Ep. 85 - From Restore Hyper Wellness to Humanaut Health: A New Era in Proactive Wellness with Jim Donnelly — The Inflammation Code

I'm Jenna Fischer. And I'm Angela Kinsey. And we have the podcast Office Ladies. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories and lots of laughs. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. And I also love that you called it cataclysmic and apocalyptic. You know, they are that level serious to me. And I think people oftentimes just live how they live, eat how they eat, deal with stress the way they deal with it, lean into food, alcohol, vices, whatever those vices are, but never take stock of the fact that just 10, 20 years down the line, what's coming for you is apocalyptic. Good morning and welcome to the Fusionary Health Podcast. I'm Dr. Shivani Gupta, And this is the podcast dedicating to recalibrating your health every day. My goal is to help you wake up each day energized by addressing root causes and giving you new approaches to preventive health. The more we know about integrative health, the more empowered we are in building the vibrant health we want. Welcome to the Fusionary Health Podcast. I have a special guest in store for you today, Jim Donnelly, founder of Restore Hyper Wellness, previous founder, and now he's embarking on a whole new endeavor that I'm excited to talk to him about today. Welcome, Jim.

Hey, thank you very much. I'm super excited to talk to you and it's great to see you again.

For sure. So I remember seeing you on stage talking about Restore Hyper Wellness, and I was so inspired by your mission of what you created to create Blue Zones, little Blue Zones all around the world. I thought, gosh, that's a big vision that you cast, that you did, you executed on it. And there are those centers all over the country. So will you share that journey and your vision and what became of it and where it's at now?

Yeah, so, you know, I've been a kind of mission-driven entrepreneur for my entire life. I like for the things that are important to me and in my world to drive the kind of businesses I do. At the time I started Restore, I was 46. I had had a series of injuries from all kinds of crazy sports things and going to Ranger school and just, just all the stuff that happens in a, in a sort of aggressive kind of life. And, and I was picking up my wife from Abbott. And a friend walked by and said, hey, Stace, I'm going to do cryo. See you after lunch. And I literally said, what's cryo? That sounds way better than lunch. And I, instead of going to lunch with my wife, I went and did cryotherapy. I went and I loved the way it made me feel from the first second. I fell in love with it, but I hated everything else about the experience. It was overpriced. It was in a crappy center. The owner was, you know, talked a little too much about making money as opposed to making me feel better. Within weeks, had found a friend. He became the co-founder with me. We found a location and we opened one. And we thought the worst case is that people won't come and we'll have our own personal little cryo studio next to Whole Foods and we'll invite all our friends. But it took off and we were wrong about a bunch of things, by the way. We thought it was gonna be for athletes and people with injuries and things like that. And that was a tiny fraction of the people. It turned out that people with chronic conditions, which is 60 60% of the US population enjoyed coming in for cryotherapy. Most of their conditions were inflammation-based, pain-based, and the business just took off. And, you know, being an entrepreneur, we then put rocket fuel on it. And Steve was my partner. He didn't do anything with the business. He was more a financial contributor. So it was many years before he got involved in the day-to-day with me. But we kind of opened 4 more studios. We A/B tested a bunch of things. We started adding other modalities. And 4 years in, we had, you know, 15 or so of these around the country with 10 modalities under one roof. And it was a thriving business. And Steve and I used to always talk about, we didn't do this to create a small business. We wanted to have massive societal impact. And so how do we make this something really big? And learned about franchising, learned about, you know, all the other things we thought we needed to pull together, telehealth platforms and what kind of medical support and all these things. With the ambition of democratizing what we called hyper wellness. So we created this category, hyper wellness. We created this philosophy called right away wellness. And the idea was anyone who walked in our door would walk out feeling better. And if they did that, we could get them in a virtuous cycle of the more you do, the better you feel, the better you feel, the more you do. And that's kind of the key to anything. Get people in a good cycle as opposed to a bad cycle. you know, 5 years after that point, you know, woke up, that was about 2 years ago and had 200 and close to 50 locations around the country, 40 plus states. And it had taken a really big minority investment from General Atlantic, one of the top private equity funds. And I don't mention that for any other reason than to say it was validation for a lot of people. It was validation that this was a big idea. It was validation that proactive health and wellness was the path forward. It was validation that the smartest of the smart people found this category to be investible. And a lot of people came to me and literally just said, thank you. Thank you for showing us there's a path forward. I don't like money to be the definition of a path forward, but it is one of the indications. And so, you know, I think they kind of opened up a lot of people's eyes.

Absolutely. I think it is so validating because you're being told, hey, proactive wellness is the future and we're willing to invest in it because we see the growth potential in this arena. When at the same time as the founder, you're saying, I was, I was going to create this anyway. I wanted to impact in this way in health. So after you were done with, with creating Restore Hyper Wellness and building out this franchise model and you made wellness more accessible, What were some of the challenges that you encountered and what made you step out of doing Restore Hyper Wellness and moving on into new projects?

There were a few things. There were 3 seminal things that happened to me in fairly short order. Number 1, I got run over by a drunk driver, literally ran through a red light at 65 miles an hour, almost killed me, crushed my neck, crushed my chest. And, for about a year and a half from a physical standpoint, I was pretty miserable. You know, every week or so, I, I kind of trigger my neck and couldn't sleep, couldn't work out. And so I did look for a better solution, and I'll get to that in a second. The second thing that happened was, my dad died of cancer, and he died of a pretty rare form of cancer called sarcoma. And he had a pretty miserable existence for about a 3-year period. And, and there were both joyful and sad moments. But that definitely kind of got me thinking. And then finally, I was at like the 8.5-year mark of running Restore. And my life thesis had always been every 5 years I wanted to reinvigorate a new idea, do something different. I'm not the guy that wants to be running a company 8.5 years in. It's a very different type of management. It's a lot of spreadsheets and HR issues. It's very little creation and originality. And I'm just not the guy for that. And So those three things converged at around the same time. And then we got the investment from General Atlantic and it provided the obvious sort of stepping off point for me. You know, from a financial perspective, I could do that. And then I knew that Restore would have, you know, good management to take it to the next level.

Nice. So you felt comfortable leaving this thing that you created in good hands and then you can move forward.

Yeah, and I always tell people I'm a military kid. I lived a new place every year of my life till I was 16, sometimes 2 places in a year. I'm not very emotional about the past. I'm much more what's next. I don't walk around thinking about legacy. I don't walk around thinking Restore is, you know, to me Restore was wonderful. I love it. The people. That are, that were part of it are great friends of mine still. But I don't have a problem holding on to things. I'm much more interested in what's next and, and, and, and what can I do that's different and better and, and, you know, like, like I said, going to help society and help me be a good sort of person on this earth.

Sure. So for those who don't know what Restore Hyper Wellness is, because I actually have visited one, I've seen all the modalities, my, my gym that I used to work out at. All the trainers went there and tried the different machines. So I got to see what it was. Before we move forward, will you just share what some of those modalities were that you brought into the space?

Yeah, it was, um, at first it was literally Restore Cryotherapy, and that's all we did. And then cryotherapy is you step into a cold chamber for 3 minutes. It's very, very cold, and it does all kinds of good things to your body. And I would say anyone that's not putting cold in their life, you're missing out. It's, it's fantastic. But we realized really quickly that that wasn't a big enough business for us. We called that a guy in sweatpants business. Anybody could do it. Not a lot of barriers to entry, and it only did a little bit. So then we started looking at all the other things we could add. We added hyperbaric oxygen therapy. We added IVs. We added IM shots. We added saunas. We added red light therapy, we added some blood diagnostics, compression, you know, all these things that fit into this box that we called wellness and light-touch medical. So these were not medical things that required a doctor to be in the location. RNs could perform all the services, of course, all under the auspices of a medical director. But, but these were relatively easy things to execute at retail. They were very complementary. If you did them all, it created even better results than if you did just one one-off. And once again, they fit that construct of you always walked out of Restore feeling better. If it was endorphins, if it was a little more energy, if it was a little less pain, you know, there was something that it did. And then you overlay really lovely people on top of that. And people really— loved it.

I love that idea. I do think that there's a cumulative effect to these things that we do for our wellness. And it sounds like you did this years before all of this came into the biohacking space and became more at-home. Oftentimes people are buying now infrared saunas and these kinds of things. But like you said, it's one at a time. Usually people don't build the wellness suite that you're talking about.

Yeah, it's, you know, there were some interesting things like back in the day when we first started Restore. I don't call myself particularly innovative. I'm much better at seeing something as a little spark, and then I can kind of make it a fire. There were things like Upgrade Labs that existed 10 years ago. And the difference was that Upgrade Labs kind of just stayed there. And Restore figured out how to scale and do it the right way and do it quickly. So whereas some businesses like that stayed small, Restore became you know, a national thing and a national footprint. Now, I think there are reasons for that. We were built, we built our organization to scale. We had done this kind of thing before in terms of scaling businesses. You know, so I think we had a unique ability to do that. But, but the stuff that we put under the Restore roof, it existed, just wasn't put together very well. The protocols were all very individual services, not stacking. You know, we had this thing called Restore Labs where we experimented with all kinds of different ways to do the stuff and, and we just got good at it.

That's very cool. I mean, I love, I love the idea and I love the idea of creating blue zones all over the country. You know, we live in this society that's oftentimes so polluted. We know we're dealing with toxic burdens as people. And so to create an opportunity to have a space where you can go and get that kind of cumulative support, I think is so cool. And so Jim— Yeah, go ahead.

Problems, like big problems. And, and the typical customer had had their interactions with traditional medicine. They had tried all the stuff. They had done everything their doctor told them. And they either didn't get good outcomes or the side effects or unintended consequences were just as bad as the original problem. And I don't knock traditional medicine. I think there's a place for it. I think there are some things that if my kids had something, there are situations where I'd take my kids to a doctor, obviously. But, but they were looking for something different. And I do call it a hugs and tears business because we produced incredible results. People that for 20 years, 10 years had had a problem that just went away or, or was such a non-issue all of a sudden. And, and they were just astonished that like, I cannot believe that cold did that. I cannot believe that, like, contrast therapy did that. I cannot believe that simply being hydrated with an IV and a few micronutrients could give me that. And I didn't even know how bad I felt until I felt good again. And so, you know, I became really good friends with lots of the customers. I tell people all the time, my, my life's construct is a day that I don't cry is a day that I don't feel, a day that I don't feel is a wasted day. So, there were lots of tears in the early days. And I would say my customers were almost disappointed if they didn't get a tear out of me when they would tell me a story. And my staff was probably like, oh, for gosh sakes, please don't cry again. You know, but I also remind people, listen, I was an Army Ranger. I did all kinds of hard stuff. You could break my leg and I wouldn't cry. But, but like people things and stuff like that, I just think, why would you hold that back?

It's true. I mean, it's the best part, right? When we get to make that impact in someone's life and, and even through simple solutions that we know are simple to us can create such a lasting impact in someone's life. It's the greatest gift. Yeah. So, so I wanted to ask you next. Go ahead.

Go ahead. No, go ahead.

I was going to ask you, you know, I know that after Restore, you've already started building an incredible new project kind of taking health into a whole different dimension and approaching true prevention using a lot of new technologies and kind of a different mindset and approach. So I was just gonna ask you, what is your next cool project that you're creating for the world?

Yeah, you know, I did a series of things in addition to Restore. I own some really high-end health clubs on the East Coast and, you know, did a concept around— it was called a men's grooming lounge, which had some med spa components to it. So I do I always say all of those things plus some of the other businesses I did earlier on were building blocks to what I now have worked on, which is called Humanaut Health. And I always say an astronaut explores space, a humanaut explores health optimization. And we really did want to create a brand, first of all, that people felt like they could belong to. That was a movement, that it was an ethos. And I, and I quite simply say to people, do you want to be a humanaut or not? And when you describe what a humanaut is, you know, it's very intellectually curious and looking for better ways to do things and, and looking for these things that your body already does, but finding ways to accentuate that, you know, like all these things, people like, wow, yeah, of course I want to be a human. And then, you know, I use the analogy of if Restore is sort of elementary school when it comes to health and wellness, these are very foundational things like heat, cold, light, pressure. Like, those are your basic things, and, and everyone should be doing those, but they only take you so far. And so Humanote, to, you know, to use that same analogy, is probably the grad school of health and wellness. It's pulling all the pieces together and taking the complexity of health and wellness and making it easy for people. So we say we're your copilot in your health optimization journey. And when you walk in off the street, we start with a series of diagnostics, 100 blood panels, epigenetic genetic testing, gut health, biological age of all your organs. I mean, I could go on and on. There's about 75 different diagnostics that we can do. Once we get a really good picture of you, we can then create very personalized, individualized protocols. We assign you a coach as part of our coaching platform to help with behavior change. And then we solve the fundamental issues of health, movement, nutrition, sleep, stress, cognitive health. Then we want to keep checking in and make sure we're making progress. If we are, then we can go to the next level and we can help with more specific problems. Menopause for women, andropause for men, joint pain, metabolic health, sexual health, healthspan, you know, these really hard things to solve. But you don't solve them if you don't have a holistic integrated approach and if you're not solving the foundational things. And then we sprinkle in hormones, peptides, stem cells, ozone, all these cool things to accentuate the results. And, and people have really loved both the approach. They love the retail environment we've created. They love the people. And they're shocked by the amount of data and the things that they had no idea to even think about.

This sounds like functional medicine meets modern medicine all under one roof.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I commissioned art for the retail clinic. And the art has a construct. And the construct, it's very colorful, but it has straight lines that run across parallel on the thing. And then on top of that, there's a very amorphous shape that's also come colorful. And what I say is that the straight lines represent traditional medicine and the amorphous shapes represent functional medicine. And when you put the two of them together, you create something more beautiful than the individual components. And so we really do think like that. We're not anti-traditional medicine. We're not 100% functional medicine is the only way to do things. Like, You gotta pull in the parts of each thing and, and use it in a way that's very individualized and personalized. And by the way, we do lean into accentuating the things that your body already does. Hormones, stem cells, you know, all these things. Like, these are things your body produces and, and you just need to help it sometimes. We do have customers that come in or patients that come in and say, listen, I'd like to achieve these goals and I'd like to do it without traditional pharmaceuticals.

Okay.

Like, others come in and say, hey, throw whatever you can at me. Pharmaceuticals are fine. Like, we really do try to take the person, consider what they're trying to accomplish, consider how they want to accomplish it, and work with them in the appropriate way.

You know, it sounds to me like it, it's everything under one roof that so many people are seeking. You have a category of people who are are really struggling, chronic illness, chronic disease, autoimmune, all the issues. And whenever I see people like that, I say functional medicine is where you need to go because you need a lot more in-depth testing on yourself to understand what are those root causes coming at you. Then you have a whole category of people who want to just optimize. I'm one of those people. I'm like, how can I make everything better? How can I make everything— how can I keep my brain function at top level forever? Perimenopause, menopause, I want to skip all that. Like, let's just optimize all the way through. And then you have a whole other category of people who are struggling with things but just don't get any answers. Like, I find a lot of people are calling it aging, and I'm like, no, guys, that's inflammation. And you're, you're thinking that this is your new quality of life as you age. So do you have kind of different tracks that you put people on to support them? And then what are some of your preventive tools that are very modern technology tools that people may not realize they can do? Like, I saw you do full body MRI for cancer screening, and I was like, actually these are really cool things that if we did them, we could catch things way earlier and treat way earlier.

Yeah. So I would say, I'll start there, that there are 4 apocalyptic things and that's sort of cancer, neurodegenerative issues, metabolic issues, and, you know, the obvious things like if diabetes, cancer, dementia, you know, metabolic issues, like I said, those are the ones that are the apocalyptic horsemen. And so the first thing you want to do is identify if those things are about to run you over. And interestingly, like cardiovascular health and metabolic health, you can completely control them. You can completely sort of address those things. Now, cancer and neurodegenerative issues are a little harder. Cancer, it's 100% about early detection. And so like it's a little bit arbitrary. No one can pin exactly why people get cancer. There's certainly lifestyle things that help push that off, but the key to cancer is early detection. And the neurodegenerative stuff, it's a little bit of early detection and a little bit of trying a bunch of things. And so the first thing is get those things, you know, on the table and figuring out where you stand. Okay, let's set them aside. Now there are certainly lifestyle things that everyone should do. I always say movement is the best medicine. Like movement is the thing that helps with every bad health issue. And so, all right, what does movement mean? And we help define that. We start with data once again. We do all kinds of movement analysis. We inform people about things like VO2 max, and they're like, oh, isn't that for high-level athletes? It's like, well, no, it's actually for everybody. And it's the single best indicator of healthspan and, and where you are and where you're going to be when you get older. And so let's, let's take that esoteric idea and break it down for people and help people understand how they improve it. And, you know, and we just go into movement really deeply. Then we look at simple things like sleep. Like, by the way, I think sleep is one of the biggest issues in society.

Sure.

People bombarded with, if you just don't look at your screens and blah, blah, blah, you'll be fine. And it's not as simple as that. There's a lot more that can be done. And then you look at, all right, what are we putting in our body? And We don't get into the religious wars around food and take the side of, you know, keto or that. We function on a few basic principles and then make sure those principles are applied to the diet that's going to work for somebody. We do a ton of testing around cognitive health and give you some, you know, different things you can do for neuroplasticity and all the stuff. And, you know, I can keep going, but But those are the foundational things. Like, get the really cataclysmic things off the table and then focus on the foundational things and then get to the specific things. You know, like I said, for a 45 to 55-year-old woman, you know, menopause is the thing. Like, if you don't address it, you are going to have a problem. And I say we do try to have a different, better approach to it. So, for instance, if a man walks in and says, I'm here to fix my testosterone. Our first question is, where's your wife? Because we don't want to fix your testosterone if we don't fix your wife, because now we're creating a societal issue. Like, I, I've seen it again and again with guys my age. Like, you fix your testosterone and your wife doesn't fix her hormones, that's a problem. And we don't want to be a part of a problem. So we do try to take a different— I would call more, I don't know, I don't wanna say more humane, but certainly a, a, a more thoughtful approach to all these things.

I love that. And, and I also love that you called it cataclysmic and apocalyptic. You know, they are that level serious to me. And I think people oftentimes just live how they live, eat how they eat, deal with stress the way they deal with it. Lean into food, alcohol, vices, whatever those vices are, but never take stock of the fact that just 10, 20 years down the line, what's coming for you is apocalyptic. That's my entire family history. That's why I teach what I teach. That's why I do what I do. I know what my endgame looks like. It looks like 20 years of horrible disease management and interventions. Heart attack, stroke, Parkinson's, amputation. It was all bad. And I thought, how are you going to change this? Like, that's what's coming for your parents, and then that's what's coming for you if you don't have a huge behavior change. And so I love that you called it apocalyptic. It's kind of like, you can go to functional medicine and say, I'm, I'm trying to optimize, but if we don't check for the really serious stuff first and take it off the table, then we're not really supporting the person or their family.

Yeah, it's, um, I'm, I'm kind of surprised by the number of people that literally say the words, I just, I don't want to know. Like, I hear what you're doing. I get it. If I come in and do all that, I'll find something. And I'm like, and you don't want to know. And, and there are people that are like that. And I will say, you know, we may never get to them, or we will get to them when something really bad starts to happen, because that does change your perspective. And I will say this. I think a lot of these offerings, especially in the longevity space, if not done well, can become a little gross, can become a little too self-serious, can suck the life out of everything. Like, people still have to live. They have to balance their sort of short-term life and what they want to have around them and what they want to do with their sort of longer-term goals. So we try to meet people where they're at. We try to understand what they want to accomplish and how they want to do it. Um, we get things all the time like, I'm ready to go all in but I got to drink my wine at night. It's like, okay, like, let's talk about that first because there might be some alternatives. But if that's a, that's a hard line, okay, let's, let's work around it. And, and like, you know, once again, you know this better than anybody else. Like, sometimes it can be simple thing. Well, great. You're going to drink a little wine. Can we drink it at 5 o'clock instead of 9 o'clock? You know, like, you're just little things like, okay, I get what you're trying to do. You don't want life to have all the joy and fun sucked out of it. Everything about this can't be so self-serious and judgmental. And that's how we try to do it. Like we make it relatable. We make it understandable. Like I said, we're your copilot. We're not your judge. A judge tells you all the things that you've done wrong. A copilot kind of helps you navigate the things that pop up. And I think that's just a better way to it. We, you know, I talk at our company as much about playfulness as I talk about medicine, you know, like in order to get people to want to do this, you got to put some playfulness in this. You've got to make this enjoyable or relatable or else people, people are not good at sticking with things that are drudgery.

It's so true. I sometimes feel like that when I'm sitting with a client, like I'm giving them an entire lifestyle and I'm like, I know this is overwhelming them. I know that the work I'm asking them to do isn't that fun. And so really my job is to get them to see how good they can feel. And because they can feel extraordinary, clear-headed, energized— like, my goal is for everyone to feel like a Ferrari. Like, let's get there and feel that good. Then they're willing to do the work. Because to me, it's all about race cars, and that's always my favorite analogy. But how can you get to, like, that level of fueling yourself on feeling that great and staying that optimal and not crashing into things.

Yeah, you know, and a lot of people come in and they expect a magic thing or they're kind of told, well, we got to do all these things and you'll see it down the road. Like, once again, my philosophy is there has to be benefit in the immediate future. We have to do things that make people see some notion of improvement quickly. And it's that daily improvement, those little things that done day after day after day, week after week after week, month after month, that ultimately that is the secret to healthspan. There is no magic thing. But once again, if you tell people, well, just do these things, trust me, wait for it, that doesn't work. If you make it so hard for them that it's just drudgery, that doesn't work. If you throw too many things at them at one time, that doesn't work. And so you kind of And rethink all— so, for instance, we have what we call a Focus 3. We never focus on more than 3 things at a time. And we do quarterly check-ins for your Focus 3. Have we improved the items in your Focus 3? If not, we need to, number 1, rethink how we're doing it. But, you know, I think people want progress and they want to see progress and they want to move to the next thing. They don't want Focus 3 to not eventually become Item 4, 5, 6, 7. But But if you try to do it all at once, that's a problem. And I will also say that another part of our philosophy is we do not focus on the last 5% before we figure out the first 90%. And so I had a friend that came to me and asked about a particular peptide. And I said, man, I love you, but we're not going to do that. And he was like, well, why? And I was like, man, come on, you know why? Like, look in the mirror. You've got bigger issues than that. Like, so let's, let's work on your movement. Let's work on your metabolic issues. And by the way, I suspect that'll help your, your sleep. Like, until we do those things, I'm not gonna be a part of giving you this fake thing that's gonna, it's not gonna get it done. And so, you know, we really tried. I think people can handle that, by the way.

I think so too.

If you talk to them the right way and say, we'll get there. Like I'm not telling you never, I'm just telling you it's not the thing to focus on right now. And by the way, when I say I'm doing that, I'm not doing any of that. I'm not the doctor. You know, I, I stay out of the medical piece of it. Having said that, everybody comes and asks me, well, what are you doing? And what should I do? And tell me, tell me, tell me the plan for me. Guys, I'll give you some tips. I'll talk about some lifestyle stuff, but that's, that's what the doctors do. That's what our medical team does. Does.

For sure. And you know, earlier you were expressing what's on the artwork of Straight Lines Amorphous, and there's an image on your website right above the Humanaut values. And I loved the values that you shared. And it's this image of concentric circles, and it just felt like such a beautiful spiritual picture around like building a vibration. I think of building vibrant health as the key of what Ayurveda is trying to share with people. And so, I thought when you said that there's modern tradition, there's traditional medicine, allopathic medicine, there's functional medicine, and then there's ancient medicine, that ancient wisdom that we're also trying to bring forth and show people, hey, this ancient wisdom, these tools, these herbs all have a place in creating that optimization that people are craving.

I couldn't agree more. And, I don't sort of pretend to know what I don't know. So, there are some concepts out there that I know more or less. But I couldn't agree with the way you just start more with the way you just articulated it. I think people are foolish to discount things that aren't new and modern and all of that. There have been people doing things to help the health and wellness of people for millennia. And there are, you know, the problem is some of it's gotten perverted. So for instance, depending on who you're talking to, the words functional medicine can be a positive thing or a negative thing. Some people will hear those words and they'll think, oh, that's too woo-woo. It's not real. It's like, well, really? Like functional medicine done well actually is fantastic. And then other people hear it and they, of course, functional medicine's the way. So I do think some of these things have been perverted because, you know, people hear about it in the wrong way or it's represented or presented the wrong way. And, you know, I think we certainly feel an obligation to help educate people about the right way to think about certain things, including once again, traditional medicine. Like, like, don't, you know, I've got friends that'll go down a deep, dark hole around the FDA and, and the sort of the traditional institutions and what's motivating them and all that. But I'm like, guys, like, come back to the light. Let's talk about the good things. Let's be a little bit more— let's assume good intent and project good intent. And let's not go all the way to the darkest of the dark interpretations. And then let's do that for all the different buckets. And I think that's helpful for people. I think people enjoy agency. And by agency, I mean giving them the information so that they can think through things. They can be a part of the discussion in a meaningful way. They actually are working with their medical practitioner to come to the right solutions based on sort of how they think and how they want to get better. I mean, I, I think that's a big part of it.

I think so too. And I love that you're focusing on brain health, cognitive health, hormonal health, some of these big things where I think we do have huge gaps in the type of care and level of care that people are getting. These are almost death sentences. You're just told, yeah, you're in menopause, sucks to be you. That's unfortunate. And I'm like, no, no, no, there's always a way. There's always a tool. There's always a toolkit. There's always an approach. And cognitive decline, we know that's type 3 diabetes. We know it's coming down the pipeline for— I don't know if I should say a majority, but a large number of our population if we don't start bringing more tools into that arena. And it can be so devastating to the whole family.

So I think that is 100 million Americans are pre-diabetic and that's alarming. But the more alarming number is that 80%, i.e., 80 million don't know it. So 80 million Americans are walking around that are pre-diabetic and they don't even know it. And you know how that ends. Pre-diabetic without knowledge becomes diabetic almost 100% of the time. And it's a lot of people And it's a horrible, horrible thing to have to deal with.

It is. And I think as a society, we've started to think it's just normal. It's normal. You become diabetic. It's just too hard. And because of my family history, everybody was diabetic across both sides of grandparents and then the aunts and uncles. And so I think people underestimate the long-term damage into the body of that chronic inflammation of that diabetes. And I agree, it's hard. It's not easy to do, you know, maintain our weight, build our metabolism, do all the things that we talk about, move enough. But if we don't, to me, the punishment is just too significant. It's neuropathy, it's your eyes, you lose vision. Like, there, there's so many things other than just, oh, I'm gonna take an injection for my diabetes, you know?

Yeah, it's horrible. I mean, I, I grew up in a family where every male on my dad's side of the family died before they were 60. And now, it was very predictable. They were incredibly overweight. Like, my, my uncle at 45 had to be carried out of his house in a piano case when he died when, you know, I think he was 45, 46. So I grew up around that and I grew up with all my grandparents living with me as a kid. I saw them one by one have horrific health outcomes. I saw two of them, dementia was the thing and one of them, morbid obesity and diabetes was the thing. And then one of them was a stroke. And, you know, it makes an impression on somebody. I always swore that will never be me. And then you kind of grow up and you have kids and you have all this stuff going on. And your mom who says, you told me it would never be you and you're 30 pounds overweight. And I'm like, well, my first defensive response is always, but it's not 300 pounds overweight like Uncle Jimmy. But she was right. And she was like, you know, and she's just a mom that loves her son. And she's like, you know, please, like, like, don't let it become a problem because she saw it too. And, and so we all kind of have our histories and we all have the things that we kind of take from that. And, um, I, I hate hearing your family history around these things, but the good news is you're you because of that. Now you're going to go out and help a bunch of people, and, and I'm doing what I'm doing partly because of that as well.

Yeah, you're right. And we take that mission and we make it our life mission, and, and I think it's our opportunity to impact the people around and for example, my mom was here this weekend and I said, you know, I'm going to have you try a couple of things. So I poured her aloe vera juice and she's like, that looks gross. I was like, Ayurveda says aloe vera juice every morning. Just try it. She's like, okay, I can do that. I was like, okay, here's the minerals I drink. Try it. She closed her eyes. She held her nose. She drank it. She's like, oh, it tastes like water. I was like, exactly. So I said, are you committed if I order this now and ship it all to your home on subscribe and save that you will do the thing? She goes, I can do it. And so I think it's just about showing people that health doesn't have to be hard. We can get excited about it. That's what Human Health sounds to me like. It sounds like a place where you can go learn so much about yourself, understand it, and then apply so many fun different approaches to optimize.

Yeah, you know, my mom's 80. My dad died. When my dad died, I was really worried that she was going to go into a hole and not really do things. But it was actually the opposite. She became the lovely charismatic woman that I knew as my mom and, and just like going and hanging out with the ladies and playing cards and playing golf. And, and she really did sort of step back and reinvest in movement and those sort of things. But a really awesome thing is she became a member at Humanize. She became what we call a zone member. It's, it's one of our sort of entry-level memberships. And she went through the whole process. And, you know, 80 is probably not our hardcore customer. I sort of say 45 to 70 is kind of the sweet spot. And there's like Midlife Navigators and Optima, like you said. But my mom came in and she signed up and she was like, I got to tell you, this is awesome. I didn't know any of this stuff. And like, holy crap, I've got lots of problems. And then the funniest thing is my mom's always a worrier. She says, and I don't know you make money. Oh my gosh, you gave me so many things. Like, please tell me you're going to be okay. And I was like, mom, relax. We will be okay. We'll be fine. You know, but it was just really lovely to see her, you know, an 80-year-old woman, intellectually curious, embracing this thing. The love of her life is dead, but she's like, I got a lot of good living to do and I want to make the most of it. And I've got lovely grandkids and, you know, all this stuff. And, you know, I'm incredibly proud of her. And I would love to have many, many, many more stories like that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So do you have any one story that stands out to you as like, wow? Because I have some of those stories. A client who came through where it was such a huge shift that shocked even you.

Um, you know, I've— I don't want to ever get numb to it, but it's the simple things that have been the most impressionable for me. And I go— even go back to the Restore days where a woman came to me and she said, Jim, you saved my marriage. And I was like, we've got— no, come on. Like, I didn't— I didn't save anything. And she says, well, I'll tell you the story. My husband got a knee injury and he just became a cranky dude. And he'd sit in front of the TV and just watch news all day. And that'll make you cranky. and it got to the point where I just like, I can't take it anymore. I dragged his butt into Restore. I bought him a package of cryotherapy and his knee pain went away and we started walking around the lake again. And it's like, we have rediscovered our love and we've rediscovered our, like, and, and that's a, that's a Restore example. You know, these things are gonna happen at Humanaut as well. Like we've already started to see like on the stem cell side, like like my identity was being active and I used to love skiing and then my knees hurt too much to ski. Then I did stem cells and now I'm skiing again and I can ski with my grandkids. It's like these very seminal things. It always tends to be built around something that's super meaningful to a person. They have a tremendous amount of thankfulness and gratitude. And usually, like I said, a lot of tears are shared and all that. But I could talk about 1,000 of those stories and they don't have to be dramatic. And they are talked about in terms of you saved my marriage. You know, like that's why we do it. And I don't know, I just, I really love it to be quite frank. And I always say I'm selfish and unselfish. Unselfishly, I really do want to make a difference and societal impact. Selfishly, man, I think I need a little bit of this. You know, like, I get more out of it than they think. They're telling me the story about how it's improved their life, but, like, I think I need a little bit of it to feed me on a regular basis. It's like my, my fuel. And, yeah, that's a little bit selfish. But, but it is cool. Like, it doesn't always have to be this massively big thing to make a big difference. And it's just about getting started. Just something that gives me enough of a, a tailwind to push me forward. And a lot of times that's removing pain. A lot of time that's adding sleep. You know, it's just these little things and then they suddenly can do more and more and more and more and they wake up and can't recognize themselves anymore. That's the cool part.

It's true. I think we underestimate when we have those dips in quality of life, what that means for us. I know I went through a season where I was just tired all the time. And so it made me more sedentary. Made my mood not as awesome. And then I reached out to a practitioner. I was like, something's up. I know how I'm meant to feel. And so she checked my hormones. She goes, yeah, I see the problem. Let's optimize. Optimize back up to where I need to be because perimenopause will shift all your hormones all over the place. Sometimes we need a tool. And I'm one of those people, I'm a little anti-pharma, so I was resistant. She goes, how about you let me try this on you? And I'm always willing to try anything. I'm like, sure, I'll try anything. And I'm happy to check the result for myself. And now I'm like, okay, back to Ferrari speed in the brain and energy levels consistent through the day. Perfect. And so I think that people just need to understand, like, we all go through those seasons. Even if you're into health, even if this is what you do for a living, we all have our different seasons of life that shift us. And if we can get the right support, the right practitioners, the right tools on board, all of a sudden everything can be back to where it should be.

I think I've only been around you in your Ferrari stages because you've always had a lovely energy and just a really good vitality and all that. And, you know, everybody has different kinds of friends. I kind of put them in two buckets and I use like a reunion as the best example. You walk into your 20-year, 30-year reunion and you, you kind of half of the people you're like, Oh my God, like, who are these people? They can't possibly be the same age as me. Goodness. And then you see the other people. It's like, okay, these are my peeps. You know, like, yeah, hey, hey, what's up? I remember you. And, and you actually see like, okay, they've taken care of themselves. We can all relate to that. It's, and we all know people that are our age and older that you're like, yeah, that works. Like I got invited on a catamaran trip in Greece. And it was kind of funny. It was a Restore franchisee. One of the couple was turning 80. And I went and told my wife, hey, we're going to the Greek Isles and going on a catamaran. We're going with our friends and it's their 80th birthday. And my wife was like, oh, come on, I don't know about all that. Trapped on a catamaran and they're turning 80. And, you know, I said, listen, first of all, it's an honor to be invited. We're going. Second of all, like, I want to understand what Tom is doing. Like, that is the most active 80-year-old I've ever seen. And on the trip, there were lots of funny moments where he would tell us his secrets. He told us his quote unquote sex stack. He told us his things. I'm like, huh? Like, all right, I'm, I hear you. Like, and it wasn't, it wasn't like, it was just real. It was like, that's awesome. And that's relatable. And that's, like, okay, so that's your secret. And he had everything from his eyes and his eyesight into the little tricks that he did, like I said, to these things that, you know, on a romantic night that he would and his wife would— I mean, it was just so lovely to hear it, um, coming from— and he was the most vital 80-year-old I've ever seen. He was the captain of the boat. He was doing things like pulling things out of the front of the boat where he literally has to lean lower than feet and pull up heavy things. And, and you're like, if that's what 80 is going to look like, sign me up. Like, I love it. And, and like I said, I don't want to get silly talking about things like sex stacks and all that. But I think that those things are important for people because it's little tidbits. So like, yeah, like, like making love to my wife at 80. There's a way to do that. Like, awesome. Like, sign me up. You know, my wife and I joke all the time. She's like, did you ever think you'd be sleeping with a 50-year-old? Like, oh my God. And then you're 50 and you're like, yeah, it's great. But you're right. When you're 30, you don't think about it, but it's coming. Like 50s coming, 60s coming, 70s coming. These are real things. And you get there. And if you've taken care of yourself, it's quite lovely. It's actually, I would say this time of my life is my favorite part of my life. And I hope that I turn 60, it'll be my favorite part. And I think that's possible, but it, it does require some work.

I think it requires consistent investment in our health and our well-being. And, and I think it's important for both people to do that. Like, I think if you look at men's health right now, I think a lot of men don't focus on their health and they don't focus on their prevention. I see so many women who do because we're focused on our metabolism, our metabolic health. We're focused on our hormone health for sure, because when it when it's in a nosedive, we feel it acutely. And so I find it interesting if we can bring our men to the table and say, hey, you need to focus on your heart health and everything too, then we can really optimize as couples.

Yeah, there's a bunch of studies around men and women kind of come to it differently. I think a lot of the studies around women, the dynamic is they sort of spend a large part of their adult life taking care of everybody else. And then at some point, like, the kids get older and, you know, things change, and suddenly you wake up and you're like, holy crap, I haven't taken care of myself in a long time. And society's totally unfair about what it means to be a beautiful woman. And so they're like, okay, now I gotta catch up. You know, men, it's a little different. Men kind of wake up and at some point it's like, you know, it's like, I'm not the master of my universe anymore, and I'm starting to see the decay And, and like, so different, we think about it differently, but men and women both get there. And what I would say is that the longer you wait, the harder it is to fix. It's never too late. And, you know, it's— you either do something about it or you do tend to have a pretty miserable end of life experience.

It's true. And we see that more and more. Well, Jim, it's been so cool to have you on the podcast today. It was such an honor to meet you at the conference we met at. And is there anything else you want to share about Humanaut Health? And will you share where everyone can find you, where your locations are? And I can't wait to see this come to West Palm Beach in my neck of the woods.

Yeah. So I would go to humanauthhealth.com. You can find out the most information there. You can always reach me through LinkedIn. I'm try to be as responsive as possible, obviously. And my hope for Humanaut is that we bring some of the things that have currently been sort of the purvey of rich people and people with more affluence to the masses. Like, I love our dynamic. I love what we're doing. But what gets me out of bed and excited every day is the thought of democratizing longevity and healthspan in a way that hasn't been done to date. And, you know, you can go to the Humanite Health website now and we do have some sort of higher-level things, but the goal is over time we are able to democratize that and push it down. And that's what I hope for more than anything. And I will do my best to, you know, reply if folks reach out to me and you know, humanhealth.com is definitely the place to get more information.

Nice. Well, thank you so much. I love that idea. Democratize health for all so we can all have the longevity we deserve.

Exactly. Well, thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure as always. And, um, um, I, I really enjoyed our conversation today.

Me too. Thank you for joining me today. For everyone listening to the podcast, like and share this episode, share it with someone who needs it. These episodes are here to help us all build the health that we deserve each and every day. So thank you all for joining today, and I'll see you next week. Thanks for joining me for this episode. Check out our sponsor, Fusionary Formulas, the potent turmeric supplement used by doctors around the US for patients with pain and inflammation. www.fusionaryformulas.com. I'm your host, Dr. Shivani Gupta. For more, visit ShivaniGupta.com. Subscribe to this podcast in Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Click the follow button or subscribe in any of the apps that you use. That's all I've got for you on the Fusionary Health Podcast this week. You have the power to transform your health and achieve vibrant, vibrant health starting today. On Aspire with Emma Greed, we talk about mindset, ambition, and the work that actually moves the needle. Listen to Aspire with Emma Greed, available where you get your podcasts.