In this ninth episode, Travis Christofferson provides an overview of his new future of medicine book “Curable: How an Unlikely Group of Radical Innovators is Trying to Transform our Health Care System”.

Read the transcript

He covers the great inefficiencies of healthcare and harm it’s doing to swaths of the patient population. He explains it’s too qualitative than quantitative, that incentives are misaligned. He offers hope by urging a shift to being data-driven.Topics we discussed in this episode

The economics of MoneyballData can overcome our cognitive biasesRepurposing medicationsMetforminHuge disparities and variations of treatmentVeneration of a physician’s intuition has and still causes great harmComplexity of medicine has outstripped the human mind ability to do it effectivelyFee for service model incentivizes unnecessary treatmentsPrescribed medications are third largest cause of death globally30% to 50% of all healthcare dispensed is over treatmentDoctors on salary change the way they practice medicine, aligning with patient morePrecision pre-operation antibiotic timingEasily saving thousands of lives saved and billions of dollarsThe need to get to the source of disease and use a preventative type of medicineUnnecessary cancer treatment with early detectionThe need to focus on wellness and lifestyle things like dietMetformin and berberineGoing all the way disease upstream and tackling aging itselfResveratrolInterventions like ketogenic diet and fasting show great data, but no incentives due to lack of financial rewardsMost expensive treatments typically done even when there is no data to indicate that they are more effectiveHealthcare is a parasite dragging down American business on the world stageAmazon, JP Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway building their own healthcare from the inside outVirta Health as an example of an emerging innovative boutique health systemVariation in treatment is not something that’s taught in medical schoolHealthcare is disassociated from the way capital markets traditionally workEnd of life chemotherapy and other aggressive treatments are evilLack of government investment in research to treat disease at source, the aging process itselfWater fasting before chemotherapyEpigeneticsOur health is nowhere near as deterministic as we used to think just twenty years ago

Show links

Tripping over the Truth: How the Metabolic Theory of Cancer Is Overturning One of Medicine's Most Entrenched Paradigms by Travis Christofferson (Book)Curable: How an Unlikely Group of Radical Innovators is Trying to Transform our Health Care System by Travis Christofferson (Book)Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (Book)Care Oncology UK (Website)Care Oncology USA (Website)Metformin (Wikipedia Entry)Radical mastectomy (Wikipedia Entry)Sapiens DS’ Brad Perkins on a new healthcare industry emerging from computing (Previous Episode transcript)Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler (Book)An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal (Book)Intermountain Healthcare (Website)Brent James MD (LinkedIn Profile)Hacking the Software for Life by Brad Perkins (Conference talk video)The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care and How to Fix It by Marty Makary MD (Book)Metformin and berberine, two versatile drugs in treatment of common metabolic diseases (Paper)Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To by David Sinclair PhD (Book)Overkill: An avalanche of unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially. What can we do about it? by Atul Gawande (New Yorker, Article)Virta Health (Website)Substantial health and economic returns from delayed aging may warrant a new focus f...