LEVELS – A Whole New Level

Most medical imaging happens after a symptom, injury, or abnormal test gives a clinician a reason to look. But what changes if imaging becomes a more routine measurement, creating a record of the body before something goes wrong?
In this episode of Next Level, Mike Haney talks with Dr. Daniel Durand, chief medical officer at Prenuvo, about whole-body MRI as a test case for a broader shift from episodic medicine toward longitudinal health data. Whole-body MRI is controversial, and Durand is clearly an advocate. The conversation takes the skepticism seriously, then asks a larger question: as measurement gets cheaper, more frequent, and increasingly visible to patients themselves, how should medicine decide what is worth knowing?

Free course: Improve your metabolic health
Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠

What We Cover:
How X-rays, CT scans, ultrasound, and MRI differ, and why radiation matters when you start thinking about repeated imaging
What whole-body MRI sees well, and where CT, colonoscopy, or blood-based approaches may still be better
The concerns around incidental findings, overdiagnosis, anxiety, and unnecessary follow-up, and Durand’s response to them
What the current cancer-detection evidence for whole-body MRI does, and does not, establish
Why having prior scans could help distinguish a stable abnormality from something genuinely new
How faster scans and AI interpretation could eventually connect imaging with genomic, proteomic, and other health data

🎙️ About the Guest:
Dr. Daniel Durand is chief medical officer at Prenuvo and president of the Prenuvo Medical Group. He trained at Johns Hopkins, is board-certified in adult and pediatric radiology, and previously served as chief clinical officer and chief innovation officer at LifeBridge Health.

📍What Dr. Daniel Durand & Mike Haney discussed:
03:32 - Why imaging belongs in a series about continuous measurement
15:32 - Imaging 101: X-rays, CT, ultrasound, and MRI
28:57 - How AI is shortening MRI scan times
38:52 - Screening versus surveillance
40:26 - Which cancers whole-body MRI can miss
46:39 - The case against scanning healthy people
52:40 - What the cancer-detection data actually shows
54:39 - "We're all going to get a body scan"
1:03:31 - What would make routine imaging more useful?
1:11:49 - Building a baseline of the healthy body
1:17:43 - When AI can see more than a radiologist
1:21:28 - Is it better to know, even when you can't treat it?

🔗 Helpful Links:
Dr. Daniel Durand, Prenuvo: Prenuvo medical leadership
Meta-analysis behind the ~9,000 participants and ~1.6% detection figures. It notes limits, including incidental findings (European Radiology, 2026): PubMed
Prenuvo-associated study of 1,011 people, 2.2% confirmed cancer detection (Cancer Research/AACR, 2025): AACR abstract
Incidental findings in whole-body MRI and their psychosocial effects (European Journal of Radiology, 2021): PubMed
Prenuvo's research overview, including Polaris data (company-reported): Prenuvo clinical research

Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/rFZVbzUPSaA
Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

📲 Connect:
Connect with Dr. Daniel Durand at LinkedIn

👋 Who we are:
Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health.

Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

Alcohol has spent the last 40 years bouncing between two health narratives: a little is good for your heart, or any amount is dangerous. The science doesn’t really support either slogan.
Dr. Tim Naimi has spent decades studying the health effects of alcohol and, just as importantly, why the research is so difficult to interpret. His read of the evidence is less dramatic but more useful: there’s no good reason to start drinking for your health, very low intake may carry little measurable added risk, and risk rises as consumption does. Understanding why earlier studies made moderate drinking look protective helps explain a lot of the whiplashing headlines.

Free course: Improve your metabolic health
Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠

What We Cover:
Why alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen causally linked to at least seven cancers
Whether small amounts of alcohol really protect your heart
Why researchers still don’t have a definitive randomized trial of drinking and long-term health
How the “sick quitter” problem, selection bias, and confounding made moderate drinkers look healthier
Why two major recent reviews of alcohol and health produced such different headlines
How the risk changes with dose, including Naimi’s estimate of a 1 in 25 lifetime risk of an alcohol-caused death at 14 drinks per week
Why alcohol consumption is falling, and whether GLP-1 drugs could be contributing

🎙️ About the Guest:
Dr. Tim Naimi is a physician and alcohol epidemiologist who directs the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, where he is a professor in the Division of Medical Sciences.

📍What Dr. Tim Naimi & Mike Haney discussed:
00:45 — Why the science on alcohol is so confusing
05:48 — How alcohol damages DNA and raises cancer risk
09:43 — Is alcohol actually good for your heart?
14:22 — Why we still don't have a definitive randomized trial
20:30 — The "sick quitter" problem
24:56 — Selection bias and the problem with "healthy" moderate drinkers
29:35 — Why two major reports produced different headlines
31:37 — How alcohol risk changes as drinks per week increase
38:21 — Industry funding and conflicts of interest
46:15 — How much alcohol is too much?
49:48 — Why younger generations are drinking less
51:53 — Health consciousness, GLP-1s, and the decline in drinking

🔗 Helpful Links:
Alcohol Intake and Health Study: No Protective Effect at Low Levels, With Mortality Increasing to 1 in 25 at 14 Drinks Per Week (Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 2026) Paper
Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2025) Report
Association Between Daily Alcohol Intake and Risk of All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-analyses (JAMA Network Open, 2023) Paper
Do “Moderate” Drinkers Have Reduced Mortality Risk? (Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 2016) Paper
Alcohol Abstinence in Drinkers with Atrial Fibrillation (New England Journal of Medicine, 2020) Paper
Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health (2023) Guidance and supporting research
Alcohol and Cancer (World Health Organization / IARC) WHO overview

Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/8GNmcjPfg7U
Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

📲 Connect:
Connect with Dr. Tim Naimi at University of Victoria
👋 Who we are:
Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health.

Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

From a single blood sample, new proteomic tools can now measure thousands of proteins at once. Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray’s lab is using that flood of data, together with machine learning, to build a much higher-resolution picture of what’s happening throughout the body and where someone’s health may be headed.

The early signals are striking. In one analysis of people who appeared healthy by conventional measures, every additional 4.1 years of estimated heart age was associated with nearly 2.5 times the risk of heart failure over the following 15 years. Wyss-Coray sees this kind of measurement eventually becoming a “health compass”: something that could show which parts of the body are changing fastest, then help track whether an intervention is actually moving them in the right direction.

Free course: Improve your metabolic health
Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠

What We Cover:
How a drop of blood can now reveal information from thousands of proteins
Why aging appears to happen in waves rather than at a steady rate
Why one part of the body may age faster than the rest
What young-blood experiments in mice taught Wyss-Coray about proteins and brain aging
How the work is moving from whole organs down to individual cell types
Why the field’s biggest constraint may now be data collection rather than better AI

🎙️ About the Guest:
Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray is the D.H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University and director of the Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience.

📍What Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray & Mike Haney discussed:
04:03 Proteins 101: the building blocks hiding information about your health
05:09 How one blood sample can measure thousands of proteins
09:07 Using machine learning to find patterns in the proteome
12:17 Can blood reveal what’s happening inside the brain?
13:11 What happened when young blood was given to old mice
19:45 Why aging may happen in waves rather than at a steady rate
29:24 How stable are protein measurements over time?
32:37 Can proteins predict disease years before it appears?
40:35 Why one part of your body may age faster than the rest
46:31 The missing test: does an intervention actually change the measurement?
51:04 Going from whole organs to individual cell types
54:10 Why more data, not better AI, is the current bottleneck
57:18 A future “health compass” for the body

🔗 Helpful Links:
Organ aging signatures in the plasma proteome track health and disease (Nature, 2023)Paper
The foundational organ-aging work discussed in the episode, using plasma proteins to estimate aging across 11 organs.
Plasma proteomic signatures of cellular aging predict human disease (Nature Medicine, 2026)Paper
The newer study extending the approach to more than 40 cell types using over 7,000 plasma proteins.
Undulating changes in human plasma proteome profiles across the lifespan (Nature Medicine, 2019)Paper

Young blood reverses age-related impairments in cognitive function and synaptic plasticity in mice (Nature Medicine, 2014)Paper

UK Biobank Research resource
The large longitudinal cohort used for much of the disease-prediction work discussed in the episode.

Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/1dfMBAZiP8o
Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

📲 Connect:
Connect with Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray at Stanford

👋 Who we are:
Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health.

Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

Aging science has gotten much better at describing who appears to be aging faster or slower. What medicine still lacks is a reliable feedback loop: a way to tell whether something we do is actually changing the biology that drives age-related disease.
Dr. Nir Barzilai argues that solving that measurement problem could turn geroscience from an interesting field of research into something doctors can actually use: measure where you are, intervene, measure again, and learn what works.

Free course: Improve your metabolic health
Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠

What We Cover:
What centenarians reveal about living longer and spending less time sick
Why changing one hallmark of aging can affect several others
How TAME was designed to test metformin as an anti-aging drug and to convince the FDA to treat aging itself as an endpoint—and why it failed to get off the ground
Why metformin, SGLT2 inhibitors, GLP-1 agonists, and some osteoporosis drugs are being studied as potential gerotherapeutics, or anti-aging drugs
How FAST is searching existing clinical trials for biomarkers that change when an intervention affects aging biology
Whether aging needs continuous monitoring or can be meaningfully tracked a few times a year

🎙️ About the Guest:
Dr. Nir Barzilai is the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair in Aging Research and a professor of medicine and genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he directs the Institute for Geroscience.

📍What Dr. Nil Barzilai & Mike Haney discussed:
05:10 - Aging is a condition, not just a label
05:59 - Why aging is what drives disease
08:19 - Should we call aging a disease?
10:20 - Why the species may have a ceiling around 115
14:34 - Why changing one hallmark of aging changes the others
23:08 - Metformin was anti-aging before it was a diabetes drug
31:55 - Centenarians live longer and spend less time sick
40:12 - How TAME tried to make aging an FDA endpoint
48:17 - Metformin, SGLT2s, GLP-1s, and osteoporosis drugs as gerotherapeutics
52:26 - FAST: finding biomarkers that actually change with treatment
56:49 - Whether aging needs continuous monitoring, or a few checks a year
1:01:16 - Where behavior still fits once we have anti-aging drugs

🔗 Helpful Links:
Hallmarks of Aging: An Expanding Universe (Cell, 2023) Paper
Compression of Morbidity Is Observed Across Cohorts with Exceptional Longevity (JAGS, 2016) Paper
Metformin as a Tool to Target Aging (Cell Metabolism, 2016) Paper
Geroscience-Guided Repurposing of FDA-Approved Drugs to Target Aging (Aging Cell, 2022) Paper
Biomarkers of Aging for the Identification and Evaluation of Longevity Interventions (Cell, 2023) Paper
FAST: Finding Aging Biomarkers by Searching Existing Trials FAST Initiative
ARPA-H PROSPR / FAST award ARPA-H FAST project

Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/HbeGjwCw6vk
Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

📲 Connect:
Connect with Dr. Nil Barzilai on X: https://x.com/NirBarzilaiMD

👋 Who we are:
Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health.

Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.

Medical AI is already getting good at doing things doctors do. Dr. Ziad Obermeyer thinks the bigger opportunity is using AI to discover things medicine doesn’t yet know.

His work shows both sides of that future: algorithms can amplify bad assumptions when trained on the wrong targets, but they can also uncover signals in medical data that humans miss. Obermeyer argues that as more health data is collected outside the hospital, AI could turn it into a continuous picture of health rather than a series of isolated snapshots.

Free course: Improve your metabolic health
Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠

What We Cover:
Why AI should learn from patients and outcomes, not just doctors
How an ECG model found hidden risk of sudden cardiac death
Why medical data access is still a major bottleneck
How more measurement could actually mean fewer unnecessary tests
Why healthcare may be entering a “mainframe to PC” transition

🎙️ About the Guest:
Dr. Ziad Obermeyer is an emergency medicine physician and an Associate Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He also co-founded Dandelion Health and the non-profit Nightingale Open Science.

📍What Dr. Ziad Obermeyer & Mike Haney discussed:
02:43 Why better data is fundamental to medical AI
05:54 The problem: There’s no variable called “get sick”
09:27 Algorithms optimize exactly what you tell them to
23:03 Why teaching AI to copy doctors limits what it can discover
26:28 How AI could create a new science of medicine
28:40 Could AI predict sudden cardiac death before it happens?
34:14 Can an algorithm teach us what it sees?
36:50 Medicine’s biggest AI bottleneck: access to data
49:00 Healthcare’s “mainframe to PC” transition
55:08 Why more measurement could actually mean fewer tests
58:46 Why medical AI is aiming too low
1:02:13 What the next generation of wearables needs to measure

🔗 Helpful Links:
Dissecting Racial Bias in an Algorithm Used to Manage the Health of Populations (Science, 2019)https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax2342
An Algorithmic Approach to Reducing Unexplained Pain Disparities in Underserved Populations (Nature Medicine, 2021)https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01192-7
An ECG Biomarker for Sudden Cardiac Death Discovered with Deep Learning (Nature, 2026)https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10674-6
Predicting the Future — Big Data, Machine Learning, and Clinical Medicine (NEJM, 2016)https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1606181
Nightingale Open Sciencehttps://www.nightingalescience.org/
Dandelion Healthhttps://dandelionhealth.ai/

Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/WDo-iL6O5nU
Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

📲 Connect:
Connect with Dr. Ziad Obermeyer on https://ziadobermeyer.com/

👋 Who we are:
Levels helps you understand your metabolic health with personalized data, expert guidance, and tools that connect your daily choices to measurable changes in your body. Our goal is to help you make better decisions about food, exercise, sleep, and long-term health.

Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health.