Well with Arielle Lorre - 119: How to Better Understand and Optimize Our Health with Base Founder Lola Priego

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

In this episode I’m talking to Lola Priego, founder of Base, about merging healthcare with tech and how it can help us live optimally. We discuss her background as an engineer at Amazon, Facebook and Instagram and how she drew from this experience to develop an app that is used to help improve health. We also discuss common lifestyle areas that we struggle with such as stress, sleep, low sex drive, low energy and nutrition and how through at-home testing, Base helps us understand our deficiencies so that we can improve them. 20% off first month with Base code: BLONDEFILES url: get-base.com/blondefiles Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Go to your rise-adviseur or sunnycars. The following podcast is a dear media production. Hey, welcome to the Blond Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in

between, no topic is off limits. I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life. Thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. Welcome to a bonus episode of

the Blonde Files podcast. Today I am talking to Lola Priago. She is the founder of BASE. So BASE is an app and at-home testing service to help users investigate, monitor, and improve their well-being. Basically, you submit a blood and or saliva test that they send to you to determine what hormone, vitamin, or nutrient is off in different lifestyle areas like sleep, stress, and energy. And then BASE provides tailored lifestyle recommendations from their medical team and help to track the user's evolution as they improve. I have been doing this for the last couple months. So I have been having issues with my period, with my hormones, and I suspected that it was kind of a top-down thing. And of course, the top being stress. And so sure enough, we found that my cortisol levels were low,

which would indicate prolonged stress. So I've been taking their recommendations in and making adjustments in my lifestyle, and I'm really working to get those numbers up. So I'm going to retest soon, and I'm really looking forward to seeing if I was able to improve. I love a challenge. And I just think this is incredible. I think it's the future of medicine and just overall optimal living. So Lola is a former engineer at Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram, and she drew inspiration from her own experience with health and in tech and merged the two in this really ingenious way. And this is a fascinating conversation about that and the future of healthcare. So enjoy. All right. Welcome, Lola. So excited to talk to you. Thank you. So excited to talk to you.

I hear that New York City in the background. Yes. An ambulance is just passing by. The sounds of the city. So to get started, I would love to just have you kind of introduce yourself to the listeners, talk about maybe what you were doing before and how you came to become the founder of space. So to get it started, this accent is from Spain. I've been here in the US for about eight years and my background is in engineering, but I did go to Met School for one year. And basically I came to the US to work at big tech. So Amazon, Facebook, Instagram. I came to finish also a master's in artificial intelligence. So I was working a lot. I don't know if you've, you know, when you're shopping, you see like recommended products for you and things like that, right?

I was also working a lot in like content recommendations for the Kindle content subscription. So similar to Netflix, you know, based on your profile, what are the, you know, the things that you may want to read? And then for Facebook and Instagram working like in a variety of things. And what happened to me was that I don't know if this has ever happened to you, You know, like it's 3 p.m. You cannot focus. You're really tired. And then that consistently happens day after day. And at that time, it was about 26 or 27 years old. So I couldn't really explain why I was so tired all the time. And this is probably where you and I were going to resonate. But I went to doctor Google and, you know, so much PS wellness advertising out there where, you know, you have to buy this. supplement and then you're going to feel great again or like you need to buy these mattress and then you're going to sleep amazing and then you're not going to be tired ever again and you know this one size fetal type of advice flying around and eventually I saw this keto diet this was early 2017 and of course

at the beginning I tried that out I was feeling great for a month's in I was not feeling good back again. And that's when I started, you know, messaging my friends from med school, which at that time they were already doctors. And I went to get lab work done. And that's when I finally started to understand what was going on with my body. So it turned out that the long-term keto diet was not working for me. My hormones were like became imbalanced. My thyroid, you know, my T3 got imbalance and then my cholesterol skyrocketed and it just turns out that my original fatigue was coming from severe deficiencies in folate and vitamin B12, which I would have never been able to figure that out on my own just by trying different supplements. It would have been

really hard. And that's when I decided, you know, I look at big tech and I saw all of the cool technology that we were creating for people to buy more. to spend more time in their phones, browsing Instagram, browsing Facebook. And I looked at the healthcare industry. And to me, you know, I saw that a lot of the super cool tools that we're developing for tech are not really being used to help people feel better. And what happened to me where I had no clue what was going on with my body for six months was a terrible journey.

Like it's just frustrating. You lose hope. you're just tired and it's just so hard and so frustrating and you spend so much money in the meantime as well that I decided to quit big tech and you know start working on the in the healthcare industry so after that I actually went to be the head of engineering for a medical device and that's where I learned everything in relation to like lab testing and I started testing myself frequently and learning a lot of things about my body what what actually makes me super stress, what helps me de-stress, what makes me tired, what makes me not tire. And that's when,

you know, I created the concept of base that is just basically helping people just knowing what's going on with their bodies. Like, what is that extreme fatigue coming from or stress, sleeping issues, issues with your weight management and so forth? It's pretty genius. I mean, I'm thinking about my own experience. And for years, I had gut issues. I had hormone issues. And it sounds like I went through a similar thing that you did where I was just buying supplements online, not really knowing what anything did, but a lot of these supplements are, first of all, unregulated. And also they promise a cure, essentially. And it's so frustrating. It's so expensive. And finally, when I, when my issues got really severe. I ended up going to nutritionist who did a lot of lab testing. And he always said,

if you're not assessing, you're guessing. And in a similar experience as you had, he found things that I never would have found before. And since then, I've been such a proponent, especially on Instagram, about getting tested, finding someone to work with and getting tested because so many people are experiencing gut issues. They're experiencing, you know, period issues. They're experiencing energy crashes, libido issues, stress, sleep, all of that. And I think that the barrier comes when somebody goes to work with an individual, maybe a practitioner, and it's very expensive. And there is kind of the comparison where like if you don't work with someone and you are just trying all these different supplements, you're probably spending as much money, if not more.

But the thing about base is that it's really accessible. And so it kind of breaks down that barrier. And so I really love that about base. But I'd love to hear why you chose to focus on the different lifestyle areas that you focus on within the app. That's a great question. The reason why we created programs that are tailored towards, you know, helping people figure out, where's that stress coming from, you know, where's that root cause and how to fix it or, you know, issues with your diet, whether weight management issues or nutritional deficiencies, it's just because at the end of the day, what I realized as well,

while browsing this wellness industry and specifically going into the functional, you know, medicine route was that it's a different approach depending on the goal that you have. And, you know, this generic, let's just be healthy, it's really hard for me to get motivated if I have a busy lifestyle. But if I know that I'm working towards like, hey, I really want to, you know, lose some weight

by this date or like I really want to fix my energy levels within this, you know, two to three months period of time. And I'm going to be focused on that. By focusing, you know, on one area at a time really helps me to stay motivated because, you know, it's just really hard to work in my health like holistically. And I know that like that's definitely a route that I think it's great. But for me as a human being that has so many things going on, you know, I'm also a founder.

I've always worked a lot and had a busy lifestyle with friends and workouts. It's just hard to like stick to the habits unless I have like a specific goal that I'm working towards. And that's also, you know, like I worked for two years and a half thinking about how to make people spend more time on Instagram, right? Like make the tool more engaging and more personalized for them. And like I saw how like the tiniest change will have an impact on like the average time spent in the platform for 10 minutes.

And at the end of the day, what I realized is that we need to use that technology and that psychology that we created for getting people to spend more time in entertainment to make health easier for them. So a base is not only like annoying and facilitating that and making it like, as you say, affordable and accessible for under $100 a month. Actually, we are $60 a month for the improvement plan, but it's also about helping you get there. And the hardest part sometimes is just the motivation and just, you know, helping people do these hard thing called health. So I tested my stress hormones. I've been sharing about. about this on Instagram, but having gone through various health issues in the past years and

testing with practitioners and everything that I mentioned, I really come to learn my own body. And in this past year, I started having really irregular periods and my sleep was a little bit off. And I could just tell, because I'm, again, I'm very sensitive. I can tell that my body is kind of in this like agitated state more often than not. And so I figured that it was kind of a top down effect and that the stress was kind of trickling down and affecting things like my period because I know that your reproductive hormones kind of go offline if you're like running on cortisol all the time. And so I tested that and sure enough, my cortisol was really low. And I'm the type of person kind of similar to you. I like one thing to focus on and I love a challenge. So I was like,

I am going to retest in like six weeks and I am going to get those numbers up. I'm going to do all the things and I had my call with your team and they gave me some tips on what to do. So I'm doing my high intensity workout in the morning and I just love, I love that it's actionable and that you can kind of track your progress. And I'd love to hear more about the process of like from when you get tested to when you get your recommendations and then when you retest and all of that and why you designed it that way. Yes. Before we get into that really quickly, it's something interesting to note that people don't know that cortisol can be low, right? Like we have this association where cortisol being low, this is amazing.

That means that we are not stressed. And when cortisol is low, your stress, when cortisol is high, your stress is about, as you said, finding the optimal point, something that we have learned with base members and with myself too. It's CBD, which is becoming super popular, right? if you take too much CBD, you're going to get what it's called adrenal fatigue. Your cortisol is going to drop. It's going to become super low. And then you're going to have a different type of stress.

And this is something that I tested with myself with some CBD drinks and CBD gummies. And just finding that optimal level for your stress levels is super important to be right. You know, like not super tired and stress, but not, you know, agitated and, and, stressed. To answer your question about the process, the way we do it is, you know, we do what it's called the initial assessment that is the starter test, where we, depending on, again, your goals, what you're struggling with and so forth, we're going to tailor something for you. Or you directly say, like, you know, I want to go into the stress track or like the diet area, you know, whichever of our five, the five areas that we offer, you get that starter test that you can

take or either by visiting a quest diagnostics or at home that is our most popular choice at home. Like you would collect your samples, the saliva or finger prick, mainly back to the lab and five business days later, you'll get an notification in your app, you get your results. And we give you some insights as to what's going on. We give you a score, a percentage of optimization score so you actually understand how are you doing? We don't like this thing where you're like, you're not dying or you're open. You know, like you just tell me a little bit more.

And then you have an onboarding consultation where we help you navigate, you know, those things. In app, you get recommendations about your diet, supplements, lifestyle, things that you can implement to fix that test, that hormone, that vitamin, that it's off. You said that, you know, you were working on your cortisol. So people usually identify that thing that it's off. And then what we do is monthly testing to make sure that you get. to the level that is optimal. It usually takes two to three months, sometimes, just one month for someone to, like, really work on that something.

In your case, cortisol, right? Like, hey, my cortisol is low. And I don't know if you're feeling stress or you feel tired in the mornings. And then, you know, working on it, seeing that improvement in your levels and then start to feel better is something that, you know, we really like to see happening. as I mentioned, we want to make data actionable, digestible, and at the end of the day, we're here to help people feel better. So it makes sense that we have these monthly testing or tracking up until you feel like, hey, the problem is fixed and we're good to go. Yeah, and that's something that kind of sets your company apart from other at-home testing and just other testing in general is that a lot of times you get the results and that's it.

And then you have to interpret it yourself and figure out what to do next. And I love that base gives you those recommendations. And I like that there's follow up and you continue doing it until you do feel better. But I'm curious if you have been seeing patterns, like if there's one category that most people are struggling with. And if so, why you think that is? And what kind of lifestyle factors contribute to that? We've definitely seen multiple patterns. and I'm going to mention three that have been super interesting to me. One is for sleeping issues. This is hilarious.

Well, not that funny, but it's just wild how many people have sleeping issues. They take melatonin to fix those sleeping issues. They overdose a melatonin, which, yes, it is possible. And what will happen is that your hormone, that it's melatonin in this case that regulate your sleep, would go up to like super high levels. And then those levels would not be able to come down in the morning. So you wake up, you feel really groggy. And then because those levels were high throughout the day, they cannot rise again at night.

And people get into this cycle of being hooked to melatonin supplements when the actual root cause of their sleeping issues is or either, you know, stress which cortisol blocks the production of melatonin. or that they're exposing themselves to like blue light at night or inflammation, you name it. And it's just so interesting at the beginning. I remember because this is not something that gets talked about a lot, right, overdosing the melatonin because it's not like anything bad that's going to happen to you. You're just really tired the next morning.

But when we started seeing so many users with super, super high levels of melatonin in the morning, it took us a little while to pick up, you know, on to what's going on. And it is, you know, you start asking these members. And it's like, hey, do you take melatonin? And they're like, yeah, 10 to 15 milligrams. And I'm like, well, that's a lot. That was me because I'm a former addict.

So my approach to everything, it's like, oh, it says five milligrams. I'll take 20. So then it was just so interesting to see that pattern for sleep. Another one, too, and this one is heartbreaking, is the, fact that a lot of people come to us because they are really tired. And at the beginning, we thought that, you know, thyroid was going to be a big factor. And we were going to see a lot of people with hyperthyroidism. But what we are seeing is how many people actually have issues with their sugar levels. And I'm not referring to glucose, but HBA1C that it's a biomarker that doctors test

for to understand the long-term effect of your sugar. levels and you still understand if you are pre-diabetic or like you have actually diabetes. And the amount of people that we are seeing that are pre-diabetic, it's really, really, really high. And no one even thought about this possibility. Like most of these members, like, you know, when we deliver the sad news to them, like, they will have never expected it. The good news, though, is like when you're pre-diabetic. And like, this is something that happened to me, by the way, as well.

I was drinking Diet Coke since I was, you know, really young. And eventually that comes back and get you is that you can reverse it by being super smart with your diet and staying away from adulcurants and like basically fake sugar and watching your refined sugar intake. So the good news is that you are very much in control and you're not at a stage where you are already, you know, diet. But it's something that we see a whole lot. And that was an interesting pattern too, which also, you know, makes it feel empowered to keep going and keep working hard because at the end of the day, these are, you know, even though these are sad news, we are still early for them to take control over this problem and like, you know, fix it and go back to a normal lifestyle. And the last one that we see often too is for a diet. And this is funny because you mentioned about stress being correlated to your sex hormones. But it's also about how you burn fat because what happens there is cortisol blocks testosterone,

which women, we also have testosterone. And testosterone and estrogen are correlated that production, right? but testosterone is also what we call a fat burning hormone. So if you go into a low-fat diet, your body will respond by decreasing the levels of testosterone. So because it's, you know, like your body understand that it doesn't need to burn as much fat. So then your testosterone drops low and then you stop burning fat. So what we see a lot is just people coming to us because they have issues with weight loss.

And when we look at what we call the fat burning hormones test, you know, we learned that their testosterone levels were super low. And, you know, therefore, that's why, you know, they were experiencing some issues. And it's just getting them to back again, incorporate some healthy fats that, you know, that are still controlled. So it's not like we are putting them into a high calorie diet or keto diet. It's just like introducing some fats such as that testosterone level can go up back again and they can, start burning fat. And just so that the listeners know if they're not familiar with the company, you do have doctors and nutritionists on board that are advising on all of this. So it's not just kind of unsubstantiated or unqualified advice. But I'm curious, it's kind of interesting because

a lot of, I guess all of the lifestyle areas that you test, they have to be interconnected at some level. What are some lifestyle changes just overall that you can recommend to people that are listening, like despite what their personal or their individual struggles or imbalances may be, just some lifestyle things that people can implement today for optimal health? This is a question that believe it or not, I've never had to answer because it's funny. We always talk about different stories. And we typically claim that there's truly not a one-size fetal, right? Like, that's the, the T-L-D-R, the to London read conclusion. But to answer your question, there are things that are always generally good. So I would say that cardio workouts in a way that are not high-intensity workouts every day,

but like, you know, going out for a 30-minute walk to activate your body every day, it's always good, it's never going to be, you know, a bad thing to do. Because, again, strenuous workouts or high-intensity training workouts, it actually depends. If your cortisol levels are super high, you may run into a risk of injury already or like if you're not hydrated. So there are certain things that, you know, we typically recommend people or certain situations where we recommend people to stay away.

But walking, going for a light bike ride. that's something that generally is always really good. Vitamin C is something that it's just, you know, like it's really hard that you overdose on it, like especially if you stay under the one gram dosage, something that I would just tell people is just be cautious in the, like, basically what supplements you take because we also see people that are really rarely though

that are high in vitamin D. but again, if you stay within the realm of the normal dosage for vitamin D, this is like it's great for you and it's something that 80% of you as adults are deficient in. So, you know, just get that vitamin D right on. Vitamin B12 is another one as well that it's hard to overdose. And it's just really related to your brain fog and fatigue. So that's another good one to do. And then there are like this soft lifestyle recommendations

that is just stay away from blue light at night. It really, you know, like the way that your body works is that the little thing that is producing melatoning in your body, it's right behind your eyes. And when you actually give light to it through your eyes and specifically blue light, that little thing that it's just, again, behind your eyes is going to stop producing melatonin, so you're not going to be able to go to sleep. So there's no situation where, you know, like being on a lot of, on your laptop screen at night.

It's going to be good. Just get a blue light blocker glasses if you need to work at night. And then meditation, it's another one that it's just scientifically proven to be absolutely great. I've been meditating actually since I'm a little kid, although it was not cool back then. I was just the weird though that would go into a dark room to just put music on and just like listen to music and I would not want to be bothered for like an hour and a half because I wanted to be with my thoughts.

But meditating, again, it's just something that it's great for your cortisol levels and overall your alpha brain waves and just concentration. So it's just something that it's generally really, really good for the body and in mind. It's kind of interesting that you went from working for big tech like Instagram and coming up with probably algorithmic ways. I don't know if that's a word for people to stay on the app longer. and now you're kind of on the other end where I'm sure a lot of people

have things like stress issues, sleep issues, you know, libido energy, all of that from being on social media, being on devices all the time. Totally. And I have to say that the best part, though, of working at Instagram

is that we would care internally a lot about these issues as well. Like I remember when the team was being created to like, control the time spent in the platform because, you know, eventually we realized that there were some people that they were taking the tool to the extreme where they were using Instagram for, you know, over an hour or two a day. So, you know, we started to have to put measurements in place that whether that was not helping revenue at all, but like it was helping, you know, people

stay more healthy and sane across the board. And that's something that, you know, I was, I always felt really proud of of how we operated back then that, you know, we never wanted to really compromise people's health. But as you said, it was mostly like feeling heartbroken when I would ask around and pretty much all of my friends were running into the same issues. You know, like, yeah, like I want to, you know, eat better, but I just really didn't know what was going on. Like, 10 years ago, this diet was great, right? It was the low-fat diets. That's how you had to eat because that was good for your cholesterol and overall health.

And now, like we're saying the opposite, like, low-carb diets are the way to go. So people are so confused that the problem of being confused and not knowing what's going on with your body is, like eventually you lose hope and you become demotivated. And that's why for me, which is just. is kind of reverse engineering all of these, looking at all of the tools that I developed in big tech and trying to figure out how to map that out to help people feel better. And of course, as you said,

health is a really hard industry because what you don't want is to put health and people's well-being fully in the hands of tech. But you don't want an algorithm to suddenly be controlling your health. So a base is also something that we have worked really hard on that is building algorithms that are supervised by doctors and nutritionists. And this is more so creating technology that is amplifying the reach of the best functional medicine doctor in sleep, the best functional medicine doctor in adrenal fatigue. Right. So when we see profiles that fit a given, you know, characteristic in terms of hormone levels and age and certain conditions, we are able to serve them really, really great with the best care in the world at the time, more than actually us building things from scratch. So what I always say is that we are just building technology that is scaling the reach of, you know, doctors that usually charge $400 an hour for a consult, such as you can get that in your app, you know, for 15.

995 a month. So that's, those are the kind of things that we are trying to build a base. But again, it's a hard problem because you have to create the right balance of technology and algorithms, but also like that experience in doctors and nutrition is that, you know, they still need to be involved and should be involved. That's pretty amazing though. And it, and you are really utilizing the technology, like, of the times that we have available, but also not taking the human aspect out of it. And that's something that I really appreciated. Like I said, when I got my results and I went through everything in the app,

but then I had a call with an actual person and we were able to really talk about kind of, you know, the things that weren't covered in the app and really what to do next. And it's really amazing. I mean, I think that what you're doing is so needed right now. And hopefully we'll, you know, kind of become the future of health and being able to have access to these things because we are also different and it's so hard to navigate, especially online, what the right thing is to do. And because I've been vocal about issues that I've gone through in the past, I have people

that ask me questions daily, like, oh, I'm bloated all the time. What should I do? Or like, my period's not regular. What can I do? Somebody sent me a message the other day and said, is there a supplement that's like Adderall because I just crash every afternoon at three. And I'm like, I don't know if that's really like getting to the root cause of that. You know, like I don't know. Caffeine. That's the only one I can think of. But, you know, it's so important for us to learn what's happening with ourselves in order to be able to know what to do next and find a solution.

So where can everybody find you? Get dash base.com or get underscore. base on Instagram and social media. We are also usually super responsive through our customer service chat or email. Fun fact, I actually spend 30 minutes of my day every day, just going through customer service tickets and answering a couple of them. I just find that a super fun and also super insightful, just as you said, being connected to what people actually need and what are the questions that they have, you know, like in the case of,

hey, I crash every day at 3 p.m. What kind of new tropics or like supplements should I be taking? And, you know, it's for us, it's also like, how can we deliver value before the test as well, right? Like through education, because for people, it's even helpful to know, like, hey, if you crash at 3 p.m. pay attention if you're eating something like pasta or like any potential inflammatory foods because maybe it's going to be inflammation or like pay attention if it actually gets worse at like four or five six p.m. because then it's probably you know rooted in vitamin deficiencies or like actually you know like if if you're also really tired in the morning it could be adrenal fatigue and your cortisol levels you know maybe low and and we need to talk to.

all this from a hormonal perspective, right, like thyroid cortisol. So again, like even for people to know what are the possibilities, you know, the top three, four root causes to something so they can start paying attention to signs, right, to start understanding their body a little bit better and listening to their body from a scientific perspective. But again, signs that it's not boring is something that we love doing, right? Like, we're here to educate and not. necessarily. I mean, what it's driving everyone to join base as a company as an employee is not necessarily to make money, although we are, of course, a business. We are here for the mission. It's super hard and challenging, but it's so exciting. And it's, you know, we are really here to help people

feel better. And education, even though it's, of course, free of charge is something that we also love doing. And that's something that, as I said, we are at get dash base.com. and any questions that anyone might have, we'll make sure to answer those within one business day. Amazing. Well, I really love what you guys are doing, and I think your mission really comes through. And I hope that everybody is listening,

if they're struggling with anything, or they just want to find out more about themselves and their bodies and how everything is working, that they go and they sign up. We'll have a link for it in show notes. And thank you, again, Lila, so interesting to hear your story. Thank you so much for having me.

A base membership starts at 5995 a month. And right now you can get 20% off your first month of membership with the code Blonde Files. That's B-L-O-N-D-E-F-I-L-E-S. All you have to do is visit get-d-Base.com forward slash blonde files to learn more or enter the code blonde files at checkout. So again, that's G-E-T-B-A-S-E. slash blonde files for 20% off your first month. I hope you enjoyed that episode.

If you liked it, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. I'm always posting about each episode there or over on my personal page at Ariel Lori.