Making Sense of Science

Over the last few decades, perhaps no one has impacted healthy lifestyles more than Deepak Chopra. While some of his recommendations are criticized, Chopra has helped bring meditation, yoga and other practices for well-being into the mainstream, in ways that benefit the health of vast numbers of people every day.

His work has led many people, including some scientists and doctors, to accept new ways of thinking about alternative medicine, the power of mind over body, and the malleability of the aging process.

It's been said that Chopra’s impact is such that our culture no longer recognizes him as a human being but as a pervasive symbol of new-agey personal health and spiritual growth. Last week, I had a chance to confirm that Chopra is, in fact, a human being – and deserving of his icon status – when I talked with him for the podcast. Showing no signs of slowing down at age 76, he described his prolific work, including two popular books in the past year and a range of technologies he’s developing, including his meditation app, meditation pods for the workplace, and a chatbot for mental health called Piwi.

Take a listen and get inspired to do some meditation and deep thinking on the future of health. As Chopra told me, “If you don’t have time to meditate once per day, you probably need to meditate twice per day.”
Highlights:
2:10: Chopra talks about meditation broadly and meditation pods, including the ones made by OpenSeed for meditation in the workplace.
6:10: The drawbacks of quick fixes like drugs for mental health.
10:30: The benefits of group meditation versus individual meditation.
14:35: What is a "metahuman" and how to become one.
19:40: The difference between the conditioned mind and the mind that's infinitely creative.
22:48: How Chopra's views of free will differ from the views of many neuroscientists.
28:04: Thinking Fast and Slow, and the role of intuition.
31:20: Athletic and creative geniuses.
32:43: The nature of fundamental truth.
34:00: Meditation for kids.
37:12: Never alone.Love and how AI chatbots can support mental health.
42:30: Extending lifespan, gene editing and lifestyle.
46:05: Chopra's mentor in living a long good life (and my mentor).47:45: The power of yoga.

Links:

OpenSeed meditation pods for people to meditate at work (Chopra is an advisor to OpenSeed).
- Chopra's book from 2021, Metahuman: Unleash Your Infinite Potential
- Chopra's book from 2022, Abundance: The Inner Path to Wealth
- NeverAlone.Love, Chopra's collaboration of businesses, policy makers, mental health professionals and others to raise awareness about mental health, advance scientific research and "create a global technology platform to democratize access to resources."
- The Piwi chatbot for mental health.
- The Chopra Meditation & Well-Being App for

Making Sense of Science features interviews with leading medical and scientific experts about the latest developments in health innovation and the big ethical and social questions they raise. The podcast is hosted by science journalist Matt Fuchs

The Friday Five covers five stories in research that you may have missed this week. There are plenty of controversies and troubling ethical issues in science – and we get into many of them in our online magazine – but this news roundup focuses on scientific creativity and progress to give you a therapeutic dose of inspiration headed into the weekend.
Here are the promising studies covered in this week's Friday Five:
- A blood test to detect Alzheimer's
- Vets take their psychologist anywhere
- Can intermittent fasting affect circadian rhythms?
- A new year's resolution for living longer
- 3-D printed eyes?

Making Sense of Science features interviews with leading medical and scientific experts about the latest developments in health innovation and the big ethical and social questions they raise. The podcast is hosted by science journalist Matt Fuchs

A promising development in science in recent years has been the advance of technologies that take something natural and use technology to optimize it. This episode features a fascinating example: using tech to optimize psychedelic mushrooms.
These mushrooms have been used for religious, spiritual and medicinal purposes for thousands of years but only in the past several decades have scientists brought psychedelics into the lab to enhance them and maximize their therapeutic value.

Today’s podcast guest, Doug Drysdale, is doing important work to lead this effort. Drysdale is the CEO of a company called Cybin that has figured out how to make psilocybin more potent, so it can be administered in smaller doses without side effects.

Cybin isn’t Drysdale’s first go around at this. He has over 30 years of experience in the healthcare sector. During this time he’s raised around $4 billion of both public and private capital, and has been named Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Before Cybin, he was the founding CEO of a pharmaceutical company called Alvogen, leading it from inception to around $500 million in revenues, across 35 countries. Drysdale has also been the head of mergers and acquisitions at Actavis Group, leading 15 corporate acquisitions across three continents.

In this episode, Drysdale walks us through the promising research of his current company, Cybin, and the different therapies he’s developing for anxiety and depression based not just on psilocybin but another psychedelic compound found in plants called DMT. He explains how they seem to have such powerful effects on the brain, as well as the potential for psychedelics to eventually support other use cases, including helping us strive toward higher levels of well-being. He goes on to discuss his views on mindfulness and lifestyle factors - such as optimal nutrition - that could help bring out the best in psychedelics.
Show links:
Doug Drysdale full bio
Doug Drysdale twitterCybin website
Cybin development pipeline
Cybin's promising phase 2 research on depression
Johns Hopkins psychedelics research and psilocybin research
Mets owner Steve Cohen invests in psychedelic therapies

Making Sense of Science features interviews with leading medical and scientific experts about the latest developments in health innovation and the big ethical and social questions they raise. The podcast is hosted by science journalist Matt Fuchs

On today’s podcast episode, I had a chance to speak with Shai Efrati, a physician and professor in the schools of medicine and neuroscience at Tel Aviv University. Efrati also directs the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research, and our conversation in this episode focuses on the potential health benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Efrati's studies point to a connection between the use of hyperbaric chambers and improvements for a range of health problems such as Long Covid, strokes and traumatic brain injuries. Plus, Efrati has an early line of research suggesting that hyperbaric oxygen therapy could help protect against cognitive decline in healthy people and perhaps even slow down the overall aging process.

We talk about what’s going in on the body during hyperbaric oxygen therapy that could possibly lead to transformative benefits for patients, some of whom had searched for treatments previously and come up empty. We also discuss exactly where Efrati is with this line of inquiry, both what his studies have shown and the great deal of additional research that’s needed before the healthcare system can and should fully embrace hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Efrati and I talk about why you can’t just go on Amazon and buy something that says hyperbaric – the only way it can have a positive effect is if you access the real version of the chamber and use it correctly under the supervision of a knowledgeable physician.

I also ask Efrati what we know about the short- and long-term risks for those who follow the research-based protocol on a regular basis. And what about accessibility to people without a lot of extra cash to spend on their health? Efrati is already rolling out this therapy at a small number of specialized clinics in places like the Villages retirement community in Florida.

Making Sense of Science features interviews with leading medical and scientific experts about the latest developments in health innovation and the big ethical and social questions they raise. The podcast is hosted by science journalist Matt Fuchs

In today’s podcast episode, I talk with Nir Barzilai, a geroscientist, which means he studies the biology of aging. Barzilai directs the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

My first question for Dr. Barzilai was: why do we age? And do we have to age? His answers were encouraging. We can’t live forever, but there are a few things we can do to age later, as he argues in the book.

He explained that centenarians differ from the rest of us because they have unique gene mutations that help them stay healthy longer. For most of us, the words “gene mutations” spell trouble—we associate these words with cancer or neurodegenerative diseases, but apparently not all mutations are bad.

Centenarians may have essentially won the genetic lottery, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are predestined to have a specific lifespan and health span—the amount of time spend living productively and enjoyably. “Aging is a mother of all diseases,” Dr. Barzilai told me. And as a disease, it can be targeted by therapeutics. Dr. Barzilai’s team is already running clinical trials on such therapeutics—and the results are promising.
More about Dr. Barzilai: He is scientific director of AFAR, American Federation for Aging Research. He is also the author of Age Later. As part of his work, Barzilai studies families of centenarians and their genetics to learn how the rest of us can learn and benefit from their super-aging. He also organizing a clinical trial that is testing a specific drug that may slow aging.

Show Links

Age Later: Health Span, Life Span, and the New Science of Longevity https://www.amazon.com/Age-Later-Healthiest-Sharpest-Centenarians/dp/1250230853

American Federation for Aging Research https://www.afar.org

https://www.afar.org/nir-barzilai

https://www.einsteinmed.edu/faculty/484/nir-barzilai/

Metformin as a Tool to Target Aging

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5943638/

Benefits of Metformin in Attenuating the Hallmarks of Aging https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7347426/

The Longevity Genes Project https://www.einsteinmed.edu/centers/aging/longevity-genes-project/

Making Sense of Science features interviews with leading medical and scientific experts about the latest developments in health innovation and the big ethical and social questions they raise. The podcast is hosted by science journalist Matt Fuchs