Strength Coach Collective
Welcome to the “Strength Coach Collective” podcast, where we bridge the gap between cutting-edge fitness science and real-world coaching.
For the first time, people are living longer but not better. Fitness coaches and personal trainers can fix that. But who’s helping them push the industry forward? No one—until now.
Hosted by top trainers and gym owners, this show will teach you how to turn research and technology into actionable tools for transforming lives in gyms, studios and clubs.
From heart-rate training, wearable tech and biometrics to the psychology of behavior change, this podcast bridges the gap between knowledge and application. In each episode, we’ll give you practical insights to elevate your coaching or personal training practice and maximize client results.
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Strength Coach Collective
The Next Frontier: Blood Biomarkers for Precise Fitness Coaching
The one-size-fits-all approach to fitness coaching is no more. Enter blood biomarkers: the next frontier in truly individualizing client training programs.
Today on the “Strength Coach Collective” podcast, Kenny Markwardt sits down with Ash Anwar from Molecular You to explore how comprehensive blood analysis is revolutionizing fitness coaching.
While traditional medical tests look at a handful of diagnostic markers after problems develop, Molecular You analyzes 288 biomarkers to catch issues early.
In this episode, you’ll learn how biomarkers can transform your coaching by giving you insight into:
- Resilience—if clients are overtraining or recovering from exercise stress.
- Energy systems—moving beyond V02 max to determine how efficiently the body shifts between aerobic and anaerobic fuel sources.
- Cognitive performance—levels of brain plasticity and neuroprotection, showing how exercise literally makes clients smarter.
Ash also shares recommendations for testing frequency and explains how coaches can stay within their scope of practice.
Listen to find out how molecular-level data can help you optimize programming for each client’s unique physiology.
Links
Strength Coach Collective
1:32 - How biomarkers relate to fitness
20:02 - Top biomarkers for coaches
29:22 - Fitness and cognitive ability
40:44 - Molecular You’s process
51:16 - Recommended testing frequency
A one size fits all approach is no longer the gold standard in coaching. We need to be using all the data that we can get our hands on to help evolve a client's training program. Blood and biomarkers are the next frontier that we should be exploring in terms of individualizing a client's experience. Ash Anwar is here from Molecular U to talk to us about how we can do just that. Welcome to the Strength Coach Collective, a podcast brought to you by Two Brain Business. We are here to help advance the strength and conditioning coaching community by bringing you a wide range of experts in the field. Join our group at strengthcoachcollective.com. For today's episode, I'm your host, Kenny Marquardt. Ash, I'm very excited to have this conversation with you. This is... Welcome, Ash.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, happy to be here. And I'm sure it'll be knowledgeable for me too, because I've dealt with a lot of biomarkers and things in my career, but I'd love to hear about their application and to get that feedback as well is gonna be a good learning experience for me too.
SPEAKER_00:Cool, so you hit on something I wanna start with, biomarker. As we've talked about before this podcast, the word biomarker keeps coming up. Obviously, it's a big thing that you guys do at Molecular Review. We've talked about how I'm going to screw this up many times over the podcast, but can you define a biomarker for me and for us?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So a biomarker is, you know, it's a broad term. It's used in a lot of different contexts. But essentially what a biomarker is, is any sort of measurable indicator of a biological state or condition. So that could be a metric associated with, you know, how someone is in terms of their health status, in terms of their aging and longevity. It could be in the context of a disease. or in the context that maybe we're exploring is more performance and recovery from exercise and things like that. So a metric, a measurable indicator is what's referred to as a biomarker. And biomarkers can be of many different types. So genes could be a biomarker, for example, if you're looking at genetics. In the context of what we do at Molecular U here, we are looking at proteins and metabolites. And what these are specifically are the metabolites are the byproducts of the chemical reactions that occur in the body. So we're looking at metabolites as one class of biomarkers. And proteins are essentially the structural and functional elements in your body. They produce, they are part of our structural set So they're part of the skeletal system, the muscle system as well. And they perform a lot of functions, a lot of enzymatic functions when we go and exercise or when we eat, when we stress out. All these kind of things are governed by proteins as well. And that's the second class of biomarkers that we assess here at Molecular U. And we put this all together to give an indication of a person's health status, a person's disease risk, or their responses to exercise and changes in their diet.
SPEAKER_00:Cool. All three of those things you just referenced, maybe not three, there's a million, but post, future, present, the things that they're going to be indicative of through, I think we should probably reference, we're talking about a blood test. That's how we're going to compile this information through what you guys do. There's so much to explore. How do we... How is this relevant to fitness, to longevity, to helping people live longer, live better?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, you know, we could look at it in the context of blood tests for sure, right? Like, because there's multiple different, I would say, biofluids that, you know, people can assess. Blood is a big one. And the reason that we believe blood is so important is that all of our key organs and tissues are essentially bathed in blood, right? So it's the perfect medium from which not only is the body nourished when it comes to the nutrients and things that it needs, but also as we just go through our daily lives, our stresses, our physical activity produces a lot of byproducts. and waste products that our blood carries and filters it out from our blood to keep us optimal. So blood is already right off the bat, I think, a very important biofluid and very informative biofluid. Of course, we could look at other things like urine. So for specific cases, urine might be looked at. Cerebrospinal fluid in the case of neurological disease, for example, is a vital one for that one as well. But I think blood overall is really a good excellent medium for getting a really broad-based comprehensive set of information about an individual. And the reason biomarkers are important and really good in the context of what we're looking at is they're They're really objective, and they have a lot of scientific data behind them. So tons of research has been already done on blood biomarkers and their relation to disease and performance. So we have a lot of that information already at our fingertips. And it's really about synthesizing that information down to whoever the users are going to be, whether that's coaches making sense of that information for their clients, or it's the clients themselves trying to understand more about their body on a much, much more deeper level the reasons we're particularly interested in biomarkers in the blood from a molecular use standpoint is is for two essential reasons one these biomarkers act as in early warning system, essentially. So it allows us to understand the early changes that could occur when it comes to disease or when, you know, the body is under a tremendous amount of stress or when there's some sort of a deficiency. Maybe, you know, there's a lot of overtraining, for example, a lot of inflammation that's happening there or the immune system is primed and activated for some reason and causing some sort of autoimmune damage. Like looking at biomarkers gives us this early detection system and allows us to understand the body on a deeper level, understand any sort of issues earlier on so we can intervene and then put this individual back on track towards a much more optimized, healthy and longevity. angle, essentially. And then the second reason is personalization. So when we talk and think about genetics, you know, while we are very unique on a number of fronts, each of us has a uniqueness and a personalization to our biomarkers. So just like the genetics, the metabolites and proteins that are in our blood, we also have a unique combination of these biomarkers that exist for us. We also these biomarkers also respond to exercise to diet to our daily lives in a truly unique way and to look at these biomarkers essentially we are able to uncover a unique pattern a unique signature for for each individual
SPEAKER_00:crazy there's again so much to explore yeah in in For basic context, and you're out of Canada, which I think that's a little bit relevant to the question I'm going to ask because most of our listeners are probably U.S. based. And when we get a blood test from our general practitioner, again, that might be different. You guys might not. I don't know. I think it's probably what I'm thinking about is like insurance coverages, et cetera, here. So in any case, comparatively to what we get in a generic practice, you know, wellness exam to all the biomarkers that you guys are doing at molecular you, how does that compare? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. I think in a way it is quite similar. So the system in Canada and the U.S., I think, are quite similar that way where a physician can recommend a blood test. So they'll fill out a form. You can go into a blood collection or phlebotomy kind of outfit. Sometimes it's done by the clinic in-house. or it can be done by, I think in the US there's Quest, those kinds of companies. We have our equivalents up here as well, like Life Labs and Dynacare, for example. So very similar, you'll go in, you'll get the blood tests. The tests will be analyzed in a specialized dedicated laboratory, and then the results are fed back to the physician where they bring you back in for a consultation and make a decision. So in that process, we are quite similar. A physician in the US can order our tests But the key differences are in specific areas. So a traditional blood test done by the physician, they're usually looking at a handful of biomarkers, right? And these biomarkers are more on the diagnostic side of things. So basically, these are the biomarkers that once your body is in a state of consistent damage and disease these are the biomarkers that would become changed and that's what they're looking at a handful of these biomarkers that will indicate okay whether or not you have a specific disease because usually when individuals go to a doctor they have a symptom or they're worried about something and the doctor is essentially using the the standard clinical tests to determine what is the disease and what is the medication that potentially they're going to put the individual on. With Molecular U, we are looking at hundreds of biomarkers. So our blood, as I mentioned earlier, our blood is so rich in information and traditional clinical labs only look at a small portion of the biomarkers that exist in the blood. We are looking at you know, 300 currently and expanding to close to 1000 of these biomarkers in our blood. And this is going to give us a tremendous level of information when it comes to looking at an individual's health and disease status and response to various stimuli. And as I mentioned, The doctor is looking for something diagnostic.
SPEAKER_02:Our
SPEAKER_01:biomarkers that we look at are really in the realm of a pre-diagnostic stage. So if you think about, let's say, diabetes, for example. So diabetes is where the body loses control of the ability to regulate blood sugar. So when the doctor prescribes their standard clinical test, they're really looking at fasting glucose as an indicator of like, okay, you're unable to manage your sugar levels, so it's really high. Or they're looking at something like hemoglobin A1c, which gives them like a three-month time window as to like the average levels of glucose in your blood. And they're just looking to see that, okay, if it's elevated, okay, you're likely to be diabetic or pre-diabetic. But the biomarkers that we're looking at are much, much more in the earlier stage because our bodies do a really good job of maintaining what's something known as homeostasis, which is a normal state. So despite all the insults that are happening to our body on a daily basis, our body always tries to maintain a state of normality. So there's a lot of redundant systems that compensate for any sort of dysfunction. And if you think about it like dominoes, there's a lot of dominoes that start to fall very early in the years. And until you have enough dominoes that fall and your system cannot maintain that state of normality, that state of homeostasis anymore, that's when the final domino falls down, which is fasting glucose. And then the doctors are able to understand and indicate it. But we are looking at those earlier dominoes further upstream. And the beauty of that is That's incredible.
SPEAKER_00:It's like, yeah, I think the frustrations that I and a lot of people I talk to and a lot of my clients and a lot of people in the industry are like the medical, and I don't think it's their fault. I think it's just that it's so clogged up, but it's so late and so reactive and so much less preventative. that a lot of times, you know, I go to the physician, they're like, what in the world are you doing here? Like, you're clearly healthy. You're clearly doing fine. But I want to know more. I want to be where you're talking about, steps and steps and steps ahead. So it's not even, you know, we don't even ever get to that point. Why are you talking to me and fitness coaches and not more? And I realize you probably are talking to physicians as well. But like, why are you talking to me? Why are we talking to coaches?
SPEAKER_01:I think that, well, I would say, first of all, we are talking to clinicians, definitely, because I think it is part of that healthcare continuum, too. But I think in terms of our health journeys, I think, especially after COVID, COVID, people have taken a lot of their health into their own hands and they're really looking to take control of their own health. And so there is a big capacity for people to understand what's going on on a much deeper level than waiting for potentially something to go wrong or waiting for things to be at a diagnostic level. As you mentioned, they want to take these steps earlier. They want to have control earlier. And I think this is where coaches and fitness professionals professionals like yourself can fit in really well here, right? Like it's really all about understanding the early stages of the body status in terms of health, but not only understanding that, but being able to take control and guide individuals and guide clients into not only warning of disease, but also pushing them towards a higher degree of wellness, a higher degree of resilience against disease, a higher degree of optimization for their health. Because I think just being healthy, just being normal is a good thing, but we can use the knowledge of our biomarkers and knowledge that you guys have in in understanding the body mechanics understanding the the physiology of exercise to take it further to make our ourselves really strong and against against any sort of stresses that we have in our in our environment quite that we have on a on a regular basis right
SPEAKER_00:yeah i think it was that was transparently a little bit of a leading question because i i perhaps uh with a little bit of ego think that with fitness like we can do so much change in terms of health and wellness so like we are kind of the gatekeepers before people need to go to a physician so I was kind of hoping you'd say something along those lines like you know we do have the chance to elicit so much of that change I just I think that that perspective is becoming more apparent and more accepted where there are those of us who are very proactive and are taking steps to get more data and more things to individualize what we're doing, both in nutrition and training, sleep and recovery and supplements and et cetera, et cetera. But it's just, I think it's just kind of flipping this paradigm of health on its head with thinking that like we are kind of the the initial practitioners of this to help people change that. So I guess I was just kind of hearing it from your perspective of like why, like how you guys, how molecular you is looking at fitness as one of those big leaders and how we're going to make these changes according to what we're going to uncover.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And I think like fitness, and exercise. I mean, we've heard it from the doctor all the time, right? Like, you know, they speak to us about like, eat better and exercise, which is, you know, like, there's two big problems with that. First of all, everyone knows that we should eat better and exercise. And, and you're exactly right what you when you said that you guys are the gatekeepers to health, you truly are, because it's it's one thing to hear advice. It's another thing to have someone who who guides you through this process in a really holistic and data-driven way as you guys are doing, but also be that accountability partner and to help that individual really take control of their health and say, okay, you know what, I am going to be so much more proactive on my health to make sure that I'm going to ward off any sort of disease trends or understand this earlier and you guys are there to essentially give them this information guide them through this information but also act as builders of these healthy habits as well which I think is really important and I'm guilty of this too like I'll go to you know to a gym and I'll do a burst of heavy weights and short reps or something right I'll be like okay there we go I'll make my Yeah, absolutely. We're going to create a specific data-driven guided program for you so you can not only build towards the goals that you want mutually and have that understanding as well, but also build those habits along the way where it becomes, instead of a negative feedback loop, it becomes a positive feedback loop where I'm happy every single time I'm going to the gym. Okay, I'm making incremental progress towards climbing that mountain. And I think where most you can supplement with you guys is giving you those metrics of those biomarkers to be like, okay, these incremental changes that you're seeing on the physical side where somebody is able to lift more or do more reps, we're also seeing this in terms of the molecular drivers for muscle turnover or muscle building. And with the biomarkers, we can actually even see, okay, maybe is the individual being pushed too much? Do we see too much muscle? muscle damage? Do we see inflammation that's maybe indicative of overtraining? Do we see biomarkers that are impacting their endurance and their ability to recover from this exercise? So feed that extra data for you, for you guys to make that much more informed decision at this very critical stage for clients.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's incredible. I We look at strength numbers. We look at VO2 max, and occasionally we'll look at cholesterol and A1C. Again, we're not in a position where we can make diagnoses, but we can look at those things. We can look at blood pressure, resting heart rate. There are a handful of markers that we can look at that will present and be easily accessible as a coach that we can use for our metrics. What are some of the top ones that we have the biggest sets of change on or biggest opportunities for change on as biomarkers that you guys uncover? It's a big question, I realize.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. We can go through it. This is the level of information where I think you guys are already doing such an unprecedented amount of work to integrate, to look at the external factors like reps and VO2 max is such a great indicator of health and and everything i remember in my early days in my kinesiology class being on that bike and having to balloon fond
SPEAKER_00:memories i'm sure that's a great that's just a great 15 minutes of your life
SPEAKER_01:exactly but it's it's it's uh it's it is an arduous test definitely but it is such a good indicator of uh you know essentially another other metric that you guys capture and blood pressure again very, very critical and excites me to know that you're looking at some biomarkers like cholesterol as well. In terms of what we can we can supply from the molecular use side like i think there's three three very big areas that i think we have in terms of our set of biomarkers that i think can feed in and help supplement the information that you're uh that you're already kind of assessing but looking at it from the from the molecular side so the first one really is is i would say around this around our our capacity for recovery and resilience so this is where i'm really talking about how from a molecular side how we can understand how well our body repairs adapts and and handles the physical and mental stresses of daily life right so this is things biomarkers uh that are central around to multiple different systems in the body so systems like inflammation uh looking at immune biomarkers as well the mitochondria become very important at this stage so mitochondria is they always say it's a powerhouse of the cell which is apt because this is the structure where we produce our energy so we want to look at how efficiently that energy is being produced and then you know we look at things like oxidative stress right so we talked about waste products as you exercise you develop you know free radicals and and waste products that need to be eliminated and need to be neutralized if not They can cause excess damage in the body. And then there is a very key interface or bridge between our neurological system and our endocrine system. So how does our neurological system interface with the hormonal system in our body? And we want to make sure that balance is really optimized. So those are some of the key things. systems that feed into what i would call a recovery and resilience theme of the body and you know we have a number of biomarkers there right inflammatory biomarkers like c-reactive protein for example some of your listeners might have heard of c-reactive protein it's it's a common uh inflammatory protein exercise can cause it to increase temporarily, which is a good thing because in response to load, you are having a little bit of muscle tearing and everything. So your body does respond by increasing the inflammation. But we optimally want to see that level of inflammation go back down to normal baseline levels after exercise. If we don't, it indicates that there's too much pushing on the system. There's overtraining and too much inflammation, even post-exercise, hinders any kind of gains and any sort of growth that you would have. So it actually acts as an obstacle, essentially, right? So
SPEAKER_02:you
SPEAKER_01:want to look at that really carefully. And in terms of, for example, the mitochondria, for example, there's a metabolite known as beta-hydroxybutyrate. So some listeners may know that as well. It's essentially a ketone body. So it's produced when our bodies shift from aerobic to anaerobic systems, essentially, right? So instead of using sugars to burn for fuel, we shift towards fat metabolism. So we burn our fats to produce energy, which is a much more energy-intensive process, but also produces ketone bodies. And beta-hydroxybutyrate is an example of that ketone. So understanding the levels of BHB or beta-hydroxybutyrate in the blood give us an understanding of like, okay, how well is the body able to shift from that aerobic to anaerobic type of fuel source and how... is it in terms of the efficiency of that and how is it in terms of like burning the fats, right? So we want to basically, like that gives us a good metric and indicator of that as well.
SPEAKER_00:How do you see that? Like that would probably be a correlate of a VO2 max, I would imagine. How do you see that? Translated by baseline fitness improvement versus other interventions that are possible through nutrition. Tell me about the things that we can do to change that that may or may not be a common prescription for improving VO2 max, or maybe they're the same. Does that make sense? Was that a... Wildly meandering question, but the point was, is it the same thing? Would that just be a representation of VO2max, or would that be a supplement to an improved VO2max by improving your... Oh, gosh. What? Can you say it for me? My chemistry is
SPEAKER_01:gone. BHB,
SPEAKER_00:basically. There we go. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. But yeah, no, there is definitely a correlation between BHB levels and VO2 max. And I think where the data is going to be really beneficial here is where VO2 max really is the output, right? And changes in VO2 max are going to be, I would say, harder to to assess maybe, like you wanna see a big step up between that. But while you're seeing the changes in two different readings of VO2max, we might have multiple changes in levels of BHB and these other biomarkers associated not only with fat oxidation and the fatty metabolism, but in the case of VO2max, like we have biomarkers around lung elasticity right which may change we have biomarkers and metabolites around how efficiently gas exchange is occurring because as you exchange gases the o2 and co2 you're also changing the ph levels of the blood right and so certain biomarkers will also adjust based on those changes of um of pH when it comes to the gas exchange in our lungs as well. So we're getting multiple different intricate detailed measurements from the biomarkers while the VO2 max is being optimized. And I believe that'll help even guide towards how do we optimize and improve an individual's VO2 max, for example. So you're going to get a lot more information that supplements what you guys are already doing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, totally. As you were going through all those different little measurements and things that would be, you know, that would contribute to the improvement of it. Like that just made my brain go in so many different directions of how you would be able to optimize that for somebody rather than just a stereotypical VO2 max improvement protocol, which is, you know, not all that difficult to write, but with having some more inputs that you could change to improve that for somebody specifically is just, that's wild. That's like, that's super exciting to me. Uh, maybe I'm just a weird, maybe I'm just a nerd, but that's all right. I think that's, you are too at a different side of the different side of the room.
SPEAKER_01:So that's all right for everybody. There's something for everybody as well here. And, and I mean, one thing I wanted to point out as well, right? Like we, we are, like we've been talking a lot about kind of the functional element of this, right? VO2 max, a functional score. I was talking a little bit about like the structural elements, right? Structural biomarkers. And, you know, if you think about, you know, weights lifting, you know, if you can put more load and things like that, it may be the structural thing. One area that we can dive into a little bit more too is kind of the third element that I think the molecular you can provide is insights into kind of this connection between energy and mind performance as well right so we have you know our our our cognition is so intricately linked to fitness and and exercise as well as you know how well our body uses energy right both in terms of burning sugars but also burning fats as well our brain uses tremendous amount of oxygen right a tremendous amount of uh of energy right and so when you're essentially optimizing your fitness and your body kinetics and movement, indirectly you are optimizing your cognitive ability. right and so we have biomarkers and metrics that look at how efficiently a brain is your brain is at neurotransmitter metabolism like how how well is is the brain structures communicating and you know does this you know how effectively does this translate into higher cognitive ability and and every athlete will will tell you right when they're playing sports it's not just about the physical movement it's also about a lot of it is is higher level thinking and so So we will have biomarkers around a lot of that, right? How the brain efficiently uses energy, how the neurotransmitters and hormones that are really relevant for optimal brain health and cognitive ability, how those change and how those are at different baselines and improve over the fitness capacity or fitness metrics that you guys will do. And of course, one of the things we want to build too with the brain, just like in our muscles, is we have biomarkers that are established for for cognitive resilience, as it were, right? Being resilient against any sort of damage that could impact our brain or central nervous system. We want to make sure our bodies are resilient against that. Resilient against inflammation, particularly neuroinflammation, which has an even bigger effect on the brain as well. So how can we make sure that our brain and central nervous system is even more protective and has that shield against those insults that can be very damaging.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. How, man, how do you improve those things? Like, so again, like this is an interesting set of data to, to be able to compile, but what do you, again, I can realize there's, again, Millie, there's 200, how many of you guys, how many biomarkers you guys measure in a test? 200,
SPEAKER_01:288 right now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So how, how do we change those things? Like, you know, and that, for that example, let's talk about the cognitive, cognitive resilience. Is that the way, does that the term you use?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Cognitive resilience.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. What, what, what can somebody do about that? Say they get a low score on that. What does that mean for them?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, if they get a low score, it's not the end of the world, right? It just means that we can work towards improving on those specific biomarkers that can essentially... provide a shield for the brain and central nervous system structures, essentially, right? So, for example, this is where I think the data that we have that's based out of a tremendous amount of scientific literature. So what we do at Molecular U is we take all that scientific literature that's out there on these biomarkers and essentially catalog it, compress it, make sense out of it, and put create these models that allow us to understand these various things like cognitive resilience, and then essentially translate it for the users of our platform. And as new research comes out, we're always on top of this, right? So we always scan the research, the latest research, and then bring it into our systems. We have many, many scientists like myself comb through this information, update models, and always provide that latest understanding and interpretation around these different But this is where I think the interface between what we do and what you guys are doing is so critical because we're going to give you that information when it comes to the biomarkers associated with, let's say, cognitive resilience. But we have an academic understanding from the exercise physiology scientific literature that, let's say, weight training is beneficial for weight loss. cognitive improvement when it comes to Alzheimer's disease. Like there's papers published on that, right? But, you know, how is this, you know, how does this occur? And, you know, what type of weight training, what regimen of weight training? And of course, the uniqueness of individuals, right? Is weight training effective in improving the cognitive resilience biomarkers in this individual? If not, why? What else do we have to do to push these biomarkers to get to that stage, right? What we know from the biomarkers, for example, a biomarker for cognitive resilience is something known as, there's a biomarker called insulin-like growth factor binding protein, right? for example. So there's binding protein 2, binding protein 3. Essentially, these are a family of proteins that bind and regulate insulin growth factors, which are hormones in our blood. And the regulation of these proteins governs how plastic our brain is, so how able to adapt and grow and change with knowledge and everything our brains are how effective it is in repairing itself and essentially a very big neuroprotective layer so this family of proteins essentially provides those roles what's known right now is that regular exercise so here the consistency comes in play as well so regular exercise regular training of the body and the mind upregulates these insulin-like growth factor binding proteins, right? This family of proteins gets more expressed when we have regular, consistent exercise. But how does this occur and what type of exercise, that's what we really need to look at. But we know kind of the biological mechanisms behind it, that they get upregulated, they increase the signaling when it comes to insulin growth factor signaling pathways, which are important for neuronal health, synaptic plasticity, and cognitive function. So it makes you smarter, but when we're looking at an individual, I would really love to see when you have, let's say, three different individuals who you've put into three different potential exercises, where those biomarkers for a certain client is signaling really high. Because that'll give us the feedback on that information that, hey, actually this type of weight training is actually giving us the biofeedback for really raising the levels of insulin growth factor binding proteins, for example.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so fascinating and so exciting. And I think that the ability to individualize what somebody is doing is still like the most exciting frontier of fitness and nutrition for me. And what you just described is exactly that. I mean, from not only understanding the baseline of what their genetic tolerances are for– how much volume they can handle. Because some people, like as a coach, I've seen people who can handle ridiculous amounts of work. Like they can just, they can do it day in, day out. And there are other people who just do not tolerate it well at all. And that's a very broad, you know, very broad example. But the same thing goes down the line of, you know, neuromuscular efficiency and how many reps people can do of their run max, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it allows us to make these super intricate program designs At one end of the spectrum, but at the other end of the spectrum, like you said, we still need people to show up to the damn gym. That's also a really important part of this, but by showing them the results that we're able to look at through their biomarkers, show them the improvements, give them the great evidence besides the body compositions, besides the strength numbers, but we're actually able to show on paper, hey, you're getting healthier according to these things. That should help them get some you know, some little breadcrumbs along the way to keep them coming in. So yeah, super, super cool.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean, you could look at it the other way too, right? As, as our, you know, regular exercises we mentioned, so critical, so important to be consistent when we don't exercise our muscles atrophy,
SPEAKER_02:right?
SPEAKER_01:It's, uh, our neuromuscular junctions, for example, like we start to lose them. Synaptic plasticity, if you don't exercise your brain and at the same time, if you're not working out your body, you start pruning that back as well. Even sleep, if someone's not sleeping adequately with proper sleep, there will be pruning of the synaptic connections too, which impacts cognition. So you could look at it the other way too. Like if an individual has done a test and they have a certain threshold of biomarkers and you get an understanding of where the body's at, and if they have a period of sedentary state where they're not working out or they had a big gap in their exercise, you can actually look at those sets of biomarkers and actually see the decline in the muscle turnover and see say hey you know yes we know muscle atrophies but look you you've seen a 15 percent decline because you haven't been consistent or looking at the biomarkers of the brain being like okay look your neurotransmitter ratios here which we were working to optimize well we didn't really work on it like because of this time you went to cancun or something yeah yeah Now you have a 20%, you know, dysfunction change. We need to bring that back. Right. So, you know, it's, it's going to keep people in check. And I think we need that.
SPEAKER_00:I agree. I agree so much. And the, the, that's so, again, so exciting. I get, I giggle a little bit cause people will leave. They'll do like a long trip, but there'll be off for the holidays or, you know, people have their periods of time, which is totally normal, but they'll get on a body composition scanner or they'll do some sort of fitness test and they'll, they'll have gotten worse. Yeah. And they like, well, no kidding. And I, but I tease them. I said, well, that would be pretty stupid if you kept coming to my gym and you were like, sorry, if you stopped coming to my gym and you were getting better, like, why would you keep coming to my gym? Why would you do all these things? I think it's a, just the more, the more compositions or compilations of, of positive evidence that we can show them. And in terms of like, Hey, look, just like, just make your effort, come in, do the thing and you'll keep improving. And also if you don't, There's negative associations with that as well. So I just love the ability to demonstrate, improve, make huge changes, et cetera. What does this look like from a user interface, from a coach interface? What's the process like? Is it invasive? Are you taking half my blood out of my body?
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no. Okay, good. Yeah. And I think that's a big, big positive from what we do. I think what we do is we take two vials of blood. So it's very similar to, I would say, a standard clinical draw if you go in to take a sample. There's a lot of other There's a few other companies. Function Health is another example where they are looking at a number of biomarkers, but they'll take 17 tubes of blood over the course of two days, which I think is pretty invasive. But ours is a fasted blood draw, two vials on the same day. It doesn't take very long, and we leverage a really high-throughput technology known as mass spec that allows us to take essentially very small volumes of blood and be able to essentially run it through this mass spectrometer it's a liquid chromatography mass spectrometer that allows us to get like really accurate measurements of each of these biomarkers and the the variability between the measurements is actually very, very small. So what that enables us to do, so there is definitely that high throughput nature, which means that we can run many of these biomarkers at the same time through the system to get numbers of the hundreds of biomarkers that we assess. But at the same time, because of the technology is so, the variability is so low, in terms of the fluctuations of these measurements, we can actually get really close absolute quantification of these biomarkers, which allows us to, over time, when we take multiple measurements of your blood, we will be much more certain of any changes that have occurred in that biomarker. So if a biomarker has gone up, is an actual reflection of what has happened physiologically. in your blood. And this is a big advantage against the traditional clinical tests where they're not using something like mass spec. What they're doing is they're using some sort of like an indirect measurement, like something like, let's say, ELISA, where you have an antibody tagged to basically a signal that you're able to get kind of an indirect measurement based on fluorescence or something like that. We are actually being able to measure the actual biomarker itself through that machine.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, crazy. Okay, so test happens. Then what's turnaround time? How does that look for me? What would that look like if I had a client perform a test? What do we get that I can look at with them? Yeah, I'll stop there for a sec. I have a follow-up, but I'm going to wait.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So what it looks like is, yeah, your patient will go in, they'll do the blood test, we'll get it, we'll send it off for processing. The whole turnaround right now is weeks. And so we're talking, I think right now it's around four weeks, if I'm not mistaken, but we're driving that down, you know, as the technology scales. And we're working with a partner, analysis partner in the US, we're anticipating it to get the turnaround time right down to within one week, basically. So very quick turnaround on there. And then what it looks like right now is we do have our own platform. And so it is a web-based system which shows you all the biomarkers and shows you that information when it comes to different disease risks and different biological pathways, which are like groupings of these biomarkers together. So I talked about like inflammation, so inflammatory markers would be together for example so we have our own web-based platform that enables you to explore all this information explore the interpretation and also the it in the in the platform there's also an action plan so it actually gives you a a set of lifestyle actions so that's a diet exercise and supplements that are specifically targeted to the biomarkers that are out of range in your platform. So there's that web-based platform that we deliver alongside, if you want it, there is a PDF report that you can download. So a lot of our clients are like, hey, I want to see a hard copy like a PDF copy of my results because I want to hand it to my doctor or I want to keep it for my records or whatever it is. So there is a PDF version of that. So in terms of that information, we can supply the platform. One of the things we're working towards really is this performance and fitness of vertical. But I think we would love to collaborate with coaches to build a custom platform to give them this information. I mean, right now we can take this information and perhaps provide a PDF information about like, okay, these fitness metrics, what do they mean? What does it mean for your client in terms of performance and things like that? So that could be stage one. But ultimately the goal really is to surface this information and design a platform That can integrate with what you guys are already using, perhaps, and give you that side of that information in a package that you're familiar with.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, cool. Because that's, I think, where I'm intimidated by that, where I'd be feeling like... a client and I would just be trying to decipher a new language with new characters. Neither of us were like, I don't know what this means. What do you think this means? But if there's action plans, that makes it more helpful, which was what my follow-up question was before. How would a coach make sure that they're staying in their lane within their scope of practice and not trying to diagnose or treat something that they're not qualified to do so? Where does that line... does that line get blurred or what does somebody need to do about that?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, no, absolutely. So I think like a lot of it, as I mentioned is, is proactive, right? So it's not really about, you know, I don't think. you guys would be in a position where the information would be presented in a way that you're diagnosing a condition or to act as a doctor, for example, and to do treatment or medications. That's not the ethos of molecular you either when it comes to looking at this information. If we do see something that is specifically... If we do see something that is, I would say... risky or we think it's a high urgent flag like i think we have systems to handle that and we have you know doctors and clinics on staff that you know we can we can look into that and say okay this is a this is a really critical signal that we need to look into and discuss with with the patient um or you know with the individual directly or you know through through the clinic we can we can through your gym we can also you know address you know any sort of things. But I would say these are very rare circumstances. I've only had a handful of these situations occur where something has signaled to be really really high priority and we've involved our medical staff to look into this. So I think the information is going to be interpreted in a way that gives you a level of understanding where you don't have to worry about prescribing a medication or anything like that. And the action plans are designed to be very, they're pulled from academic literature. So they are best practices when it comes to Canadian regulations or American regulations, when it comes to, especially with the nutrition, for example. In Canada, we use the, I think it's called the Canadian Food Guide. And a lot of that basis of our action plan is from there as well. But I think when it comes to nutrition, the specifics of the action plan, this is where you guys and the coaches are the experts, right? This is where based on the understanding of the information we're bubbling up, you guys are going to be able to really look at that information, pair with your tremendous knowledge in the field around exercise physiology and everything, and be able to design that optimal plan, which we don't do, right? We just give you kind of like, okay, weight training is beneficial, right? But... Where do you take it from the next step? Right.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, for sure. More pointing out of the obvious stuff, but right. What I'm hearing too, like that's good. As you were talking about some of those, the predictive stuff to think about, okay, well now I have to tell this guy he's got cancer. Like, you know what I mean? Like that would, that would be, it sounds like that's, there's, there's steps and processes in place that would, again, keep us in our lane, keep, keep everybody in a, in a, uh, comfortable space for which we wouldn't be doing that. We'd be prescribing things that we'd be able to take action upon based on a generic sense of where they're at.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, exactly. Be very proactive. And really the focus is on wellness, longevity and performance. And that would be there. We have multiple, I would say, AI systems that analyze the data for us and indicate any sort of flags for our scientists. So we have an approach. It's like scientists in the loop, we call it, right? Or human in the loop, essentially, where AI systems will scan the information. They'll make sense of it. They'll interpret it based on the training sets that we've developed already, and this is where the interpretation is provided. But at the same time, these systems are designed to flag any sort of critical emerging flags that we need to be aware of from a medical standpoint. So right away, when it comes to the path of how that report goes or how that client's data goes through, if it is flagged with a critical piece of information, we have systems in place to handle that. Got
SPEAKER_00:it. Okay. How often should somebody be doing... How often do you guys recommend somebody take a test?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, this is... I think that's... I mean, it's a good question. It's really up to, I think, the coach and the client to what they're comfortable with. In the case of performance... I think being able to do the tests at a higher frequency is going to be much more beneficial to show those incremental changes, to make quicker and more deliberate changes in any sort of exercise plan and really help give that biofeedback quickly to both the coach and the client. So that would mean, I would say, a good frequency would be every month to every three months So again, this could be something that can be decided with the coach and the client to what they're comfortable. Every three months is something we have done before with our... We've done studies on different responses to exercise. So every three months is the frequency we have used. But I understand that some clients, and they've approached us too, they're more into the biohacking and understanding...
SPEAKER_03:yeah
SPEAKER_01:more about how their systems work and so they're they're much more inclined to be looking at things much more frequently and making very quick rapid adjustments so that's definitely like the time frame i would say works fairly well for coaches one to three months um from a clinical standpoint when we're looking at in terms of disease management or just longevity that's when you know we we have a complete different channel with the clinics where where those clients will do it every six months or every year. But it is really not about optimizing or performance. That is really about disease management, understanding any sort of potential trends towards disease that they want to handle. So for that channel, it's definitely they adopt more of the six months, every six months or every year kind of assessment.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that makes sense. That's just the slower moving. chip with that time but with the people that I'm thinking about the tip of the spear kind of like top 1% people who are really into the optimization and maximizing every little bit that they possibly can I can see that being more of a monthly every three months type of a thing and again there's so many biomarkers that are measured to think about what types of changes can be seen in those types of time frames can you see a lot of changes in a lot of things in that timeframe or does that depend?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. I think like, Yeah, no, no, absolutely. I think, no, you'll see quite rapid changes, especially even more pronounced in individuals that are actively pushing their bodies, right? So when it comes to looking at the metabolites, for example, those response, so these are the chemical reactions in the body, those respond very quickly to stimuli, right? So when it comes to like, if someone's not sleeping well, or they have, you know, inflammation, injury, whatever it is, overtraining, those will change rapidly so it's almost like the first wave of changes that will occur and it will those changes occur within weeks right like if you think about um even let's say going through uh you know a marathon you're running right so you're training for a marathon you do the marathon you know if you analyze someone's blood you know right after the marathon already there's going to be tremendous changes within within that those first few few weeks it's already going to be very different from when they started the marathon versus after finishing the marathon right so metabolites move quite rapidly the second wave is actually the proteins so those are the ones that will change over the span of one month so from day one to day 30, proteins will over time incrementally change to get to a new baseline. So in an individual that is pushing themselves when it comes to performance and optimization of their their body within a month we will see quite pronounced changes especially of metabolites but definitely of proteins that are served to back up that kind of stuff because they're again structural if you're seeing structural changes which you will see after a month we'll get that reflected in the proteomics in the proteins and then also functionally as people are improving when it comes to their you know their the reps or vo2 max we will also see an a stepwise change in their protein baseline levels as well.
SPEAKER_00:Cool. Super cool. Man, I could dive into this stuff for hours and hours and hours and still feel like I could just barely scratch the surface. But I'm going to let you go after an hour we've been doing this. Where can people learn more about this from you guys?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. I would say that I can't believe it's been an hour. It's just like so exciting and such a pleasure speaking to you about this as well. I think people can get more information on our website, which is at www.molecularyou.com. And so that's, you know, all of our information is there when it comes to the tests, the science behind the testing, as well as, you know, if individuals are interested in ordering in themselves and checking it out i think we have a vertical for there as well we do have that direct to consumer channel but of course that's where you know an individual is just interested in getting their own results and and getting that interpretation there um but one of the the key things that i would love to stress is as well here is that the, the power of this as well is working, especially in that vertical around performance and optimization is in working together with, you know, coaches like you that can design that, take that tremendous comprehensive information, but then design a unique personalized health, wellness, and optimization plan for the individual.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. The feedback loop and the changes that we could make, uh, Again, I've said this a bunch before on the podcast, but it's super exciting because I feel like there's exponential amounts of gains once we start doing this more and more and more and have more feedback loops that happen.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, super cool. Ash, thanks for doing this, man. This is exciting. Appreciate your time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, likewise. I appreciate your time as well. And, yeah, happy to do it. I love this stuff. Breathe, sleep, and think of biomarkers. That's all I do.
SPEAKER_00:We're maybe the least popular people at parties, but you know what? Whatever. We're having a good time. Select people that want to talk to us about these types of things. We have a specific niche. It's great. We're changing the world. We're changing the world whether they know it or not. So, yeah, it's cool. I appreciate it again. All right, Ash. Thanks, buddy. Thanks, man. All right. As always, thanks for listening. And don't forget, you can join our group at strengthcoachcollective.com.