Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. David Ewing Duncan describes himself as the experimental man.
25 years ago, I was one of the first humans to have my DNA sequenced for a story for Wired magazine.
David is a journalist and a science writer.
And we almost didn't do the story. It seemed a bit gimmicky, but we did it, and it really resonated with people. And so I was kind of off and running.
And he has made a career out of this, out of signing up for tests promising new insights into health and mortality. After sequencing his genome, he later tested his proteome, the protein circulating in his blood, then his microbiome, then his metabolome.
And I've got about, I don't know, at last count, about 70 terabytes of data on myself, which is an extraordinary amount of data. A lot of that is I got a lot of MRI scans, so that eats up a lot of bites.
It is really a twist on the line in Hamlet, know thyself.
Yes. But in all these terabytes of data... Maybe 98% was not useful. But the 2%, this man, John Sang, is largely responsible for.
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Chapter 2: What is the Immune Health Metric and why is it important?
It's probably the most important system in our bodies. It literally decides if we're going to be able to heal ourselves when we get an infection or a disease. It's health. Our lack of health is different than our actual biological age.
And as John reminded me, there's roughly 1.8 trillion of these little immune cells hanging out in your body right now, seeing what's good.
And many of them are residing in different organs and tissues. Many of them also move around your entire body. They patrol and they try to check out different tissues and organs, and then they see what's going on.
To respond by, say, running up your body temperature to fight a cold, return your system to homeostasis, and to remember those threats for next time.
It has to remember, have I seen the flu? Have I seen the COVID? Or have I seen a lot of inflammatory signals? So now in my next response, I may want to anticipate what's coming in.
John's test, the immune health metric, requires a blood sample. So David gave his blood and after a ton of fancy calculations, got his score, the snapshot of his immune health. He was nervous about how he'd fare. And then he got the text from John.
So my score was 0.35.
And how did you feel about that?
I honestly didn't know what to make of it. It's just a random number. And I had to get a lot of explanation before I really understood what that score meant.
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Chapter 3: How has David Ewing Duncan's journey in health testing evolved?
Can extremely personalized medicine unlock the secrets of how healthy you are and how long you may live? Plus, what David's score means. I'm Emily Kwong. You're listening to ShoreWave, a science podcast from NPR. This message comes from Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. You can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps.
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All right, John and David, I want to start by talking about how doctors have historically assessed people's immune health in the past. Like, how is immune health measured, John?
They actually don't have a very good way to summarize overall how's your immune health. All we got typically, if your doctor orders it, it's what's called a CBC. It's a complete blood cell count.
Complete blood cell count. I know the CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Mm-hmm.
That's right. I'm Canadian.
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