Unlocking Peak Performance: Biohacking Strategies for Entrepreneurs | Joe Cohen

What's up guys, welcome to the Zen Hard Podcast. In this episode, I'm interviewing Joe Cohen, the founder of SelfDecode, which is pioneering precision medicine. This is a subject that I'm personally extremely interested in, and it's something that's going to change the future of health and medicine. So if you're interested in biohacking, feeling better, learning about how to optimize yourself really in any way, listen to this episode, tune in. It's filled with great information. and I can't wait to see what you think. All right. So you made it here from Miami, Joe. I was really excited about this one for a long time. I love health, biohacking, feeling good. There's so much cutting-edge information as technology is growing and exponentially getting faster and stronger. So is the medical space, the health space. People are getting access to all this cutting-edge stuff, and I know you're on the forefront of a lot of it. And being so passionate about this stuff, I've been looking forward to this conversation. And I'm a little bit out of breath because we just did some push-ups before this. So my, my open, uh, winded intro is a bit winded. But anyway, I've been excited to have this, so thank you for coming on. Maybe we could start off, just, uh, share a little bit about your journey. Um, you know, I know you had some health issues that you overcame, but for the people listening, I think it'd be a good place to start off.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. I'm also a little winded from the bush. So I got started from a relatively young age, just had a lot of different kinds of health issues, things that were not so serious like brain fog, like energy issues, insomnia, chronic inflammation. So either getting sick a lot, just kind of like a bunch of these kinds of issues that you can't go to the doctor and they'll be able to help you, right? If you go to the doctor and say, I have brain fog, they'll like try to make sure you don't have any terminal cancer or something. But beyond that, what are they going to do, right? If you're young— if, you know, if you're older and you have— you say you have brain fog, they'll just tell you, you know, maybe you have cognitive decline or something like that. But if you're young, you have these issues, they don't really have any answers. And it's known, right? There's no answers. So I got into it because I realized, okay, so doctors are learning things in a very specialized way. So if you have a cardiologist, they learn about cardiology. And I have two brother-in-laws who are doctors, and they learn about very specific things. They don't know about general health outside of what they learn on their own. And you get to see this pattern where you go to doctors, you see they don't really know the big picture. They don't know— they're not looking at this in a first principles way. And so I— my mission was to study the body and try to use as much technology and tools and information that I could make the proper decisions about how to engineer my body into better function, preventing disease. And so when I started My first thing was just try everything. That was one approach.

That's kind of where I'm at.

Yeah, that's what a lot of people do. And it was almost like my first full-time job, just trying everything. Literally, I would just do mega dosing experiments, multiple a day, day after day, just trying one thing. I would just eat like rice one day and like, okay, how do I feel on rice?

Were you keeping logs and journals and stuff like that? Or were you kind of just doing it and seeing how you feel?

I was keeping logs and journals. A lot of it was not logs and journals. It's hard to log everything.

Yeah.

But I was keeping a lot of logs and journals. And then over time, I mean, you get a general understanding of how you feel from different things. I just remembered for the most part how I feel from something. And so I was doing a lot of experiments with diet, tried every diet out there. I was doing carnivore already in 2013.

Oh, wow. Yeah. That's way early on.

Yeah, way early. I mean, It's interesting getting into this from, you know, an early time. I was doing ice baths in 2007. Wow.

Way before they were cool.

Right. And then all of a sudden you see intermittent fasting, ice bath, and it was like, I've already like advanced way beyond that. And, you know, it's, so I keep on trying new things and I've always been trying new things. At a certain point you hit a a roadblock where if you can know— I already actually fixed most of my problems at that point. And so that was like a very good turning point. That's what allowed me to embark on my entrepreneurial journey because before I was just, you know, I was unemployed, no girlfriend, you know, the worst, like kind of how people describe men in despair.

Did you feel helpless because you didn't feel good and didn't have any of this? Stuff going on?

Yeah, I mean, it was just like I was basically like a dropout of society because, you know, wasn't in the system in any way. Didn't have a job, didn't have a girlfriend. I couldn't even handle school at that point. I had to drop out. So it got bad to a point where I just couldn't do anything. I was disabled.

Wow. Right?

And I was thinking like, I should probably get on like disability or something. Wow.

How old were you at the time?

I was 25.

Okay.

Yeah.

How old are you now?

37.

Okay, cool.

So, um, yeah, I had health problems early on, but it just got worse. So what I realized is people's health problems don't get better, they get worse, generally speaking. So you're just getting worse. And then there was a crash at some point when I was just doing the wrong things, and it was just a crash. And I got— all of a sudden I got scared. I actually see it in some clients of mine. Sometimes they do something really bad and then you just get scared of everything. Like, I'm stopping everything. That's kind of what happened with me. I did a bad experiment. I was eating like tons of coconut oil.

That was one of your experiments?

Yeah, I started to have brain inflammation. I didn't know what it was. And because I was following like Bulletproof, like I was— it was when he first started coming onto the scene. I was like, wow, okay, he's doing this. Let me try this out. This is already in 2011.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden I was like, whoa, my— and then I just got scared of everything.

How did you know you had brain inflammation?

So I had brain fog before, but not brain inflammation. It was a little different. So the brain fog was from more of a localized inflammation in the hypothalamus. It's a little complex, but this was— I would walk into a room And I would, if there was any kind of like smell, I would just start feeling it in my brain. Wow. Yeah, it was a very unique experience where it was just like any, like I would just, anything that was any kind of environmental toxin would just like hit my brain.

Ah.

You know what I'm saying? And so yeah, I would feel it very acutely and it was very unique and it never came back after that and it was never, I didn't ever had it before that. It was just— and what happens is if you eat a lot of saturated fat, actually you can cause problems with the brain barrier.

Wow. Yeah, because, because people think that fat is good for your brain, right? Not too much, but too much. Yes, can become a problem.

And you know, I like to take things to the extreme.

We all do. Something's good, more of it must be better.

Exactly. Like, you know, people are taking a— it was, there was like a thing, a period during that time where coconut oil was the thing.

Yeah.

And so people would take like a tablespoon of coconut. I said, well, I'm One tablespoon, I'm gonna take 6. Forget about this, I'm just like, boom. I'm like, wait, what's going on here? And I was doing a bunch of different experiments, I didn't know what was happening at that stage. I just got really scared. But that's when I started to just be more methodical and say, okay, one experiment at a time, really think about it rigorously, not because somebody else told me to do it, really think about it, start understanding how does the body work, how does this work? What are the mechanisms beside— what are the mechanisms how all these things are working? And then I could see how does my body compare to someone like, you know, somebody else's body. And it started to make me understand that, hey, you know what, there's a lot of research on different kinds of immune systems. There's a Th1, Th2. There's all this different kinds of information about why my biochemistry could be different than yours. That naturally led me to precision health. So genetic testing, lab testing, trying to get all the types of data about my body so that I could pair it with the research and understand how my body is ticking and why my body is ticking different than somebody else. Because if you can understand it, then you could predict it. Right.

I, my, my initial question. So like when I think of precision health and I think of lab tests, I think of gaps in time, right? You get your blood done, maybe you get it done a week later, maybe it's a month later, something like that. And certain things have an immediate effect on your body and your biochemistry, and other things take time to change your body and your biochemistry. So if you're testing things from a Precision Health perspective, you must be factoring in the things you're doing, how they affect your body immediately, long-term. There's a lot of stuff to track. So like when you think about Precision Health, Where do you kind of start? Are you starting with labs? Are you starting with your gut? Where do you dive in initially with yourself or with someone else to kind of start to learn the story?

So we have a framework that we use, and this is my personal framework, and I instituted this personal framework to my company, SelfDecode, right? So I was thinking, okay, what is the framework about how we predict whether something is going to work. And I just thought about it. So there's a bunch of ways you could think of, try to predict whether something is going to work. Number one is what are your symptoms and conditions?

Right.

Do you have— everybody's got something that they're dealing with. It could even be something like acne or, you know, some skin fungus or whatever, right? It's symptomatic of something else.

Right, right.

If it's acne, A lot of people don't realize it's actually an immune system issue. You have bacteria, yeah, right? And it's the bacteria causing inflammation. Your immune system is trying to fight it with cytokines. And but if your immune system is actually stronger in a certain way, then you don't need to resort to— like, basically it nips it in the bud. Gotcha. Yeah. So that's just an example of like a symptom. You don't— you're not like diseased, right? Right.

So you start by looking at the symptoms and conditions.

What is going on outwardly, what are the symptoms and conditions? And by the way, a lot of people don't even realize all their symptoms and conditions, right?

Because when you're living in your body for so long and you don't know what it's like to live in someone else's body, because we feel like— you can describe things, but we're very complex. So like, how do you describe how you feel when you don't really know how it compares to other people? Sometimes, I mean, it's, it's hard to figure out, you know, maybe someone's just feeling like low energy or down or not motivated, and it's hard to describe specifically like what's causing that.

Exactly. So it's, it's not so clear to people. Sometimes people don't know, how's my mood compared to somebody else's? Right, right. How do you know? I didn't know that not everybody, you know, I thought everybody probably has brain fog until I started interviewing a lot of people. Yeah, haphazardly.

Yeah.

Hey, do you get brain fog after eating a meal?

Yeah.

And some people would say, what are you talking about? Other people say, yeah, all the time.

I get brain fog after eating a meal most of the time.

Well, you ask enough people, you'll, you'll hear either 'What the fuck are you talking about?' Yeah.

Or, 'Yeah, of course.' Yeah, I don't eat breakfast, not because, like, partially because, you know, I read about intermittent fasting and your body getting some space to cleanse itself, detox, whatever, but mainly because I can't really go into my days with a low— when I eat, I get kind of a lower energy most of the time.

Right, and that's not supposed to happen.

Yeah.

So people don't realize that, and that used to happen all the time, like, It would be even more extreme for me, for different complex reasons, but essentially it would be even more extreme. If I'd eat something, I'd get a food coma.

Yeah, right, right.

Cereal or whatever.

Did it depend on the type of food, or was it just because there was something wrong with you?

No, the type of food.

The type of food.

Yeah, but I— you don't realize it because you're generally eating similar types of food all the time. So, right, it's usually some kind of grain with some kind of you know, maybe meat or fruit. You don't realize, like, what is— is it from a different certain type of food? And so what you see is, but it is generally from some food sensitivity often. And that's why you see carnivore kind of getting more popular, because if you only eat meat, it's not healthy in a lot of ways, but at least you take out all these food problems that people suffer from.

So are there— are there general foods and combinations of foods that work for everyone, or is it really specific based on your tolerance to certain foods?

It's specific. Okay. Yeah, diet is actually very specific and depends on a lot of factors. Some people will do more better with more fat, more carbs, more protein, and then that's one factor. I do— so I can tell you about myself. Yeah, I do better with a lot of freaking protein. Yeah, and even much more than anybody ever recommends.

Really?

Yeah. And I test my blood.

Wow.

So I could see exactly what's going on in my blood, how much protein I need. So you could— there's different measures for that. You could look at serum protein, albumin. You could also look at the individual amino acids in the blood. And I do that. I check these very often. And I could see, wait, even if I only eat protein, I'm still deficient. Wow. So in some way, that's a good thing. In some way, it's a bad thing. My muscles just suck up protein.

Gotcha.

And it's, it's actually very rare how well they suck them up because, you know, if I exercise, I just basically just, I'm a protein sponge.

So how would someone begin to figure out what foods are right for them?

So let's go back to the framework because I think it goes back to the framework. There's the symptoms and conditions.

Yep.

There's your goals. Everybody's got a different goal and what you, what your goals are, it's going to depend on, you know, what you do. So some people want to have a goal of longevity, it might be at odds with working out 6 hours a day for a bodybuilder, right? So that's kind of like a goal situation.

Yeah.

So you have your goals, you have your, uh, uh, your symptoms and conditions. And there's a lot of research about, hey, if you have this condition, there's a lot of supplements, maybe some drugs or whatever it is that can help with this thing, or some diets. Uh, if mood is your issue, well, vegan and vegetarian diets are associated with worse moods.

Really?

Yeah, absolutely. Wow. There's research on that.

Is that why all the vegans are always angry?

One of the reasons. Actually, I don't know. It's not a joke. No, I mean like, uh—

I wonder if there's a correlation between people at a protest and people who are vegans. There's a higher percentage of vegans at protests.

100%. First of all, if I meet like girls and they tell me they're vegans, Now, I, you know, I think there's a higher likelihood of mental health issues.

Wow.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's maybe somebody who's trying to do a radical change might be more susceptible to mental health issues.

But to be clear, like—

But the diet itself as well.

You're better off being a vegan than eating a bunch of processed foods. Yeah. So like if someone's trying to do something better for themselves and they're used to eating, you know, Chipotle, McDonald's, you know, whatever it may be, like, okay, vegan's probably better for them than what they were doing.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. But then, you know, and then some people just say they don't feel that good from meats and stuff, right? That's less rare. It's more rare. But the point is, is that diets— and then everybody has a different sensitivity. I've seen it, like, allergic to random stuff, random little things. Yeah, one person's allergic to avocados, and yeah, another person's allergic to this food and that, and you can't predict exactly what, but everybody's got their own thing. So there's allergies and sensitivities.

Yeah.

And then there's how well you do with different macronutrients. And these are different for everybody. Now, you could say that there's commonalities for everybody. Nobody is going to be great or do great on donuts.

Right.

Right. It's not like a, you know, a health food. But what you can say is—

would be nice if it would be great.

But what you can say is If we're just looking at whole foods, right, normal foods, not like highly processed foods. Yeah, we look at normal regular foods that your grandmother ate or something like one ingredient.

It's a food, right? It's a food, it's a vegetable, right?

How much of you eat of that food is going to be dependent, like how, how much a certain food is good for you is going to be dependent on a whole bunch of factors. So there's symptoms, conditions, goals, then there's your genetics. Your genetics are going to have a role in a lot of different factors. So you can have two people in the same exact environment. If they have different genetics, some person can develop an allergy to one thing where they can develop a disease for one thing. I mean, there's— genetics is a huge factor. And genetics you can really use for a lot of different things because it says something about everything, right? Right. Like you've got a gene for everything, right? There's some gene related to everything that's going on in your life. In one way or another. Maybe some things are a little less genetic, some things are a little more environmental, but one way or another, there's genes related to everything.

Yeah.

And then you have lab tests. So, uh, you basically are looking at your lab tests and lab tests, blood tests, they could be anything. There's an explosion of different kinds of blood tests now, right?

Right.

Lab testing.

Yeah.

So you can do, you know, uh, just regular blood tests. You can do up to like 300 that have good evidence behind how to get into the lowest risk of dying, essentially, or how to be the healthiest. So there's like 300 solid ones. And then you have just an explosion of metabolites, microbiome stuff, and a whole bunch of different stuff with maybe a little less evidence, but still it's up and coming. And that's interesting as well. And then you have lifestyle risks. You basically see, you know, were you born premature? Were you breastfed? These are things that your genes are not necessarily going to know, but they do affect different—

Can that really make a difference? Like if you're a baby and you're breastfed versus—

Yeah, absolutely.

Having formula, it could change how you are as an adult?

Yeah, maybe if they develop— maybe they've developed better formulas now and it might not be as predictive as it was 20 years ago, but the idea is that all these things—

That's crazy because I've heard like every so often, maybe it's every couple years or 10 years, like, you're— every cell in your body has replaced itself, but your— I would assume maybe your gut microbiome has, you know, held on to some— something. It's crazy that something that you can do when you're a baby can actually change the way you are as an adult.

Yeah, I mean, even if every cell in your body replaces itself, you have to also think about— there's research on epigenetics, right? And that could be multi-generational.

Right, right.

So something that happened to your mom, grandmother, yeah, can somehow affect you now. And we see that as well. So, you know, if you fall on your head as a kid, there could— there's— it could be some impact later on. Or if you weren't— if you didn't have the right nutrition growing up, or yeah, it could be anything. If you were exposed to some toxin.

Circling back to the food sensitivities for specific individuals, I know there's all these different tests you can do. If someone's interested in figuring out what food is good for them and what's not good for them, are there any kind of, you know, 80/20 rules, right? Where there's probably a bunch of tests you could do, but are there any main things that you can do to get most of the information?

There's no gold standard in terms of what kind of tests you can do. Okay. Some testing, you could look at some genetic predispositions and they could, it could tell you something, but there's definitely no gold standard for it. You could do a food allergy test. There's the IgG food sensitivity test.

I think it's bunk, but really, I think that's the one that, um, they offered at like some gyms like Lifetime Fitness, for example. I bought a food sensitivity test from them a couple years ago and it said that, uh, asparagus was something I shouldn't eat.

I had no idea. Really? Yeah. So not every test, just because they give it to you, is a valid test, right?

I know that's what makes it challenging for people, right? Because there's so much there's this huge game, and we'll get back to this topic in a second, but I'm actually curious what your thoughts on this. There's this huge echo chamber going on in society, in social media. One person says something, then someone else hears it, then they talk to their audience, someone else hears it, so then they say it. And it's like there's all these mini pieces of information being dropped into an echo chamber. And then someone who's a consumer that's trying to learn is getting hit with all these different pieces of information. One's veganism is good, one veganism is bad, one carnivore diet's good, one, you know, and it's hard to figure out like what's true and what's not true. I would love to actually hear your perspective on like how do you determine what's true and what's not in this world?

Yeah, so the best way I would describe social media is the blind leading the blind.

Yeah, that's what it feels like.

So I have a very deep understanding of all these topics. I've been around the block for many years, right? And I see people talking about stuff. It's just not even worth to hear 99% of the time.

And a lot of it is these big people that have lots of followers, right?

Right. So the way that you get big on social media is by being outrageous.

Yeah.

And you can be outrageously wrong, right? And you'll still get big, but that's kind of what sells. And then, so that's kind of, That's the problem with social media is being outrageous and most of the time it's outrageously wrong. Sometimes it's correct, but then how do you filter out? What I look at is, I mean, I look at the data. So the more I go into this, it's not about what anybody says. I just don't care. It's about the data. What does the data say? And number one is I take validated tests and then the question is, okay, so this test is validated. What does the data say? So I don't care if somebody tells me there's new research and, you know, showing that this amount of protein a day is really what's good. I follow the data, right? What is the data showing for me? I don't care about what the data— I mean, I care, but the idea is that the data for me is more important. And what I do is, so the framework is when I look at a lab test, I look at, okay, so is there a study showing changes in health outcomes or the chance of dying? Pretty much. What is somebody's risk of dying increases if they're not in a certain range with this lab test, right? And if the answer is yes, and there's a lot of them that have this data on it, you know, hundreds that show that you're either lower or higher you have a higher risk of dying or cancer or cardiovascular disease. So I follow that data and then what I've learned is that every single lab test I can optimize. Every single one. There hasn't been one that is just like, oh, you can't change this. Not a single one.

Right.

Right, and that's incredible because the way that the medical system works is not really to change lab tests, it's to diagnose. Right. They do it in very specific circumstances like LDL cholesterol.

Right.

They're like, okay, let's follow your LDL cholesterol. I do that with all my labs.

Yeah.

Right? Right. And the problem, the reason why they don't do it with all the labs is because it's basically, you can't give a drug for everything. Right. Right, and then the person's just gonna die or whatever.

Yeah.

Right? So you have a very good drug for lowering LDL cholesterol and there's research showing that it's gonna prevent Cardiovascular disease, they're 100% on board with that. What I look at is what are all the lab markers that are going to change my risk for something? So number one is I look at what are all my genetic risks? What are the things that are most likely to kill me? For each of these genetic risks, there's a whole bunch of lab markers attached with the research showing that, hey, if you have higher levels of this marker, either it's, associated or causally associated with some outcome, some negative outcome. And so I try to get all of my markers in that optimal range. I'm at a point where I've optimized all of my markers and now I keep on exploring new and new markers.

Gotcha.

Because, and then it's not only just exploring, you have to test every marker like 10 times to see what's going on.

Right, things change.

Yeah, 3 times is gonna give you a baseline. Right. And then, and by the way, one thing I noticed of testing, I look back at the past year of testing. I took 19 tests. Yes, 19 tests or maybe a year and a half. Out of the 19 tests, 12 times my body was fighting an infection.

Wow.

Most of the time I did not even realize it.

Wow.

Yeah. And I know I'm, this is my field. I know when based on the markers when somebody's fighting infection.

Right.

Right? There's many markers. The number one for me is iron. Really? Yeah. So serum iron, if it goes below 70 for me, I'm fighting an infection. Really? My normal is between 90 and 130. Gotcha. Yeah, and you know, if it tanks, and the reason I know is because I'm doing tests on like 300 different markers. Right. and then I see that that's correlating with pretty much everything else. And some of these times I felt a little weaker, or one time I actually got sick, right? So you kind of, yeah, you kind of get the idea. And also I'm doing a lot of testing when I'm traveling. So every time you go on a plane, you pick something up.

Something, right?

Yeah. And the question is, do you feel symptoms or not?

Right.

But you pick it up. Yeah. And so I'll go to India and do a lot of testing. And, you know, you're around— I'm around people from every country.

Yeah.

Everybody's bringing something in there. And then, and I see it in my blood test. And so I'll do the same test 3 times within a week and a half. So every like 3 days, and I'll see normal, like normal infection, normal.

But so, so what you're saying is your body could be fighting something and you feel no symptoms, but at a certain point, if your body has to fight hard enough, you start to feel symptoms.

—Yes. So when you feel symptoms, that's a backup response.

It's your body's overheating because it's, you know, you're getting a fever which is helping fight the infection more. So your body has—

the way to— a simple way to think about it is the immune system is very complex, but a very simple way to think about it is there's an initial response and there's a backup response. Mm-hmm. The initial response is if your core immune system is very healthy you can fight off almost all infections without a problem.

Right, and those are the people that say, "I never get sick." Correct. They just have really strong immune systems.

They're getting sick, they don't know it. Yeah. You know, I had this employee that said she never gets sick. Well, she maybe once every 2 years, whatever. Yeah. But she complains of migraines once a month. Yeah. She's like, "I don't know why they come on." Yeah. "There's no rhyme or reason, it's not related to my period or anything." I'm like, "Guess what? Every time you get a migraine, you're probably fighting an infection." Right. So you have inflammation and it just didn't come up as like a fever or anything like that. So there's kind of like, there's different levels of getting sick. Right. Right. So the initial level is your body's fighting an infection. It tries to increase some inflammation, but it doesn't want to increase the most damaging type of inflammation. Right. It's kind of like a backup system. So there's different backup systems. It's like Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. Plan A fails, we go to Plan B, right? Plan B is like we do a cytokine, like we release a lot of cytokines and that's when you start getting more symptoms. Plan C is like you have high fever. It's like these cytokines are not working. We need to, we really need to like get this shit under control and fever is what really gets the infection under control. But really, once you have fever, that's when Plan A and B didn't work.

Got you. —So what can someone do to make their immune system stronger, make the cytokines work more effectively, or, you know, what can people do to prevent getting to Plan C?

—Right, so a lot of it has to do with just general optimizing health, and you have to look at weaknesses in each person. So in my case, I've realized a whole bunch of things that I never realized until actually the past 2 years about what my immune system was doing and where I was weak, right? Because The immune system is very complex. Right. And I only got so far in just throwing darts on the wall and seeing what sticks. Yeah. Just slinging things and it's like, oh, you know what, I think I feel better from this. But the immune system is something you can't do so easily because— 'Cause it's complex. Well, how do you know, like for example, if you're traveling a lot and you get sick versus just staying home and you don't get sick, It's just hard to know. Maybe it's, did I take the astragalus and that's why I'm not getting sick? Right, right, right. Or just, did I get lucky? Yeah. It's very hard to figure it out.

But it seems like everything points back to precision medicine. But I guess my question is, is there any general things that work for most people specifically to make their immune system stronger? Or is it always going to go back to precision medicine?

I can go through a couple things, like a bunch of things. But yeah, like, we have this report on immune health. There's like 300 different recommendations, right? Um, can I give you examples of general recommendations? Yes. But what I'd rather— like, I could give you examples of me specifically. Yeah. Or what would you rather, general or me specifically?

Well, me. Yeah, it's always better for the, the me specifically, but I'm just thinking like—

I can give you an example why it's different though. So for me, I was low on arginine. Okay. Every time I tested, low on arginine. Are most people low on arginine? I don't think so.

Who even knows to look for that? Except for someone who's so crazy. People. Well, actually, that does bring me back to the question I wanted to ask earlier, which is, you know, you're testing, call it 300 things, right? And in your blood tests and everything can be optimized, right? Is there a source of truth that you can— that someone can look at that can tell them this is what the levels should be, or this is what the optimal levels is? Is there a database or a tool? I mean, SelfDecode is being— what's the source of truth for people, right?

If they're looking at research, so everything we say in SelfDecode, we, we back it up with research. Yeah. So it's like, here's a reference. Essentially, we give you optimal ranges and we say— we give you like a little bit of an essay explaining why we think something is the optimal range. And if you disagree with that, you could send, you could send us an email and we'll look it over.

So, so SelfDecode has basically became the source of truth. You've compiled all the information and all the research into one central place. Yeah.

And it's an evolving truth because if somebody comes along and say, hey guys, I think you guys are wrong about this. Right. Then you look into it. Yeah. We look into it. We said, we look up the data.

We so much, if you gave someone their, their biomarkers, 300 things, They're looking at everyone, they're Googling things. It would take them a lifetime to figure out what they need to optimize.

You can't figure it out. That's why you need software. That's why I embarked on this mission of taking all this information together and combining it so that we have a recommendations algorithm so that it takes the complexity out of people, for people, because you can't. It really is very difficult. I've been doing this, you know, kind of like to build the software, and I just see it's like, holy shit, this is a full-time job.

Let's say the software is perfect. And you're low on a certain supplement and that's, that's what's causing your symptoms. The next question is, how do you know that the supplements you're buying are actually good? That they're like, they're good quality supplements?

I've never had a problem with that. Yeah, really? No, it's been— it's over.

That might be a big echo chamber thing. Yeah, it's like, they need to be pure, they need to be this.

Well, it's for people selling supplements. Yeah, for sure. Right, you don't, you don't want to trust these guys. Trust me.

So most of the time, if you're taking a supplement to treat a symptom, it's probably a fine thing as long as it's—

Well, here's what I would say. Here's what I'd say. So I will go with the big brands. I always go for single ingredients. Yeah. You get into more trouble when you don't do single ingredients. Mm. When you don't go with big brands. Yeah. It's just—

A lot of gimmicky stuff. Yeah.

I mean, now some of these smaller brands could be fine. It could be good quality. Sure. But, and then a lot of, a lot of the things about like, oh, this, let's say if they do testing on it, sometimes it could be 10%, 20% less, a little more. Who cares? Right.

That makes sense. Who cares? You're still getting what you need.

So, and sometimes like in certain things it's important, like fish oil. Okay. Rancid. Gotcha. That's important. So certain things are important. And then certain herbs, certain, you want certain extractions because some are more effective than others. Gotcha. But if we're talking about a single ingredient, right, like NAC or something like that, you open the capsule, it smells like NAC.

So that's one less thing for people to be overwhelmed about.

Yeah. Okay.

So technology's evolving, you're helping pioneer that space, compiling a source of truth, helping people figure out how to optimize their biomarkers. What does this— the endgame look like? I mean, how I know this is an abstract question, but let's say people are very aware of everything in their body and they're keeping it at an optimal level. Like, how much longer can people live and how much better can they feel? Like, what's the endgame here?

It's an open question how much longer people live— can live with the current technologies we have. I don't— the answer is I don't know. But what my guess is, over 100. Yeah. And, and the reason is because Most people die from some disease, right? And what I'm very convinced about is you could push these diseases off by 20, 30 years. So, gotcha. Instead of living to 80, you'll live to 100. Yeah. Now, how much beyond that, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I have, you know, it depends on the individual, depends on what factors. What are your thoughts on the mind-body connection?

Like, for example, um, I am, you know, pretty spiritual person. I go to plant medicine journeys, like I had a problem going into one of my plant medicine journeys and I had this crazy experience and I feel like I fixed my problem, but it wasn't through supplementation, it wasn't through diet, it was through myself. What's your perspective on that?

Mental health has a huge impact on physical health. I think a lot of people who go through these plant journeys, it can help with mental health. I think a lot of people go through life where they have a lot of internal baggage. Yeah. They don't know even what their baggage is. Right. Right. There's just something that weighs on them. Or many things.

Or many things. Thousands of micro things.

Exactly. Just daily or whatever. Big purpose life. What's my mission? And, you know, trying to get money and try whatever, everything, you know, problems with your wife, your kids, who knows, right? Right. There's things that weigh on people. And I think people kind of just try to filter it out in some way. Yeah, suppress it. Yeah, suppress it. And then it weighs on their psychology. Yeah. And then this plant medicine allows them to open up, be aware of it, and also kind of reset. It's a reset on the system.

So does your mind have any kind of control over certain levels of things in your blood? Like, for example, let's say your liver enzymes are high. Like, you know, there's supplementation you could take to lower it, but by relieving stress or becoming really present and feeling other emotions, can you change the biochemistry through your mind and the way you feel? Well, I would say depends what.

So for most things, no. I mean, for some things, I mean, stress is one of the biggest risk factors. Yeah, a whole bunch of stuff. Mental health, right? If that's why happy people live longer, right? If you're happier, it means you got less stress, or you know how to deal with it, right? It's kind of an area under the curve where if you're happy, you're probably handling life better in some ways. So it's going to impact a lot of things in the body, but not something like liver enzymes.

The reason I bring it up is, you remember I was texting you when my liver enzymes were elevated and I was very worried, and you told me to buy these supplements. I forget what they were called. I ended up getting them. But it took a couple of days for Amazon to ship them to me. And the next morning I went out. I do like this walk every day. I call it the perfect walk. And it's like, it's like my meditation essentially. And I was in a very high energy state in this walk and I focused my attention where my liver is and I just felt like beautiful, peaceful emotions. And when I got retested, the enzymes were lower and it could have been a coincidence. It could have been that they were higher for whatever reason. But in my reality, my experience, like, it changed something. And you hear about people, you know, like the monks that can go sit out in the snow and keep their body hot, right? There's all these different types of— I don't know if you follow Joe Dispenza at all, people that cure themselves of diseases through meditation. And you're a very scientific guy. And I know people have very polar opinions on this stuff. I'm kind of in the middle. I'm like, I don't really believe it unless I experience it. I've experienced some things, but not enough to, like, be a full believer. But someone who's very scientific like yourself, like, what are your thoughts on that whole world? Like, uh, on the mind-body connection, on being able to change yourself through meditation or through feeling a certain way?

I see the stories, I don't see it in reality. So I look at people's blood tests. Yeah, let's say you say, hey, I tried this. My response would be, uh, test it 10 more times and see. Let's see, because you don't even have the baseline. Yeah. That's why I always tell people before we even— just to get a baseline, you want to test 3 times, right? Maybe you had an infection before. Yeah, maybe you exercise the day before. Actually, what I find is if you exercise the day before, it's gonna have a big impact on your liver enzymes.

For sure, because you're like— my liver enzymes, my baseline was in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and then that time when I, I reached out to you, it was in like the 140 range or something super high. And then when I got tested the day after that walk, it was like at a 42, and it was like the lowest it had ever been, right?

So you want to get the baseline, test it a bunch of times, and then see if this method is continuing. Did you start any supplements? Like, there's too many factors, right? What I see is that, um, I look at the blood and it's not— I, I think you can improve a lot about health based on mental health. There's no question, but I think there's limitations. And by the way, plant medicine is also very strong anti-inflammatory, right? So that's, yeah, that's another factor. Yeah, but I do think that there's limitations, and I could talk about my own experience. So I would say that, um, you know, uh, I've gotten to a very zen state where I'm not stressed almost ever, don't have any anxiety or depression or anything like that. Wasn't always like that. I used to be higher, much higher levels of anxiety, depression, but through supplements I've been able to get to a very calm state. Yeah. And as calm as I am, with zero mental health issues, I still see that, hey, there's a lot of things in my labs that I need to still optimize, right? And I optimize them. Yeah, but it was through doing things, not through like necessarily meditating on specific things or being— or having a positive mindset. Uh, I haven't seen it firsthand. Let's put it that way. It's kind of like, yeah, people claim, yeah, I cured my cancer.

They want to believe it too. It's like, it's fun to believe. Well, let's put it this way.

Anytime I've seen firsthand somebody tell me, hey, I've cured this cancer from, you know, my mindset. My second question is, what else did you do? Right. And they give me a list of 100 other things. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's like, Well, how do we know? I'm sure the lower stress helped them, right? The mental— there's definitely a strong connection there. But when you say, yeah, I did this, plus I was doing these juices every day and I was taking these supplements. Oh yeah, and I also took chemotherapy. Yeah, right, right, right. Okay. Yeah, I was just doing 100— when people have cancer, they do everything, right? You never— you'll never see somebody who just— who has cancer and you don't have time to experiment. I'm not going to do anything, I'm just going to have a positive mind. It doesn't happen, right? You're just balls to the wall, everything.

What are your thoughts on frequencies? You know, there's Rife machines. I don't know if you're familiar with any of those things. I have a biocharger at home which emits electricity at different frequencies. Do you know anything about that kind of stuff?

Yeah, there's interesting— I think that actually does have an impact. It's hard to know exactly which machine or which thing, but there was There was this guy, Jack Smith. He just— he was telling me, like, he doesn't respond to anything. No, like, he respond as in doesn't notice any difference. And then he was telling me about this electric— I forgot the name. Even called a biocharger. It's not— it wasn't a biocharger. It was something else. Yeah. And he just said that was like the only thing that helped him. Wow. Yeah. One of the only things. There's a few things, but the idea is that Uh, but I do notice there's some effect on different kinds of magnetic waves and things like that. It's hard to know exactly which frequency, which device. Yeah. And what it's going to treat and whatnot. Yeah. It's hard to— there's not as much research as I'd like, but there seems to be something to it. There's limited research.

Um, you know, when I bought my BioCharger, um, I'm— again, I'm one of those people that try everything, so I was at an event, I saw one there, it looked really cool. When you hold the light bulb next to it, you know, electricity goes through your hand, lights it up. Well, there's electricity going through my body. Sure, I'll buy one. It's $15 grand. And so they told me a story, and they're very limited on what they can claim, you know, FDA limits you on what you can claim. But they told me a story about a woman who had tinnitus in her ear, and, you know, for months it wouldn't go away. She went to the doctor, they wanted to do surgery, and she used the BioCharger and used the parasite cleanse frequency. And when she went to bed that night, she felt something in her ear. And when she woke up, there was a parasite on her pillow. Like it killed the parasite and made it come out of her ear. And the tinnitus went away. And the doctor didn't know there was a parasite. So again, it was a story that was told to me. I hope it's not a lie, but it's pretty incredible to think that a frequency can actually kill a parasite in your body.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not— I'm a little skeptical of the story itself, but I'm not skeptical of, you know, technically some kind of frequency could help a parasite. I mean, I've got another story for you. I had tendinitis.

Tendonitis or tinnitus? Tendonitis. Oh, I was talking about tinnitus. Oh, tinnitus. Yeah, it's where you— then your ear has like a ringing sound. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, you know, then it's a different story. Okay. Okay. But yeah, the I think it's hard to know. I don't know if that machine— first of all, do you feel better from it?

So I do breathwork and meditate in the mornings. So it's like, I might as well just turn the machine on because you just sit next to it. So it's just like a 15-minute meditation breathwork session and it's on. I do it every day. So I don't know if I feel different or not when I do it or not.

Right. What I'd like to see is— so in this type of situation, number one, sometimes people are Like, they're like, yeah, look, I have a really strong effect from this. Yeah. And that's, that's fine for me in terms of, you know, if somebody feels that. But if not, how about we look at your blood? We have a good baseline. So you've already done like 2 tests that I could see, right? Yeah. We do a 3rd one. You try the BioCharger for a week. That's a good idea. Let's see what the hell's that.

They have 1,100 recipes. So like, if you're telling me one of my biomarkers is off, I can program a recipe specifically for whatever it is we're trying to do. And we can do a test. We'll do it for a week straight and then retest. That's what I'm all about.

If you can notice a very significant effect, great. Done. Great, continue. If you can't— and this guy that I mentioned, he says he doesn't notice things, but I look at his blood, I'm like, look, you still have things that are not optimal. And so I said, the way that you need to do this is just follow your blood markers and take action based on that, because you're just not going to know otherwise. So look at your genetic risks, especially if you want something like longevity, you want to see what you're at risk for. But then look at your blood markers and see, am I moving in the right direction? Because your blood markers are not going to lie. Right. That's what I'm all about is like, let's take a step back. I'm a very skeptical person, but what I know is, okay, if you feel really great, then continue. If you can't notice a difference because you're doing 100 things, let's check what's happening in your blood. Yeah, for sure. I start the BioCharger and what happens?

Yeah. So I'm— I have so many different directions I want to go in right now. So, all right. We got the BioCharger. We'll do that experiment. I want to see what happens there. Okay. I'm thinking about from someone from a perspective listening to this. They want to dive into their blood. They want to be able to utilize your software. They want to be able to learn, but their doctor is not supportive of it or, you know, they don't have insurance or whatever the situation may be. How does someone actually go and get this blood work done and know what kind of blood work to take?

So actually, uh, that's a great question. First of all, one of the features we have is what blood tests to get. And essentially what we do is we look at your genetic risks and we say, okay, based on these genetic risks, here's what you should check. And again, there's the genetic risk, that's your predisposition. So I have a genetic risk for heart disease and a bunch of different things, but I basically optimized all of my biomarkers related to that. And so now I don't have a risk. It doesn't matter even if I have a strong genetic risk, if I'm able to optimize all my biomarkers, then my risk is actually very low. And by the way, cardiovascular disease is not something you could feel. I always, even when I didn't optimize those biomarkers, I felt great. And then you optimize them, You don't feel more great, you just— it's something that affects you later on, right?

So, um, so you guys tell them what tests to get? What tests to get? Where do they— how do you go and order those tests if you don't have a doctor that can write you an order for it? Well, there's—

we actually sell lab tests online as well, but you could— there's other places that you could— that sell lab tests online. So there's basically— it's connected to a requisition. You get the requisition, you go to a Quest or Gotcha.

So you go into there, you know, you already have the form or the information filled out. They take your blood, they upload it, and then it gets sent back to you guys or wherever. Yeah. So you actually don't need a doctor to get this stuff going.

Yeah, there's a doctor that signs off on it, but essentially on the backend. Yeah, you don't need to go to a doctor. You could also try just getting it through your insurance if they're going to pay for it. So depends on— everybody's got different insurance. If you have insurance, Also depends on your doctor. Some doctors will give you a hard time, but basically you just take a printout of all the lab tests that we're telling you to take and just give it to your doctor and be like, can I get these?

Yeah.

A lot of times they'll tell you no. Sometimes they'll tell you yes. Depends on your doctor. Depends on your insurance. So, you know, whether they pay for it or not. So I think regular testing is critical. The, the, the, uh, genetic testing is very important because it gives you a foundation, the baseline. But you don't need to do that every week, right? It's just a one-time test. It tells—

it kind of shows you what to look at. Correct. Where to look, where to focus.

Yeah, there's a lot of benefits to it. But in terms of tracking your health, you could track, you know, just based on how you feel. But I find that the blood markers are super important, right, in tracking like your underlying health. And if I'm working— I don't work with a lot of people, but if I work with somebody it's very helpful to show, hey, look, here's your report card, right? Rather than, you know, trust me, or, you know, because somebody could be like not feeling— like, I've had some times where somebody's like all of a sudden feeling great, like, wow, you saved me. And then one day, and then like one day they're all of a sudden like, oh, you know, I'm not feeling so good. Yeah, is it the supplements? Like, what's going on? I'm like, they do a blood test, I look at it, I'm like, you just had an infection. Yeah, it was like, yeah, you feel a little weaker for a couple days. It happens, right? Your body's fighting infection. But like, sometimes people freak out, and— but I show them like, actually, look at all your markers, they're all getting better. And they're like, oh, nice, right? Okay, so it helps also motivate you when you see, hey, wait a second, my markers are getting better, they're not getting worse. And, um, so it doesn't matter whether a doctor says Oh, supplements are garbage or whatever. That's dogma. Let's look at the data. Right. Right? The data is that if you have this marker, it's in this range, people who are in this range live longer. They have a lower risk of dying. So we're looking at the blood.

We're looking at the genetics. What about the gut and the gut microbiome? Is that something that you look at often or you think it's important to take a look at?

There's certain markers that are useful. But it's overblown. Really? Yeah, so there's very specific things that you could look at the microbiome, but think of it like a lab test. But the thing is, is that the actual number of useful markers is like 5 to 10. Gotcha. So you get a lab test done and it depends on how comprehensive it is. How many lab markers were in your last lab test? 100? I don't know, right? A lot. Yeah, let's say 100. Yeah. Okay, you get a microbiome test, the amount of useful data you can get is maybe like 5 to 10. So it's like another lab test. Question is, is it worth the cost? $300, $400 to get a couple markers? Depends on how advanced you are and how advanced you want to be. And I wouldn't say it's the first thing to get. No. So one big mistake I see people make is they go for all this very advanced testing when they don't have all the simple stuff down. Gotcha. You want— like as much stuff that's well validated first. And then once you optimize all that, you can go to the deeper stuff. So people are doing like, you know, very like advanced testing. I'm like, where's your CBC and CMP? Gotcha. Like what? Yeah, my diet, you know, my functional medicine doctor never ordered that stuff. And so I mean, yeah, for me, I've done all of the— there's like 300 very basic markers to make sure they're in the optimal range. Now I'm branching out and trying to get more advanced stuff, but I think the order was proper. Rather than go start with the advanced stuff, go with the basic stuff.

Makes sense. So in— I'm curious, like, in society, are there any things that stand out that people— a lot of people do regularly that are very bad for them? For example, tap water or fluoride-based toothpastes? Or is there anything that you're just like, I can't believe all these people do this, that's just so bad for people that they might not be aware about?

I don't think so. Really?

You don't think like fluoride is bad? Or— no, I think—

so here's what I think. Each of these things can have a small negative impact. And what it is, is the accumulation of all these things together can have a larger impact. Yeah. The— so, so people do have negative impacts, but imagine fluoride was as bad as everyone is making it out to be. Yeah. And imagine, imagine, you know, everything was as bad as people— we would all be dead. Yeah. I mean, how is anybody walking?

But don't you see— I mean, again, it's a big echo chamber and I'm just in the chamber, so I hear things, but you're seeing like Autism rates are getting way higher, autoimmune disease— diseases are getting way higher, like people are getting sicker. They're also living longer because they're being treated better, but it seems like more people are getting—

There's many factors when it comes to that. Autism rates are getting higher because people are having kids later also, right? Now, way back when, people would have kids when they're like 13, 14. Yeah, maybe. Now they're waiting till they're 40. Yeah. And wow, wait, autism rates are going up. Now again, is it because— that's one reason. I think there's probably 30 reasons. What about vaccines? Uh, I, I don't, I don't know. The answer is I don't know.

So it's a very sensitive topic. People don't like to talk about that for whatever reason.

Yeah, I mean, I, let's put it this way, if it is a factor, I think it's way overblown. Yeah. Right. So I don't— it's kind of like, you know, COVID vaccine. Like, there's some people that get shit after a COVID vaccine. How common is that? How significant is that? Yeah, you're getting some inflammation from any vaccine. Yeah. Right. Stimulating the immune system in some way. It could be like a cumulative thing with a whole bunch of other things. Who knows? Yeah. But I don't think it's— again, I If something is very widespread, it's very unlikely that has huge impact, right? Whereas like the things that are— and by the way, a huge impact for most people, I think it can have a huge impact for some people. So that's where you get it tricky because you could have something that has a small impact for many people but a large impact for a small percentage of people. Yeah. And so you'd have to understand what it is that you've got that impact from. But you see it in everything. I mean, the longer I'm in the industry, the more some people just get floored by mold. Some people don't. Yeah. Some people get floored by VOCs. Some people, when they get COVID, they're out for a month. Some people don't. Yeah. Right? Everybody's got their kryptonite. You know, some people, they'll eat, you know, some whatever, something they're sensitive to, they're gonna get floored. Some people don't. It's kind of like, I just see the big picture. I see so many different things that people respond to, and I think of it— we need to think of it more as in like first principles. Like, you know, is somebody exercising for— like, there's basic things that everybody knows about. Yeah, you should get outside, exercise, mental health. But that stuff you already know about. And then what happens is, is that you'll have an influencer come along and tell you, yeah, you're gonna die from toothpaste or whatever, and you're like, holy shit, I don't want to die from toothpaste.

What about— it's like sunscreen. That's a new one for me. It's like, now it's, you know, it used to be, oh, you need to block yourself from the sun. Now it's like, sun's good for you and sunscreen causes cancer. So I'm like, all right, well, I got this like beef tallow sunscreen now. It's got like less chemicals in it.

Do you use sunscreen? Uh, so I used to not. I use— I use more now, actually. And so the answer is, is a little more complex. Sunscreen is protective against harmful UV rays. Yes. And you do get cancer from UV rays. However, if you have enough internal defense mechanisms, you could prevent that. Right. But I think most people don't have enough.

So, so you think other factors, like if you take one person that's eating very healthy and then one person that's eating a bunch of processed foods, you put them both in the sun, like other factors can— Oh, 100%. Yeah. The unhealthy guy might get cancer, the healthy guy might not.

No question about it. So yeah, I mean, your body needs a lot of things. I can name 5 different ingredients that you need. Vitamin C, niacin. You need more of certain nutrients to, uh, different antioxidants like astaxanthin, lycopene, carotenoids. You need more of these nutrients to protect against the sun. If you don't have them, and, and the sun will also use them up more, right? So if you're out in the sun, you need more of those nutrients. And so it's not, it's not simple. It's not black and white. It's not black and white. And then within this, uh, the sunscreens, you have some sunscreens that are much more carcinogenic, and then some that are much— that are not.

The beef tallow, it's like beef.

It doesn't have to be beef tallow. It's just the ones that have, uh, like zinc oxide is is fine, right? So there's, there's certain sunscreens, the ones— but there's other issues. They, they, they— it looks— the ones that are more healthy, it looks like you have sunscreen. Yeah, yeah, you're white. Exactly, you're whitening up.

You can't sweat through it.

Um, and then the other thing is you do want some UV rays, but then you don't want too much. So the right answer is try to be as healthy as possible, try to get sun on your body for a half hour, but don't sunbathe for 6 hours without sunscreen. Yeah, moderation. It's more of a nuanced thing, and then if you are, then wear some sunscreen.

So my last question for you, because we're going to be wrapping up here shortly, is what— have you had any interactions with people that were battling diseases and, you know, the doctors couldn't figure them out, and you witnessed them, you know, change a supplementation or a diet and actually cure themselves of something? Have you had any of those types?

Oh, absolutely. All the time. Yeah. I mean, I would say I'm— I see it all the time. There's no question about it. Yeah. I mean, I'm not dealing with cancer patients, just to be clear. So, but, you know, besides— so I don't see it on those— that cohort. But, uh, pretty much everything else you see it. And I— and again, it's— if somebody has a chronic disease like heart disease, I'm also not so much dealing with people who are 90 and have heart disease their whole life, and then all of a sudden they cure their heart disease. That's a damaging process over time. It's not like you're gonna make somebody who looks 90 look like they're 20 from some skin treatment or supplement or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that, like, there's certain things that you accumulate damage over time. I'm talking about chronic issues, autoimmune, migraines, just any random, like, chronic issue for people who are not 90. I see them fix it all.

So the answer is, if you can't find the answers, you got to dive into Precision.

Absolutely. And so I counted a list of 75 issues that I had, right? Small, big, whatever it is. And just one by one, knock them out. Knocked it out. Yeah, I don't have any issues now. And I mean, I had so many of them.

Yeah, it's like— I'm excited to go through my stuff with you and see Hopefully I don't have 75, but no, I mean, most people have like 10, 20.

Yeah, they're probably only aware of like 5 of them. Yeah, yeah, it's like, but you, you just— and then I've counted also 70 biomarkers that were not in the optimal range that are now in the optimal range. Wow. Yeah, damn. And, and so I see it in my, my metrics, I see it in how I feel, just fitness. Just a whole bunch of different kinds of testing. You could— I could look at some of these testing and see how healthy they are. Wow. Absolutely. So, but I— yeah, I mean, it's— it's— this stuff works. And it's, it's very, very powerful if you have the right method.

I think it's the future. I think between artificial intelligence, efficiencies, cost efficiencies, more labs being available to people, more You know, people can come to your house and take your blood work for you. More information compounding on itself to get more conclusions. I think it's the future. I think, you know, what you're pioneering is, is an area that's going to help millions of people. And I think, you know, old medicine is going to be phased out with precision medicine. That's what it seems like. And we're at the very beginning of it. And, you know, I think you're working on really exciting and world-changing stuff.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I agree that there's a confluence of things coming together where you have easier testing, more testing. Yeah. So you could test way more things. The genetics testing has advanced tremendously, right? You really couldn't predict very much disease 5 years ago, whereas you can much better now. Yeah. So you have, and then the amount of lab testing, there's the microbiome, metabolomics. Just— and the amount of research coming out on all this testing and what it means. And we didn't have this 20 years ago. Yeah. Then the amount of supplements that you have, it's just an explosion.

You can get one day on Amazon. Yeah.

And I remember 20 years ago you couldn't get like most of— 95% of supplements you have now, you couldn't get 20 years ago, right? Anywhere.

So the answer to this giant overwhelming echo chamber is precision medicine. You have to—

there's no other way.

Yeah, you have to dive into your genetics to see what to look at. You have to dive into your blood to see what, what's off, and you have to go at them one by one and fix them.

Yeah, and that doesn't mean— there's certain things that everybody's going to do well with in one form or another, so everybody should move, right? Right. How much exercise, how rigorous, that could be individual, but you need to move. If you're sitting all day, it's not healthy, right? You know, getting outside, sleeping But then the question is, why are people not sleeping, right? You know, most people don't sleep well, not because they're, they're trying not to sleep well, right? Yeah, there's something causing it. So, but you know, these are like some very basic pillars that everybody knows about. And it's nothing, you know, I'm not telling you anything new. My theory is that everybody's already trying to do the best they can in some way or another. Yeah. And You know, and, and, and, but they need other things to really get them, like basically the, we're working against a bad environment. Yeah. And so just to give you one example, I told you 12 out of 19 times I was fighting infection. Guess what? 500 years ago, you were in a small village. You never left. You, you were around like 20 people. Yeah. You know, your wife, your kids. Yeah. You know, you're, you're on a farm and That was that. How many people did you meet? Yeah. Here you get somebody from— you got 8 billion people all over the world cramped on a plane. Yeah. You know, you're all over the place. Maybe we should all wear masks. The masks aren't going to even help. I know, I'm playing. Right? You'll still get sick. I was wearing— like when I wore a mask at a certain point, I still got sick. Like it was even worse because I wasn't optimizing my immune system. Right. Internally. Yeah. Whereas now I get sick, but then I fight it, right? I don't even notice. So I think something like that is the amount of toxins in the environment, the amount of everything, the just the, the, the crap food, everything put together. We're in— we have— we're like fighting a very big uphill battle, and we need extra tools in order to get us to optimal.

Yeah, and you're building those tools, so thank you for that. It's a big service to humanity. And I think this industry, 20 years ago, things were much different. 20 years from now, they're going to be way more different than the difference we've seen in the last 20 years. Technology is growing exponentially. Data is going through algorithms that can sort it. There's more data available. I think the next 20 years is going to be crucial, especially fighting this environment.

I agree. And the AI also is really important because, um, like we've already integrated AI tools that you can ask your genes any questions. Yeah. And blood tests. And so like taking— you're like, I'm just so confused. But taking all the internet's information and all your information, combining it and being able to ask any question is unbelievable, right?

Excited to see where it all goes. Joe, thanks so much for joining. Great interview, awesome information. And, uh, I'm excited to work with you personally. And, and maybe we have to do another one because I have so many more questions I want to ask.