speaker-0: So men can be estrogen dominant too, and men can have the bronchogene.
speaker-1: Yes, 100%. Getting into my 30s, I saw my personal health declining. I have an extruding disc in my lower back, my weight was going up, so I was organic, gluten-free, you know, the sober tober types of things, yet every single marker of my health was going in the wrong direction.
speaker-0: Welcome to the Rock Bottom Podcast, presented by Jigsaw Health, where we share health horror stories that inspire. Today's guest is Jeremy Maleka. Jeremy struggled for years with chronic back pain, inflammation, and unhealthy weight gain despite living an active lifestyle. His journey back to health began through various lab tests that help uncover the root causes of his inflammation and eventually help many others.
speaker-2: Before we dive in, just a quick note, as always, this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. So please always consult with a healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine.
speaker-0: This is the rock bottom podcast.
speaker-2: Jeremy, welcome to the Rock Bottom Podcast. It's so good to have you here. We got to see you in Scottsdale a couple of weeks ago at the Consumer Health Summit.
speaker-0: And it was all I could do to keep myself from asking about your story because I'm so excited to hear it. ⁓ and I didn't want any spoil.
speaker-2: I know, and it would have been great had we been able to get you in the studio, but time would not permit. So you're there in lovely San Diego and we're gonna get a chance to learn about you. So why don't you tell us ⁓ tell the audience who we buy okay. We have to remember that we just recently gave the audience a name and Ashley, you came up with the name.
speaker-0: No, I don't like it. Okay. Because it's the rock bottom podcast, I I I was like, ⁓ bottom feeders, but that doesn't have a good ring to it. Unless we just make it a thing and we just really everybody embrace it. We're all bottom feeders here.
speaker-2: His reaction though. Audience, what do you think? Are are you okay being a bottom feeder? I thought it was hilarious.
speaker-0: We'll take a poll and then on the next episode we'll announce whether we are going to remain the bottom feeders or come up with something better.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-2: What do you think, Jeremy?
speaker-1: Yeah, definitely. I I'd stick with it. We d we try to definitely be controversial, hopefully get more clicks. ⁓
speaker-0: Right. So go ahead and print the t shirts, is what you're saying.
speaker-2: But it's it's said in love, obviously. And we laugh for like six minutes afterwards. So it is. Okay. Rough start. So tas
speaker-0: Take us back, here's we'd love to have you take us back to your rock bottom moment, the one that you're gonna be talking about today. I know many people have multiple of those throughout a lifetime. And then we'll kinda talk about what led you there and then what got you to this point.
speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ so you know, my my background was ⁓ engineering. ⁓ I started in a medical device company, then I kind of rose through the ranks, right? So then I came over to a company called ResMed, SP 500 company, and I was basically ⁓ growing my career, right? So I was product management director and then was a VP. What really what my rock bottom moment came in was I've always been a health focused individual. So I spent, you know, all you know, I was gonna be an athletic trainer. I got into medical school. I decided not to, always reading books. I remember ⁓ Eat to Win. I don't know if you remember that book from back in the late 90s. Men's Health put out a thing called the complete book of abs. So I like I had all this stuff and I've worked and I've been, you know, physically active, basketball, football, doing all kinds of things. And as I was really going through my career and getting into my 30s, I saw my personal health declining. So I was starting to have chronic back pain. So I was doing all the things, ⁓ you know, injections, or ablation. I have an extruding disc in my lower back. And I was starting to, you know, really, it was just progressively getting worse. My weight was going up, my blood pressure was going up throughout that individual process. And so what really happened was I, you know, my wife Jen, who I think is gonna be on as well. ⁓ you know, as a practitioner. So we were doing all the things, right? So I was organic, gluten-free, you know, the sober tober types of things. Yet every single marker of my health was going in the wrong direction. It all came to a peak in December of 2017. And I hit, I remember the day, because I call it the worst day of my life. I stepped on my withing scale and I still have it and I still use it and all of my marketing and stuff. I hit two, four, zero, right? So being five eleven and a half-ish. ⁓ and seeing the 240, that was a really ⁓ challenging moment for me, right? ⁓ I call it the worst day of my life because one of the things is you know, you're doing things, you're investing in your health, you think you're doing everything right, and everything is going in the opposite direction.
speaker-0: I can't imagine yeah, that's the most frustrating thing ever because it's not like you were just being lazy and like, I just can't get motivated to work out or I just can't stop eating these, you know, potato chips or whatever. Like you're genuinely doing everything that you know to be healthy and like it's just you're getting sabotaged somewhere. Yeah.
speaker-1: And so I was, you know, we were running all the tests, dual microbiome, blood work. I was tracking all the stuff ⁓ in an Excel spreadsheet. Obviously, I was tracking my weight, but I was doing activity trackers, high intensity interval training, or even like slower zone two training, and really nothing was working. And it was so frustrating because I was working so hard, yet everything was going in the wrong way. ⁓ So that all changed. ⁓ so Jen, who was my practitioner, had a consultation with ⁓ one of the medical ⁓ advisors from a company called precision analytical or the Dutch tests hormone test and in that conversation you know I had taken multiple tests and he's like well has he ever gone low carb right and I and we were like huh and we're like doing all the supplements for the detox pathways and DIM and all this update dosage and everything else. And so all of a sudden I was like ⁓ I didn't know that was a thing. So I was gluten-free organic but I was still high carb. So things like Rice, chips, corn, all this other stuff was really the problem. And then what happened is we just all of a sudden that insight led to a cascade, which actually brought me back to where I actually where my health goals were. So what was interesting, now looking backwards, we have all the information was based upon my genetics, I'm what's called estrogen dominant. so my I have a family history of breast cancer. So on the women's my grandma, my mom ⁓ both had breast cancer. ⁓ there's a specific estrogen pathway called the BRACA gene that I have. ⁓ so you can
speaker-0: So that's crazy. Like I think a lot of people might just think that that's something only women have. Like so men can be estrogen dominant too, and men can have the Broncogene.
speaker-2: That's exactly what I'm thinking in my head.
speaker-1: Yes, a hundred percent. And so that and it it's kind of a stigma thing, right? Because you think testosterone, dudes, estrogen, women, right? Right. ⁓ but what really was happening with my genetic and my family genetic tree is one, we do not dispose we do not deal with carbs very well. So my last name is Maleka, East European. My mom's ⁓ maiden name is Fiaca F-Y-A-L-K-A, which is also East European, right? And so if we think back to kind of the genetics and the evolutionary traits of what that looks like, rice is not a thing in Eastern Europe, right? And so as the generations kind of evolve and grow through, it was more around things like root vegetables. So I do well with underground carbohydrates, above ground carbohydrates, I think corn, rice, and everything else. I do not do well. And so what happens is in my particular case, is I was still taking in those carbs, those carbs that get stored as fat. And what's happened is fat then drives estrogen. And so because of my family history, where we're not good, what's called estrogen detoxers, we build up this accumulation. And so that's really what was happening to me was I was basically filling the tank with all of this estrogen based upon the carbohydrates that I couldn't really process well and just stuffed into fat. And then I basically, as Dr. Carrie Jones always likes to say, my My bathtub was plugged. So I'm filling the bathtub with a whole bunch of estrogen, and then I have no ability to actually detox that out. So you look at, you know, you hear about the genetic components, MTHFR, you know, Gary Breckett talks about that quite a bit. I have that, C O ⁓ T. All of these things are basically around what's called methylation. And so in my particular case, the estrogens were coming in, and then I didn't have a good ability to support the ability to get rid of those estrogens. And so If you look at what is one of the there's four different pathways. There's the two hydroxy, four hydroxy, and sixteen hydroxy metabolites that come out when you detox. Four hydroxy is the cancer-causing pathway, right? So when people talk about estrogen-driven cancers, that's that's the one you have to look for. I was off the chart in terms of that particular metabolite. And so that correlated with my genetics, my family history, and everything else. And so what I did. was then I learned how to eat better, but then also actually do the right supplementation. And so that's where we started looking at what's called methyl donors or supporting my underperforming methylation genetics by adding in methyl components. So that's things like choline, so which is comes from eggs, ⁓ glutathione, ⁓ Nacetylcysteine and glycine. So giving myself the components, the building blocks in a more supplementary way to actually start to detox that. And so Where I went from was 1.1. You don't have to worry about the ranges, but 1.1 is very high down to a 0.4. So I saw over a 60% reduction by one affecting my diet and then also supporting that detox pathway. So what that meant for me as an individual is I immediately lost essentially 40 pounds in three months.
speaker-0: Well. Just by eliminating specif like did you eliminate all carbs or just the corn and the rice?
speaker-1: Yeah. So I originally was very hardcore keto. The other the other insight that actually came in was I it's if you go to a ketogenic diet, it's like creamer in your co creamer and butter in your coffee, and then you're focusing on beef. Turns out I actually have a reactivity to beef and cow milk, specifically from the US. So I had a good ⁓ good drop, and then I had a food sensitivity where I understood that. So then I switched over to more kind of pork, bison.
speaker-0: Very high f
speaker-1: ⁓ you know, elk, other types of proteins. And then I had another significant drop. So I had not only the component of getting through understanding where I was at from that dietary component, but I also had an inflammatory component. The funny part is once I got rid of those inflammatory foods for me, my back pain was gone. And I had
speaker-0: ⁓ I have a question on the testing side of things. So what tests did you do to figure out that you had the bronchogene and this ⁓ estrogen dominant?
speaker-2: I feel like we need to slowly unpack everything that you just did. I took a whole bunch of notes and I think the bottom feeders would like to get some details.
speaker-0: I for one would like to know.
speaker-1: And and look
speaker-2: With your ⁓ I guess your D your DNA testing. What did you take for that?
speaker-1: Yeah, and look, it this is the this is why the my the my business exists is because of my individual journey, which is my what worked for me will only work for me because I am a unique individual. And so, you know, kind of foundationally is what is my genetics, right? Genetics doesn't necessarily mean what what is gonna happen. So just because you have the BRACA one, you're not necessarily gonna have breast cancer. just because APOE4 doesn't mean you're gonna have Alzheimer's. It means the potential of where that exists. So you have to kind of understand the blueprint of who you are and kind of where your potential and your limitations are from a genetic component. Then we had to look at my obviously comprehensive blood work. Everybody knows they can get it pretty cheap today, advanced hormone testing, microbiome testing, and then food sensitivity. And that's really the foundational test layer that we do for each individual.
speaker-0: Can you tell us what like if someone wants to get a genetic test to find out if they have those things, what did you use? What company?
speaker-1: So at the time it was twenty three and me.
speaker-0: ⁓ okay. ⁓ gee, yeah.
speaker-2: Hey, they used to be like their own town.
speaker-1: Yeah, it was not, you know, that's this twenty seventeen. So this is back before twenty three and me issues existed and the privacy concerns. But any genetic testing company is gonna give you kind of and there's a lot of great ones out there. We work with Max Gen Labs, they're very kind of data privacy focused. There's three X4 genetics, you know, it's a couple hundred dollars, but they'll give you a very easy to understand view of kind of what those genetic potentials are. The nice thing about that test, it's you only do it once 'cause your genes ain't changing. Yeah. And then the other part is so that's your potential. Then where is where's your metabolomics at today? So how do we understand what's actually happening to you? That is where the other testing comes in.
speaker-0: Okay.
speaker-2: Matt's when you learned what your ⁓ four hydroxy metabolite levels was were, you said it was a one point one, which is off the charts. Yep. ⁓ and and what testing did you do for that? What was that one called?
speaker-1: So we so I have used a company called ⁓ Precision Analytical. It's a Dutch test. They're kind of the market leader in the functional and integrative space. There's other ⁓ urine-based hormone tests. One of the things that is really important to understand is that yes, you can go do one of these hundred and sixty plus blood biomarkers, but it only tells you the estrogen or E2 value. It does not tell you how you're ⁓ getting rid of it. And so that's really where we do.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, these urine based are more comprehensive and give you a lot more insight as to how your whole hormone system is functioning rather than just that one than one blood biome.
speaker-0: So do you recommend Dutch test over blood test just for overall hormone just assessment?
speaker-1: I recommend them complementary. So blood and urine are two different tools in the toolbox and they give you two sets of information. And that's really where, you know, thinking about this from a consumer standpoint, this is where kind of the overwhelmed can come in. And so this is really why, you know, the business that we built really focuses on helping providers set give that information to the consumer so they can understand it in a digestible format.
speaker-0: Yes, the overwhelm is real.
speaker-2: Yeah. ⁓ and I do want to come back to what you and Jen, your wife, work on together at Biochanic. ⁓ but I I want to ask maybe a sort of ⁓ controversial question here. You talked about like, you know, ⁓ these blood panels that you can get that are be kind of kind of becoming the rage right now. What are your thoughts on that? I think you somewhat alluded to it.
speaker-1: Yeah. Well, so in fairness, I am a member of two of those platforms and have been for over three years. It's a great cost effective way to get comprehensive blood work as a as a health motivated consumer. I highly recommend it. You're never gonna get it running through your insurance, your primary care provider. So you we just need to set the expectation if we want the information that we can do it.
speaker-0: What are the two platforms that you subscribe to? Are you willing to share that?
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I do function health. So I was one of the original beta users with them. So I'm in year three with them. And then there's a newer one called Superpower. ⁓ met the founders a long time ago. So I run them side by side. It's really I do that one because it's a even though they use the same lab testing provider, I'm curious just to see like how they interpret the data so I can better represent it to my friends and family that are also using them as well.
speaker-0: So if you are a consumer that like maybe can't afford both, do you recommend one or the other?
speaker-1: Yeah, they're they're equivalently beneficial in different ways. You know, function ⁓ gives you a ⁓ more markers, superpower gives a better coaching experience and a kind of a human-human interaction that you can't get through function. So it really depends on where you're at. Ultimately, like let's say you get a whole bunch of information back, most of my friends and family will upload it to Claude and Claude's gonna do some interpretation. The problem is AI doesn't have context. And so Really, that's why we're so focused on helping practitioners help that are working with clients, right? So, okay, so you come back, your lipids are all out of whack, you've got high insulin, HBO1C. Now somebody has to kind of look at that through the context of who you are, right? So what's your sleep pattern look like? How are you working out? What's your family stress look like? Are you living in a moldy home? All of these other things are the context is actually more important than just the data itself. The data gives you that opportunity to say, hey, look, I've got some areas that are kind of giving me yellow and red lights here, but now what do I do about it? Has to have that kind of human human in the loop or ⁓ in real life component.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm.
speaker-2: Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. ⁓ and I you I think to ⁓ a guy I know that's like, yeah, just signed up for function and I'm just running the results through Claude. Yeah. ⁓ did you did you get a chance and maybe we're kind of going out in left field here, but at CHS there was an interesting presentation from ⁓ Onyx.life, I think it was, that's like sort of specialized AI. I'm curious if you knew about that, have looked into that and maybe we're getting far afield here, but
speaker-1: Yeah. No, it's so ⁓ for the people that don't know, OnyxDay dot AI is the ability for a practitioner who has built a lot of education and research in a certain area to kind of create their own avatar. So I think Jeff Dr. Jeff Bland was a perfect example where they've taken all of his information and they created around him. It's an interesting approach and I think ⁓ it can be useful. ⁓ but kind of, you know, taking a step back. ⁓ so I worked at ResMed, which is a sleep apnea company. And sleep apnea, obstructs of sleep apnea. Everyone hopefully knows it's a CPAP device. It's, you know, kind of challenging. ⁓ so the thing about CPAP therapy is the only way you can ever hurt an individual bulb by putting them on CPAP therapy is by hitting them over the head with the device. There is no risk. And one of the things that we tried for a very long time was: well, if that's the case, why don't we just test people and put them onto therapy and We can have this whole digital pathway where can we can get a whole bunch of consumers onto sleep therapy. That never worked. And the reason is health is a lot different than your consumer products. Right. So yes, I can go buy the new MacBook Air because I get sold and everything else. When somebody gets diagnosed or has concerns about their health that's so personal, they want to talk to somebody about it. I have questions, right? I I'm not just gonna accept that this therapy is gonna, I'm gonna go on to this therapy, I'm gonna be fine. I wanna, well, what does this mean? If I do this, what are the benefits I'm gonna see? What are the risks? Well, how do I clean it? All of these things come in. So back to the onyx.ai component, it's a great way to serve education, but ultimately health is so personal, there still has to be some sort of human contact, right? So establish the relationship. build the trust that your approach thinking and methodology is gonna work for me, ask those questions. And then yes, that AI can kind of fill in the gaps along the way, but there's still that part that has to start with that human to human interaction.
speaker-0: And also having blind trust with AI is a complete and utter mistake because it is hallucinating. It is wrong a lot of the time. I've experienced some really interesting ⁓ hallucinations with my personal AI about my health, which I know are like grossly wrong. And I'm like, well, I wonder it like how people that like don't have a a knowledge base hardly at all about things and they're just literally throwing stuff in there and just taking it as gospel. Like how many lives is this actually ruining right now? It's a big concern.
speaker-2: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
speaker-1: Yeah, you know, it's funny if if anybody's familiar with the Gartner hype cycle, we're like in peak AI hype, right? And so I'm sure you guys have seen just being around everybody at CHS, this AI doc in your pocket, AI's gonna ⁓ we've got this new AI, Lab Core's got AI, I think Quest has AI now, everybody's got an AI thing. But if you actually look at consumer polling around the perceptions around AI, nobody likes it. Nobody likes it. Right. So in some ways I think we're kind of breathing into the mirror here and it's kind of fogging our view as to what the actual people in sp in the world actually want to see from a from an experiential perspective.
speaker-2: I was watching a little report over the on YouTube last night about ex CEO of Google speaking at University of Arizona graduation ceremony and he brought up ⁓ AI and the crowd booed him. And he was kinda like, wait, maybe I'm maybe I'm speaking to the wrong audience here.
speaker-1: Yeah. I actually so I I was at a graduation. I was at Carnegie Mellon. My niece just graduated from there and Jensen Wong was the keynote ⁓ speaker at the commencement. And it was funny, Jen and I were sitting there, it was super interesting. I mean, it's the most valuable company CEO. We were like super interested to hear what he had to say. They recruit out of Carnegie Mellon for their For their engineering, and I talked to my niece about it, and they're like, ⁓ yeah, we hated it. It was just an advertisement for AI. They just I think were that school just doesn't boo people, but they were not impressed.
speaker-2: So interesting. ⁓ well okay, I want to get back to your health story. I feel like this is becoming the the rock bottom AI podcast or something.
speaker-0: I want to go back to some of your health markers that you mentioned, the COM T and the MTHFR, because I think our audience are probably a decent amount people that have not heard those before or don't know what they are. Can you explain those to us?
speaker-1: So ⁓ MTHFR is a gene which is how your body does methylation. So methylation is kind of the cleanup crew where it comes detox approach, right? So it's it's basically taking a methyl group, adding it to it so that your body identifies it such that you excrete it out the way in a very broad, ⁓ very simplified way. When you have the genetic SNPs, whether you're heterozygous, meaning one copy or homozygous, two copies of the mutation, depends on.
speaker-0: Detox system.
speaker-1: it will reduce the amount of your ability to actually add that methyl group. So I think if you're heterozygous, you have a thirty percent reduction. If you're homozygous, it's seventy percent reduction of methylation.
speaker-0: Okay, so if you have ⁓ T H F R you either have one of the two of those.
speaker-1: If you have the the the SNP, the okay ⁓ mutation in the SNP. If you don't have the mutation, then it's full fully functional. Yeah. So then C O ⁓ T is a similar one. It's more typically associated with like neuroinflammation ⁓ or neural ⁓ approaches. So generally like I'm more A-type, higher energy, but also more susceptible to things like anxiety. ⁓ ruminations and everything. And so part of that is now how do I actually help on the neurotransmitter side support that mutation with supplementation as well?
speaker-0: Okay, so let's talk about both of those things and what you're you're actually doing to like mitigate those things or to support those things.
speaker-1: Yeah. So back on the MTH the MTHFR side, ⁓ I do what's called so there's a couple different ways. So you can do ⁓ glutathione, which is ⁓ essentially ⁓ a methyl donor. There's also what's called N acetylcysteine or NAC plus glycine, which are the building blocks for methyl groups. So I do both of those depending on what I have available. ⁓ there's a lot of great products out there. Then I also do focus a lot on eggs because of choline, which is also a method donor as well. So that's kind of like one of my staples for my dietary approach. So that's been helping me on the hormonal detox side.
speaker-0: Is there anything people need to stay away from in particular with the MTH F R and food food wise? ⁓
speaker-1: No, I mean it's one of those things that it's really important to kind of y I I don't know what happened to it, but remember the whole thirty diet? Yeah. Right? The whole thirty diet was essentially a massive elimination diet. And then you reintroduce things trying to understand what's working for you and what's not. ⁓ so in the same vein of doing that, you know, you it's not just a genetics and a food connection, it's a genetics, a food, a microbiome connection, all these other things.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-1: And so having if you are having health issues, you're having concerns, you're dealing with anxiety, you're gas pain and bloating after eating, all this other stuff is to really start to think about and measure what you're eating and how you're doing things. From a nutraceutical perspective, there really isn't anything you can do, you have to worry about because it's either going to work or it's not. Right. And you can't really ⁓ I mean, there are certain things that you can ⁓ do, you know, do too much on, but in the body'll tell you your body's just gonna eliminate it, right? Yeah, it's not gonna use it.
speaker-0: What about B vitamins for people with MTHFR? A connection there.
speaker-1: Yes. So yes. So one of the one of and again, not showing up on the urine-based hormone test, but on my blood biomarkers, I've elevated homocysteine. Homoysteine is very highly associated with cardiovascular disease. ⁓ so my typical homocysteine, like the top end of the range is like 10. ⁓ so I'm normally at like an eleven or twelve. And so I do take a methylated B vitamin. So there's a lot of different great products out there. ⁓ and so when I am compliant on that, my homocysteine comes down below ten. And then when I run out and I forget to reorder and I retest, it goes back up over ten. And so those are one of those things where you can see a direct causal relationship on that component as well.
speaker-2: ⁓ well I'd be remiss to not mention ⁓ have you ever tried the jigsaw activated B with SRT? I I should send you some. The whole concept for that, ⁓ my dad is MTHR and ⁓ he was like, Okay, well I I need to take like the the methylated versions, the active forms of B vitamins, but you don't store B vitamins. Yep. So
speaker-1: I have not.
speaker-2: You kind of get a high dose and then you pee him out. And he's like, well, if we did the if we did the sustained release technology like we do with the MAG SRT, I think it would help me to lower my homocysteine. So ⁓ that's been in our product lineup for gosh, I mean 21 years. One of the original formulas. So I my friend will send you some of those. I'd be interested to see ⁓ your results. It's it's very simple. It's you know, one pill.
speaker-0: The originals.
speaker-2: Tons of methylated bees and it breaks down over I think six hours, eight hours. Right.
speaker-1: And as as anybody knows, if it doesn't have the time release technology, you take it in the morning and then your pea is orange. And going back to your body will use what it'll use, then I've probably taken too much, right? Because now the orange pea is indicating that it's that I've kind of OD'd on it.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-0: Exactly.
speaker-2: Yeah, the the most common thing I hear when I give my friends activated B is is am I gonna be okay? Because it's a very high dose of all the B vitamins. And I always tell them if you're not seeing that, I would be surprised because there's so much of the vitamins in there. You could you almost it's it's like overfilling you probably. ⁓ So ⁓ yeah, most most people that take that product tend to stay on it and reorder it. So ⁓
speaker-1: In one of those things like MTHFR, I think the p the population prevalence is well over fifty percent that you're at least heterozygous. So it's like that should be like one of those core products that is just in everybody's general supplement regimen.
speaker-2: ⁓ I I'd actually kind of like to go back to the scale when you saw 240 on the scale. How how long had it been sort of building up to that where you were like, All right, I I gotta do something and and why was that? Why was that the number? Why was that the moment? I guess take us take us to the scale.
speaker-1: Yeah, it was so it I think most people will see their weight go up a couple pounds a year, maybe five. You know, there's you know, sometimes, you know, there's variability, you know, there's water weight, you know, cycling females certainly there's gonna be variability, but it's like it just kind of goes like this. What was interesting about twenty seventeen was that it wasn't like the two to five pounds in the year, it was ten to twenty in that year. So I had been probably floating at 220 and then getting to 240 by the end of the year was a huge change. Right. And then you could viscerally feel feel it. Right. Because, you know, a lot of times people say don't focus on the scale, focus on the, you know, how you feel in your body, muscle weight and all this other stuff. I had to get a new out wardrobe. Right. And that that is the tell the telltale side because it's not only is it, you know, you're glossing over you can gloss over it on the scale on the number. But when you actually have to go change and get different clothes, that's really what hits you so hard from a from a confidence ⁓ perspective. The flip side is when you lose a whole bunch of weight, you have to buy a whole bunch of new clothes now too. So that side of it feels fun. That's that feels more fun, right? So instead of buying, you know, jeans with a thirty-eight waist, you're like, Well, I don't have any jeans that fit anymore. So now I have to buy at a thirty-four, which is, you know, something that, you know
speaker-0: Sure.
speaker-1: is also flip side that also makes you a lot more confident.
speaker-2: That's awesome, man. ⁓ and you said you did it it almost in the course of four months. Did you say you lost forty pounds?
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. When
speaker-2: That that that is very fast. I'm curious during that time, I want to go back to you ⁓ when you discovered then a beef allergy. Yeah what were the symptoms that you found to discover that? Because that seems like a really important ⁓ part of the story.
speaker-1: Yeah. So the there was so there's a couple different ways that you can look at food sensitivity testing. There's what's called IgG or amino globulin testing. There we there's a different test that's called a mediator release test that actually does it's a blood draw and they in they inject the beef pro are sorry, all the proteins into the different blood samples and they measure the inflammatory response. So it's a little bit different in that respect. What was super interesting was that the ⁓ you know, my there's red, yellow, and green, right? So green's good, yellow, we'll kind of see. And there's red and it was shellfish, which I don't know why. I wasn't really eating much of that anyway, but it was beef, corn, and rice, right? And so those were like the key functions. What's really crazy was so in it's I I I think it's specific to US beef, maybe. The grass-fed component, the glyphosate component, maybe something along those lines. I don't have seem like if I travel abroad, I don't really have the same issues. What was really interesting is look, if I go to Austin, Texas, I'm eating the brisket, right? So we would go, there was a conference called Paleo Effects at the time. And so we were there, and I know and I'm like, look, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna eat beef. Back pain comes back for 48 hours. Two days later, I have a five-pound increase. And then two days later, five pounds come us off. And so what was happening is my body's reaction. So I'm doing going water retentive, the neuroinflammation comes up and then give it, you know, and then I take it out of my system and then my body actually is able to pass that along. And I did that and you could see it multiple times. And so we jokingly, Jen and I always jokingly talk about like different foods and we call it, is it worth it? Right.
speaker-0: Right. That's incredible.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-0: But sometimes it is.
speaker-1: Right. So like, you know, sometimes like, you know, I generally eat gluten free, but sometimes there's just, you know, a restaurant that has their own sourdough starter, seven day, you know, and it's like grass fed butter with all this different flavoring. We're like, okay, it's worth it. I'm gonna take the pain knowing that I'm gonna pay for it tomorrow because I know it's worth it. Right.
speaker-0: And when you eat that way versus let's just say you went to, you know, in and out and had like the bun and all the things, like versus ⁓ you know, the high quality sourdough grass fed butter, do you notice less of an a reaction when you eat?
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, certainly. I would imagine I would joking ⁓ I would jokingly say ⁓ like for in and out or going and getting, you know, pizza from the local pizza shop, I would jokingly say I might as well just eat it in the bathroom.
speaker-2: Ha ha.
speaker-0: That's really funny.
speaker-1: Yeah. So really when you get those those, you know, highly enriched, you know, gluten you can kind of see if you've ever been to a pizza shop, they'll have the bags and it says like gluten enriched flour type of thing. And so yeah. And also my my skin breaks out, so I'll get zits so I know if I've been exposed or not. So and I they're always like right here around my nose.
speaker-0: ⁓ yeah. God, it doesn't sound worth it. Yeah.
speaker-2: well, is it worth it? At least ask the question. You know, at least you know which
speaker-0: Sounds like more trips to Europe are in order.
speaker-1: Yeah, definitely.
speaker-2: Italy, you know, a number of people on the podcast have talked about and you y you feel like you you hear it a lot. I went to Italy and I ate all the pizza there and walked around and drank the wine and didn't have any of the breakouts and the reactions that I have. Did do you have any experience like that to share?
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, look, it's it's it's a function of the food supply that we built in the US market, right? So in in Europe, I it this may be old, but in general, like the sat was something like Americans will spend five percent of their income on food, whereas in Europe they'll spend twenty percent. So there's a higher expectation for higher quality food in Europe. The other side of this is in the US, they have dw you know, they use dwarf grains, so it's faster growing, higher gluten. In in the European market, instead of doing the fast sourdough starters like you would see in typical US sourdough bread, they're actually doing the seven the 72-hour fermentation process. That ferment fermentation process, the gluten and gliadin proteins are actually broken down by the bacteria that's creating it. So if you don't do the fast process, it actually removes a lot of that out there. And so that's why you kind of see a lot of that. We did a a re a a study on pediatric autism. ⁓ with a group out of Chicago and Purdue University, and they did a whole bunch of food testing and mold and testing. So we only found out about this afterwards. So the kids were eating US-based processed food, and then they went on to basically a six-week organic non-processed food diet. They did mold and mycotoxin testing. Every single kid was elevated for what's called okra toxin A. Okra toxin A is a food mycotoxin that exists largely in grains. When they went onto an organic diet, all of the ochrotoxin A came down, their behavioral scores, it's neuroinflammatory. So the kids actually did a lot better just by eliminating it. We later, they so then they brought the data to the farm and ag groups, and they were like, ⁓ yeah, well, what we do is when you go to an auction to buy grain, we test it for ochrotoxin A. If it's above the threshold for okrotoxin A, what do you think they do?
speaker-2: Ship it to America.
speaker-1: No, they mix in clean grain until it gets below the threshold and then they sell it and that's when it ends up in your cornflakes.
speaker-0: That's just so upside down.
speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ and so you know, like we can look across like a lot of data within our system and everybody like I just I had friends, I just ran their t total tox burden. ⁓ and she was super elevated for toxin A. And I'm like, you gotta fix your food sources. It's not hard.
speaker-0: On that note, ⁓ let's talk about it. So you just said grains are one of the bigger contributors. We we know through our own research ⁓ that coffee is one of the biggest contributors. I did a mycotoxin test and had like four different types of very highly elevated ⁓ for mold. You know, it must have been okrotoxin A. I don't recall right off the top of my head. Maybe you do, but ⁓ so I sent me down the rabbit hole to find clean coffee. ⁓ ultimately ended up doing our own clean coffee because then we know we could send it in for third party testing to make sure it really is free of mold, mycotoxins, heavy metals. So that's where Firefly Coffee came from. But I am curious where
speaker-2: And the whole documentary, the Breaking Big Food documentary is about the American food supply and how it's gotten so rotten.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: So what are some of the other things besides grains and coffee that people need to be looking out for? Peanut butter. Yes.
speaker-1: Peanut butter. Peanuts are inherently moldy.
speaker-0: And ⁓ like cashews, right?
speaker-1: Yeah, I believe so. But peanuts, I mean, they're they're a legume. They're underground. They're in, you know, they're grown underground in a moldy essentially a moldy environment. And so there are a few kind of peanut butter people online, but if you're looking at like Skippy or any of the kind of the traditional processed foods, not only is it packed with sugar, that it's just it's a free for all when it comes to mold and mycotoxins.
speaker-0: Okay. Good to know. So if you're gonna do peanut butter, get the good stuff. Make sure it's organic. Spend the extra money to get quality.
speaker-1: And test and third party tested, just like your coffee.
speaker-0: Mm. So there are peanut butter brands that have third party testing. ⁓ that's great to know.
speaker-1: You can just search mold free peanut butter and there's a c ⁓ quite a few different ones. They have a lot of different flavors and stuff like that. It's also low sugar too, which is always nice.
speaker-0: Great to know. And then also like dried fruit can be a culprit too.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So although I I don't know why you would want to eat dried fruit.
speaker-0: I know.
speaker-1: Fructose and sugar, like what's the point?
speaker-0: I don't know.
speaker-2: Those ooh, those can be really yummy.
speaker-0: That's true. ⁓ so yes, each to their own. But really, I think it all comes down to again, like education and knowing yourself and your body and like what like everybody needs knowledge is power, right? In this specif specifically in this, because we are not just like a one size fits all. And a lot of the medical system, even the naturopathic side, is a very one size fits all system. Here are, you know, one set of standard tests that we have everyone do and then we make all of our decisions based on that. Well guess what? Those standard tests don't include like eighty percent of what you just said you had to find out to actually solve your problem.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean the the most important I you know with with the pandemic, you know, there's very you know, don't be it was actually the best thing that ever happened to us, even though it's kind of painful to say right now. Because what it shined a l shone shine a light on to the broader consumer world is the only person that cares about and will do is willing to do something about my health is me. Yeah. ⁓ you know, I jokingly call it the Joe Rogan effect. He's talking about testing and food and diet and all this other other information, Huberman, all the people that are now shining a light on the important component. And I think the pandemic, what it did is it shifted the mindset for consumers to go like, look, I need to get s if I want to do and be the person that I want to be, have, you know, run around with the kid with the grandkids when I'm 70 years old. I want to be able to coach and compete and do all these other things, have a great golf score when I'm 65 and retired. I have to take control of my health. And I think that's what's really exciting. I was concerned that we were gonna fall back into the five for $5.99 at Applebee's. And I feel like the the consumer world is now like, look, we're doing a lot more things. Yes, I could do a GLP one, but that's not the only thing. So really, you know, getting high quality supplements, getting an understanding of diet where things are, getting a better understanding of what's going on with me, getting more educated, online education. The democratization of personalized health is what's really exciting today.
speaker-0: Yes, it is exciting. You can feel the shift. You can, you know, like people are talking about it more than ever and educating themselves and it is super encouraging. ⁓ on that note, let's talk a little bit about what you and your wife Jen have created.
speaker-1: Yeah. So ⁓ through my experience where I had all of those different test reports, ⁓ I jokingly ⁓ at one point was like I was ⁓ she was telling me to buy this bottle of supplements for seventy dollars. And I was like, why? And she's like, Don't you remember on page four of your microbiome test you had Candida and d decreased the last days or something? I was like, I don't even know which one that is, let alone everything else. And so My background being in ⁓ electronic medical records, mainly in the post-acute care space. So think about skilled nursing facilities, home health, dura medical equipment. What I saw was Jen struggling with trying to use what is the traditional healthcare model and not having the right technology in place. And so what we did is we founded Biochanic, which is built around kind of this individualized approach to health. And the way we think about it is not the consumer function health side. It's really about empowering a provider to be efficient. So that they can see more patients more effectively. And so if you think about an individual provider and they're running those five tests, they have to synthesize and think through all of that. They have the intake form, the context, maybe wearable tracking, education, diet and meal planning, all of this prevents them from scaling. And unlike the traditional healthcare model where you just kind of show up and leave with a prescription, they're working with people over time. And so this time burden builds up and then they can't scale and see more people. And so our focus from a technology side was like, hey, how do we take what's needed from the medical documentation side and actually make it work for this health model? And so that's what we built. We call it a health intelligence platform. It's funny now everybody uses the term health intelligence. ⁓ but that was trademarked. ⁓ 2022. and ⁓ it's so it's we're ⁓ you know really excited. We keep building around this. We've
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Just a lot of great momentum. Now we have the kind of the AI component as well, not customer facing AI, but hey, how do we help that provider pull all of those data points together? Look at the genetics, the hormones, the blood chemistry, and give the provider a starting point. So it's such that they're really focused on the one on one care and then just tailoring it for that individual. And so that's what's really exciting today.
speaker-2: So for you, you don't work directly with individuals, you work with providers and you give them sort of the platform, the health intelligence system to treat their patients more effectively. Do those practitioners have to use the tests that you guys work with? Okay.
speaker-1: No, we're we're a hundred percent agnostic. And we know that our providers are gonna use different tests for different reasons. So yeah, you know, we have ⁓ Tracy Gappin, who you met at consumer health. He's a he's a health optimization focusing on hormone replacement therapy, gut health, genetic coaching. So he's gonna use a different set of tests than Jen, who is a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner who's using a different set. So we're agnostic. And then more importantly, you know, there's always new stuff coming into the market. The nice thing about our the personalized health space is those new kind of tools, techniques, applications, you know, a lot of them were we met at consumer health summit. We want to be able to support that immediately. Right. So somebody comes in, they have this really cool mitochondrial testing and they can see improvements in mitochondrial function. We want to be able to put that out there without having to to keep them locked into a single s ⁓ testing set. Yeah.
speaker-2: And how could I guess bottom feeders? I'm just starting to use it now. Yeah. How could our bottom feeders ⁓ follow you online and or could they find a practitioner that utilizes your platform because they feel like I want to go to a practitioner that has your added benefits?
speaker-0: Because really that creates a more personalized experience versus you just don't get the the TLC or like the attention to all of the different details necessarily with a comp with a doctor that like has too much on their plate and and it has a bottleneck essentially.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah. So we have over 2,000 active providers today. We do make available so if a consumer comes to us and says, Hey, yes, I want to go work with a provider, what we do is we provide them a set of options. So think of it as like a Yelp ⁓ for functional and integrative through our kind of vetted provider network. It really depends on the individual. So if that, you know, the person says, Hey, you know, my son is having IBD, IBS and neuroinflammation, then we're like, okay, here are the three people that we would recommend that specialize in that niche. Go follow them, go learn about them and find the one. And the most important thing that we always say is, you know, we don't want to just point you at this person. You need to find the person that you're going to resonate with. Yeah. So are do they speak your language? Do you connect with them? Do you ⁓ do you really feel like you have that kind of accountability? Because if you go and hire somebody that you hate, you're not gonna do the work and you're just gonna waste the money. So we always say, you know, check out their podcast, follow their Instagram, you know, sign up for their newsletter and You know, I think Jen uses the stats somewhat, it's usually about three months where people will follow her because they want their following and learning and seeing the post. And we always encourage the consumers to do that as well. ⁓ there is a lot of information out there, the explosion and the number of personalized health, functional, integrative, Ayurvedic, longevity, you name it. There's a lot more comp competition out there. So there's a lot more people fighting for eyeballs. So it is really important for the consumer to be very thoughtful in who they want to work with. And not just jump at the first opportunity.
speaker-2: ⁓ so how should the bottom feeders get in touch with you, Jeremy?
speaker-1: ⁓ just come to our website. ⁓ Biochanic B I O C A N I C dot com. ⁓ just drop us a note, hit us up on the count contact us form, and we'll get you all squared away. And then of course we're at biochanic on all the socials.
speaker-2: Yeah, right.
speaker-0: Thank you for all the work that you guys are doing to help make the healthcare experience better for consumers. ⁓ it's such a need and Godspeed.
speaker-2: And it's probably a part that isn't really thought about from most practitioners. They think, or I'm sorry, from most consumers, where they think about like, okay, well, a practitioner, they went to medical school, they've got their stethoscope, now they're gonna treat me. Well, there's a whole underlying support and technology system that will kind of make or break a practitioner. So really, Jeremy, what you and Jen, your wife are doing is Radically transforming the health in America. And thankfully, because of the Joe Rogan effect, because of the COVID effect, because of the waking up of so many millions of Americans to realize our food is poisoned. Yep. I have to take control of my own health care. Because of all those tailwinds, I hope that you guys are seeing a lot of growth and that your the practitioners that you support are also seeing a lot of growth.
speaker-1: Yeah, mean it's a it's a really great time because now there is so much more awareness, you know, and now that people really understand big pharma, big food, just like you guys kind of laid out in the documentary and exactly how the incentives are working in those spaces. Now people are really like aware and now motivated to go take control of their health for themselves. And I think that's what's really exciting. And really we're here to help enable the practitioners to help give them the tools to kind of, you know, be be healthy and get to their own individual health goals.
speaker-0: Amen to that. Well, thank you so much, Jeremy. It's been a pleasure to hear your story. And we look forward to having an episode with your wife, Jen, here very shortly.
speaker-1: Yeah. Awesome. Well thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it.
speaker-0: This episode of the Rock Bottom Podcast is brought to you by Jigsaw Health, a family-owned Arizona-based nutritional supplement company. Every formula is made with clean ingredients that are third-party tested to ensure that what's on the label is in the bottle and nothing else. Learn more at jigsawhealth.com.
speaker-2: Do you have a health horror story? We're always looking for stories that will inspire others. So please use the link in the description to apply to be on our show. Finally, if this episode resonated with you, then please like and subscribe. It really helps others to find our show and we want to help spread the word. New episodes drop every other Wednesday. So thank you so much for tuning in and we'll see you on the next show.
speaker-0: There.
speaker-1: Yes, 100%. Getting into my 30s, I saw my personal health declining. I have an extruding disc in my lower back, my weight was going up, so I was organic, gluten-free, you know, the sober tober types of things, yet every single marker of my health was going in the wrong direction.
speaker-0: Welcome to the Rock Bottom Podcast, presented by Jigsaw Health, where we share health horror stories that inspire. Today's guest is Jeremy Maleka. Jeremy struggled for years with chronic back pain, inflammation, and unhealthy weight gain despite living an active lifestyle. His journey back to health began through various lab tests that help uncover the root causes of his inflammation and eventually help many others.
speaker-2: Before we dive in, just a quick note, as always, this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. So please always consult with a healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine.
speaker-0: This is the rock bottom podcast.
speaker-2: Jeremy, welcome to the Rock Bottom Podcast. It's so good to have you here. We got to see you in Scottsdale a couple of weeks ago at the Consumer Health Summit.
speaker-0: And it was all I could do to keep myself from asking about your story because I'm so excited to hear it. ⁓ and I didn't want any spoil.
speaker-2: I know, and it would have been great had we been able to get you in the studio, but time would not permit. So you're there in lovely San Diego and we're gonna get a chance to learn about you. So why don't you tell us ⁓ tell the audience who we buy okay. We have to remember that we just recently gave the audience a name and Ashley, you came up with the name.
speaker-0: No, I don't like it. Okay. Because it's the rock bottom podcast, I I I was like, ⁓ bottom feeders, but that doesn't have a good ring to it. Unless we just make it a thing and we just really everybody embrace it. We're all bottom feeders here.
speaker-2: His reaction though. Audience, what do you think? Are are you okay being a bottom feeder? I thought it was hilarious.
speaker-0: We'll take a poll and then on the next episode we'll announce whether we are going to remain the bottom feeders or come up with something better.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-2: What do you think, Jeremy?
speaker-1: Yeah, definitely. I I'd stick with it. We d we try to definitely be controversial, hopefully get more clicks. ⁓
speaker-0: Right. So go ahead and print the t shirts, is what you're saying.
speaker-2: But it's it's said in love, obviously. And we laugh for like six minutes afterwards. So it is. Okay. Rough start. So tas
speaker-0: Take us back, here's we'd love to have you take us back to your rock bottom moment, the one that you're gonna be talking about today. I know many people have multiple of those throughout a lifetime. And then we'll kinda talk about what led you there and then what got you to this point.
speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ so you know, my my background was ⁓ engineering. ⁓ I started in a medical device company, then I kind of rose through the ranks, right? So then I came over to a company called ResMed, SP 500 company, and I was basically ⁓ growing my career, right? So I was product management director and then was a VP. What really what my rock bottom moment came in was I've always been a health focused individual. So I spent, you know, all you know, I was gonna be an athletic trainer. I got into medical school. I decided not to, always reading books. I remember ⁓ Eat to Win. I don't know if you remember that book from back in the late 90s. Men's Health put out a thing called the complete book of abs. So I like I had all this stuff and I've worked and I've been, you know, physically active, basketball, football, doing all kinds of things. And as I was really going through my career and getting into my 30s, I saw my personal health declining. So I was starting to have chronic back pain. So I was doing all the things, ⁓ you know, injections, or ablation. I have an extruding disc in my lower back. And I was starting to, you know, really, it was just progressively getting worse. My weight was going up, my blood pressure was going up throughout that individual process. And so what really happened was I, you know, my wife Jen, who I think is gonna be on as well. ⁓ you know, as a practitioner. So we were doing all the things, right? So I was organic, gluten-free, you know, the sober tober types of things. Yet every single marker of my health was going in the wrong direction. It all came to a peak in December of 2017. And I hit, I remember the day, because I call it the worst day of my life. I stepped on my withing scale and I still have it and I still use it and all of my marketing and stuff. I hit two, four, zero, right? So being five eleven and a half-ish. ⁓ and seeing the 240, that was a really ⁓ challenging moment for me, right? ⁓ I call it the worst day of my life because one of the things is you know, you're doing things, you're investing in your health, you think you're doing everything right, and everything is going in the opposite direction.
speaker-0: I can't imagine yeah, that's the most frustrating thing ever because it's not like you were just being lazy and like, I just can't get motivated to work out or I just can't stop eating these, you know, potato chips or whatever. Like you're genuinely doing everything that you know to be healthy and like it's just you're getting sabotaged somewhere. Yeah.
speaker-1: And so I was, you know, we were running all the tests, dual microbiome, blood work. I was tracking all the stuff ⁓ in an Excel spreadsheet. Obviously, I was tracking my weight, but I was doing activity trackers, high intensity interval training, or even like slower zone two training, and really nothing was working. And it was so frustrating because I was working so hard, yet everything was going in the wrong way. ⁓ So that all changed. ⁓ so Jen, who was my practitioner, had a consultation with ⁓ one of the medical ⁓ advisors from a company called precision analytical or the Dutch tests hormone test and in that conversation you know I had taken multiple tests and he's like well has he ever gone low carb right and I and we were like huh and we're like doing all the supplements for the detox pathways and DIM and all this update dosage and everything else. And so all of a sudden I was like ⁓ I didn't know that was a thing. So I was gluten-free organic but I was still high carb. So things like Rice, chips, corn, all this other stuff was really the problem. And then what happened is we just all of a sudden that insight led to a cascade, which actually brought me back to where I actually where my health goals were. So what was interesting, now looking backwards, we have all the information was based upon my genetics, I'm what's called estrogen dominant. so my I have a family history of breast cancer. So on the women's my grandma, my mom ⁓ both had breast cancer. ⁓ there's a specific estrogen pathway called the BRACA gene that I have. ⁓ so you can
speaker-0: So that's crazy. Like I think a lot of people might just think that that's something only women have. Like so men can be estrogen dominant too, and men can have the Broncogene.
speaker-2: That's exactly what I'm thinking in my head.
speaker-1: Yes, a hundred percent. And so that and it it's kind of a stigma thing, right? Because you think testosterone, dudes, estrogen, women, right? Right. ⁓ but what really was happening with my genetic and my family genetic tree is one, we do not dispose we do not deal with carbs very well. So my last name is Maleka, East European. My mom's ⁓ maiden name is Fiaca F-Y-A-L-K-A, which is also East European, right? And so if we think back to kind of the genetics and the evolutionary traits of what that looks like, rice is not a thing in Eastern Europe, right? And so as the generations kind of evolve and grow through, it was more around things like root vegetables. So I do well with underground carbohydrates, above ground carbohydrates, I think corn, rice, and everything else. I do not do well. And so what happens is in my particular case, is I was still taking in those carbs, those carbs that get stored as fat. And what's happened is fat then drives estrogen. And so because of my family history, where we're not good, what's called estrogen detoxers, we build up this accumulation. And so that's really what was happening to me was I was basically filling the tank with all of this estrogen based upon the carbohydrates that I couldn't really process well and just stuffed into fat. And then I basically, as Dr. Carrie Jones always likes to say, my My bathtub was plugged. So I'm filling the bathtub with a whole bunch of estrogen, and then I have no ability to actually detox that out. So you look at, you know, you hear about the genetic components, MTHFR, you know, Gary Breckett talks about that quite a bit. I have that, C O ⁓ T. All of these things are basically around what's called methylation. And so in my particular case, the estrogens were coming in, and then I didn't have a good ability to support the ability to get rid of those estrogens. And so If you look at what is one of the there's four different pathways. There's the two hydroxy, four hydroxy, and sixteen hydroxy metabolites that come out when you detox. Four hydroxy is the cancer-causing pathway, right? So when people talk about estrogen-driven cancers, that's that's the one you have to look for. I was off the chart in terms of that particular metabolite. And so that correlated with my genetics, my family history, and everything else. And so what I did. was then I learned how to eat better, but then also actually do the right supplementation. And so that's where we started looking at what's called methyl donors or supporting my underperforming methylation genetics by adding in methyl components. So that's things like choline, so which is comes from eggs, ⁓ glutathione, ⁓ Nacetylcysteine and glycine. So giving myself the components, the building blocks in a more supplementary way to actually start to detox that. And so Where I went from was 1.1. You don't have to worry about the ranges, but 1.1 is very high down to a 0.4. So I saw over a 60% reduction by one affecting my diet and then also supporting that detox pathway. So what that meant for me as an individual is I immediately lost essentially 40 pounds in three months.
speaker-0: Well. Just by eliminating specif like did you eliminate all carbs or just the corn and the rice?
speaker-1: Yeah. So I originally was very hardcore keto. The other the other insight that actually came in was I it's if you go to a ketogenic diet, it's like creamer in your co creamer and butter in your coffee, and then you're focusing on beef. Turns out I actually have a reactivity to beef and cow milk, specifically from the US. So I had a good ⁓ good drop, and then I had a food sensitivity where I understood that. So then I switched over to more kind of pork, bison.
speaker-0: Very high f
speaker-1: ⁓ you know, elk, other types of proteins. And then I had another significant drop. So I had not only the component of getting through understanding where I was at from that dietary component, but I also had an inflammatory component. The funny part is once I got rid of those inflammatory foods for me, my back pain was gone. And I had
speaker-0: ⁓ I have a question on the testing side of things. So what tests did you do to figure out that you had the bronchogene and this ⁓ estrogen dominant?
speaker-2: I feel like we need to slowly unpack everything that you just did. I took a whole bunch of notes and I think the bottom feeders would like to get some details.
speaker-0: I for one would like to know.
speaker-1: And and look
speaker-2: With your ⁓ I guess your D your DNA testing. What did you take for that?
speaker-1: Yeah, and look, it this is the this is why the my the my business exists is because of my individual journey, which is my what worked for me will only work for me because I am a unique individual. And so, you know, kind of foundationally is what is my genetics, right? Genetics doesn't necessarily mean what what is gonna happen. So just because you have the BRACA one, you're not necessarily gonna have breast cancer. just because APOE4 doesn't mean you're gonna have Alzheimer's. It means the potential of where that exists. So you have to kind of understand the blueprint of who you are and kind of where your potential and your limitations are from a genetic component. Then we had to look at my obviously comprehensive blood work. Everybody knows they can get it pretty cheap today, advanced hormone testing, microbiome testing, and then food sensitivity. And that's really the foundational test layer that we do for each individual.
speaker-0: Can you tell us what like if someone wants to get a genetic test to find out if they have those things, what did you use? What company?
speaker-1: So at the time it was twenty three and me.
speaker-0: ⁓ okay. ⁓ gee, yeah.
speaker-2: Hey, they used to be like their own town.
speaker-1: Yeah, it was not, you know, that's this twenty seventeen. So this is back before twenty three and me issues existed and the privacy concerns. But any genetic testing company is gonna give you kind of and there's a lot of great ones out there. We work with Max Gen Labs, they're very kind of data privacy focused. There's three X4 genetics, you know, it's a couple hundred dollars, but they'll give you a very easy to understand view of kind of what those genetic potentials are. The nice thing about that test, it's you only do it once 'cause your genes ain't changing. Yeah. And then the other part is so that's your potential. Then where is where's your metabolomics at today? So how do we understand what's actually happening to you? That is where the other testing comes in.
speaker-0: Okay.
speaker-2: Matt's when you learned what your ⁓ four hydroxy metabolite levels was were, you said it was a one point one, which is off the charts. Yep. ⁓ and and what testing did you do for that? What was that one called?
speaker-1: So we so I have used a company called ⁓ Precision Analytical. It's a Dutch test. They're kind of the market leader in the functional and integrative space. There's other ⁓ urine-based hormone tests. One of the things that is really important to understand is that yes, you can go do one of these hundred and sixty plus blood biomarkers, but it only tells you the estrogen or E2 value. It does not tell you how you're ⁓ getting rid of it. And so that's really where we do.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, these urine based are more comprehensive and give you a lot more insight as to how your whole hormone system is functioning rather than just that one than one blood biome.
speaker-0: So do you recommend Dutch test over blood test just for overall hormone just assessment?
speaker-1: I recommend them complementary. So blood and urine are two different tools in the toolbox and they give you two sets of information. And that's really where, you know, thinking about this from a consumer standpoint, this is where kind of the overwhelmed can come in. And so this is really why, you know, the business that we built really focuses on helping providers set give that information to the consumer so they can understand it in a digestible format.
speaker-0: Yes, the overwhelm is real.
speaker-2: Yeah. ⁓ and I do want to come back to what you and Jen, your wife, work on together at Biochanic. ⁓ but I I want to ask maybe a sort of ⁓ controversial question here. You talked about like, you know, ⁓ these blood panels that you can get that are be kind of kind of becoming the rage right now. What are your thoughts on that? I think you somewhat alluded to it.
speaker-1: Yeah. Well, so in fairness, I am a member of two of those platforms and have been for over three years. It's a great cost effective way to get comprehensive blood work as a as a health motivated consumer. I highly recommend it. You're never gonna get it running through your insurance, your primary care provider. So you we just need to set the expectation if we want the information that we can do it.
speaker-0: What are the two platforms that you subscribe to? Are you willing to share that?
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I do function health. So I was one of the original beta users with them. So I'm in year three with them. And then there's a newer one called Superpower. ⁓ met the founders a long time ago. So I run them side by side. It's really I do that one because it's a even though they use the same lab testing provider, I'm curious just to see like how they interpret the data so I can better represent it to my friends and family that are also using them as well.
speaker-0: So if you are a consumer that like maybe can't afford both, do you recommend one or the other?
speaker-1: Yeah, they're they're equivalently beneficial in different ways. You know, function ⁓ gives you a ⁓ more markers, superpower gives a better coaching experience and a kind of a human-human interaction that you can't get through function. So it really depends on where you're at. Ultimately, like let's say you get a whole bunch of information back, most of my friends and family will upload it to Claude and Claude's gonna do some interpretation. The problem is AI doesn't have context. And so Really, that's why we're so focused on helping practitioners help that are working with clients, right? So, okay, so you come back, your lipids are all out of whack, you've got high insulin, HBO1C. Now somebody has to kind of look at that through the context of who you are, right? So what's your sleep pattern look like? How are you working out? What's your family stress look like? Are you living in a moldy home? All of these other things are the context is actually more important than just the data itself. The data gives you that opportunity to say, hey, look, I've got some areas that are kind of giving me yellow and red lights here, but now what do I do about it? Has to have that kind of human human in the loop or ⁓ in real life component.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm.
speaker-2: Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. ⁓ and I you I think to ⁓ a guy I know that's like, yeah, just signed up for function and I'm just running the results through Claude. Yeah. ⁓ did you did you get a chance and maybe we're kind of going out in left field here, but at CHS there was an interesting presentation from ⁓ Onyx.life, I think it was, that's like sort of specialized AI. I'm curious if you knew about that, have looked into that and maybe we're getting far afield here, but
speaker-1: Yeah. No, it's so ⁓ for the people that don't know, OnyxDay dot AI is the ability for a practitioner who has built a lot of education and research in a certain area to kind of create their own avatar. So I think Jeff Dr. Jeff Bland was a perfect example where they've taken all of his information and they created around him. It's an interesting approach and I think ⁓ it can be useful. ⁓ but kind of, you know, taking a step back. ⁓ so I worked at ResMed, which is a sleep apnea company. And sleep apnea, obstructs of sleep apnea. Everyone hopefully knows it's a CPAP device. It's, you know, kind of challenging. ⁓ so the thing about CPAP therapy is the only way you can ever hurt an individual bulb by putting them on CPAP therapy is by hitting them over the head with the device. There is no risk. And one of the things that we tried for a very long time was: well, if that's the case, why don't we just test people and put them onto therapy and We can have this whole digital pathway where can we can get a whole bunch of consumers onto sleep therapy. That never worked. And the reason is health is a lot different than your consumer products. Right. So yes, I can go buy the new MacBook Air because I get sold and everything else. When somebody gets diagnosed or has concerns about their health that's so personal, they want to talk to somebody about it. I have questions, right? I I'm not just gonna accept that this therapy is gonna, I'm gonna go on to this therapy, I'm gonna be fine. I wanna, well, what does this mean? If I do this, what are the benefits I'm gonna see? What are the risks? Well, how do I clean it? All of these things come in. So back to the onyx.ai component, it's a great way to serve education, but ultimately health is so personal, there still has to be some sort of human contact, right? So establish the relationship. build the trust that your approach thinking and methodology is gonna work for me, ask those questions. And then yes, that AI can kind of fill in the gaps along the way, but there's still that part that has to start with that human to human interaction.
speaker-0: And also having blind trust with AI is a complete and utter mistake because it is hallucinating. It is wrong a lot of the time. I've experienced some really interesting ⁓ hallucinations with my personal AI about my health, which I know are like grossly wrong. And I'm like, well, I wonder it like how people that like don't have a a knowledge base hardly at all about things and they're just literally throwing stuff in there and just taking it as gospel. Like how many lives is this actually ruining right now? It's a big concern.
speaker-2: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
speaker-1: Yeah, you know, it's funny if if anybody's familiar with the Gartner hype cycle, we're like in peak AI hype, right? And so I'm sure you guys have seen just being around everybody at CHS, this AI doc in your pocket, AI's gonna ⁓ we've got this new AI, Lab Core's got AI, I think Quest has AI now, everybody's got an AI thing. But if you actually look at consumer polling around the perceptions around AI, nobody likes it. Nobody likes it. Right. So in some ways I think we're kind of breathing into the mirror here and it's kind of fogging our view as to what the actual people in sp in the world actually want to see from a from an experiential perspective.
speaker-2: I was watching a little report over the on YouTube last night about ex CEO of Google speaking at University of Arizona graduation ceremony and he brought up ⁓ AI and the crowd booed him. And he was kinda like, wait, maybe I'm maybe I'm speaking to the wrong audience here.
speaker-1: Yeah. I actually so I I was at a graduation. I was at Carnegie Mellon. My niece just graduated from there and Jensen Wong was the keynote ⁓ speaker at the commencement. And it was funny, Jen and I were sitting there, it was super interesting. I mean, it's the most valuable company CEO. We were like super interested to hear what he had to say. They recruit out of Carnegie Mellon for their For their engineering, and I talked to my niece about it, and they're like, ⁓ yeah, we hated it. It was just an advertisement for AI. They just I think were that school just doesn't boo people, but they were not impressed.
speaker-2: So interesting. ⁓ well okay, I want to get back to your health story. I feel like this is becoming the the rock bottom AI podcast or something.
speaker-0: I want to go back to some of your health markers that you mentioned, the COM T and the MTHFR, because I think our audience are probably a decent amount people that have not heard those before or don't know what they are. Can you explain those to us?
speaker-1: So ⁓ MTHFR is a gene which is how your body does methylation. So methylation is kind of the cleanup crew where it comes detox approach, right? So it's it's basically taking a methyl group, adding it to it so that your body identifies it such that you excrete it out the way in a very broad, ⁓ very simplified way. When you have the genetic SNPs, whether you're heterozygous, meaning one copy or homozygous, two copies of the mutation, depends on.
speaker-0: Detox system.
speaker-1: it will reduce the amount of your ability to actually add that methyl group. So I think if you're heterozygous, you have a thirty percent reduction. If you're homozygous, it's seventy percent reduction of methylation.
speaker-0: Okay, so if you have ⁓ T H F R you either have one of the two of those.
speaker-1: If you have the the the SNP, the okay ⁓ mutation in the SNP. If you don't have the mutation, then it's full fully functional. Yeah. So then C O ⁓ T is a similar one. It's more typically associated with like neuroinflammation ⁓ or neural ⁓ approaches. So generally like I'm more A-type, higher energy, but also more susceptible to things like anxiety. ⁓ ruminations and everything. And so part of that is now how do I actually help on the neurotransmitter side support that mutation with supplementation as well?
speaker-0: Okay, so let's talk about both of those things and what you're you're actually doing to like mitigate those things or to support those things.
speaker-1: Yeah. So back on the MTH the MTHFR side, ⁓ I do what's called so there's a couple different ways. So you can do ⁓ glutathione, which is ⁓ essentially ⁓ a methyl donor. There's also what's called N acetylcysteine or NAC plus glycine, which are the building blocks for methyl groups. So I do both of those depending on what I have available. ⁓ there's a lot of great products out there. Then I also do focus a lot on eggs because of choline, which is also a method donor as well. So that's kind of like one of my staples for my dietary approach. So that's been helping me on the hormonal detox side.
speaker-0: Is there anything people need to stay away from in particular with the MTH F R and food food wise? ⁓
speaker-1: No, I mean it's one of those things that it's really important to kind of y I I don't know what happened to it, but remember the whole thirty diet? Yeah. Right? The whole thirty diet was essentially a massive elimination diet. And then you reintroduce things trying to understand what's working for you and what's not. ⁓ so in the same vein of doing that, you know, you it's not just a genetics and a food connection, it's a genetics, a food, a microbiome connection, all these other things.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-1: And so having if you are having health issues, you're having concerns, you're dealing with anxiety, you're gas pain and bloating after eating, all this other stuff is to really start to think about and measure what you're eating and how you're doing things. From a nutraceutical perspective, there really isn't anything you can do, you have to worry about because it's either going to work or it's not. Right. And you can't really ⁓ I mean, there are certain things that you can ⁓ do, you know, do too much on, but in the body'll tell you your body's just gonna eliminate it, right? Yeah, it's not gonna use it.
speaker-0: What about B vitamins for people with MTHFR? A connection there.
speaker-1: Yes. So yes. So one of the one of and again, not showing up on the urine-based hormone test, but on my blood biomarkers, I've elevated homocysteine. Homoysteine is very highly associated with cardiovascular disease. ⁓ so my typical homocysteine, like the top end of the range is like 10. ⁓ so I'm normally at like an eleven or twelve. And so I do take a methylated B vitamin. So there's a lot of different great products out there. ⁓ and so when I am compliant on that, my homocysteine comes down below ten. And then when I run out and I forget to reorder and I retest, it goes back up over ten. And so those are one of those things where you can see a direct causal relationship on that component as well.
speaker-2: ⁓ well I'd be remiss to not mention ⁓ have you ever tried the jigsaw activated B with SRT? I I should send you some. The whole concept for that, ⁓ my dad is MTHR and ⁓ he was like, Okay, well I I need to take like the the methylated versions, the active forms of B vitamins, but you don't store B vitamins. Yep. So
speaker-1: I have not.
speaker-2: You kind of get a high dose and then you pee him out. And he's like, well, if we did the if we did the sustained release technology like we do with the MAG SRT, I think it would help me to lower my homocysteine. So ⁓ that's been in our product lineup for gosh, I mean 21 years. One of the original formulas. So I my friend will send you some of those. I'd be interested to see ⁓ your results. It's it's very simple. It's you know, one pill.
speaker-0: The originals.
speaker-2: Tons of methylated bees and it breaks down over I think six hours, eight hours. Right.
speaker-1: And as as anybody knows, if it doesn't have the time release technology, you take it in the morning and then your pea is orange. And going back to your body will use what it'll use, then I've probably taken too much, right? Because now the orange pea is indicating that it's that I've kind of OD'd on it.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-0: Exactly.
speaker-2: Yeah, the the most common thing I hear when I give my friends activated B is is am I gonna be okay? Because it's a very high dose of all the B vitamins. And I always tell them if you're not seeing that, I would be surprised because there's so much of the vitamins in there. You could you almost it's it's like overfilling you probably. ⁓ So ⁓ yeah, most most people that take that product tend to stay on it and reorder it. So ⁓
speaker-1: In one of those things like MTHFR, I think the p the population prevalence is well over fifty percent that you're at least heterozygous. So it's like that should be like one of those core products that is just in everybody's general supplement regimen.
speaker-2: ⁓ I I'd actually kind of like to go back to the scale when you saw 240 on the scale. How how long had it been sort of building up to that where you were like, All right, I I gotta do something and and why was that? Why was that the number? Why was that the moment? I guess take us take us to the scale.
speaker-1: Yeah, it was so it I think most people will see their weight go up a couple pounds a year, maybe five. You know, there's you know, sometimes, you know, there's variability, you know, there's water weight, you know, cycling females certainly there's gonna be variability, but it's like it just kind of goes like this. What was interesting about twenty seventeen was that it wasn't like the two to five pounds in the year, it was ten to twenty in that year. So I had been probably floating at 220 and then getting to 240 by the end of the year was a huge change. Right. And then you could viscerally feel feel it. Right. Because, you know, a lot of times people say don't focus on the scale, focus on the, you know, how you feel in your body, muscle weight and all this other stuff. I had to get a new out wardrobe. Right. And that that is the tell the telltale side because it's not only is it, you know, you're glossing over you can gloss over it on the scale on the number. But when you actually have to go change and get different clothes, that's really what hits you so hard from a from a confidence ⁓ perspective. The flip side is when you lose a whole bunch of weight, you have to buy a whole bunch of new clothes now too. So that side of it feels fun. That's that feels more fun, right? So instead of buying, you know, jeans with a thirty-eight waist, you're like, Well, I don't have any jeans that fit anymore. So now I have to buy at a thirty-four, which is, you know, something that, you know
speaker-0: Sure.
speaker-1: is also flip side that also makes you a lot more confident.
speaker-2: That's awesome, man. ⁓ and you said you did it it almost in the course of four months. Did you say you lost forty pounds?
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. When
speaker-2: That that that is very fast. I'm curious during that time, I want to go back to you ⁓ when you discovered then a beef allergy. Yeah what were the symptoms that you found to discover that? Because that seems like a really important ⁓ part of the story.
speaker-1: Yeah. So the there was so there's a couple different ways that you can look at food sensitivity testing. There's what's called IgG or amino globulin testing. There we there's a different test that's called a mediator release test that actually does it's a blood draw and they in they inject the beef pro are sorry, all the proteins into the different blood samples and they measure the inflammatory response. So it's a little bit different in that respect. What was super interesting was that the ⁓ you know, my there's red, yellow, and green, right? So green's good, yellow, we'll kind of see. And there's red and it was shellfish, which I don't know why. I wasn't really eating much of that anyway, but it was beef, corn, and rice, right? And so those were like the key functions. What's really crazy was so in it's I I I think it's specific to US beef, maybe. The grass-fed component, the glyphosate component, maybe something along those lines. I don't have seem like if I travel abroad, I don't really have the same issues. What was really interesting is look, if I go to Austin, Texas, I'm eating the brisket, right? So we would go, there was a conference called Paleo Effects at the time. And so we were there, and I know and I'm like, look, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna eat beef. Back pain comes back for 48 hours. Two days later, I have a five-pound increase. And then two days later, five pounds come us off. And so what was happening is my body's reaction. So I'm doing going water retentive, the neuroinflammation comes up and then give it, you know, and then I take it out of my system and then my body actually is able to pass that along. And I did that and you could see it multiple times. And so we jokingly, Jen and I always jokingly talk about like different foods and we call it, is it worth it? Right.
speaker-0: Right. That's incredible.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-0: But sometimes it is.
speaker-1: Right. So like, you know, sometimes like, you know, I generally eat gluten free, but sometimes there's just, you know, a restaurant that has their own sourdough starter, seven day, you know, and it's like grass fed butter with all this different flavoring. We're like, okay, it's worth it. I'm gonna take the pain knowing that I'm gonna pay for it tomorrow because I know it's worth it. Right.
speaker-0: And when you eat that way versus let's just say you went to, you know, in and out and had like the bun and all the things, like versus ⁓ you know, the high quality sourdough grass fed butter, do you notice less of an a reaction when you eat?
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, certainly. I would imagine I would joking ⁓ I would jokingly say ⁓ like for in and out or going and getting, you know, pizza from the local pizza shop, I would jokingly say I might as well just eat it in the bathroom.
speaker-2: Ha ha.
speaker-0: That's really funny.
speaker-1: Yeah. So really when you get those those, you know, highly enriched, you know, gluten you can kind of see if you've ever been to a pizza shop, they'll have the bags and it says like gluten enriched flour type of thing. And so yeah. And also my my skin breaks out, so I'll get zits so I know if I've been exposed or not. So and I they're always like right here around my nose.
speaker-0: ⁓ yeah. God, it doesn't sound worth it. Yeah.
speaker-2: well, is it worth it? At least ask the question. You know, at least you know which
speaker-0: Sounds like more trips to Europe are in order.
speaker-1: Yeah, definitely.
speaker-2: Italy, you know, a number of people on the podcast have talked about and you y you feel like you you hear it a lot. I went to Italy and I ate all the pizza there and walked around and drank the wine and didn't have any of the breakouts and the reactions that I have. Did do you have any experience like that to share?
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, look, it's it's it's a function of the food supply that we built in the US market, right? So in in Europe, I it this may be old, but in general, like the sat was something like Americans will spend five percent of their income on food, whereas in Europe they'll spend twenty percent. So there's a higher expectation for higher quality food in Europe. The other side of this is in the US, they have dw you know, they use dwarf grains, so it's faster growing, higher gluten. In in the European market, instead of doing the fast sourdough starters like you would see in typical US sourdough bread, they're actually doing the seven the 72-hour fermentation process. That ferment fermentation process, the gluten and gliadin proteins are actually broken down by the bacteria that's creating it. So if you don't do the fast process, it actually removes a lot of that out there. And so that's why you kind of see a lot of that. We did a a re a a study on pediatric autism. ⁓ with a group out of Chicago and Purdue University, and they did a whole bunch of food testing and mold and testing. So we only found out about this afterwards. So the kids were eating US-based processed food, and then they went on to basically a six-week organic non-processed food diet. They did mold and mycotoxin testing. Every single kid was elevated for what's called okra toxin A. Okra toxin A is a food mycotoxin that exists largely in grains. When they went onto an organic diet, all of the ochrotoxin A came down, their behavioral scores, it's neuroinflammatory. So the kids actually did a lot better just by eliminating it. We later, they so then they brought the data to the farm and ag groups, and they were like, ⁓ yeah, well, what we do is when you go to an auction to buy grain, we test it for ochrotoxin A. If it's above the threshold for okrotoxin A, what do you think they do?
speaker-2: Ship it to America.
speaker-1: No, they mix in clean grain until it gets below the threshold and then they sell it and that's when it ends up in your cornflakes.
speaker-0: That's just so upside down.
speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ and so you know, like we can look across like a lot of data within our system and everybody like I just I had friends, I just ran their t total tox burden. ⁓ and she was super elevated for toxin A. And I'm like, you gotta fix your food sources. It's not hard.
speaker-0: On that note, ⁓ let's talk about it. So you just said grains are one of the bigger contributors. We we know through our own research ⁓ that coffee is one of the biggest contributors. I did a mycotoxin test and had like four different types of very highly elevated ⁓ for mold. You know, it must have been okrotoxin A. I don't recall right off the top of my head. Maybe you do, but ⁓ so I sent me down the rabbit hole to find clean coffee. ⁓ ultimately ended up doing our own clean coffee because then we know we could send it in for third party testing to make sure it really is free of mold, mycotoxins, heavy metals. So that's where Firefly Coffee came from. But I am curious where
speaker-2: And the whole documentary, the Breaking Big Food documentary is about the American food supply and how it's gotten so rotten.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: So what are some of the other things besides grains and coffee that people need to be looking out for? Peanut butter. Yes.
speaker-1: Peanut butter. Peanuts are inherently moldy.
speaker-0: And ⁓ like cashews, right?
speaker-1: Yeah, I believe so. But peanuts, I mean, they're they're a legume. They're underground. They're in, you know, they're grown underground in a moldy essentially a moldy environment. And so there are a few kind of peanut butter people online, but if you're looking at like Skippy or any of the kind of the traditional processed foods, not only is it packed with sugar, that it's just it's a free for all when it comes to mold and mycotoxins.
speaker-0: Okay. Good to know. So if you're gonna do peanut butter, get the good stuff. Make sure it's organic. Spend the extra money to get quality.
speaker-1: And test and third party tested, just like your coffee.
speaker-0: Mm. So there are peanut butter brands that have third party testing. ⁓ that's great to know.
speaker-1: You can just search mold free peanut butter and there's a c ⁓ quite a few different ones. They have a lot of different flavors and stuff like that. It's also low sugar too, which is always nice.
speaker-0: Great to know. And then also like dried fruit can be a culprit too.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So although I I don't know why you would want to eat dried fruit.
speaker-0: I know.
speaker-1: Fructose and sugar, like what's the point?
speaker-0: I don't know.
speaker-2: Those ooh, those can be really yummy.
speaker-0: That's true. ⁓ so yes, each to their own. But really, I think it all comes down to again, like education and knowing yourself and your body and like what like everybody needs knowledge is power, right? In this specif specifically in this, because we are not just like a one size fits all. And a lot of the medical system, even the naturopathic side, is a very one size fits all system. Here are, you know, one set of standard tests that we have everyone do and then we make all of our decisions based on that. Well guess what? Those standard tests don't include like eighty percent of what you just said you had to find out to actually solve your problem.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean the the most important I you know with with the pandemic, you know, there's very you know, don't be it was actually the best thing that ever happened to us, even though it's kind of painful to say right now. Because what it shined a l shone shine a light on to the broader consumer world is the only person that cares about and will do is willing to do something about my health is me. Yeah. ⁓ you know, I jokingly call it the Joe Rogan effect. He's talking about testing and food and diet and all this other other information, Huberman, all the people that are now shining a light on the important component. And I think the pandemic, what it did is it shifted the mindset for consumers to go like, look, I need to get s if I want to do and be the person that I want to be, have, you know, run around with the kid with the grandkids when I'm 70 years old. I want to be able to coach and compete and do all these other things, have a great golf score when I'm 65 and retired. I have to take control of my health. And I think that's what's really exciting. I was concerned that we were gonna fall back into the five for $5.99 at Applebee's. And I feel like the the consumer world is now like, look, we're doing a lot more things. Yes, I could do a GLP one, but that's not the only thing. So really, you know, getting high quality supplements, getting an understanding of diet where things are, getting a better understanding of what's going on with me, getting more educated, online education. The democratization of personalized health is what's really exciting today.
speaker-0: Yes, it is exciting. You can feel the shift. You can, you know, like people are talking about it more than ever and educating themselves and it is super encouraging. ⁓ on that note, let's talk a little bit about what you and your wife Jen have created.
speaker-1: Yeah. So ⁓ through my experience where I had all of those different test reports, ⁓ I jokingly ⁓ at one point was like I was ⁓ she was telling me to buy this bottle of supplements for seventy dollars. And I was like, why? And she's like, Don't you remember on page four of your microbiome test you had Candida and d decreased the last days or something? I was like, I don't even know which one that is, let alone everything else. And so My background being in ⁓ electronic medical records, mainly in the post-acute care space. So think about skilled nursing facilities, home health, dura medical equipment. What I saw was Jen struggling with trying to use what is the traditional healthcare model and not having the right technology in place. And so what we did is we founded Biochanic, which is built around kind of this individualized approach to health. And the way we think about it is not the consumer function health side. It's really about empowering a provider to be efficient. So that they can see more patients more effectively. And so if you think about an individual provider and they're running those five tests, they have to synthesize and think through all of that. They have the intake form, the context, maybe wearable tracking, education, diet and meal planning, all of this prevents them from scaling. And unlike the traditional healthcare model where you just kind of show up and leave with a prescription, they're working with people over time. And so this time burden builds up and then they can't scale and see more people. And so our focus from a technology side was like, hey, how do we take what's needed from the medical documentation side and actually make it work for this health model? And so that's what we built. We call it a health intelligence platform. It's funny now everybody uses the term health intelligence. ⁓ but that was trademarked. ⁓ 2022. and ⁓ it's so it's we're ⁓ you know really excited. We keep building around this. We've
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Just a lot of great momentum. Now we have the kind of the AI component as well, not customer facing AI, but hey, how do we help that provider pull all of those data points together? Look at the genetics, the hormones, the blood chemistry, and give the provider a starting point. So it's such that they're really focused on the one on one care and then just tailoring it for that individual. And so that's what's really exciting today.
speaker-2: So for you, you don't work directly with individuals, you work with providers and you give them sort of the platform, the health intelligence system to treat their patients more effectively. Do those practitioners have to use the tests that you guys work with? Okay.
speaker-1: No, we're we're a hundred percent agnostic. And we know that our providers are gonna use different tests for different reasons. So yeah, you know, we have ⁓ Tracy Gappin, who you met at consumer health. He's a he's a health optimization focusing on hormone replacement therapy, gut health, genetic coaching. So he's gonna use a different set of tests than Jen, who is a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner who's using a different set. So we're agnostic. And then more importantly, you know, there's always new stuff coming into the market. The nice thing about our the personalized health space is those new kind of tools, techniques, applications, you know, a lot of them were we met at consumer health summit. We want to be able to support that immediately. Right. So somebody comes in, they have this really cool mitochondrial testing and they can see improvements in mitochondrial function. We want to be able to put that out there without having to to keep them locked into a single s ⁓ testing set. Yeah.
speaker-2: And how could I guess bottom feeders? I'm just starting to use it now. Yeah. How could our bottom feeders ⁓ follow you online and or could they find a practitioner that utilizes your platform because they feel like I want to go to a practitioner that has your added benefits?
speaker-0: Because really that creates a more personalized experience versus you just don't get the the TLC or like the attention to all of the different details necessarily with a comp with a doctor that like has too much on their plate and and it has a bottleneck essentially.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah. So we have over 2,000 active providers today. We do make available so if a consumer comes to us and says, Hey, yes, I want to go work with a provider, what we do is we provide them a set of options. So think of it as like a Yelp ⁓ for functional and integrative through our kind of vetted provider network. It really depends on the individual. So if that, you know, the person says, Hey, you know, my son is having IBD, IBS and neuroinflammation, then we're like, okay, here are the three people that we would recommend that specialize in that niche. Go follow them, go learn about them and find the one. And the most important thing that we always say is, you know, we don't want to just point you at this person. You need to find the person that you're going to resonate with. Yeah. So are do they speak your language? Do you connect with them? Do you ⁓ do you really feel like you have that kind of accountability? Because if you go and hire somebody that you hate, you're not gonna do the work and you're just gonna waste the money. So we always say, you know, check out their podcast, follow their Instagram, you know, sign up for their newsletter and You know, I think Jen uses the stats somewhat, it's usually about three months where people will follow her because they want their following and learning and seeing the post. And we always encourage the consumers to do that as well. ⁓ there is a lot of information out there, the explosion and the number of personalized health, functional, integrative, Ayurvedic, longevity, you name it. There's a lot more comp competition out there. So there's a lot more people fighting for eyeballs. So it is really important for the consumer to be very thoughtful in who they want to work with. And not just jump at the first opportunity.
speaker-2: ⁓ so how should the bottom feeders get in touch with you, Jeremy?
speaker-1: ⁓ just come to our website. ⁓ Biochanic B I O C A N I C dot com. ⁓ just drop us a note, hit us up on the count contact us form, and we'll get you all squared away. And then of course we're at biochanic on all the socials.
speaker-2: Yeah, right.
speaker-0: Thank you for all the work that you guys are doing to help make the healthcare experience better for consumers. ⁓ it's such a need and Godspeed.
speaker-2: And it's probably a part that isn't really thought about from most practitioners. They think, or I'm sorry, from most consumers, where they think about like, okay, well, a practitioner, they went to medical school, they've got their stethoscope, now they're gonna treat me. Well, there's a whole underlying support and technology system that will kind of make or break a practitioner. So really, Jeremy, what you and Jen, your wife are doing is Radically transforming the health in America. And thankfully, because of the Joe Rogan effect, because of the COVID effect, because of the waking up of so many millions of Americans to realize our food is poisoned. Yep. I have to take control of my own health care. Because of all those tailwinds, I hope that you guys are seeing a lot of growth and that your the practitioners that you support are also seeing a lot of growth.
speaker-1: Yeah, mean it's a it's a really great time because now there is so much more awareness, you know, and now that people really understand big pharma, big food, just like you guys kind of laid out in the documentary and exactly how the incentives are working in those spaces. Now people are really like aware and now motivated to go take control of their health for themselves. And I think that's what's really exciting. And really we're here to help enable the practitioners to help give them the tools to kind of, you know, be be healthy and get to their own individual health goals.
speaker-0: Amen to that. Well, thank you so much, Jeremy. It's been a pleasure to hear your story. And we look forward to having an episode with your wife, Jen, here very shortly.
speaker-1: Yeah. Awesome. Well thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it.
speaker-0: This episode of the Rock Bottom Podcast is brought to you by Jigsaw Health, a family-owned Arizona-based nutritional supplement company. Every formula is made with clean ingredients that are third-party tested to ensure that what's on the label is in the bottle and nothing else. Learn more at jigsawhealth.com.
speaker-2: Do you have a health horror story? We're always looking for stories that will inspire others. So please use the link in the description to apply to be on our show. Finally, if this episode resonated with you, then please like and subscribe. It really helps others to find our show and we want to help spread the word. New episodes drop every other Wednesday. So thank you so much for tuning in and we'll see you on the next show.
speaker-0: There.
