A Stunning Result for AI Health Advice

I’m not usually one to share my personal health stories in social media, but this is so significant, I feel almost a duty to do so.

What if I told you that in three months’ time, I doubled my odds of remaining healthy into my 90s–without medication, magic, or hardly any effort?

Would that be worth something to ya? Read on.

Over the last half century, as Americans have grown fatter, as diabetes has gone from rarity to the new “normal,” as more and better long term health studies have borne fruit, many of us have struggled in one way or another with our health and lifestyle. The trouble has been, there is so much contradictory information, it’s hard even for an educated person to make sense of it all, and there is also so much nonsense, hyperbole, and outright misinformation. There was a whole thirty-year conspiracy to blame fat for health impacts really attributable to carbohydrates and a near simultaneous knee jerk rejection against anti-fat advice by researchers observing that you actually need fat to live and that anyway, cholesterol lowering drugs weren’t saving lives as it seemed they should. And on it goes. Vitamin D deficiency is an epidemic made worse by cancer avoidance. Cholesterol is bad, except for good cholesterol, and turns out to have little to do with what you eat, except for trans-fats which do. Processed food is bad, except flash frozen fish and berries are actually healthier than most fresh supplies. Multi-vitamins are a scam and chocolate doesn’t cause acne, except they really aren’t and really can, and the American diet is killing us except we have more access to super foods than ever, except, except, except…

If you’ve been feeling bewildered, you’re not alone. It’s easy to give up even figuring out what healthy should look like beyond weight control and exercise. both of which are challenging enough when you spend 2 hours a day on the commute and can literally have pie delivered every day to your door.

So here I was, an economically comfortable, middle-aged white dude with moderately elevated blood pressure. I tried to stay fit, and my weight never got completely out of hand though it certainly had its swings. Things were okay overall, though clearly, inexorably, sliding in the wrong direction as I age.

Then, in February of 2025, I got back blood test results that almost made it boil. After all my bike riding and weight loss and healthy eating, my blood serum lipid levels were still moderately bad and getting worse. What the….?

Something had to change, and it wasn’t as if I hadn’t already tried–a lot.

Now, let me be clear. I believe the purpose of living is to love life, not just extend it. We are all going to die, and if you don’t enjoy the life you’re living, what’s the point in stretching it out? And sure, some people just don’t want to give up their comfort foods, even if they were originally cooked up to avoid starvation during the depression. Fair enough, you do you. I’m not judging or telling you not to, though I will point out what as a doctor in the family once said, that the trouble is, people don’t realize that the diseases of obesity don’t just let you alone and then kill you one day–the take you bit by bit. So just be forewarned. I for one, want to live long and well, and I’m willing to put in the effort, but what exactly does that mean? What specifically do I need to do to balance health and effort and comfort and time, etc.

I do have one thing going for me. I know something a lot of people seem not to–that you really can change your habits and preferences and without depriving yourself of anything. When I was a kid, I spent a summer at camp where the only free drinks were water or unsweetened black tea. I got so used to the tea that when I got home and took a swig of my mother’s Supersaturated Southern Sweet Tea, I spit it all over her kitchen!  Another summer, I easily got used to a friend’s family’s skim milk, and as an adult, I long ago switched from whole milk to skim, to nut, to unsweetened nut. You did know that lactose is a sugar, right? And that the ability to even digest milk as an adult is an evolutionary adaptation to food scarcity we no longer face? Anyway, It’s a thing. You do not have to keep eating the same foods your great grandmother used to survive the great depression, and there exist in this world, excellent alternatives from many cultures to any healthy dish you hated as a kid. You just have to look around for ones that fit you. You can adapt to new and excellent things and never look back.

But what to choose?

It was time for a new approach, and I had a target of opportunity.

I had come out of the COVID lockdown with a habit of eating mostly the same things, most days. I wasn’t depriving myself, I’d just settled on a small selection of meals that were easy and affordable and healthy (or so I thought) and that’s mostly what I ate. So if I changed these, it would be a daily change and might add up to significant impact. But what to change?

For dinner, I mostly ate Ceaser salads with chicken, sides of yogurt and berries with a little whipped cream. At bedtime, I ate Cheerios, because they are supposed to be good for you, right? But I’d crept into a bad habit of having a couple of Quaker Dipps bars that certainly weren’t doing me any nutritional favors. Those were the low hanging fruit, so to speak, as were the mocha lattes I’d taken to having as a low calorie lunch on the days I go into the office, even if they had let me maintain my weight for a couple of years.

I saw opportunities for improvement, but everything I was eating has a list of ingredients as long as my arm, all with complex and interacting effects. A healthy diet just isn’t as simple as “don’t eat fat” or “don’t eat sugar,” and a diet devoid of either is a diet you will never stick with. So…I’m a fairly smart guy, but I’m no metabolic chemistry expert. I do, however, find myself living in a time when I have access to one, or rather, all of them after a fashion, by proxy of AI. Today’s AI is a power tool that if you are smart enough, makes you smarter, and if you’re dumb enough, makes you dumber. It does, however, have an advanced ability to summarize vast quantities of data, sort through conflicts, and do all the simple math needed to let you use it subject to reasonableness checking.

I wrote down a detailed list of everything I eat in a typical week and asked ChatGPT what I should change to improve my lipid levels. It gave me an answer that was categorically insane. So I asked better questions, questions about alternatives that would be practical and enjoyable, at least enough so I might get used to them.

And here’s what it came up with:

• Instead of iceberg lettuce based garden mix and Caesar salad dressing, use romaine, kale, and/or spinach and guacamole.
• Instead of sweetened Chobani yogurt and berries with a dollop of whipped cream, use plain Chobani yogurt mixed with my own berries and a dollop of whipped cream or lemon curd (about half the total carbs and even tastier).
• Instead of Cheerios, use oatmeal.
• Instead of Dipps bars, use 1/4 cup trail mix with M&Ms and nuts.
• Instead of mocha latte, use plain latte.
• Instead of powdered coffee creamer, use coconut powder.

Does any of this strike you as sacrifice? Really? I was surprised by the guac, which I think of as being high-calorie. Turns out, it has a fifth to a third the calories of Caesar dressing, healthy fats instead of evil ones, and a host of other goodnesses. Also, it’s freakin’ guac, man. What’s not to like? And Cheerios? Naw. Oats are good for you, but cereal turns them into effectively bread–empty carbs with little meaningful fiber–and then adds sugar, lots and lots of sugar. No mas.

I asked lots more questions, and soon found that ChatGPT can actually forecast the effects on serum lipid levels of any dietary change you make. Would it be accurate? Who knew, but its reasoning checked out under scrutiny. And why not? It was just mapping all the variables, doing the math, and extrapolating from published studies. I ended up switching from sweetened, packaged oatmeal (which has as many calories as the Cheerios but at least more fiber) to a savory Indian spiced oatmeal I had tried a while back and stopped eating because it contained too much sodium. But here’s the thing, everything I was eating contained too much sodium–even the Cheerios. So after factoring all the changes, I was actually ahead on sodium, calories, soluble fiber and, I would argue, taste. These simple changes saved me 300-600 calories per day and added 10grams of fiber while eliminating partially hydrogenated oils, which are essentially artery poison.

So on with the experiment. I made only these changes–nothing else–and paid to have my blood tested a month later.

The results? Hold on to your butt blubber:

• Reduction in total cholesterol: 11%
• Reduction in LDL “bad” cholesterol: 10%
• Reduction in triglycerides: 35%

In one month. Really.

This was spectacular–better than we’d expect had I been put on statins, which was sort of the whole idea, better to fix the problem before it gets to that point, yes? And here, I’d done it in a month, and it cost me essentially nothing. What’s more, it’s pretty much exactly as ChatGPT predicted.

I still needed to do better though, so…

• Latte is made from unfiltered coffee, and that contains cafestol and kahweol, chemicals that boost LDL levels, so I swapped the latte at lunch three days a week for a “misto” (cafe au lait) made with filtered coffee and oat milk and, with a little sweetener, pretty much identical to my mouth.
• The Indian spice savory oatmeal is a little too spicy for bedtime, so I cut it 1/4 with plain instant oatmeal, slashing sodium, boosting soluble fiber, and improving glycemic index.
• I added some inulin powder (soluble fiber) to the oatmeal mix and oatmilk powder “creamer” just because I had it on the shelf.

I made no other changes and had my blood drawn a month later. Once again, exactly as ChatGPT predicted:

• Further reduction in total cholesterol: 8% for a total reduction of 18%
• Further reduction in LDL cholesterol: 13% for a total of 22%
• Further reduction in triglycerides: 7% for a total of 40%

The coconut powder is good in coffee, but makes every cup taste like coconut–which is fine and all but….swapped with oat milk powder.

I did nothing different and had my blood drawn again, this time for a more comprehensive lipid profile which showed that things are stabilizing with LDL still a tad high but still dropping.

Meanwhile, in the same period, my blood pressure has dropped by 9% on average, enough I’ve had to adjust my medication to keep from passing out. Why so much when I haven’t lost weight or done anything else to explain it–when indeed I’ve returned to the daily commute, to a new job with more stress in the same time? Simple, with the improvement in lipid levels, my cardiovascular system is healing after decades of abuse, as evidenced by an 11% decrease in pulse pressure, the difference between systolic and diastolic that’s a good measure of blood vessel stiffness and is known to be the best single indicator of cardiovascular risk.

So this is my story. I still ride my bike most days, still don’t eat enough apples, and still need to lose some weight. But I can do it. And I can keep doing it over the long haul. And I’m not sacrificing anything. All I’ve changed is my go-to, most days diet. If I want to eat curry or a hamburger or my mom’s recipe for sweet potato casserole with marshmallows browned across the top, then I do. But I don’t want these things that often anymore, because the world has salmon steak and sushi and Mediterranean food. And if I do get up and make pancakes, I’m more likely to eat them with berries than syrup. I’m not suffering, trust me.

And what’s it add up to? ChatGPT can tell me that too. Based on the Cardiovascular Health Study British Whitehall II cohort and supported by several other studies, these very simple and entirely painless changes have

• Improved my expected longevity by a decade
• Improved my odds of remaining independent into my 90s by 50%
• Cut my risk of dementia by 40%
• Cut my risk of heart attack or stroke by 65%
• Improved my odds of living to see 95 by 300%

Of course, I could still die of a heart attack (or get run over by a dump truck), but meanwhile I get to eat guacamole every night. Oh, woa is me, this is so hard.

Folks, I’m not sharing this to brag, to temp fate, or to criticize how anyone else is living. I just found it stunning to so easily make so much progress so quickly after so many years of failure. I just want you to see the possibilities.

Go boldly! It just might keep you alive.