How to Use AI to Improve Your Health - Simple Methods

Welcome to the Dr. Turned Health Coach podcast. My name is Dr. Rushori, a board-certified family medicine physician bringing you the expertise of a physician with the loving support of a health coach to help you age well, stay healthy, and prevent the common chronic conditions in the U.S. Today we're going to dive into artificial intelligence or these large language models. You may know them better as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and well, all these other ones that are out there. Now we as physicians have our own separate system that's only for physicians and healthcare professionals. It's called Open Evidence. We also use a software called Up-To-Date that has its own AI built in. There is another one called Doximity that's also for doctors. So anyway, there's a lot of different of these AI-based tools available, but how do you use it? How can you use what's available to you to improve your overall health? So now what we're going to focus on today is probably the most common things that everybody deals with. Most common things are always going to be mental health, nutrition, exercise, and probably sleep. Those are the four. I always sort of help my health coaching clients with. That's what my patients often struggle with, and that's what we try to improve. There are many ways of using these large language models, which I'm going to just refer to ChatGPT. That's our kind of like generic Google. One way that I really think you can get a lot out of it is if you can create a dedicated project inside something like ChatGPT, so you can actually, with a paid version, I think, you create a project, and that project, you give it a bunch of information. This is who I am. I'm a 42-year-old female. My goal is to be able to run a marathon. My sleep habits are this. These are my blood pressure numbers. This is my cholesterol numbers. So you give it some basic parameters, and you want to give it an instruction. That's probably one of the most important things that many miss. So every time you ask a question, or when you basically program your artificial intelligence project, you tell it that, hey, imagine you're a nutritionist and a physician. That's who you are. And you're going to give me advice only based on the most rigorous, up-to-date information that we have that is evidence-based. You're not going to just pull things out from the latest social media headline, right? Because unfortunately, AI can do that. So you say, you can use the WHO, the CDC, the FDA, the American Diabetes Association, all of these big name institutions that are pretty, pretty reputable. So you might start with something like, I don't know why, but I get days in the month and the week where I'm really down. I feel really emotionally exhausted. I feel emotionally overwhelmed. I can't really wrap my head around what I'm supposed to do. I just describe it any way you like. Give me three things that I can try and ask me three questions before giving me the answer to help you give me a better answer. This is a great way to interact with chat APT. So I might say something like, do you notice that things happen when-- do you notice the overwhelm every time you have something big planned or you have a big project to do? Yes. Do you notice that you start ruminating on it and then you kind of freeze and then you don't get to do anything else? Yes. Okay. So then it might say, okay, let's try this. Let's try this. Let's try that. Based on that, you can say, okay, give me actual actionable steps that I should try for the next week or two weeks, and then I'm going to report back to you. Tell me what to report back to you so that we can troubleshoot and see why this worked or let's celebrate if it did work, right? So we want to troubleshoot why it didn't work and we want to celebrate when it works. So that's an easy way for you to have an interaction with chat GPT about your mental health. You can now go a step further and say, hey, I've had a lot of improvement. Now I've heard that there are some vitamins or supplements or something in my diet that I can do to help me. Now using the most up-to-date evidence, blah, blah, blah, give me some things that I can try to change around in my diet first and supplement second. Why? Because based on solid evidence, we know that whatever you add into your food, however you change your food around is going to be much more effective than adding a supplement. So if you add a supplement first and then change your food, you're going to get less of a benefit. So chat GPT might say, hey, in the winter months or when you're really stressed, try to have more foods with omega-3 fatty acids. Try some sardines, try some salmon, okay, you give that a try. And then it might say, if you're already getting a lot of sunlight and you're still feeling a little bit down, a little overwhelmed, a little bit stressed, you might try a little bit of vitamin D supplements just a little bit around that time and then you can stop it. Or it might recommend St. John's wort or it might recommend Ashwagandha, but you always want to see what evidence it gives you. So always say and list all the evidence for me and just click on one of those, click on one of those and read it. Give it a quick browse because you don't want to start something unless you have, of course, the guidance of a physician, that's the best, but if you don't have it, if you're really going to do it yourself, you want to verify the sources. Now you can do the same thing for nutrition. You can take a bunch of photos of the foods you eat, you can take photos of your favorite foods in a restaurant, you can go to their website and look at the menu and say, "Hey, recreate this dish for me so that," and then you can list all of your risk factors. So you say, "Hey, you're a nutritionist and a physician. I want you to recreate this dish in a way that I get enough fiber, that it's not too much salt, that it helps me with my blood pressure. I also know I have high cholesterol, so I want to make sure it doesn't raise my cholesterol. I want it to taste the same and look really pleasant. Give me a one-hour version of this dish and a 20-minute version of this dish because if I'm super busy, I'm only going to spend 20 minutes." Give me a shopping list of ingredients and give me alternative to ingredients that are less likely to be found. Oh, by the way, I live in zip code 90024, so find me foods or things that are available in that place. Really fun. And that's a great way for you to be able to do that, to achieve a really good nutritional profile. Also, you can say, "Hey, on the weekends, I like to eat out." So, here's my zip code. Give me all the good restaurants and pick the top dishes that are likely going to be very healthy for me that I can eat at these restaurants, given my health profile that I've shared with you. The next one is exercise. That's easy. But you would think that, "Okay, well, just give me a bunch of exercises to do." You really want to interact with ChatGPT in a way that is personalized to you. Look, I don't like walking, I don't like running, I don't like sitting there lifting a bunch of stuff. So ask me five questions, and based on those answers, give me something that I can do that I actually would be able to stick with. So for example, I might say, "Why don't you like lifting? Why do you mean you get paid?" "Well, it just feels uncomfortable or I get really winded." "Okay, well, then we need to just have you go through the motions and really focus on your form." Or, "We need to find a sport for you that you really like." You might say, "Okay, I have this sport, racquetball, I love doing it, but I only get to do it once a week, and that's only if my friends show up, and that's only if racquet courts are available." Okay, let me come up with five solutions so that you can do it more times in the week and make it easier. For example, it might say, "Hey, you know, you could just hit against the wall, or hey, you know, you could just do pickleball instead, or you could try this or that." So it can help brainstorm with you, it can help give you really good information based on your preferences. And of course, sleep. Now, the way I like to do sleep is like one of my favorite sleep books that I prescribe to every patient. I just send them a copy. Usually, if they have any sleep issues, it's called "Hello Sleep," I forget the author's name, but I say, "I'm having some trouble with sleep. When I wake up, I feel groggy, and at night, I just have no desire to go to sleep. I'm super awake, I'm all wired, what can I do?" Based on, so imagine you're a sleep psychiatrist or sleep expert, and based on the advice of this book called "Hello Sleep," design a program and troubleshooting strategy for me to be able to get better sleep, feel less wired towards the end of the night, and feel more energetic in the morning when I wake up. Fantastic. And you try that, and then you take it back. You take it back, and you say, "Hey, this is what we did, this is what you recommended, but for whatever reason, I didn't get the results." Ask me five questions to troubleshoot why I'm still feeling wired at night, and let's try some other things. I hope this is kind of fun for you guys, to experiment with chat GPT and try to kind of manage your own health using these parameters. Thank you so much for listening to the "Doctor Turned Health Coach" podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow the show and leave a quick review. It really helps others find this content. For more information and helpful resources, check the show description. I've included links to tools, articles, and ways that you can work with me. Thank you so much, and have a wonderful day.