July 2, 2026 • 9 mins
Dr. Jim Keany, Chief Medical Officer at Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, joins The Bill Handel Show for 'Medical News'! Dr. Keany talks with Bill about accelerated biological age markers.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's time for Jim Keeney, chief medical officer for Dignity
Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, is our medical
news segment.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Jim, good morning. Do we have a decent line here? Repeat?
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah? Now I can.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Excellent. This is the world of cell phones. I mean,
just absolutely love it. Okay, A couple of topics I
want to share. This came out this morning about the
West Nile virus. They found one one mosquito with that
was carrying West Nile virus and that was in the
mosquito trapping the program that's around all over southern California.
(00:41):
And this mosquito I forgot this name. The name of
the mosquito is Fred or George or the amos. I
have no idea, and it is they're looking at all
of a sudden that one. And how scary is that?
And what is West Nile virus about? And should we
be frightened?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Right? So? Okay, West Mount virus is endemic in our area,
meaning it's here all the time. It generally affects birds,
and then the mosquitoes bite the birds, and then they
bite us, and then we get West Mount virus from
mosquitoes so it's always here. This is not necessarily, you know,
fatal news, but it's an early warning, you know, just
(01:23):
to remind everybody that mosquitoes do carry disease and that
they're not good for you, and you should really try
and do what you can to reduce mosquito breeding. So
all those plants that you have outside with the little
water basin at the bottom of them, you've got to
make sure those aren't accumulating water. Definitely, if you have
a neighbor who has a neglected swimming pool that's completely
(01:45):
turned green, that's the kind of thing you're supposed to
report because that's a huge vector for mosquitoes. The parts
that people forget about is they're gutters, right because you
don't see them, and if you don't clean out your gutters,
then the water pools up there and mosquito breathed. So
mosquitos carry disease, and west nolvirus is one of them.
You know, it's not one out of five people who
(02:08):
get west now virus show symptoms, So most people don't
show any symptoms, but one out of one hundred and
fifty will be so bad that they'll get hospitalized. So
it's not something that has these huge outbreaks where you
see tons of people with it, but it can be serious.
It's something you would like to avoid. And if it's
as simple as you know, using bug repellent or reducing
(02:29):
the number of areas with pooling water, it's worth doing.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, just became big news, which I find interesting because
when we talk to you, it's.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Basically, you know, big whoop. What I found.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Interesting it is it's indigenous to southern California, particularly LA.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
That was kind of interesting. I enjoyed that.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
So Okay, yeah, I mean they found it isn't the
first mosquito in California. You know, they've spent they found,
we've had one human case. They found about ninety dead
birds that were West virus positive. You're supposed to report
dead birds so they can come out, get them, test
them for West Nile virus because that is an indicator.
And then you know, of the state samples, about one
(03:13):
hundred and fifty have been positive so far this year.
So it's out there. It's something you want to try
and avoid.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Okay, now there are this is interesting. There is work
from Washington University. I guess medicine, right, do I have
that right? Accelerated biological age markers and early on set cancer.
That's something that is going to affect all of us.
So what's going on with that?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yeah, this article is interesting. I mean I could talk
about this one for probably an hour because it's just
so interesting that they're looking at things, first of all,
biological age, difference between that and your calendar age.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Right.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Your biological age measures things like inflammatory markers, other immune
system function, those type of things, and they look at
how at any given age, you know, what should that
look like as opposed to your chronological age is just
your birthday and how long you've been on the planet. Right,
So it looked at They have this study population that
(04:17):
we've talked about before from the UK. It's called the
UK Biobank, where they have, you know, hundreds of thousands
of participants. The US has something similar called All of
US Research Program. It's not as robust of a database,
but they're pulling from this database. So this isn't a
prospective study where we're trying to experiment with something. This
(04:37):
is what we call just an observational cohort study. We
have all this data, it's sitting in a data repository
and we're just asking it questions, so we could find
stuff that just is there from random chance. But in
this case, they're looking at all these different cancer risk
markers and well age markers that may increase your risk
(04:59):
for cas answer, and it turns out that they do
that they are associated with a higher risk for cancer.
And again os rational study. We've talked about this before,
when the if a rooster crows and the sun comes up,
did the rooster make the sun come up? No, So
things that are associated don't always mean they cause each other.
But in this case it's pretty powerful. I mean they're
(05:20):
looking at the hundreds of thousands of people, and what
they showed was that you do have a significantly higher
risk if you're born during a certain period of time
because your biological age markers are higher. So people born
between nineteen sixty five nineteen seventy four have a higher
standard age gap from where you know, the gap of
(05:42):
their biological marker to their chronological age compared to people
who were born before that. But people born between nineteen
ninety and nineteen ninety nine had ninety two percent higher
age gap. So it's americantly higher.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, so I was born before that, you were born
before that too. You know, we're in good shape.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Hey, I uish it.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
But what this means, Bill is that you know, as doctors,
we're typically not thinking, you know, colon cancer in a
thirty year old. That's just not what we normally think.
But we have to start thinking that way because the
younger generation is biologically aging faster.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
One other thing I wanted to point out, and that
was I wanted your opinion on this, because yesterday I
did one of those BLASTO five thousand tests where it's
in the gym, where you stand on this device is
basically looks like a scale and you hold on to
something and it measures your B and I and it
measures all kinds of things. And here I am, and
(06:41):
they said I was maybe fifteen twenty pounds overweight. I
weigh one hundred and seventy three pounds and I'm six
feet tall and I am twenty pounds overweight. Is the
US government still talking about a healthy weight that you're
cadaverous looking?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Well, I mean yeah, if we're talking about your healthiest weight,
your healthiest weight should be, you know, somewhere around you know,
fifteen to twenty percent body fat. So if you have
more than that you're probably you're carrying excess weight. That's
pretty high actually, so you know you're definitely carrying excess weight.
Most people have to struggle to get to that level,
by the way, So you know most of us are
(07:21):
walking around with extra fat that we don't need. And
certain types of fat are inflammatory. They do increase your
risk for cancer. They cause a lot of other problems
besides just the weight itself there. They cause impacts on
your vascular system. So you know, there is an ideal,
and nobody is expecting you to look like you know
the ideal. And that's the other thing is about these
(07:43):
You're not competing with some standard. What you are is
these are perfect for somebody who wants to start exercising.
And what you're looking for is am I getting better?
You're only competing with yourself. So the goal is look
at those numbers right now and see what you can
do to improve them. And the great thing is then
you can introduce things into your lifestyle, your diet, your medications, whatever,
(08:05):
and now you have a baseline to look at and say,
am I better off now than I was before I
started whatever I'm doing?
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah. So bottom line, according to the US standards.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
If you end up looking like an extra in a
holocaust film, that's going to be the going to be
the healthiest.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's terrific.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I really enjoyed that yesterday. And then really, no, you
know what, we don't have time for this.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
We'll do it next week.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And that has to do with your AI doctor doesn't
have to follow the same privacy rules as your real doctor.
And I get questions on handle on the law all
the time about oh, this is violation of HIPPA when
medical information is shared with, for example, insurance companies. Of course,
medical information has to be shared with insurance companies. Are
(08:52):
you looking at AI and have any fear that AI
is going to well not have the same privacy rules.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Oh, it doesn't have the same privacy rules.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
No, I understand. Does that Does that bother you?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, you know it doesn't because I don't put my
personal information in there, but you know it, Yes, you're
you're going to On one hand, you have consumer AI rules.
On the other hand, you have medical hip hop rules.
So yeah we can, I mean, we can talk about
that again for effort.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, we'll No, we'll do that next week.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Because because AI has so much to offer but also
so much risk.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I wanted to talk about that, how AI is
involved not only with privacy but also uh, it's involvement
with medicine and how we deal with it. And that's
a big, big topic that we're not talking about enough.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Jim, I'll catch you next week.
It's time for Jim Keeney, chief medical officer for Dignity
Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, is our medical
news segment.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Jim, good morning. Do we have a decent line here? Repeat?
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah? Now I can.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Excellent. This is the world of cell phones. I mean,
just absolutely love it. Okay, A couple of topics I
want to share. This came out this morning about the
West Nile virus. They found one one mosquito with that
was carrying West Nile virus and that was in the
mosquito trapping the program that's around all over southern California.
(00:41):
And this mosquito I forgot this name. The name of
the mosquito is Fred or George or the amos. I
have no idea, and it is they're looking at all
of a sudden that one. And how scary is that?
And what is West Nile virus about? And should we
be frightened?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Right? So? Okay, West Mount virus is endemic in our area,
meaning it's here all the time. It generally affects birds,
and then the mosquitoes bite the birds, and then they
bite us, and then we get West Mount virus from
mosquitoes so it's always here. This is not necessarily, you know,
fatal news, but it's an early warning, you know, just
(01:23):
to remind everybody that mosquitoes do carry disease and that
they're not good for you, and you should really try
and do what you can to reduce mosquito breeding. So
all those plants that you have outside with the little
water basin at the bottom of them, you've got to
make sure those aren't accumulating water. Definitely, if you have
a neighbor who has a neglected swimming pool that's completely
(01:45):
turned green, that's the kind of thing you're supposed to
report because that's a huge vector for mosquitoes. The parts
that people forget about is they're gutters, right because you
don't see them, and if you don't clean out your gutters,
then the water pools up there and mosquito breathed. So
mosquitos carry disease, and west nolvirus is one of them.
You know, it's not one out of five people who
(02:08):
get west now virus show symptoms, So most people don't
show any symptoms, but one out of one hundred and
fifty will be so bad that they'll get hospitalized. So
it's not something that has these huge outbreaks where you
see tons of people with it, but it can be serious.
It's something you would like to avoid. And if it's
as simple as you know, using bug repellent or reducing
(02:29):
the number of areas with pooling water, it's worth doing.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, just became big news, which I find interesting because
when we talk to you, it's.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Basically, you know, big whoop. What I found.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Interesting it is it's indigenous to southern California, particularly LA.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
That was kind of interesting. I enjoyed that.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
So Okay, yeah, I mean they found it isn't the
first mosquito in California. You know, they've spent they found,
we've had one human case. They found about ninety dead
birds that were West virus positive. You're supposed to report
dead birds so they can come out, get them, test
them for West Nile virus because that is an indicator.
And then you know, of the state samples, about one
(03:13):
hundred and fifty have been positive so far this year.
So it's out there. It's something you want to try
and avoid.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Okay, now there are this is interesting. There is work
from Washington University. I guess medicine, right, do I have
that right? Accelerated biological age markers and early on set cancer.
That's something that is going to affect all of us.
So what's going on with that?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yeah, this article is interesting. I mean I could talk
about this one for probably an hour because it's just
so interesting that they're looking at things, first of all,
biological age, difference between that and your calendar age.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Right.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Your biological age measures things like inflammatory markers, other immune
system function, those type of things, and they look at
how at any given age, you know, what should that
look like as opposed to your chronological age is just
your birthday and how long you've been on the planet. Right,
So it looked at They have this study population that
(04:17):
we've talked about before from the UK. It's called the
UK Biobank, where they have, you know, hundreds of thousands
of participants. The US has something similar called All of
US Research Program. It's not as robust of a database,
but they're pulling from this database. So this isn't a
prospective study where we're trying to experiment with something. This
(04:37):
is what we call just an observational cohort study. We
have all this data, it's sitting in a data repository
and we're just asking it questions, so we could find
stuff that just is there from random chance. But in
this case, they're looking at all these different cancer risk
markers and well age markers that may increase your risk
(04:59):
for cas answer, and it turns out that they do
that they are associated with a higher risk for cancer.
And again os rational study. We've talked about this before,
when the if a rooster crows and the sun comes up,
did the rooster make the sun come up? No, So
things that are associated don't always mean they cause each other.
But in this case it's pretty powerful. I mean they're
(05:20):
looking at the hundreds of thousands of people, and what
they showed was that you do have a significantly higher
risk if you're born during a certain period of time
because your biological age markers are higher. So people born
between nineteen sixty five nineteen seventy four have a higher
standard age gap from where you know, the gap of
(05:42):
their biological marker to their chronological age compared to people
who were born before that. But people born between nineteen
ninety and nineteen ninety nine had ninety two percent higher
age gap. So it's americantly higher.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, so I was born before that, you were born
before that too. You know, we're in good shape.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Hey, I uish it.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
But what this means, Bill is that you know, as doctors,
we're typically not thinking, you know, colon cancer in a
thirty year old. That's just not what we normally think.
But we have to start thinking that way because the
younger generation is biologically aging faster.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
One other thing I wanted to point out, and that
was I wanted your opinion on this, because yesterday I
did one of those BLASTO five thousand tests where it's
in the gym, where you stand on this device is
basically looks like a scale and you hold on to
something and it measures your B and I and it
measures all kinds of things. And here I am, and
(06:41):
they said I was maybe fifteen twenty pounds overweight. I
weigh one hundred and seventy three pounds and I'm six
feet tall and I am twenty pounds overweight. Is the
US government still talking about a healthy weight that you're
cadaverous looking?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Well, I mean yeah, if we're talking about your healthiest weight,
your healthiest weight should be, you know, somewhere around you know,
fifteen to twenty percent body fat. So if you have
more than that you're probably you're carrying excess weight. That's
pretty high actually, so you know you're definitely carrying excess weight.
Most people have to struggle to get to that level,
by the way, So you know most of us are
(07:21):
walking around with extra fat that we don't need. And
certain types of fat are inflammatory. They do increase your
risk for cancer. They cause a lot of other problems
besides just the weight itself there. They cause impacts on
your vascular system. So you know, there is an ideal,
and nobody is expecting you to look like you know
the ideal. And that's the other thing is about these
(07:43):
You're not competing with some standard. What you are is
these are perfect for somebody who wants to start exercising.
And what you're looking for is am I getting better?
You're only competing with yourself. So the goal is look
at those numbers right now and see what you can
do to improve them. And the great thing is then
you can introduce things into your lifestyle, your diet, your medications, whatever,
(08:05):
and now you have a baseline to look at and say,
am I better off now than I was before I
started whatever I'm doing?
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah. So bottom line, according to the US standards.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
If you end up looking like an extra in a
holocaust film, that's going to be the going to be
the healthiest.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's terrific.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I really enjoyed that yesterday. And then really, no, you
know what, we don't have time for this.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
We'll do it next week.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And that has to do with your AI doctor doesn't
have to follow the same privacy rules as your real doctor.
And I get questions on handle on the law all
the time about oh, this is violation of HIPPA when
medical information is shared with, for example, insurance companies. Of course,
medical information has to be shared with insurance companies. Are
(08:52):
you looking at AI and have any fear that AI
is going to well not have the same privacy rules.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Oh, it doesn't have the same privacy rules.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
No, I understand. Does that Does that bother you?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, you know it doesn't because I don't put my
personal information in there, but you know it, Yes, you're
you're going to On one hand, you have consumer AI rules.
On the other hand, you have medical hip hop rules.
So yeah we can, I mean, we can talk about
that again for effort.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, we'll No, we'll do that next week.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Because because AI has so much to offer but also
so much risk.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I wanted to talk about that, how AI is
involved not only with privacy but also uh, it's involvement
with medicine and how we deal with it. And that's
a big, big topic that we're not talking about enough.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Jim, I'll catch you next week.
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