Preventative Medicine

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✨ Stat: 80% of cases of stroke, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes, and 40% of cancers, are preventable through simple lifestyle hacks.

🧠 AI Insight: AI algorithms have the ability to detect early signs of diseases like diabetic retinopathy with over 90% accuracy, outperforming human specialists in speed and consistency, according to studies.

📈 Market: The global digital health market is projected to reach $660 billion by 2027, fueled by increasing adoption of wearables, AI-powered health solutions, and a growing demand for telehealth services.

🛡️ Preventative Medicine

We don’t have a health-care system; we have a sick-care system. The system is designed to treat illness after it occurs, rather than prevent it in the first place. But can this be changed? Can we move toward a health-care system that prevents disease instead of reacting to it?

✅ Yes (at least for some conditions as of today)

A well-known example of a condition that could be prevented, but is not being prevented, is Type 2 Diabetes (which affects over 540 million of us). The human body shows signs of insulin resistance years before diabetes is actually diagnosed.

🧬 Why is insulin resistance important?

Insulin is a hormone that helps regulate blood glucose (sugar) levels. When someone becomes insulin-resistant, their body requires more and more insulin to keep blood sugar in check. This overworks the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Eventually, these cells become exhausted, insulin production drops, and blood sugar levels rise, leading to pre-diabetes. This is a stage that can often be detected through simple blood tests.

🎯 If pre-diabetic individuals are identified early, disease progression can be significantly slowed. This, however, is not happening at scale today. Most people are not diagnosed until they’ve already developed full-blown diabetes.

But there’s a challenge:

Preventing disease isn’t as simple as running a single blood test. It requires a holistic view of human health. While blood biomarkers offer some insight, they’re not enough on their own.

A truly preventative approach must integrate data from genetics, oral and gut microbiomes, blood, and body composition. That’s exactly the kind of comprehensive solution companies like Superpower are building.

Superpower, 10x better than an annual check

Your annual checkup says you’re fine but you wake up feeling exhausted.

Superpower is different.

100+ lab tests (not the usual 15)
Tracking for life (not a one off snapshot)
24/7 Concierge team (not google)

It’s your health. Own it for $499.

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🧬 Regeneron acquires 23andMe’s data

Speaking of genetics, you might remember 23andMe, the consumer DNA testing company that provided health risk reports for over 200 conditions based on saliva samples. The company tested more than 15 million people.

But things didn’t go as planned.

🚫 The FDA intervened due to concerns about how the company presented disease risks to consumers, especially for conditions that individuals might be genetically predisposed to but would never actually develop.

🔐 Then came a data breach, where certain ethnic groups were specifically targeted.

🔬 Over time, 23andMe shifted its business model towards research, using its vast dataset to support pharmaceutical R&D.

In 2025, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals acquired 23andMe’s “assets”, its genomic database of 15 million users, for $256 million (a sharp decline from the company’s former $6 billion valuation).

Regeneron, a US biotech firm that develops treatments for complex conditions like cancer and cardiovascular disorders, will use this data to study gene-biomarker interactions and develop new drugs, particularly for rare diseases.

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