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Health & Fitness

LEVELS – A Whole New Level

Levels

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.

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  • 26 episodes
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  • Avg 1 hr 10 min
  • English

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  • Thursday · 1 hr

    #311 - Can Your Blood Predict Your Future Health? | Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray & Mike Haney

    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.

  • September 10 · 1 hr 3 min

    #310 - Can We Measure Aging Well Enough to Treat It? | Dr. Nir Barzilai & Mike Haney

    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.

  • September 3 · 1 hr 5 min

    #309 - What AI Sees That Doctors Can’t | Dr. Ziad Obermeyer & Mike Haney

    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.

  • August 27 · 1 hr 11 min

    #308 - Why Some Foods Are So Hard to Stop Eating | Dr. Dana Small & Mike Haney

    Why do we crave some foods the more often we eat them? Are we addicted? Dr. Dana Small’s research suggests that food craving reaches far beyond taste or willpower, and that “addiction” isn’t a helpful descriptor. Every time we eat, unconscious signals from the body teach the brain which foods deliver useful nutrients, and train us to want more of those. In other words, we don’t eat crave foods because they taste good; foods taste good because our body craves them. Understanding that means we can rethink overeating. It’s not a matter of addiction or self-control; it’s our body behaving the way nature intended it to, but in the setting of foods not found in the wild, like those high in both fat and carbohydrates. But we may also be able to train our brain away from these cravings. 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 Taste vs. flavor, pleasure, motivation, and food reward How gut nutrient signals teach the brain which foods to seek Why fat + carbs produce an unusually strong reward response What eight weeks of high-fat, high-sugar snacks did to the brain How GLP-1s may cut food wanting while preserving pleasure 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Dana Small is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Metabolism and the Brain and a professor at McGill University, with appointments in Neurology and Neurosurgery and Medicine. She directs the Modern Diet and Physiology Research Center, and her research examines how sensory, metabolic, and neural signals interact to shape food reward, eating behavior, and metabolic health. 📍What Dr. Dana Small & Mike Haney discussed: 02:44 - Is food actually addictive? 05:02 - Taste and flavor are different senses 08:21 - Why “hedonic” vs. “homeostatic” eating is misleading 10:42 - The reward from sugar begins after you swallow it 22:32 - The “high road” and “low road” of food reward 27:41 - How scientists teach the brain to associate a flavor with calories 38:30 - Why combining fat and carbohydrates produces more reward 47:34 - How beliefs about food can change physiological responses 50:02 - Eight weeks of snacks changes how the brain responds to food 57:51 - What this science means for people trying to eat differently 1:03:50 - How GLP-1 drugs may change food wanting 1:07:30 - Can GLP-1s help retrain eating behavior for the long term? 🔗 Helpful Links: Habitual Daily Intake of a Sweet and Fatty Snack Modulates Reward Processing in Humans (Cell Metabolism, 2023)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36958330/ Supra-Additive Effects of Combining Fat and Carbohydrate on Food Reward (Cell Metabolism, 2018)https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(18)30325-5 Integration of Sweet Taste and Metabolism Determines Carbohydrate Reward (Current Biology, 2017)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28803868/ Rethinking Food Reward (Annual Review of Psychology, 2020)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31561741/ In Defense of Pleasure: We Need to Rethink Food Reward and Obesity (PLOS Biology, 2025)https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3003497 Mind Over Milkshakes: Mindsets, Not Just Nutrients, Determine Ghrelin Response (Health Psychology, 2011)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21574706/ Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/lXlCqNqjgHY Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 👋 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.

  • August 20 · 1 hr

    #307 - It Took Months to Interpret His Genome. Claude Did It in 30 Minutes. | Dr. Euan Ashley + Mike Haney

    Twenty-five years ago, sequencing the human genome seemed poised to usher in an era of personalized medicine. Dr. Euan Ashley helped turn that promise into an actual clinical experiment, leading one of the first efforts to interpret an entire human genome in the context of a real patient’s health. The challenge quickly became apparent: medicine could suddenly generate billions of data points about one person, but making sense of them was painfully slow. That history feels newly relevant. Ashley recently gave an AI system his own 15-year-old genome data and watched it reproduce most of an analysis that had originally required months of work by a team, in about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, genomics is being joined by wearables, multi-omics, and other technologies capable of tracking far more of our biology over time. In this episode of NextLevel, we use the genome revolution as a case study for what happens when our ability to measure the body advances faster than our ability to interpret and use the information. The next leap in personalized medicine may depend less on collecting another mountain of data than on building the tools, reference datasets, and healthcare systems capable of turning that information into decisions. 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 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Euan Ashley is Chair of the Department of Medicine at Stanford University and the Roger and Joelle Burnell Professor of Genomics and Precision Health, with appointments in medicine, genetics, and biomedical data science. He’s also the author of The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them. 📍What Dr. Euan Ashley & Mike Haney discussed: 03:33 What happened to the promise of personalized medicine? 06:33 The first clinical interpretation of a human genome 11:26 AI interprets in 30 minutes what once took months 21:25 Why genomics still needs better, more diverse reference data 27:41 Building a molecular map of exercise with MoTrPAC 32:01 Exercise changed nearly every organ researchers measured 39:05 Why your personal baseline can matter more than a "normal" range 42:46 How wearables opened a new era of longitudinal health data 47:48 The biggest barrier to continuous, personalized healthcare 51:39 What medical AI needs to become genuinely useful 57:05 How AI can ace medical benchmarks for the wrong reasons 58:20 The heart measurement Ashley considers a medical "holy grail" 🔗 Helpful Links: Clinical Assessment Incorporating a Personal Genome, The Lancet, 2010. Landmark integrated clinical analysis of a complete human genome. Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC), NIH Common Fund. Large-scale project mapping how exercise changes tissues and organs. MoTrPAC: Human Studies Design and Protocol, Journal of Applied Physiology, 2024. Human study of molecular responses to endurance and resistance training. The Mitochondrial Multi-Omic Response to Exercise Training Across Rat Tissues, Cell Metabolism, 2024. MoTrPAC study on molecular changes across organs after exercise. Harmonizing Standards and Resources for the Medical Genome, Nature, 2026. Ashley et al. on genomic reference standards and clinical-grade sequencing. Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/bD2YVGdwviE Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠ 👋 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.

  • August 13 · 1 hr 14 min

    #306 - Does Intermittent Fasting Actually Work? | Dr. Courtney Peterson & Mike Haney

    Is intermittent fasting biohacker wellness hype or legit health intervention? Some studies show real benefits, others find nothing, and the occasional headline calls it bad for your heart. Dr. Courtney Peterson has spent nearly two decades running some of the field's most tightly controlled feeding trials, and her data points to a clear pattern: there is a real effect to a restricted eating window, but when you eat may matter as much as how long you fast. Her studies found that eating in a short window early in the day lowers blood pressure and improves insulin sensitivity, even without weight loss. A physicist by training, she brings that same rigor to a field built mostly on people's own food diaries. 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 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Courtney Peterson is an Associate Professor of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She holds a PhD in physics from Harvard and leads clinical trials on intermittent fasting, meal timing, and circadian rhythms. 📍What Dr. Courtney Peterson & Mike Haney discussed: 0:00 Introduction 02:39 The three types of intermittent fasting 05:29 The 2012 mouse study that started the field 11:24 Why fasting works through appetite, not extra calories 13:48 Her six-hour study: lower blood pressure, no weight loss 25:34 Why results depend on who's being studied 28:45 The shift worker whose health got worse 36:45 Her theory: timing over fasting length 43:08 Heart attacks, blood pressure, and the body's clock 45:55 The camping trip that reset people's body clocks 58:11 Early findings from her unpublished aging study 1:08:16 Should you eat ice cream for breakfast? 🔗 Helpful Links: Time-Restricted Feeding without Reducing Caloric Intake Prevents Metabolic Diseases in Mice Fed a High-Fat Diet (Hatori et al., 2012) — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2012.04.019 Early Time-Restricted Feeding Improves Insulin Sensitivity, Blood Pressure, and Oxidative Stress Even without Weight Loss in Men with Prediabetes (Sutton et al., 2018) — https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2018.04.010 Early Time-Restricted Feeding Improves 24-Hour Glucose Levels and Affects Markers of the Circadian Clock, Aging, and Autophagy in Humans (Jamshed et al., 2019) — https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11061234 Calorie Restriction with or without Time-Restricted Eating in Weight Loss (Liu et al., 2022) — https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2114833 Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/dKauIgX3IH4 Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠ 👋 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.

  • August 6 · 1 hr 10 min

    #305 - What You Can Learn from Measuring Everything | Dr. Michael Snyder & Mike Haney

    What if we could measure the human body the way engineers monitor a jet engine? For nearly two decades, Stanford geneticist Dr. Michael Snyder has been trying exactly that. By continuously tracking everything he could possibly track in his body—genome sequencing, metabolites, wearable data, whole-body imaging—he has turned himself (and ~100 study subjects) into one of the world's largest experiments in continuous health measurement. The point wasn’t mindless biohacking. It was to answer a question: Are there clinically useful signals in all that data? This conversation suggests the answer is yes. Snyder’s experience and that of dozens of his study subjects offer some of the first real evidence that continuous measurement intelligently analyzed can reveal that you’re getting sick before you have symptoms, help find solutions to medical conditions that work for your unique biology, and help you refocus on prevention of disease rather than management. 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 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Michael Snyder is the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Genetics and director of the Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine, where he previously chaired the Department of Genetics for 15 years. 📍What Dr. Michael Snyder & Mike Haney discussed: 03:10 Why Dr. Snyder started measuring healthy people instead of waiting for disease 09:18 Living in the future: tracking his own biology for nearly two decades 15:02 Why "normal" isn't enough: the importance of personal baselines 22:48 Discovering his own genetically unique form of type 2 diabetes 32:06 How wearables detected illness before symptoms appeared 39:18 Whole-body MRIs, incidental findings, and why change over time matters 46:55 Why everyone has abnormalities, but not everyone has disease 55:41 The promise of metabolomics, proteomics, and continuous biological sensing 1:06:52 Why AI is essential for interpreting thousands of health signals 1:15:34 What continuous measurement could mean for preventive medicine 1:23:10 The next decade of personalized health and what's still missing 🔗 Helpful Links: Personal Omics Profiling Reveals Dynamic Molecular and Medical Phenotypes (Chen et al., Cell, 2012) https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(12)00965-3 Longitudinal Multi-omics Profiling Reveals Dynamic Personal Health Status (Price et al., Nature Biotechnology, 2017) https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3695 The Integrative Personal Omics Profile (iPOP): A Decade of Progress in Precision Health (Snyder lab review) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-021-00409-3 Wearable Sensor Data and Self-reported Symptoms for COVID-19 Detection (Mishra et al., Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2020) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-020-00640-6 All of Us Research Program https://allofus.nih.gov/ Connect with Dr Michael Snyder: https://med.stanford.edu/snyderlab.html Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/eUEYmLC1CcE Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠ 👋 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.

  • July 30 · 1 hr 17 min

    #304 - Did Low-Fat Diets Drive the Obesity Epidemic? | Dr. Arne Astrup & Mike Haney

    For decades, we've been told that eating less fat is one of the healthiest things we can do. That advice reshaped the foods we buy, the way we think about weight loss, and even how parents feed their children. But what if we misunderstood fat in the first place? In this episode, nutrition researcher Dr. Arne Astrup traces how the war on fat began, why many of its core assumptions haven't held up under decades of research, and what we've learned instead. Rather than asking whether fat is "good" or "bad," he argues that the more useful questions are: What foods actually keep us healthy? Why do some people gain weight more easily than others? And what happens when we reduce nutrition to single nutrients instead of whole foods? 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 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Arne Astrup is a physician, nutrition researcher, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Copenhagen whose research focuses on obesity, appetite regulation, dietary fats, and cardiometabolic health. He previously chaired the Danish Nutrition Council and helped lead Denmark's landmark ban on industrial trans fats. 📍What Dr. Arne Astrup & Mike Haney discussed: 00:00 Introduction 01:03 How fear of fat became public health policy 07:40 Did low-fat advice help create today's processed foods? 10:20 Denmark's trans fat ban and one lesson nutrition got right 14:00 "I was wrong." Why dietary fat isn't the main driver of obesity 18:45 Why your body fat isn't simply the fat you eat 27:00 Why fat can help you eat fewer calories 32:00 Are nuts actually easy to overeat? 36:00 Cheese, yogurt, and why whole foods don't behave like nutrients 41:00 Why insulin resistance changes carbohydrate tolerance 55:00 The LDL debate: what saturated fat actually changes 1:01:00 Why it's time to stop talking about "saturated fat" as a single thing 🔗 Helpful Links: Diets with High or Low Protein Content and Glycemic Index for Weight-Loss Maintenance (DIOGENES Trial): Landmark randomized trial led by Dr. Astrup examining protein, glycemic index, and long-term weight maintenance. New England Journal of Medicine Weight Loss Maintenance in Overweight Subjects on Ad Libitum Diets with High or Low Protein Content and Glycemic Index: The DIOGENES Trial (12-Month Results). One-year follow-up of the DIOGENES study. International Journal of Obesity Dietary Saturated Fats and Health: Are the U.S. Guidelines Evidence-Based? (Astrup et al., 2021): Consensus review arguing that current saturated fat recommendations should place greater emphasis on whole foods and dietary patterns than saturated fat alone. Nutrients (2021) Walter Willett's research on industrial trans fats and cardiovascular disease: Early epidemiologic work that helped establish the harms of industrial trans fats and ultimately informed policy changes worldwide. PubMed search for Walter Willett trans fat publications World Health Organization: REPLACE Trans Fat Initiative: Background on the global effort to eliminate industrially produced trans fats from the food supply. World Health Organization REPLACE Initiative Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/ajqg7LdM0PM Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠ 👋 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.

  • July 15 · 1 hr 17 min

    #303 - Why Healthcare Needs an Intelligence Layer | Dr. Robert Wachter & Mike Haney

    Almost everything your doctor knows about you comes from a snapshot: a blood pressure reading, an annual lab, a handful of numbers meant to represent a constantly changing human body. That's beginning to change. New sensors promise far more continuous health data, and AI may finally give us the ability to interpret it. But medicine has been through a data revolution before, and almost none of what people initially promised actually happened. In the first episode of NextLevel, Mike Haney sits down with Dr. Robert Wachter, Chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF and one of medicine's leading thinkers on technological change, to ask what healthcare's messy transition from paper to electronic records can teach us about the AI era. Wachter explains why digitizing medicine didn't transform care on its own, why your doctor is already overwhelmed by data, and why simply sending them continuous feeds from your watch, ring, or future sensors would make the problem worse. The missing piece is an intelligence layer: a system capable of deciding what matters, helping patients act when they can, and pulling clinicians in when they're actually needed. They also explore how AI is changing the balance of knowledge between doctors and patients, the danger of trusting systems that are usually right, what healthcare can learn from airplane cockpits, and why collecting more health data may be much easier than figuring out what any of it means. 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 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Robert M. Wachter is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He’s also the author of six books, including the 2015 bestseller The Digital Doctor, which examined medicine's transition from paper to electronic health records, and 2026’s A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, his examination of generative AI's arrival in medicine. 📍What Dr.Robert Watcher & Mike Haney discussed: 0:00 — Dr. Wachter and medicine's technological revolutions 7:00 — How healthcare finally went digital 12:40 — Why digitizing healthcare didn't fix it 19:00 — AI is fixing problems computers created 29:40 — Does AI know more medicine than your doctor? 33:00 — The hidden danger of trusting computers 42:30 — What healthcare can learn from airplane cockpits 56:15 — Why medicine has to move beyond the office visit 58:20 — Healthcare's missing intelligence layer 1:04:20 — Why more health data isn't enough 🔗 Helpful Links: Dr. Robert Wachter, UCSF Department of Medicine: https://medicine.ucsf.edu/people/robert-wachter A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future: https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-giant-leap-how-ai-is-transforming-healthcare-and-what-that-means-for-our-future-robert-wachter/e6a7ecb6556f9f02 The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-digital-doctor-hope-hype-and-harm-at-the-dawn-of-medicine-s-computer-age-robert-wachter/9187727 Pattern Recognition, Dr. Wachter's newsletter on AI and healthcare: https://robertwachter.substack.com/ Dr. Robert Wachter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-wachter-3102b963/ Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/762DTOa7uTY Find us on YouTube: ⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1 👋 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.

  • July 12 · 3 min

    Coming Soon: NextLevel

    Healthcare is entering a new era. AI is improving faster than our ability to measure the human body, while a new generation of sensors promises to change that. Together, they’ll reshape how we understand health, disease, and medicine itself. NextLevel is our new series inside the podcast where we try to make sense of that future through conversations with the people building it. Our first episode, featuring Dr. Bob Wachter, arrives this week. 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 👋 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.

  • July 2 · 1 hr 17 min

    #302 - Social Connection, Longevity, and the Hidden Health Risks of Isolation | Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad & Mike Haney

    You probably spend more time thinking about protein than friendships. According to today's guest, you’ve got it backward. In this episode of A Whole New Level, Mike Haney sits down with Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, one of the world's leading researchers on social connection and health. She explains how data now unequivocally show that social isolation drives early mortality. And why simply not feeling lonely doesn't necessarily mean you're getting enough social connection, as well as why even weak connections matter a lot to a healthy social life. 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 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University and one of the world's leading researchers on social connection and health. Her landmark meta-analyses involving millions of participants established social isolation and loneliness as independent risk factors for chronic disease and early mortality. 📍What Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad & Mike Haney discussed: 0:00 — Introduction 1:18 — How Dr. Holt-Lunstad began studying social connection and health 3:00 — Why relationships belong alongside diet, exercise, and sleep 4:10 — Social isolation vs. loneliness vs. living alone 11:45 — How researchers measure social connection and health outcomes 16:20 — The biological pathways linking isolation to disease 27:30 — How scientists study social connection without randomized trials 33:00 — Family, friends, weak ties, and what kinds of relationships matter| 37:00 — AI companions, loneliness, and whether technology can replace human connection 46:15 — Is there a minimum effective dose of friendship? 58:10 — Why Americans are participating in fewer clubs and community groups 1:03:20 — Why objective isolation predicts health better than loneliness 1:10:40 — Making friends as adults and overcoming the friction of connection 🔗 Helpful Links: Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad BYU Faculty Profile: https://psychology.byu.edu/directory/julianne-holt-lunstad Social Connection in America Survey: https://www.socialconnectionguidelines.org/ U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on Social Connection: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf Key Research Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010): https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316 Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015): https://perspectives.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.201500160 Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation (U.S. Surgeon General, 2023): https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf Bowling Alone (Robert Putnam): https://bowlingalone.com/ Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/g6D2CIpB2n4 Find us on YouTube: https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1 👋 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.

  • June 18 · 1 hr 18 min

    #301 - What Actually Moves the Needle on Cardiovascular Risk | Dr. Kevin Maki & Mike Haney

    High cholesterol. Elevated ApoB. A positive CAC score. Now what? Most people quickly find themselves trapped between two extremes: simplistic advice to “cut saturated fat” and online influencers insisting cholesterol doesn’t matter at all. In this episode of A Whole New Level, Mike Haney sits down with clinical research scientist Dr. Kevin Maki to cut through the confusion. Drawing on more than 35 years of cardiovascular research, Maki explains why heart disease risk is about much more than LDL cholesterol alone. He breaks down the roles of inflammation, blood sugar, family history, kidney function, and lipoproteins, while also making a clear case for something many people resist: LDL and ApoB still matter. A lot. The evidence increasingly suggests that when it comes to atherosclerosis, lower for longer is better. That has important implications for diet, statins, and how early we should intervene. Mike and Dr. Maki also tackle saturated fat, seed oils, red meat, industry-funded research, and how to separate evidence from online nutrition debates. 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 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Kevin Maki is founder and Chief Science Officer of Midwest Biomedical Research and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Public Health at Indiana University. A former president of the National Lipid Association, he has spent more than three decades designing and leading clinical trials focused on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, nutrition, and lipid management. His research has included studies on cholesterol-lowering therapies, dietary patterns, red meat, seed oils, inflammation, and cardiometabolic risk reduction. 📍What Dr. Kevin Maki & Mike Haney discussed: 0:00 — Dr. Maki’s background in clinical research 4:30 — How industry-funded nutrition research actually works 15:00 — The Framingham Heart Study and the “Big Four” risk factors 20:00 — FLASH-GLICK: the ten factors that drive cardiovascular risk 26:00 — Why inflammation may be the next frontier in prevention 33:00 — LDL, ApoB, and the “lower for longer” principle 42:00 — Particle size, ApoB, and what advanced lipid testing adds 47:00 — Why everyone should know their Lp(a) 51:00 — Saturated fat, seed oils, and the “compared to what?” problem 62:00 — What the red meat evidence actually shows 72:00 — Statins, lifestyle, and LDL treatment goals 82:00 — Why earlier LDL lowering may provide the biggest benefit 🔗 Helpful Links: Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/l8QzuuTYxLI Beef Consumption and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11621491/ Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Lowering and Risk of Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events in Primary Prevention Trials: A Meta-Analysis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1933287426000395 PREDIMED Trial (Mediterranean Diet & Primary Prevention): https://www.nejm.org/doi/abs/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303 CORDIOPREV Trial: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35525255/ The Framingham Heart Study: A Historical Perspective: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)61752-3/abstract Midwest Biomedical Research: https://midwestbiomedicalresearch.com/ National Lipid Association: https://www.lipid.org/ ✅ Subscribe here on YouTube: https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1 👋 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.

  • June 4 · 1 hr 14 min

    #300 - Who Should Take GLP-1s? The Science of Obesity, Appetite & Weight Loss | Dr. Robert Kushner & Mike Haney

    What are GLP-1 drugs actually doing in the body, who are they for, and why might some people want to think twice before treating them like a six-month shortcut? For years, obesity treatment focused largely on behavior: eat less, move more, stay motivated. Yet many people lost weight only to regain it. According to obesity medicine pioneer Dr. Robert Kushner, that wasn’t a failure of willpower. It was a failure to fully understand the biology driving weight regulation. In this episode of A Whole New Level, Mike Haney sits down with Kushner, one of the leading figures in obesity medicine and a lead investigator on the landmark STEP trials, to discuss how GLP-1 medications are changing the field. He explains why these drugs may be the first treatments capable of helping patients “fight biology with biology,” why appetite regulation appears to work differently in different people, and why many patients describe a dramatic reduction in food noise after starting treatment. But this conversation goes beyond how the drugs work. Kushner also addresses one of the biggest questions facing obesity medicine today: who should actually take these medications? He explains why obesity specialists evaluate far more than a number on the scale, why someone hoping to lose a modest amount of weight may want to think carefully before pursuing treatment, and why successful long-term health still requires changes that no medication can provide. They also discuss obesity as a disease, the promise and limitations of telehealth prescribing, and why maintaining weight loss often requires something deeper than motivation: a shift in identity. 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 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Robert Kushner is Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Medical Education at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and one of the pioneers of modern obesity medicine. He is a past president of The Obesity Society, founder and former chair of the American Board of Obesity Medicine, and a lead investigator on the landmark STEP clinical trials that helped establish semaglutide as a treatment for obesity. 📍What Dr. Robert Kushner & Mike Haney discussed: 2:06 — Why obesity is more than willpower 4:34 — The benefits and drawbacks of calling obesity a disease6:27 — Clinical vs. preclinical obesity 17:36 — What obesity medicine misunderstood about weight regain 18:44 — “Fight biology with biology” 25:07 — Why weight maintenance is a different challenge than weight loss 26:49 — The identity shift that helps people keep weight off 27:52 — How GLP-1 drugs actually work 31:09 — Why some people experience constant food noise 34:09 — Why GLP-1s treat obesity but don’t cure it 42:17 — The STEP and SELECT trials 44:15 — Who should consider GLP-1 medications? 45:44 — Why obesity treatment is more than an online prescription 50:44 — What happens after you stop taking GLP-1s? 🔗 Helpful Links: Watch the conversation: ⁠https://youtu.be/qdssFUAWVck Dr. Robert Kushner: https://drrobertkushner.com/about/ Northwestern Faculty Profile: https://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/faculty-profiles/az/profile.html?xid=11686 STEP Trial: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032183 SELECT Trial: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2307563 👋 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.

  • May 21 · 1 hr 31 min

    #299 - Do Athletes Really Need More Carbs? | Dr. Andrew Koutnik & Mike Haney

    Most athletes are told the same basic rule: the harder you train, the more carbs you need. But Dr. Andrew Koutnik argues the science is more complicated. In this episode, Mike Haney talks with Dr. Koutnik about how the body fuels exercise, why muscle glycogen may not explain “hitting the wall” as neatly as many people think, and why blood glucose, brain energy, insulin, and metabolic flexibility may matter more than conventional sports nutrition advice suggests. They discuss whether athletes really need 60, 90, or even 120 grams of carbs per hour, why some athletes may perform well on far less, and how to think about fueling as an individual experiment rather than a universal rule. Because apparently even “eat sugar while running” was too simple for human physiology to leave alone. 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 🎙️ About the Guest: Dr. Andrew Koutnik is a Visiting Research Scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, studying nutrition, metabolism, Type 1 diabetes, and human performance. He earned his PhD in medical sciences from the University of South Florida and has worked with groups including NASA and the Department of Defense. 📍What Dr. Andrew Koutnik & Mike Haney discussed: 00:42 Why carbs became central to sports nutrition 05:30 How the body uses carbs, fat, ketones, and lactate for fuel 13:45 Exercise, insulin sensitivity, and blood glucose 21:20 Why muscle glycogen may not explain performance limits 31:00 What “hitting the wall” may really mean 39:15 The case for lower-carb fueling strategies 48:30 Why more carbs don’t always mean better performance 58:00 The problem with 90–120 grams of carbs per hour 1:08:30 How athletes can test fueling for themselves 1:17:00 What this means for everyday exercisers and marathoners 🔗 Helpful Links:Watch the conversation: ⁠https://youtu.be/FfomxfyCchw Study discussed: Carbohydrate Ingestion on Exercise Metabolism and Physical Performancehttps://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/47/2/191/8432248Related paper: Substrate Oxidation Does Not Influence Middle Distance Running Performancehttps://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/17/17/2771 Find us on YouTube: https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1 📲 Connect:Connect with Dr. Andrew Koutnik: https://andrewkoutnik.com/X: https://x.com/AKoutnikInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrewkoutnikphd/Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=2BzUjqkAAAAJ 👋 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.

  • May 7 · 1 hr 9 min

    #298 - Why AI Won’t Replace Doctors—But Will Change Everything Else | Dr. Ami Bhatt + Mike Haney

    We can measure more about our health than ever before. Wearables track everything from heart rhythms to glucose trends, and AI can now identify patterns clinicians might miss. But more data does not automatically mean better health outcomes. In this episode, cardiologist and digital health expert Dr. Ami Bhatt joins Mike Haney to explore why medicine still struggles with prevention, how continuous health data can help patients take more agency, and where AI may actually improve care—not by replacing doctors, but by helping clinicians navigate the right information at the right time. They discuss the promise and pitfalls of wearables, the challenge of turning constant streams of health information into useful action, and why the future of medicine may depend on what Dr. Bhatt calls “collaborative intelligence”: humans and AI working together to make better decisions earlier. 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 About the guest: Dr. Ami Bhatt is the chief innovation officer (CIO) at the American College of Cardiology and the Chair of the FDA Digital Health Advisory Committee. She received her undergraduate degree at Harvard University and her Doctor of Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, and was the Director of Outpatient Cardiology, TeleCardiology, and Adult Congenital Heart Disease at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🎙 What Dr. Ami Bhatt & Mike Haney discuss: 1:19 Why heart disease remains the leading killer despite medical advances 10:17 The opportunity and risk of detecting disease earlier 17:38 What wearables are actually useful for today 30:16 When health tracking creates more anxiety than insight 37:12 Why AI should guide doctors, not replace them 44:27 Dr. Bhatt on “collaborative intelligence” in medicine 1:18:30 Why the future is human judgment plus AI, not AI alone Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health. 🔗 Helpful links Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/d0LJvL1uB4k Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📲 Connect Connect with Dr. Ami Bhatt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dramibhatt/

  • April 23 · 1 hr 35 min

    #297 - Does Most Chronic Disease Come Down to “Energy Flow?” | Greg Mushen and Josh Clemente

    Metabolic health is often simplified to a matter of blood sugar, but at its root, it is a complex system of energy substrate signaling. While many view chronic disease as an inevitable part of aging, a systems-thinking approach reveals that maintaining high "flux"—the capacity to efficiently move and clear energy through the body—is the primary lever for longevity. Without the stimulus of regular movement, even the most optimized diet can fail to prevent the accumulation of metabolic waste that leads to insulin resistance and heart disease. In this episode, we sit down with Greg Mushen, a technologist who turned his engineering mind toward his own biology after conventional medicine failed to address his chronic health issues. Mushen breaks down his "Theory of Flux" and why he believes the key to disease resistance lies in meeting our body's "clearance burden". From studying the activity levels of hunter-gatherer populations to debunking myths about walking and V2 max, Mushen provides a data-driven framework for optimizing health through the lens of evolutionary biology and systems engineering. Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In this episode, we cover: The Theory of Flux: Understanding health as the dynamic capacity to move nutrients and fuel through the system rather than a static set of markers. Insulin Resistance Reimagined: Why blood sugar is a symptom, not the root cause, and how fat accumulation in the liver and muscle disrupts signaling. The Power of PAL: Why a Physical Activity Level (PAL) of 2.0 is the "golden ratio" observed in disease-free subsistence populations. Walking vs. HIT: De-bunking the idea that you need high intensity to improve V2 max and why the "area under the curve" for oxygen consumption is what matters. The Saturated Fat Paradox: Comparing the Messiah and Chimané populations to understand how high activity levels can mitigate the risks of high-fat diets. Fiber as a Sensor: Why fiber is more than just "throughput" and acts as a critical environmental sensor for metabolic signaling. The "Walking Grifter" Philosophy: Why walking is the most under-leveraged tool for increasing metabolic flux with the lowest recovery cost. 🎙 What Greg Mushen & Josh Clemente discuss: [00:53] — Greg’s transition from tech engineering to "debugging" his own biology. [06:55] — The mold exposure and chronic fatigue that sparked a deep dive into primary literature. [11:36] — How correcting a copper deficiency became a "point of light" for understanding micronutrients. [20:53] — Lessons from the Messiah: High saturated fat intake paired with extreme physical activity. [25:26] — Defining Flux: The capacity to clear substrate and prevent metabolic accumulation. [30:26] — The PAL 2.0 threshold: Why doubling your basal metabolic rate is the key to warding off chronic disease. [51:10] — Lipid Kinetics: Using the "sink and drain" analogy to understand LDL residence time. [01:00:19] — The Integral of Oxygen: Why walking 15,000 steps can be as effective for V2 max as short bursts of HIT. [01:17:16] — Why Greg changed his mind on plant-based vs. animal protein. [01:28:24] — Greg's personal stack: From 15k steps and resistance training to PD5 inhibitors and custom fiber blends. Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health. 🔗 Helpful links Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/A1KSG2qyVww⁠ Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📲 Connect Connect with Greg Mushen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregmushen

  • April 9 · 1 hr 10 min

    #296 - The Truth About Protein: Why Exercise is the Secret to Muscle Growth and Longevity | Dr. Stuart Phillips & Mike Haney

    Protein is often hailed as the ultimate nutrient for health and longevity, but the science suggests it is only half of the equation. While social media influencers debate the minutiae of protein grams, researchers have found that the vast majority of protein's benefits are "baked in" only when combined with physical activity. Without the stimulus of exercise, even the most optimized protein intake fails to move the needle on muscle growth or chronic disease prevention. In this episode of A Whole New Level, Mike Haney sits down with Dr. Stuart Phillips, a researcher who has spent over 25 years at McMaster University studying the intersection of protein, exercise, and human health. Dr. Phillips breaks down why the current RDA for protein is likely too low for optimal health and why the methodology used to set those standards is decades out of date. Dr. Phillips explains the "brick wall" analogy of muscle turnover—where synthesis and breakdown are in a constant tug-of-war—and how lifting weights acts as the primary driver for "the bricklayers". From the impact of anabolic resistance in aging to the truth about protein timing and kidney health, he provides a grounded, data-driven perspective on how to maintain a functional reserve of muscle as we age. Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠⁠⁠⁠ In this episode, we cover The RDA Debate: Why the standard 0.8 g/kg recommendation is a "preventing deficiency" baseline rather than an "optimized health" target. The Power of Exercise: Why 80% to 90% of protein's benefits are dependent on physical activity. Muscle as a Storage Depot: Understanding muscle as a functional reserve that dictates disease resistance and survival. Anabolic Resistance: How inactivity and aging make our cells less efficient at using amino acids. The Myth of Timing: Why the "anabolic window" is more like a "garage door" that stays open much longer than once thought. Protein Quality & Source: Comparing animal vs. plant proteins and why the "food matrix" matters more than isolated powders. Kidney Health: De-bunking the 60-year-old hypothesis that high protein intake causes kidney damage in healthy individuals. 🎙 What Dr. Stuart Phillips & Mike Haney discuss: [00:00] — Why exercise is the "big driver" of protein's health benefits. [09:00] — Transitioning from the RDA (0.8 g/kg) to an optimized range of 1.2 to 1.6 g/kg. [30:31] — The limitations of "nitrogen balance" as a methodology for protein needs. [44:45] — Muscle as a structural substrate vs. carbs and fats as fuel. [01:10:05] — Anabolic resistance: Why we lose building efficiency as we age. [01:18:15] — The "Compound Interest" of muscle: Why starting early prevents a late-life mobility spiral. [01:28:10] — Hormones and muscle: The differing impacts of testosterone and estrogen during aging. [01:39:15] — Addressing the concerns regarding high protein intake and kidney function. [01:52:10] — Whole foods vs. supplements: Why the "bricklayers" care about amino acids, but the body cares about nutrients. [01:60:12] — Debunking the immediate post-workout protein shake myth. Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health. 🔗 Helpful links Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/twVUPk-B-vg⁠ Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📲 Connect Connect with Dr. Stuart Phillips on LinkedIn & X: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartmphillips/ https://x.com/mackinprof

  • March 27 · 1 hr 7 min

    #295 - The Science of Preconception: Measuring Fertility, Toxins, and Generational Health | Dr. Ann Shippy & Josh Clemente

    Preconception health is one of the most powerful—yet overlooked—windows for influencing a child’s lifelong wellness. While fertility is often discussed in the context of age or medical intervention, emerging research suggests that the months leading up to conception are a critical "time capsule" for epigenetic health. In this episode of A Whole New Level, Levels Founder and CEO Josh Clemente sits down with Dr. Anne Shippy, a board-certified internal medicine physician and author of The Preconception Revolution. Dr. Shippy brings a unique, systems-based approach to fertility, moving beyond basic labs to uncover the root causes of infertility and chronic disease. Dr. Shippy explains why the "check engine light" of infertility is often a signal of deeper metabolic or environmental imbalances—and why age isn't always the primary driver of reproductive success. Drawing on her engineering background and years of clinical practice, she walks through how toxins, mitochondrial function, and the microbiome interact to shape the health of both parents and their future children. Along the way, the conversation explores the practical "mini-experiments" couples can run to optimize their biology—from tightening blood sugar control with CGMs to auditing the "chemical soup" of modern life. The result is an empowering framework for generational health: shifting the focus from reactive treatments to proactive, data-driven preparation. Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠⁠⁠ In this episode, we cover • The Preconception Window: Why the 3–12 months before pregnancy are a critical window for epigenetic influence • The Engineering Approach: Applying systems-based, data-driven models to the biochemistry of the body • Environmental Toxins: How PFAS, phthalates, and microplastics in packaging disrupt hormone health • Sperm Health Trends: Understanding the 50% decline in sperm counts and the role of lifestyle in reversing damage • Mitochondrial Function: Why cellular energy production is the foundation of egg and sperm quality • IVF as a Last Resort: Why tuning up the body’s "hospitable environment" should come before invasive procedures • The Role of Glucose: How stable blood sugar improves fertility and passes on better epigenetics to the baby 🎙 What Dr. Anne Shippy & Josh discuss [03:35] — Making the career shift from IBM chemical engineer to functional medicine [05:54] — Using CGMs as a series of experiments to optimize preconception health [10:04] — Success stories: Reversing "failed" IVF and infertility in the early 40s [14:48] — Why the children’s health crisis and the fertility crisis share the same root causes [17:22] — The "Time Capsule": How the egg and sperm pass on epigenetic snapshots [20:02] — The minimum timeline: Why three months is the baseline for biological change [22:22] — The impact of processed food packaging on hormone and sperm health in just 21 days [24:50] — Advanced testing: Moving beyond Quest labs to microbiome and toxin panels [29:57] — The "Big Three" environmental shifts: Clean air, clean water, and clean food [42:22] — The "Lightning Round": Prioritizing changes from synthetic fragrances to alcohol and exercise Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health. 🔗 Helpful links Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/QG4Jxxu_gyE Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📲 Connect Connect with Dr. Ann Shippy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annshippymd/ https://annshippymd.com/

  • March 12 · 59 min

    #294 - Cholesterol Science Explained: Why Your LDL Score Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story | Dr. Ronald Krauss + Mike Haney

    High cholesterol is one of the most widely discussed—and established—risk factors in medicine. But reams of research now show that while it is key to cardiovascular risk, it is not the whole story. In this episode of A Whole New Level, editorial director Mike Haney sits down with Dr. Ronald Krauss, one of the world’s leading lipid researchers and a pioneer in understanding how different forms of LDL—and the physiological factors around them—affect cardiovascular risk. Dr. Krauss explains why the basic link between cholesterol and heart disease is well established among experts—but also why the standard cholesterol panel often misses the deeper metabolic story. Drawing on decades of research, he walks through how lipoproteins, particle size, triglycerides, and metabolic health interact to determine whether cholesterol actually becomes dangerous. Along the way, the conversation explores why cardiovascular disease remains the leading killer despite statins and decades of research—and how factors like obesity, insulin resistance, and inflammation reshape the lipid landscape in ways that traditional tests may not capture. The result is a clearer framework for understanding cardiovascular risk: not just how much cholesterol is in the blood, but how it’s being transported, how long those particles circulate, and what metabolic conditions are driving them. Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠⁠ In this episode, we cover Why the cholesterol–heart disease link isn’t actually controversial among researchers Cholesterol vs. lipoproteins: why the particles carrying cholesterol matter more than the number itself Small dense LDL: how triglyceride metabolism produces the most harmful particles ApoB and particle counts: why many researchers prefer measuring particles instead of cholesterol mass Lipoprotein(a): the genetically driven risk factor affecting up to a third of the population Metabolic syndrome: the cluster of conditions that amplifies cardiovascular risk Why carbohydrates and metabolic dysfunction can drive harmful lipid patterns The saturated fat debate: why food context and metabolic health matter more than simple fat categories 🎙 What Dr. Ronald Krauss & Mike Haney discuss: [01:09] — Why the cholesterol–heart disease link is largely settled science [02:27] — Why cardiovascular disease remains the world’s leading killer [04:42] — Inflammation and metabolic dysfunction in vascular disease [06:12] — The discovery of small dense LDL and why particle size matters [07:14] — Lipoprotein(a) as a major inherited cardiovascular risk factor [09:18] — “Residence time”: why particles that circulate longer cause more damage [11:24] — ApoB vs LDL-C: measuring particles instead of cholesterol mass [13:31] — The HDL paradox: why raising HDL hasn’t improved outcomes [15:28] — Metabolic syndrome and the five markers that amplify risk [17:16] — Why the saturated fat debate misses the bigger metabolic picture Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health. 🔗 Helpful links Watch the conversation: ⁠https://youtu.be/sS0orvd2TFs Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠ 📲 Connect Connect with Dr. Ronald Krauss on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronald-krauss-81a38021/

  • February 26 · 55 min

    #293 - Why You Can’t Exercise Your Way to Weight Loss: The Constrained Energy Model | Dr. Herman Pontzer + Mike Haney

    You can’t outrun a bad diet—but it turns out you might not even be able to outrun a good one. In this episode of A Whole New Level, evolutionary anthropologist Dr. Herman Pontzer joins Mike Haney to dismantle the "armchair view" of metabolism and explain why more exercise doesn't necessarily mean more calories burned. Drawing on his groundbreaking research with the Hadza hunter-gatherer community and global meta-analyses, Dr. Pontzer explains the Constrained Energy Model: the phenomenon where our bodies hit a metabolic ceiling and begin "trading off" energy from vital systems like immunity and reproduction to account for physical activity. This conversation reframes weight loss not as a simple math problem of "calories in vs. calories out," but as a dynamic, evolutionary balancing act. Sign Up to Get Your Free Ultimate Guide to Glucose: ⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠ In this episode, we cover: The Myth of Additive Energy: Why adding a 300-calorie run to your day doesn’t actually result in 300 extra calories burned over the long term. The Hadza Paradox: How hunter-gatherers who walk miles every day burn the same amount of total energy as sedentary Westerners. Metabolic Trading: How your body "pays" for exercise by dialing down inflammation, stress responses, and reproductive hormones. The Business of the Body: Why the human body acts less like a simple machine and more like a corporation reallocating a limited budget. The "Set Point" Debate: Whether our bodies are tracking pounds on a scale or the flow of energy in the gut. Practical Weight Management: Why diet is the primary tool for weight, while exercise is the primary tool for everything else. 🎙 What Dr. Herman Pontzer & Mike Haney discuss: [0:01-0:52] The Additive Model vs. The Constrained Energy Model [1:24-2:48] Dr. Pontzer's Book Burn [3:33-4:21] Defining Energy Balance [5:15-6:50] Where the "Armchair View of Metabolism" Breaks Down [7:07-8:50] Comparing the Additive Model to the Constrained Energy Model [16:14-18:12] Energy Accounting: Where Daily Calories Go [18:13-20:57] The Body as a Business Metaphor [22:13-23:47] Specific Ways the Body Compensates for Increased Exercise [24:19-25:27] Modifying the Constrained Energy Limit (Diet and Weightlifting) [47:54-51:23] Diet is Key for Weight Management Levels helps you see how food affects your health, empowering you with the tools needed to achieve health goals and improve healthspan. Levels Members gain access to the Levels app and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), providing real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health. Look for new shows every month on A Whole New Level, where we have in-depth conversations with thought leaders about metabolic health. 🔗 Helpful links Watch the conversation: https://youtu.be/6GUWQuT-vRc⁠⁠ Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠https://youtube.com/levelshealth?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠ 📲 Connect Connect with Dr. Herman Pontzer on X: https://x.com/HermanPontzer

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