Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #26 Naveen Jain

Episode Date: March 26, 2018

We sit down with Naveen Jain to discuss his company Viome- a leader in microbiome and gut health research Naveen on Instagram Twitter Email [e-mail] Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on Twitter and on Instagram Get 10% off at Onnit by going to Onnit.com/Podcast              Onnit Twitter        Onnit Instagram

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it needs. Get 10% off the protein bars and bites at onnit.com slash podcast. Thanks for tuning into the Onnit podcast.. Today we have a very special guest, Naveen Jain. Naveen has started six or seven giant companies. Currently he's running a couple of different fascinating companies, one of which we dive pretty deep into. It's called Viome, V-I-O-M-E, and they have very quickly become the leader in studying what's going on in your poop. Now, I've worked with a couple of different companies in the past, and they really couldn't tell you shit about your shit. But this company can dive into all sorts of tips and tricks. And the truth is, there's a lot we can learn from our poop. And more importantly than that, it's how do we solve the health issue. And I think as we begin

to look into what's going on in our digestion, and in our microbiota, and's how do we solve the health issue? And I think as we begin to look into what's going on in our digestion and in our microbiota and the different ways we can influence and change that, we really see new ways to look at health and we see new ways to work towards living better, thinking better, improving our emotional state, because everything starts in the gut, including our neurotransmitters, which contribute to how we feel, how we think, how we behave, how we act. It all starts there. I think you're going to enjoy this one with Naveen Jain.

Check it out. Welcome to the On It podcast. I am joined by a very special guest, Naveen Jain. And Naveen, you started an amazing company that looks deep into stool sampling. Is that correct? You know, so I started my company that was looking in deep outside the space and doing the space exploration. As you know, my other venture is Moon Express, the only company in the universe that has

permission to leave Earth orbit and land on the moon. And the idea was to essentially create a multi-planetary society. And we are hoping to launch our first mission to the moon by the end of this year. So here you are exploring the outer space. And then I realized that we have this whole universe inside the human body. Why not start a company that could essentially start to look at all the universe inside us and find a way to keep the chronic illness at bay? So I started a company called Y-Own with a simple moonshot of making illness a matter

of choice rather than a matter of bad luck. And I learned some amazing things along the way because I'm not a scientist. I'm not a scientist, I'm not a doctor, and here I have this access to this technology that was developed at Los Alamos National Lab for our national security, where they were trying to find exactly the solution to the same problem that if a bad actor were to get hold of something, how would the government know what is making people sick? And they spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to find out what makes people sick.

And we got access to this technology that now we are able to use exactly the same technology, but to keep people healthy. And that's really the genesis of how I have got it started. And I'm going to share with you a whole bunch of things that I learned along the way about human body that I found fascinating. And I'm sure that you and your audience will find that fascinating as well. Yeah, I'm very, very fortunate to have you here.

And quite a bit, you know, it seems like in the last 10 years, the research into the microbiome has really exploded under the forefront. We now know how much our neurotransmitters affect us, our immune system affects us, and it all starts in the gut. So it looks like some of the ancient philosophers had that right thousands of years ago. Yeah. At least now through science, we can peek in and take a closer look at exactly what's

going on. So what are some of the fascinating things that you found in researching the microbiome? Yeah, so first of all, like you said, thousands of years ago, the Hippocrates said that all disease starts in the gut. And then he said something that was even more profound that said, one man's food is another man's poison. And what he was really trying to say is that there is no such thing as universal healthy diet. A diet that's good for you may not be good for someone else.

And even the diet that's good for you today may not be good for you three months from now because your body is constantly changing and adapting. And the third thing that I think was, you know, just as profound, which says, you know, let the food be thy medicine, let thy medicine be the food. That means really the food is the medicine that the body needs. That means if you know exactly what's lacking inside the body, the food can be your medicine. The things that I found most fascinating was that we have more foreign cells in our body than the human cells. That means the microbiome, all of the microorganisms that live inside our gut, there are more number of cells of these microorganisms than the human cells.

And the second part that I thought was really interesting is that when you look at the gene expression, the human genes, I mean, human DNA only produces about 20,000 genes, and these microorganisms produce 2 million genes. That means if you look at the gene expression, we are less than 1% human, and we are this walking talking ecosystem and whereas if you look at the western medicine it has this war against these bacteria and viruses and the philosophy is that if you can somehow kill every bacteria every virus from the human body somehow we are going to be healthy it turns out that nature did not quite designed us for that purpose. And to some extent, I keep trying to explain to people that we are mostly a microbial ecosystem,

and most people don't seem to quite resonate. So I came up with this different way of describing, and which is just my funny story of how humans were created. Do you want to tell you how humans were created? Yeah, please do. Okay. So here's how I think it happened. So as you know, these bacteria and viruses and its organisms have been on planet Earth

for about 4 billion years. The humans were only about, give or take, about 200,000 years old. So I think this is how it happened. You know, about a million years ago or so, all the bacteria and viruses got together and they said, you know, we are just sick and tired of living in this local space. We want to take over the world. And the wise one says, you know,

I think we can do that. How so, master? We're going to create this thing where trillions of us can live inside us all we have to do is keep this thing healthy it's going to run around everywhere trying to feed us it's going to find the food everywhere it's going to go all over the world it's going to poop everywhere it's going to spread us around and and that's how we're going to take over the world. It turns out that they created humans.

And just like we are afraid of artificial intelligence, these guys started to worry about, what if this thing got smarter than us? What will happen to us? So one of the young ones says, Master, Master, I'm worried that these things are going to get really intelligent. Aren't they going to destroy us? Master says, don't you worry.

Master, tell me what? He says, inside their cell, one of her brother is right inside their cell. They call that mitochondria. It's just our brother, ancient bacteria. We talk to him all the time. And guess what? Their mitochondria, they call that.

It is the energy source. They go out of line. We just simply shut the energy down. They're done. And they say, Master, you're so brilliant. And the other ones got up and said, Master, Master. They started to develop this thing called brain. What are we going to do about that?

Master said, we thought about that. You know what we did? Since we all reside in the gut, we created a direct connection to their brain. They call that a vagus nerve. We just use the neurotransmitters to tell them exactly when we are hungry, they feed us.

When we tell them we are full, they stop eating. We tell them what we crave, they go and find that food for us. And here's the best part. We control how they feel. We're not going to let them produce serotonin. 90% of all the serotonin, we're going to produce it ourselves in the gut.

So we control how they feel. So just relax and enjoy. This human is our leadership. They think they are in command, but we know better. We are the one who is pulling all the strings. So just relax and enjoy. And that's who we are as humans, young man. It's crazy to think that so much of our thoughts literally are coming from little messengers inside the gut and including every time we want that that maybe that snack or that food that's not so healthy for us that could be some of the bad bugs residing in us that are craving sweets or crazy craving something that

may not be the right choice for us from a health standpoint but that's exactly what they want to eat and so we get those signals and we we dive into those cravings a little bit more than we should. What have you seen with regard to some of the pathogenic bacteria and candida, different funguses and things like that, that can really manipulate how we feel and think and the food cravings that we have? And that's really interesting is that, you know, to some extent, you know, it is now in all seriousness, it's not us versus them. It is us and them in this symbiotic relationship. That means if we keep them healthy,

they keep us healthy. To large extent, you know, a lot of the enzymes and the vitamins and the nutrients that our body needs is produced by our gut. I mean, think about it. Everything that we eat, they get to sample it. They are the one who actually are the one that are converting a lot of the food that we eat into the nutrients that our body needs. And the reason the nature created it that way, so they don't have to build a complex humans. So, for example, when we eat fiber, the human body cannot digest fiber, but the microorganisms in our gut love that fiber. And when they get the fiber, they release

something called short chain fatty acid, things like butyrate and acetate and propionate that are exactly what our body needs. That's exactly what our brain needs. To some extent, when we feed them well, they release the right type of chemicals that our body needs. And when we don't take care of them, in fact, what they do is when we don't eat, say, for example, the right foods for that ecosystem, again, there is no healthy food. So it's not that everyone

should eat apple and spinach and everything that's healthy. It turns out like for me, when I did my YOM test, everything that I thought I was healthy for me, because I thought I was eating healthy, turned out to be unhealthy for me. So here I was, I was thinking that, you know, I was trying to lose weight and I was pre-diabetic I was thinking that, you know, I was trying to lose weight and I was pre-diabetic and I'm trying, you know, and everyone told me that's really easy. I need to cut down all the carbs. I really need to cut down the starch and I need to be eating spinach and avocado and oats and lentils and legumes and tofu because I'm vegetarian. When I did my YOM test, it turns out the majority of my diet needs to be the complex carbohydrate.

And in fact, the foods that I need to minimize are spinach and avocado and oats and lentils and tofu. It turns out that everything that I thought was right for me was exactly wrong for my gut ecosystem. So what we are finding is it's not there is one right ecosystem that everyone needs. It's like a rainforest, right? So every step you take in a rainforest is a completely different ecosystem. And yet they're all lush and green. That means you can have gazillions of ecosystem, they all can be healthy. An interesting thing is even though all humans have 99% same DNA, when it comes to our gut ecosystem, we are less than 5% same. And that's one reason why one diet that's good for one person is not good for another person.

And that's one reason why the fad diets don't work. So, you know, people say, oh, I'm on Atkins diet. And next thing you know, the poor Atkins diet of the heart disease, right? And then your people go on a paleo diet and the people go on a ketogenic diet and they go on a lactate diet. And all these fat diets come and go. They work for some people, don't work for some people. And even the people that it works for a short time, they stop working because your body goes out of balance, because your gut goes out of balance. So I really think what we are doing is looking at your gut, finding out not the organisms that are in your gut. That is just simply the beginning. We look at how active they are, but most importantly, we look at what are they doing. That means, are they actually, how much of the butyrate they're producing,

how much of the vitamins they're producing, are they producing things like LPS, which is a toxin or inflammatory things that's going to inflame the body. So what we, you know, as you pointed out right in the beginning that in the last five years, every research is clearly showing that all chronic diseases, whether you name them Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or autism, or you call them depression or anxiety, obesity or diabetes or autoimmune diseases or even cancer is influenced very heavily by our gut microbiome. In fact, the Cleveland Clinic published a research about three months ago that even the breast cancer, they found in every breast cancer tissue the same microbiome. And what I found most fascinating was that about two months ago, there was separate research that came out, whether the cure for cancer works or it kills you depends on your microbiomes. When you do chemotherapy, it could actually be completely detoxified and has no impact, or your microbiome can turn the chemotherapy drugs into a toxin and kill you. Or immunotherapy like anti-PD-1 drugs, whether it works or it does not work depends on your

microbiome. So these things that we call these small organisms are not only influential in many of the chronic diseases, even the cure for the disease, whether it works or does not work, depends on these microbiome. And, you know, as you know, our healthcare system really is not designed to cure the chronic diseases. It simply suppresses the symptom. And that's one reason our pharmaceutical industries are thriving on these chronic diseases, because once you get a chronic disease patient, for the rest of their life, you have to take these drugs. In fact, one of the pharmaceutical company CEOs said that the best drug that we develop are the drugs that people have to take

for the rest of their life. Imagine what he's saying. He's saying the best drugs are the ones that don't cure the patient but keeps them sick. I mean, isn't that a definition of a parasite? And that's the kind of healthcare system we live in today because no one has incentive to keep us healthy. And what we are realizing is that unlike the infection, the chronic disease is not something we catch. It is something we develop over a long period of time. And very interestingly, that almost all of the chronic diseases, they all have the same root cause, which is inflammation. The chronic inflammation causes chronic diseases, and the chronic inflammation happens because of the imbalance

of the microbiome. So all of these chronic inflammation is the one that is responsible for depression or anxiety or PTSD. Obviously, there are environmental triggers, but many of the environmental triggers depend on how resistant is your microbiome. So, you know, one easy way of thinking of the microbiome and the environmental triggers are, you know, it's like two rubber bands that's holding this body or the ball in balance. And when the rubber bands are really strong, you can even punch the rubber, punch the ball, and it will come right back and balance it out again, because your rubber bands are really strong. So even though there is strong environmental trigger, like you go to the water and you have a trauma,

that would normally would cause things like PTSD. But if you have a strong gut and these strong rubber bands, you'll come right back up and you're back in balance. But when you have the weak rubber bands and you punch the ball, then essentially the ecosystem goes out of balance and out of whack, and it has no way to come back. And that's really one good way of describing how our gut really keeps us in balance. So when you look at the results of a test from Biome, and you see that there may be some imbalances, maybe some pathogenic bacteria, what is then the goal on how you would go about fixing that? We've obviously researched some of the lactobacillus family, bifidobacteria, some of that. There's a lot of research that shows health benefits there. Is it then to introduce these bacteria into the gut with prebiotic fiber and things that feed that? Or would it be some

other administrations, maybe some herbals and things that can get rid of some of the pathogenic bacteria? Yeah. So the first thing is that most people so far have really been using very, very old technology to look at microbiome. So all the microbiome technologies before Viome came about have been using a technology called 16S. And the 16S is a complete scam. It's like a snake oil. There is really, you get no information out of it. And that's the reason why the science has gotten a bad name because people say, I've gone the microbiome test. It does apps, it's completely useless. And they're absolutely correct.

It used to be completely useless. So when companies like Ubiome or American Gut Project are selling these microbiome tests, they use the 16S sequencing. And what 16S does is it cannot look at any virus. It cannot look at yeast. It cannot look at fungus. It can't look at mold or even just the bacteria that it's looking at. It can only look at a genus level, like you say, or you got more fermicutes or you got more bacteroides. The fact is, that's like saying that New York has more crime than California, and the reason it is because the New York has more women.

That doesn't make women a criminal. The point is they're looking at things at such high level that does absolutely nothing. So genus level, it will be like you have men, women, children, versus species level or strain level will be there is Adam and there is Ryan and there is Naveen. But even that, that's called metagenomics. It can look at the individuals. But what really matters is what purpose are they doing?

Is one an entrepreneur? Is one a plumber? Is one an electrician? And each one of them perform different functions. As a matter of fact, what we found most interesting is the same organism may do completely different things in one ecosystem than it will do in a different ecosystem. That means depending on who else is around, their functions completely change. And you start to think about the human beings are no different, right?

Depending on whose company you are, you behave very differently. So if someone is with me, they may be calm and quiet, and somebody could be with Ryan, and they could be all party, right? So it's really very different depending on how many of them are there and who else is there. So I think it's really about what is that ecosystem is producing rather than what individuals are actually doing. And that's what we focus on, Wyom, is that what is going on.

So, for example, when we look at your microbiome, we say, you know, you're not producing enough butyrate and you're producing and you have too many of these protein fermenters that are releasing too much of ammonia that's causing inflammation. So first thing we say, OK, you need to now cut down the protein that you may have thought of good for you because so much of the protein is going in your large intestine that shouldn't be going. You need to cut that down. And by the way, you really need more butyrate. And here are the things you need, here's a probiotic you need. Our simple thinking is that we are going to simply tell you the food that you want. And if there are any supplements that you're missing, we simply recommend that you need this supplement rather than selling you the supplement. And what we find is that most of

the probiotics are generally useless because they never stay in your gut. In fact, most of the probiotics are generally useless because they never stay in your gut. In fact, most of the probiotics that we see people are taking, we actually don't see them in their gut. That means these things never get hold. They're all transient. So a lot of the supplements people are taking are wasting their money and they're simply pissing them off or they're taking this probiotics and they're pooping them out, but they're taking this probiotics and they're pooping them out, but they're really not doing any good. And I think, you know, to some extent, we have to find a new way of introducing these new organisms. So currently we are simply using the current organism that people are already have in their gut and feeding them correctly so we can get the

right mix of what people need. And when we have to introduce the new set of organisms, then we look at the stuff and say, what else will complement what is already there? So if there are 30 different types of probiotics, we can find the one that you actually need, not the other 29 that you may be taking. So I really think everything we do is based on completely personalized that is right for you. And we don't sell you any of this stuff. We simply recommend you what might be right for you. Well, you touched on a lot there. And it's funny that you mentioned you biome because I had done that test before and I thought, what a complete waste of time this is.

They've given me absolutely nothing to go off of, no way to change and really no illustration of what is healthy and what's bad inside my gut. And, you know, and then another thing you touched on that I thought that was incredible is something that I've been working on, which goes against all common knowledge in the fitness industry is to reduce protein intake, you know, and that's due to the fact that I have higher ammonia and that goes against, I mean, that's bodybuilding 101 is to have high protein diet. I was a professional fighter and fought in the UFC. I mean, everyone knows you need more protein to recover quicker. And what's funny is that as I learned this about myself, reducing protein has enhanced my recovery time And I'm still getting stronger. I'm still putting on muscle. It has had no impact on strength gains or anything from a physical

standpoint, other than making me healthier and allowing me to recover quicker. Isn't that counterintuitive? My point is, you know, all these myths that people have created, and I really think this idea of somehow there is a mass merchandising, that means one thing fits all, one drug for all cures, or, you know, same drug will work for everyone that has the same symptom, is fundamentally wrong. And, you know, I think you are a perfect example. I think you should repeat so people can hear it again and again.

Not protein is not good for you just because you're working on, you need to eat more protein or all of these microbiome tests that you may have done have been scamming you. I mean, the companies like you buy them and American gut project, they've really given the bad name because not only they don't give you anything actionable, even the things they are looking at are completely useless telling you,

you have more for me, cute than bacteria. At least what difference does it make? It's like saying you have more men than women. So now what? Exactly. Exactly. Now what was exactly my question. There was really nothing to add in. And another thing you talked about was the fact that if we supplement with high doses of probiotics, the second we stop taking them, we see no difference. Or even if we are taking them and we do a test, we may not see a big shift in our microbiome. And that's likely because it has more to do with the total environment than it does with necessarily what we're introducing to our gut via some type of pill or powder. Exactly correct.

That means there may be some different strain of probiotic that is likely to stay in your gut. And the reason is you think of these things as each of these organisms inside your ecosystem have found a balance now. Right. So good, bad. So maybe the bad bacteria won and they have more of it. And the good guys are trying to keep them in control, but they really don't have enough strength. So they're really retreating. And once you start feeding them the right set of nutrients, now they get enough of strength so they can start to push back on these bad guys.

But the point is you can introduce something new there. As soon as you introduce something new, they fight for this to colonize. And then everyone gets together, even the bad guys and the good guys, they were fighting among themselves. Now they this new or new thing that's coming in because it needs to find the symbiotic relationship with other things that are there that means we look at the stuff and say look these are the things that are there when you introduce this particular strain is going to form the symbiotic relationship, the thing that are already there, and it's going to

form an army that's going to join them. And now they can fight something else that they are antagonistic to, right? And it's really, to some extent, is art of war. And you have to realize who is going to be with who, and who is a friend, who is a foe. I really like that. So we talked about one of the dietary recommendations you make, possibly if somebody's high in ammonia, you can reduce protein. What are some of the other things that you've found in looking at probably quite a few stool samples in recommending to people as far as interventions they can make from a lifestyle standpoint and from a dietary standpoint? As I said, sometimes the fact is that, you know, you just

need more carbs because you digest carbs better than you digest protein or you digest fat. So, it's really, again, it may change in three months. What we find is that when we do a test, there is a certain ecosystem. So, we go work with that. So, in in my example when i did my first test i was recommended that i eat more complex carbohydrate and cut down the protein and fat because remember what i was doing since i was a vegetarian every vegetarian meal that i was eating was lentil legumes tofu all very high protein and i was eating no carbs because i thought carbs were the enemy. And as soon as I introduced more carbs, more complex carbohydrates, and cut down on my consumption of lentil,

legumes of the food that I was eating a lot of, like spinach and avocado, my body got in balance. And when I did my second test after three months, suddenly it said, okay, now you can start to introduce spinach and avocado and start to eat more lentils, but you need to now start cutting down some of the carbs, right? So it's constant diversity of food and

constant changing of the things. And we have to keep finding that right balance of where your ecosystem is. And some people may take three months to get to a place where you can change your diet. And some people may take four or five months before your diet actually needs to be adjusted. And we find, you know, one of the things very interesting is we obviously have thousands and thousands of people who have gone through the test. The people who are, for example, on paleo diet, we find them and say, oh, my God, their gut is so messed up. And the French word is effed up, right? It is so effed up because they're eating so much of damn protein that they have so much inflammation. And we see a massive amount your gut lining being shattered by looking at the human RNA that we see that in the stool.

So that shows us that your gut lining is seriously inflamed and needs to be repaired. So we will say you need really these supplements like glutathione or you need the inulin that's going to repair your gut lining. And one of the interesting things we find is that when we fix the gut, the symptoms may be very, very different. People, you know, the symptoms disappear. So, you know, one of the ladies posted on Facebook, she actually is on a Dr. Oz show that's going to be aired on February 16th. She, you know, I didn't know that she was going to be on Dr. Oz's show. She lost 71 pounds. Now, obviously, we had nothing to do with weight loss because we were not focused on our weight loss.

It turns out that she had a leaky gut and she had a massive inflammation. So when we start to recommend the right supplements and diet, her leaky gut start to get repaired and her inflammation went down. And because of that, she lost weight. Other women that also on the show had diabetes and depression. And again, we fixed her leaky gut. She had a SIBO and that solved her problem of the thing that she had other you know customers are telling us they have acne or they have anxiety and in fact one of the interesting thing was there was a one of our customer who posted a youtube video on his own and say i am a trainer and a nutritionist i recommend these diets to everyone and here i was i was not willing to admit to anyone that I'm seriously depressed and I have all of these issues. And when I went on a YM diet, I feel not only my depression and anxiety

is gone, that my pre-diabetic level has come down. And now again, remember, we don't go out to fix any of these symptoms. What we do is simply focus on reducing the inflammation and fixing your gut. The symptoms, a lot of the symptoms are completely changing for different people. So I think to me, it is just so satisfying to see that people are feeling better. And maybe I can share my story of what got me started. And I think that might tell you that why am I so determined and passionate about solving this problem? Yeah, I'd love to hear that. day we moved from village to village and we were you know hungry came to this country uh 35 years ago with five dollars and didn't speak the language and knock on wood that god has been just so kind to us i've started now this is my seventh company and every company so far i have touched has been

wildly successful and i keep thinking about you know I have now I feel this tremendous debt to the society because when I came to this country, so many people embraced me and helped me become who I am. And, you know, a lot of times I feel so sad. The people who helped me, I can't give them back anything. I asked them, what can I do for you? And every time I hear nothing. We don't need anything. And you wonder, how are you going to ever pay your debt back? Because the people who helped you don't need your help. And I finally realized about 15 years ago,

the best way I can pay back my debt to the society is to pay forward. What kind of things I can do to help everyone else who needs my help and hoping they would have the same feelings when they become successful, that instead of paying me back, they're going to pay forward. To me, both the two companies that I'm currently running, one of them is Moon Express, which is the company that is creating a multi-planetary society so that we as humanity won't die because we're all living in a single spacecraft called planet earth and if we get hit by a large asteroid we'll all become dinosaurs and the why am i started because i started to look at and saying the billions of

people who are suffering from these chronic diseases and anyone who has seen any loved one go through this chronic disease, whether, you know, God forbid, someone has cancer or dementia or even diabetes, right? I mean, just a painful process to watch people suffer through that autoimmune diseases. I mean, you know, all of these things are so painful. And we are spending more money than ever on our health care. And people are getting sicker and sicker. So the more money we spend, people are getting sicker. There's got to be something we could do. And when I saw this technology that was at Los Alamos, I felt that now we had the right

technology that can actually start to make a dent in this universe. And the amazing thing is that when I started the company, I set out that goal. What if we can create a world where illness could really be a matter of choice? Amazing things happen. You know, the head of the IBM Watson Research called me and joined the company. He said, I want to help you solve this problem because I can apply the artificial intelligence to all the data that you might collect. The Dr. Messier, who was a PhD in microbiology, MD, she was working at Human Longevity with Craig Venter. She quit her job and joined. The three other people who were working on gene expression at HLI came and joined because the problem you're trying to solve is worth solving.

All of us have been so successful. We want to do something that will move the needle, something that will change how humanity is going to live. So as you know, I don't need more money in my life. God has given me everything that I could have possibly asked for, more money than I'll ever be able to use, and amazing children who are doing more for the society than I could have ever asked for. Our oldest son started something called Kairos Society. That's K-A-I-R-O-S. I'm just so proud

of him that not only he's focused on helping the young entrepreneurs, he started the things to help these entrepreneurs solve the real world problem. And he was just on CNBC two weeks ago and the Fox talking about that the Silicon Valley has lost its soul when its focus on building an Alexa-enabled toilet rather than fixing the problem, the kids graduating with a loan that they can't pay back. The people who are working can't live and afford housing in San Francisco or New York, right? Or the elders who cannot live at home because there is no care that can be provided at home.

So they go to the senior homes and depressed. Why can't we bring the health care to the home? Why can't we bring the type of things so they can live in their home, right? Solving real-world problems. Our daughter graduated from Stanford, and she was so passionate about women empowerment. She's working with an AI company to remove the gender bias using artificial intelligence. And several of her clients now having an amazing success hiring more women because they don't know they're men or women because AI is helping them make that decision. And our youngest one is now a junior at Stanford, and he's going

out on the same path of solving real-world problems using entrepreneurship and technology. The reason I mention is that, to me, when you have everything in life, what would you do? And that is your true passion. And my true passion is solving this problem of chronic illness. And I have decided I'm going to dedicate my life to making it happen. But unfortunately, I can't do it alone. You need the society and other people to come together to spread this message because the more people who are joining us, the more we are learning. So not only even today, the thousands of people who have come in front of you today. So we have 10,000 people that are already using it. Now, everyone who comes along benefits from what they did.

And every person helps benefit when the next person comes along. So to me, we all have to come together. So I can't thank you enough for allowing me to share this message of hope their own health so that they are empowered to know what they can do and they're not being victimized by the healthcare system and believe they have lost all hope because they believe the chronic illness will always be there and it's called chronic because you can't solve it. I am here to tell you that if we come together, we will solve this problem. Well, it certainly sounds like you've got the A-team involved with you. It's quite a few amazing people that have all come together to work on this issue.

And it's something that I feel like Western medicine has become a double-edged sword where we're so incredibly good at fixing things that are already broken in terms of, uh, from a surgical standpoint, if I get in a car accident, things like that. But when it comes to health, you know, I can't go to a doctor to get healthy. There's nothing I'm going to learn from them in 15 minutes. That's going to teach me how to live better.

That's going to ultimately lead to seeing them less often. And unfortunately that's the case for a lot of people. Thankfully I do have my health, but for many people, that's not the case. And I think the more we work towards figuring out health as a preemptive movement to work towards, the more we can set the stage so that we don't see healthcare rising. We don't see millions and millions and millions of dollars getting dumped into a system that's failing miserably. What are some of the plans that you guys have with Viome? I saw that I was on your site earlier. You guys do an annual plan. What does that include in it? Yeah. So one of the things is that the technology that is able to look at every single transcript, every single thing what's going on in your body, this thing would have cost $10,000.

Even when we launched about six months ago, the price was $1,000. We brought the price down as the technology is getting better and better. And as we are learning more and more and the volume is picking up, now you can essentially for $399, you can get a test done. And every incremental test during the year is only $199. So to some extent, we're trying to bring the price down rather than make more money because the more people who join, who help us reduce the cost because the volume reduces the cost significantly. And as more people are joining, we just want to keep going forward so other people can join at a cheaper level.

And even though we lose money on a second, third, fourth test during the year, we still want people to do it because I know it will help them. And my hope is that as more people do tests, our costs will come down so we won't lose money in the future. But it's okay right now for us to be able to lose a little bit of money, but contribute towards the betterment of the society. And hopefully over time, the cost will come down significantly enough where we'll continue to reduce the price and still be profitable. So today we have a gut intelligence test and something called metabolic intelligence test and with the help of you know the last 10 000 people our next thing is to be able to not even have to do the metabolic intelligence test because all the information that we were learning from it now we can use the artificial intelligence to simply look at the microbial ecosystem and predict what food is

going to do for you. That means within the next six to eight weeks, we'll be able to tell you that, hey, don't touch almonds because it's going to have a high inflammatory response in your body. But Naveen, you can eat almonds, but you better not touch carrot because it's not going to be very good for you. So, you know, as we are learning more and more because of the information we have collected, now we can get rid of this metabolic intelligence test and that saves us money. But more importantly, now we can introduce a new type of test that allows us to look at, for example, the urine metabolites.

So we know what organic acids and amino acids are in your body and that allows us to give even more finely tuned recommendations. And then we'll be adding things like what we call the blood gene expression. And that will allow us to look at the mitochondrial gene expression and the white blood cell gene expression. That means we can now see how much inflammation you have in your body. So we can look at the, can look at all the inflammatory markers, whether it's a CRP, interleukins, or cytokines.

But we also look at all the genes that are being expressed. So we know that what genes are being expressed and what's not being expressed. That means we know what proteins are going to be produced and what proteins are not going to be produced. So we can now adjust your diet and adjust the supplements that you may need based on all that information. So as we are adding new types of tests and learning more, it just gets better and better.

And my hope is that with the help of people like you who is helping us spread the magic, I think we're going to be able to get to a million people in the next 12 to 24 months. Dr. Oz obviously been supporting us and his show is going to be launched on February 16th. And Deepak Chopra just launched his book called Healing Self. And he's now talking about who I am. And in fact, you're going to be seeing almost every email he sends out all on his website and everything is going to be tightly integrated. And the reason he's doing it because he realizes, again, that his life's work has been about keeping people well. And now, finally, we have a technology to do so. So he became our partner to spread the magic.

And, you know, Dr. Mark Hyman, Ben Greenfield, and, you know, we can go on and on. All of these people who have really experienced YM themselves are finding that the message worth spreading. So I'm hoping that you and others who are listening to it will find a way to let your friends know that this magical technology is now finally available that they can use. Yeah, Ben Greenfield is definitely a friend of the shows. He's kind of the guy I go to when it comes to all things biohacking. And Ben just had a great episode with Joe Rogan in front of a couple million people. So I'm sure the world is going to get ready to see and know who Ben Greenfield is.

I do look to him for quite a few of the biohacks and different. Do you see my podcast with Ben Greenfield? Yes. Yes. So that's why the second you contacted us, I was like, oh, 100%. I knew who you were and wanted to get you on. So thank you for reaching out to us. I have a request for you on air since we are recording.

Would you be able to connect with Joe Rogan? Because I really think he would be fascinated by what we're doing and his audience will be absolutely perfect. I will be happy to send you over to him. He's a busy man. You know, I've had my own. It took me a year and a half to get on his show originally a couple years ago, and I haven't been back on since. But I will most definitely try to connect the two of you because this is certainly a message I want to get out there. And like I said, if you've got Ben Greenfield's support, you've got my support.

That's please. I mean, if you can make me, you know, connect me to him and even through email introduction, I really think that will help us spread this magic. And I hope that in four or five years, I think we can solve this problem. And I want to go out before I die. I want to solve the problem of education and I want to create abundance of food. I mean, I really want to make sure the things that we fight over, we can create abundance, whether it's the abundance of energy, abundance of water, abundance of land. You know, all of these things is what we fight over. And there's no reason we can't create abundance of energy because every 90 minutes,

more solar energy falls on our planet than we use in the whole year. Imagine if we can convert them into the usable form. And if we have abundance of energy, we can take the dirtiest water and distill it, right? Because we can boil it, we can distill it, right? So you can have fresh, fresh water. That means now no one's going to get sick because they're drinking the dirty water. And what if we can use all the energy, water, and able to adjust the microbiome of the soil and have abundance of food so that the food energy and stuff becomes

nothing but air and it's democratized it's demonetized and we don't fight over air we can all sit in the same room because we know there's plenty of air and oxygen for all of us and that really to me is the ultimate goal of life will be that the things that we need can absolutely be so abundant that they are free just like air and everyone will have more of it that means need can absolutely be so abundant that they are free just like air and everyone will have more of it. That means we can focus on the things that we do best, which is to go out and help everyone else, but not have to work for living. We only do the thing that we absolutely passionate about. And that is possible. It's very possible. Thanks to great minds like yourself. Do you think as this progresses that you may try to get into other things like energy and solving some of the other world problems that we've got going on right now?

Absolutely. And I'm absolutely committed that as soon as I solve the healthcare problem, the next thing I want to attack really is the education system. Because I really believe the problems are very similar where it was designed to teach you skills. And in the world of exponential technologies, all the skills are becoming obsolete by the time you graduate. So we have to teach the children in a very different way, which is learning to learn rather than teaching them skill and one single discipline. We need to be interdisciplinary

because most problems are interdisciplinary solutions, right? So I'm hoping that if someone fixes the education system before I get to it, then I'm going to focus on creating the abundance of agriculture. I'm going to focus on creating abundance of energy. I'm going to focus on abundance of fresh water. So I'm not going to let go until as long as I have the last breath, I'm going to constantly focus on what can I do to

move the humanity forward because that's the life worth living. I couldn't agree more. How much have you seen dietary effects on the microbiome when it comes to the differences in organic food versus inorganic food? Obviously, there's an issue with monocropping and the spraying of pesticides and herbicides. And now we're seeing that glyphosate in Roundup is having a tremendous impact, not only on the environment, but on our microbiome as well. What are some of the dietary recommendations you guys make? Or is that a part of the protocol when you guys make, or is that a part of the protocol when you do decide to tell people what they should and should not be eating? Well, obviously, there's just no doubt that the way we are growing our crops are unnatural and,

and to some extent, are very dangerous to not only our body, but also our gut microbiome. So if you remember, you take this glyphosate thing that is designed to kill the microorganisms. Imagine that you put that in your body, what's going to happen? It's going to kill all the microorganisms, which are gut bacteria. And, you know, all of these genetically modified foods is not something that neither the gut bacteria knows how to digest or our body knows how to digest. And so we are now feeding our body the food that it doesn't know what to do with

because it has never seen that type of food. And evolution is really, really slow. So we are now, to a large extent, doing unnatural things to our human body. So obviously the organic food, I mean, if you can get organic food, we always want you to eat organic food. I mean, the pesticides and glyphosate and GMOs are just not something that human body should ever be getting. So my hope is that by doing the things in a natural way, which is as

opposed to using these GMOs or pesticides, what if we can adjust the microbiome of the plant and the microbiome of the soil? And, you know, really, this is what used to be. People used to use the manure and other stuff that was full of microorganisms. And to some extent, soil is the gut for the plant. And you can adjust the soil. You can adjust the microbiome of the plant. Not only you get the lush green food, you get the tasty food. I mean, you know, right now the foods are big and bulky, but there's just no taste to it. And a lot of the times when I go to some of these countries like, you know, India and Africa or Latin America, and you even eat the tomatoes and just taste so sweet. And you say, oh my God, what happened to the tomatoes that we buy in the QFC? They're big

and you taste them and it's like, it's dead. Yeah, we can even see it in the color. The color of corn has gone from deep yellow and orange to pure white. It's losing its carotenoids, which give it that color, the deep yellows and oranges. And it's just from constantly pulling from the soil. If the plant is going to take nutrients and vitamins and minerals from the soil, it can only do that for so long without soil amendment. And the issue with spraying these things with, you know, synthetic chemicals and things like that is that even when we spray synthetic fertilizers,

we're not amending the microbiome of the soil as we do with compost, manures, and things like that. Exactly. Brother, you are probably one of the smartest person I have actually ever discussed because, you know, you know these things. I mean, a lot of the smartest person I have actually ever discussed because, you know, you know, these things, I mean, a lot of the times when you tell people that you get a blank stare, it's like, whatever, dude, I don't understand what you're talking about. So I mean, really I'm so glad that you understand that you're not only how important the microbiome is to a human body,

how important is the microbiome to agriculture and everything else and all the things that we are doing to our land, our environment? Because everything we do to our environment, guess what happened? We breathe that. When we breathe all the toxins from the air, it goes to our microbiome and it kills them, right? So everything affects everything. We are interconnected. We are interconnected inside our body,

gut and brain, the gut and skin. And we are connected to the outside world. We are part of the larger ecosystem so that we as humanity are part of the larger ecosystem called climate. And inside us, we are a part of the ecosystem, which is bacteria and organisms all living together in peace and harmony. As above, so below. You are 100% spot on. We have this idea in the West that we can control things and we live outside of the environment and we're different from all these other animals. And the truth is we are more closely related and closely interlinked to all that exists. And we can see this with our mindset when we rape the environment, when we raise conventional feedlot cattle in a way where they just stand shoulder to shoulder in their own feces, and it's not working. I mean, there has to be a new model and a new paradigm shift in order for us to heal ourselves and heal

the planet. And actually, it's very, very interesting. You mentioned, if I can just go slightly tangent, is that, you know, the problems we are facing is the problems that we created. I mean, I'm not suggesting that people don't eat beef, but there is a new way you can create beef, which is instead of raising the cattles, because nature creates cattles by simply taking a stem cell, right? So what if you can take a stem cell and only grow just the muscle tissues and not have to grow the cattle, which is eyes and the ears and everything else? And if you don't, you can still have a massive supply without having to raise cattle.

And that means now all the agriculture that is being used for cattle can be used to feed the humanity. All the water that goes into the agriculture can now be used for people. So, you know, majority of the water is used for agriculture. Majority of the agriculture is used to feed the cattle. So if you want to solve the water problem, you solve the cattle problem, right? And if you solve the cattle problem, you solve the environmental problem. In fact, if you really care about the climate change, all you have to do is not eat beef for one day a week. You will do more for the environment than driving a Tesla all year. So my point is, the things that we care about are not the things we do. The cattle industry has done more damage to the environment than anything

else. I think I saw that on a documentary with Leonardo DiCaprio and it blew my mind how much of an effect this has, not only because of CO2 and things like that, which is the big talk in climate change, but methane gas that comes. There's no carbon sequestering in feedlot cattle because their feces just stays above ground. And obviously the sun bakes that and it just goes right up into the air. And I read a book called The Soil Will Save Us that talked about grass-fed free-range cattle walking through and just the stomping mashes things in it. And then large grasslands can help absorb that and sequester some of the carbon, but there's still the issue of methane. So really, if we have this shift

towards poultry and fish and eating smaller prey, we can see large changes, not only in our health, but in the environment. Well, again, I mean, we just have to be conscious and realize that we are not isolated from the world we live in. We are even within us, we can we might have an infection and you take antibiotics. It's like throwing a nuclear bomb inside your body. It kills everything. And, you know, no wonder we are developing the, you know, antibiotics resistant bacteria. We are developing the humans that, you know, we start taking antibiotics from the time we are young because you have ear infection. The nature can do an amazing job of keeping you healthy. And interesting thing is if you look at the people who live on farms, they don't get allergies.

They don't get as many of these chronic diseases because they're constantly one with the nature where the microbiome of the chicken and the cows and the ground and manure, everything you're breathing and doing. And that really makes the human body and our immune system so calm that when next time you get a pollen, you don't start thinking the world is coming to an end. Take a chill pill.

It's just a pollen. It's not going to kill you. But our immune system doesn't know that difference. And that's the reason I believe the more we're starting to be in the nature, whether we are going for hiking in nature, doing things that are much more closer to nature, I really think it not only benefits us as an ecosystem, we also become part of the larger ecosystem. So, you know, I don't know what else to tell you. I'm not trying to be more of a hippie here, but that's really, you know, one has to start being conscious about where we live. Yeah, a hundred percent. And I'm, you don't have to apologize about being a hippie. I think I'm probably more of a hippie than most of the people listening in. But, you know, we had Dr. Andy

Galpin on, who's a professor at Cal State Fullerton, and he just finished writing a book called Unplugged. And one of the biggest take-home messages of that was how much science now supports being in nature with depression, anxiety, and a number of other health issues. There's just so much to that. You know, it is deep and meaningful and impactful, and it changes the way we feel about our world. And so much of our struggle right now is figuring out how to live better. You know, how can I operate each day and live a little bit better than the day that I did yesterday? And I think all these tips, hippie or not, should be included. They should be on the table because there are ways for us to improve our lives.

Well, I mean, I believe that hope is such a strong thing and optimism of how things can get better because I am just so optimistic about where we are as humanity. There has never been a time in the human history where we are making so much progress, despite what we hear on the news, that every which way you look at the humanity is moving forward. And the only reason we even have terrorism in our country or anywhere is because people have lost hope. When you know that tomorrow is going to be better than today, the people essentially want to live longer and they want to be with their family. It is when people lose hope, when they know that tomorrow is

going to be no better than yesterday or worse, then people start to feel anxiety and they start to act in a way because it says life means nothing because nothing is going to be better. And my thinking is that technology is allowing the things to be democratized. The things that we have taken it for only granted for developed countries, now the things are coming down in prices where the worldwide, the humanity is going to get better. And it's people like you who are spreading this message

are the people who actually deserves the credit because people like you are bringing these messages to the millions of people who would never hear it, right? So I am just thankful to you that you believe in it and you have dedicated your life to educating people and giving them the hope and optimism.

And more than that, allowing them to take control of their own health, control of their own body, control of their own mind, and not let it be corrupted by all the things that we hear, whether it's the news or politicians, that everyone in the system is trying to take advantage of you and trying to use you for their own benefit. So I'm a big believer. Empower yourself with the information and go out and feel that there's nothing that you can't do. Well, thank you so much, brother. That's been an hour. Where can people follow you? Are you on social media, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook? All of that, brother. Or you can even send me an email. I love to hear from every one of you. Just send me an email. My first name Naveen Naveen last name Jan at gmail.com

that will be N-A-V-E-E-N dot J-A-I-N at gmail.com and I sure hope brother every one of you and everyone listening here would join me at YOM and sign up for the service so that we can all be part of this

revolution where we can move the humanity forward and take control of our own health and someday really make illness a matter of choice. Thank you so much for jumping on. I'm going to buy my uViome test today of the annual package. Oh, don't.

I'm really excited. Dude, dude, dude. What are you doing? Not the uViome test. That's a piece of shit. That's a scam. That's right. That was stuck in my head.

Viome. Viome. I will give him a Viome test today. Thanks a scam. That's right. That was stuck in my head. Viome. Viome. I will get my Viome test today. Thanks, brother. I love you. Love you too, brother. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for tuning into the On It podcast. Check out Viome.com. You're going to be able to see a much closer detailed look at your poop, and that's going to give you all sorts of cool insights and information on what are the foods you should eat that would benefit your microbiome, what are the different things you can change lifestyle-wise that will help influence and impact you in

new ways, and just take a deeper dive into some of the missing elements. Maybe you have cognitive decline. Maybe you've got brain fog. Maybe you have leaky gut syndrome or there's irritable bowel syndrome. There's a number of ways we can attack these things. And I think by taking a deeper and closer look, we really can figure out some things that maybe your traditional doctor isn't helping with. Thanks for tuning in.