Why Young People Are Getting Sicker | Dr. Jay Bhattacharya & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | young people are getting sicker earlier and staying sicker and older people are getting sick

00:00:08.800 | but holding on to some remnants of health longer and most of the treatments are geared toward the

00:00:15.180 | older population is that true yeah that's true that's exactly right that's a terrible situation

00:00:19.680 | because it essentially is not preparing for the future right so what we have is a system as a sick

00:00:24.860 | care system the advances we've made have allowed people to say sick longer it hasn't translated a

00:00:31.320 | longer life right it just it's there was a hope I think when I first started doing research in 2001

00:00:36.960 | there in population aging there was this idea of a compression of morbidity that is you live long a

00:00:43.940 | long life and the time you spent really sick and disabled was was compressed at the very end of

00:00:49.740 | your life rather than spending a long time disabled and sick and you you you die die after having

00:00:55.480 | spending like a decade or more very sick the idea was that that that we're uh which we have advances

00:01:01.460 | in our culture has produced results so that you uh you live a long life and you only spend you know a

00:01:07.500 | few months really sick at the end of your life um that hasn't panned out right that is in fact we have

00:01:12.920 | uh uh very little increase in life expectancy and for many many people unfortunately a very long period

00:01:21.080 | of time in in a in a state where they're uh their the quality of life is not that high not that good

00:01:27.140 | right dementia uh chronic disease leading to uh you know say diabetes leading to all kinds of of you

00:01:34.920 | know kidney failure macular degeneration you you name it peripheral peripheral vascular disease heart disease

00:01:40.660 | um you end up with a situation where all of these amazing biomedical advances that we've had over the

00:01:46.560 | last decades have not translated to actually improving the health and well-being and longevity of the

00:01:51.460 | american people um i think that uh that the biomedical infrastructure research infrastructure of the

00:01:58.620 | country has to translate over for results for regular for real for real people for the american people

00:02:04.560 | otherwise people can ask us what why why are we having these why why are we doing what we're doing

00:02:10.560 | it can't just be that we we're doing cool things i mean not that we're not doing cool things a lot of

00:02:15.920 | cool things are getting done but if they don't somehow eventually translate over uh i don't again i don't

00:02:20.800 | mean to distinguish basic science work i think basic science work is really important but eventually

00:02:24.120 | it has to translate over or else people will say why have we made these vast investments the key

00:02:29.360 | the key thing is um if we're not actually improving health as a result of the research we do then we

00:02:37.120 | haven't accomplished our mission right that's the and um the research agenda of the nih as we've talked

00:02:44.720 | about it's very it's like we talked about uh you know international relations as determining in part what

00:02:49.600 | scientists work on it you know for drug pricing um we talked about how politics determines the

00:02:57.200 | the agenda that scientists work on right so you talked about hiv right so the the political

00:03:02.480 | focus on hiv led to the vast investments the nih has made in hiv with some positive effect actually a

00:03:08.960 | lot of positive effect um and then also the sociology professions the scientific profession

00:03:14.400 | determining these are all complicated things that result in the portfolio but if the portfolio

00:03:19.120 | ultimately doesn't meet the health needs of the american people then it's not doing what it's

00:03:23.120 | supposed to be doing part of my job is to make sure that that it does meet those health needs the

00:03:27.920 | the make america healthy again movement um that's what it's asking for that the health institutions

00:03:33.520 | of this country actually meet the health needs of the people where they are uh and um in the large

00:03:39.280 | part we've not successfully done that in this country for decades uh otherwise we wouldn't have

00:03:44.960 | this major major chronic disease crisis we're currently facing um and so that's you know it's a complicated

00:03:51.200 | question it's not like you know it's not just solved by funding one grant or making the specific decisions

00:03:56.240 | it's about the incentive the system at large to focus on on on it uh and in uh on on uh on to create

00:04:04.720 | incentives to for the so that scientists turn their ingenuity toward those health needs rather than

00:04:10.480 | rather than just advancing their careers incrementally