Is A Full Body Scan REALLY Worth It? - An Entrepreneur's Real Experience

 Uh, there was some mild diffuse hepatic steatosis. So just, um, fatty liver. Holy shit. What? I first heard about this on an Olin podcast, right? A podcast of a few Silicon Valley VCs entrepreneurs. And they talked about how they did these full Body scams early on to rule out early stage onset of cancers and growth. And some of the people on the podcast, right. May or may not be billionaires like Chamath, for example. And that's kind of how I went down this rabbit hole of full body scams. And we're going to kind of go through mine today, right. And see kind of if I'm in trouble, but there was a really neat article by a physician that was a little skeptical. Of the concept of full body scans. So whole body imaging scans as a cancer screening tool are low yield and healthy patients with incident medical history. If you're a physician reading, this isn't news to you, but if you're not a physician, don't be fooled. The benefits of these whole body scans don't outweigh the risks which include unnecessary physical, emotional, and financial harm. This individual is obviously a well-read MD and um, he has a point of view shared by a lot of conventional physicians and he does make some good points. I remember reading about Michael Milken and, uh, Steve Ross, who was the founder of Time Warner. Both of them ate hot dogs, like, every day. And they had prostate cancer. Unfortunately, Steve Ross died from it. Milken was able to treat it, but it's like, if you could get that diagnosis way earlier, how much is that going to be worth to you? And so they talk about, like, I guess the false positive rate with high variability. I do think that is true. There are incidental findings in some false positives that can occur. But the reality is you can get incidental findings and false positives on any scan. But some people, to his point, don't want to know, right? And being the bearer of bad news is probably not a, you know, not the most positive role to play. I've blown out my knee four times, right? And so I actually just decided, you know, to go through with this. What is the value to a particular patient knowing that they caught a particular cancer early? I mean... What's an extra 10 or 20 years worth of life worth to you, right? And it's really at this point, I think targeting a different sector of the population that has a willingness to pay and the ability to pay. And they're not mandated by any means. Right? So if you're, if you're interested to do it, if you're not, I don't have to. All right, Dr. Ryan. So I'm kind of nervous here, so you're ready to go through. The scan. So go. Yeah. All right. Let's do this. Dr. Ryan, I think they have an error. I'm actually six foot two in shoes. Okay. All right. That's the first area. Okay. Let's go. Okay. So they already put a disclaimer where they basically say, this is really just an adjunct and not intended to replace other screening practices. So in other words, this is just. Completely a screening procedure and it will just give you some more information. But again, if something does turn out to be positive, additional screening and imaging is probably indicated, right? It can't be used to diagnose them. Is that what you're saying? I don't know if it could necessarily be used to diagnose, particularly, uh, if there wasn't like a clinical symptoms there, it can start a discussion. That's the best way to look at it, I think. And so it said overall, other than a benign congenital cystic appearance in the posterior fosta. white matter signal and the brain is normal. And so the fact that this cystic appearance in your posterior fossa at the rear of your skull is, uh, benign, it's not really anything to be concerned about. There aren't any solid masses, no collections, no issues in terms of your blood vessels. You did have a nasal septal deviation, I believe you had. Disclose to me that you've had surgery for your deviated septum. Yeah, I've had three surgeries. It's so weird. There's still, like, some, some mild, uh, deviation after surgical correction. There's no masses in your thorax, abdomen, or pelvis. And no enlarged lymph nodes. That's a good thing. Uh, there was some mild diffuse hepatic steatosis, so just, um... Fatty liver. Holy shit. What? But again, it's mild and I would just say that it's maybe this is the first sign. So we got to clean up the diet a little bit. Around the time of this, uh, you were frequenting in and out a little bit too much. So yeah. That would be something that I probably would maybe hold off on. You did talk about how you had an ACL tear in your right knee. That's evident there, yeah. And then some mild degenerative changes. And this is really common in a lot of individuals in the general population. What's interesting is... degenerative changes in your spine, particularly in your lumbar spine don't necessarily correlate with back pain, right? I always look at their symptoms on physical exam and see what their symptoms are before I make any changes in regards to this. And then it says your soft tissues are unremarkable. Now they did recommend the follow up scan in 12 months. I don't know if that's totally necessary. I think this is just kind of useful in that you have a baseline. And for otherwise healthy individuals, it's probably going to be something like this. Well, uh, Dr. Ryan, I think that was pretty helpful because I can't tell you how many times my wife was Googling like the systemic marina and she's like, Oh, what is this? And going through and getting a little worried and stuff. And I think, you know. Dr. Google probably isn't the best way to do it, but I'm actually, believe it or not, uh, kind of happy. I, I did that, the whole fatty liver thing, which was pretty funny, uh, got me, you know, just to basically start thinking more about like what I put in my system. I got a standing desk. It helped as well. Right. And so just being able to kind of de risk was valuable to me, but it may not be the same for others. Right. But I think that was really helpful for me and I'm happy I did it.