has really changed
my behavior.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
It has changed her.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
The ring has changed me. Okay, this was a gift.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
I've only had it for like three months, and I
had started working out more and a different kind of
working out because TT's husband has been my trainer. Anybody
looking to run, Wow, he's your guy.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Okay. I was getting, first of all, a rash from
wearing this Apple Watch. Okay, And you need to charge
it so often, and so I will put it on
the charger. I would leave it off for days. It
just wasn't I'm not consistent with my Apple Watch. It
dies on my arm. I don't want all of those
notifications I'm getting, and I feel like I turned them off,
(10:54):
but I'm still getting notifications. The ring I put it
on once I got used to it for like two
or three days. It's like, set it and forget it.
It's a rotisserie chicken. You know. I put it away.
I don't think about it.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
And wait a minute, I need to know more about
how you just leave the rotissary chicken out.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Oh wait, do you not remember those informations that set
it in?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
And they now, I do believe in food safety. Do
not set it and forget it with your rotissory chicken.
But wearing the ring, I felt like I didn't have
to think about it. It was able to get consistent monitoring,
and I wasn't on and off, and it gave me
some really good insights around, like my sleep is never
(11:38):
it was never right. Okay, it's not she's not sleeping,
like I haven't been resting. I've had a lot of
day stress. When I realized those things, I'm like, Okay,
what was I doing today. I'm starting to put in tags.
Everything's in one place for the or ring every night.
I'm putting all that stuff in. I'm looking at the day.
It's been easy for me and I don't have to
charge it. And even the prompts didn't feel like I
(12:00):
don't know if it was the apps I was using.
It felt like a little condescending some of those prompts.
I didn't like those notifications I was getting.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I know what you mean, yeah, Apple Watch. I just
felt like it was shaming me. Is like, how come
I stood up in two hours? I'm like, I'm working exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
That's the reason why me and my Apple Watch don't
get along. Like it's phases. I want all of that
health stuff off, Like if you take a ten minute walk,
you can don't tell me to get up and take
a ten minute walk. I'm barely making it through the day.
I don't want to hear that. I just want to know,
did I just get an email? Perfect? I can see
that a text message. So I'm like the opposite where
(12:36):
it's like I don't need all that health data. I
just need I want to be more efficient in everything else.
But I know I'm an anomaly.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
No, I don't think you are.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I have heard from the people who make these rings
that I think like two thirds of their users have
a watch and a ring.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
The ring is one thing, m hm that it feels
like an advance. But you've been also trying out the
continuous blade glucose monitors and I've seen those.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yes, what's the scoop?
Speaker 3 (13:05):
So this is wild? Like I was hesitant to try
this because it is in your body. It's a tiny,
tiny bit. Okay, So there's a very fine little metal lead.
This is gonna sound terrible.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
It sounds like just like.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Demolition man stuff. There's an applicator and you put it
on and you go like and it goes junk and
it makes this loud noise and this tiny, tiny little
metal wire. It does not penetrate the skin. It goes
just below the epidermis. Into I guess, like the interstitial fluid.
It's just below your skin and there, I guess glucose
(13:43):
is circulating even though it's not penetrating any blood vessels.
And the wild thing about it is the more sophisticated
ones have this little like it's almost like when you
go to the store and you just pay with touch lists,
like with your watch or your phone, and you just
tap your phone to the sensor and it goes like
beep boop, and then immediately download your glucose data and
so you get this continuous monitoring you can check out
(14:03):
anytime you want, and the way it gets sold. You know,
I'm sure you've seen these ads. There's tons of influencers
on Instagram love this. It is a lot of data
and like, I feel like it can be misused, but
when I did it, it just was helpful because it
kind of helped me realize I need to be taking
seriously all of the advice about slow carbs and when
(14:24):
do you eat, and because it will show you how
you respond to various foods, how you respond to exercise,
does your blood sugar change, you know, if you're tired,
and it kind of just I mean, these are things
that I think we could all probably figure out on
our own if we had a skilled nutritionist kind of
in our ear all the time. But it's just like
(14:45):
the watch of the ring. It's very convenient, and you
know how humans are, We need reinforcement. We have to
be told over and over and get day in and
day out to like break down our mental barriers to
learning these things.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Do you feel like there's a such thing as too
much information? Where do you think we should draw the
line between beneficial health checking and potential over reliance on technology?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah, I do think there's a such a thing as
too much information. I mean, this is why I use
a ring and not a watch, because I actually only
want to check my sleep in activity maybe a couple
times a day, and I don't want anything sending me
alerts and reminding me. I'm like, yeah, I know I
haven't exercised this morning, Like that's going to happen this afternoon,
(15:47):
Like stop hassling me. The blood Guckost monitor also, I
felt like it was valuable, But the more I investigated it,
the more I found that a lot of the sort
of chatter around it on social is people observing what
are normal variations in blood glucose throughout the day, and
they were pathologizing them and saying like, oh, you know
(16:10):
this just happened. I saw this, so I shouldn't eat
this food ever. And it's like, no, this is your
blood sugar does go up and down if it is
out of control, and then yes, you need to see
a medical doctor. So I think that there is this
potential for people to really just over focus on certain measures.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah, I mean, the data is only as good as
the people who are reading it, Like, you have to
know what the data means. You have to understand those things. So,
like you were saying in the beginning, doing this in
conjunction with your doctor so that they can explain these
things and give you context. I feel like makes the
data that much better and over.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
A long period of time, Like don't go checking the
exhale sheet between your epidermis and drmis every twenty minutes,
like it's just going to alarm you, you know.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Right, hyperfixation on getting your data just right seems very
excessive because how much will it really extend your life to.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Never mineccounts teaching.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Listen, in the world we live in in I need
less minutes, okay, which I.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Feel like, now we have to talk about Brian Johnson.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Let's get to let's get to it. Let's get to it.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Okay, So Brian Johnson he made his money on a
company called Braintree, which is a you know, payments platform,
so it's like Square or one of these. His net
from the sale of that company was probably north of
three hundred million, So he's set for life. And then
he's like, you know, does the like typical Silicon Valley
(17:51):
divorced guy thing, has some drama, and then decides, I'm
going to commit myself to not dying. That's his motto,
don't die. And now he is famous for having these
special dinners with other celebrities like the Kardashians or whoever,
where he's like, here's my extremely strict diet. He doesn't
(18:12):
eat after eleven am. I think it's vegan, and he
has He spends more than a million dollars a year
on tests and this kind of full time longevity doctor
who is helping him figure out ways that he sees
himself as a pioneer, ways that we can all live longer.
(18:32):
So primarily for him, that's caloric restriction, you know, it's
eating and taking all these supplements that he thinks are
going to help him into accidents whatever. And avoiding the sun.
He's definitely not seen the sun in at least two years.
And then his latest thing, I don't know if he saw,
is he's getting really into the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. He
(18:52):
said that's the next breakthrough for him. And he has
created a movement called Don't Die and it's amazing to
me how it has become this big Silicon Valley subculture
that has broken out of that and now like they're
kind of accolytes everywhere. And he jokes like, yeah, I'm
starting a cult, and it's a cult to make you
(19:13):
go to bed on time.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
I have never heard of Brian Johnson, and so I
had to look him up and I found his diet
and I've just got to step through some things with
all of you. So his daily routine and diet, he
has a calorie intake of about two thousand calories a
day that is precisely measured, and he eats all his
food in the morning, like Chris was saying, and completes
(19:38):
them all before noon. And he usually has three main
items for his three main meals, and it's a green
or a super veggie meal, a nutty pudding, and the
third meal is based on the data that he has
evidence bay fired to figure out what he needs for
(19:59):
that last meal. And so the core components are one
hundred percent vegan, and he's focused on whole foods that
have high nutrient density and low glycemic index so to
avoid blood sugar spikes, and no processed foods, so no sugar,
no refined grains, and no seed oils. And he takes
(20:21):
over one hundred pills a day of vitamins and supplements.
And that hyperbaric therapy, Christopher, that you were talking about,
that's when you increase the delivery of oxygen to the
body by providing pure oxygen in an enclosed space. So
he gets into these chambers, it's pumped full of oxygen
and it's meant to increase the amount of oxygen into
(20:41):
your body.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
That's crazy, because my multi items are looking at me like, girl,
when are you returning? When will you have another one to.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Blow off the top of my before I screwed the top.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Don't tell my mama. I'm embarrassed a little bit because
I know Brian Johnson already across Brian Johnson on Twitter
years ago, and I was like, what's this man doing now?
The open access officionado in me was like, download his data.
Take a look, right, Okay, I was looking, and so
(21:16):
I was looking at all the like readouts because he
was sharing all this stuff publicly, and he was talking
about what type of tests he was doing. I said, hey,
a little weird. This is before I think he was
taking his son's blood or whatever was going on there.
What Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy, it sounds like
a joke, but he was getting these plasma transfusions as
part of his whole anti aging thing, and he was
(21:38):
replacing his blood with his sons. Now, it didn't really help,
and it just proved to be controversial because I was like,
now you're taking it too far, okay. But he was like, hey,
my nutritionis has worked with me. And at the time
I didn't have a nutritionist. I still don't, okay. Mine
is my explore page on Instagram. And so I was like,
all right, if the nutritionist is working with him and
(21:59):
this is working, let me try some of these things.
So Blueprint is Brian Justin's like outfit where he does
all this stuff, and so I've made some of those recipes.
Now he was saying, just blend it all up, you know,
and just eat this, you know, slurry. I don't go
that route. I like to chew and so but I've
tried some of the things. Not so bad once you
(22:20):
get used to it.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I can't eat that many lentils.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
No lentils are good for you. I know they're good
for you.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I don't like them.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I feel like what he is doing, though, in some ways,
is the future, because we're talking about tracking right now
and glucose monitoring being the cutting edge. But this reminds
me that this ring that I'm testing ultra human, which
is like a more fitness focused version of AURA, Like
they are moving into new types of tracking that they
(22:48):
want to pair with the insights and the data you
gather from the ring. So like obviously like everybody's doing now,
they'll do like cycle and ovulation stuff, but they actually
are contracting with like outside labs and they're like, go
get your vitamin D tested, yeah, or go get these
other common blood markers tested and then we'll integrate that
(23:10):
into the app. And so I find it fascinating that
like what used to be tests that would be ordered
by doctors. Now we are being encouraged to go get
on our own, yeah, to go examine our biomarkers, like
we're all Brian Johnson.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
But also what I've seen lately that was taking it
too far is Brian Johnson having all those folks that
work with him sign of NDA's. Did you see that?
I did see that.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
You sent me the link, so I read it because
I didn't know who he was. I was like my
first introduction into him, and I was like, this seems incorrect.
You put an NDA's in place and trying to live
longer to harass folks. Sounds like you should be not
living so long. Oh that sounds hard. If it ain't right,
it ain't right, though, it ain't right.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Like so I'm up to minds when it comes to
that because I live in Atlanta where people are on
a lot of things that should be done by doctors. Okay,
and you can get a V twelve shop with your lashes, Okay,
you can get both of those done at the same time.
But I feel like that's really interesting, Like I would
be interested in my vitamin D levels and all of
(24:16):
those things. But when we share all of this stuff,
it's different when I share it with my doctor versus
sharing it with the app. So for me, I'm like,
what about data privacy? So we had a Dope Labs
listener reach out months ago, Hey Vio, and she said
she was using the iOS health app, a mindfulness app,
a sleep tracker, and a cycle tracker like you mentioned,
(24:36):
and she said she started getting like she noticed that
she was getting targeted ads and emails and socials and
even women's health and it was stuff that she wasn't
thinking about it first, but she felt like the ads
correlated with what some of the apps were eventually telling
her or calculating. And so I don't know how much
of this is the strides in effect, like once you
look at a thing, you start to recognize it more
(24:56):
and more you bring more attention to it. But she
said she didn't feel safe for secure, so she stopped
using them. And you know, TT and I were talking
about data breaches we saw with twenty three and meter
and that's your genetic information YEA United Healthcare. Yeah, so
when we think about this, what is the potential When
we start thinking about I mean, I don't know what
anybody would do with my vitamin D levels, but with
(25:18):
all of this information. Do you know anything about what
companies are saying they're going to do to protect our
data once they have it.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
I don't, but I have covered data privacy for a
long time, and I do know based on my previous reporting,
that the default here is companies will gather and share
data if it is profitable until they are prevented from
doing so. That's just the bottom line. I mean, we
(25:46):
went through this with location data, Like it's easy to
forget that not that long ago, advertisers could know everywhere
you'd been almost and target things based on your location
until Apple shut that down with a whole whole change
to their policies, and that made Mark Zuckerberg super mad.
He's still mad about it, talks about it all the time.
And health data, it's probably like the next frontier. I mean,
(26:11):
you're right. What's really scary for me is like the
cycle tracking stuff. We've actually done some reporting on that.
This is a very real scenario. That's gonna sound like dystopian,
but this is real. When companies gather this data, if
they're not encrypting it, let's say law enforcement can go
subpoena that data. So a lot of times the way
they solve crimes. Nowadays is our phones are tracking us
(26:31):
all the time, and even if Apple is preventing Facebook
from getting that data, every one of our cell phone
providers has that data at and T Verizon, and when
they get a subpoena from local law enforcement or the
FBI or whoever, they turn that data over. And most
people don't object to that because it's generally it happens
with a warrant and it's like somebody had to be
involved in a serious crime. But we now live in
(26:53):
a time where a serious crime might be, you know,
missing a cycle, and then the Age of Louisiana thinks
that you've broken state law and, according to their law,
committed murders, so they're going to go subpoena that data.
That's very frightening to me.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
No states currently have laws that say that they could
use your phone data to track you and figure out
if you've obtained an abortion, but there have been instances
where law enforcement agencies have used data in investigation. So
in Idaho, law enforcement used cell phone data to charge
(27:45):
a mother and son with kidnapping for aiding an abortion
seeker who traveled across state lines to receive care and
So in response to these concerns, there have been a
bunch of states that have enacted laws to protect reproductive
health data from being exploited.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I like it, and I like the geo fencing around
healthcare facilities.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Apple tries really hard to make sure that that data
they either don't ever get it or it's encrypted in
a way that nobody else can get it. Like, they're
quite good at that, to the point that law enforcement
gets real mad at them. That's why, Like, if you
ever want to have a conversation that law enforcement can access,
use imassage.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Okay, yeah, for real, all of my criminal activity is
about to start. My Villain Richard story starts today.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
You and your Apple Watch.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
So I saw a stat that said that in twenty
twenty three, fifty percent of adults between thirty five and
forty four reported that they own a wearable fitness or
wellness device. And then we also saw that the higher
your education level I'm in, the higher your income, the
more likely you are to use these devices. In your opinion,
(28:56):
how can wearable technology be made more accessible, especially when
we're thinking about how this could help improve your health
outcomes when you become more aware of what's going on.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
That's a good question. I think that some of it
could be awareness. I often forget that I pretty much
have my phone on me all the time anyway. It
has a health app on it that is tracking every
one of my steps, whether or not I have aware.
Every phone is wearable effectively if you are carrying it,
and it's quite accurate. Another thing is I think that
(29:30):
there's a normal cycle and technology where it starts out
as an expensive toy for the rich, and then it
just becomes cheaper and more accessible. I mean, I think
the maybe the underlying question is how do we make
it not just accessible, but how do we make it
useful to people? Because it's telling you, well, you didn't
(29:50):
get a lot of activity because you're a long haul
truck driver and you're stuck in the cab twelve hours
a day. Does that even have any utility?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
You know, it's true.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
But if you're a member of a population that historically
has had less access to healthcare or has had medical
mistrusts over years because of you know, actual events, I
think something that tells you about heart incidents is important,
right if you're able to track or catch those things early.
And so I'm like, once we remove that economic layer
(30:22):
or the act like just the barrier to entry into
some of these things. How do we say, like, hey,
I know you feel like this is tracking, and it
might be, but it could also save your life or
save you hundreds of dollars or thousands in the long run.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah, I hope that one way that it becomes more
accessible is more insurance companies subsidize it. Right now, Medicare
advantage plans will pay for an Apple Watch, and why
because of exactly what you just said, Like, if they
can prevent you having to go to the er, that's
going to save them tens of thousands of dollars. Better
(30:56):
that you get an early alert through your watch, you
go to your doctor, you get the care you need
when you need it. I mean, it could be a
win win, and sometimes the driver is economic right with insurance.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
I'm curious about what advice you would give to consumers
that are looking to integrate these devices into their lives
without feeling overwhelmed, you know, and without riding the highs
and lows of blood glucose monitoring notifications that shame you
for not moving and also like and just not becoming
(31:30):
a hypochondriac because all these things happen without your awareness
before and just knowing that your body does have some
resilience to manage these types of things.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
That's a great question, because it's definitely I think, as
this conversation is illustrated, it is not one size fits all.
Every single one of us has had a different experience,
and I feel very privileged that I have been able
to try all these different devices, you know, and part
of it is my job. I just call people up.
I'm like, hey, I want to try your device and
maybe I'll write about it. I would say, just start
(32:00):
somewhere a used Apple Watch, see if you want to
get into it is a great way to start and
not too expensive.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Because you're so immersed in all of this, what future
developments are you excited about? Like what do you see
coming down the pike that you're like, Okay, this is
going to be very very cool.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I think that almost hesitate to say because it sounds
so nuts. I think brain monitoring is going to be next.
And I don't mean the Elon musk sticking an electrode
into your head.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
No one should do that.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
I just mean, like, you know, the EEG headbands, which
now you can use for biofeedback and such. I think
that people are going to start playing with those two
I don't know, you know, help them. First it'll be
to help them meditate, and later it'll be to help
them identify, you know, different states of mind. I don't know, I.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Didn't even think about that.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Wow, the future is now.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
I think, even when I look at all of this,
all our data, feels like we need to get a
cybersecurity people on the line because all of our data
is up in the air. It feels like up there
in the clouds, everybody in the clouds, and everybody's pulling
down different things. I'm seeing your favorite rappers getting caught
up with screenshots from their text messages, war plans for
(33:23):
the United States being shared in a messaging app with
reporters in the app, all the credit bureaus sharing everything.
All that stuff is just loose on the Internet. I
feel like.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
All of it's just loose information high fighting up Internet.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yes, and so Apple Hell feels like the safest place.
Maybe that's where I should store my pens, you know, like,
maybe that's where I should put my passwords. You can
find Christopher on Instagram and threads at Technically MEMS, and
if you want to find him on Blue Sky and
all the other budding platforms, go to MEM's dot club,
(34:03):
mi MS, dot c l ub.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope
Labs podcast, tt.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Is on X and Instagram at d R Underscore.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
T s h O, and you can find Takiya at
z said So.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Dope Labs is a production of Lamanada Media.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Our senior supervising producer is Kristin Lapour and our associate
producer is Issara Sives.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Dope Labs is sound design, edited and mixed by James Farber.
Lamanada Media's Vice President of Partnerships and Production is Jackie Danziger.
Executive producer from iHeart Podcast is Katrina Norvil. Marketing lead
is Alison Kanter.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
sudi Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Lab
is executive produced by us T T show Dia and
Zakiya Wattley.
I'm TT and I'm Zakiah, and this is Dope Labs.
Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship. Girl,
let me tell you about this Apple Watch and how
(00:26):
it saved my life. Okay, I didn't have a fall
or anything, but I got a high heart rate notification
when I was dating this man.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
He was stressing me out, and for the Apple Watch
to say to me, Hey, you have an elevated heart
rate even though you're not moving around, it was like, Wow,
you in danger, I said, this man trying to kill me?
An Apple Watch knows? Okay, where your fitness devices save yourself?
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Good God, But that just makes me think of about
all of this wearable tech that a lot of us
are wearing and the notifications that we get. So I
think that that is a great topic for us to
talk about today. Let's jump into the recitation.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, I already told my story, but what do you
want to know? What else do you want to know?
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I think it's good to start from the beginning, like
who started all of this and what made it boom
the way that it has. It feels like everyone has
some type of device on their body.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yes, And when did it become cool? Because I remember
when people are like, can't believe you're dressed up and
got on an Apple Watch. It you got on a
wiz Kid watch or whatever.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
You know. They still saying that. They're like, oh, leave
that Apple Watch at home when you're going to someplace fancy.
I'm like, well, how am I supposed to get these
steps at this work dinner?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Huh mm? And along with steps, there's also like heart
rate information, breathing. Some of this wearable technology is letting
you tell if your stress level is high. I want
to know how useful all that information is when it
comes to like healthcare and your PCP or a primary
care physician looking at it and saying, hey, here's what
(02:03):
you gotta do next.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right, And the engineer and me like, I want to
know how this stuff works because sometimes I look down
in my Apple Watch and I see that green light
glowing and I'm like, okay, what are you doing? So
I want to know how all this stuff works like
inside of these devices.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yes, And the consumer in me, okay, the gadget.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Girl and me knows my friend loves a gadget.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I do Apple watch or ring. I remember the fit
bit yep, I remember whoop? But like, what are the
other ones out there? What's new, what's coming? And what
do I need to buy next? And what's capturing which
data points? Because that really, I feel like, determines what
you should have right.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And my friend she also loves a lot of data
on herself. She wants everybody to send their numbers in.
But I feel like there might be a little bit
too much information, you know, And so I want to know.
Is there a such thing as too much data? Is
it overwhelming us? It's overwhelming me?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Not me, I'm throwing in Google sheets, let's look at it.
But for the people that are collecting their data like me,
is somebody else collecting it? Is somebody else possibly selling it?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
That's scary mm hmm. I want to know because we
saw what happened with twenty three and me companies up
for sale along with your data.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, I think that's a great start of questions.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Absolutely, let's jump into the dissection.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Our guest expert today is Christopher Memes. He writes about
technology for The Wall Street Journal, and he's the author
of Arriving Today.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Christopher We are so excited to have you back on
the show. Me az Akiya are people who wear wearable technology?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
You see?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
She has her ring on where did wearable technology begin?
How did we get here? Who started this? And was
there an inflex point when it started to become popular.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I think it all came from our phones in the
first place, right, Like we take it for granted that
there are these sensors in our phones. My favorite way
to describe it is we all remember the first time
we picked up an iPhone and or a iPad and
you know, you do this and you turn it ninety
degrees and it was like magic because you're like, oh,
now the YouTube video or whatever is full screen.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
So that little attitude sensor in there that was key
to enabling these fitness devices because it, I mean, that's
kind of a miracle technology itself. It's a literal form
of nanotechnology. So the real precedent of that technology is
this thing that was the size of the basketball which
flew on the first missions to the Moon, and it
(04:48):
was attitude sensor so that they could orient the spacecraft
as it was coming down to land. And you know,
it was a very early computer. It was built by IBM,
and that has been so miniaturized now that it is
the size of a poppy seed on one microchip inside
your phone, and so then of course it's easy to
put it into like a fitbit or an Apple Watch,
(05:08):
and it's super accurate. You know. That's why your watch
can identify different exercises that you're doing without even telling it.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
An attitude censor. The key needs one of those, and
not just for orientation.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Well, I think when they came out with the Apple Watch,
there was a lot of skepticism. Everybody was like, you know,
the iPhone is enormous. You're never going to build a
business that's on the same scale, So why are you
even trying? And then I think maybe five years into
sales of the Apple Watch, somebody did a calculation and
they were like, you know, if you broke this business
out on its own, it would be a fortune one
(05:49):
hundred company by itself by revenue. But Apple's so big
that it's like to them, it's like a rounding error
because it's five to ten percent of their iPhone revenue.
I mean, Cook famously is extremely focused on health. He
has said in interviews, I think better health is going
to be Apple's greatest contribution to humanity, like that he
(06:09):
wants that to be his legacy.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
And it seems like doctors are buying into that idea.
In your article, you mentioned that some doctors are recommending
the Apple Watch to patients to help them manage their
health conditions. Could you elaborate, aside from the attitude sensor, like,
what are some of the other specific features that make
this particularly useful for a medical setting. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
So, obviously, as America's population ages, we've overcome the big
killers of the past. People aren't dying from pneumonia anymore,
and so, you know, we age, and obviously heart disease
and cancer become the big killers. So you just have
tons of especially boomers, now aging into that time of
life when they might need intermittent or continuous monitoring of
(06:54):
their heart. And one of the kind of really pivotal
innovation for the Apple Watch as a medical device was
giving it the ability to do a live essentially EKG.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Right, you can take a recording and if you're having
like an abnormal event or your doctor wants to look
out for, you know, something's wrong with the rhythm of
your heart, you can just record it. On your watch
and email it to your doctor. And that's such a
breakthrough the fact that you can do that on the
cheapest Apple watch, the Apple Watch. See, doctors are basically
prescribing it. They're saying, this happened to my own mother. Actually,
(07:30):
the doctor said, just go get one of these watches
and then do this monitoring so many times per day
and send me the results.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Chris, you and Zakia are ring wearers, and Zee you
have the or ring, right yep, and Chris you have
the ultra humans. So let's talk about rings. They feel
like the next step in the technology. Zeqia is the
first person that I know personally, so I could see
the ring on their finger and she was explaining to me.
She was showing me all this data and I was like, Okay,
(08:00):
my Apple watch cannot do that. What do you think
sets this new ring technology that people have sets it
apart from the Apple watches and the fitbits. What was
the change in the technology that helped the ring, the
or ring, or the ultra human ring become what it
is today.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Well, I think it's pretty simple actually, So like here's
my ring and the sensors are on the bottom and
the sensors go on this bottom part of your finger,
and you know what do we have right there? Actually
I'm not an anonymous, so I don't know. I don't
know if it's a vein or an artery. I think
it's an artery.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
You're right, it's an artery.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
And that is a really great place for a sensor,
is right on the bottom of your finger where you
have an artery, Whereas if you have a smart watch
and it's sitting on top of your wrist, this is
actually a terrible place for a sensor because this is
your veins. There's so much information you can get when
you put this light sensor right up against the artery
that is close to the skin. So that's really the
(08:57):
key thing. Like I think in theory, the best possible
device would be like a choker and it would be
like right on your carotid artery right here. I mean,
you would get so much data be like, oh, your
brain is low on oxygen right now, like you need
to stand up or something. It's as simple as that,
which is why it blows me away that Apple hasn't
tried to make a ring yet. I mean, again, I
think the watch is good enough. They're able to gather
(09:19):
a lot of data. But the other thing you can
get from putting a sensor right here on your finger
is this measure of basically how hard your arteries are,
which predicts, you know, heart disease.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, and it's because what they do is there's.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
A measure of like how fast the blood is flowing
during a particular period in the cycle of your heart beating,
and by measuring the velocity of the blood at that moment,
they can get it's a proxy for her, like how
hard your arteries are.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So you tell me they're looking at it, say too
much cholesterol in there, yeah, or if there's a plaque
build up.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
But it's really about the elasticity of you or blood vessels,
because that is a really big factor in terms of
your health. But Tekia, I really want to hear how
this ring has changed your life, because I'm like a
collector of these stories. It always blows me away. How
wearing one of these rings for tt if you want
to talk about the watch change your behavior, how did
(10:17):
it change your behavior? Because this ring has really changed
my behavior.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
It has changed her.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
The ring has changed me. Okay, this was a gift.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
I've only had it for like three months, and I
had started working out more and a different kind of
working out because TT's husband has been my trainer. Anybody
looking to run, Wow, he's your guy.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Okay. I was getting, first of all, a rash from
wearing this Apple Watch. Okay, And you need to charge
it so often, and so I will put it on
the charger. I would leave it off for days. It
just wasn't I'm not consistent with my Apple Watch. It
dies on my arm. I don't want all of those
notifications I'm getting, and I feel like I turned them off,
(10:54):
but I'm still getting notifications. The ring I put it
on once I got used to it for like two
or three days. It's like, set it and forget it.
It's a rotisserie chicken. You know. I put it away.
I don't think about it.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
And wait a minute, I need to know more about
how you just leave the rotissary chicken out.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Oh wait, do you not remember those informations that set
it in?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
And they now, I do believe in food safety. Do
not set it and forget it with your rotissory chicken.
But wearing the ring, I felt like I didn't have
to think about it. It was able to get consistent monitoring,
and I wasn't on and off, and it gave me
some really good insights around, like my sleep is never
(11:38):
it was never right. Okay, it's not she's not sleeping,
like I haven't been resting. I've had a lot of
day stress. When I realized those things, I'm like, Okay,
what was I doing today. I'm starting to put in tags.
Everything's in one place for the or ring every night.
I'm putting all that stuff in. I'm looking at the day.
It's been easy for me and I don't have to
charge it. And even the prompts didn't feel like I
(12:00):
don't know if it was the apps I was using.
It felt like a little condescending some of those prompts.
I didn't like those notifications I was getting.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
I know what you mean, yeah, Apple Watch. I just
felt like it was shaming me. Is like, how come
I stood up in two hours? I'm like, I'm working exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
That's the reason why me and my Apple Watch don't
get along. Like it's phases. I want all of that
health stuff off, Like if you take a ten minute walk,
you can don't tell me to get up and take
a ten minute walk. I'm barely making it through the day.
I don't want to hear that. I just want to know,
did I just get an email? Perfect? I can see
that a text message. So I'm like the opposite where
(12:36):
it's like I don't need all that health data. I
just need I want to be more efficient in everything else.
But I know I'm an anomaly.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
No, I don't think you are.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I have heard from the people who make these rings
that I think like two thirds of their users have
a watch and a ring.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
The ring is one thing, m hm that it feels
like an advance. But you've been also trying out the
continuous blade glucose monitors and I've seen those.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yes, what's the scoop?
Speaker 3 (13:05):
So this is wild? Like I was hesitant to try
this because it is in your body. It's a tiny,
tiny bit. Okay, So there's a very fine little metal lead.
This is gonna sound terrible.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
It sounds like just like.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Demolition man stuff. There's an applicator and you put it
on and you go like and it goes junk and
it makes this loud noise and this tiny, tiny little
metal wire. It does not penetrate the skin. It goes
just below the epidermis. Into I guess, like the interstitial fluid.
It's just below your skin and there, I guess glucose
(13:43):
is circulating even though it's not penetrating any blood vessels.
And the wild thing about it is the more sophisticated
ones have this little like it's almost like when you
go to the store and you just pay with touch lists,
like with your watch or your phone, and you just
tap your phone to the sensor and it goes like
beep boop, and then immediately download your glucose data and
so you get this continuous monitoring you can check out
(14:03):
anytime you want, and the way it gets sold. You know,
I'm sure you've seen these ads. There's tons of influencers
on Instagram love this. It is a lot of data
and like, I feel like it can be misused, but
when I did it, it just was helpful because it
kind of helped me realize I need to be taking
seriously all of the advice about slow carbs and when
(14:24):
do you eat, and because it will show you how
you respond to various foods, how you respond to exercise,
does your blood sugar change, you know, if you're tired,
and it kind of just I mean, these are things
that I think we could all probably figure out on
our own if we had a skilled nutritionist kind of
in our ear all the time. But it's just like
(14:45):
the watch of the ring. It's very convenient, and you
know how humans are, We need reinforcement. We have to
be told over and over and get day in and
day out to like break down our mental barriers to
learning these things.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Do you feel like there's a such thing as too
much information? Where do you think we should draw the
line between beneficial health checking and potential over reliance on technology?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah, I do think there's a such a thing as
too much information. I mean, this is why I use
a ring and not a watch, because I actually only
want to check my sleep in activity maybe a couple
times a day, and I don't want anything sending me
alerts and reminding me. I'm like, yeah, I know I
haven't exercised this morning, Like that's going to happen this afternoon,
(15:47):
Like stop hassling me. The blood Guckost monitor also, I
felt like it was valuable, But the more I investigated it,
the more I found that a lot of the sort
of chatter around it on social is people observing what
are normal variations in blood glucose throughout the day, and
they were pathologizing them and saying like, oh, you know
(16:10):
this just happened. I saw this, so I shouldn't eat
this food ever. And it's like, no, this is your
blood sugar does go up and down if it is
out of control, and then yes, you need to see
a medical doctor. So I think that there is this
potential for people to really just over focus on certain measures.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah, I mean, the data is only as good as
the people who are reading it, Like, you have to
know what the data means. You have to understand those things. So,
like you were saying in the beginning, doing this in
conjunction with your doctor so that they can explain these
things and give you context. I feel like makes the
data that much better and over.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
A long period of time, Like don't go checking the
exhale sheet between your epidermis and drmis every twenty minutes,
like it's just going to alarm you, you know.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Right, hyperfixation on getting your data just right seems very
excessive because how much will it really extend your life to.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Never mineccounts teaching.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Listen, in the world we live in in I need
less minutes, okay, which I.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Feel like, now we have to talk about Brian Johnson.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Let's get to let's get to it. Let's get to it.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Okay, So Brian Johnson he made his money on a
company called Braintree, which is a you know, payments platform,
so it's like Square or one of these. His net
from the sale of that company was probably north of
three hundred million, So he's set for life. And then
he's like, you know, does the like typical Silicon Valley
(17:51):
divorced guy thing, has some drama, and then decides, I'm
going to commit myself to not dying. That's his motto,
don't die. And now he is famous for having these
special dinners with other celebrities like the Kardashians or whoever,
where he's like, here's my extremely strict diet. He doesn't
(18:12):
eat after eleven am. I think it's vegan, and he
has He spends more than a million dollars a year
on tests and this kind of full time longevity doctor
who is helping him figure out ways that he sees
himself as a pioneer, ways that we can all live longer.
(18:32):
So primarily for him, that's caloric restriction, you know, it's
eating and taking all these supplements that he thinks are
going to help him into accidents whatever. And avoiding the sun.
He's definitely not seen the sun in at least two years.
And then his latest thing, I don't know if he saw,
is he's getting really into the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. He
(18:52):
said that's the next breakthrough for him. And he has
created a movement called Don't Die and it's amazing to
me how it has become this big Silicon Valley subculture
that has broken out of that and now like they're
kind of accolytes everywhere. And he jokes like, yeah, I'm
starting a cult, and it's a cult to make you
(19:13):
go to bed on time.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
I have never heard of Brian Johnson, and so I
had to look him up and I found his diet
and I've just got to step through some things with
all of you. So his daily routine and diet, he
has a calorie intake of about two thousand calories a
day that is precisely measured, and he eats all his
food in the morning, like Chris was saying, and completes
(19:38):
them all before noon. And he usually has three main
items for his three main meals, and it's a green
or a super veggie meal, a nutty pudding, and the
third meal is based on the data that he has
evidence bay fired to figure out what he needs for
(19:59):
that last meal. And so the core components are one
hundred percent vegan, and he's focused on whole foods that
have high nutrient density and low glycemic index so to
avoid blood sugar spikes, and no processed foods, so no sugar,
no refined grains, and no seed oils. And he takes
(20:21):
over one hundred pills a day of vitamins and supplements.
And that hyperbaric therapy, Christopher, that you were talking about,
that's when you increase the delivery of oxygen to the
body by providing pure oxygen in an enclosed space. So
he gets into these chambers, it's pumped full of oxygen
and it's meant to increase the amount of oxygen into
(20:41):
your body.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
That's crazy, because my multi items are looking at me like, girl,
when are you returning? When will you have another one to.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Blow off the top of my before I screwed the top.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Don't tell my mama. I'm embarrassed a little bit because
I know Brian Johnson already across Brian Johnson on Twitter
years ago, and I was like, what's this man doing now?
The open access officionado in me was like, download his data.
Take a look, right, Okay, I was looking, and so
(21:16):
I was looking at all the like readouts because he
was sharing all this stuff publicly, and he was talking
about what type of tests he was doing. I said, hey,
a little weird. This is before I think he was
taking his son's blood or whatever was going on there.
What Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy, it sounds like
a joke, but he was getting these plasma transfusions as
part of his whole anti aging thing, and he was
(21:38):
replacing his blood with his sons. Now, it didn't really help,
and it just proved to be controversial because I was like,
now you're taking it too far, okay. But he was like, hey,
my nutritionis has worked with me. And at the time
I didn't have a nutritionist. I still don't, okay. Mine
is my explore page on Instagram. And so I was like,
all right, if the nutritionist is working with him and
(21:59):
this is working, let me try some of these things.
So Blueprint is Brian Justin's like outfit where he does
all this stuff, and so I've made some of those recipes.
Now he was saying, just blend it all up, you know,
and just eat this, you know, slurry. I don't go
that route. I like to chew and so but I've
tried some of the things. Not so bad once you
(22:20):
get used to it.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I can't eat that many lentils.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
No lentils are good for you. I know they're good
for you.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I don't like them.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I feel like what he is doing, though, in some ways,
is the future, because we're talking about tracking right now
and glucose monitoring being the cutting edge. But this reminds
me that this ring that I'm testing ultra human, which
is like a more fitness focused version of AURA, Like
they are moving into new types of tracking that they
(22:48):
want to pair with the insights and the data you
gather from the ring. So like obviously like everybody's doing now,
they'll do like cycle and ovulation stuff, but they actually
are contracting with like outside labs and they're like, go
get your vitamin D tested, yeah, or go get these
other common blood markers tested and then we'll integrate that
(23:10):
into the app. And so I find it fascinating that
like what used to be tests that would be ordered
by doctors. Now we are being encouraged to go get
on our own, yeah, to go examine our biomarkers, like
we're all Brian Johnson.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
But also what I've seen lately that was taking it
too far is Brian Johnson having all those folks that
work with him sign of NDA's. Did you see that?
I did see that.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
You sent me the link, so I read it because
I didn't know who he was. I was like my
first introduction into him, and I was like, this seems incorrect.
You put an NDA's in place and trying to live
longer to harass folks. Sounds like you should be not
living so long. Oh that sounds hard. If it ain't right,
it ain't right, though, it ain't right.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Like so I'm up to minds when it comes to
that because I live in Atlanta where people are on
a lot of things that should be done by doctors. Okay,
and you can get a V twelve shop with your lashes, Okay,
you can get both of those done at the same time.
But I feel like that's really interesting, Like I would
be interested in my vitamin D levels and all of
(24:16):
those things. But when we share all of this stuff,
it's different when I share it with my doctor versus
sharing it with the app. So for me, I'm like,
what about data privacy? So we had a Dope Labs
listener reach out months ago, Hey Vio, and she said
she was using the iOS health app, a mindfulness app,
a sleep tracker, and a cycle tracker like you mentioned,
(24:36):
and she said she started getting like she noticed that
she was getting targeted ads and emails and socials and
even women's health and it was stuff that she wasn't
thinking about it first, but she felt like the ads
correlated with what some of the apps were eventually telling
her or calculating. And so I don't know how much
of this is the strides in effect, like once you
look at a thing, you start to recognize it more
(24:56):
and more you bring more attention to it. But she
said she didn't feel safe for secure, so she stopped
using them. And you know, TT and I were talking
about data breaches we saw with twenty three and meter
and that's your genetic information YEA United Healthcare. Yeah, so
when we think about this, what is the potential When
we start thinking about I mean, I don't know what
anybody would do with my vitamin D levels, but with
(25:18):
all of this information. Do you know anything about what
companies are saying they're going to do to protect our
data once they have it.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
I don't, but I have covered data privacy for a
long time, and I do know based on my previous reporting,
that the default here is companies will gather and share
data if it is profitable until they are prevented from
doing so. That's just the bottom line. I mean, we
(25:46):
went through this with location data, Like it's easy to
forget that not that long ago, advertisers could know everywhere
you'd been almost and target things based on your location
until Apple shut that down with a whole whole change
to their policies, and that made Mark Zuckerberg super mad.
He's still mad about it, talks about it all the time.
And health data, it's probably like the next frontier. I mean,
(26:11):
you're right. What's really scary for me is like the
cycle tracking stuff. We've actually done some reporting on that.
This is a very real scenario. That's gonna sound like dystopian,
but this is real. When companies gather this data, if
they're not encrypting it, let's say law enforcement can go
subpoena that data. So a lot of times the way
they solve crimes. Nowadays is our phones are tracking us
(26:31):
all the time, and even if Apple is preventing Facebook
from getting that data, every one of our cell phone
providers has that data at and T Verizon, and when
they get a subpoena from local law enforcement or the
FBI or whoever, they turn that data over. And most
people don't object to that because it's generally it happens
with a warrant and it's like somebody had to be
involved in a serious crime. But we now live in
(26:53):
a time where a serious crime might be, you know,
missing a cycle, and then the Age of Louisiana thinks
that you've broken state law and, according to their law,
committed murders, so they're going to go subpoena that data.
That's very frightening to me.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
No states currently have laws that say that they could
use your phone data to track you and figure out
if you've obtained an abortion, but there have been instances
where law enforcement agencies have used data in investigation. So
in Idaho, law enforcement used cell phone data to charge
(27:45):
a mother and son with kidnapping for aiding an abortion
seeker who traveled across state lines to receive care and
So in response to these concerns, there have been a
bunch of states that have enacted laws to protect reproductive
health data from being exploited.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I like it, and I like the geo fencing around
healthcare facilities.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Apple tries really hard to make sure that that data
they either don't ever get it or it's encrypted in
a way that nobody else can get it. Like, they're
quite good at that, to the point that law enforcement
gets real mad at them. That's why, Like, if you
ever want to have a conversation that law enforcement can access,
use imassage.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Okay, yeah, for real, all of my criminal activity is
about to start. My Villain Richard story starts today.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
You and your Apple Watch.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
So I saw a stat that said that in twenty
twenty three, fifty percent of adults between thirty five and
forty four reported that they own a wearable fitness or
wellness device. And then we also saw that the higher
your education level I'm in, the higher your income, the
more likely you are to use these devices. In your opinion,
(28:56):
how can wearable technology be made more accessible, especially when
we're thinking about how this could help improve your health
outcomes when you become more aware of what's going on.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
That's a good question. I think that some of it
could be awareness. I often forget that I pretty much
have my phone on me all the time anyway. It
has a health app on it that is tracking every
one of my steps, whether or not I have aware.
Every phone is wearable effectively if you are carrying it,
and it's quite accurate. Another thing is I think that
(29:30):
there's a normal cycle and technology where it starts out
as an expensive toy for the rich, and then it
just becomes cheaper and more accessible. I mean, I think
the maybe the underlying question is how do we make
it not just accessible, but how do we make it
useful to people? Because it's telling you, well, you didn't
(29:50):
get a lot of activity because you're a long haul
truck driver and you're stuck in the cab twelve hours
a day. Does that even have any utility?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
You know, it's true.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
But if you're a member of a population that historically
has had less access to healthcare or has had medical
mistrusts over years because of you know, actual events, I
think something that tells you about heart incidents is important,
right if you're able to track or catch those things early.
And so I'm like, once we remove that economic layer
(30:22):
or the act like just the barrier to entry into
some of these things. How do we say, like, hey,
I know you feel like this is tracking, and it
might be, but it could also save your life or
save you hundreds of dollars or thousands in the long run.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah, I hope that one way that it becomes more
accessible is more insurance companies subsidize it. Right now, Medicare
advantage plans will pay for an Apple Watch, and why
because of exactly what you just said, Like, if they
can prevent you having to go to the er, that's
going to save them tens of thousands of dollars. Better
(30:56):
that you get an early alert through your watch, you
go to your doctor, you get the care you need
when you need it. I mean, it could be a
win win, and sometimes the driver is economic right with insurance.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
I'm curious about what advice you would give to consumers
that are looking to integrate these devices into their lives
without feeling overwhelmed, you know, and without riding the highs
and lows of blood glucose monitoring notifications that shame you
for not moving and also like and just not becoming
(31:30):
a hypochondriac because all these things happen without your awareness
before and just knowing that your body does have some
resilience to manage these types of things.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
That's a great question, because it's definitely I think, as
this conversation is illustrated, it is not one size fits all.
Every single one of us has had a different experience,
and I feel very privileged that I have been able
to try all these different devices, you know, and part
of it is my job. I just call people up.
I'm like, hey, I want to try your device and
maybe I'll write about it. I would say, just start
(32:00):
somewhere a used Apple Watch, see if you want to
get into it is a great way to start and
not too expensive.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Because you're so immersed in all of this, what future
developments are you excited about? Like what do you see
coming down the pike that you're like, Okay, this is
going to be very very cool.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I think that almost hesitate to say because it sounds
so nuts. I think brain monitoring is going to be next.
And I don't mean the Elon musk sticking an electrode
into your head.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
No one should do that.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
I just mean, like, you know, the EEG headbands, which
now you can use for biofeedback and such. I think
that people are going to start playing with those two
I don't know, you know, help them. First it'll be
to help them meditate, and later it'll be to help
them identify, you know, different states of mind. I don't know, I.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Didn't even think about that.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Wow, the future is now.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
I think, even when I look at all of this,
all our data, feels like we need to get a
cybersecurity people on the line because all of our data
is up in the air. It feels like up there
in the clouds, everybody in the clouds, and everybody's pulling
down different things. I'm seeing your favorite rappers getting caught
up with screenshots from their text messages, war plans for
(33:23):
the United States being shared in a messaging app with
reporters in the app, all the credit bureaus sharing everything.
All that stuff is just loose on the Internet. I
feel like.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
All of it's just loose information high fighting up Internet.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yes, and so Apple Hell feels like the safest place.
Maybe that's where I should store my pens, you know, like,
maybe that's where I should put my passwords. You can
find Christopher on Instagram and threads at Technically MEMS, and
if you want to find him on Blue Sky and
all the other budding platforms, go to MEM's dot club,
(34:03):
mi MS, dot c l ub.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope
Labs podcast, tt.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Is on X and Instagram at d R Underscore.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
T s h O, and you can find Takiya at
z said So.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Dope Labs is a production of Lamanada Media.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Our senior supervising producer is Kristin Lapour and our associate
producer is Issara Sives.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Dope Labs is sound design, edited and mixed by James Farber.
Lamanada Media's Vice President of Partnerships and Production is Jackie Danziger.
Executive producer from iHeart Podcast is Katrina Norvil. Marketing lead
is Alison Kanter.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
sudi Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Lab
is executive produced by us T T show Dia and
Zakiya Wattley.
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