The FitTech Club Podcast

"Aging starts in your DNA" - Adiv Johnson, Head of Scientific Affairs, Tally Health

• FitTech Club • Season 2 • Episode 10

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🔥 What's in this episode? Over 200,000 people waited for this technology before launch - this is how Tally Health is revolutionizing longevity measurement through DNA science. In this episode, Adiv Johnson, Head of Scientific Affairs and Education, reveals how a simple cheek swab can predict your biological age and mortality risk with remarkable accuracy. Discover how they're achieving measurable longevity insights through epigenetic aging clocks and AI-powered personalization.

🎤 About our guest: Adiv Johnson is the Head of Scientific Affairs and Education at Tally Health, a longevity company that has raised over $10 million and performed 20,000+ age tests. He holds a PhD in Physiological Sciences with over 15 years of aging research experience and has published 40+ scientific papers. As part of the founding team, he left his previous role to join Tally Health after consulting for Dr. David Sinclair's Lifespan podcast, bringing deep expertise in epigenetic biomarkers and aging biology.

🎯 What you'll learn

[06:06] How DNA methylation changes predictably with age - enabling epigenetic clocks that estimate biological age within years of accuracy

[09:00] Why single biomarkers fail - the need for holistic aging measurement combining molecular data with traditional fitness metrics like grip strength and VO2 max

[14:55] Tally Health's three-tier business model - individual testing, comprehensive membership with lifestyle coaching, and supplement-only subscriptions

[19:07] The massive synergy potential between molecular longevity tools and traditional fitness operators for holistic aging optimization

[23:55] AI's transformative role in longevity - from personalized coaching algorithms to next-generation biomarkers that better capture mortality risk

📌 Links & resources

Tally Health Website

Connect with Adiv Johnson on LinkedIn

🎧 Enjoyed this episode?

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Natalia Karbasova, founder and CEO of the FitTech Club, a global business club for founders and executives in the fitness and consumer health tech industries. In this episode, we explore how DNA methylation is revolutionizing longevity measurement beyond traditional fitness biomarkers. Adav Johnson, head of scientific affairs and education at Tally Health, reveals how a simple cheek swab can predict biological age within years of accuracy and capture actual mortality risk. So, without further ado, let's dive right in.

Speaker 2:

All right, we're live now and I'm very happy to welcome Adip Johnson, head of Scientific Affairs and Education and Telehealth, to this podcast episode of the FitTech Club podcast. Adip, if you have a PhD in physiological sciences, you have over 15 years of experience in aging research. You've published over 40 scientific papers. That's amazing how much you have done so far. And today we're going to be speaking about the longevity of business models. Specifically, we'll dive into the business model of telehealth. I'm very interested in this one. With telehealth, you guys are trying to improve health span, extend longevity, through scientific methods, specifically DNA research. I hope you'll give us a wrap up on that one as well. And with this in mind, edith, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure mind.

Speaker 2:

Edith, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure, edith. Let's dive right into it and start with some numbers. So you've raised over $10 million so far. Technically speaking, you are still a startup, although a quite advanced one, and you've performed over 20,000 age tests. Probably it's going to be a bit more than that since then, and so tell us a bit about your model, how this really works and why you think what you're doing is valuable for the longevity of humanity.

Speaker 3:

These are all great questions. So I've been with the company for over three years now. I was part of the founding team and I actually came to find out about this when I was in stealth mode because I was doing consulting for Dr David Sinclair for his Lifespan podcast and we got to know each other and I was doing research with my close friend, dr Maxim Shokharev, looking at Asian biomarkers, asian biology, and I learned about this and when we saw that there was an opportunity to join, we were so excited so I left my previous job to join and my close friend Dr Shokharev left the Salk Institute to join and we've both been here since the idea for the company really started with DNA methylation and DNA methylation.

Speaker 3:

Great question. It's a process that our cells use to control which regions of DNA are accessible or inaccessible. It's an epigenetic mechanism that regulates the expression of genes without modifying the underlying code of DNA itself. And there's other types of epigenetic mechanisms. Dna methylation is especially well known epigenetic mechanisms. Dna methylation is especially well known. Typically speaking, you add a chemical methyl group it's a carbon atom with three hydrogen atoms, kind of like a flag to a region in DNA and that region just gets blocked off. It's kind of like putting police tape around it saying stay away, and then when you remove it, the opposite happens. And this is how cells assume different identities. That's why a nerve cell behaves differently than a heart cell or a skin cell. They have the same DNA but it's the epigenetic layer that's determining how they behave and what types of genes are expressed.

Speaker 3:

And it's become really, really clear that DNA methylation drastically changes with age.

Speaker 3:

Actually, one of my first papers was reporting on a literature review how the methylation landscape just becomes dysregulated over time.

Speaker 3:

You see genes that should be turned off or turned on, the exact opposite.

Speaker 3:

Sites that should be methylated lose methylation, others gain methylation and this just contributes to a lot of molecular disorder and dysfunction and, shockingly, dr Steve Horvath showed this in 2013, many of the methylation patterns that change with age are highly predictable so predictable that you can predict almost perfectly how old everyone is just by looking at their methylation, within a few years of accuracy.

Speaker 3:

And this gave birth to something known as an epigenetic aging clock, which is typically a machine learning model or an artificial intelligence model that reads in methylation on dna and then outputs an h, and this science was the basis for telehealth, and we created, before we launched, a really, really special model that predicts how old people are epigenetically with a cheek swab, and we've shown, through collaboration with researchers in Scotland who had access to a data set with older adults, that this model actually captures mortality risk, so how long older adults will live and we showed that, in older adults tracked over time, people that were predicted to be the oldest with our model were more likely to die significantly more likely to die during the follow-up period than people that were predicted to be the youngest. So we know that there's a signal here that is relevant to aging and longevity, and this is kind of the foundation of the business.

Speaker 3:

So we want to test, and this is the measurement tool that people can use to gain insights into their epigenetic aging. And then, on top of that, we have two other aspects of the business. One is lifestyle recommendations, which include things like how to optimize strength training, cardiovascular training all important for longevity but, of course, diet, sleep, mental health, habits all of these factors. And then we also have supplement formulations that are geared towards specific use cases as well. So these are the three main parts of the business, and the whole idea is to offer a combination of measurements and tracking and then intervention.

Speaker 2:

So test status quo, recommend what to do about this and sell additional supplements to help solve those problems. Recommend what to do about this and sell additional supplements to help solve those problems. Adif, how would you really describe the problem that you're solving? Because that sounds like a great consumer health company, but like what exact problem are you solving and who is buying your product?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, great questions. So the problem we're solving is it's really hard to understand how you're aging and you can't just do it with one marker. Right? You can measure your grip strength if you get a dynamometer, or how long you can do a dead hang.

Speaker 2:

That's a really Right. In the classical fitness space we usually say grip strength as well as muscle volume are the indicators for longevity, and that's what the traditional fitness industry always, or quite often, understands when they're speaking about longevity. So what's different in your approach?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, great question. So grip strength is an amazing biomarker. It routinely associates with how long people live, their risk of developing age-related diseases. But it's not a perfect biomarker and there are situations where people have an amazing grip strength but die early, and it's really easy to imagine how that could happen. And likewise, you might have someone who's running marathons in their 80s, has terrible grip strength but is aging quite well. So no single biomarker tells the whole story and that's why, from our perspective, you need to incorporate diverse metrics, each of which are providing insights into different systems, to get a more holistic sense of aging. And there are not. When you go to a store or a clinic, it's not typical to get something that provides insights into your methylation, your epigenome. So this is where we're trying to get something that provides insights into your methylation, your epigenome. So this is where we're trying to offer something that can be used on top of other aging biomarkers such as grip strength, vo2 max, walking speed, maybe clinical metrics even like heart rate variability, blood pressure, etc.

Speaker 2:

And for your customers, like typical customers.

Speaker 3:

Typical customers are people that are very passionate about longevity. Our initial cohort was mostly biohackers, so we had a very large wait list of over 200,000 people before we started and these are people that were following Dr David Sinclair. They read his book, listened to his podcast, signed up and a lot of our initial members came from that wait list and were people that were very knowledgeable about aging, and I think biohackers are probably the best term to describe that cohort. Over time we still do get biohackers. We've actually seen a lot of our newer customers are people that are interested in longevity and know a little bit or a moderate amount about it, but are not experts in it. So the cohort has blended over time to represent now a mix of kind of traditional super knowledgeable biohackers and people that are just starting to learn about this but want to go deeper and do more Amazing.

Speaker 2:

So we have discussed that your ecosystem consists of. On the one hand, we test your DNA and find out where you stand in terms of your biological aging, and please correct me if I am bringing the wrong stuff together. Right, you recommend supplements and you also recommend the lifestyle changes. Could you tell us a bit more about your business models, the numbers behind it, how you earn money and where do you want to move on? Where do you want to move with that one?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so the way we structure our business model is people can just buy a test by itself or they can buy multiple tests. And we do have people that reach out and say hey, I want 10 tests for myself or for my family, or I want multiple tests for a personalized experiment.

Speaker 2:

What kind of tests are those? Give us an example.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah. So you get a kit at home and it's a cheek swab. So you open up a kit, you take out a swab and you swab part of your cheek, Right, so you're brushing your teeth, but with your cheek. Then you put it in a tube, you put the swab up and down on the tube and that's it, Pop it in the mailbox and then it goes to the lab and gets processed.

Speaker 2:

So it's always the same tests, and do you have tests that are focused on different kinds of criteria that you're looking at, or is it always the same result that you're looking at?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, what we look at is we measure hundreds of thousands of methylation sites across the genome and we're looking at specific sites that we found to be of special interest for epigenetic aging, and the main readout of that is an epigenetic age. Now we do have an R&D team here in the company which I'm part of, and we are looking into what kind of additional insights you can provide based on methylation, because, surprisingly, you can use DNA methylation to estimate quite a bit about a person. So you can. It's not perfect, but you can find a pattern of methylation that significantly correlates with whether or not someone does strength training, for example, or whether or not someone has a plant based diet, or whether or not someone smokes or drinks a certain amount, and so we are looking into the possibility of giving methylation based readouts that provide insights into how someone's lifestyle is impacting their DNA methylation in a cheek swab. But at the moment you get a readout and then you track it over time. So we have an interface which shows people historical results up until most recent results and, of course, everyone wants to see a trend line that goes down over time, and the goal is to get your epigenetic age lower and lower relative to your chronological age, and that's one aspect of the business.

Speaker 3:

Now there's also a membership people can sign up for. Membership includes routine testing, so you basically sign up, you're testing multiple times a year with a specific cadence, and then you fill out a comprehensive survey and we have an algorithm that looks at your results, your methylation, looks at your lifestyle survey and then determines what to prioritize, and we call that an action plan. So someone might fill out the survey. They're not doing strength training, they're not doing cardio. They're drinking too much. Unfortunately, alcohol is not great.

Speaker 2:

Probably not water.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, etc. We should ask about water intake. That's important, but it could be that they're doing some things right but not doing other things properly. But then the question is what to focus on. So that's where we use the methylation results to compare how other people are doing versus them and then give them a ranking of what to prioritize and then a check-in plan. So a membership it really is for someone that says I want to be on this journey, I want to make lots of changes, I want advice, I want to be held accountable. It'll help me get there. And then the membership also includes a supplement as well, which someone can choose what to focus on. The default recommendation is our first product that we launched, and the third type of business model or business offering is a supplement subscription. So someone can just sign up for a supplement or any number of supplements without getting any kind of lifestyle recommendation or getting any kind of testing, and so we get different cohorts, different types of people, depending on which offering they go for.

Speaker 2:

Right. Do you disclose the number of paying subscribers?

Speaker 3:

The number of subscribers. I would have to check and see what it is. Off the top of my head I don't know, but they're pretty well split, I would say, at this point, between memberships and the most popular type of subscription model we see is memberships or supplement only. And we do get people that buy one off tests, but those are not as frequent as the other types and over time we've actually seen that more people are moving towards supplements as well are moving towards supplements as well, so we still have a very strong membership base, but at least recently, and this could change over time who knows, the interest in supplements has grown Right, right, and I have a big question here for you.

Speaker 2:

So we know that the longevity industry is growing pretty fast and we have quite some fitness companies, like Lifetime Fitness, that are also entering this market with different kinds of treatments, including GLP-1 treatments for weight loss, including, you know, infrared saunas. All this kind of stuff that seems to be helping normal users, not just biohackers, to be fit and healthy and hopefully live longer. But the question to me is for me is how do you see the combination of the business of gyms that are obviously really heavily on the habit change side of things and what you guys are doing?

Speaker 3:

I think there's potential for huge synergy. From my perspective, exercise is the most powerful pro-longevity intervention we have in our toolkit. Obviously, I'm not going to downplay sleep or diets or any of these things they're all very, very important but I think that when you look at just the consistency of the data and the magnitude of the effect, it really seems like strength training, cardiovascular training, more full-body type training, like yoga that incorporates stretching and balance. These things are so important for healthy aging and longevity and I think everyone should be prioritizing this if they care about maximizing their chances of living a long, healthy life. And so because we don't do coaching, for example, and we don't incorporate these kind of classical exercise or fitness metrics that are also important for longevity, I think there's huge potential synergy between these more novel contemporary molecular tools that provide insights and also traditional and emerging fitness technology as well.

Speaker 2:

Do you have any partnerships in place with classical fitness operators or also companies like wearables or fitness apps or lifestyle apps, or whatever comes to your mind that you're working with?

Speaker 3:

We are exploring partnerships right now with a few different external organizations and we're very excited about that. We don't have them currently in place. We have done an internal wearable study with one of our products, sleep Formulation, to look at potential impacts on sleep quality and other metrics, but this is something we've discussed quite a bit of. It would be wonderful to look at the impact of the interventions we offer and the epigenetic age testing that we see many users do repeatedly and see how that pairs with something like wearable data. It would be incredible, and also just being able to see how methylation patterns relate to classic wearable metrics as well would be really fascinating to see how it all blends together.

Speaker 2:

And the partnerships that you're working on. What kind of partnerships would be that? Would those be, and what? What kind of companies?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, most of the interest we've seen for partnerships has been for the test, so people that want to incorporate our cheek swab methylation tests into their business. And we launched as a direct-to-consumer company and this is an initiative that we're excited about and we're pursuing of basically formalizing a path towards B2B integration. But we've had many people reach out. We've also had people order tests for others in a given organization because they want to see what the impact of what they're working on is on our methylation result.

Speaker 2:

Right, and if I know that you're coming from the classical medical research. If you were a fitness operator, though, what would you do to enter the longevity market?

Speaker 3:

If you were a classic Okay, this is a really really good question. Okay, this is a really really good question. I think that if it was me, I would offer routine testing for metrics that we know are really really valuable to measure for health and aging. We already mentioned a couple of these. Grip strength and VO2 max are two of the best biomarkers that predict how long people will live. I think it's also very important to measure lean mass percentage, body mass, that is, fat versus lean. You know DEXA scan is the most traditional way to do that. This can be quite expensive. There are newer scales that aren't as accurate but give you this data at a fraction of the cost and are much easier to get access to.

Speaker 3:

But if I was going to make, say, a gym or a fitness center that had a longevity focus, I would make sure to incorporate testing for these kind of metrics on a regular basis.

Speaker 3:

I also think that even basic things like beats per minute for heart rate or heart rate variability, which is so easy to access now with variables, these are also important to optimize. And the way I think about all this is, again, there is no one metric that tells the whole story of full body aging, and so you know what I personally try to do is I try to optimize as many metrics as possible that I know are significantly associated with how long people live, risk of various chronic diseases, etc. So I think that if you could incorporate this suite of metrics and then obviously pair it with interventions that are fitness oriented or even recovery oriented red light, for example, I know, is emerging in popularity Saunas, of course, I'm a huge fan of saunas. One of my favorite things to do in a recovery days go chill in the steam room and the sauna. So I think that's probably how I would frame it, if that answers your question.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and you know what's been your personal most surprising learning about the business of longevity so far in all those years.

Speaker 3:

That's such a great question. I think that I assume naively that people knew a lot more about longevity and and wellness, and it's been. You know, it's very easy. It's kind of like when you drive a car and learn to drive. It's super easy to forget what it was like to learn how to drive. And I think I've been in the space, I've been so involved in this space for a long time now. I mean, when I was in high school, I knew I wanted to go into longevity and I was just obsessed with it that I think I I just got to a point where I forgot that. You know, many people are not that obsessed with this and they don't know a lot about things and let's understand, they haven't taken the time. They have busy lives. Why should they so? Just really understanding the need for education and also teaching people why it's important to do something, as opposed to just assuming that they understand that it is important to do Right.

Speaker 2:

These are the basic things that really bring us forward, adif. Maybe my last question would be looking forward into this year and the next coming years, with the whole incredible space of progress that we're witnessing right now, what do you expect to radically change the business of longevity in the next couple of years?

Speaker 3:

AI for sure, Artificial intelligence.

Speaker 3:

This is a wild time for the aging space.

Speaker 3:

I've never seen it like this before, and that's saying something, because, since Cynthia Kenyon's seminal work showing that you can double worm lifespan with a single gene mutation, the field really exploded more than a couple of decades ago, and I really feel like we're at the beginning of the hockey stick for the longevity sector and people. The evidence is just overwhelming that aging is highly modifiable. There is a huge amount we can do to impact it, both on an individual and a societal level, and there's so many insights that we have yet to tap. And AI, I think, will allow us to unravel some of the complexity of molecular data and provide those insights. So, whether it's a large language model that incorporates huge quantities of user data to provide personalized coaching and recommendations, or the next generation of biomarkers that do a much better job capturing mortality risk long-term, I think that this is going to be a very transformative period. I'm not maybe as ambitious as some people in terms of what the predictions are, but I do think that some big changes are on the horizon.

Speaker 2:

So, given the current rate of progress, how long will both of us be able to live and stay healthy?

Speaker 3:

That is such a complicated question. I'll tell you what the range of the field is. So on the very conservative side, you have people that say, look, we've already maxed out human lifespan in developed countries. You know, we can make it to around mid 80s on average, and that's as good as it's going to get. We can make it to around mid 80s on average, and that's as good as it's going to get. On the other side, you have people that say we're going to hit longevity escape velocity by 2029, early 30s. And the idea of longevity escape velocity is science finds a way to extend lifespan more than a year for every year that goes by. So essentially, aging has been conquered.

Speaker 3:

I think I'm somewhere in the middle where I do think that we should be optimistic about what's possible and emerging tech, and you know, I personally believe that I can live to 100. Historically, I think you've really probably needed good genetics to make it to 100. And I'm optimistic that that's going to be something that'll be more accessible for more people with more technology, and I also think it's going to be more possible for people to be in good health later in life, in their 70s and 80s and even 90s. But you know. Hey, we'll see what the actual outcome is, but I think it's going to be a positive step forward regardless.

Speaker 2:

So I hope we can celebrate your 100th birthday together, Adif.

Speaker 3:

That sounds perfect. I like that. Thanks for joining us. Hey, thank you so much, bye.