How tech will (and won't) replace your doctor | Zack Abbott and Dhruv Khullar

Elise Hu (0:03)

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. We're back with the next episode of our original series, TED Intersections, which features unscripted conversations between experts navigating the ideas shaping our world. There's more health advice out there than ever before, and no easy way to tell what's actually worth your time.

From biotech breakthroughs to smarter cancer screening, doctor and writer Dhruv Khullar and microbiologist Zack Abbott sit down to examine what happens when science can change who we are, including the potential of re-engineering the human body and what medicine might look like in 20 years.

Dhruv Khullar (0:46)

We're also losing the ability to feel our bodies, to understand subjectively what it means to be in good health. And do I have energy today? Am I feeling unsettled? What does it mean to thrive? And so I think that instead of layering on more metrics which have a place, the most important metric is really this qualitative sense of, do I feel healthy today?

Elise Hu (1:08)

Dhruv and Zack get into gene editing, AI in the doctor's office, why our grocery store tomatoes taste like water, and the strange, powerful world living inside our guts.

Zack Abbott (1:20)

We are really a walking ecosystem. And what's even more interesting is that, unlike our human cells, this bacterial community is constantly changing. It's very plastic and dynamic. And so it's not surprising that it has a huge impact on every aspect of our health.

Elise Hu (1:33)

Throughout the conversation, they keep circling the same idea that when science can change who we are, the hardest questions aren't about what we can do to stay healthy, but what we should do. This episode was made possible with the support of ZBiotics. That's coming up right after a short break.

And now our TED Conversation of the day.

Zack Abbott (2:01)

It is really hard to kind of get credible information out there that's also compelling when you're competing in a world where there's so much, it's so easy to generate content that is compelling that it is not accurate.

Dhruv Khullar (2:12)

Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways to be wrong, there's only a few ways to be right.

Zack Abbott (2:15)

Right.

Dhruv Khullar (2:15)

And so, you know, just if you do the math, it's like if you say something, it's probably going to be wrong, unless you take a lot of steps to figure out if it's actually true or not. All right.

Zack Abbott (2:41)

Want me to go first?

Dhruv Khullar (2:42)

Let's do it.

Zack Abbott (2:42)

All right. Let's get into it. What is a health metric you wish people will focus on more?

Dhruv Khullar (2:47)

Is it too cheeky to say no metric?

So, I think that we are inundated with health metrics. Some of that is to the good. I'm a doctor. A lot of what I'm focused on is metrics and quantification and how do we get people's cholesterol level to the right number. But I think we're also losing the ability to feel our bodies, to understand subjectively what it means to be in good health and do I have energy today? Am I feeling unsettled? What does it mean to thrive? And so, I think that instead of layering on more metrics which have a place, the most important metric is really this qualitative sense of do I feel healthy today?

Zack Abbott (3:27)

We try to quantify things, put a number on it, and that makes decisions easier, right? But the reality is that everybody's biology is so different, and so those numbers are sort of like indicative. But I agree with you that there's a lot of behaviors and things that I think that probably make a lot of sense for people to spend more time on it. For myself as a microbiologist, my answer to this is always the microbiome, right? But even there, there's not a number or a metric that you can track. You go out and you get microbiome sequenced, you get that information back, what do you do with that?

We don't have a good answer for what to do next, even though we know it's so important and so essential to our health. So honestly, the answer I give is just eat more fiber. You're almost assuredly not getting enough fiber. Ninety-five percent of Americans don't get enough fiber.

Dhruv Khullar (4:10)

And for some people, it can be motivating to have a number. So if someone says, walk 10,000 steps, maybe that takes someone and gives them a real tangible goal to walk towards. But I also think there's a problem when people have to look at their sleep tracker to figure out whether they feel well-rested.