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Plasma dilution shows promising potential for enhancing organ function and reversing biological age. Longevity expert Alina Su, CEO and cofounder of Generation Lab, discusses how therapeutic plasma exchange can reduce chronic inflammation and support healthier aging.

Editor's note: While this therapy shows promise, it has not undergone rigorous FDA testing. The FDA discourages people from pursuing this treatment "outside of clinical trials under appropriate institutional review board and regulatory oversight." 
Editor's note: While this therapy shows promise, it has not undergone rigorous FDA testing. The FDA discourages people from pursuing this treatment "outside of clinical trials under appropriate institutional review board and regulatory oversight." 

Could Blood Replacement Therapy Reverse Aging?

Health

Plasma dilution shows promising potential for enhancing organ function and reversing biological age. Longevity expert Alina Su, CEO and cofounder of Generation Lab, discusses how therapeutic plasma exchange can reduce chronic inflammation and support healthier aging.

Editor's note: While this therapy shows promise, it has not undergone rigorous FDA testing. The FDA discourages people from pursuing this treatment "outside of clinical trials under appropriate institutional review board and regulatory oversight." 

How to Reverse Aging by Diluting Your Blood

Plasma dilution shows promising potential for enhancing organ function and reversing biological age. 

Aging itself is a systematic inflammation that's chronically going on in your body. It's very hard to eliminate it. But this is a process that can directly inhibit it and also able to be reversing it. We have published a paper, a clinical study that has been showing people who have done 13 different plasma exchange. How exactly is it behaving in their body? Young blood is the way that people thought it's actually working. But what we have discovered is that exchanging the old plasma out, which is removing the old plasma itself, diluting the old plasma is actually having a better effect than just injecting young plasma. So we don't need to be vampire. The plasma dilution is that you take out your old plasma and through a centrifuge, it's going to be separate your blood into plasma, which is the yellow part and platelets, red blood cells, which is the red part, the yellow part is going to be thrown away and the red part is going to be going back to your body again with a young set of albumin. So this is called process of therapeutic plasma exchange, which is we are calling it as plasma dilution. And what is working for your body is it's actually going to be eliminating all of the factors that's inhibiting your cell regeneration and also causing the chronic inflammation that's in your body. Which also another name of chronic inflammation is h. So there is a lot of clinicians who are providing therapeutic plasma exchange or plasma dilution as it's already a FDA approved treatment process to solve immune system resistance organ exchange and also having toxicity in your body. So for example, Dr Kro in San Francisco, by partnering up with Irina Conboy lab, we have been discovered and doing clinical trials to show old plasma dilution has been working very good. This technology has been involved past 20 years already showing a lot of different clinical trials and clinical validation knowing how exactly these people after getting plasma diluted is able to be reversing their biological age and reducing their inflammatory levels in their body in systematic way. So we are seeing a huge comparison between before and after even doing one single plasma dilution. And this is going to be a very exciting technology that we are seeing how the people know if it if this is a great thing for them to work is that we usually recommend people to do the testing first to actually see what is your biological age in your different function in your different organ. According to this epigenetic information, you will be able to see before and after difference and show the efficacy of the treatment. How well did it behave in your body? Which part of your body became better? Did your lung function reverse 1.888 years old. Did your brain function reverse? Three years? So it's function based testing that you will be able to see different of the data.

Khairul ANWAR, CEO and Founder, Pandai Tim BALDWIN, Provost, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence Sonita JEYAPATHY, Co-Director, Center for Pro Bono & Clinical Legal Education, National University of Singapore Moderator: Jeremy Kahn, FORTUNE

Brainstorm AI Singapore 2024: AI in education—fighting cheating and preparing smarter students

Conferences

Khairul ANWAR,  Pandai, Tim BALDWIN, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Sonita JEYAPATHY, National University of Singapore, Jeremy Kahn, FORTUNE

Sunita, let's start with you. Um at, at the National University of Singapore, your law school. How are you finding students are using A I? And how are you preventing them from misusing the technology? Why you need to do certain things? Why you need to learn certain critical skills with or without the assistance uh That all helps to solidify for the student whether or not to use this particular tool. So yes, there will be students who will, who if they are not better aware, they will try to use it, but sometimes that's not really their fault as well. They need to be made to understand why certain tools should be used perhaps at a later time after they've acquired certain critical skills without the tools. And do you have a specific policy about use of chat bots? Um So we uh there is anti plagiarism obviously uh in in any tertiary institution. And the knee jerk reaction when Chat GPT came out was um what are we going to as educators? What are we gonna do? Are all our students gonna be plagiarizing things from Chat G BT? Um But then after a while things settled down a little bit more and we realized that we could leverage it as well. I mean, there was a lot of experimentation but it could be a tool that could assist students, it could be a tool that could assist educators as well. So we're still in the throes of experimentation, but students basically know they can use it, they need to be aware of plagiarism policies and they need to also take personal responsibility for how they use it. Right? And when in doubt, talk to the educators, right, think about what the institution allows you to do. Absolutely, Cairo, you've created a kind of a I tutor. Can you talk a little bit of how this works and how do you make sure the tutor is providing information in a way that the student is actually learning as opposed to sort of enabling them to sort of shortcut through the learning process and maybe not actually take on board the information that they should be acquiring. All right. All right. So just a little bit of context. Panda is an education app to help, you know, school students outside of school or after school to do, you know, revision study to access new educational materials. And Panda started in 2020. Now, we have more than half a million students using it. So um we incorporated I and one of the features is a chatbot that helps students with their homework, with their assignments and all that. But what we've done different is that as unlike chat G BT, the chat board in Panai actually accepts, you know, students lingo, it is trained on the curriculum. And what's important is that it's designed not to give the outright, but you have to give you step by step solutions. So um to ask the students, you know themselves, what's next and what do you understand now? And where do you think the next step is? And it's as if a personal tutor is sitting next to the student asking the students questions rather than, you know, giving the answer outright as if it's a calculator. Right? So the danger is that with, with tools like JA I and CT like 25 mission is that students would outsource everything to the A I, right? And we've heard many times that, you know, um we can treat JN I as another education tool like cos or when two came out or Excel or sheet, we can move on to more complex stuff. But the danger is that if we allow that to happen, the student will outsource not only their writing but also the thinking process behind it. Right. So with calculator, the student have still think about the question, what numbers to input, what pressure to put similar with Excel shape and Google, etcetera. But with gen I, you can just copy everything into gen without even reading it and then you get the answers. Right. Right. Which is quite presentable. So that's the, you off the thinking. So, right. And then you use a sort of socratic method to prevent, you know, students from sort of leaping ahead to just having to do everything for them. Tim. I, I know it. Uh mmbz you've been using LL MS to help, uh you've created LLM that can help people improve their modern standard Arabic. I don't know if you can talk a little bit about that. And again, how, how do you make sure that it actually functions in this kind of tutoring role? Uh So as, as complex Mezua, I the Mohammed Bin Day at the University of Artificial Intelligence, we, we're based in Abu Dhabi. Uh Greetings from UE. Um uh We're watching very carefully what's happening in Singapore learning a lot of lessons. Uh So we're the world's first uh A I university or a graduate university masters and phd students, about 70 faculty. Um We're uh um unlike most uh universities, we're actually in the game of commercially relevant LLM model training. Uh So if you've done anything involving uh Arabic, if you've done anything involving Indonesian, uh if you've done anything involving A I, safety chances are you've, you've used uh LLM or you've used resources that have been developed at the university. Um So we, we very much sort of straddling the, the commercial academic divide uh as a university, a New Paradise University, if you like coming back to the actual question. Um uh um the use cases for, for LL MS and A I more generally in education are very real um uh in terms of research, you know, I think there's a, there's a bit of a, um, a, a tip of the iceberg effect that we're seeing in terms of G GP T. Uh And it's important to realize that there's a lot more that's happening in, in A I uh beyond just uh LL MS. Uh So, um we're also working in the space of personalized uh learning uh trying to increase both the, the access and the scalability of uh education. Um in, in part using LL MS. Yes. Uh but um very much trying to uh learn how a student is learning, uh um try to learn what are the points of confusion uh in terms of their learning process and, and cater the presentation of the curriculum and the generation of questions to uh what their weaknesses are and to try to complement their strengths uh um to uh um both increase the sort of personalized tutoring access. But if you come from a more wealthy background, you, you can, you perhaps assume uh to students throughout the world, not just in English uh in languages uh beyond English as well. And I think that it's very important that we don't fixate too much. Yes. As educators, we, we sort of think about plagiarism and, and through cheating, it's a very real uh issue uh as a, an educator, uh that I do think about. Uh, but there are, there are so many benefits, so many good things that can come out of the A I models. Well, beyond the, the sort of simplistic chat QVD, use cases that I think we need to be aware of. Yeah, absolutely. That's interesting. I want to come to questions from the audience in a little bit. So please think of your questions and I'll come to you in a minute. Um Cairo, I know that, you know, with panda, it's not just about their supporting the student, but you've also built uh aspects of features of the product that support teachers. Can you talk about that? Because I think that's sometimes overlooked. There's so much focus on what is the student doing and, and less on. Well, how can this technology actually support teachers? All right. So when we started in 2020 our product was designed to help students directly. So students will go to school like they normally do. But after school outside of school, instead of using paper based stuff they can use instead. And then um around a year and a half ago, teachers actually came up to us saying, hey, um is there something we can do for them? Right. So now we have a new module called Panai teacher where students can actually, teachers can actually teach there have their own ID and have special functions. That's what that for them. So I don't want to get into so much detail, but it it covers, you know, teaching, teaching planner, it covers monitoring the students, analysis of the students as well as self development content to develop themselves the teachers themselves rather than just to develop the students. So what we've seen is that there's um you know, a valid concern on the over reliance on A I interaction that diminish the vital interaction with the students and their teachers, right? So um it's it's important that no any tool that we develop actually enhances the interaction with teachers as well. And that's why, for example, in pan, we have the par model, the teachers model try to complete the ecosystem somewhat and, and and we've seen even with our chatbot when students are, um they um initially, yes, they were asking academic questions, but after months of, you know, using the product, students actually started to share about their personal life, sharing about their parents, sharing about their boyfriend, their friends, about the problems in school, their friends, right? And confiding into the chat board, right? So that's also a danger where you know, young students, especially because we were dealing with K 12 primary school students as well, treating the board as if like a friend, right? So replacing the vital interaction with his students and their friends and social interaction with teachers, et cetera. So that's the den. So um the, you know, the ethics behind it so interesting. I, maybe we'll talk a little bit more about that. This sort of the way these, yeah, maybe this, this morse from being a tutor to kind of being a companion chap bot and, and maybe there's a sort of tendency to, to go that way. Um, uh, so I wanted to ask you if you, do you feel like, uh, either the way teachers have to teach, needs to change or what they have to teach needs to change. Uh Because of gender of A I and because of the, you know, the popularity of these chef bots, um So I'll share the perspective, the legal perspective since I'm with the law faculty. So I guess projecting into the future, the now, maybe we know that human and machine will need to work together, right? There needs to be some interact, there needs to be interaction there and how the unit operates, leveraging the strength of each that will make it a AAA positive um combination. We also know that things will change extremely quickly and people will need to learn and unlearn skills and knowledge extremely quickly. So, taking that in mind and coming back to the curriculum that we teach at the law faculty, the question then is what do we need to change? And how might we need to change how students learn things? Obviously, there will need to be a law and tech element. Um And by this, this exposure to technology can come in various different forms. Students need to be aware of obviously the latest digital products out there so that they can think about legal issues that can arise from that there can be exposure in terms of how educational tools personalized learning because then they can see to what extent it is useful or not and the strengths and weaknesses of the tool. So playing around with that, taking personal responsibility around that um exposure to what's happening in the industry because that changes at a breakneck speed as well and learning how to deal with um or do the digital speak, I suppose in the in the foreseeable future where um students or lawyers need to speak to technologists, right? To build products that could help the industry. Um But apart from that, I think in terms of just thinking skills, um you want to have higher order thinking skills like analytical skills where students can look at complicated things, break it down into its component parts. Understand the relationship between the two, you need synthesis skills where they can look at different threads of thought and create new patterns. You need also the values that students are invited with because they need to understand why they are doing things. They need to understand why they are serving the community and those things aren't changing. Those are things are sort of always been there and they remain consistent, right? That's, but I think now they're more important more important than ever. Yeah. And if you don't kind of celebrate the humanness of it, I mean, that's what your combination and the human in the loop is meant to be. I want to get questions. I know there's at least one question from the audience. So if we can go to the gentleman up here in front, he had his hand up and then I also see that someone in the back. Um, but the gentleman up here, I saw him first. So, uh I don't know if we can get a mic to him, uh quickly, if not just stand up and, and say your name and where you're from and, and what your question is, should know how to use A I, whether it's the earlier predicted A I and A I to be ready for the A student has to learn that otherwise there could be universities which are doing it better than you and your students get left behind. So rather than saying plagiarism or let them use Google came in and people started using Google. So the whole curriculum has to change in terms of asking questions which are about critical thinking where they just can't copy paste from chat G BT, right? So, uh a student has to be well versed with all the latest stuff uh and change the curriculum, change the question and you're seeing very rightly that students should be able to work with technology. A law student should be able to work with technologies to come up with new A I models which help uh law. That's a good. Do you have a, do you have a question there? Is it just sort of a comment on, on that? I'm saying that the critical, the questions have to change in the curriculum has to change. I think that's echoing what Sunita was saying. Which is that, yeah, that maybe you change a little bit to emphasize the these skills even more. Um now because you have technology that can do a lot of the, the simpler things. That's what you were saying, Tim, do you, do you agree with that? I mean, I do and I think this is something that all universities are grappling with at the moment. I think even in the A I space for us as a university, our focus has been very much on education of, you know, the, the A I innovators, the people who are going to be driving the next wave of uh um A I innovation for in research. And absolutely, we need those sorts of people. Um But one question we've been asking ourselves is what would an undergraduate curriculum look like if we had AAA blank slate uh based on the existing technologies that are already here as well as what we know is coming? Uh What should that look like? Uh And the answer isn't necessarily that, you know, they need to understand linear algebra and they need to be able to, to uh train in Pytorch. Uh It's possibly there's an even greater need for A I super users. People who understand how these different models work. They understand the weaknesses of the models, they understand why there are going to be shortcomings in terms of um you know, whatever there was a lot of talk about through culture values uh um in city answer. But why is it that you get biases in models? Uh How is it? I can use the most successful, how can I buy them in different settings, whether it's uh legal settings or, or business settings? Um But not necessarily the, the sort of core skills we able to train LL MS uh you know, they, they, we don't need the world to be awash with LLM trainers. You get a couple of 1000 of those in the world and you're set really. Uh there, there's a lot more innovation to be had but uh really, it's the flow through effect. Uh and the, the middleware if you like and, and I think uh for a modern A I curriculum, even in computer science, I think these are the things we should be thinking about rather than, you know, the sort of classic, teach them algorithms and data structures. And, you know, have you taught the way I was taught as an undergraduate? No, I don't think that's the case at all. Interesting. I know there's one other question uh the woman has her hand up uh very high in the middle of that there if you Yeah, yes. If you can stand up and we'll get your mic to you very quickly. And if you could just say who you are and what your question is. OK, thank you so much. Uh This is one way from Singapore and really happy to be here to hear your perspective because like the definition of education has like widened with like technological cycles, getting smaller and smaller. So my one question for everyone here is that uh how do you, what is one practical tip that means not theory, practical tip that you have for everyone here because we are all here to learn, to decide what to outsource and what not to outsource. Yeah. Keen to learn from your 11 practical tip Cairo, they have one practical tip for what students can. So maybe rely on an A I tutor for and what they shouldn't rely on an A I tutor for II I think um on the student side, they definitely will try to cheat, right? Ie the fastest, the most efficient way to cheat, right? But um like this gentleman has said, um teachers have tried to change the way they do evaluation, right? For example, like um um now uh exams are being done on paper, essays are submitted with editing history now and then assignments are increasingly more personalized. So to force the students to answer and include their personal stories as well, right? Rather than something they can copy of the internet only. So I just want to highlight that it's important to highlight to the students. What is education in the first place? Right? If, if um the message is is we say you go to school, you go to college, you buy a big house, you buy an expensive car. Then if that's the case, the message is that this is just a transaction and obviously students are going to cheat. But on the other hand, if you say it is actually a way for us to for students to become an informed citizen, a better decision maker better, then maybe that's, you know, the way it is supposed to be. So we can ask for philosophical question to our kids, but it invites us to, you know, rethink how we think about education as well. So the mental of education. So I need to do you have one practical sort of tip or or thing that's about output what you should. So I second I rule with what it means to be human. Like I said, the human and machine interaction, right? So you need to leverage on your strengths and what are those strengths that will be important? Your critical thinking skills, your interpersonal skills, your emotional intelligence skills, I think you make sure you're not out sourcing those skills, right? Because you're just cheating your future self essentially and Tim, you have one tip for people. One tip agency and accountability are the two things that we have to hold on to. So whatever you're submitting as a student, it is your work. If you're using A I tools as part of that, you need to own it. So if it's code, say you have to be able to tell me what every line of code does that you're submitting, even if you've used code uh to generate it. Uh And you need to own it. And I think it's important to realize that a lot of these issues we're talking about aren't actually new issues. It's, it's a new guys uh because we're talking about A I tools. But, you know, contract, if a rising has been around, whether you like it or not for a number of years, we've been grappling with it as universities. The big difference here, as I, as I say is agency, I can use these tools to uh um enhance the work that I'm doing and embed them into my work flows. But I am ultimately the owner of what comes out of it and I have to be able to defend everything that's there. If I'm doing uh getting someone else to write my essay, obviously, II, I can't do that. This is me just with uh you know what, whatever uh um uh embellishments using A I tools. Great. Well, that's a great note to end it on. Um we're out of time. I'm afraid if we could go on a lot longer. But I want to thank my panelists and thank you all for listening. Thank you.

Dr. Jenna Glover, chief clinical officer of Headspace, shares tips for being more present and mindful throughout the workday.

3 ways to practice mindfulness at work

For many people, the work day is spent dealing with constant deadlines, distractions and other stressors all competing for attention. At the exact same time. Research shows that work stress in particular can have a dominating effect on people's lives, impeding their ability to fully show up to work, maintain healthy relationships and properly care for their minds and bodies. If we that chronic stress unaddressed, it can lead to lost productivity, employee burnout attrition and substantial excess health care cost through mindfulness training, we can condition our brains to respond to stress in a way that protects our health, our well being and performance. Here are three simple ways to practice mindfulness at work. First, take regular breaks. Most people don't think they can afford the time to take a break, let alone regular breaks. But a well known productivity study found among a group of employees, the 10% who were the most productive had an ideal work rhythm of 52 minutes of work followed by a 17 minute break. If you want to start incorporating breaks into your day, try setting a timer on your phone to ring every hour when the timer rings. Take a break. It could be as short as one minute at your desk or as long as you can spare, no matter how you spend them, regular breaks can be particularly effective and rejuvenating. Number two, actively listen, try being fully present and mindful of what others are saying throughout the work day. Instead of just automatically nodding. As you wait for your turn to talk, you'll benefit from learning to quiet the internal chatter in your head and creating a space and openness to process what your coworkers are trying to tell you lastly use your commute to mindfully unwind. It's important to unplug at the end of a work day and set boundaries. So you can be truly present at home. The commute can be an ideal time to make this transition. I think many of us can relate to the fact that in this hyper connected world, we're experiencing increasing levels of stress, whether at work in our personal lives or social media, why stress itself is not innately bad? If left unattended, it can develop into overwhelming or chronic stress which radically increases a risk of debilitating mental and physical ailments by setting people up for success and helping them achieve their goals around health and happiness. We can take a step in the right direction to inspire cultural change that has a ripple effect, not just throughout the company but across everyone employees interact with on a daily basis.

Lisa Pahl, Licensed Clinical Social Worker; Co-creator, The Death Deck Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider, Founder, End Well; Host and Producer, TED Health Darnell Lamont Walker, Death Doula; Filmmaker; Emmy-nominated Children’s Television Writer Moderator: Jennifer Fields, FORTUNE

Brainstorm Health 2024: A Better End of Life

Lisa Pahl, The Death Deck, Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider, End Well; TED Health Darnell Lamont Walker, Death Doula; Emmy-nominated Children’s Television Writer, Jennifer Fields, FORTUNE

Doctor Anger Leer. I wanna start with you. We're talking about transforming the way that we talk about death. But can you talk a little bit about what it's like to die in America today? Yeah, thank you, Jennifer. You know, I would go as far to say uh that dying in America today is a public health crisis. Um 80% of people wish to die at home, around 30% actually do. The rest are dying in hospitals uh in other institutions, 60% of people are are dying in pain. Um Our health care system um favors aggressive invasive treatment um for people of all ages and all medical conditions even if it won't help them. Um And this is very expensive care and how it plays out for people is it creates a lot of needless suffering for patients and their families in and around the end of life. And we could be doing a whole lot more to encourage upstream conversation so that the care that people get is care that they really want. They really understand. I think truly honors the life that they've lived. So a lot of the work that we do end well is trying to change that cultural conversation. We know that um doctors in general really fear death. Um How can we allow uh more conversation about mortality to let us all live better every day? Um How can we create interdisciplinary solutions so that uh dying? Uh so that caregiving, so that grief is a little less hard for people. And then the third thing that we really focus on is trying to uh shift media portrayal of death and dying, which we know on film and television is inaccurate to try to include things like medical aid and dying to tell more nuanced stories of patient centered care around end of life. The way that things really should be psychedelic assisted therapy, death duel is all the things that hopefully we'll get to talk about today. And so I, I know that we can be doing a lot better and turn out you are a Du Doas. And when we think about doulas, we think about um someone who's assisting at the birth of a child. Um Can you tell us a little bit about what you do? Yeah, absolutely. I, you know, just talking about birth, everyone knows what a birth duel is. And so, you know, as a, as a joke, usually when people ask, I say well, birth doas bring them in, I take them out um which essentially is what it is. But I'm there as a support. Um I'm there to make sure they get the good death, the death they want. Um you know, everyone wants to die with dignity. I'm there to, to support that there, to support the families through grief. Um And just make sure that the person doesn't die alone. I, I started in this business because I didn't want people to die alone. And um I, I get to be there holding their hands through that process, advocating for them in the hospital in the medical system. Um And a lot of my work I do in uh black communities and so advocating in the medical system is a, is a huge part of the work. Um But all of that, it's a, it's a huge support system and sometimes there is no family. I get to be the family. I get to be the support, the advocates um and making sure that good death or as close to that um happens. And Lisa, you do a little bit of work in medical aid and dying and it's probably a topic that gets a lot of the focus of conversations around reframing death. But I'm hoping you can tell us a little bit about what it actually is and what it means, what it looks like. Sure. So I work in hospice as a social worker and in that space, I help people similar to Darnell. Um I'm part of the interdisciplinary team and sometimes we also involve Doulos as part of that. Um And through my work supporting people. What I witness are these beautiful loving deaths. And then I also witness a lot of pain and suffering and fear and anxiety about what's to come. And so in 11 regions or 10 states and DC, uh medical aid and dying is legal. And what that means is a person who is terminally ill has six months or less to live is competent to make their own decisions and can ingest the medication themselves. They are allowed to control the matter and time of their death. And I've had the privilege of attending a lot of those deaths. And what's really beautiful about those experiences is that we're all talking about the fact that the person is dying. And for me, that's what I see as lacking the most in our culture is we're just not talking about it. And when someone talks about, even if they're exploring the option of medical aid and dying, it means we're talking about what they want in their death, what they want in their life. And a third of people who obtain the prescription, they don't even take it. And so we know that people get relief and reduction of anxiety when they just have access to the medication. Doctor Ar sorry, Doctor Unger Leiter, you mentioned uh just a moment ago, psychedelics that I know that there's been a lot of innovation around um the other uses for psychedelics besides um recreation. Can you talk a little bit about what you were thinking, this is gonna bring to the end of life experience. Well, I can certainly tell you what I hope will happen. Um I think it's important to set the stage in that. Uh currently uh psychedelics are not legal except for two states, Oregon and Colorado. Uh We do expect sometime in the next 2012 to 24 months that FDA will uh legalize MD MA, which is also known as ecstasy um for PTSD, but currently only those two states it's legal. Um But I will say that, you know, for next now, 60 years, we have really solid data showing that people facing the end of their lives, often, not always, but, but pretty often have existential distress when they become more proximate to the end of their lives. And in medicine, we don't really have good tools for helping people through that. The medicines that we do have. Benzodiazepines, opiates really blunt the senses and don't allow people to live fully until they die. And so the idea with psychedelics and what the data has shown that, for example, one treatment uh with a trained therapist um of psilocybin, um which is the active component in magic mushrooms um has a very long lasting effect up to six months of relief of some of that dread and anxiety. Uh Many people who've gone through this experience have said that it's the most powerful day and most meaningful experience of their lives. So there is something that happens as a result of this medicine, of the intention setting of the integration therapy that happens afterwards, which is also a really big part of it. It's not just popping medicine and then tripping, it's, you know, much, much more um and done in a very rigorous clinical and at least in the clinical trials. Um So I think there is promise and I hope that we as a health care system, as a society see this as something uh that's really important for everyone to get access to. In addition to all the other indications for mental health for which psychedelics are shown to be safe and effective. I should have also mentioned that the safety and efficacy piece are there as well for dying people? Um I'm gonna look out for questions if anyone has anything, just raise your hand and Mike will come to you. Um But first Darnell, I want to ask, what is the impact of your work on the families of people who are dying? Does it impact their mental health? Does it impact their grief? What have you seen? Yeah, absolutely. Um One of the first things I do when I, when I come to a client is how they want to die. Um And this is a question most family members don't ask the person who's actively dying. Um So it, it gives them a sense of, oh, it helps ease that. Uh that question that they were all that they were afraid to ask. Um, it lightens the grief. It doesn't get rid of the grief. You know, we can't cure grief. Grief is gonna happen. Um, but it lightens the grief when they know when they, when they questions that they had, when those questions are answered. And I'm able to help facilitate that when I'm able to help facilitate closure on, um, so many levels able to help them in the me, uh you know, talk to doctors um make advanced directives, you know, uh figure out who the proxy is gonna be. These are things that family, you know, a lot of times when someone is diagnosed, people don't know what they need right away. And so I'm there to say, OK, this is everything you need. And so it, it takes a huge weight off of their shoulder. Um and it, you know, I, I don't mind, I'm sorry, I don't mind taking that and, and saying, listen, this is what we have to do. Um when you have time, this is what we have to do. And then I'm, I'm a writer full time. Um and I'm, I'm able to bring that into my work as a death dealer and say, listen, let's tell your story. And so then when the person dies, we have all of these things that some people don't get, you know, in the end, um I'm able to craft, you know, this is what this is what I wanted as a as a kid. These were my favorite memories. This is uh these were my best friends, whatever that is, uh which also comes with the death, the death deck, which is an amazing tool um that I, you know, I able to use as well with some clients. And um so yeah, it, it helps ease that pain and the suffering for the families. Also, I want to turn to the audience. Does anyone have a question? We have it right here. I would just ask that you keep your questions brief and focused and definitely have a question in there. Thank you, Seita Finney with Bayer Consumer Health. Um This is probably best directed to Darnell and purely selfish question for all of us with aging parents, which is probably many of us in the room. What is the best way to have the conversation about? How would you like to die before it's an imminent event? It's a thing. Yeah. Um the siblings to uh go in uh a lot of people don't, you know, to be an effective listener. I, I think, you know, we, we say it but all of us, we aren't, we aren't bad, you know, and to just go in and listen and, and ask the question, I, I come straight out and ask, I come into the room and I just say, how do you want to die? And you know, some people are a little shaky on that at first, but it will start the conversation and, you know, if that's the one they, they don't want to answer, then there may be a softer one that they'll introduce and say, well, I don't know. But this, you know, um, so just go in and just say, listen, I'm, I'm here to listen or talk about you, you know, go in and say, well, this is what I want. This is how I wanna die. And then as you're talking about it, they'll see, you know, it may soften them up to the conversation as well. Can I, can I add a couple of things? Um This is one of my favorite topics is how to have these difficult conversations. And so, you know, we can use media as Sohana was saying, we, there are films, there are podcasts, there is some great storytelling that I was even, you know, part of to be able to use those moments in the film. You know, my mom and I watched this is us. And so, you know, after the episode where they're talking about the advanced directive, I called her up and she had a lot of thoughts and so we have to be creative. Um And then I, I created a game called The Death Deck to help people have these conversations as well. Um So there's a lot of tools out there and um I think we just have to be brave and willing and less denial about the fact that we're all gonna die. And these don't have to be like sad, scary conversations either. It can be an intense set of subjects, especially if the person is already ill. Um But it's really a way if you think about it of like getting to know your loved one better. So approach it with that, that kind of love and curiosity of, I want to know more about you as a person and honor you throughout your life. This is such great advice. We have another question. My name is Tara Bain. I'm with the 100 top hospital program. Prior to doing that, I actually practiced as a nurse and was a hospice nurse and had the privilege of being with people um as they died, which is, it is a true privilege. I'm just curious, Darnell, how do you fit in with hospice? Like, are you totally separate? Because a lot of what you were describing is what I saw when I practiced as a hospice nurse. I think it's really cool what you're doing. I just kind of curious how that all fits. No, absolutely. I, you know, I, I've worked not for a hospice but I've been in hospice there. Uh clients who will call who are in hospice and honestly, the work that I do, I've seen hospice workers do hospice nurses. I've seen people who don't even know what death dealers are. I, I started in this work because my grandmother was a caretaker. She's never heard the term death dealer, but she did everything that I've been doing. You know, I think we've all done the work on some level. Um, but being in the hospice, I, I couldn't tell you what the difference is between what I do and what so many people in the hospice, uh, in, in hospice do. It's an amazing, it is an amazing thing to see. Um, and I, I think, like I said, I think we've all done the work. We've all been there for someone. We've all held someone's hand, we've all held space for someone. Um, you know, even just going and taking the plate over to a sick neighbor, you know, whatever that is. I think we've all done it. We have one more question over here. Hi, I'm a Aris Lazin with Stanford medicine. Um, really important topic that you're addressing today. One of the things I've been thinking about is, you know, knowing the loneliness epidemic that's currently, you know, that we're all dealing with the United States. How does that play in sort of end of life conversations or decision making? Knowing that often people who are at that stage are hopefully counting on family networks and others to support them through something like this. How are you kind of thinking about that challenge? Mhm. I mean, it's, it is a huge challenge, right? We know that most, you know, family members, younger family members don't live anywhere near, you know, their elders. Um And so thinking about who will, I think the question as well? Like who will care for you in those final, you know, days, weeks, moments of life. Um I don't know that we have, you know, major solutions. I think this is something that we need to be talking about as society, right? So how we care for people through illness and through death is how we really should be measuring ourselves as, as a, as a society, we need to do better. Um I do think that we'd be remiss to not talk about the field of palliative care in general. Such that, you know, if someone is in the hospital, I know, you know, this um you know, having a team inclusive of a social worker, physic and a nurse um and a case manager thinking about these bigger questions about the, the logistics and the practicalities of care. But in reality, this is uh a major one and I think, you know, the the field of death doulas while it's been around for, you know, probably thousands, right? Since the beginning of time, it's now called death doula. They are filling a need um filling a gap where I, I just lost my father this last year. Um you know, as somebody who's an expert in this space, I was texting a death Doula friend of mine to get advice because I myself you know, wasn't even well as well equipped as I wanted to be um caring for my father who was dying. So there, there's there are many, many gaps. Um isolation and loneliness uh is, is a huge uh part of that conversation. And I think we also have to just be educating people more about hospice and palliative care and end of life op options. Because uh hospice and palliative care do include that social worker who is skilled at finding resources and helping people with caregiving issues, enlisting the help of friends and family um referrals for death to us when that's appropriate too. So really the education to let people know that these services are available um I think is the most important thing we can be doing. Turn on. Do you have anything to add? Um No, II I would just like to say, I think it's very important you brought up just having those conversations, like those difficult conversations. I think that's what's gonna uh drive us a little bit further and um and really find out, you know, like, yeah, we aren't that close to some people but um having those conversations, you know, how, where do you wanna be? Do you wanna be here? Uh How do you wanna die? You know, um is a great way into a lot of that. A lot of the questions you all may have uh can be answered by just asking that that first question. Uh how do you wanna die and just not being afraid of it. I'm not running from it. And I think those conversations are what give us confidence to make decisions for our family members too. You know, because people are really scared to make decisions on behalf of their family member. And if you have these conversations, you can feel more confident in doing. So. Thank you so much. You really are contributing to a, a big conversation that people are having already, but you're really working so hard to change the stigma around that. So I thank you so much. Thank you for your being here and for this conversation. Thank you.

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