Using AI To Interpret Labs and Reversing Disease With Precision Medicine at Wild Health

My name is Ben Greenfield and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, there's a great quote that anytime you try to isolate anything and try to pull on one string like you find it connected to everything else. So a lot of times one of the mistakes we make in medicine is, okay, we're gonna get someone's A1C down, improve their metabolic health. So we switch them to a ketogenic diet without any really data and that probably will work, but then we may see their LDLP or some of these things skyrocket. So we've improved one thing and we've hurt another thing.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

All right, this is cool, but you want to pay attention cuz it's coming up right, right around the Corner on Friday, December 2nd. You're gonna get a chance to join me and some really powerful healing physicians down in Sarasota, Florida. This is a live event, goes from 8am to 5pm I'll be there. My friend and a brilliant former podcast guest, the Doctor Strange of Medicine, Dr. John Laurence is going to be there. HBOT USA, Dr. Jason and Melissa Saunas are going to be there with their hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Brian Richards of Saunaspace, Harry Paul, one of John's friends who I recently met, who's also an amazing healer for an event that's super unique. It's all based around the elements Earth, fire, air and water, with a ton of treatments and technologies and modalities and very unique biohacks that you're gonna get exposed to during the entire event. Basically what I mean by that is when it comes to air, you're gonna learn about hyperbaric oxygen and ozone and air filtration. Everything you need to know to upgrade your air when it comes to pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, earthing, grounding, a host of other ways that you can use the power of the planet to enhance your health, your sleep, your recovery, your muscle gain, your fat loss, a lot more water. You'll learn about proper water filtration, how to upgrade your water, hydrogenated water, structured water, basically soup to nuts. Everything you need to know about water and how to apply it in your home, in your office, in your life. And then finally, fire is a fun one. Lots of cryotherapy, a little bit of ice too. Breathwork. Inner fire practices a ton of stuff when it comes to introducing the element of fire into your life. So this event is super unique. John and I have been working on it behind the scenes and it has come together amazingly. There's even a VIP experience. If you sign up for the VIP experience, you could come two days early or stay a few days after the event. And basically you will get all the medical protocols customized by Dr. John and his staff. If you claim one of those 10 via VIP spots that'll include like IV methylene blue laser treatments, John's really unique bliss release, which is basically an endonasal adjustment, which is essentially like a chiropractic adjustment through your nose for your entire skull, which if you've had TBI or concussion or allergies or things like that in the past, it totally reboots that entire system. There's gonna also be ozone treatments, Meyers IV cocktails, exosome treatments, IV laser, access to a CVAC machine. And John's entire facility is gonna be at your beck if you got one of the VIP tickets. And then we're also probably gonna have a little bit of a party later on in the evening after this event. The whole thing is going to be a pinch me, I'm dreaming full on cutting edge of biohacking experience and I'm just now letting the world know about it. So spots are gonna fill up pretty fast. Space is limited. But if you wanna get in now, here's how you go to BenGreenfieldLife.comElements Event. That's BenGreenfieldLife.Elements-Event. It's in Sarasota, Florida. Again, it's all day Friday, December 2nd. I would come in early and stay after if you just want to try out all the crazy modalities there. You know, I don't know how fast those VIP tickets are going to sell out, but either way this thing is going to be absolutely amazing. I just can't wait. Like I'm pinching myself. Can't wait to be on the plane to head down there and do this. So check it out. BenGreenfieldLife Elements event. And I'll see you there, I hope. Are you ready to get a golden milk latte without spending eight bucks at the local coffee shop? There's this stuff, it's this gold latte, premixed blend, delicious and filled with superfoods and medicinal mushrooms. It is one of the best nighttime tonics. Keeps your mind off of ice cream and other sweets at night. Kind of heals your body while you sleep. I shouldn't say heals. I don't even know if I can say that heals cures. All I know is it makes you feel amazing because it promotes restful sleep and supports physical recovery. You wake up refreshed without drowsiness. Tastes delicious and like a little bit of warm coconut milk. So good. Low sugar. So it's a dessert like tea that's guilt free, 100% USDA certified organic. It's called Organifi Gold. Organifi makes these amazing juice powders. Organifi Gold is turmeric and ginger and reishi mushroom and oh, it's all blended together and tastes so, so good. They've got lemon balm in there and turkey tail as well, which are super nourishing to your gut and your immune system. You get 20% off of this stuff. You go to Organifi.com Ben that's Organifi with an I.com Ben and that will get you 20% off order from Organifi. And that's the gold juice powder I just told you about. We are working with a new company that makes an amazing kid's multivitamin. So if you're looking for something for your kid, but you have realized that most typical children's vitamins are basically candy in disguise. They got like two teaspoons of sugar, unhealthy chemicals, a bunch of gummy junk that growing kids should never eat is a problem. I'm always looking at these labels for my own kids and in the past I've just fed them liver because I haven't been able to find a good multivitamin. But there's this company called Hya H I Y A. It's a pediatrician approved, super powered, chewable multi. Right? Most children's vitamins have again like 5 grams a sugar, a couple teaspoons. That contributes to a variety of health issues, paradoxically. But Haya has zero sugar, zero gummy junk, non gmo, vegan, dairy free, allergy free, gelatin free, nut free. So super safe for any kid who's sensitive to that kind of stuff. They formulated it with the help of a bunch of nutritional experts and physicians. It's a blend of 12 organic fruits and veggies. Then they supercharge it with 15 other essential vitamins and minerals like D, B, 12C, zinc, folate. So it supports your child's immunity, energy, brain function, mood, concentration, teeth, bones, you name it. And the best part is my kids go ape nuts over this stuff. They're going to give all my listeners, whether you have a K or maybe you just want an amazing multivitamin that tastes great because I have to admit I've snuck a few myself. They're going to give us all 50% off. That's pretty big. 50% off. It's your first order. Okay. To claim that, you go to hyahealth.com Ben H I yahealth.com Ben that'll automatically get your kids the full body nourishment that they really need to grow. All right, folks, if you've been listening to the podcast for a little while, or if you've worked with my coaching program or read my book Boundless, or really come across a lot of my recommendations when it comes to basically how to find a good doctor and how to get connected with a physician who actually knows what they're doing and practices the type of medicine that I would personally put my stamp of approval on. For what it's worth, you've probably heard me use the term wild Health. Wild Health is a network of physicians that practice some pretty advanced and cutting edge forms of what could be called precision medicine or genomics based medicine. And we've done several podcasts before. I'll link to all of them in the show Notes for this episode, which you're going to find@BenGreenfieldLife.com bewild that's BenGreenfieldLife.com bewild they've got trained medical practitioners in all 50 states and they have been up to a lot of new initiatives behind the scenes. I actually traveled all the way down to Lexington, Kentucky to check out some of the new stuff that they're doing and to hang out with the mastermind Behind Wild Health, Dr. Matt Dawson himself. Now, before I let you get to know Matt a little bit better, I want to give you a quick preview of some of the stuff that they're up to that you're going to get to hear about today. They are taking athletic teams, pro athlet, really high performance squads, and literally taking them through these unparalleled, unheard of genetic and medical optimization programs to basically create genetic freaks of nature. And they're getting crazy results like massive increases in testosterone, decreases in crp, stuff that goes way beyond Tom Brady not eating nightshades, way, way beyond that. They've also got this brand new artificial intelligence program. So one of the times of the week that I tend to just rip my hair out is when I'm going through all these clients labs, blood, stool, urine, saliva, and I'm personally doing a lot of interpretation of that, as I know are hundreds of physicians and practitioners and providers across the country. And the whole time I'm doing that, I'm like, man, why couldn't artificial intelligence take this person's exercise goals, their nutrition goals, their health history, their supplementation and their entire medical history and all these different lab tests and actually be able to create a, a customized program for that person. Wild Health has cracked the code on that, which is amazing because I'm gonna be able to use that in my own Ben Greenfield life coaching program. But it's something that's literally gonna change the world when it comes to labs and interpretation and the ability of superintelligence computer algorithms to be able to help you out with your blood work and your biomarker interpretation. They have a brand new fellowship program for medical students which we'll talk about. What's really interesting is they have demonstrated some pretty cool management and near re of a host of different metabolic and cardiovascular diseases with incredible results without the use of prescription medication that is so commonly used these days, especially in allopathic medicine. And then finally for you execs out there who like to own nice things, so to speak, they have this exclusive. This is actually the first time that they're offering it anywhere but private on my podcast. It's a VIP health program that basically gives you a dedicated health coach, a dedicated care coordinator, a performance fitness coach, supplement, supplementation and medication management, your own nutritionist, custom genetic screening, full body MRI, CT scan, microbiome testing, complete lab panels, epigenetic age testing, cancer screening, sleep monitoring, biometric tracking, all your heavy metals, toxin, food allergy testing, adrenal function analysis, full DEXA scan. Basically like the creme de la creme of an executive testing program along with ongoing personalized analysis of like your biofeedback devices, your wearables, they've even got mindfulness coaching, breathwork coaching. It blew me away when I looked at what they're doing as far as their executive health programs. And so anybody out there who basically wants everything done for them, that's also going to be something that you're going to learn more about on this show with my friend and Dr. Matt Dawson. Matt is an athlete. He was a two sport college athlete. He and I have played basketball, we've played pickleball, we haven't yet played tennis, but he can swing a tennis racket pretty good too. He lectures all over the world, he trains thousands of physicians, he's got two text, got an educational app he's created. He has combined his background of extensive training in genomics and functional medicine to give really, really good personalized and precise medical guidance and to lead the team at Wild Health. He's a cool guy, he's a friend. Most importantly, He's a dad, he's a husband, he's a family man, and he's just a good guy who happens to have a belly full of wild blueberry smoothie this morning. How was that smoothie?

It was amazing. Now that you've covered everything, we want to talk about.

Oh, our podcast is over.

Just all pickleball. Now can we talk about our aspirations?

We can talk about our pickleball aspirations. So before we do, Matt and I went to this place called. We've been eating amazing, amazing food all week. We went to this place called. Is your brother's place of feed and supply. I actually just posted to Instagram this morning, but we basically punished about 10,000 calories worth of steak and charcuterie boards. Adaptogenic smoothies. It's a pretty good setup you had there.

Yeah, I got a week of fasting ahead of me to try to burn that off.

Exactly. But. But we did have to get a smoothie in this morning, so I made. Matt. I've got this way to make a giant ass smoothie that's got, like, 250 calories in it. I just use tons of ice, use stevia, use sea salt, a little bit of wild blueberries, a little bit of coconut yogurt, which is pretty low in calories. And then I just put a touch of collagen in there. And the trick for anybody listening in, if you want to do this is you put a ton of ice in, then you have to use a blender that's got, like, a spiralizing blade on it. And the ninja, you actually have one here, which is perfect. The ninja works really good for this because you bl. That spiralizing blade introduces a bunch of air into the smoothie, so it expands and expands. Expands. You get this giant smoothie bowl, and it looks like you're eating this massive acai bowl, but because it's sweetened with stevia, it's got some sea salt in there. It's mostly ice. It's barely any calories, but it kind of gives you that breakfast fix without having eaten a whole breakfast.

Yeah. I still don't know if I believe you. It's like 250 calories, because that was.

Like, my stomach, but that's all expansive. It's all just. I was like, perfect. It's just gas. Just like the stars. And then. And then we were supposed to play pickleball this morning, but I chickened out after a late night dinner last night. You got a game in you?

Yeah, yeah, I played. It wasn't my a game. But I played.

Yeah. So those of you who have not gotten on the pickleball bandwagon, I'm actually, I'm interviewing one of the top pickleball pros later on this week, Tyson McGuffin, who I found out is like, my neighbor up in Spokane. I really liked pickleball when I found it a few months ago. And then I got here and played singles with you and another friend down here. So I've played like competitive singles a few times since I got here. It's amazing. Like, that sport, like power, strength, speed. I'm hooked.

I knew like when you said you hadn't played singles before, I'm like, this guy's gonna be hooked after this week. Because anybody that played him, it's just the funnest sport ever.

Oh, man. It's like mental chess. It's like ping pong with a whole bunch of power and strength. It's not like that old person's retirement community sport anymore. And from what I understand, it's like the fastest growing sport in the nation.

Yeah, I think LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, they have teams in major league pickleball. That's crazy. We're going to have a team, like, whether major league pickleball knows it or not. Like, we're coming for them.

Okay, so for those of you listening, Matt and I've been talking about this. You guys have a Wild Health has a baseball team right now, right?

Yeah, we have a minor league baseball team. It's called the Wild Health Genomes. It's just a great name. Pretty funny thing to do. We've got, we've made a video about it, but we're totally switching to pickleball. Like, that's, that's the next thing.

All right, so, so what, what would this look like to have a, to have a Wild Health sponsored pickleball team? And just so we don't bore people, I mean, people probably want to know, like, what you're doing to create these athletic freaks of nature. So tell me about what you, you're doing with like a baseball team that you would do with, let's say, like a pickleball squad.

Yeah, sure. So we, we have really, in the last six months, went pretty heavy into pro sports. It started by people to us. They saw what we were doing. We had some athletes. Now we have dozens of NFL, NBA, several, like three minor league baseball teams, entire teams. We're taking care of USA Boxing, several other Olympic sports as well. And we're getting incredible results. Now the pickleball thing that's just like a fun side obsession. But that program, the kind of genetic optimization athletic program, it started as just, it made sense. Like if you look at these athletes genomics and do all this testing and they're gonna do better, and now we actually have results from it. I can tell you a couple examples.

Before you give me the results. I think a lot of people might not understand when you say that you put an athlete and, and obviously if you're listening, you're not an athlete. This is going to be applicable to you, you know, whether, whether you want to perform in any aspect of life. You said genomics analysis. What's that actually mean?

Yeah, we sequence everyone's DNA. We look at about 675, 000 different SNPs.

And that's saliva.

Exactly, it's a saliva test. So it just comes to someone's home, they send it back. We look at all that. We strongly believe that genetics alone are almost worthless because it doesn't. I mean, if you have a VDR simple, what is your vitamin D level? Like, where do you live? Is it summer, is it winter? If you have an mthfr, well, what is your homocysteine level? What are you eating? What are you doing, what supplements are you taking? So we combine those genetics with blood work, microbiome, phenotypic data, all of this stuff, and we look at in total millions of data points that we can pull together and come up with a plan from that. So a really personalized approach that doesn't really exist otherwise.

Right. So there's a lot of companies that do DNA testing. I mean, you know, this or a dime a dozen. We got like doing like Dr. Ben Lynch's dirty genes. There's DNAFit that does more like exercise and performance. There's, you know, Genetic Genie, there's that company up in Canada, I've had them on the podcast, the DNA Company. Are you saying that the difference would be you're taking the DNA, but you're combining that with stool, blood, urine, food allergy data, the wearable data, just all of it at once. So then you're able to see. Okay, well here's the genetics, here's the genetic prepositions, but then here's how it's actually manifesting. And here's all the other things that you got to pay attention to.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, I shouldn't say it's useless, that's maybe offensive to those companies, but when somebody tells me they have an APOE 4 mthfr or PMT or whatever. Okay. Like, then I've got a dozen more questions. I want to see their blood work, I want to see all these other data and then we can talk about what to do about it. We think there's really a next level that no one had done before and that's what we're doing now.

Yeah, and I want to talk more about how to actually interpret all that stuff because that's like I mentioned in the introduction, like, what's probably the hardest part of my week is when a client delivers me all these lab results and it's just me and my brain ticking away, you know, basically hours of my time pouring through this stuff. But we'll get to that later on. And how a computer could be used to do the type of thing that I'm doing now to put me out of a job and cause me to just go, I don't know, sit in the forest staring at the sunset. Anyways, though, the athletic program, in terms of what this actually looks like and what kind of results that you're getting, tell me about what would happen like with the average athlete who walks in the kind of testing they're getting and then what you guys are seeing.

Yeah, I mean, the average athlete, I mean, there's tons of room for improvement. I think what's even more exciting is the extraordinary athlete. So we have one. One that I can talk about because he's been public is Brandon Cooks. He's a top receiver in the NFL. He's been in the league for 10 years. Great results. But when we started working with him and look back 20, 20, 2021, we started working at kind of the end of 2021, and in a year he improved his 20 yard dash time 5%, increased his strength by 13% when we tested it, his max velocity over 4% and those and his broad jump by 4 inches. So for somebody who's been in the league for 10 years, he's already doing everything right. He's kind of aging. Ten years in the NFL is a while to have those types of improvements. He was blown away. He had a career year. And I mean, for these athletes, it's not just they're performing better. I think his contract, the two years prior to us, he made 17 million pretty good for two years. His current two year contract, after all this is $39 million. So he's measurably, objectively performing better, he's got a better contract and he's been a really incredible advocate. Most of our patients, we can't talk about, even though we have dozens just for HIPAA reasons. But even that, like there's the max contract MBA guy. I'll give you one more example and then we can talk about the results who came to us. Originally, he was having some mood and mood issues throughout the season. Anxiety, depression. It's a long season in the NBA. He also was having kind of some nagging injuries. And when we got him on this optimization thing, we looked at it. He had major issues with his diet, with sleep, with all these other things and taking this multifactorial approach. Last year, he was in talks for the mvp. He didn't win the MVP award, but again, a career year. It was a perfect storm for him. So just to give you an example of a couple things we did. His sleeping was very wrong for his chronotype and what we saw when he needed to sleep.

Do you know the chronotype based on his genetics?

So a combination thing. So we can look at clock genes, for example, but we also do use other data. So we're pulling in any wearables that someone has, like an aura ring, anything, Apple health, Google health, that it pulls. We can pull in. So we're not just looking at the genetics, not just the blood work, but even wearables.

So with chronotype, you can see like the sleep cycles and when they're empty, entering different sleep phases and figure out if they're going to bed too early, getting up too early, too late or too late, et cetera.

Exactly. And he was doing all of that. So he also was a slow metabolizer of caffeine. But all of his teammates, they would crush these Red Bulls and things before a night game, and it was killing his sleep. He'd get up in the morning and just the whole day was a drag for him. He had a collagen 5A1 polymorphism. So when we got him on more collagen protein, his injuries started going down.

What was that polymorphism?

Collagen5 1A. So this is one that I had as well. When we first started, I was doing Ironman races, but I just had all of these injuries when I increased my sardines. The collagen you put in that smoothie this morning, Bone broth. I've not had a single tendon or ligament.

Is that because there's an actual polymorphism that limits collagen synthesis?

Yeah.

Which would affect your recovery.

That's exactly right. Yeah. And so just a dietary. So a sleep change. A dietary change. I think this guy, he also had a FAAH polymorphism So CBD had a big impact on his deep sleep, but just combined.

Meaning it helped his deep sleep.

Exactly. It helped his sleep. Yeah. Some people, I mean, so this is a great example of every time you see or you hear on a podcast, someone say, hey, science says CBD improves sleep or caffeine improves performance. Well, what they're really saying is for 60% of people or 80% or whatever it is. But then when you look at athletes, like caffeine, for example, example, we've known for decades it's an ergogenic aid. So this guy, he thought, okay, I'm going to play better with caffeine. But when you look at it, a fast metabolizer has. They've done 20k time trials on, on cyclists. Fast metabolizer has a big increase in performance. Slow metabolizer, it actually hurts them. It's not that it doesn't help, it hurts them.

I remember you telling me that once. Now, now, with something like that, could they still take caffeine but put something along with it, like, say, L theanine? Or could you, for example, because a lot of times when you drink coffee, it's not just caffeine, it's also paraxanthine and theobromine. So you could, for example, like have them take two of the molecules from coffee that aren't caffeine, or combine the caffeine with the L theanine and just like, tweak and perfect their ratio based on that specific athlete.

Yeah, so that's where the Ben brain or the doctor brain comes in. So you mentioned it replacing you. It'll never replace you. It just makes you better. So in that example, for this athlete, we may say, look, your slow metabolizer is probably going to hurt you, but hey, let's do an experiment. Let's add some L theanine or something and let's watch your data and see. So even though we are able to make much better predictions, we also, everything we do, we want to measure it. Look at the oura ring data, look at whatever else we're trying to measure, and see if their performance improved or not. And we got a big head start because we have the genomics, the blood work, everything else, we still want to be objective about those results.

Is that data that you're collecting something that could theoretically be fed into the artificial intelligence algorithm? Meaning, like, if you've got like a thousand athletes and you've tested, let's say like paraxanthine or theobromine versus caffeine or CBD for sleep cycles are you able to actually begin to use almost like big data to perfect what a computer would be able to do or predict.

That's exactly right. So just to give you an example of that, so far we've mainly we've seen thousands of people but we've been translating the science to get results. So like for these athletes we're seeing an over 20% increase in testosterone, 5% increase in muscle mass on average, which is a lot for a 200 pound NFL player. 39% reduction in CRP. So we've gotten those results by translating the evidence and sciences out there. Now we're going the next step. So we just completed a merger with the world's most innovative AI company back in February. And I'm not saying that that's what Fast Company named them.

Okay.

Now we're looking to create science. So now we've got thousands of patients, we've taken care of hundreds of pro athletes. We're looking at that data and we're making it even better. So although we've got the world's greatest outcomes, we're going to be accelerating that now using AI. So now because we're a part of this company, we have hundreds of software engineers, data scientists, PhDs, not just the physicians and PhDs we had. So that's the next step for sure.

Are you able to say what the company is?

For sure? It's a live person. So they do conversational AI was the main thing that they do. But it you actually introduced us to them. They wanted to get into healthcare and add this world's greatest AI stuff to healthcare.

Yeah, yeah. Well I actually remember that conversation with one of the guys who was running Live Person because we were actually going over his labs and as is often the case, like I was alluding to earlier, I was like going over his blood and his stool and urine and I think we had some food allergy data. I think we had like a micronutrient, like, like a neutral valve type of data as well. And I'm talking to this guy, I'm saying like, okay, well your reference ranges are telling you this, but your goals are XYZ or you'll run into. Another example would be like somebody wants to do an ironman triathlon or triathlete, but they're carbohydrate sensitive and so they're told based on their data that they're supposed to eat a low carb diet. And yet as somebody who's burning 4,000 calories a day, that has nothing to do with their actual goals. There's all these things that feed into proper lab work interpretation. And as I'm talking to this guy, I think the actual question he asked me was like, dude, why couldn't a smart computer do everything you're doing right now if it had the right data? And I told him, look, that would be a dream, but it just doesn't exist because you have all these disparate lab companies. You have the saliva company and the blood company and Genova Diagnostics for the stool. And then you also have the training software company for the exercise component and the nutrition and the meal planning company for the meal planning. And there's nothing that does it all at once. It's kind of like the one software program to rule them all if there was actually something that would allow you to do this. And I was shocked when I was talking to him and I asked for that question. And I got to thinking, I'm like, gosh, in the era that we live in, it's shocking that we can't just take a bunch of of fluid from the human body, feed it through a computer, and have it actually tell us based on not just our medical needs, but our exercise goals, our nutrition, our lifestyle, everything. The supplements we're taking, what foods we like, what foods we don't like, what foods we're allergic to, what foods we're not allergic to. It could technically plan out all our health for us, but it just didn't exist. And then he's like, well, who's the closest? I'm like, oh, Wild Health. They have this clarity report, which I didn't read you about before. I'm like, they're kind of sort of on the cusp. And then. And it turns out that you guys started making magic together.

Yeah, I mean, he's a visionary. So Rob Licasio is his name. He basically invented chat on the Internet, like 25 years ago, and now it's kind of revolutionized conversational AI. But if you talk to him about something like this not existing, that should. He's the type of guy that wants to go build it. And so that's what he's doing. He wants to have an even bigger impact on the world. And when he looked like, what healthcare? I mean, they kind of scoured the globe like, who is closest to this? And that's how we came together. Like their Data scientists and PhDs, when they evaluated, said, yeah, if we add our technology to this, we'll actually have that and create it.

Okay, so boots on the ground, what does this look? Is this like a website that people could log into once they've got all their data submitted to a wild health doc or practitioner. Is it. Is it an app or what's the actual delivery mechanism as far as the user experience?

Yeah, it's like all of that, actually. So when someone signs up@wildhealth.com, we start collecting all the data again, the millions of data points. Then we deliver it, and there's a web interface where you kind of see, like, this is a dashboard.

I'm going to stop you right there when you say collecting all the data. When this person signs up, do they get, like, test kits in the mail? Do they need to go to a lab? Do they need to go see a doctor? How's that actually work?

Yep. So we want to make this as seamless as possible. So they get a saliva kit for the DNA at home, they send that back. We put an order in for all the blood work and the lab tests. They go do that. All of that is fed into our program. And you're talking about your brain on it. I remember in the days we were doing that, it would take me 10 hours to prepare this. Now, we don't like the AI. We shouldn't have a human brain, no matter how smart they are crunching this data.

Yeah.

And now all that comes into a system. It combines it all and then it spits out. This is the perfect diet, this is the perfect exercise program. These are the supplements that will help you. These are the medications that will or won't work for you. All of that is done. And then, then the doctor or the Ben brain just kind of translates that and talk to the person and helps.

Just walks them through the report. But the computer is able to do a lot of the groundwork that I'm just like, burning my eyeballs out doing on a daily basis myself.

Yeah. All the heavy lifting.

Okay, so based on that, if, let's say there's like, I don't know, a nutritionist or an RD or a trainer or a doctor, and they're like, well, shoot, that's going to kind of like, kind of sort of put me out of a job because of computers doing my work. Kind of like the trucking industry. When we talk about robotic trucks taking over the truckers, what then does the practitioner wind up doing? Are they just able to work with more people because they've got a software service that's able to help those people instead of a live person? Are they basically able to just continually update the app or the website with new exercises and new meal Plans and new diets, or what do you think it would actually look like in an ideal scenario for a practitioner who's listening, who's like, well, crap, this is going to put me out of a job.

Yeah, they do the things that a person should do. So when you mentioned that like you're going to go off in the woods, I was thinking, no, Instead of helping 10 people, you'll help 100 people. And you'll do what you do best, which is motivate them, translate it, help hold them accountable, and then answer questions. Exactly. And this is, this is precision and personalized medicine. It's not perfect. Nothing is perfect. Everyone, we don't, it's very, a lot of hubris. If we think, think we're going to just give the perfect plan with all this data, it's going to be a better plan. But we still need the human brain to say, okay, this is our goal. Here's how we're probably going to get there. What is the objective measure? And then we remeasure and retest. So putting the brain having the. So if you think about chess, for example, we used to be the world's greatest chess player, then kind of Big Blue or whatever, the IBM Watson started playing chess and became the best player in the world world. But that's not actually the best player. The best player is a hybrid person with the AI that is actually the best chess player. And that's what we want to do. We want to take doctors and coaches, make them that centaur of an AI machine and the person, and that's going to be the best in the world.

So theoretically, if you had enough workouts, let's use training as an example. If you had enough workouts and exercises and exercise videos and you had a computer that knew that person's genetics, their fast twitch, slow twitch, muscle fiber capacity, the fact that they want to do a Spartan at the beginning of the year and I don't know, Ironman at the end of the year, or they just want to be able to, I don't want to say, pass a Russian kettlebell certification or whatever. That program could actually be automatically generated by a computer. And then the role of that person's trainer would be, hey, I'm here to answer your questions. I'm going to show up at the gym with you and actually do this workout with you to motivate you. And then where my mind also goes is this happens to me a lot. Well, not a lot. I don't want to make it sound like I'm injuring people. Right and left. But someone would be like, oh, I threw out my shoulder. I can't do this week's program workouts. What do I do as a substitute? And then when I ask you that question, not to get too complicated, where my mind goes is, couldn't you just feed into the computer, hurt my right shoulder, and then it would automatically adjust everything for the week.

Theoretically, you can. And like, you're. I mean, kind of like, Rob, you're a visionary. You're seeing out in the future. That is a future state as well. We're getting closer and closer to that. And I mean, every day and every month it's getting a little better. But that's where we're going. Like the continuing to optimize the program and the providers. We want not just the best AI, not just the best doctor, but combining the two. And that's where someone like you can say the AI can do this much. But I know from experience this. And we add that in and over time, yeah, the AI will do more and more. I don't think there's ever going to be a time when there's no provider there necessary. There's always. The human brain is always going to have a role in this process as well.

And who would have access to this? Like, do you have to be a doctor or have. Or have a gym where you have like a doctor on staff to be able to order all the labs and the bloods and everything like that and start to feed people through this app or this software? Or if somebody's sitting at home and maybe they're not a coach or a trainer or a nutritionist or a doctor or something like that, but they're just like, oh, I want to do this. Where does somebody actually go and what do they need to have access to to actually use this type of software, this program?

Yeah, a computer and a phone. So we also deliver this via an app. We just launched the app in the last month. Month. We have physicians in all 50 states like you already mentioned, so we can prescribe, we can order labs and things like that. And it's all delivered virtually. So no matter where you are, we can deliver this and you can do it in our coaches. We have physicians and coaches assigned to every patient and then we follow along. But it's virtual. You don't have to come anywhere. There's lab testing places everywhere. The whole body, mri, home phlebotomist, too.

They can come.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's getting easier and easier to do this. Regardless of where you are, you don't have to be be in the place where the best physician or coach is. Like it can be delivered anywhere.

Okay, so let's use. Because I do have a lot of personal trainers that listen in and people who are running exercise programs, coaches, nutritionists, et cetera. Let's use my Ben Greenfield life coaching program, for example. I've got a few dozen coaches. I meet with them a couple of times a month for office hours to go over client problems and do ongoing education with them. They go through this certification module where they learn a bunch of stuff from me and then they're kind of of like a certified Ben Greenfield life coach. So when people come to me and they want to use my methods like the biohacking, the air, the light, the water, the electricity, the blood work, the training, nutrition, everything.

And they get signed up for a program, they get connected to a coach who's interpreting that all for them. Now what I need to, in order to actually start to use this software for our Ben Greenfield life coaching program, need to just like, like have one of your physicians be able to work with us to then give us access to the software. How would it look? Exactly.

Yeah. So we actually have a training program as well. So for example, your coaches are getting great training and coaching specifically, they may not get the full precision medicine training. I'm not sure what your program looks like, but we've trained hundreds of providers, so we have a full fellowship to train doctors or health coaches to be able to interpret.

You don't have to be a doctor.

You don't not know. I mean, our coaching program is MD in mwbc, whatever the National Board of Health coaching is. When you go through our fellowship, if you're a physician, you get CME credit for it. If you're want to be a coach, even if you're not a coach yet, you can get nationally certified to be a coach going through our program. And then you not only have that certification, but you also can't. You also know the precision medicine component of it as well.

What if somebody's just like sitting at home and they're not a coach or a trainer, but they just want to learn this stuff? Could they sign up too?

Yeah, absolutely. It's open to anyone. We, when we look for coaches, for example, that we're going to hire, having a coaching background is great, but we really care about is someone who cares about people and really wants to make a difference in someone's life. Because we're doing that, like we're really having a big impact on people's Health.

Okay. What type of topics? Like just give me a flavor of the type of topics that would be covered if someone were to go through a course like this.

Sure. So a lot of it is just kind of basic functional math medicine stuff. So it's kind of a combination of the functional medicine and the genomics. That's what we find is not out there as much. There are functional medicine courses. There may be some precision medicine, which I'm actually not sure about that. We've created a full kind of 12 month fellowship to train someone from beginning to end. Yeah. We also have a kind of self study that has all the contents, over 100 hours of content. So someone can do it on their own in a short amount of time. But we think mentorship is is also important. So we have weekly hangouts where we translate and do case studies and things like that as well. So there's a self study program that has the CME as well. But if you want to be health coaching certified and then it's the full year program because there's an amount of hours you have to do with a certified health coach.

What mattress do I sleep on? Well, I'm picky. I'm very picky. I wanted a mattress that blocks ems that increases deep sleep cycles based on my actual measurements. That actively cools my body even if I can't use one of those fancy bedtop cooling thingamajigs. Accelerates recovery. Something my wife likes and I like. Something that doesn't off gas, a bunch of chemicals. Something that is designed using your health in mind and nothing else. No fancy bells or whistles or wi fi or gadgets or springs or anything. Okay. This is like sleeping. Sleeping on the most natural surface imaginable. They've even done what's called dark film microscopy on people's blood cells when they sleep on this mattress. And it actually allows your blood cells, your freaking blood cells to return to a natural free flowing state that allows your bloodstream to optimize the oxygen flowing through your body. Improves your body's nighttime recovery cycle, improves your sleep quality. Sleep is so important to me. You know that I'm super picky. I don't just sleep on stuff because people give it to me. I sleep on stuff because I do the research I and this mattress is top of the top essentia e s S E n T I a you go to myessentia my E s S E N t I a myessentia.com BenGreenfield Use code BENVIP that'll get you an additional hundred dollars off your essentia mattress. So myessentia.com BenGreenfield and use code BENVIP I like to see what's going on inside my body. I don't like to pay a lot of money to do it and I want it interpreted for a me. And that's what InsideTracker does. Okay? I got a personalized plan to build endurance, boost energy, optimize health. They test my blood, they send me the kit. They can do DNA, they can do blood, they can do fitness tracking. They have a sick app that keeps track of all of it for you. So you don't even necessarily have to sit down with a doctor and have them go through all the results with you because it's super easy to just understand your blood from what they send to you. And they have these super comprehensive blood and biomarker tests that tell you everything that's going on inside your body. You can even connect it with your Fitbit or your Garmin so you can kind of connect your devices and get real time recovery tips, for example, after workout. So it's kind of like having a personal trainer and a nutritionist and like a blood interpretive person all in your pocket all at once. It's a lot of people. So anyways, for a limited time, you get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store. You go to InsideTracker.com Ben that's InsideTracker.com Ben that gives you 20% off the entire InsideTracker Store. Enjoy. All right. So you've probably heard about these so called gas station dick pills. I know, I said it. You didn't. That's okay, I said it. They give you like, you know, these four hour erections with nasty side effects and heart problems and sweaty palms and a possible trip to the hospital. Lord knows what other colors and agents they have in those things. And then Viagra is just like, dude, that's like the nuclear bomb. It's like pulling out all the stops. What if you want to just go natural? Natural? Well, there is this stuff called Joy Mode. Joy Mode, It's a great name. It's all natural. It's all natural. So everything in it helps to promote nitric oxide production, penile tissue relaxation, increased drive, and it works for ladies too. My wife has been taking it before, so actually loves has arginine and yohimbi and L citrulline and vitamin C in it. It was created by this scientific team to actually support erection quality, infirmary firmness, blood flow, sex drive. It's all natural. And it works. It gives you good energy too, honestly, like so there's that. So there's no need for, you know, have an espresso before date night or whatever. You just mix it with 6 to 8 ounces of water or if you're like me, you just dump it straight into your mouth. It's like an electrolyte packet kind of. So you get 20% off this amazing new supplement. You go to usejoymode.com greenfield or enter code greenfield at checkout for 20% off your order. That's useful. Use joy mode.com greenfield and use code greenfield for 20% off of this stuff. So if you do over the course of the year, how many average like hours per week do you think somebody would have to devote to studying this stuff?

So as much as they want. So kind of a minimum is probably two to three hours a week. Most people probably spend five to six. But we have a lot of content. So there's the in person stuff once a week, week. There's the required and then there's just a lot of resources there too. So someone could spend 10 hours or more a week, but you can get it done in as little as two to three hours a week.

And can you like download the videos and the audios and the media? Like let's say I wanted to walk on the treadmill for an hour every morning for a year and just become a total expert in precision medicine during that process. Could I just like download stuff and have my phone set up and just do it like that?

Yeah, absolutely. This is not 1998 where all the students have to get in a classroom at the same time and all that ridiculousness. This is kind of on your own, asynchronous. We have some synchronous stuff once a week. We even record that. So you could do it completely on your own time.

Yeah, you and I actually haven't talked a lot about this, but I feel like maybe I need to upgrade my knowledge base and jump in and do that myself. I haven't actually gone through your guys full program. I'm sure a lot of what I've done in the past overlaps with some of it. But I'll talk with you later. But maybe I'll go through that program myself because, because I'm an information sponge, I love to learn that stuff and I'm sure a lot of people listening in as well. And by the way, again, I'm going to put the show notes@bengreenfieldlife.com bewild if you're listening in, you're like, oh, dude, I want to sign up and try this out. Now. This kind of leads me into a thing that I'm pretty excited about that you were filling me in on, that I kind of gave a preview of when I was introducing you. And that's kind of like the gold standard. Like, what would it look like if we were to take everything that you guys are able to do and let's say like an executive or somebody who kind of wants to go straight to the top as far as the services they receive. Tell me about this executive program.

Yeah, and this is something we haven't talked about publicly. We just kind of launched this in the last month, and it's been referral only, but it is exactly what you talk about. There's a dedicated kind of elite health coach, 24 7, access to a doctor, and the health coach. Every test you would ever want. I mean, we help people find their own personal chefs. And we do, obviously the genetic stuff, the labral lab panel, microbiome, coronary, cta, pre nouveau, full body mri, gallery testing, epigenetic age testing at home, sleep monitoring, heavy metals, toxins, everything. And basically, if you need it or want it, you're going to get it. And it's all included in the program. It's. It's not something. I mean, this is probably a bad, bad sales pitch for. It's not something that everybody wants and needs. This is kind of like the elite. And the cost is such. I mean, I'm happy to even talk about that. It's. It's $50,000. So it's. So it's a lot.

$50,000 for. For the year, for like a year.

And everything's included, all the tests. I mean, I mean, just the whole body MRI is thousands of dollars and the galleries, almost a thousand. So you're getting almost that in, in testing. But it's really for those athletes, those CEOs. Like, I'll tell you an example. I had a CEO of a public company who. I was talking to her on the phone the other day, and I'm not her doctor. I'm not smart enough. We've got doctors a lot smarter than me taking care of these people. And she had had migraines for years, like every other week, knock her out for a full day, which is expensive for a COO of a public company. And she was blown away because she wasn't having them, period anymore. Once we did the whole optimization, she gained back whatever, that's 10% of her time. One worked day per week. And once that is worth to her, it's way more than $50,000 in a year. So I say the cost up front because I don't want people to, like, it's not for everybody like we are.

That's what we call an executive program.

Exactly. Yeah. And our, and our. I mean, it's been very important to us, Ben, to make this sustainable for everyone. So, like our regular program is about a latte a day. I mean, it's around $100 a month. It's. It's nothing for this kind of investment. Investment. But for the executive, it is expensive. So I don't want anybody to be shocked by that. And it's been referral only. I'll tell you, in the last week we've had about 20 people sign up. So it's a popular thing that people are doing. But it's the kind of. Yeah, the creme de la creme. Like you mentioned, it's all the testing you would ever want. And we price it that way too, because if the doctor and you and health coach say, hey, this would be beneficial, we don't want you to think about it. We just do it. And it's all included in the program.

What kind of stuff do you find out from a full body mri?

A lot. I mean, sometimes you just pick up kind of the normal musculoskeletal stuff and we start to see, oh, this is why you're having aches and pains. Let's do something about it. But the main reason for the whole body MRI is insurance. So with these executives, if you think about it, you hear these stories all the time of an executive just having a heart attack all of a sudden or having cancer come out of the blue. And the cancer didn't just start yesterday when you find it. It's probably been brewing for a few years. So the three big screening things for these executives is let's do an AI driven clearly report a CT angiogram to really look at, make sure you're not going to have a heart attack. And let's do a gallery, which is the kind of liquid biopsy for cancer and a pre nouveau for solid tumors.

Okay, we do those pre nouveau. That's the mri.

Exactly.

Okay.

Yeah. That's what we think is kind of the best out there right now. Now. So we do those three, and that's like an insurance policy. Like if you do those, we feel pretty good. You're not going to have a heart attack or get cancer in the next two or three years, which a lot.

Of people walk around wondering about, like, how's my ticker? And do I have some tiny tumor I need to be worrying about?

Yeah, so let's quit worrying about. Let's just test for those.

Yeah. Okay, so, so that's the full body MRI and the cancer screening. And then everything else involves a lot of that blood, saliva, stool, urine, food allergy type of testing that we talked about. So, so you take care of all that. And then does somebody, if they have like an existing wearable, like, I'm an aura guy, like, I wear the aura ring. Do you guys go with a specific wearable that you assign to everybody, or do you just kind of work with what somebody has or likes coming in?

Yeah, it's anything and everything they have. So we can pull all that data through APIs. So your ring, you're going to get, you have your app, but we're going to be pulling it into our system as well to correlate it with everything else. So it's all of those. And so. And so after you've done that insurance policy, all the other stuff you mentioned, that's kind of your optimization, let's level you up, let's get your migraines taken care of, whatever else is bothering you. So let's find. I mean, another CEO of a public company that I talked to had heavy metal issues that had no idea he was having some issues from that. No idea that's what it was. And we discovered that. So insurance policy and then optimization to get you at the top of your game. Because it matters what when you're performing at that level.

What about the brain? Because a lot of people, they kind of have like the fitness piece style in. They're eating pretty healthy, but they still are just like, dude, I want to think faster. I've heard about smart drugs. I've heard about nootropics. I've heard about microdosing, I've heard about neurofeedback. Are you guys doing anything for mental optimization?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, honestly, all of this helps mental optimization. If your body's not functioning at its top, your brain can't either. So, I mean, the heavy metal I mentioned, that can have a big impact the nutritional testing, see what foods are having a negative effect on you. All of this is for the brain too. We don't think of it in terms of let's fix the body or let's fix the brain or let's fix the gut, let's fix the whole person. That's a mistake that medicine makes, is considering us a collection of organ systems when we're a whole person.

Yeah, but I guess what I mean is, more specifically, from a more precise standpoint, could you do a Dutch complete urinary analysis looking at neurotransmitter balances? Although I know that urinary levels don't necessarily reflect what you're looking at in neural tissue. It could give you an approximation or something like the Braverman Neurotransmitter Questionnaire, which nootropic companies like Nootopia are doing. And basically you could map out what that person's dopamine, serotonin, gaba, et cetera ratios are and then say not only here's what you should be doing for your body, but here's like the smart drugs or the nootropics that would work well for you. Or to give another example, not to throw too much at you, could you do like a spec scan or like a qeeg, map out areas of the brain and prescribe someone like a specific neurofeedback program to remap the brain, things like that?

Yeah, absolutely. And then you take it to the next level. So as you're saying that, I'm thinking about a professional race car driver that we took care of care of and we did all of that. How are we going to. Because it's all about reaction time with a, with professional race car driver. So we did all that. Let's optimize the brain and then let's test. So there's plenty of apps out there to test your reaction time and mental acuity. So we'll give the recommendations based on all the data and then let's follow it and then we can do all the things that you talked about, like let's try this nootropic, let's try this medication, this supplement and see how it affects you. So we do these end of one experiment based on the data we have, and then make sure it's causing an improvement.

Right.

There's not something. Because the body is infinitely complex. Even if we're looking at millions of data points, sometimes there's unintended consequences. So we want to catch those quickly with the objective data.

Right. Wow. I mean, it's a pretty complete program, but obviously, like you said, it's expensive, at least relative to the average personal trainer, relative to your less expensive of kind of basic wild health program. But it kind of begs the question for, let's say the average person who's maybe not an exec. Let's just say I don't even like the average sick person. I know you were talking to me about some of the things you guys have been doing for everything from LDL and lipid panels to risk for diabetes, Alzheimer's, et cetera. Tell me about what you've been doing with sick pain people and what you've actually seen in terms of chronic disease.

Yeah. So for your average. I was gonna say like you and I. I'll say like I. Like you're not, you're not the average person. So. But for someone who doesn't necessarily aren't trying to get that last 1%, but they've really got some issues. We have a real heart and passion for that because that's the most of the world and we want to have a big impact on the world and we're seeing phenomenal results with that. So you, I think you mentioned kind of diabetes or A1C. We, we're getting ready. We just submitted our first white paper, so I can't talk about all the results, but I can tell you a few things that we've been public about. You mentioned ldl. So ldlp, not to get into the debate around how important that is, but if you think ldlp, no matter how, how important you think it is, on average we get about a 33% reduction in that, which is about. It's a little more than a statin without all the side effects.

Right. Which is important because LDLP is not necessarily really a villain in of itself, but it's, it's necessary but not sufficient for heart disease. It can give you, give you clues at least.

Yep. And you think about combining that with inflammation, which we think probably is a bad thing. CRP we get. I think the numbers around a 50 reduction is pretty incredible for someone who has a CRP down or up. And inflammation. We all know that metabolic health is critically important for the brain, like you mentioned for cancer, heart attacks. It drives all of these things.

Things.

So A1C is one of the things I'm most excited about when you look at our results. So for people who aren't perfectly familiar with the numbers, I'll give you some comparisons. The two. I'm not, I'm not going to name these companies because I don't want to get in trouble, but who we consider to be kind of the two top companies in the world when it comes to metabolic health and A1C reduction, they reduce A1C by 0.9 and 1.2%, which is big. So if you think of someone who has an A1C of 6.55, they're. They're diabetic, kind of 5.7 to 6.4 is pre diabetes. So if you reduce that by 0.9, bringing them down to 5.6, they're no longer diabetic. So that's a big decrease. 0.9.

And just for people know that the A1C being a three month snapshot of your blood glucose levels.

Exactly. So these two come, both are multi billion dollar companies. One was acquired for over 10 billion, the other is worth billions. 0.9 and then 1.2. These two companies, our average is 1.9. It's when we look at people who have prediabetes, say what theirs was again, 0.9 and 1.2, you guys.

1.9.

Exactly. Okay, so another way to say that when we look at people who come to us with prediabetes or diabetes, 49 of them after six months do not have diabetes. Their, their A1C is 5.6 or less, which if you look at a comparison to normal programs, about 3% of people have complete normalization of A1C. See, it's almost half. 49% of the people over six months we get normalization, which I hesitate to talk about sometimes because general medicine says you can't cure diabetes. Well, we are and we're publishing these results right now. But it's that the amount of cancer, heart attack, stroke, dementia that we're going to drive down with that is a really exciting thing to me.

Well, I know that I've seen, for example, example, some research showing reversal of pancreatic cell dysfunction, which is one of the primary causes of diabetes, or pre diabetes occurring in response to carbohydrate mitigation, like a low carb or a ketogenic diet. Kind of begs the question when you talk about that reduction, what is it that you're doing or prescribing or recommending that you think is different that's actually affecting that type of change?

Yeah, it's a great question. It's also kind of like asking like, hey, here's a Picasso. Which of those colors makes it beautiful? Because it's usually multifactorial. Like you name the things that like obviously like reducing someone's sugar intake and carbohydrates, that's going to have an effect. But it's really everything together. It's the combination of that, the dietary things, taking away the foods that are harming them, getting them on a better exercise program. Sometimes we'll use medications as well. That's not the first tool we go to. We are physically physicians. We could do Metformin or a supplement like berberine or something else, but it's everything together. And then measuring it and then refining that over time is where you get the big impacts. Actually doing this in a personalized way based on someone's data, genetics, blood work, and having a coach holding their hand through it, that's where the magic happens.

Okay, so back to the lipids. And this, I guess, could be a little bit illustrative of the need for something like an algorithm that this data can be fed through. A lot of times people come to me and they're freaking out because of typically their LDL, high cholesterol, high LDL, I skip straight over to blood glucose and hemoglobin A1C, because high levels of blood glucose or high glycemic variability can actually oxidize that cholesterol in the bloodstream. Same thing with inflammation, crp. So then I go look at crp, then I look at the triglyceride to HDL ratio, which is, you know, the so called atherogenic index that's more predictive of heart disease than cholesterol. And occasionally like the actual particle size, if that's something that they've had measured, and then I can come. Let's say the particle size is fine. They got big fluffy LDL particles, they've got low hemoglobin A1C, they've got low glucose, their inflammation is just fine. Assuming they haven't worked out the day prior, and their triglyceride to HDL ratio is fine. Let's say their HDL is like 100 and their trigs are 60 or something like that. I'll go back to that person and be like, hey, you got nothing to worry about. And as a matter of fact, I personally try to keep my cholesterol above 200 because of the advantageous effects on hormones, on cell membrane stability, et cetera. But I'm going through and looking at all that myself. Could a computer basically say, okay, this person has come in with high cholesterol, but you know what, we don't have to worry about the high cholesterol or the lipids because all these other values looked just fine. As a matter of fact, this person has like a pristine lipid panel, even though reference ranges in modern medicine would indicate that they need to be on a statin or something like that?

That's exactly right. And you, you hit on some important points too. That I think it's John Muir is a great quote that anytime you try to isolate anything and try to pull on one string like you find it connected everything else. So a lot of times one of the mistakes we make in medicine is, okay, we're going to get someone's A1C down, improve their metabolic health. So we switch them to a ketogenic diet without any really data and that probably will work, but then we may see their LDLP or some of these things skyrocket. So we've, we've improved one thing and we've hurt another thing. Well, in that some individuals we see too, like maybe their cholesterol is a little high, but they've got no inflammation, so we're not as worried about it. The combination of a clear, clearly scan, like a cta, like perfect cta, no inflammation, okay, we'll tolerate a little an increase in their lipid goods for that A1C reduction. But being able to combine all of that to know where we have room to push what we need to focus on, and having a computer do that for us, we think is the best way to do that.

Right. Because then even like, you know, let's say that you have somebody who does have prediabetes or diabetes and you decide, okay, this is going to be a candidate for a low carb ketogenic diet and you're not using some kind of algorithm or you're not looking at genetic data and that person has familial hypercholesteremia and they've got perhaps elevated liver enzymes and poor liver and gallbladder function dictating that they're going to do super crappy and have liquid diarrhea on a ketogenic or a low carb diet that's high in saturated fats. And maybe They've got a APOE4 gene that would dictate that they're going to get Alzheimer's or dementia with the high intake of saturated fats due to inflammation in the brain. You would actually have to take that person and say, no, you're not going to do a standard high saturated fat ketogenic diet. We still want to limit carbs, but because of your genetics, you're going to be more of a candidate for, let's say a high flavanol, high polyphenol vegetable and fiber rich, low carb Mediterranean diet and do tiny, tiny tweaks like that.

That's it. And a great example that and sometimes there's trade offs. We want to be real about the trade off too. So we may have a pro athlete who is, we're thinking with their performance, like you, you've put athletes on ketogenic diets and they've done great before, which is, is usually a great thing. But sometimes these athletes have so much inflammation from the hard workouts, they may have the familial hypercholesterolemia and no one's even thinking or caring about that because we're all thinking about just performance.

Right.

But we find those people on a CT angiogram may have real atherosclerosis from a lot of inflammation and from that diet. So we need to talk about them, about, hey, hey. This may optimize your performance, but let's think about you. At 60, you have an APOE 4 like you mentioned, you've already got atherosclerosis. We actually, the lipids aren't probably going to have an impact on your performance right now, but it may have an impact on your risk of getting dementia and having a stroke later. So bringing, so being able to look into the future for these athletes too, they can make trade offs on how we do their diet and training and other things.

Right. And there's some sports where you're always going to be fighting uphill battle, like Ironman, for example. You just can't be a perfect picture of health if you've made a goal to do an Ironman in January. But you can at least work to mitigate the damage and the rampant levels of inflammation and the thyroid dysregulation and the endocrine dysfunction that's going to occur from ultra endurance until that person's done. And perhaps give them the message that maybe it's not something they should do their whole life once they've kind of checked off that personal Mount Everest they want to climb.

Yeah, we've helped athletes figure out when to retire. I mean, you get to a point in your athletic career, okay, you're going downhill, you can still make money for a little while, but you've got a family, you have investments, you want to get into something after athletics. And if we're sacrificing your future for a little more performance now, where look, you're already on the decline, you're burnt out a little bit. We can help you figure out kind of when to retire as well versus when to double down. You've got a few more years of good production in you.

Yeah. How much are you relying on kind of like bringing in experts or bringing in speakers. Like when I was down here on this last trip, we, we were originally planning on doing like an event where I could teach some of the people that come in. And I think we're going to focus on like meditation, breathwork and stuff like that. And we planned it out too late and didn't wind up doing it. But from what I understand, you guys are starting to roll out almost like series of educational events that the general public could attend where you get to listen to an expert. I think you called it Awake and Aware. Awaken Aware.

So yeah, that's right. I mean we have a podcast as well, the Wild Health Podcast where we'll try to bring experts on and talk about specific topics. The Awaken Aware events are something I'm really excited about because they're actually a little different than just performance.

We try to think about the person like the mind, body and soul. And the Wake and Aware events are more geared towards that soul part. Like at our last event you just mentioned, we just had one a few weeks ago. So we had an NFL player here and yeah, he's one of the ones that broke my sauna that we were talking about the other day.

Find out the barrel sauna has a weight limit.

Yeah, you don't want four 250 pound guys on one side. Just work to the wise if you got a barrel sauna. So a really special thing for me was seeing he had some real emotional releases around some breath work and things that we did and he left the conference and I just thought man, this guy, guy is going to really take it to the next level in his just spiritual life, in his soul. And is that going to have an impact on his contract? Well, I'll be honest with you, I don't really care. Like I want to have an impact on his life as well.

And Awaken Aware of an infinite impact.

Exactly. And that's what the Awaken Aware about. We've, we've proven we've got the world's best signs and world best outcome with athletes, regular people. But we want to give people, okay, let's not just live longer, but let's have a reason, reason to live longer. Let's make it a good life, not just a long life. And with these athletes it's not just be about athletic performance and physical performance, but let's get your mind right so that there's not this post athletic career depression and all these other problems that come along with it. So that's what the Wake and Aware events are about. We've got a few coming up.

Yeah, tell me about some of some of the ones that are coming up. Just listening.

Yeah, we have one. This is a cool one. It's not what you would think of that we're doing. We have A relationships. One relationship. One in January so couples can come too. We have one with Ryan Holiday in Austin, I think it's in February, where we'll talk about kind of stoicism and how that plays in. We have one, a Breathwork, specifically one here at the castle in January as well with James Nestor. So some really big names. Bishan Lakiani is going to speak at one of them upcoming. Yeah, one of them. I've got to find some good pickleball court so I can tempt you to come to show up as well. But yeah, some really cool events where we go deeper, not just the body.

Yeah. And you said the castle. If you guys are listening, you have no clue what meant by that. We're not in some medieval locale in Italy. Basically the Wild Health headquarters are at an actual freaking castle. Like a giant stone castle 15 minutes from the airport in Lexington with this beautiful farm and sheep and goats and a teaching garden and a spa and. And barns and this castle with like a farm to table restaurant. You can go stay out in one of the castle. What do they call them? Spires? Those. Those towers on either end of the castle and there's farmhouses and tiny houses. We've been. My wife and kids and I have been staying here for a week and it's kind of an experience just to come up to the castle. But you. But you have the ability to host some of these Awakened Aware events here and then you're also hosting them in some other towns too.

Yeah, the last one we had was sure. It's 110 acre property and Ben and I are in the back of it right now where we can see sheep and horses and all these animals. But on the very back of the property we have about a 400 year old bur oak tree. And so last one we did, we spent most of the time out there, which is. Yeah, it is. It's. It's my favorite tree. I don't know how many people have a favorite tree, but this is my favorite tree.

Yeah. And. And people can come here and walk around and be in the sunshine and eat organic food. Is that like. It's kind of like whether or not you're interested in. In Jack squad of anything. We've just talked about just coming out and seeing the castle is actually pretty cool. The Awaken Aware events, I can link to those@BenGreenfieldLife.com bewild and then also this fellowship that you talked about that anybody can take. I know that that's something that's just ongoing throughout the year. Right?

Yeah. And both of those are really important to us for a couple reasons. The Awaken Aware, like I mentioned, we really want to help people. People have a reason, not just get them healthy. And the fellowship is important because we're. We're starting to get kind of overwhelmed with the number of people coming, and we need to train more people to do this. And so I asked before we recorded this, and I think We've got a 20% off discount code for either of those. If you sign up for the Awaken Aware conference or the fellowship, I think you put in Ben 20.

Okay.

And you can get 20% off those because we. Those are. They're just important to us from kind of a heart perspective with Awaken Aware and to just. We need more providers helping us and working with us.

And that. That 20% code that will work on, like, that curriculum that we talked about, where if people want to just go in and study precision medicine, whether they're a doctor or not, they could use that code and get 20% off that full year of training as part of the fellowship.

That's exactly right. Yeah.

Cool. We're going to make a lot of smart cookies with this podcast. Hopefully a lot of healthy people, too. What else are you excited about that's coming up in the future for Wild Child Health? I mean, besides. I mean, obviously we talked about a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipeline.

Yeah. So the first thing that comes to my mind, which I'm hesitating whether to mention, but I think I'm going to, because I may get in trouble for this because it's not public at all. We, as I mentioned, are. We really want to be able to do this for anyone and everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. And in the next year, we're going to have it to where you can just use your insurance. And so anyone could be able to afford this and that. Now, I'll tell you, when we do launch that, like, if you're able to do the functional medicine, precision medicine, get the results we are, and just people use their insurance for it, we're going to be overwhelmed and we're probably not going to have capacity. But for everyone who is signing up now and paying the cash pay, which is around $100 per month, those are going to be the first people that have access to that. I mentioned that because it's most exciting to me because anyone will be able to do it, but I really would want to push the fellowship as well because we're going to need more providers, more Doctors and health coaches who are able to help provide that for even.

Though you have the computer algorithms and artificial intelligence, you're still going to need providers to be able to help get people into the program.

Exactly, for two reasons. One, like I mentioned, we'll never replace the human brain, ever. Like, a computer's not going to have the empathy and compassion and be able to motivate someone to really care about. And also, when we're billing your insurance, there's codes, and we need actual providers doing that.

Oh, yeah, that's a good point. The computer can't bill the insurance. But what you're saying is somebody could say, okay, I want to do the genetic testing, urine testing, get the stool, get the blood work, do all these things that typically people are paying out of pocket for, because these are like the fancy things that insurance doesn't cover. Or exercise or meal plan. You say saying insurance could actually cover someone being able to get, like, their exercise program and meal plan written out for them.

Yeah, exactly. Nutritional counseling. There's a code for that with. With Medicare and with a lot of other health plans even. There's even a code. Yeah, for. For a lot of the exercise stuff. So we're getting really creative with how we. And the interesting thing is we know that's what works. It's not just the precision, but it's the nutritional component and exercise. And traditionally, insurance hasn't paid for that. That. But there are codes where. Where it will.

Now, when I was a personal trainer, that's always boggled my mind. I'm like. Because I. The main way I ran a lot of my facilities was I partnered with physicians in the Spokane and the Coeur d' Alene area. Meaning. And by partner, I mean, like, I would go to their offices and tell them, hey, look, I'm a personal trainer. Here's my credentials, here's the facilities I have. And a lot of times the physicians would come and train with me, and then they'd see what I could do and they'd send their patients over to me. But all these patients. Patients are paying out of pocket. And what you were saying is that technically, in that similar scenario, we now live in an era where people could bill. There are. People could have their insurance cover them going and seeing a personal trainer or working with a wild health practitioner or getting their meal plan right now for them.

Yeah. And it has to be a physician or a nationally certified health coach. And so that's the kind of providers we have. And that's what I'm most excited about being able to. When we first started, it was just too expensive for most people. Yeah. In the exact program, it still is too expensive for most people. But to be able to do this for anyone, have those types of results and not cost them much money, that's a dream.

It's kind of unheard of. Like I don't think most people in the exercise and nutrition industry even know that technically insurance could cover this stuff.

Yeah. And it's complicated. Like the payer world is just such a complicated mess. But for the last few years we've been diving in and we, I think.

We got it figured out that's that's going to actually change a lot of things when it comes to people being able to do this and sustain it throughout the year.

Yeah, I think so.

Wow. All right. That is a lot of stuff we just fed you guys through the fire hose. As far as everything Wild Health is up to, I know that many of you might have questions, you might have comments, you might have feedback. I'm going to link to everything we talked about. I'll put that discount as well for the precision medicine program, the fellow fellowship in the show notes, I'll put all the information about their upcoming Awaken Aware events, the executive program, the athletic program, all@BenGreenfieldLife.com bewild and then of course stay tuned for the first ever professional pickleball team full of athletic genetic freaks powered by the Wild Health Athletic Optimization. Because that's going to happen, right?

That's right. And one last thing I'll mention, I just now realized we didn't talk about. I don't want to confuse people. Obviously we have an Instagram. I think it's at wildhealthmd or something like that. I'm too old to keep up with that, but it's something like that. And the exact program that you won't find anything about that on our website. I just realized, I mean it was the first time we've talked about publicly that in the past it's been a referral only program. So if you're interested in that, just go to the contact us@wildhealth.com and put in that you were referred by Ben and myself and hopefully that'll kind of get you to the top of the queue. But yeah, everything. Any questions you have, anything, it's going to be@wildhealth.com if you're interested.

All right, awesome. So check out wildhealth.com I'll link to all this stuff@bengreenfieldlife.com Bewild Matt. Dude. Another fascinating conversation. For those of you who like this conversation, I'll link to all my other conversations with Matt and the team as well in the shownotes if you want to go back and listen to some of the them. And we take a deep dive into precision medicine. A whole lot more on those episodes too. But in the meantime, man, maybe it's time for another blueberry smoothie. What do you think?

Yeah. Or some pickleball. Let's go for some pickleball.

All right, folks, thanks for listening. Howdy, howdy ho, folks. I am hiring. That's right, I'm hiring. Ben Greenfield Life is looking for an IT specialist. What that means is I need to. I need somebody who can help me out with technical and web development support software systems, optimal performance of the websites, platforms, the users, the team. I'm really looking for somebody who has a few years working in the IT field, who knows things like email service providers, Shopify, WordPress, Klaviyo, backups, you name it, and who also is preferably interested in things like health and fitness and biohacking. Asana, Slack, Zoom, Zoom are three of the programs that we use to support the team at Ben Greenfield Life. And preferably whoever applies for this position has some pretty good interpersonal skills and can work across a wide variety of teams and customers and external vendors and also just be a total tech head who can fix stuff that goes wrong from a technical standpoint. If you are interested in this job that includes technical support, web development, technology maintenance, and much more, and you want a salaried position full time, that can be done from anywhere in the world, you can apply@bengreenfieldlife.com itjob that's BenGreenfieldLife.com itjob and we are hiring soon. We're filling this position quick, so if you're interested, BenGreenfieldLife.com itjob.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it, or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.