How Knowing About Your Genetic Risks Can Inform Your Health Choices: 40

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Today I am talking to the CEO of SelfDecode, Joe Cohen, and he is going to share with us some things about, first of all, as we always do at this podcast, about his personal health journey, kind of how he got to this point where he wanted to get more into biohacking and ended up starting this company. I think it's a really interesting backstory. And then we'll share with you guys a little bit about why actually learning more about your DNA can help impact your overall health and wellness. So anyway, welcome, Joe. If you could do that little self-introduction, that That would be amazing.

Awesome. Thanks for having me. So I'm the CEO and founder of SelfDecode. I had a long history in healthcare. How did I get to this? I basically had a lot of health issues, just you name it. I was suffering from everything. I always like to say that I won the lottery of bad genes and it's just, I've been trying to always figure out like, what are these bad genes that I have? How do I make it so that I actually perform better than people that don't have as bad genes as me, right? And, you know, just growing up, I had fatigue, brain fog, gut problems, you know, sick all the time, immune issues, mental health issues, kind of like a lot of these chronic issues that you see, you know, especially in, like, I mean, I wasn't old, I was very young, right? So this is already in high school. And so I, you know, just I had to fix my issues or I wasn't going to live a normal life. That was very clear to me. And so I was at one point I was unemployed. I was, you know, I was antisocial, didn't have any relationships, was just like disabled, completely disabled. And I didn't know what to do. And I just said, okay, I have to fix my health or else I'm done. Right. It's just like I'm going to live a life of poverty, being alone, you know, being— having mental health issues, being unhappy. And that's not the life I want to live. So I basically said my main focus in life is going to fix my issues. And that's when I started to stumble upon DNA lab tests, Precision Health, analyzing my symptoms, analyzing my lifestyle. And it was through that journey that I had very— I mean, it really was a game changer. And I said, I need to— my life's mission is to build these tools in order to help other people that are not willing to make this their full-time job, right? People needed answers right away. And I just identified that you need software, you know, AI, machine learning, and targeted content for what you need and for your genes, not just some fine, you know, not something generic like, oh, this worked for me and it's going to work for you. And, uh, this, you know, just like a dogma. It was like, let's use science, let's use software, let's use AI, and let's bring this together into a platform that people can really use to optimize their health.

Yeah, and that's how I first became aware of it because I, as Everybody that listens to the podcast knows I'm very into all that kind of stuff and stumbled across your service, went ahead and checked it out. One of the things I really like about it, and if people aren't familiar with this, a lot of people are probably more familiar with DNA testing through something like a 23andMe or ancestry.com. That's how I first had gotten mine done. But what a lot of people don't know is that you can actually, once you've had your DNA, you know, taken from— you usually swab your mouth or spit it in a cup, you get a printout of basically all the raw data. And then you can take that raw data and you can import it into services like yours that give you a lot more insight into not just ancestral things, but what a lot of companies like yours— and I think you guys do it really well— are focused on now is, is giving these health insights to people so that they can really learn more about their DNA to impact their health. So as you're going through this journey, Joe, what was one of the first things— I mean, I'm assuming at some point you probably checked out something that was existing, you got your DNA, you took it. How did you start to put together these pieces of— you know, basically a visual representation for people of health insights? Like, what were some of the first things that you ran across that, you know, led you to do— led you to design the software in this way, I guess, is what I'm trying to get at here.

Right. So, I mean, the first version of the software was somewhat designed with how I was looking at it. And also, yeah, I mean, basically, like, How I did it initially was actually like literally look, reading up on studies, and then looking up on my text file, like if I had a variant or not.

Right?

That's, that's literally how I did it.

A lot of labor.

Yeah, I tried to use other softwares, but they were all bad. And I was just like, okay, it kind of just started off as let me like, find a way that I'm just gonna like, be able to look up SNPs easier, like these variants easier. But then it was just clearly like, okay, people want— people are not as nerdy as me. They want very clear answers. They want to know, they want us, SelfDecode, to do the hard work for them and they just want to see the results. And so that was kind of like the, you know, the mission from there. Was how do we make this, you know, as rigorous, scientifically rigorous as possible? And then also, how do we present it in a way to the consumer that they understand it as well as possible? And that's what we've been working on since then. I mean, and I think, I mean, I think we did a much better job than these other companies in terms of for the Health Optimizer. Groups.

Yeah, and I think it's also, uh, some people probably have some concerns around privacy or sharing their data in that way. And so it is also important to just be aware of what company that you're doing this kind of stuff with, so that, like, obviously you guys are US-based, and, um, you know, I've read your policy on all that kind of stuff. So I think that it's important for people to just realize that you're putting that out there in the world. I think people worry about that for future health insurance implications or something like that. I don't know if that's really a valid concern, but I think obviously protecting your data is always really important. So just like kind of a little side note there for people.

Um, yeah, but now that you talk to know also is that, uh, we for that reason actually we started offering our own kits, uh, a few years ago so that people can buy, uh, instead of getting something like 23andMe and they have to then who knows what's happening with your data. So just to be clear is that we also offer kits for people who either are afraid of getting, having their data leak into some pharmaceutical company or just, actually it's more accurate if we do the test itself.

That's besides the point. OK, that's good to know. So I think this is probably a good point where we can kind of— you were sharing with me before we actually started recording because like we said before, I actually have this service and I hadn't logged in for a little while. While, and you guys are a newer company and you're constantly integrating new features, new updates. So if you could share your screen again, I think what we were going to look at, you were going to kind of show us the search feature. And if you're not watching this on YouTube, you're just listening, you might want to pop over to YouTube to see this part. We're at about, you know, 7 minutes in, something like that. But we'll try to do our best to describe it if you're not watching it on video. So Joe just pulled up the SelfDecode website, and you can see on the screen that it's showing select your area of interest. And I'll just let you take it from here. Joe, since you know where you're going.

Yeah, so, uh, we surveyed customers and I said, okay, what are the things that are most interesting for you? So here is, we, we show where are the risks in the body, and it could be these are genetic risks and these are lab risks. So we have a lab platform that's also integrated into this, right? Um, so this is kind of, each of these goes into a report. And then people also said like, okay, I heard enough of, like, I read all this content, just tell me what I need to do. And so we also have a customized formula that we give you, and for each thing we tell you why it's being recommended. So for example, this is the formula that SelfDecode gives me, and it says, why am I being recommended omega-3 fatty acids? It says because I have high genetic risk for anxiety, artery hardening, high blood pressure, mood, and stress, right? I actually do very well with omega-3, and you could see more information on this. Um, but in any case, this is what consumers wanted. So we said, right.

And just to point out to people, those, when Joe pulled up that, um, screen just now on the, and pressed on anxiety, it actually linked to the studies that are relevant to that as well.

So, correct.

So people know that.

And, and by the way, you could also click on the report as a whole anxiety or, or any of these reports, right? These are all very in-depth health reports. You could click on, you know, my blood pressure as well. All these are gonna— are basically coming up because there's higher genetic risk, right? And so we, using our algorithms and AI, we look at what are the top, you know, what are the recommendations that we recommend, okay? But here's like, for example, here's just a report. You could see I'm in the 80th percentile. Generally when you're in the 80th or highest percentile, categorize that as higher risk. But luckily enough, I filled out this lifestyle assessment that shows I'm in lower risk, right? So we have these assessments for each report that shows you what your lifestyle risk is, like if you have any big lifestyle risk factors. And then we have recommendations, you know, basically like all the recommendations with showing also which gene is linked, uh, why it's being prioritized, a given recommendation. So they're all prioritized from top to bottom, uh, with the genes linked to it. And, um, so that's pretty cool. But yeah, so, you know, usually people will start from their dashboard and they could see like a bunch of different health reports on a bunch of different topics like brain, heart and blood vessels, uh, hormones. You could sort by risk if you want. And yeah, and so it's nutrients, diet and nutrition is— we have 200 topics. So very, very comprehensive stuff. And so that's kind of like how you could quickly look at like your risk for a lot of things. Slightly, you know, decreased MTHFR, higher need for riboflavin, higher need for folate. A little bit high risk of gut inflammation here. It's almost at the 80th percentile and it keeps going down. Then you could go more deeper into specific categories, sleep, metabolic health, inflammation, gut health, hormones, things like that.

Joe, can you talk a little bit in how you've been, you know, when you've been learning about all this stuff, sort of the intersection between having a gene for some— because you touched on this when you were just talking about some of the features is at the intersection between, you know, having a certain gene, its impact on your health, and that intersection with lifestyle. Because most people will have heard or know this now that just because you have a specific gene doesn't mean that it's going to express itself. It's very, uh, based on environmental factors. It's based on toxicity levels. It's based on, you know, lifestyle things. So many things. So can you talk a little bit about the, what you've been learning with those and, and why you decided— I love that you you decided to include the lifestyle evaluation in there as well, because I think, you know, without that information, you just see this 80th percentile, oh my gosh, I'm going to, like you say, you have high blood pressure. I mean, like, I'd love to hear, like, do you actually have that? Like, what was your personal experience with this intersection?

So if you weren't able to change the risk, then I wouldn't have started this company, right? The whole idea is that number one is your genetic risk is your genes don't change, right? But your epigenetics, they do change, and your risk changes as you get older. So, you know, if you're 1 years old or 90 years old, you're still gonna have the 89th percentile, let's say, I'm gonna have for high blood pressure, right? Even though kids who are 1 years old don't have high blood pressure, right? So disease that you get as you get older. So really what this is saying is, you have this tendency as you get older because you generally, for 99% of the diseases, you're not born with them, the chronic ones, right? You're not born with them. You get them as you get older. So the way to look at it is not— it's not a diagnosis tool. It's saying what your predisposition is. Now, we realize that, you know, you can have a predisposition, but then you could live a very healthy lifestyle. If you live a healthy lifestyle, guaranteed you're not going to have high blood pressure unless maybe you're like 90 years old, right? And so we also look at things like, you know, that's why we have this lifestyle assessment where, you know, it says I have reduced risk of high blood pressure. And there have been periods where my blood pressure was high, actually. And then I changed certain things. And it's now— you could see my lab results. It's now a normal, ideally healthy lab result. And so you have to measure stuff. You have to look at what your lifestyle risk is. And the reason is because I follow these recommendations here. Right. You know, there's recommendations from top to bottom of highest impact and they're categorized, they're prioritized based on my genes. And some of them are obvious. Some of them are not so obvious. Right. As you go down, it becomes less and less obvious. Um, but in any case, uh, so that's kind of the way to look at it. Now, um, let's go back here and look at some things. Uh, so the main things that we have here is the DNA. We've got labs, so we have a whole lab analyzer where you can upload labs and look at your lab results. And that's really important. Uh, for example, let's say It says I have a predisposition for high hemoglobin. Actually, my labs are usually on the higher level for that. Right. And so we have— and you could also— we allow you to shop labs, look at your results, and then obviously input your results from, you know, a PDF or something like that. You could easily upload a lab. And then you have the lifestyle analyzer that looks at your lifestyle risk for a bunch of different issues. You could categorize and say, okay, let me look at gut health. So you kind of— the way to look at it is you have to look at what, what are your, um, what are the things that you want to optimize, right? If you don't know what you want to optimize and you just want like a formula that we already gave to you, that's also possible. But typically you want to have a goal of what do you want to optimize, right? And so you'll pick a topic and then let's say if it's gut health, For me, I always like to optimize my mood. And you can see why. If you see my screen, you see that I've got high risk of mood, stress, and anxiety. And so, and those are things that I had to deal with in the past. And, you know, they're very much that there's a lot of tools that you can combat those things. And I've benefited tremendously from those things. For example, People like to know examples, like give me an example of what you learned, like specific gene or what recommendation. I would not have taken 5-HTP if not for my genes. It turned out that I had this tryptophan hydroxylase gene that was basically not producing enough 5-HTP and serotonin.

Yeah. And just for people that aren't familiar with that, 5-HTP is like the precursor for serotonin in your brain, which is kind of your happiness, or, you know, people think of it as the well-being hormone. So anyway, just for people that didn't know, I want to make sure that's like a precursor. So you can take that naturally and it's supposed to help boost levels in your brain is the way I understand it.

Correct. Exactly. So yeah, basically, like, you could see, for example, that I get— I got recommended 5-HTP and explains why. So my— I have a tryptophan hydroxylase gene, like you said, it helps, it helps make serotonin. Mine is not working so well. And when I don't take 5-HTP, my mood is very unstable. Like I'm in a bad mood most of the time. I don't know how else to say it.

Did you take it this morning? I hope.

I did. Yeah.

It seems like you're convinced.

Yeah. No, I have to. I've tried, you know, sometimes I always like doing experiments. I like to see, like, okay, let me try things that increase serotonin, um, but don't increase the 5-HTP, meaning, like, inhibit the reuptake of serotonin, right? Those are not as good as, uh, 5-HTP because for me personally, you know, my tryptophan hydroxylase gene is not working very well, right? And, and there's a few other genes also, like BDNF is a big one. And getting light and exercise is very important for that. You could— and then another one I would say is the DRD2 gene. That's the dopamine gene. So that's like, you know, that's dopamine is super important for motivation and, you know, also being in a good mood. And so I kind of have like a lot of genes. BDNF is a growth factor that also puts you in a good mood. So for me, I think like BDNF, tryptophan hydroxylase, and the DRD2 genes are super important for me. There's other ones as well, but a lot of the other ones are actually related to serotonin in some other way. So serotonin really works very well for me. And, you know, some people will be like, oh, serotonin, you know, it's not that significant for mood, whatever it is for me, right? Like, it— that's where the genes come in.

No, that makes a lot of sense, and it allows you to really do things a lot more targeted. And then of course, um, for people that can't see the screen, there's just this whole list of things that you could try to improve your mood, like exercise, like the, um, BDNF that you mentioned, brain-derived neurotropic factor, how to increase those, if there's any supplements involved, or if it's just a lifestyle factor. So, um, I'd like the way that you guys have laid that out. And this is actually, I think, changed a little bit since I even, um, first tried it. Cause I think I probably got this maybe a year ago or something like that. But, uh, I noticed like every time I log in, there's always some kind of new, uh, new report or new thing that I haven't seen yet. So it's one of the really fun things about kind of watching you guys grow as you've, you know, gone through all these different iterations of what you're offering now.

Yeah, definitely. And, and so by the way, like what, what I do is I build a regimen based on, based on the recommendations throughout the reports. And then every, every recommendation I have, basically, like, it tells me why I have that recommendation. So, for example, why am I taking berberine? It says, like, I have high LDL cholesterol and high blood sugar. Well, it's not that high. It's just a little high. And, but my LDL cholesterol is actually pretty high, and that's because I eat a lot of saturated fat. And I know there's— I know this is a keto community, and I'm a big fan of keto, but there's a lot of— I don't know, it's kind of like a big, you know, there's a big debate about whether LDL cholesterol can increase heart disease risk. For me, like, just looking at the science, it seems like it does. And so even though my cholesterol is high, it is something that I want to bring down. A lot of natural stuff bring it down, like berberine, carnitine. And so a lot of these things, like especially berberine, I started taking just for my LDL cholesterol.

Yeah. And just a side note on cholesterol, because people have heard me talk about that on here before too. Are you familiar with Dave Feldman's work at all? Because he's got some really interesting things out lately that you might want to check out for LDL.

I have looked at his work. I've seen his stuff. Now, it's a very complex field. I don't know.

It really is.

It's just like, there's a lot of— that's what I'm saying. It's like, it's not something that you can have. I mean, I feel like that could be like a 6-part podcast on its own.

For sure.

So it's like, I'm not saying you're wrong. I think like people have different opinions about it. It's just like, for me, I'm just, you know, I'll give you an example, something that might be interesting. And this is kind of what made me a little more scared. There's this new kind of research called Mendelian randomization. And what that does is it looks at, it looks at, like, what are your— and we're not doing these studies. These are published studies. It's a known method now. They started doing it in like 2015, and it's become very popular. So you know how you have all these lab markers and, you know, this is correlated with this, but is it just a correlation or just, uh, you know, an association but it's not causation? So there's a couple ways to look at if something's, uh, causative or not. Um, one of them is through clinical trials, and when you look at clinical trials, uh, Cardiovascular disease has gone down with these statins, right? Now, I don't know, you could argue what— you know, the point is, when they give statins, people's risk goes down based on the information I've seen. So that's one way of looking at it. You give a supplement or a drug or something and you see if the risk goes down. Um, they have a new method where they look at your genetic predisposition. So if you're genetically predisposed to LDL higher LDL cholesterol. Then what they do is they look at, um, you know, how likely you were you to, you know, die from cardiovascular disease or just die from all-cause mortality. Um, and they do that with like— you could find studies on everything. So they'll find people who have higher levels of vitamin C naturally, not through the diet, because the problem is, is that a lot of these studies, they're basically saying like, people who have higher vitamin C levels are much healthier. But then you find out that the people with higher vitamin C levels also eat higher levels of vegetables and fruits. And so what was the cause, the fruits or vegetables, or was it the higher vitamin C? So these studies are designed to tease that a lot out a little by saying, like, you know, people with higher tendency to vitamins, higher vitamin C or carnitine or whatever. Like, an interesting one was people with higher carnitine actually fared much better with COVID So I started taking carnitine when I got COVID. But that's, that's a, that's besides the point. But in any case, what they do these— they did a lot of these Mendelian randomization on LDL cholesterol. And all these studies are saying that the people with naturally higher levels of LDL cholesterol have more heart disease. Now, I think that if there's a lot of things that you could do that even if your LDL cholesterol is high, you can take the risk down like I've tested all my markers, like my oxido— oxidized LDL cholesterol is not high, my inflammation levels are not high. So, you know, when you look at all these things, my risk is going to be much lower, even though my LDL might be higher. But I still have to just deal with the fact that by itself it is a marker. And again, I wouldn't say I'm an expert in LDL cholesterol. I'm just kind of like, you know, I'm doing my own research and, and, and, you know, I, I do whatever I, you know, whatever to the best, you know, I could be wrong.

Well, no, I think it is a conversation. It's just what I like about what Dave is doing right now in particular, they actually are doing a clinical trial on, uh, some of that people with really high LDL doing a calcium heart scan and then rescanning because if the LDL model was correct, the sort of idea would be that you would expect to see some incremental buildup after over a year of calcium. And then—

correct.

So anyway, they are— they're at least diving into it so that those of us with high LDL—

yeah, no, he's doing a study. I think that's important. And I'd like to see if the study was published and they had very good— like, it had— it said that there was no impact from the LDL. I'd love to see that because I like—

I know I would too.

I can't eat a diet that's not with a lot of meat and like I have too many other side effects, so that's not even an option for me. It's not like, oh, my LDL is high, I'm going to do— it's like, no, I'd rather have high LDL than high inflammation. So I don't care what the hell my LDL is. I'm going to do this diet.

No, and I think that's— that's obviously what the service does is kind of gives everybody more information to make those kind of decisions for yourself, right? Because The truth is, if you really dive into some of this, we don't know. And that there was this other— I don't think it was a Mendelian randomization, but it was by the British Journal of Medicine. And they had said, as many people have high LDL as low LDL in relation to heart attacks. They're like, there's no association actually between— now, they're talking about heart attacks, which you could say, okay, getting these calcifications and whatever in your heart over time, even if you didn't have a heart attack, that's definitely not a good thing. But there's just so much information out there. And so I think knowing that this, that you have a special risk towards some of these things can help inform your decision to the best we can. 'Cause like you said, we just, some of it's like we don't know or we just do the best we can with the information that we have. And that's what knowing some of these gene things allows you to really do.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's another thing, by the way. So I think that's another factor. For example, if you have high LDL and you also have a high risk of cardiovascular disease, with disease, I think that does make a difference, right? Meaning like, because I mean, I think there's many studies that show it is a risk factor, but there might be some that show it's not. But what freaked me out is the Mendelian randomization that, you know, people with genetically higher levels of LDL have higher levels of heart disease. And so for me, I mean, like, I basically, like, and also I have cardiovascular disease in my family and I also have some higher genetic risk based on my reports. And so I'm taking it seriously. Like, I think based on all that information, I need to— I should take it seriously. I'm not going to freak out about it. Like, I think I also need to— like, I have like an order of priorities. Number one for my health is to have a good mood. If you're happy, you're going to live a long time. Right.

Yeah.

For number 2 is don't have inflammation. I mean, it's probably number 1 because inflammation caused my mood to like go down like crazy. But, you know, don't have inflammation. And for that, diet was the biggest thing for me, like eating lectins and grains and a bunch of stuff really wreaked havoc on me. And so I have a very strict diet. I only— I don't even eat eggs and dairy because I get a reaction to them, but Yeah. So diet is number one. Then like my mood is a big one. And, you know, I've got all these kinds of things. I only literally started paying attention to LDL like 2 weeks ago. And I also only take the things generally that are also anti-aging. I like the berberine. Berberine came up as one of my recommendations, but I like that it's also an anti-aging thing because a supplement because it increases AMPK. And so a lot of like anti-aging people are taking metformin. It also lowers blood sugar a lot. And my fasting blood sugar tends to be like, I don't know, 95. It's, it's not so bad, but, you know, ideal would probably be like 90 or under, like 85 to 90. So I kind of think like, okay, the berberine is good for my blood sugar. And by the way, all this information comes up too when I click on like Why am I taking berberine again? He said, you know, you have a higher risk for blood sugar, genetic risk. You have a high, you know, you have a lab that's actually high risk for LDL. And then I think like, you know, it's got— it's anti-aging because it acts like metformin and then it's got all these other benefits and it's also good against infections. I'm just— I'm going to take it. So that's kind of how it works. And then I build my regimen based on— through the app, and then I can order a customized supplement. For me personally, just to be very honest, I already have every supplement that exists. So I just like, you know, I think it's cool to get it all in one formula. And I think that like I like taking it in less formulas because having like a million bottles is like I have to spend like 2 hours opening up each bottle. I was like, oh, I need something more efficient than this. But yeah, I mean, we basically created that for because people were demanding like, oh, it would be really cool if I was just, you know, tell me what, like, because you tell people, okay, berberine, you don't tell them what kind of berberine and they start like freaking out. They don't know what the hell is going on. Like, what do I do?

How much?

Or how much? Exactly. They don't know anything that's going on. And then you're just like, all right, let's, let's go the next step, you know, walk them through it. Uh, so we try to make it as simple as possible. And then we also have, uh, the last thing I wanted to show you here actually is that, uh, we have like, it's not only just, um, you know, a platform for looking at something very specific. Right? Like I discussed mood, discussed a lot of things. I asked, I asked you, for example, what, you know, what are you most interested in? You said, okay, for example, maybe weight or whatever. So here's all the categories of stuff that we have, right? We have a report on weight, strength, sleep duration, sedentary behavior, sleep quality. Underactive thyroid, sleep apnea. Um, you know, all these things can be related to weight, and obviously the central report is going to be weight. Now you could also look at the lab markers related to weight, uh, and either you have them or you can order them. Um, you could see like estradiol, estrogen, uh, leptin, and people who have— who are overweight are also going to have higher levels of cholesterol. More likely to at least. And then you could also do a deep dive on specific variants. So you could see there's 120 variants that you can look at. There's different genes that you can look at. For example, here's the leptin receptor. And so there's tons of information that you can look at. We then have custom articles that are really cool. So, you know, about like specific genes that we really like. And so for example, FTO, This one is related to adrenaline. This one is related to the circadian rhythm, BDNF. And so you could click on these articles, for example. Let's say you click on this one, and it's, it's a custom-written article that shows you— it's like a personalized genetic article. So it's, it shows you, for example, here's your Here's all— here's your variants for this article. So it tells you, you know, not associated with obesity, associated with higher obesity, and then you can look at what variants you have over here. So basically— and then it also has recommendations. So it's really cool articles that you could read that are customized to your specific variants. And then you also have lifestyle assessments. That are related. You see there's an obesity lifestyle assessment, and then you could also shop labs related to that. So there's a weight loss lab panel, there's also a home test kit. That's essentially, you know, what we have, which is, you know, it's quite a significant platform.

Yeah, and you do that for each topic, which is crazy. It's the article, yeah, exactly, really well-researched and have all the links, so that's always useful for of people. Well, just to be respectful of your time, Joe, first of all, I just want to thank you for sharing all this knowledge and for creating this product because I think this is how some of the best products come up is a creator that has a very specific problem. You're having all these health issues yourself and you weren't finding what you needed to sort of be able to improve health and be able to accomplish what you wanted to. So, you created it. And I think that's really how the best products come because if you're thinking of it and you're a one person that's into that, you can bet that there's probably a couple other million people that wish that they had the same thing. So thank you for all of that. But before we go, can you just share with people kind of anything like what's next that you see for the company, anything cool that you're working on, and where can people most easily find you online if they want to connect and learn more either about your— you or the company?

Yeah, definitely. So One of the things we're gonna be doing is, we're gonna be expanding some of the topics and this is based on the request. So, I think it's interesting when, the way that I see the health world is like two main kinds of things, right? There's like mainstream science and then there's hypothesis-driven stuff, right? That's kind of like more on the frontier but it's not as like rigorously researched. So a lot of the stuff that we started with were— was much more rigorous mainstream science, like, like more rigorous science. Uh, like our polygenic risk scoring is most cutting-edge predictive risk scoring on the market, and that's done with— in like a mainstream kind of science way. Um, we're gonna be— now the stuff that I was more involved in, um, is more hypothesis-driven. So those are like the articles Meaning like there's science to back it up, but it's not like proven science, right? It's just like, it's kind of like you have to put a picture together. Um, so that's kind of like the stuff a lot of times that I'm interested in. We have that, that's why where the blog posts are really cool. We have 700 blog posts that you could read about a whole bunch of different genes, different topics, really dive deep and see which variants you have. So that's really cool. We already have that. But I want to go— I want to like do all the topics that, you know, that people like, like, you know, heavy metals, detox. So we're going to be getting more into those. We're also going to be doing ancestry, which is really cool. There's a reason why companies don't— only the big companies do ancestry. It's because in order to have it accurate, you need a lot of data to begin with, and these big companies have a lot of data. Uh, now the thing is, is that in order to have a very accurate, you know, the most cutting-edge polygenic risk scoring on the market, you need to have good ancestry, because every ancestry is going to have a different risk profile. And so you need to have— like, the more accurate your ancestry is, the better your predictive models are going to be, right? And so we've been actually working on ancestry just for that reason alone But because of that, we're actually— we said, you know, let's also give this to the consumer. And I think that's going to be really cool because we have— it's— we're going to be filing a patent on it, on the algorithm that we have. It's usually very difficult to file patents on that, but we have very solid technology there. And, you know, we think it's going to be, you know, one of the best Ancestry's— I mean, like The— it is— it's going to be the best algorithm on the market, uh, but we're going to have to— like, it's going to take a little bit of time to get enough data to make it better than 23andMe and stuff like that. But I'm really excited about that, um, and, uh, I think it's going to be, you know— so I, I, I like that because my goal is like, I don't want people to be like, oh, we need to use 23andMe because if we don't do that, we're— we don't We're not going to get the ancestry or whatever. I want to say like, don't, you know, we're not going to sell your data. We also have your ancestry that's going to be coming out in, in within a few months. Um, and it's, it's just as good as 23andMe. Um, and then we also have all these, you know, topics, the mainstream science topics that 23andMe doesn't have. And we also have these functional topics like heavy metals, uh, you know, some of the hypothesis-driven stuff that is really cool as well. And so that's kind of what my, you know, like, that's what I would want to see from the Genetik app. And that's what we got, the feedback we got from consumers. And so that's stuff that, you know, we're making sure that, like, we want to make sure that this is not only 2 times better than what everybody else has. It's like, my goal is like always, how do we give more and more value, you know, 10 times better than what people have right now.

Yeah, awesome. That's— I can't wait to check that out when that's released. And where's the best place besides selfdecode.com if people want to connect or get in touch with you? Is the website the best, or how do you prefer people to find you?

Yeah, I mean, selfdecode.com is a good way. On Instagram, I'm Mr. Biohacker. People are welcome to follow me if they wish.

Okay, awesome. Well, thank you again so much for sharing all of this. And if people want to check it out, of course, the links will be in the show notes. And I've found it really valuable and very interesting. If you're— I think, you know, you said something about not everybody's as much of a geek as you, but I think that that is a little bit who's attracted to this kind of stuff because I just found it very entertaining. So anyway, thanks again, Joe, and it's great to meet you.

Thanks for having me, Cheryl. It was nice talking to you.