Modern Wisdom - #067 - Inside Tracker - The Largest Database Of Healthy People In The World

Episode Date: April 29, 2019

Inside Tracker are a company from Boston MA who provide bloodwork analysis to athletes and the general public. The world is increasingly moving toward a focus on inner health, micro gains and a higher resolution view of our body's internal state. Inside Tracker are at the forefront of this analytical movement. After sitting down with Professor David Sinclair at Harvard Medical School I went straight to meet with Inside Tracker HQ Execs Jonathan Levitt & Carrie Kolb to talk through the trends they're seeing worldwide from thousands of bloodwork samples. Extra Stuff: Inside Tracker - https://www.insidetracker.com Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's happening friends? I hope you are well and it's nice for me to finally be back in the UK after a lot of travelling. New York nearly finished me off last weekend but I've just about recovered. On to this week's episode, I'm sitting down with Carrie and Jonathan from InsideTracker HQ. Now you may remember last week that both me and Professor David Sinclair spoke about blood work being done by the guys inside tracker. So I thought it was timely to release the episode I recorded with two of their execs who understand what athletes and professionals need even if we don't know it ourselves. So yeah, today expect to learn what the largest database of healthy people in the world is identifying with regards

to trends in people's diets, their exercise, what their blood work levels are suggesting, carry and Jonathan's predictions moving forward for the future of this analytical wellness movement and a whole host of other interesting things. Also, if you are interested in getting your blood work done from InsideTracker, just head to InsideTracker.com and they'll do the rest. Now please welcome, Carrie and Jonathan. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back and joined by Jonathan and Carrie from Inside Tracker. How are you today? Good, thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I mean, thank you for having me. Thanks for coming.

It's awesome. So, can you explain to the listeners at home who you guys are and what inside tracker is and what it does? Sure. So we work for inside tracker. I handle mostly the CrossFit division and Jonathan Handel's endurance, but we also are helping people out with their overall health or healthy aging. And what inside tracker really does is we look at biomarkers in your blood that are scientifically tied to performance, overall health and longevity.

And we create personalized recommendations for foods, supplements and lifestyle changes to help you get those biomarkers into optimized zones if they're not already in there. Yeah, it's a serious, a serious subject, isn't it? I've just come straight from Mr. David Sinclair's office at the Harvard Medical School. And it seems like longevity and this more analytical assessment, I mean, I'm wearing a hoop band, right? Like I've got always on a heart rate tracking of, is it a trend that you can see at the moment with fitness that people are starting to take this sort of stuff more seriously?

Definitely. And they're starting to care. So I've been at the company for four and a half years now. And when I started, it was all about, you know, we needed to help explain why this is something you should care about. And now it's at a point where everybody knows what it is. We have to show that we're better and that our platform is more advanced, more analytical, and more personalized than anything else out there.

So the dreams already been sold. Yes. Why do you think that's the case? Why are people more bothered now? Are they just looking for marginal gains, or is it just natural movement along with as the technology sort of continues? What do you think of it? Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both.

I think there's more coming out about how you can improve longevity, what you can do to be better about yourself. There's a large group of people that are either getting older, they're seeing their parents get older, probably more likely, at least here in the States with baby boomers. And so people are questioning their own longevity and looking at what can I do so that I don't get like that? Or what can I do so that I can be with my kids or something like that

as they get older? And so people are looking for a way to make that actionable. So I went through the process as the viewers will be seeing throughout this episode, I went to Quest Diagnostics in Redlands in California and out the other side of that I got my blood strong, they got sent off to your lab and then within a few days I had a bunch of data that I waited for you to interpret on my behalf because I didn't quite understand what everything was. But it does seem mad to me that out of a, it was quite a lot of blood, it was like 10 vials, well not that much. No way, it looks six. Yeah. It felt like that. It felt like pines.

It felt like pines in your hands, but it wasn't. It seems so mad that you guys are able to decipher so much about my diet, my training, my lifestyle, my cortisol levels, my free testosterone, just from a couple of hours of blood that I had drawn on the opposite side of the country like a week ago. It's a mad concept. It's mad, but if you think about it, people are looking for guidance and what's the most reliable source of data. It's not how are you feeling today. It's not, you know, it's not these, these, I have a garment and it tracks my sleep quality. And it's some nights, it says I sleep for

three hours and some nights it says I'm, I'm in bed'clock but I'm not and and people are looking for analytics and people are familiar with you know go into your doctor to get glucose and cholesterol but it stops there and there's so much more beyond just are you sick today or are you you know coming from the performance side of things, who cares, how you compare to 300 million Americans or a human in general, it's all about how do you compare to yourself for someone that's training like you're training, for someone that's eating like you're eating, and then, you know, you might be, you might need to be here, you might need to be here, and you're currently here. And so it's that, you know, 1%, 5%, 10%, whatever it is, that there's benefit to getting there.

You are totally right that it seems so primitive now when I think about the fact that all of us are training in some form, especially if it's for performance, you are looking to dial in marginal gains. If you read a Ben Burjron's book, Chasing Excellence, at the bottom he's got character and then above that he's got process, which is making the most of minutes. That is in its very essence, the highest resolution, highest fidelity look at marginal gains that you can. And it does seem super like prehistoric to not be tracking sleep quality with something better than I think I went to bed at 10 o'clock last night. And the same thing it would appear now with guys like yourself is being rolled forward for blood

work. I was talking to David and he said he's got all of his data with you guys since like 2011. Yeah, that's the which is intense. Yeah, it's a cool part of our platform is that you can no matter when you do inside tracker, you can upload past blood test results and kind of put in a little ping of what you were doing at that time in your life. So you can notice trends in all my, you know, glucose was here at this time in your life. So you can notice trends in all my glucose was here. At this time of my life, this is what I was doing fast forward six months.

This is the next time I tested here's where it was and all I was doing that. So you can find trends in the changes that you've made to find out what can really affect your glucose and how to get that work out of move. So can you talk to the listeners about some of the athletes that you guys have worked with? Yeah, I mean we work with, I mean all types of athletes from CrossFitters like myself

who are just, you know, going to stay healthy to the top tier CrossFit athletes that are going to the games. Are there any household names that people might know? Yeah, we've tested Catrin as a big supporter of ours, Catrin, David Stutter. She works with Ben Bergeron, who's talked about Inside Tracker before. Cole Sagar, Scott Pantek, who's going to the games for the ninth time.

Now, we've worked with Tia. we've worked with all of the CrossFit Mayhem team recently. So a lot of household names that you probably know, which forning. Yeah, they've done inside tracker and have found, you know, a lot of value in it. So what do you find when you look at these athletes? Is the, obviously, we don't need to go into specific details and find out that Katrin's actually got slightly high-pitched vocals. We see a lot of trends with especially high-level cross-fit athletes where their CK is usually a little bit higher, which is just means it's just a creatine kinase, which is a marker of overtraining.

So you would expect to see, you know, that marker be a little bit high based on how often they're training how many hours they're putting in per day. We also have seen glucose in crossfitters be a little bit on the higher end, which is something that you noticed in your. Yes. And it's just because for whatever reason they're not eating enough soluble fiber, which is exactly what I think you were told this morning on your consult. Yeah, so I had yourself and one of your colleagues

run me through my results earlier on today. I honestly thought that I wouldn't be further out than I was. I was expecting after a decade and a half of club promotion and under-sleeping and some periods of pretty significant overtraining as well. I was expecting my inner-age to come back at like 45 and for the just to be like every sound and alarm going off inside of inside tracker like the

air rates siren goes off and then the red light pick up this guy make sure he's not dead. Yeah, yeah, I mean, so but it turns out that it wasn't that bad and that glue cussed a little bit out. Free testosterone was low. Yeah, I'm going to guess is typical. Yeah, of people who train a lot. And yeah, have some more soluble fiber and stop taking a multivitamin and then see where you're right in three months. What do you see with endurance athletes? For endurance athletes, it's different. It's more micro nutrient related. We see 50% of our female population having low faredin, so the store is form of Lyron. That's 50% of women under the age of 50 that are doing inside tracker.

So this is someone that is proactive about their health and thinking about these types of things. So I would extrapolate to say that the general population of runners is probably a little bit higher than that. So we can say, you know, there's a pretty high chance that by doing this and knowing your numbers, you'll improve your energy. Yes. Low test austin is also a common trend. What else? We see the liver enzymes elevated. We see the creatine kinase elevated.

So all of these indicators of overtraining or not resting enough because like CrossFit running is addictive and you want to do more of it and these athletes are allergic to rest. And so it's like, oh, when was your last? Even just trying to schedule the test. It's best done after a rest day or an easy day. Well, I don't have those. It's like, okay, you don't have to do Insight Dracker to know that you should probably have a few of those in your program.

So for a lot of people, fundamentally, it's a shift of, okay, here's some data that says you're worked. Maybe we back off a little bit on the volume perspective. And then the other big one is, caloric needs. So many runners are running a lot, or even if they're not running a lot, they're running more than they're eating. So they're not eating enough to replenish the energy that they're burning. And so that puts you at risk for injury and it puts you at risk for overtraining and burnout and all that stuff that we want to avoid. So when I did my own consult with our dietitian, she basically

said you're under by 500 calories every day and that's not on my run days. So it's like, okay, let's find another meal or another like two or three snacks. How does under-eating manifest in the blood work? So for me, it was a combination of high cortisol LDL was unoptimized and the free testosterone had gone down a little bit given an increase in training. So I, you know, test quarterly and I was able to see as my training ramped up, those things all went the wrong way. And so we went through and also this all-able fiber. And so this was January of 2018, and I'm doing like 20% more mileage than I've ever done,

eating more and getting more results. And it hadn't been injured, not come with, but it was a no-brainer like, hey, this is something that's a problem. It's very clearly identified in the blood work, and now it's having, you know, action reaction. It's taking a little guess what, how is it? Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, you remove the, you know, where do I focus? What supplements do I need? I know what I need, carry knows what she needs, and you know what you need. And there's probably some overlap in that, but if I were to take what Carrie needed or how to take what you needed,

that's not what we need. So it's understanding your personal has supplement routine and something as simple as that. Or also what you need to eat. And for, I was not told that I was under eating, just FYI, after I got my consult. But if you're doing something where you're using templates or you're macro counting and you wanna try to meet those numbers,

but you wanna try to meet them with the right foods, now you have something telling you exactly what your body needs. So that was really helpful for me to know, like for you, you were told that you needed to eat a lot of beans. It was helpful for me to know. 20 different types of beans. Also, validates my sushi habit. Okay, yeah, because what? The fish and shellfish. Okay, and that was keeping you optimal. Yeah, fantastic. I mean, anything that excuses you to eat more sushi or more of what you want,

yeah, sweet. One thing that I thought was super interesting when I was looking at the recommendations, I don't know what I was expecting the recommendations to be. I think I maybe thought there would be something crazy complex out the other side of it, but having spoken to one of your colleagues, what I discovered was that between sleep, training, diet and supplementation, those are the only inputs that we need to be looking at to manipulate everything that's going on with regards to our blood work. I don't know what I thought I was going to expect to see.

Like it was some I don't know what I was expecting. Like, just something crazy complex that was totally out of the room and said, oh, well, your eye is out, so you need to do this ridiculous thing. But it's not. It's everything's within your control. Yeah. So adoption is, like, the whole program is worthless if you can't take the data and make meaning of it.

So there's a lot of, you look at pro sports, there's a lot of meaningless tracking that's going on. People are tracking GPS, people are tracking sleep, people are tracking power, people are tracking. All these things that pro athletes are having tracks, but it's just sitting in a portfolio somewhere. Yeah, exactly. And I was at the National Strength and Conditioning Association conference a couple years ago, and one of the presenters was basically saying, stop tracking just to tell your boss you're tracking this. It's a waste of your athletes time, and it's a waste of your time if you're not doing anything with it. it's time and it's a waste of your time if you're not doing anything with it. And so our goal is to make everything that we ask of you and everything that we

take from you literally your blood meaningful. And so you may have noticed that there are a lot of questions on the registration process. We don't ask anything that we don't use anywhere. None of it's just for fun. None of it's for statistical purposes on our end. Everything that we ask on that registration process is used in a recommendation somewhere. One of the things that the dietician that I was speaking to earlier on mentioned was that if she had the choice, she would have actually had like a 120 question questionnaire, apparently there's 16 major food groups, 16 questions that relate to each of those. But she was like, I would be looking at breaking down your veggies into like dark leafy greens and colorful veggies and timing and

frequency and quality and all sorts of stuff. but I guess you guys have to mediate between how much are we going to get people to actually fill this in. If it's 100 and 30 questions about your, you're going to get zero compliance or lower compliance, but you need to mediate that with getting sufficient data so that you guys can actually make it useful, I suppose. And it needs to be realistic for people to get recommendations for them and be able to implement them in everyday life, like Jonathan said.

So it can't be a huge stretch. Like one of our recommendations is to adopt a vegetarian diet for a day. And that's only if a day per week. And that's only if you eat a small amount of meat. So if it's someone who is telling us they're eating, every single day, we're not going to go tell you to be a vegetarian, because that's unrealistic for that person.

So it's making a simple change versus a complete overhaul. Yeah. I wonder how many people at home that are listening on one of the X-ray men's of the spectrum, one where they are doing data masturbation and over-tracking and everything is down. I've got a couple of buddies who do that with their work, palmadoros, so they know every 25 minutes of their day, they know exactly what they've done. And then I'm sure that there will be a lot of people on the other end of the spectrum who are just flying blind. But yeah, you are right, there's this kind of addiction that

some of us get into, which I've swung in and out of. You've got paralysis by analysis. Absolutely. Yeah, you are right. So for the normal everyday person, we've spoken about athletes, for someone who's just looking to exist through life-feeling better, is blood work going to identify why they may have particular allergies to foods or particular deficiencies that could lead to more serious problems down the line. Is it an early warning system for some people? Are there any other things to do with longevity that you guys really focus on?

The company was started for that first point. It wasn't to help lead athletes squeeze out an extra 1%. Our founder, Gil Blander, had a death in the family when he was a little kid and he said, I want to live forever. And so this is his project of, you know, how does Gil live longer, live better. And he went throughout of academia and he said, you know, I can publish some papers, it's some scientists we'll see, or I can start a company and impact tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people, billions of people.

And so he went with option number two, or he went with option number one at first, and then transitioned over option number two. And so the initial mission of the company was, like I said, was not to help elite athletes, but rather help anyone have more energy or better sleep or whatever. Athletes need that performance, whereas most people want to feel better. But the program works the same way for those two people. It works.

It uses scientific studies to provide recommendations to help achieve goals, specific goals that are relevant to you. Even if the goal is just to fill more calm or lose some weight. Exactly. And then the food sensitivity question is when we get asked a lot. At this time, we aren't confident enough in the science and validity behind food sensitivity testing, so we don't include it. It's incredibly expensive and doesn't provide

much utility on our end. So instead of just trying to make a few more bucks, providing a service that isn't as good of a quality, we just don't do it. I think definitely based on what I've seen of what you guys have given me as a feedback, remembering that you don't know what I eat typically. The things that were highlighted by deficiencies in my profile seem to tie in very closely with what I know that I don't eat. So, like beans and oatmeal problems. Beans and oatmeal, I just need to eat more beans, apparently. We had an athlete that wrote a blog about beans you know, beans are, it was a hilarious

title and I'm blanking on what it was, but basically beans are her end all be all solution. She just wants to have beans all the time. Beans all the time. I mean, I don't know. Beans to me are especially if you're British. Like, beans are not a very important food group. Like, beans are what you you're British, like beans are not a very important food group, like beans are what you have with breakfast, but apparently they're what I need to fix myself. So, remain for elite athletes, what's the trend suggesting at the moment, do you think? I mean, I think there's so many ways that obviously you can track different things about yourself. Now, we can use the DNA plus blood that we offer, which if you have your DNA sequenced

and you also have your blood work done for us, we can- Otherwise, just blast myself in the face with that glass of water. We can use both of those pieces of information to give you an even more detailed look at not only what's going on inside your body right now but what you are what you are predisposed to because of what your DNA is. Particularly genetic conditions. Right. And stuff like that. David was discussing his Ashkenazi Jew genes that he's got and he was just like lambasting them saying how it means that he's got and he was just like lambasting them saying how it means that he's got a predisposition to be fat and he's scended hearing. He's got

he's shy with dairy, he's not very good with I think like wheat or something else as well and yeah I mean all of the things we are the sum of our nature and our nurture right and if the nurture and the environment is able to be represented in the blood work that you guys do now and that the nature is able to be represented in your genes, you do have a pretty comprehensive picture of exactly what's going on inside of you.

I wonder moving forward, whether or not things like this and more consistent testing, because you guys just test every three months, right? So like the gold standard, yeah, and that's to see Do something get recommendations make changes reassess right? So we understand that that's not that's not gonna work for everyone with their budget or with you know getting into a lab What not so we're looking to add in more inputs that are sort of lower friction points. So adding in Fitbit, adding in Garmin, adding in this physiological data so that you can

say, okay, my goal is to boost sleep quality. I've improved my magnesium or improved my vitamin D and I see that I see a related improvement in sleep quality. Or my sleep quality is poor. Let's look at diet about around how can we manipulate diet, knowing what we already know about you, to make a recommendation around if we're in sleep quality. So the goal is, and then adding things like microbiome or things as the science continues to support it,

what are all the inputs that we can just mashing to the, you know, inside tracker approach of taking science, stealing it into recommendations and helping you improve. That's our process. And the more we can load into the top here, the better and more personalized the recommendations and improvements can be.

So you guys are working, I'm going to guess, majority of you on the front end dealing with athletes, speaking to people and so on and so forth. What are the people that are dealing with the backend, the science and the data? They just like floating into the matrix. Yeah, Karen they just like, from the book, the Matrix? Like, there's just a lot of things. Yeah, Karen, I joke that we're the only two people in the entire company without advanced credentials. And it's literally a couple of letters after you name them.

And everyone else has got like a real sense of that. It's true. I mean, I have a couple of letters in front of my name. And I'm going to have a lot of fun. I'm wearing an S. But, no, they are very smart, but very personal and awesome people. It's a good mix of like super cool nerds. Yeah.

Is everyone in one form or another in the fitness or sort of stuff? For the most part, yeah. Yeah. So like our company outings, we went boxing and bowling. You went boxing. Boxing? Was it nice to... It was so intense.

It was not... Honestly, for a company outing, it was 10 million times harder than I thought it was going to be. I'm like still sore from it. Was it, um... Is it January? Was it nice to be able to unleash your fury on that receptionist that never, like, passes on your messages?

They were like heavy bags that we had to... Oh, there was no spars. Wasn't each other, right? I'm each other right. But I kept checking over to make sure our CEO wasn't like flat lined on the ground. He made it through it. Oh wow that is funny. Yeah so do you guys understand or can you explain a little bit about the process of what happens when science comes in because it sounds like from the consultation I had earlier and from speaking to you guys here until you're absolutely dead on that the science is going to back up something you're not actually going to bother using it. So what's the process of I guess absorbing the science and then delivering it to the system?

Is it the super the super notes? Yeah, we see we have a team of thousands of interns that are typing away on the computer. It's a dozen or so. Yeah. Constantly researching new studies and constantly looking at things that are the biggest priority like for the endurance athletes is the iron group How do we make the iron recommendations better or how do we we just added hemoglobin A1C? How do we lump glucose with hemoglobin A1C and make recommendations?

So they're either looking for new studies or they're looking for specific topics and they find something they talk about it in their and their science meeting and and they find something, they talk about it in their science meeting. And that's even an idea. And the way it works is it's an algorithm, so it's a big if-then statement. So if this, then that. So there are a whole bunch of rules in the system, and the rules are written by the scientists, but it can't just be scientists one saying,

hey, here's something cool, loaded in. It's scientists one, proposes a rule, has to be validated by a second person, and then it can be added into the body. So you have like an internal peer review system almost? Yep, of peer reviewed studies. Yes. So there's super peer review. The A of each one.

The A of the A of the A of the twenty. Exactly. So we're getting the best of the best from the best And then there's an algorithm that goes into ranking the recommendations So we have recommendations from one to five stars that are that That system is is based on the recency of the study, the type of the study, the number of people. So you can take a certainty to the recommendation, right? So like the bean thing is a five star recommendation.

The oatmeal is a five star recommendation, but there are bean things. I'm going to keep drilling with bean things. It's fine, man. You need to do like 99 cents. I know. I know. You are right. So the bean thing is something we're very confident in and

Whereas there are other things that You know supplement recommendations that that might not be as strong or or not It's still valid and it's still but there haven't been you know 10 studies on on garlic for glucose levels or something like that Let's say that Someone who's at home might be feeling like they're just a little bit out. Do you see, we discussed typical trends amongst high performing athletes, is there anything that you think or that you see consistently that you think people should consider doing immediately, even before they consider getting their blood work done? Are there some things, some ones I call my energy levels are a little bit low.

My mood appears to be a little bit out, my training's a little bit out. And there's some kind of very common issues that you tend to come up against that you could recommend for people to maybe try doing this first, then try to do that first. I mean, I would say the easiest one, and probably the most important that I can think of, is just sleep. A lot of people who come to us I can think of is just sleep. A lot of people who come to us, they're cortisol is way off and it's because they're not getting enough sleep. So our biggest recommendations are just cut the screen time, shut your phone off a half hour before,

you actually go to sleep so that when you are sleeping it's eight quality hours and not, you know, to sleep so that when you are sleeping it's a quality hours and not, you know, often on if you're not in a good room. So I would say that that's a big one that we do see a lot of and just something easy that you can implement in your daily life. Everyone's already doing it right. What else? Is there anything else that you see that tends to be reflected in terms of diet? Is anyone eating or eating too much of something or not eating enough of stuff. Yeah, so we see 82% of Americans with elevated glucose and the best. 82% so for the majority of people adding oatmeal into their diet is the best possible thing that they can do.

Really? We get elevated glucose oatmeal oatmeal. We looked at we post a paper on the impact of algorithm-based recommendations or the personalized nutrition model that we follow and we were able to look at recommendations interventions and Improvement and so we could see that that some things worked better than others In terms of compliance like another one we found was that the only thing that will improve low vitamin,

low enough vitamin D levels is taking a vitamin D supplement, which sounds like it makes sense, but oh, stand outside for 20 minutes a day. Didn't do it, didn't work. Eat more fatty fish, didn't work. Eat more mushrooms, didn't work. So yeah, back to the glucose thing. So if you do nothing else, eat more oatmeal. We looked at what are some of the best interventions

across the board for men based on biomarkers. Eating nuts on a daily basis is... Any specific type of nuts? Whatever you want really. Almonds, walnuts, etc. That improves glucose, lipids, testosterone, liver enzyme, inflammation. And most of those metrics make up our inner-age score as well with glucose having the highest weight. So if you're looking at one specific food, they can address the bulk of the metrics that impact male longevity the most. Yeah.

Nuts. Nuts. Nuts. I, well, it's nuts, right? I can't, it isn't. I can't, I can't get around. And again, I don't know what I was expecting to see or hear about training, recovery or training sleep, supplements and diet. I don't know what I was expecting, but like train harder. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know what I thought it was going to be like to go and do some like, up my meditation and I was going to have to do whatever. It's in there. You'll probably see that for as long as all. Interesting. So you guys have got so much data on the backend. And like you say, you started to publish papers now. Is there a plan longer term with what you're going to do with the data?

Obviously, people have got like privacy and stuff like that. But in terms of trends and things, the amount of data that you guys have captured must be pretty powerful. Yeah, we feel it's the largest database of healthy people that exist in the world. So I've looked at that, but in terms of trends and things, the amount of data that you guys have captured must be pretty powerful. Yeah, we feel it's the largest database of healthy people that exist in the world. And as- The largest database of healthy people that exist in the world.

Yep. Fuck. Yeah. So like point blank, that's pretty powerful. And then we're- So not put a pressure on you guys? Like, you're now at the tip of the sphere with regards to making sure that any analysis of this is as optimal as it could be.

Right, for sure. And it's a huge opportunity, and it's why the company was created. That's Gill's dream to have this power to impact millions and billions of people. He looked at me one day, we were in a meeting talking about, you know, do we go after thousands? Do we focus on millions? And Gil was like, seven billion. That's our number. It's just everyone. Yeah. And he was totally serious. Like his mission is to help every human on the planet. And however we get there, that's how we're going to get there. And however, we get there, that's how we're going to get there. But yeah, I mean, you look at, in the paper we published, we have some charts that are

able to look at correlations between, as this goes this way, this goes this way, this data doesn't exist anywhere else, because there aren't people doing full, you know, 43 plus biomarker tests on healthy people. Some of these tests are usually run on sick people to address from a medical standpoint, but we're able to see statistically significant changes and make better recommendations from it. Is that a floor in human nature? Or is it a floor in medicine at the moment that people only seem to look at getting this sort of thing done when there's a problem?

Yeah, definitely a flaw in medicine. Yeah, I mean, we got every, you know, once or twice or sometimes three times a year, we'll get a customer. The customer will tell us that they were charged by quest for the blood draw. So you walk into quest and hand them your insurance card and say, here's what I'm testing. You're paying $2,000 for our $589 plan. And so it's unattainable for most people outside of inside the way that

the medical world currently operates. Yes. You either can't get this done or it's outrageously expensive. One of the reasons you can't get it done is because it's not the area of expertise for a physician, so they're not going to do it. They're not going to do something. It's the, you know, we were talking about before, monitoring data and not doing with it, something with it. They're incentivized to not do that, and they're incentivized to do things that they can help you with.

And that's not their area of expertise. They're essential in what they do, but they're, you know, go to a dietician or use insid tracker or something like that that can help you with the blood work. Yeah, and it's really preventive health care instead of just reactionary health care. That's the goal is to have everyone do it and everyone's had their blood work done at some point in their life. But now everyone's got these recommendations, right? So for the majority of people, the data you get from your physical is enough to use for

a $49 DIY plan and get guidance on glucose and lipids. And so it'll tell you, it'll probably tell you, you don't meal and beans and nuts. But for the most part, you can't just hear that and know. You want something in front of you that says this is me. It's like the personal invitation. I have a friend who, she's an elite marathoner. And the way she described it was like, I know that I need to sleep more.

And I know that I need to eat more. And I know that I need to take an iron supplement. But it took seeing it in front of me to see, this is Julia's needs to do list. Yeah. Versus like, yeah, most people should probably do these things. Perfect example of that is I've had a back injury for around about a year now and only recently did I get an MRI. I've been doing my rehab and I've been kind of moving in and out of different

types of rehab movements but it was only until I saw that I've got two bulging discs, L5S1 and I've got a schmoles node as it's called. For me to actually go right, stop thinking that you can do a lighter version of what you've been doing quadruple down on your rehab and that's get this fixed. There's something about seeing it in front of your face. So we've talked about not oatmeal, sleep. Is there anything else? is there anything else that people tends to be lacking in which Manifests itself in the day I think you guys see I Would say iron in women Jonathan already touched on that the fared in I and women iron I mean women though in nine

We see it in women especially fared in which is your is a marker of your iron storage in your body. So my set fatigue and yeah, we see that tense below. And just like John said, if that happens, then, you know, even getting out of bed can be a large task. We just have no energy. So obviously trainings out of the question. So if you had a goal in mind of running a race or doing cross-fit competition, you know, something like a low ferroden level can really step in your way. What's the fix for that? Depends how low? Yeah, you can fix it through food or supplementation. So if you're super low, you need to bring in the big guns and supplement. Yep. You guys give out an inner-age figure. What's that mean? What is

inner-age? So inner-age is the age that your body is on the inside versus what the number says on your driver's license. So it's your... I like that. You never heard that one. That's good. Don't be down. And we use five markers that we've determined are the most important from the markers that we test in terms of longevity. So glucose, ALT, HSCRP, vitamin D, and testosterone. Okay. And all those combined. Those combined will give you your inner age. I'm 31 and mine says that I'm 36.

That is because I have quite high glucose. I'm writing thinking that that is one of the most heavily weighted. It is, yeah. Why is that the case? Research on longevity, correlating glucose, consistently optimized glucose to better longevity. Okay. And 86% of Americans have high glucose. 82% yeah. 82% yep. What's that cheeto? Like why is that? Why is that the case? Is it high carb diet? I mean how long have you been in the States? Yeah, a couple of weeks. There's a lot of a lot of big servings, a lot of sugary food. Yep. Sedentary lifestyle. I know. It does surprise me because although since I've been here, there are some large servings and some large people as well.

Although that's the case, there's more wellness out here than there is in the UK as well. But you've been in LA and Boston. Yes. So, is that one representative? LA and Boston, LA in particular, is a very wellness conscious place. I was just a Nashville Tennessee for the weekend, very not a wellness conscious place. So you get places like that that, it's a sign of status to go out to eat all the time.

And we have research that shows the more you go out to eat, the more likely you are to have elevated glucose. And- Is that one of the things that you guys asked? I can't remember whether I remember it was. Okay. How often do you eat out or get really true? Yeah. Is that one of the things that you guys asked? I can't remember whether I remember what it was. Yep. How often do you eat out or get takeout? Okay.

And so, I mean, that's true in other places in the country too. Like, if you eat out a lot, then maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that's the control of your diet usually when you eat out, right? For sure. Yeah. And even if you order, if your intents are good, like I'm gonna get a salmon with whatever, you're getting sugar in the mashed potatoes,

and you're getting sugar in the sauce, and you're getting sauce, and all these different things that you have no control over. So some of our recommendations are around, we've done blogs where we talk about it, like you're at a restaurant, So some of our recommendations are around, you know, we've done blogs where we talk about it. Like, you're at a restaurant and you can ask for your food however you want it.

It doesn't have to be what's on the menu. But yeah, so getting back to your question of why do we think it's so elevated, said in their lifestyle, people are sitting from 9 to five every day and they're exhausted by the time they go home so they're not going to the gym and they sleep or they don't sleep and they do it all over again the next day. And it's like a status symbol to be busy and being busy is glamorized. And so if you're busy all the time you can't do the things that you need to do forized. And so if you're busy all the time, you can't do the things that you need to do for yourself. And so you're putting other things in the priority

and your health is the cost. The comment about being busy, being seen as a sign of status was something that I was reading by the guys that make the six minute diary that did a free PDF called The Golden Evening routine and they talk exactly about that. That, um, month's society praises our, uh, busyness. It's a right of passage and a badge of honor. Right. Um, that people who, again, after it, like Gary Vaynerchuk, all of the listeners at home,

will know my opinions about Gary Vaynerchuk, all of the listeners at home will know my opinions about Gary Vaynerchuk. I mean, he's going to die a lot earlier than the rest of us because you can't talk about hustling grind and sleep three hours, and I Gary like because it's biology. Right. Because your body will break down. There are anomalies to that. It's the same, it's the same, the genetic code if that's the same likelihood as you being hit by lightning. Right. Apparently to get that, that genetic mutation. Right. And those people are all at the top because they have stuff going for them in their genetics. And because we have an athlete that that just raced or just broken a fasting time running south to north of Israel.

Okay, so it's 1000 kilometers. It took him 10 plus days and he slept three hours a night. Just got through it. Yeah, running 66 miles a day or a little over a hundred K a day and he does blood work through Insight Tracker. And he just ran 10 marathons in 10 days, like two, three weeks ago. And his day is great. And he doesn't sleep a lot. And I'm sure he would be better if he slept more. But he is the exception to the rule that like you must get six hours of sleep or you must get seven hours of sleep. He literally does everything and and he's able to to do his job. He's able to be with his family. He's able to do sponsor obligations, things like that, but but he's the like 0.00001% and there's

almost nobody like him. But the people that are like him are all at the top and and they're all role models of people are like, I'm going to be just like this person. And and you can aspire to do some things that are similar. But like if it's not in your if it's not in your nature to like not need that which it is for the majority of us, you're going to burn out and you're going to get injured and you're not going to enjoy what you're doing. I'm going to fall behind. Did a podcast recently with James Clear, the writer of Atomic Habits, and he was talking about how our genetics, they do not predetermine, but they do predispose. Right. And I think that that as a little

guiding Influence towards what people do in their lives. Right. Like if you struggle to put a muscle trying to become a power lift Is probably a bad idea. You may enjoy it, but you're not gonna get the best in the field. Yeah, exactly. And I suppose that You know your guy like if he was, I don't know, it's a long distance truck driver. It's probably wasted in that industry, like where you were on a ticket timer and you got to be off the clock for 10 hours or 8 hours or whatever it might be. This guy doesn't need it, like he's the guy that can go.

So he's found himself an industry, in which you can find that. So moving forward, what do you see the future of this industry looking like? Have you guys got any new markers in the pipeline that you want to use? And then on top of that, what do you think in terms of technology and stuff like that? Is there anything that the super nerds have told you about that's kind of coming up? Well, we're looking not Markerwise, but we're looking to add more mindfulness recommendations to the platform as well. So For something like cortisol to implement

Yolgoth you told us that you weren't doing that kind of exercise now. So things like that. We're looking to add How would that manifest in would that be cool? It was all again. Relicively in the blood work. Yeah, so it's not only looking at specific lifestyle interventions that we had, neither considered, we hadn't done a lot of research on, but also more inputs as we were talking about before. And so physiological monitoring, microbiome, things like that that are more new compared to blood analysis, and then getting like, talk about super nerd. We can go super nerd on this. Let's go super nerd. Imagine you get a notification from your phone that knows your blood work, that knows your calendar, it knows the weather, and it knows, let's say your vitamin D is low or your cortisol is high and you have back-to-back-to-back meetings,

but hey, you've got this block of 15 minutes at two o'clock and it's sunny out. I could go take a walk, you get a ping. Hey, it's sunny out and you have this little stretch of time that's available. Take advantage of it. So it's knowing. That would be so sick wouldn't it? Yeah, super nerdy stuff, but people would dig that. Some people would dig that. So it's stuff like that.

RCO jokes, I don't know if it's a joke though, about spitting on your iPhone and getting data and getting immediate recommendations. That's probably a long way away, but it's not outside their own possibility. I think it's been talk I've been hearing on some podcast recently about future technology to do with nanotech where you can have these receptors that would just be placed in your blood and not just be flowing around you all the time, giving like, I think it's James Bond, in fact I'm certain

it's James Bond, where they like to shoot something in his arm and then it's heart rate elevated and it's because he's having sex with someone. Yeah, I mean, like there's something for everyone, but no meaning like you can go as advanced as that, or you can, you can, you know, peel back a few few less layers, you know, and and look at it through your iPhone or something like that. Yeah, I do get that. I think talking about the cultures and stuff like that, something that I've definitely noticed is the difference between the UK and the US is that busyness culture. Like the US actually seems to be a little bit more relaxed. I think that the UK, and I'll be interested to hear if the listeners agree, I think that the UK does, I don't know what they're busy doing because

they're not getting, they're not getting after it, there's not this kind of entrepreneurship thing below the lines that there appears to be in the US. So you spent time in two very busy places? Yes. So you're getting like the representative sample. Yeah, but it's true everywhere. And there are so many books and podcasts about like more, more, more, more, more. You must do more.

And that leads to burnout. Now we're getting books and podcasts going the other way that says, you need to, you have your rest day for training, you need a rest day for life. Right. Exactly. And so we're getting to a point where, I have an Instagram account with a couple of friends called Rest Day Braggs.

And one of them is an Olympian and the other is a professional trail runner and obstacle course racer. So like they have some pedigree behind success and they both run themselves into the ground by trying to do everything. The one that went to the Olympics 10 years ago now is still just now getting out of that hole that she put herself in.

And so we're glamorizing like sat, sad on my couch for the afternoon. Like, the only intervals I did today were couch to fridge and stuff like that, that we're getting messages from people that are like, oh my God, I thought it was the only person that, you know, struggles with taking time off or sleeping in or like, we now have people bragging, like, God, ate hours of sleep.

But such a good rhetoric to be pushing. I've never heard of anyone who does see that but you are totally right. It's just not it's not glamorized. It's associated with the laziness and complacency and not making the most of minutes. But if it's part of the plan, I'm sure that Ben Bergeron, even with his making the most of minutes strategy, I'm sure that some of those minutes are res. I mean, every Friday is a rest day for his athletes, through Comter-in.

I don't know if everyone has the same rest day, but there's definitely both in rest day. A lot of rest days in that. Perfect example, despite the fact that United Airlines broke my phone holder which is why I've got some slightly odd camera angles today I noticed that as you go through their in-flight entertainment they have a headspace app and then now that helps you fall asleep on plane. Yeah. Oh, I've been this far. I mean, Andy Puddy-Kum is getting absolutely everyways, partnered with Nike.

It's partnered with the United Airlines. But, you know, the fact that meditation has been adopted by an aeroplane. Yeah. Literally available on the street. You know, you think like what we're going to do, I'll watch another Harry Potter movie or Avengers or something. Like, no, no, no, no, I'll meditate based on this and it's curated for being on a plane and that was like

Did you do it? No, no No, it's not cool. It's not cool. It's gotta be glamorized for you It's gonna be, I'm not exactly, no one would have known because I'm not, I wasn't on Instagram at the time taking a selfie of it so I think that as we continue to move forward, and as technology like root bands and inside tracker and so I've continued to move forward, that hopefully more people will be able to understand what's going on inside of their bodies. But one of the things that I do worry about is that paralysis by analysis thing that you were talking about that people become so bogged down in the data that they don't really get anywhere. Is the onus on the people to fix that

or is it on the platform to make sure that it's giving them the right output? Because obviously if people are just drowning in data, like what do they do with it? I think the thing that we try to do is is out of all of these things that we can recommend for you, we try to have you choose between three and seven of these recommendations that we give you that you can actually use every day or every week. So if you narrow those recommendations down to only three or only five, then you're not going to be bogged down with having to change so many things about your life.

Now you can continue to live, continue to train, to recover, and if you make these important changes, then it will move the needle for you. So for us, I think that's an important part of what we do. Incremental changes, right? What do you guys see? So to begin to round up, what do you see as an impact on your athlete's performance? Have you got any stats like that? Obviously, I'm going to guess they won't be put in the 5k times in versus all of their other things, but do you see any? So it's hard to get that on the individual athletes. We've looked at some of the data around pro teams we've worked with, related to injuries. So games lost.

Look at the San Jose Sharks. They've had a lot of success with that improving travel, improving around travel. So again, San Jose Sharks had the year that we did this, analysis, they had the best away record in the league, meaning they were able to manage travel the best, based on the data that they were collecting around, when do we change practices? And how do we improve, you know, how do I make this skate optional? And this skate required and get the players to buy in that they should sleep in on this day,

and they should show up on this day. So, we looked at some data around that. I'm not sure we have much else at the organizational level, at the team level, but... But injuries are going to be such a big deal. So injuries are just a manifestation that something has been pushed so far, and that's something might have just been formed. Right. It's not always going to manifest.

Like someone's poor deadlift posture isn't necessarily going to show up in the blood work. Exactly. We had an MBA team that the dietician, the dietician, you have squat. Squat, shaming. Yeah. So, we had an MBA dietician that came to us and said, I think Paleo is a problem. I think it's a problem for our athletes because they're tired and injured all the time. And some things are problem.

And she was like, and I'm the dietician and they're not listening to my nutrition advice. So I need this bulwark, don't I? Who's doing the Paleo? The athletes, the athletes, that they know better than the dietician? Yes. So the culture in some of these organizations is, they listen to the strength coach or they

listen to the head trainer, they listen to some guy that's been in the organization or in the sport for 20, 30 years. Whereas the dietitians are credentialed, they went to school for nutrition and they, that's their job. So she was able to get the blood work done and came back and she was like, I'm right, check that out. Now let's make some changes. And injuries went down and fatigue went, you know, improved. It's not to say inside tracker, improve their injuries and fatigue, but the platform that we allowed them to use that we were able to have them use allowed them to show their athletes look this is a problem here, lipids are out of whack, your cortisol through the roof,

calories, blah blah blah, vitamin D, here's hard data showing you what to do and and it's saying exactly what I'm saying now I'm going to help you implement it and she did and it worked. You're totally right about that. It comes back to the example that I said earlier on about the MRI. You're going to tell us or it in front of my eyes and because everyone wants to take the path of least resistance. Everyone wants to believe, oh well, no, no, no, that's not me.

That's not me. No, no, that's everyone else. That's everyone else's, that's everyone else's oatmeal. Yeah, I'm 18%. Yes, absolutely. And when you think, when you think like that, you actually end up doing this off a disservice because you believe that you're not culpable to the trends of the market and you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, market and you're like, no, no, no, no, no. You are the trend. By its very fucking nature, it's more likely that you are than you are.

It's like when people complain about traffic. Right? Like, you are traffic. I always complain about it. Why are you going to complain about something? Oh, yeah, I'm like going apes in my car. I love traffic. All of these people are so in that car.

These people are going to work today. I think it's hilarious. So anyway, it's I love it. All of these people are going to work today. I think it's hilarious. So anyway, it's the same thing. It's like, oh, that's not my problem. I'm just out for a Monday morning drive at 8.30 in the morning. Along with everybody else. Yeah, I do totally get it. I think if it's good enough for David Sinclair, it's good enough for me.

And that was like the first thing that I saw when I was talking to him today, how much he is reliant on having something that comes out of the back end because making the changes. It would be the same as doing everything that a CrossFit it does, or a strength ass leaders, or a runner does, without actually doing strength crossfit, or running, you'd be like, oh, I'm gonna make sure I get enough sleep, and I'm gonna make sure I get enough this, I'm gonna make sure I get enough that,

but I'm not actually going to do the thing that tests all of the inputs, it's the output, right? And the output for most people is training, but also should be some form of blood work. I think, you know, it doesn't surprise me that this is coming out of America and not from the UK. I know that you guys offer a service in the UK and people in the UK that are listening can get their work done. Link will be in the show notes below as always. But the USA generally to me leads, it kind of

leads to the UK with this, we're lagging behind. Like people are still eating like mince pies. Being the foods. Being the foods, they're eating, being the foods is like, but honestly, like, you know, the wedges of oranges as a half time perupe, you're just, it's still a thing. Like, so.

This is my best memories of third grade. Wedges of orange. Soccer, yeah. Far enough. Well,ges of, of our in soccer, yeah. Yeah, far enough. Well, I mean, we've adopted you at least. But yeah, I genuinely do hope that this is going to make people think with more care about what they're doing, because in the same way as the mechanism that makes mobility work for a lot of people effective, foam rolling and passive stretching and massage therapy,

Professor Quinn Henneck, a Doctor of Physical Therapy for Drug and Autraining Systems on episode 13, I wanna say said that the mechanism that those things are working on isn't what people think, but if it makes them think about their recovery, then it is enough. And that's kind of almost what we're talking about here, that maybe even the blood work,

so for me, potentially, with all of the markets, I might not have known that these things were going to be out of whack, but it was probably pretty likely that I was going to have low-fri testosterone because I'm overtraining, probably, like, fairly common, that the oatmeal and the beans and etc etc. But because I wasn't thinking about it, it wasn't something that needed to...

You don't know it, you don't know. There we go. Well guys, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you for having me out here. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens if I do change up these my beans, if I change up my oatmeal. And I hope that the listeners at home as well

will have started to realize how important it is to consider these sort of things. In the same way as David Sinclair was talking about the fact that people believe that aging is just this process that we're along for the ride with. I think people believe that a degree of ignorance of what is happening inside of their body is also like oh well I'm just I don't know I can't see what's in my blood

I can't see what the food how food to affect me and things like that and I think that um Hopefully as companies like yourselves and individuals like David begin to make people think with more granularity and like a higher resolution about exactly what they're doing with the health. It's not just enough to be like, oh well, like I'm making sure that I'm taking the stairs to work. Okay, like, yeah, fair enough. Like, that might have been a thing 30 years ago, right? When, or 50 years ago, when doctors were still smoking. Like, any... They still are. Well, they're not smoking at the delivery table.

I saw an advert not long ago that said it was for camel cigarettes. And the statistic was more doctors smoke camels than any of the cigarette. And it was a doctor at surgery, like smoking. That's perfect. Wow. Yeah, terrifying.

But yeah, guys, if you are interested in getting your blood work done, a link will be in the show notes below to the Inside Track or website. I will also probably be discussing exactly what we went through on one of the catch-up episodes coming up soon as well. But for now, thank you very much for your time. It's been awesome. Thanks Chris. Thank you. Get offence