Happy Thursday Zapien 👋

We hope you’re enjoying those last days of the year!

2023 was an epic one for health and technology. Let's look back at two major breakthroughs of the past year that have the potential to change the field for decades to come.

Forever,
Lisa, Karol & Simon

LONGEVITY BEAT

Breakthrough No. 1: GLP-1 Drugs Revolutionize Weight Management

Obesity affects a large proportion of adults in the United States and Europe. It's both a personal struggle and a public health crisis linked to serious health conditions.

Yet drug treatments for obesity have a poor reputation, likely due to both, horrible marketing campaigns and limited effectiveness.

Hence, one of the big breakthroughs of 2023: The development of GLP-1 receptor agonists for the treatment of obesity.

The first GLP-1 drug, exenatide (Byetta), was approved for type 2 diabetes in 2005. Almost five years later, Novo Nordisk introduced liraglutide (Victoza), which is based on human GLP-1. Initially approved for diabetes, it won U.S. FDA approval for obesity in late 2014.

The real breakthrough came with Novo Nordisk's semaglutide. Approved in the U.S. for weight management two years ago, it's sold as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for obesity. Semaglutide stands out because it requires only one injection per week (rather than per day).

A key study showed that patients lost 15% of their body weight in about 16 months. Patients also reported a dramatic reduction in food cravings.

And there’s more: Recent clinical trials have shown that in addition to weight loss, GLP-1 drugs also reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke in patients with Diabetes.

Unsurprisingly, Novo Nordisk’s market value now exceeds the GDP of its home country, Denmark.

But of course, not everything’s sunny (especially not in Denmark): There are concerns about long-term use, cost and side effects such as gastrointestinal problems and potential risks of bowel obstruction and pancreatitis.

Breakthrough No. 2: LLMs Transform Healthcare

Whether you witnessed the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022 or only started talking to the Large Language Model (LLM) chatbot in 2023, by now you've probably become fast friends.

ChatGPT’s ability to write (more or less) well-informed texts on just about any topic has led to a lot of interest in LLMs, including in many areas of healthcare.

We've selected a few of these emerging trends:

Clearly, LLMs are still in their infancy and the opportunities are balanced by limitations and concerns (which we will address another time).

From a regulatory perspective, as of this fall, no device using generative AI or powered by LLMs has been approved by the FDA.

Perhaps one day, we will each have a personal LLM trained on our health data to coach us on staying healthy.

SHORT HACK, LONG LIFE

History repeats itself. When in 1993, Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web launched in the public domain, people started to see the internet as more than just a temporary fad. The internet’s mainstream adoption took years, but with 180+ million ChatGPT users and a whopping 1M+ users after only 5 days, AI is here to stay and disrupt things we probably aren’t aware of yet. 🧐

This time, let’s not wait until we are sure but celebrate the opportunities we got through LLMs to build your personal nutrition coach and 3-star Michelin chef de cuisine for free.

To keep things simple, we created a meal planning prompt your 100+ years old grandpa could use by just filling out the [brackets], hitting enter and seeing the chef himself plan around your health goals.

Before jumping into the cooking mode, let’s first feed the AI with some personal data to hit your calorie sweet-spot based on your personal goal:

Do this first:

1. Copy/ Paste prompt 1 into your LLM.
2. Fill out the brackets.
3. Hit enter and let the AI do the work.

Do this next:

1. Copy/ Paste prompt 2 into your LLM.
2. Delete irrelevant sections you don’t need from the prompt.
3. Fill out the brackets (Point 9.: Copy/paste your calorie count + macronutrients from prompt 1)
4. Hit enter and let the AI do the work.

ZAPIEN OF THE WEEK

Anika (Germany)

What are you currently optimizing?

Sleep. I’ve had really good sleep quality and performance for years. Bryan Johnson inspired me to take it to the next level.

I am shifting from “planning my sleep around my life” to “planning my life around my sleep”: perfecting sleeping schedule, hydration and getting into a nighttime practice of breath work/meditation/sound bath.

What’s your favourite tool?

I am using WHOOP to track my sleep and get tips from the personalized Whoop Coach. Also, mouth tape works wonders for my sleep. Experimenting with sleeping alone, temperature and darkness – not that easy with a family 😄

BECAUSE WE LOVE NUMBERS

⚡️ -3% ⚡️

This could be the reduction in American calorie consumption by 2030 due to weight loss drugs, according to a Bank of America projection.

ABOUT US

Lisa has a PhD in Medical Biology. She was a researcher at Harvard Medical before developing D2C laboratory diagnostics.

Karol is a serial founder who helped thousands of people build healthy eating habits with Upfit.

Simon is a healthcare entrepreneur who brought the doctor online-booking service Doctolib to Germany.

WHEN YOU ARE READY, THIS IS HOW WE CAN HELP YOU

Health Disclaimer

New Zapien’s products and services are not intended to substitute for professional medical guidance. Our content and media offerings do not aim to diagnose, cure, or address any medical issues.