Your Body, Your Choice: Take Control of Your Personal Health Data – Base with Dave Asprey : 761

Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance.

You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today we're going to talk about sleep, stress, energy and diet, but how you use data like lab testing and real data science from Silicon Valley to give yourself more ability to have control over your own biology. And the guest today got frustrated as a software engineer with personal health issues and said, you know, there's got to be something I can do. And turns out when you apply technology towards solving human problems, there are something you can do, there is something you can do, whatever doesn't mean I can conjugate my verbs properly. And what she did is she realized that blood test data was so important, but that it's very fragmented and it still is today. Her name is Lola Priego and she said, I'm going to do a data driven approach to monitoring my own health like you would servers anywhere else. And she's now CEO of a company called Base and left the world of tech in a path that you guys may know something about if you're longtime listeners. We realized, you know, if we can manage millions of servers, couldn't we manage just a few cells in our bodies? So, Lola, welcome to the show.

Thank you, babe. Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Now, you were a software engineer at Amazon and Facebook and Instagram and places like that. And you actually worked in one of my favorite areas, where you looked at application network performance, like, how does the network affect that? That was the big focus for 10 years of my career. So I feel like I'm talking to someone who's from this bizarre tribe of people who talk about latency and packet delay and all that stuff. And I'm just going to go deep on this first question for you. Is there such a thing as mitochondrial packet delay?

I mean, I hope not. I guess that, you know, like, these days everything is delayed. And definitely your body takes time to, you know, regenerate and keep producing. But hoping that there's not too much packet delay in between your bloods.

What I found really interesting about your path and why I wanted to talk with you today to educate our listeners on how you think about blood is you went from some big companies with a successful career path and all that. And you said, all right, I'm going to move to a Khosla back startup in the blood biomarker industry backed by Vinod Khos, who's a really noted tech investor. I've only met him once, a long time ago, and I was looking at joining One of his companies. So you were there and you said, all right, so tech, social media, basically, E commerce, social media. And then blood. What did it feel like to go from being deep tech at these giant companies to working with blood? Was it kind of a jarring difference, or was it the same old game?

I mean, it's definitely different. I guess for me, it felt right. If I were to summarize it with one word, it would be right. I experienced a few health issues while I was working there. And what fascinated me, and you mentioned network and networking algorithms, was that we get so, so deep in a lot of concepts, and we use technology to make people be hooked to their phones for two or three hours a day and optimize for sales and messaging, communication. And of course, those things are important to a certain extent, depending on how you look at it. But what shocked me was how neither of these tools and the latest advancements in technology, they were not applied to health. They were not applied to help people feeling better. And the result is that there were so many people, you know, being out there, not knowing what to do, being overwhelmed about, you know, you have to sleep one hour more and do this and that, and, you know, eventually they get lost in translation. They suffer from symptoms, and they just don't know how to get to the root cause of it. So when I was working at Instagram, what happened to me was that I started experiencing brain fog and fatigue, and, you know, I turned to bulletproof. So I'm going to blame you here. I turned to, you know, I went online and I tried to find sources that would help me navigate the situations. And I actually landed on a blog that was not bulletproof, that, you know, they were talking about how the keto diet, full keto diet, it's great for you. You will be super energetic and so forth. So, of course, you know, I turned to the full keto diet, Cut carbs out of my diet.

I can predict what that did to you over time. How'd it work out for you?

So four months later, you know, I was just feeling really crappy. And of course, you know, like, I hit major thyroid imbalances, My LDL skyrocketed because, you know, I didn't pick the right fats as well. And it turned out that my brain fog and fatigue were stemming also from severe vitamin deficiency. So there I was, you know, after I got some results back, finding myself stupid, I'm like, hey, I just. I went, I did all of these. And of course, I Google after that. They've asked for Keto diet. And I found your take on the keto diet and why carbs are important.

It's kind of funny. Cyclical. Keto is not keto. And I'm actually, I'm. I'm aghast at where the world of keto is today, because I did all of the things you just did back in the late 90s where, you know, oh, I feel so good. And then you get wrecked by it. And that was why the bulletproof diet was something different, because it was like you just go in, go out, go in, go out. Okay. But you broke yourself four months, especially for a woman. I'm guessing your other hormones were like your reproductive hormones, estrogen and all that, were also completely wrecked.

Yes, they were slightly imbalanced.

There was slightly imbalance. So what all lab tests did you run and how much did it cost you to run all these lab tests to find out what was going wrong with you?

So, I mean, the journey was wild. As you can imagine, the healthcare system is not designed for these kind of things. You can just imagine the endocrinologist face when I showed up there and I told him that I was doing the keto diet to feel more energetic. He looked at me like I was the biggest weirdo ever. And he was actually not even that familiar with the keto diet back then. This was early 2017, so you could tell that he was still lost as to why are people doing keto diet. It was just becoming a trend. And then eventually I had to, you know, because I pinged my colleagues from med school. I actually went to med school for one year. So, side note, I realized quickly in reading your clinical evidence that there could be hormonal imbalances and so forth. So part of the hormonal imbalances test was covered by the insurance. The vitamin test was not, which shocked me. I think that the total was about 250 for the vitamin test, which shocks me now that I know the price and the cost. And then for the hormone test, I had to pay a copay. And keep in mind that I was working at Facebook, so top tier healthcare insurance, too. It was really painful. It also took one month and a half to get all of that data back.

I found it really disheartening when I was working on all this. I ended up spending the very beginning of bulletproof. I spent 300,000. I spent more than a million. But a lot of that was on upgrades versus, you know, just getting back to base. And what I. What I really found out was that if I was all excited about working on something and I asked for data and I got the data back. Like I said, six, eight weeks later. It's really frustrating because by then your motivation is a little bit kind of flagged. And so I found that rapid feedback is really important for making personal change. That's why I like my oura ring or any test where, oh, I sent it off, I got it back in a few days. So you, you got all your stuff, you spent some money and then you had a bunch of different, really just written reports. So as someone who knows a little about manipulating data and all that stuff, what did you do?

So this is, you touched on motivation and this is one of our core pillars here at base. Really quickly, before answering your question, something that I did after all of that was, you know, after looking at Bulletproof as the brand that was the most informed on the clinical field from a data perspective on keto diet and right, like how to be, how to basically craft a diet that it's balanced and it makes sense with your biology. I, you know, I started studying your books. Literally, like, kind of like underlying, like, okay, I have to do this and that. And as a super busy person and engineer, what also struck me was, hey, I know that I have to do all of these things, but if I could only know what to prioritize right now. Is it like my magnesium is really low, so I have to make sure that I incorporate these things into my diet or my vitamin deficient, my vitamin deficiency? Is it that I should be focusing more on balancing my fats and my carbs? What is it really the thing that I should be prioritizing today? I found data as that source that will keep me motivated. For example, right after that. And then you mentioned that startup that I went to, that I transitioned into, backed by Khosla in the lab industry and so forth. What I quickly learned was that knowing that you have that monitoring and that lab test coming is really motivating. It kind of helps you to stay on track and to break things down for humans that have other things going on, but still want to invest in being healthier and feeling better. So that's the part that it's really interesting for me just to tie it back to the story and to answer your question, what I did back then, and this was the shocking part, I mentioned that my cholesterol was high. Can you guess what the doctor told me?

Let me guess, he told you that you needed to go on a low fat corn or low fat diet. If you eat fat, it should be corn or Soy oil or canola oil and then wanted to put you on statins. Did I get it right?

So, yeah, pretty much. And the fact that really shocked me was that he wanted to put me on medication. You know, like, let's keep an eye on these, and if it keeps being high, we'll put you through medication. To me, that was shocking because, well, you're from Spain.

Right. Things are more sane on the other side of the ocean around it.

Exactly. I mean, healthcare is so different there. And that's. Right. Like, one of our approaches at base is healthcare. Data should be affordable, should be accessible. It should not be managed by, you know, these middlemen that they just want profit from drug prescriptions and a few other things. And I think that ultimately not to really bash doctors again. I went to med school, and I know where they're coming from. They just had too much on their plate. Right. You cannot be the best at, like, helping someone not to die. Right. Or like, bringing someone from death to life and then also helping someone with nutrition and exercise and having the user interface to be the coach. And it's just too much. Right. So I think that that's what we also know at base, that doctors just have too much going on.

So we should mention base. So I've kind of walked through your path and how you became aware of what was going on, how you solved the problem and you started a company called base in 2019, and congratulations, you've raised $2.1 million. But now you have board members, don't you?

We actually raised a little bit more lately, but we are announcing that round a little bit down the line, but super. We have really VIP people coming onto the cap table, which makes me super excited.

Congratulations. That's amazing. So you took this experience and you said, all right, and I'm going to paraphrase this, but your thinking really appeals to me. But you're stack ranking what to do so that you can tell someone the most important thing that'll give you the most roi. And now that's kind of language out of superhuman. But what's going to give you the most energy to do first? And that actually creates relaxation in people. Because the biggest thing I hear from people like, oh, my God, Dave, you have 3,000 blog posts and 900 hours of podcasts, and that's two years of college worth of content. You know, how would I know where to go first? Right. And you're saying, well, let's look at your blood tests, and then we can tell you where to go first, which is something that I absolutely support. Are you working with doctors to do this? Are you going direct to consumers? Both. I know you have a consumer play, but is this something that my doctor could work with you on?

We work with doctors and algorithms to what's going on on a base in the background is. And you mentioned your. Right. Like your audience is like, okay, there's a lot of content here. Where do I start? So there are two starting points. Typically or someone. So typically someone is struggling with a given symptom. Let's say they are brain fog or fatigue like me. Or they can't sleep, they feel really weird when they eat. Or on the other hand, you just want to monitor you're feeling okay, but you just want to feel better and be on the driver's seat of your health. Now what we do is we combine data. We use the data that has been out there for, you know, many, many years, that it's biochemistry and clinical trials. And basically what we are doing is sitting doctors at the table and being like, okay, if someone comes to you and they are fatigued and brain fog, what would you be looking into? At the same time, we complement that opinion with data. And we looked at 80% of us adults are deficient in vitamin D. So chances are that when someone is trying to understand what's wrong with their energy, vitamin deficiency is typically the first spot to look. Which, by the way, we are seeing crazy deficiencies these days after Covid, which is super interesting.

Vitamin D because everyone's indoors. You're saying specifically D deficiency?

Yes, yes. We are really seeing the average on 18, like under 20, which the lap range starts in between 20 and 22. It's really interesting to see how Covid is affecting people's lives.

Where do you recommend based on the algorithms that you're using? What's the target level for vitamin D that you guys are supporting?

Typically, we say around 50. Depends on the given profile and the medical history and so forth. Because we don't want to have vitamin D high for people that can have certain heart disease risk and a few other things. So we typically aim for something above 50, between 50 and 70.

So relative. So my number is 70. I usually tell people around 70 and up to 90, but only if they're taking K2 with it as well. Do you guys talk about vitamin K in your stuff as well?

Slightly. I have to check, but I'm not super familiar. I know that we talk about magnesium, K and A when we're talking about.

I put those together without magnesium in a formula because magnesium has so many pills and people need varying amounts. But it's cool because you're going to show someone data wise how to do this. But, and what I wasn't sure about your Dr. Interface, but what I do like is look, you're going to look at blood and saliva, but not the vials. And this is something that makes me really angry about old school lab testing. You can get a test kit. In fact, one time I had a thousand dollar test kit from some company and I went into one of the two incredibly rigid and dumb lab analyzing companies that are out there. Companies like LabCorp and they're set up kind of like a convenience store model. There's kind of everywhere. But you can't come in and say I need someone to pull my blood and stick it in this vial so I can mail it off. Like, oh, we don't do that. You have to just do our test. So even getting my blood drawn took, you know, several hours to call around, find the right place and go do it. And that's not sustainable. Most of us have a life and a job. So the fact that the tech has moved along so you're just getting, you know, an at home, just prick your finger kind of thing and you can get your vitamin levels from that just as well as you could from liquid blood the way we used to have to do it. Right.

Exactly. And given that I worked at the lab industry briefly for around a year and a half, I can speak more to that process. But at a high level they are getting slightly better. Quest and LabCorp and so forth. We indeed work with Quest as well. So let's say that you are really averse to Fingerprick. You can in theory go with your base app and walk into a Quest center and being like, hey, I'm a base patient.

Quest is actually going to let you do that.

Yeah, yeah, we, that's a new thing.

Did you torture them to make them do that or were they nice?

There were a lot of conversations, you know, teaching them how this is how the market is, you know, moving forward. And this is just, you know, more customers for them. And we really want accessibility and ease of use for our patients. So that was, it was multiple conversations, escalating that those conversations too. But eventually they got there. I think that they generally, they get it. They just are not able to coordinate to move in that direction. But they are trying to, they're learning now that consumers have needs and they have a minimum bar that you should be meeting. And I think that the problem of the healthcare system is that it was not designed with the consumer interest in mind. But now things are changing. So it's really great to see companies like LabCorp and Quest collaborating with companies or startups like this.

That makes me happy. And the experiences I had were several years ago. And what's happening is that I believe that you should have the right to get any data you want at home without needing a permission slip from a doctor. And it's a fundamental human right. No one has the right to say you're not allowed to measure your own heartbeat. No, this is my data. And if I want to know what's going in there and if the test isn't licensed by some government agency, I don't actually care. It's my data. And if I want to take my blood and send it to an astrologer who's going to say your blood is influenced by Venus, hey, maybe I'm just being a little weird there, but it's my right. And so by democratizing access to data and just saying, look, we're going to send you a kit, we're going to run your numbers for you and we're going to show you what's going on. I just support that as it should be as free and as fast and as widely available as possible. It's never going to be free. But I love it that you're making it understandable because the number of random lab tests I have in a folder, all in different formats on my computer going back 20 years, it's insane and it's just not something that I want to deal with. And I feel like you're making the simplest decisions data guided instead of just a shot in the dark. I've often said that the reason I had to spend a million dollars to upgrade myself is I didn't know which quarter million dollars was the right quarter million of that to spend. Right. Because I didn't have a sacrament list. So I'm like, I'll just do the whole list. And I recognize that A, I'm very fortunate to have been in a position as, you know, a tech engineer and all that to be able to afford it. But also I didn't think I could keep working if I didn't do it because my brain wasn't working. And if you're doing deep tech work and you can't think, you're going to be unemployed. And I was very worried about that. So there's a sense of desperation that led me down this path. How desperate were you when you decided you were going to go down the Data science for health path and start.

To base on scale of, you know, 1 to 10, probably an 8. And as you said, right. Like you were someone that was super motivated to learn and improve. And what we believe is that you're on the side of the spectrum that was super, super motivated. But what we also want to help is the people that cannot afford it, that need, they need that little push to, you know, start improving, getting to the root cause of their symptoms. And as you said, I was desperate in a way that it's, hey, I've been brain fog and fatigue and I cannot do the things that I love. I finished work, I have these plans and I cannot do them. I physically can't do them. And it's so frustrating because you're, you feel like you're missing out in life. And it is so frustrating that I have all of the tools in the world to buy things, as we said, for social networking and a few other things. And I just cannot look at my body data to learn why this is happening today. It's really hard to even know where to start. You're blocked. You're fully blocked. So what do you do? You go to Dr. Google, you start trying out random things. I think that you did it right. Right. Like, you went and you, you building blocks of knowledge and understanding the medical side of it. But as you said, for those that don't have that time to start learning from scratch, you go to Dr. Google and then you start to randomly try out things. Chances are that typically you're not going to solve it using Dr. Google. So we see a lot of users that come to us because they've been trying melatonin for months and they just still cannot sleep. And guess what? When we go and give them their first test that we typically look at into their circadian rhythm, they are not producing enough melatonin. They have really, really low levels. And it's like, hey, there's something here going on. You were taking a lot of melatonin a few months ago, you were overdosing. Now your body's not producing that melatonin. Let's go and understand, right? Why are you not producing that melatonin? While in the meantime, let's give you fixes that could help us, could help you get to a better quality of life. So we definitely see a lot of people desperate. I was desperate myself, but I was even more frustrated just seeing all of the tools that I have available at a big tech company that were not used for the right things.

I want to mention now, too that you're kind enough to offer 20% off for listeners. So get-base.com Dave, you guys can go there, use code Dave and save 20%. It's pretty affordable. Anyway, what do you guys charge for signing up?

We are 59.95amonth. We believe in continuous monitoring and testing to get to the root cause of your symptoms or to just monitor the things that you care about.

Wait a minute. Are you saying that if you make a change, you should test again after the change?

Yes, of course.

That's pretty radical. You should just take some drugs. I mean, come on. So this idea of make a change, see if it went in the right direction, make a change, see if it went in the right direction. It's how you do it. And it's just inconvenient. At least it was. But the idea that how often do the tests come.

You can choose in between monthly or quarterly, depending on the type of user that you are. So depending on those, you would go into these two type of subscriptions. I think that also something that you mentioned, if you have a specific symptom, we can go and run $1,000 worth of tests or we can look into the highest ROI type of test. So, for example, looking into vitamin deficiency first and then depending on those results, let's say that your, you know, your vitamins are low or they are high or they are pretty much in the middle range. We'll know, depending on your profile, where to keep looking. So it's more like a continuous path to start looking into your data. Instead of running a lot of tests, you get your results in, you go on one way and we go in a different way. What we do and the way base works is that we believe fundamentally that it's going to take a little bit of time, let's say two to three months to get to the root cause of certain symptoms and fully understand the full picture. Then, as you said, in order to improve, it's not a one size fits all. And you also need to know exactly to what extent a certain supplementation or diet change is working for you. Not only that, but let's say that you are monitoring your health. For me, I use base today as a way to like check with my health. So, for example, a funny story, I just got my diet track results and for this one, base was checking my lipid, spinal and sugar. We look into several things within the diet track. But what's funny was that during quarantine I found this gelato store that quote unquote, could be healthy and I never eat refined sugar, but I'm like, you know what? This life is hard right now. I'm just going to start cheating and eating ice cream sporadically at night. At the same time, I reduced my workout activity because we work in a soft launch base. What happened was that my results got to my base app and of course my HDL was low and my triglycerides rate started to go up. It's a nice reminder that it was nice cheating and not working out for a little while, but it's time to get back on track. That's what we fundamentally believe at base, that continuous testing is the way to improve, really learn about your body and learn what things work for you, because again, it's not a one size fits all.

You know, I, I so just, just value that perspective because if you don't test what happens when you cheat, you are going to want to cheat. And anytime you're doing, like, the continuous glucose monitoring, you're doing regular ketone strips or breaths, any of those things just keep you on track so you can see what you're doing. Are you worried that when you're working with all the algorithms for base, that, okay, you're recommending a blood level higher than the Mayo Clinic recommends for vitamin D, for instance? Are you worried that people are going to come and say, you know, you're, you're not scientific or something like that? Like, how do you deal with, with that kind of, you know, we must do it the way we've always done it, even though we have more obesity and diabetes and all these other things than ever before. How do you balance that out as an actual company?

That's a great question. We actually don't fully recommend a given level because we don't want to get our hands dirty in that conversation. So what we do is like, hey, based on your profile, we give you an optimal score. So we gamified the whole process and we calculate 100 around over 50. As you said, we see great reports for people that might be at 70, 80, but then you have the medical community that saying, like, hey, but you can have calcium in your heart if you have high vitamin D levels, so forth. So we basically show you the laboratory range, and then we have a healthy range that will go something along the lines of between 30 to, let's say, 90. And then the 100% optimal score will be around that 55, 60 over 50. As I mentioned, what we do is basically saying, you're still going to be healthy within this range because it's also not Our position to go and say that something that is outside of the lab range would be or something that is within the lab range is not healthy. But we frame it as an optimization score. And then where we do have an opinion and give people recommendations is once you get your results, we match your results with clinical trials. So we've actually spent one year data mining thousands of clinical trials pre aging them because you know the scientific community, sometimes they publish things. Walnuts are great for you and this may be a bad example, but you go and you look at the map of the results of that clinical study and whether you see that 60, 70% of users had a great experience eating wellness to decrease their triglycerides, maybe you have 20% of outliers. I think that that's important for base to understand everything that's going on with certain levels and how they correlate with symptoms. And where we do really recommend things is based off your results. As I mentioned, we match your data with clinical trials out there supervised by functional medicine doctors. And then we start telling you what changes to incorporate on your diet, supplements to take lifestyle and so forth in a way that it's very digestible. So we only give you the top four things that you could be doing at a time and those things refresh every couple of weeks.

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Exactly.

Now there's another part of the algorithm and I want to dig a little deep on this is you're saying, okay, we're going to make personalized supplement and lifestyle recommendations. So many times I've seen lifestyle recommendations that mirror like the American Dietetic association guidelines. These are the people who give you diet jello and like corn syrup and stuff in hospitals that they do not know how to feed you. Like they should call it the American Diabetic association because they cause diabetes with their recommendations. So where do you get the knowledge on lifestyle recommendations? Because I, and I started writing all this stuff down because people had told me exactly the opposite of what I should be doing. They oh, cut saturated fat. I'm like, no, stuff like that. So how do we know that your lifestyle recommendations are actually the right ones?

Short answer is we are not certain, but we have a good level of confidence. Again, it's not a one size fits all. And we give you the tools for you to learn that this is actually the right change for you, for you to measure it. Right. So what we are looking into is not other people's opinions. We don't want that. We are directly looking into the data points of click clinical trials. Now take this with a grain of salt. You know, maybe the scientists that published that specific study decided to not to publish the data points. You know, things could be, the context could be different. But what we are doing is collecting those data points of evidence. So let's say that for example, again your HDL is super low or your triglycerides are really high. And now we see a lot of evidence that walnuts will help you bring those triglycerides down or you know, reducing fruit if this is actually what you are doing right now, having too much fruit. We are compiling those data points of intervention to biomarker change with a given direction and with a given intensity. We parse that, we put that into a database that it's interpreted by an algorithm. We also supervise cases on a biweekly basis with functional medicine doctors to also bring that expertise in that opinion, but with the baseline of the data to start with. That's something that I found really interesting, as you said, because the scientific community is also trying to catch up with the way we evolve. So, for example, the keto diet. My problem with the keto diet is that I was relatively early on, you were talking about all of these things, but no one else was the result that I, you know, I got thyroid issues. Now, if you go online, you find out really quickly why. Because the scientific community and people started to pick up. So now what we want base to have an opinion here is to give you the measuring stick for you to start looking into how certain things affect your specific levels based on what you care about. And that's all we, you know, all we are thinking or all we care is that you understand that there's already evidence about your levels that you can, you know, take that, ingest that, but also that you should be measuring that to see how much it's helping you. And hopefully it's helping you.

And I think over time, what happens with a setup like you have, you'll see. Well, if our recommendation is this and you're asking in your quiz, okay, are you, what are, what are you doing? You'll actually have the data point out that the recommendations don't work so you can change them. And this was what's been lacking from the world at large in health. It should have been obvious back when I weighed 300 pounds and I worked out an hour and a half a day, six days a week for 18 months on a low fat, low calorie diet, by the way. I stayed fat at the end of that. But it should have been obvious what that would do to me, right? And it, it did actually break my thyroid and it did add muscle, but I did not lose fat. It was at least not very much. But the recommendations were something that I followed without good labs in the very early days of this stuff. And it was only after that that I started getting labs and really digging in on the data. And I had that, that kind of horrible realization that, oh, my God, I've been doing stuff that doesn't work. And if I could have compared my Data, you know, 20 years ago, say, and if I could have compared my Data, you know, 20 years ago with other people doing same kinds of things, we would have very quickly learned as a society that, oh, this, you know, low fats eat a lot of Omega 6 seed oil, it doesn't work. Our population data goes down. Are you using machine learning or any sort of deep algorithmic analysis to figure out whether your lifestyle and supplement recommendations are doing what you think they're going to do?

Not yet. We don't have enough. Like the sample size is not big enough. And anyone that tells you that they're going to use AI in your health data, take it with a grain of salt. After working in big tech, I can tell you that typically you want at least 10 to 100,000 data points. If you don't have. So for example, clinical trials are controlled, right? They have certain rules, they have guidelines. But when you are out in the wild for base, we really, you know, we cannot be super certain that someone has been taking certain supplements. Religious, they may tell you so, but it may not be accurate. So you need a big sample size in order to start plugging in machine learning, which is our plan and something that we always compare based to its company KPIs. Right? What we, if we, if I gave you the analogy of a company KPI, how does a company fundamentally achieve their goals and get there? They establish certain KPIs that correlate with that goal and they just measure that, track that and work towards improving those KPIs. And that's what we basically do at base, right? Those KPIs will be your biomarkers that will correlate with your goals. So depending on what are your goals and what's your profile and what you care about, we're going to decide and determine what are going to be the major KPIs that we're going to be looking into. And then we're going to work together towards improving those. Such as. You can start feeling better now as you said, right? Like in order to give you recommendations based on AI, we are going to need to be able to have at least 10 to 100,000 subscribers doing those specific recommendations. But in the meantime we look into those randomized clinical trial trials and source the data from there, mixing that up with the experts opinion.

In 2006 I started one of the early self service at home lab testing companies. We were looking for immune activation to all sorts of stuff. So we were doing like a radioactive white blood cell counter which is a really horrible hard to collect test. So that's why I ran into so many problems with the big lab testing companies who didn't want to deal with drawing blood and whatever. And we ended, we did end up getting a contract to do it, but then I always ran into the New York State issue where citizens of New York are not allowed to have access to their health data. Only in that one state because the testing guidelines are bizarre. Can you send test kits to New York?

We do, actually, yes. And we are in conversations, very frequent conversations, with the New York State Department of Health. The thing for New York State Department of Health is that it has billing complexity. So we have to make sure that we meet with those guidelines for the health data. There needs to be a doctor involved. We went through reviews with the Department of Health and the fact that, as I mentioned, phase brings. They bring the doctors in for reviewing the data, making sure that the recommendations are not too crazy. We clearly say that within those recommendations that they are not medical advice. So meeting certain guidelines, we are able to operate in New York State, which is great. We actually. Fun fact. When we launched for the first time, we got a truck, an all glass transparent truck that we decorated as a home. And we put that in the streets of New York City for 12 days. That's when we started talking to the Department of Health just to make sure that we could have a phlebotomist there, a lab picking up samples from a truck. Again, this looked like a home. So take that with a grain of salt. I have found them, again, to be conservative. I can understand where they are coming from. And I think that if you really do your homework, there is a way to meet those guidelines and still make health data accessible and also affordable to people in New York.

I really appreciate that you've gone to that work. I know hundreds of New Yorkers I've talked to who have a separate address outside of New York so they can get access to lab testing.

That's hilarious.

Like, I just drive across the bridge, pick up my packages or have them forwarded, and then they. They do it anyway. So I'm glad you were able to navigate that because New York needs to become standardized with the rest of the country and just say, hey, you're allowed to get whatever lab test you want. You know, what do I know? That that whole, you know, health freedom thing where you should be able to, you know, do what you want to your own biology.

Exactly.

Now, what about the government side of this? Is this something that would be covered by flexible spending accounts by health insurance? Or is this just entirely like, I'm managing my own biology?

You actually can use your HSA and FSA dollars for base today, which is great. We have plans to talk to insurance companies and we are really talking to Aetna and some cvs Health and a few others. The plan here is to show them the data that this is actually helping people people's health and you know, helping people feeling better in order to start having regular insurance cover for base as well. You always have, as a company of this nature, you can always go directly to employers that they care about their employees and they are more forward thinking and open minded. So, you know, that's definitely one route that we can go with. In the meantime, I really, really feel passionate about the government path. I'm originally from Spain. So you don't pay a cent when you go to Spain to the doctor.

I live in Canada. Same thing up here. You just go in there and they do whatever.

Right, Exactly. And it's still so interesting that I go to the doctor in Spain. I don't go to the doctor here. I, every time I go back home I, you know, I visit all of my doctors, I get, you know, all of my tests done, which is hilarious because here I'm scared. You know, I have good insurance, but I don't know what the bill and the copay and you know, whatever they're going to make up going to come back to my place, I'm scared. Which is so interesting about what are they going to charge me this time? And I don't think that humans should be living that way. At least it should be upfront. That's number one. And number two, I think that the price is definitely inflated, which is really sad. Really quickly, a story that I think it's important to surface will be. Some things could be good for you as well, but to what extent? So for example, we are seeing a lot of of CBD and Ashwagandha drinks that are absolutely excellent for your cortisol levels. Now when I have too much of that, my cortisol levels go into the lower side, which is super interesting. So again, like this same thing, right? Like how data could also show you how things could be good until you have too much, too much of that thing.

I can't believe that you brought that up. That is so cool. Low cortisol is way more dangerous than high cortisol. And by the way, low insulin is more dangerous than high insulin, which is shocking. So the idea of having the right amount instead of this caveman level cortisol bad. You do not want to be a low cortisol person. I've been one for a long time. And so for me a supplement that's meant to lower my cortisol at the wrong time is going to be counterproductive and it's that way for so many people. And you want brain fog, don't have enough cortisol. You want bad sleep, don't have enough cortisol. So the idea of finding the Goldilocks zone for hormone versus it's good or bad. That's what precision data does. And it's, it's such a big deal. Do you actually see a lot of low cortisol? I'm really intrigued. This is kind of one of my personal pet peeves. There are people you know are like good or bad, but it's not like that.

We do, I would say maybe out of the cortisol that it's out of balance. 70% it's high cortisol and 30% is low cortisol. And people are, the first thing that they ask in the customer service chat is like, wait, wait, I thought that low cortisol was a good thing. And we're like, no, no, no, no, no. We need to get high fiber diet moving. We have to do a few changes here. But definitely it's not a good thing.

What if people are in? Okay, like I say, I don't know, I eat the bulletproof diet, right? So I'm going to avoid nightshades because I figured out there are suspect food that actually is guilty in my case or people are saying I'm mistakenly plant based at 100%. They usually don't say mistakenly until they see their data. But, um, how do you, how do you account for, you know, dietary belief systems that may or may not be science based in your recommendations? I mean, if you tell a vegan to eat meat, they're only going to do that when they're on death's doorstep from their vegan diet. But until then they just get pissed off. So how do you allow people to customize recommendations? Or do you.

I'm going to quote you on something that I heard of one of your podcast ones that is you don't necessarily tell people what to do. You tell them how you feel better and then they'll eventually get there. So for example, if someone marks that they are vegetarian or vegan and they have iron and B12 deficiencies, we're going to do everything that is in our hand to help you fix that. And eventually if you're not fixing it when you're doing everything that it's out there in the evidence, then you at least know and then you can start reflecting on. Do I go with disbelief or like, ultimately, what's the long term effect that I'm, you know, putting my body through here. So at least you show them and they'll eventually, you know, they'll get there.

Okay, I, I love that you can show people what's working. And one of my favorite discussion points, and you can be a healthy vegetarian with some work, but to be a healthy vegan is almost universally impossible. And you might be able to be, okay, healthy, but there are levels of greater health still accessible to you. But the question is, how's that working for you right now? And there's one is, how do you feel? Right. And then the other one is, what do your labs look like? And if there's someone who is vegan and they have great labs and they feel amazing, good for you. Like, you're the one in a million or whatever the number is. And that's okay, right? It's just that how's it working? And most of how it's working is invisible because until you've done enough lab work that you can actually know, oh, this is what it feels like when I have low blood sugar or low blood pressure, or this is what it feels like when I have too much iron or not enough iron. And I actually know how those feel in my body because I've had such rich access to the data for that long period of time. But am I going to detect whether my copper is a little too high outside my red blood cells? Probably not, to be perfectly honest. Um, that's why I get my data and it's so much work, and I've become a pretty strong expert in it because I had a need to do it. And for you to take a lot of that, you know, years of study out of the equation, because frankly, no one's going to do that unless they're really sick. So I, I think that's the function of the algorithms and the recommendations you guys are making. So I think it's. It's a really meaningful addition to the world of biohacking because we have companies like Viome doing, they've got bacteria stuff that's really good, and we have companies like the DNA company looking at functional genomics, and that's really good. But then that, like, checking in. Okay, I've incorporated all these different pieces of advice, but is it working? And it's that final piece. And if it's not, how do I directionally change things without knowing everything? I think that's cool. And that means if you want to take some weird peptides or some kind of Russian pharmaceutical, you can still say, well, hey, maybe it magically changed my inflammation. And I'm know superhuman now, but it should show in your labs and maybe it will. Do you have some sort of functionality in the app that lets me, like, take notes. Here's all the other weird stuff I tried.

Not today, Definitely in the roadmap. It's interesting because I want to do that personally because I cheat and I started cheating now that I'm more busy. And it's just helpful to know, like, okay, how this is something that will never show up in the app, right? Like cheating and what not to do. We don't get too much in there, but at least to be able to mark certain things and to start noting for myself as months go by and as years go by. Hey, you know, remember that this is what ice cream did to you, right? Or in order to discover new products. You said it yourself, right? Like, maybe there is this new, new your product that comes out of nowhere, that people think that it's black magic, that it actually works. We would love for base to learn about those scenarios, such as then we can plug in the AI component and we can start recommending that to other people that are similar to the ones that are having success with that specific product. So that's something that as we grow and we get more data points who like to start incorporating within the app.

Okay, I, I really like that. I really like that answer. I like that perspective. And over time I would hope that right now I tend to put it in my Oura Ring app. You know, they have a little ability to take notes and then I correlate it with my heart rate variability. So I, I do think that the advanced biohackers are going to want to do this. But for people who are listening, who aren't biohackers, and there's tons of people who are just saying, I want to be healthy, I want to feel good, I want my energy, I want to lose weight, whatever that ability to say, I wonder whether what I'm doing right now with this bag of potato chips is working. So you can put the bag of potato chips somewhere and track it and it would probably be helpful if that's in the app. Because then you're saying, Look, I had 50 doses of potato chips and what did my inflammation markers, my blood lipids and my hba1c.com, maybe I should back off. So those kinds of things, that's what causes behavior change. What doesn't do it is shame and self loathing and all the things that certainly have been a path of almost anyone who's been really obese. It becomes Something that's probably there at one point that you may deal with, you may not, and you can deal with it whether or not you lose weight. But I think the data there and the connecting behavior to results changes behavior, which is awesome. Lola, if there is one lab test that you think everyone on the planet should do first, given all that you've seen, what would that one lab test be?

That's a hard question. I'm going to go with vitamin D today specifically, just because it's so, so important and I know that the clinical community discussion keeps, you know, getting research studies out on how it correlates with absolutely everything. Everything is interconnected. At the end of the day, it makes sense. Right. If you don't have the key component to make energy, everything else falls apart, which. Right. Like if your phone runs out of battery, of course nothing else is going to work. Well, it's off.

Yeah.

So I'll, I'll go with vitamin D.

Well, I've been pretty active on social media lately saying that if I had a choice between a vitamin D test and a COVID test, I would choose the vitamin D because I can do something about it. And if you have low vitamin D, you have a much higher percentage of getting really sick from COVID So that's an actionable data point. Whereas whether you have some PCR tests that may or not be useful is really just more of a curiosity than something that you can take action on. So I'm not saying you shouldn't get a COVID test. I'm just saying vitamin D is what gives you resilience. So I love it that of all the things you could have talked about, that's it. Now, if people want to go to get-base.com and use code Dave and save 20%, which of the paths do they need to go down that includes a vitamin D test.

Typically, they would choose energy.

Energy. Okay.

Yeah, you can always. Because you can choose multiple tracks as well. If you do the quiz you're unsure. You can do the, the specific quiz to know which track you should prioritize depending on what's going on in your life. You can also, once you join, you have access to our team. You can also specify if you have interest in particular tests and we can make sure to accommodate your, your opinions and your desires. I think that there's definitely a world out there, people that, they are already doing testing and they maybe, you know, are interested in more in one test more than the other one. So you can also, if you are, you know, an expert and A biohacker. And you know everything about, you know about this. You can certainly tell us, hey, I actually want to go for this test or these other ones.

Well, congratulations on your startup and congratulations on recovering your own health and ability to think and pay attention and all those things that many people take for granted, but you really only notice them when they're gone. Pretty far away. If you're listening to this right now, and even once today, you've been reaching for a word that didn't just pop into your head, there's a reason for that. So there's all sorts of distance and length between I'm running the way I'm capable of running, and I'm running where I am now, which feels pretty good. So it's the little things like that that say, maybe there's something that I could do. And it doesn't mean you need to judge yourself for that. It just means that there might be room for improvement. And I've gone from many times a day grasping for words or I can't remember that or whatever, to the point that it's incredibly unusual. And if it does happen, I'm like, wow, for me, that's a marker that says something's off. In fact, I can usually predict what I did that caused it, and I can predict what to do to. To take it back. You do not want to spend a million dollars and 20 years learning how to do that. I think you can do it better with labs, to be perfectly honest, and so you can get your base stuff handled. See what I did there? And you can get that. That handled relatively easily and for just a tiny fraction of what I had to spend. And I think there's just great merit to it. So thank you for putting this together. I know that taking the level of software knowledge and thinking that you have and getting this incredibly messy data set, putting it into algorithms and doing all the process around, getting lab tests available like this is no small task. And I'm really happy you're doing it.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

If you liked today's episode, you, you know what to do. Maybe get your vitamin D levels tested, and you can probably do that at your local doctor. Or if you don't want to go to the doctor and you don't mind pricking your finger, you could do that with the base test. And it's totally worth doing. I already mentioned the code a couple times. Use code Dave there and it can be. Can save you some money. And if you decide you're not going to do any of that stuff. Well, at least think some kind thoughts because if you do that regularly, your labs will improve too. Have an awesome day.

A Human Upgrade Formerly Bulletproof Radio was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.