S2E6: AI Meets Medicine — Personalized Care You’ll Actually Use with Dr. Erik Reis.

Where I'm really seeing things move, hopefully in the right direction, is I like seeing the application of AI in these large language models to facilitate doctors to be able to make better clinical decisions. You hear the stories of a patient going in and, you know, having a rare condition and all of a sudden the doctor can put it in and you like, you know, the medical literature doubles every 73 days at this point in time. There's no way any provider out there will be able to go through all that information and digest it. With a large language model or some sort of AI-based product, you can. And so to reference that and to help give people proper diagnoses is great. But I think we're missing the boat on saying, okay, well, we're doing all this work for providers and reimbursement for care and payers and coding. What about the options for patients? Right.

Welcome to Startups Decoded, the show that gets real about what it takes to build a successful startup. I'm Andy Walsh, 2x exited founder, strategist, and your host. Each week I talk with top founders entrepreneurs, investors, and operators to unpack the plays that drive real traction, not just headlines. If you're building something bold, this is where you'll get the honest insights to scale with clarity and confidence. Let's keep growing together. Hit subscribe and share with your community. It would mean the world to me. Hello and welcome back to Startups Decoded. My name is Andy Walsh, uh, and today we're expanding into the health category, and my guest is Dr. Eric, who is a colleague of mine at Nobody, but also has his own practice. Welcome to the show, Eric.

Thanks, Andy. It's fun to be on here, and I appreciate you allowing me to come hang out with you for a couple of minutes.

Well, we do it often in the more formal work capacity. So being able to tie you down, so to speak, and get you to answer a few questions, for me, I'm excited by because I studied exercise science at university, but I'm a little bit older than you, so I don't quite remember all of it. But I'm fascinated by science. And I think that the world that we live today, as far as this hybrid nature now of AI today and medicine, but also the evolution of Eastern medicine into the world of holistic practice, things that will change the direction of people's lives. And as soon as there's a seismic shift globally, founders jump on that immediately and, and find opportunities. So today's topic will be very much around that holistic path. So to set it up, uh, I always like to give listeners a chance to get to know you a little bit. So talk us through those early days of being a doctor, um, Yeah.

Well, it's always interesting when people ask me that question of like kind of where I started to where I ended up, because I don't really feel as though like I chose healthcare. It kind of chose me. Right. So, you know, I was, you know, a patient first before I came a doctor and now in the later parts of, you know, my journey, we'll say for the lack of a better term. Because I know I look like I'm 15 still. So like people are going to ask like, how old is this guy actually? You know, I now spent the last 12 years in clinical practice working with really complex neuro cases. So from day one, I've known that I wanted to go into medicine. If you'd asked me my freshman year of college what I wanted to be, I would have said I would have been a rep for Pfizer, and that was my lifelong trajectory. And oh, how things have changed, right? So, you know, my, my journey started off with being a patient, experiencing the medical system, you know, getting my doctorate. So having that has been great and helping patients. But then after that too, it's like, well, what else is next? And now I'm really in this phase of exploring things that I've witnessed in the practice or in the clinic and transitioning that into saying, well, how can I actually try and help more people in more ways globally, right? So I can only see so many patients in my office and before my time runs out or before my, my mind runs out. And so now it's like, okay, well, how do I get involved in tech? How do I get involved in startups? How do I get involved in building systems and processes to actually scale what we do? And that's kind of really where I am today. You know, I went to undergrad as well too, uh, exercise phys. Uh, I got my doctorate in chiropractic medicine, moved into neuroscience right away. Um, I've never been a part of a traditional practice of just seeing like a specific condition. It's always been like complex neuro cases. That's just changed the game for me because I witnessed my grandfather pass away from Alzheimer's. Uh, I've seen close, you know, individuals in my life who've struggled with neurologically or neurocognitive based issues. And so I'm like, gosh, I don't ever want to have that. And I want to see if I can change that trajectory. And so for me, the big focus moving forward, which really started probably in earlier years of life, has been how do I maximize my brain and help other people do the same? And that's kind of where I started. It's kind of where I am today. And hopefully that's probably where I'll end up in the next, you know, 30, 50 years of however long I have left hanging out here. So we'll see what the journey has in store for me moving forward.

I think it's really important. It's interesting to reflect on being on the other side of the table as a patient. And the experiences that you had, the challenges that you faced, and it's things that we do all the time. And for those who have poor health, um, maybe something chronic, like they're probably too familiar with it, but even if you're not, going to the doctor is a regular occurrence. But fast forward to this year, the world has obviously been turned upside down and the opportunity for the evolution of medicine and medtech and health holistically you feel like there's no end or ceiling to that at the moment with the opportunity that we've got in front of us. So being able to fuse your curiosity, but also it sounds like scale is a word that we need to talk about a little bit today as well, in that there's only so many Dr. Eric hours in the week. And to create more Dr. Erics, we need to be able to leverage technology to do that. Otherwise, like you'll only have certain capacity and then you'll become a shadow of a human if you're doing too many hours.

Yeah, fair. Well, it's a scary subject, I think, out of having more than one of me. But what I will say is I do think that there are a lot of people out there who have come across a similar problem in healthcare that I have, which is that a lot of things that we do don't necessarily scale, or if they do, are they scaling in the right reason? So for instance, right, we take a look at like EHR records and this was supposed to be this big panacea of interoperability and interconnectivity of information. So Andy Walsh goes to see a doctor at Hospital A and then he goes to see another doctor at Hospital B. Well, those records should be talking to each other. The Doctor at Hospital B should know everything about Andy before he even comes in, because he should have access to records at Hospital A, but it doesn't happen that way. And it hasn't happened that way at all. Right now, unless everyone's using Epic or Cerner or the same massive EHR platforms, the problem is the interoperability. And then more importantly too, who owns this data? Who gets to have access to the data? My belief is that patients should be able to own their data. My belief is that patients should be able to make the decisions on their data. But, you know, there's a lot of entities out there that would disagree with that. So the conversation now where we're going is really, in my opinion, really focused on personalized approaches to medicine, right? So whether I'm in the clinic working with patients and formulating treatment plans and taking care of, you know, the individual in front of me, or I'm thinking about the next platform or product that I want to build to say, how can we help as many people as possible, but also give them a unique experience to appeal to what they're dealing with? And I really think that It's an exciting time to be in this space because I think AI and technology can solve a lot of these problems. I don't think it can solve all of them, but I think it can solve a lot of them. My only concern, my only worry about that is that we are going to over-engineer products. We're going to over-AI platforms, and we're going to forget about the center of all of this, which really is the patient. And so my big focus right now, whether I'm in the practice or whether we're building companies with Nobody Studios, is just making sure that we don't forget that core thesis. The people are the ones that matter the most. And I also have to make sure that whatever we build is something that people want, right? So there's a mix between, you know, Ford talking about, you know, if we would ask people what they would have wanted back then, they would have wanted a faster horse. And here he goes and built the Model T, right? So I'm aware of that. But at the same time as well, we also have to make sure that what we're doing is advancing people's ability to improve their quality of life. And that, that to me is just a core fundamental belief, both clinically and then also too in the startup space. I think there's a lot of people out there who resonate with that. I just, I have yet to see it really gain mass attention or attraction on the, on the, on this level that I think we should be at this point in time.

And going back to one of the first points you mentioned there, as far as the decentralization of information and data, so fragmented as far as where your records are held, and there should be a really simple way to track everything that you do and measure and test, and you start to observe patterns and that data analysis can happen by itself. So it's just active and ongoing all the time. So as your body changes, then this information is transported across into a central system. So whether you live in Washington or whether you're living down in Florida, your information travels with you wherever you go. And that seems like an obvious solution to a much bigger problem because that then also impacts public health. It goes into health insurance. There, there's so many factors that play into that, and the more disconnected it is, it feels like the more expensive it gets too. So there's so many flow-on effects of that limit and ceiling that's been in place for a long time here.

Oh, we've been aware of these problems for quite some time, right? And unfortunately in healthcare, it's not something where you can just throw money at and say, here, this is going to get solved, right? If that was the case, we would've had this solved decades ago. So, you know, where I think, I think things are going to move is you're going to see a lot more focus on continued prevention. I think that that inherently COVID shoved that to the forefront, and I think it makes a lot of sense as to why when you you take a look, especially the United States compared to other countries, I mean, people are living longer in the US, but they're living longer with chronic conditions, which burdens our healthcare system and supply. A lot of the major issues that we run into healthcare is spending so much money on reactive procedures and protocols that maybe aren't also advancing quality of life and/or they're so reactive that it's far too late to actually make a large difference for that person. So I think prevention is key. I think it always has been. And I think we've just been a bit naive to think we can take a tablet or go see a specific type of doctor to negate Negate any of the things that we do to our brains and bodies on a daily basis. I'm really keenly focused right now on finding ways to help people help themselves. And that's not saying that you should never see a doctor or that you should be able to have it all figured out by yourself, because as a patient, you should just be a really good patient. But it's our job as doctors to educate and inform patients. A doctor comes from the Latin root docere, meaning to teach or teacher. And I don't see many doctors teaching their patients or empowering their patients to really understand why doctors are asking them to do specific things. So I think that there's a unique marriage there. I think that, you know, when we move away from these large language models, I, I see a day where there's almost like a personal physiologic, like body-based model set for each one of us. So my Apple Watch is collecting data on me right now. My Oura Ring is collecting data on me right now. My Apple phone is collecting data on me right now. And I promise this is not an Apple advert, but what I'm going to tell you is there's data out there and there's information in that data that could be used to give me personalized insights about my health, my body, my mind, my sleep, my energy. And I really think that those things excite me because technology can solve that. I think we're already maximizing and opportunizing habits that people have, and there's no reason why those companies can't get built or won't get built. I just want to be a part of that journey because I think that, that excites me, and I think it can solve a lot of problems we're currently facing in healthcare.

From me, and I'm obviously not close to— I look at something like a Zempik And that became like a huge thing through COVID and a bunch of Hollywood people doing it. And Western medicine is great at doing the Band-Aid solution of giving you medication to mask the symptoms rather than deal with the source. And I don't want to go too deep on that today, but I think what you're talking about is that information is power, right? So the more you know about yourself, what your baseline is, your health passport of sorts. So we're all unique. We all have our markers. How do you measure variance and how does technology technology then empower you. And I've read things about implants in blood that is basically a microchip that allows to actively testing and can monitor changes in blood levels and certain things to be proactive in identify something that may spike slightly. That's a flag that needs to be investigated. So that kind of technology obviously is amazing for longevity, but I feel like that until one, that the right people are asking the right questions to get that information and two, the technology exists to be able to pair those two up, then we're not going to move forward. So I think that that feels like where we're at. But if you read the press today, they feel like there's a lot of startups and a lot of change happening in world of medical and medtech holistically. And I'd love to throw back to you, like some of the things that you are seeing as far as trends. And we talked at the start about East versus West in that holistic approach. Like that's a whole topic in itself probably, but even start there, what's happening in that space?

Well, I'm, I'm really seeing a lot of integration. I think an integrative approach to care is something that we have talked a lot about, but we haven't really mastered or put into practice. And all I'm saying is, listen, every single doctor, every single aspect of healthcare is there for a reason, right? So, you know, if you go and like sever an artery in your arm, you shouldn't go see a physical therapist, right? If you go and get into a really severe accident, like you should be in an ER and being triaged in some way, shape, or form by the right care team. But the problem that I think that we're running into is that for a lot of individuals, they're only being provided specific subsets of options, right? So, you know, we can battle all day Eastern, Western medicine, what that looks like. I don't think there ever really should be a line. I think it's absolutely amazing what the pharmaceutical industry has been able to do with producing chemicals that can literally change your brain and change your body, right? Like, to think that you could have a dose of morphine when someone's doing a root canal in your mouth and you don't feel anything is amazing. Like, that is absolutely, without a doubt, a miracle. But that's not the only option that we can give people when they're in pain. Right. And so for me, what drives me is just when we look at understanding the human brain, it opens up so many opportunities and it really helps us understand why so many aspects of medicine work or how we think that they work. Right. So I'll give you an example. Every great study has a double-blind placebo-controlled variant. And the reason for that is that your beliefs are really powerful. In changing the effects of how medicines work or don't work. There's a reason for that, and we've known about that for decades, but I don't think people really understand the magnitude of what that actually means. If I could tell you that, Andy, I was giving you a sugar pill and the sugar pill would raise your testosterone by a specific amount of points, and it did, well, it wasn't the pill. It was your belief that the pill was working on your behalf, and you metabolically, neurologically, hormonally actually generated that change in your body. If you just think about that magnitude for a second, it's absolutely amazing that you are able to do that right now. You thought you took a pill that was going to do that, but you didn't, right? And so what's, what's exciting for me is combining the neurology and the neuroscience with tech and finding ways to help people hack their brains and their physiology to improve their quality of life. And I don't think it's Eastern or Western. I think it's a yes and conversation. Where, where I'm really seeing things move hopefully in the right direction is I like seeing the application of AI in these large language models to facilitate doctors to be able to make better clinical decisions. You hear the stories of a patient going in and, you know, having a rare condition and also the doctor can put it in and you like, you know, the medical literature doubles every 73 days at this point in time. There's no way any provider out there will be able to go through all that information and digest it. But with a large language model or some sort of AI-based product, you can. And so to reference that and to help give people proper diagnoses is great. But I think we're missing the boat on saying, okay, well, we're doing all this work for providers and reimbursement for care and payers and coding. What about the options for patients? Right? One of the early beta tests that we did in the studio a year and a half ago was just this really silly text line that we built out called Patient Prep. And all it was was you could text a number and you could essentially ask it a bunch of questions or say, hey, I hurt my low back over the weekend. Yeah, this was bothering me. Like, I'm going to see my GP in a week. Like, what are questions I should ask my GP while I'm in there? And it wouldn't give you a diagnosis, wouldn't give you a treatment plan. It would say, hey, here are 5 or 10 questions for you to get answers to, because fundamentally most patients don't have the baseline knowledge to even ask a question to get the actual answer that they're looking for. And I'm excited about the personalization and the integration of AI to allow patients like ourselves to ask intelligent questions to doctors, because I don't think we've had access to that before. And I hope that that is something that continues to trend in the right direction.

Really interesting insight. And what I see, it's almost creating a universal language where through technology, you're both able to understand the spot where where one person says something, because the other factor there too, if anyone who's experiencing symptoms and they're stressed, it's really hard to take in information of what a doctor is saying to you in that moment in time too. So being able to have that human connection, which is always going to be important from a medical standpoint as far as evolution and where we're at now as human beings, maybe in the future people may get used to machines of some kind being that person for you, but I think having both of them combined to be a superpower is really, really like huge opportunity. And it's interesting, I wasn't intended to be a clean segue, but there's a company called Superpower who's a health tech company, and they're looking at that first global company to be a proactive health marker for you to be able to have your own passport, understand your health, and track those things as you go. And they just raised $30 million recently. And that kind of advancement where you're combining data but also with the personal practitioner, it feels like that's going to be the sweet spot moving forward.

I really do believe that. You know, I find it so interesting that most people, when asked about their weight, they can tell you at least a ballpark general sense of like what that is for them, right? If I was like, Andy, do you know like what your credit score is? Like, you got a general sense or understanding of like what that looks like. But if I asked you, I was like, Andy Walsh, what's your vitamin D status? You get blank stares, right? Well, we know vitamin D is one of the most important hormones because it's not really a vitamin, it's actually a hormone that can help with bone density formation, can help with cognitive processing, controlling inflammation, regulating your immune system. There's so much Rife data and literature on this, and yet nobody really knows what their average vitamin D is, right? It's a great, easy, simple blood test you can run, quite cheap to be fair. Same thing for just like kind of general basic understandings of like, you know, what's your HbA1c? Or like, what does your blood glucose look like? Like, we should be knowing these numbers, but I don't think it's the patients that should be knowing those numbers. I think that there can be data that's actively collected consistently to give you informed decisions about that. So Andy, let's say for instance, like we knew some of these numbers and your phone one day just had enough information to say, hey, Hey, you're going to this restaurant tonight. Like, he would be a great matched pairing for the metabolic capacity or the metabolic status that you have today. Maybe, maybe don't get the red wine. Maybe we'll hold off, but like, you're B12 deficient. Let's get you a really nice ribeye. Put some really great dark leafy greens in there as well too. And make sure that, make sure your iron levels are up to date because, you know, you, you had that issue where you got your blood checked a little bit ago and your ferritin levels were low. I think, could that be the future of the norm for people? I have no reason to believe that it can't be. The data's there. Now it's connecting that and giving the insights that are actionable for the individual. I think the one difficult part with all the things that anybody will ever encounter in healthcare or health and wellness, because I believe that those are two different and distinct kind of avenues to be playing in, is that you are trying to change human behavior. And that is one of the most difficult things. If you read any of BJ Fogg's work, I'm a massive fan of Atomic Habits by James Clear. Getting people to change their habits is not easy, but it's not— it's not like something that you can't solve. I feel like it can be done with very specific steps and very actionable steps with intention. And I think that that will be the art form. I see companies raising capital and doing all these great things in the startup space. I'm like, yes, but you have to forget you still have a human in front of you who's imperfect. And if you take anything out of behavioral economics and Daniel Kahneman's work, you know that people are not always making rational decisions. So you have to find ways to hack this amazing piece of hardware and software upstairs called your brain to get people to actually engage in that product. If somebody can hack that, or if there are groups out there that can hack that, they'll have no problems being successful. I just hope we don't forget that human aspect of that.

Now, if you look at something as obvious as social media, that, that didn't exist. We had MySpace and that was fine.

Take me back.

Yeah, but then Facebook was probably the first one that started to groom people into using psychological markers to be able to understand response and then trigger a program response on that dopamine hit for people to then be addicted of sorts. And, um, I choose the word addictive deliberately because I'm a little bit of a naysayer when it comes to social media. But I think within that, it just goes to show that that's probably whatever that is, 15, 20 years, um, that Mark Zuckerberg had that idea and built it and launched it. And now everyone is so ingrained in having that on their phone. So if you're able to parallel and think about out without doing a bit of a bait and switch and triggering people's dopamine. But what's the gamification or what's the thing that actually allows you to do it? Because I feel like the other challenge there too is sometimes people are probably reluctant to find out what's wrong with them. That can be a little bit confronting unless it's proactive enough where you can do something about it.

Yeah. So true. And it brings up a conversation I was having with somebody yesterday. So, like, frontotemporal dementia is a horrible, horrible condition. And unfortunately, there is a genetic component to it. So I have patients in our office right now at The Neural Connection where there are a few patients of ours who are like, listen, like my grandmother passed away from this. My aunt and uncle passed away from it. My mother unfortunately has just been diagnosed with it. And they're like, I'm in my forties. What is, what does my future look like? Like, what does the end result actually look like? And so there's this whole conversation between like nature versus nurture, right? So head injuries matter. Yes. Car accidents matter. Yes. Any trauma or like chronic inflammatory issues and that's not just saying like, oh, you have to have a physical traumatic event. Like, I think people forget, like, being diabetic or, you know, unfortunately being sedentary, you inherently have more inflammation and have more metabolic instability than those who don't have that, right? Even sleep, like, sleep is a massive, massive impact on regulating blood sugar and blood sugar stability. But we don't associate sleep with that, right? But the data is so rife with it. And so with an example, like, for that frontal temporal dementia patient, she's like, listen, genetically, I think I'm set up for this. And I'm like, you might be, but you have remember that your genetics or genes kind of load the gun, for lack of a better term, and the environment really is the mechanism that would pull the trigger. And so as much as we know about the human genome, what we actually found out with the Human Genome Project in the '90s was that there's not just one gene for the amount of proteins that we have to produce, right? So I think there's somewhere like 20, close to 25,000 genes, but there's like over like 140,000 proteins that are produced from those genes. Well, what happens is if you take a look at like genes as like a little string of Christmas lights, Some of the lights are on, but some of the lights might burn out or turn off. That's kind of how your genetics work, right? You can turn genes on and off, metaphorically speaking, based off of environmental aspects, diet, lifestyle, nutrition, sleep, stress, things like that. And I'm sure there's somebody out there who's a geneticist who's going to probably refute my claim on this, and they're— maybe they're smarter than I am. But my understanding anyways is that you have a blueprint with your genes, and then you have an epigenetic layer on top of that of influencing which genes get turned on and off. So for those patients who are like, listen, I feel like I'm genetically set up for this. I'm like, yes, but what are you going to do about it? Are you just going to hang out? Are you going to wait? Are you going to be hopeful or wishful? Are you going to actually take control of something and maybe change that trajectory? Because we know with twins, identical twins who have identical genetics, their lifestyle choices matter with the manifestation of their phenotype and how they actually exist in the world. You can be genetically similar to somebody. Genetically, but the way you live your life and the way you make choices in your life can dictate which genes you turn on and off. And so, you know, there's this whole play of what are we going to be able to get people to do, or how are we going to instigate them to own these health outcomes in a way that's under the guidance of great doctors using technology to kind of put the bumpers up on the bowling lane to allow them to go down a path we want them to, and then hopefully be able to live the life that they want to be, right? Because I can tell you this, I want to live to be 100. I want to make that Smucker's jar on the Good Morning America show. And, you know, have Eric's face pop up, but I don't want to be in a wheelchair for the last 25 years. I want to be like water skiing and hanging out with my grandkids. So how do we get there? I don't know for sure, but I'm a forever optimist. And I do think that there are really smart people out there who are looking at some of these problems in a different way. And I think we have to take a different approach than we have in the past to get there.

And I remember doing a literature or many literature reviews on research projects back at university. And I'd look at 20, 50 articles and trying to glean a consensus census across different research projects, et cetera, and writing reports on that. And if you think about that process, I would've spent hours, days, weeks doing that sometimes. The ability to do that now instantly is just a small example about how we can learn. And you gave the example around a patient-doctor relationship and being able to distill down information, cross-check with the latest research so the doctor doesn't have the burden of having to read 50 research articles every week to stay up to date. Update with what's actually happening. Like, just, just simple tangible examples that we do, but I see an opportunity and it may even be a business idea out there for someone to grab hold of. It's how do you actually build a community of people who are interested enough to learn and input their own data and actually get proactive notifications, etc. And you see One Medical, which has been picked up by Amazon, and they'll go heavily into the data side of it. And already know a lot about you. And that feels like the direction that they're going is this super app to be able to have a one-stop destination where you can get new plates for your car, buy a collar for your dog, and then also check your blood glucose levels as well, all wrapped up in one. And I think the consumers though need to contribute, right? You need to be actively leaning in and that creates that point. So you touched on it before. As far as a central place and whether it is EHR where all your information is held, do you think that having that centralized would create a whole new opportunity and category for businesses to build around that data to empower medical holistically?

I think if we were able to aggregate that data, I think we would be able to make better informed decisions, even more precise decisions for specific populations. I think that the data is so dysregulated and, and so disorganized. Disparate between so many different entities, right? So hospital systems, traditionally speaking, have no reason to ever want to tell anybody about their data or disperse their data because that data is valuable for them. If I have your hospital record, Andy Walsh, I don't want you to go to any other hospital but to mine because you unfortunately, unfortunately are a consumer. You're also a product and you're also spending money there that I can bill to an insurance company, right? So there's value there. And hospital systems have a very, very difficult process because their margins are super slim. A majority of hospitals are actually in the red, and they run in the red for quite some time. It's a very difficult system to get in. And so it's like, is it the insurance companies? Well, let's talk about the insurance companies. I mean, UHG is making news right now. There's a lot of turmoil in the markets. There's a lot of conversations going on. I mean, they're trying to just say, listen, we're trying to hedge our bet and we're trying to see if we can actually help take care of the people who are really, really, really sick by taking care and making sure that people who are quite healthy can kind of maybe push it forward and pay it forward a little bit. Right. I don't know if it's them. And people go and they're like, well, let's look at pharma and let's, you know, how are they gouging us with these prices? Do you know how much money pharmaceutical companies have to spend to actually bring a product to market? I mean, it is in the millions, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars at this point. Can AI maybe accelerate those processes and solve those problems a little bit quicker to save the consumer on that aspect? I believe that they can. And so I don't think it's one industry. I don't think it's, you know, you know, black versus white or left versus right or anything like that. I really think that now is kind of a call of arms to say, listen, now it's time to really work together. It's time to integrate the conversations, the information that we all have. And it's kind of like having an idea, right? If you're a first-time founder, you're like, you're going to hoard your idea and you're not going to tell anybody because you're so scared that people are going to like take it and run with it. A second, third-time founder is just telling everybody every single idea that they've ever had because they know how hard it is to bring it to market, how hard it is to build it, how hard it is to build a business around it. And how slim of a margin it is for somebody else to beat them unless they're just intentionally aggressive with it. And I think that that's kind of where we need to get in healthcare is there's a lot of good ideas out there. Let's put them to market. Let's test it. Let's see how it breaks. But then more importantly too, let's make sure that people actually are going to use it for their benefit. Because if you and I put together a great product, got an awesome UI/UX, we think it looks great and it's in the App Store and nobody wants it, we just wasted a lot of time, a lot of energy and a lot of resources and we didn't help anybody in that process.

And I love what you said about the ideas. Ideas are worth nothing unless you can turn it into a successful business. And, and that's really hard to do. But in today's climate as well, I'm seeing a lot of competitors clutter categories because getting to market is faster and easier for a lot of people as well. And, but if you have all this energy and attention from lots of companies all working on something similar, you're going to make progress. And that competitive nature is actually a healthy thing despite there being some casualties on the business side. You need that to make progress. We've seen that in various examples in evolutions through history as far as, say, like the Industrial Revolution, right? Like the machines, some survived, some didn't, and it informed how we live today. And that's going to happen again. So in the future, as far as things that you are thinking about now from a business standpoint, like the longevity is something that we talked on before, and that feels like there's a proactive piece in that. So what's, what sort of things are you seeing shift in that space to understand you as an individual and any changes in your body that you need to look at and identify ahead of time?

Where my thinking is right now in the longevity space is I really think that in order for us to move forward, we actually have to look back. And what I mean by that is you are never going to out-supplement, out-biohack, out, cold plunge, sauna your way out of a horrible diet or lifestyle. There is just nothing that is going to replace you eating great foods, getting good sleep, managing your stress, you know, staying hydrated, getting enough physical activity, which is literally one of the most powerful things that you can do structurally, neurologically, metabolically, emotionally, to be able to help you like update your brain software. There's just no way you're going to out-hack those. I mean, if you could bottle up all the benefits from physical exercise into a pill, it'd be a blockbuster drug for the next millennia and knock off 95% of pharmaceuticals on the market today because it's that powerful. You just don't get any of the benefits of exercise by knowing it. You only get the benefits by doing it. And that's the hardest part is I think once we get people in a state where they at least have the basics down, or at least enough of them to have that plateau, then I think we can start talking about, hey, what are, uh, what are these infusions doing? Do we think that this therapeutic benefit can hack this part of the genome to actually help expression and to promote accelerated healing. I'm a massive fan of things like looking into peptides and understanding how different therapeutics and senolytics can help us neurologically and structurally and from an inflammatory standpoint. I have a lot of belief in that. But if that's the case, then we still have to prevent in the earliest stages to have that impact and change that trajectory into the later stages. And so, you know, I'm excited about this space because I think that there's a lot to be said about using science to advance the human condition. But what I'm going to tell you is that there are people living in these autonomous blue zones who have never taken a GLP-1, they've never taken BPC-157, they've never, you know, gone and done cold plunges or saunas. They are in these states where they're living to be centenarians, to be over 100, and they're healthy. Some of them drink wine with their friends at night, they move their bodies, they've got quality relationships, they feel like they have value in society. And so what are they doing that we maybe aren't in, in the Western model? That's where we start after asking those questions, right? So you don't need all of that. Maybe that will augment the things that we're looking for, but I think we really have to just make sure we're sticking to the basics in some capacity. And at that point, once we get there, then we can really start seeing the acceleration of all these other advancements that people are looking for. I just don't think we're ever going to out-hack our, our human physiology. That's been around for far longer than most of us have.

And the human evolution happens at such a slow rate. And, and now we've seen the advancement of technology, that void between human evolution and technology evolution is just getting further and further apart. And how we respond to that as human beings is one layer, but I, I hear you as far as the bigger picture, because we live in this world where where it's very capitalist-driven and everyone wants to make money. So you see things that get hype and it could be a superfood or medication, things that is meant to improve your life. And I feel like that there's this behavior now where people feel like they can take shortcuts and they don't want to do the things that they know are better for them. And they'll just find ways to try and manage that in other ways rather than take holistic responsibility.

Yeah, I see it all the time. I see it in my practice. I see it in the real world. I see it on all the forums, the newsletters, I get, and I don't, I don't blame people for wanting to have that. I know that there are a lot of people who do struggle with their weight, their exercise, their stress, like all those things. Those are very real things for people to experience, but you're not going to be just stuck that way forever. Like there are options out there and I've seen patients clinically make amazing recoveries and absolutely change their lives by just having the right information and the right relationship with the right provider to be able to do that. That. And so I don't think AI is going to replace, you know, humans on the grand level or scheme that a lot of people are looking at right now. I think in medicine especially, where there's always going to be a human component where people will want to have conversations with doctors in some capacity. Right. But you're right, like the fundamentals are always going to be the fundamentals and you're never going to get away from that until proven otherwise. Right. Maybe something that I say today could be completely wrong tomorrow. That's the best part about being in science is that it's always changing and evolving. Evolving. I mean, be grateful that we're no longer bloodletting and doing frontal lobotomies today, right? You know, there's, there's a bit of a humility that comes with this territory. And I think anybody who's willing to draw a line in the sand right away is really going to have a day where they're probably going to get their teeth kicked in, unfortunately. But I think that sometimes those changes instill opportunities for us to grow and learn. And I think that that's one of the best reasons and one of the reasons why I'm so hooked in this space is that there's just so much to consume and learn that I'll never be satisfied.

And that's a great way to kind of Randomly, I heard that story about the frontal lobotomies and I feel like there was an example I heard, it was in the 1930s or '40s of a doctor that was drilling up through the nose cavity into the skull to help reduce anxiety and it took over the world and it was happening everywhere, but then all of a sudden everyone started dying like a few years later and you see that happen and people were trying things and progress happened by experimentation and there are always going to be people that had to volunteer here in some capacity to do that, where now you feel like you can probably model things in a better way to understand the consequences. And that advancement means that we'll probably see shorter lead times.

Yeah, well, I, you know, I think we still have a lot to learn in medicine. I don't think we have it all figured out, and especially in the US. I think that there's a lot of ways for us— and I look at all the problems that we have today as it's not— it's dire, right? And it's unfortunate. But I look at is like the best potential solutions to be created by companies, right? So as an entrepreneur and as a business owner, like you essentially are a problem solver every single day that you go to work and put your boots on. So that's awesome because we're in a space, especially in the health and wellness or healthcare space, where there's so many problems to be solved, which means there's so many solutions to be created by great companies that can hopefully figure out how to go and do that as efficiently as possible. So I think now is literally the best time to be involved in this space, especially with the innovation of AI I, as a non-tech founder, I can build an app and get coding set up way faster than I ever could before because I have these tools and these skills now that allow me to kind of scale out what I don't know. And I think it's such an exciting time to be in the startup space. So, you know, as much as people could be, you know, bitter about missing the dot-com bubble and things like that in the '90s, you get your second renaissance now. Hopefully you can take advantage of it and run with it.

There's a lot of opportunity out there for founders and investors alike to double down on something and be the first to market and medicine at large, as far as certain drugs and treatments and side effects. And we all are very familiar with the TV commercials where there's an ad and then you get about 15 seconds of all the fine print being read out at the end. And for obvious reasons, because all that testing, there's things that come off the back of certain tests and the approvals. I've, I've never put a drug through approvals before, but I assume that that process is lengthy in the testing. And my recent example would probably be through the pandemic and understanding a bit more around that process because it was headlines in news. I'd hate to speak out of school on that as well, but I find it just fascinating that we're in a time when all of these things are going to be interrogated and scrutinized because you've got founders who are looking for ways to create businesses that can change people's lives while they'll also create something that's sustainable for them. And I find that intersection really exciting. Exciting?

I think it's a super exciting time to be building in the startup space for so many reasons. I think, one, people are so open to the fact that if you are an entrepreneur or a business owner, like, people kind of get that now, right? I think the, the whole mentality about working in corporate or working for a major entity is kind of shifting. I don't mean that that's like a bad thing if you work in that space, but people are so open to the excitement of like being a part of a rocket ship that is starting off as a bottle rocket, right? It's a small, slow, iterative process that you actually get to have a responsibility and a part in, in helping build and shape and potentially help a lot of people in the process. I also think, too, once again, like we're living in this Renaissance era with AI coming to fruition. And yes, for those who are like leaders in this space, like it's been going around since like the '60s and '50s with AI and looking at all of the intelligent things we've been doing with computing and mathematics But now that we have a consumer-facing product and a way to access it, it's going to explode. Now, there will be a lot of casualties from a business side where companies can come and go. And just like in the dot-com era, there will be things where we're solving problems for today, but maybe that's not a problem that needs to be solved in the future because maybe that will get upended. And there's a lot of startups that have gotten unfortunately turned and burned a bit by just ChatGPT coming to market, right? So, but I, but with that being said, there's so much opportunity and you won't know till you do it, right? So as Steve Jobs would say, you can only connect the dots going backwards. You just have to have conviction and belief in whatever you're focusing your time on, that, that, that is going to go. And the worst case scenario is you get a real-world MBA in all the things that worked well and all the things that didn't. And you can take that with you anywhere you go to any other endeavor you want to pursue afterwards.

Amazing. And I feel like that the world that we live is creating that inspiration for folks to be able to take that path and be trailblazers like never before. and I'm a passenger in this journey, but I watch it closely and, and really appreciate your insight in that as well. So, Dr. Eric, to finish up today, uh, I'd love, um, for you to be able to share a little bit about what you're working on and ways for people to reach out and what they can talk to you about.

Yeah, well, so on the startup side, I'm one of the co-founders of Nobody Studio. So we are a venture studio and, uh, we are just relentlessly focused on building zero-to-one products, companies, startups that are going to just completely change the world. I'm our current director of health and wellness, and that involves looking at everything from biohacking, sleep, longevity, you name it, we are probably have our hands in it at this point. We've built out an amazing advisory board and we're just trying to just get things started. So once we kind of get things rolling on the financial side of the house, we've got a lot of exciting things in the market for that. So on the flip side, I'm also in clinical practice. So I started my company, The Neuro Connection, which is a clinic in Edina, Minnesota, and I have two brilliant business partners with that as well. And we are just heavily focused on helping people update their neurological software, and that involves looking at them structurally, neurologically, metabolically. We work with conditions and people from all over the world, and we specialize in complex neurological conditions like concussions, TBIs, migraine, headaches, vertigo, neurodegenerative conditions, and anything that essentially involves the brain. So I'm a nerd by day, I'm a nerd by night, and I essentially am still trying to figure out what I want to be when I get older. So in order to reach me, you can hit me up on LinkedIn, any social media platform you'll probably be able to find me on, and I'm always open opened to great conversations, feedback, and just helping out and find more nerds in this world to spend time with. I'm forever grateful for brilliant people like you, Andy, to call you not only colleague but a friend now too. So thanks for having me on here today.

It's a pleasure, and I thank you for your time. And I can attest to the fact that, uh, Eric is as nice as he is, um, on the podcast as he is in person. Always up for a chat, and it's been my pleasure to get to know him over last probably year or so with Nobody and our journey together. But today I'd love to wrap up and thank you. There's so much more to talk about this and I'm excited to see the future and I'm sure that you'll be right there in the front row helping drive that change.

Yeah, I hope to be there. So thank you for having me and I'm excited to see what you get to continue to do with this as well too.

Thanks for listening to Startups Decoded. If today's conversation help you think differently, share it with a founder in your network. And don't forget to subscribe for real-world startup insights every week. We really value your support. If you're interested in partnering with us, email hello@startupsdecoded.com. I'm Andy Walsh. I'll see you next week.