The Future Of Science Backed Wellness

What if the biggest challenge in health and wellness today isn't discovering new solutions, but figuring out which ones actually work? In this episode of The Better Body Lab Podcast, we sit down with physician-scientist, entrepreneur, and Radicle Science co-founder Dr. Jeff Chen to explore the growing gap between wellness innovation and scientific validation. Together, we examine how supplements, peptides, wellness technologies, and personalized health interventions are shaping the future of health optimization, resilience, recovery, and longevity—often long before rigorous evidence catches up.

Dr. Chen shares how Radicle Science is transforming clinical research through decentralized, technology-enabled trials that make gold-standard studies faster, more affordable, and more accessible. We dive into the controversy surrounding BPC-157 and research peptides, the surprisingly strong evidence behind creatine, the role of AI tools like ChatGPT in evaluating health claims, and why consumers need better ways to separate science from marketing hype.

We also explore wearable technologies, placebo effects, microbiome research, precision psychiatry, and the future of evidence-based wellness. At its core, this conversation is about building a healthier relationship with information—using curiosity, critical thinking, and scientific rigor to make better decisions for long-term wellbeing.

About Dr. Jeff Chen:

Dr. Jeff Chen, MD/MBA, is the co-founder and CEO of Radicle Science, an AI-powered healthtech Public Benefit Corporation recognized by Fast Company as a "World Changing Idea" and by Inc. 5000 as one of America's fastest-growing companies. Radicle's mission is to create proven, precision wellness through large-scale, gold-standard clinical trials focused on supplements, foods, wellness devices, and digital health solutions. Previously, Dr. Chen founded and served as Executive Director of UCLA’s Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, where he led some of the first official cannabis-related clinical studies. A nationally recognized voice in evidence-based wellness, he has been featured by CNN, TIME, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Politico, and many others. He earned his BS from Cornell University and completed both his MD and MBA at UCLA.

For information about Radicle Science visit: https://www.radiclescience.com/

Follow Radicle Science here:

Instagram: @RadicleScience

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RadicleScience/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radiclescience

Follow Dr. Jeff Chen here:
Instagram: @DrJeffChen

Key Timestamps:
00:00 — Wacky Wellness Trends
01:41 — Introducing Dr. Jeff Chen & Radicle Science
04:53 — The Promise & Pitfalls of Peptides
08:09 — BPC-157: A Case Study
09:37 — The Compounding Pharmacy Conundrum
15:06 — The CBD Analogy
16:50 — The Bottleneck for Peptide Research
17:40 — Misleading "BPC Supplements"
24:12 — The Science Behind Creatine
29:27 — The Supplement Hype Cycle
31:00 — Using AI to Discern Hype from Fact
32:49 — Validating Emerging Wellness Technologies
35:40 — How to Properly Test a Wellness Device
39:42 — The Importance of Customer Retention
41:42 — The "Food as Medicine" Renaissance
43:49 — Radicle Science's "Seal of Effectiveness"
49:34 — How Radicle Science Conducts Clinical Trials
57:20 — The Rise of Wearables & Remote Monitoring
01:01:03 — The Future of Mental Health Treatment
01:04:20 — The ARPA-H Mental Health Study
01:07:04 — How to Participate in Radicle Science Studies

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Dr. Taryn Marie: www.resilience-leadership.com/

Mike Alden: https://www.mikealden.com/ 

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrTarynMarie

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drtarynmarie/

Follow Mike Alden here: 

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikealden

Visit:

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https://bioaccesslabs.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

What's some of the wackiest shit that you're seeing that's out there right now? Um, this this I I said to Taryn, I said it's pretty wacky. Uh, but we like, we like, we had fun. I could we posted videos of it, and I don't know, I felt better, I guess, afterwards. What's some of the wackiest stuff that you're seeing right now that people are trying to like validate?

SPEAKER_04 0:17

Okay, here's here's what's interesting, right? Like science with many industries, including like the scientific uh uh medicine industries, you're crazy until the day that you're a genius and it's right. Right. Right. And we're just as we discover all these things, like epigenetics. That was that was ludicrous. In fact, uh, remember Darwin and Lamarck? Darwin says, Hey, we evolve because you pass on your genes and the shitty genes like die out of the gene pool and the good genes continue. And then Lamarck said, Well, I'm pretty sure the things that happen to you as you live, like a giraffe always trying to go get the leaves and the thing, that you could pass on to. And he was lampooned and disgraced. Right. And then 150 years later, we're like, oh crap, that was epigenetics that Lamarck was hypothesizing about. So both are true. Uh so in a to do, so for those people listening, this is how you would do an experiment with that device. Like what when it's turned on, is it vibrating? Is it glowing? What's happening when you turn it on?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Oh, yeah, it's doing all of it.

SPEAKER_04 1:16

Doing all sorts of pumming, it's doing all sorts of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:45

First, let me just address uh my co-host and also wife, Dr. Tara Marie, who's not here today. Uh, she's here, here she is. Say hello to Dr. Tara. Um uh she is uh super busy right now, a bunch of different initiatives. And she said, Hey Mike, do you think you could kind of like carry the torch a little bit? And not only that I say yes, but also uh the the gentleman that we have on Dr. Jeff Chen, they actually know each other. Um and uh she said, He's gonna be so great. You're gonna be, you guys are gonna have a lot to talk about because uh Jeff is here to talk a little bit about his company called Radical Science, which is radicalscience.com. It's a it's the easiest way I think to initially kind of describe what they're doing is what they're they're they're providing information for not only for consumers, uh, but also for companies. And when I say information, I'm talking clinically validated information about the health and wellness space, uh, supplements, uh, you know, uh anything that is effectively not pharmaceuticals uh things that we're talking about. So it what why I'm excited to have Jeff on uh is because there is just so much information out there, there's so much misinformation out there, and nobody knows you know where to turn, who to look to, who to really like rely on. And you just kind of like you hear people say, Oh, well, let's just do the research. Well, radical science is effectively doing a lot of that, you know, for us. When I say us, I'm talking about the royal uses as a as a uh you know as a as a community uh here. So um, Jeff, uh, thank you so much for for being here. Can I call you Jeff or or Dr. Chan? What you're saying? Well, Jeff is perfect, yeah. Sure, because you listen, you went to medical school, man, so you were in that doctor part. So, you know, and you are your MBA on top of that. I mean, come on.

SPEAKER_04 3:24

Yeah. Well, thank thank you, Mike, for having me. Yeah, and Jeff's totally fine. Okay. And um, yeah, so the the mission behind Radical is really to enable proven precision wellness. And when we talk about wellness, it's not waiting until you're so sick that your body is about to just completely collapse that we show up with all these heroic interventions and pharma drugs. It's be can we help you earlier in your health journey? And can the tools that we use be things like foods or supplements or even digital medicines? We think about music, we think about certain breathing patterns. And the problem with all of these different medicines is that because pharma can't really create the classic patent monopoly model on these things, you can't patent natural compounds, you can't patent certain, you know, uh uh a breathing pattern, it's really hard to. Sure. Uh they don't fund it. And if they're not funding it, who then is funding these things? Research, this type of clinical research is very expensive, it's very slow. And so you have this situation where we just simply don't know if these things work. And even if someone showed up and said, I'm gonna run a pharma grade trial on this, usually before radical came along, those trials were very small and they studied a very homogenous set of people. So at most, you could say, Hey, this thing works for no offense, Mike, white men that live in urban cities because they're the ones that were traditionally studying in these pharma trials. Right, yeah. So we're we're we're changing all of that.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

Um yeah, no, that that makes that makes total sense to me. Uh, and uh you and I, before we went live, um, people may or may not know this about me, but uh I'm also an attorney that grew up in this space. I've been in the supplement space and the health and wildness space, not only my whole career, pretty much my whole life, uh, since I was a little kid. I was always interested in taking things or doing different things to improve my uh my athletic ability, uh my strength, and things like that. So I've always been super interested in it. And when when Dr. Tarran showed me who you are and what you guys are doing, I'm like, this is gonna be this is gonna be so much fun. So um I want to talk a lot about supplements, but as you said, what you said, I'm just curious. We didn't even talk about this before, but I'm just curious what your thoughts are. So uh, you know, you're focusing on the non-pharmaceutical space, right? What's your take on peptides right now, the research peptides? Because, you know, as you mentioned, uh, you know, these pharma companies, they're not gonna fund things that they can't patent, right? So here we are, it's uh the towards the end of June of 2026, uh, July of 20 in uh July 23rd, uh the FDA is actually gonna meet about uh what I would call the lucky seven peptides. I believe it was originally 19, then it was still still down to 14, now there's seven. What are your thoughts on peptides? Are there gonna be companies out there doing research and how can we really, really be feel good about like what we're injecting in our bodies? And the last thing I'll say is I inject peptides in my body. I'm an attorney that grew up in the space. I understand what it means to have a double-blind placebo-controlled study, et cetera, et cetera. And then some of the stuff has zero for that. And I'm still taking, I'm still taking this stuff because like I'm like, oh, okay, I just feel better. And then it and I think it should be good because there's some animal studies that said it. What are your thoughts on peptides? Research peptides, where is it going? What do you what are you guys looking at? What do you see?

SPEAKER_04 6:44

Yeah. So look, peptides hold a tremendous amount of promise. They are a uh very they they're a category of health solutions and and health interventions that really have some unique properties compared to larger biologic drugs and even these classic small molecule drugs that many of you are probably used to taking for your cholesterol and blood pressure and things like that. Very promising field. Well, I think the area that everyone's trying to figure out is for these non-FDA approved peptides that are technically labeled for research use only, that everyone's getting through their doctor, just buying directly on the gray market. What the heck is going on with those? Because let's not forget there are peptides like all the approved GLPs for weight loss. They are safe, they're FDA approved, they're very efficacious. And those are peptides. And there's also peptides like collagen peptides, which you can eat by mouth. They do get broken up into very small fragments, but you do absorb those, so that's why you don't have to inject them. And those are also a uh, you know, a safe and kind of validated thing. Um validated for some things. Collagen peptides will have a whole separate conversation about. But in terms of these non-FDA proved peptides, you're right. Uh in almost all of their cases, they've never been through a single human clinical trial, and certainly not a clinical trial that had blinding randomization and placebo control to definitively prove is this thing actually working, or are people just through the placebo effect getting better?

SPEAKER_03 8:09

Like BPC 157, for instance. Let's take that one, right? So everybody knows if you haven't heard about it, if you've listened to our podcast and you've probably heard us talk about it, right? So BPC 157, allegedly derived from uh, I think it's uh I forget what the uh I forget what the B stands for, protect protective, something like that. It allegedly comes from our stomach, uh, some stomach acids, right? Yeah. And uh and it's supposed to repair and regenerate tissue. And there's some animal studies out there. One of the most profound ones, I think, is uh, I think they severed the Achilles tenant of rats, gave them BPC 157, it like grew back. Um, but there's zero human clinical studies, and I inject this stuff by the way, I grow up this face, uh, as it relates to safety and efficacy. Zero. Like that, nothing I can find, really. And so, but yet here we are, the FDA is meeting and deciding whether or not that's one of them, the seven, or whether or not it's going to be allowed to be quote, compounded. To me, as somebody who is a fan of the stuff that believes in this stuff, but also understand the science, and I'm uh we have a marketing company, like we're ready to go. Like if this stuff you know becomes quote legal, I'm using that in the broad sense. Um, like we're you know, we're all for it. But like, how can the FDA meet and even consider allowing something like this to be, quote, compounded when there's zero clinical research to back it up? Like, how is that even possible?

SPEAKER_04 9:34

It's really interesting and it is a very unique situation. So it comes down to the ways that uh compounding pharmacies are allowed to operate. And the original intention of it was that let's say there was a drug that at one point was FDA approved, then it got discontinued. The farm company's like, it's no longer profitable to sell this drug, so it's not really on the market. So the FDA wanted these situations where for a patient's need, they really needed this one drug, a compounding pharmacy could somehow source this molecule from somewhere and put it into a format that someone could actually consume, even though there was no factory spitting this stuff out in a perfectly manufactured pill. That's kind of the intent of the compounding pharmacy was to offer when needed these special situations of you know, n equals one personalized creation for someone. In this case, it's you know, maybe being uh extrapolated beyond the scope of how it's classically been used in the past, but there is a framework for for how you can uh do this. Now, one thing to also keep in mind for all the folks who are entrepreneurs about to jump into this space, just like they can add things to that list, the next administration can just take it off the list. Just like how under the Biden administration, they explicitly uh banned these things from being compounded, and now they're being taken back on. You can see how it can just the dial can just turn left and right and left and right and left and right. Now, here's the other interesting conundrum. Speaking of why isn't there more research on this? There's two key, well, there's one key reason, there's a second emerging reason. The one key reason is these things were discovered half a century ago. So at one point they could have been patentable, those patents have long expired. Also, I don't think anyone went through the effort to patent them. These were like academic labs tinkering with this stuff, right? A lot of like in Eastern Europe and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

A lot of stuff's coming out of Russia that were given to all the athletes.

SPEAKER_04 11:19

Correct. Well, that's the other concerning thing is that even all the rat data, yeah, for some of these peptides, almost 100% of the rat data was one lab in Eastern Europe. Right. So whether their mice were just weird or their protocols were weird in their lab, all the data could be made up. Could be just yeah, I wasn't gonna say that, but yes, it could also be in totally just fraudulent or uh just unintentionally fully skewed. And plus research 50 years ago, this shit was pen and papers, you know, things could be literally like misplaced.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

So uh, by the way, that not only that, but a lot of time, like BPC in particular was developed by like one Russian scientist, and the and the research that was conducted was conducted by him, right? And so no one else has really validated it, and now all of a sudden here it is today, and we're like uh that's exactly it.

SPEAKER_04 12:11

And like, and assuming it was all legit, assuming everything was great, right? Rats aren't humans, and like all the all the all the time stuff in rats doesn't work in humans, which is why we've seen the NIH and uh recently basically saying we got to stop wasting money on these like animal studies. Yeah, we got to figure out better like AI prediction models for stuff that can have much more predictive power for what it'll do in a human. Right.

SPEAKER_03 12:35

So, okay, so so you said there was the framework. So, like, like I I have a you know a pretty pretty decent uh I think pathway for this stuff, uh, as far as from a legal perspective. But um, like if if if the food and drug administration is is an organization that is has really their their mission, so to speak, right, is to ultimately protect the food and the safety and the quality of the things that are that are essentially being you know put forth into the stream of commerce, i.e. specifically prescription drugs, the model has always been, you know, multiple clinical trials independently validated, you know, reviewed by the FDA, uh, then they, you know, then they you know they probably bring in, you know, and they there's there's a whole vetting process, and this is why it takes so much time. AI have is obviously going to speed that stuff up. But if you take BPC 157 and there's none of that, the the the theories that I have seen and I that I've that I've seen JFK essentially you know promulgation, which is um, well, there is nothing out there that really shows that there are too many or or any adverse events, right? So there hasn't been anything that has really killed anybody or caused any sort of serious, serious adverse events, therefore it is safe. That completely to me flips the script, so to speak, for this is a legal, legal term, flips the script on how the FDA has operated since the Food and Drug Cosmetic DAC in 1933. So how how how is it possible that we could allow it to happen? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

SPEAKER_04 14:19

It's it's interesting. So so one area that this starts to really intersect with, and again, this is a very novel, uh unprecedented situation, right? I can draw some analogies, but there's some distinct differences. Um, but this starts to get into this notion of how can we use real-world evidence to inform decisions in the absence of these high quality, you know, rigorous trials. Right. And I think in this case, I'm not saying it's a right or wrong decision, but I think they also have to face the pragmatic realities, which is like God knows how many people are already using this stuff, they're already producing this stuff. Even if you try to ban it, then it's just gonna go black market and it's gonna continue to harm consumers. So, in many ways, this is actually related to what some of the stuff you've seen in the cannabis space.

SPEAKER_03 15:06

I was about to say it reminds me of CBD. Reminds me of CBD.

SPEAKER_04 15:09

Correct, correct, correct. That's that's what I was about to bring up. Yeah, exactly. So you hit it, Mike.

SPEAKER_03 15:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:14

Um, so it's a pragmatic approach where it's like, as far as we can tell, seems to be pretty safe. Like we wouldn't have to be.

SPEAKER_03 15:21

Genie's right out of the bottle, basically.

SPEAKER_04 15:22

Genie's out of the bottle. What can we do our best to create some guardrails and actually through letting it be in the uh regulated market, actually eliminate the gray and black market, which is concerning because you've seen some of these um citizen science experiments they've done where they tested peptides, and it's like a lot of the stuff is no peptides. Nothing. And at worst, it's got everything from MDMA to bacterial toxins that could get you super sick to microplastics, heavy metals.

SPEAKER_03 15:52

Which ones, which ones had the MDMA? I'm just asking for a friend.

SPEAKER_04 15:55

Yeah, right, right, right. Well, you know, Mike, this is interesting. So you can hear me out. A lot of people report feeling better on peptides. Yeah. Let me ask you a couple questions. Is it one, the placebo effect? Sure. Especially if you paid $700 out of pocket. Right. Number two, is it the natural course of healing? A lot of people are using these peptides to heal. The body heals on its own. So, like three weeks later, I feel great. Well, yeah, you've been healing. Uh, or is it because the thing that you thought was peptides had MDMA or it had like uh high dose like steroids, right? Then yeah, they're gonna reduce your inflammation and pain, but long term those things are gonna mess you up. And yeah, yeah. So that's we don't know because no one's ever done that round of testing. So that those are the consequences of having stuff live in the gray market, whereas at least with these regulatory decisions, at least at least in the they can control it and maybe try to jumpstart some of the research on it. But there's another bottleneck that I'll talk about uh on that, which is we can't actually run official clinical trials on peptides without invoking investigational new drug framework of the FDA and treating it like developing a new drug. Who's gonna spend money on that? Right. Not only is it off patent, I have to not just I can't just research it like a normal university would. I have to go register as an investigational new drug with the FDA. All those regulations kick in, this trauma comes to a grinding halt. So that needs to be changed too somehow.

SPEAKER_03 17:23

Yeah, I mean, you know, when I was having you on today, I a lot of times what I do, uh Dr. Taryn is a lot more organized than me and structured. I I usually just like I look at your stuff and I'm like, all right, let's just go naturally. And so I don't really always necessarily have a framework for like how our conversation is gonna go because I think it for me it's I don't know, it's more interesting, but um and uh so like I've seen I'm if you're if you're watching right now, I'm doing the air quotes, supplements, right? Now being marketed uh BPC supplements, right? So like this is something that obviously that you spend a lot of the time in. Like we're talking about it's the everything that's out there that would be considered that is that it's BPC and it's calling a supplement, is is misbranded, mislabeled, and and and and you know, could could certainly could could certainly warrant like FDA warning letters, right? Uh it is not a new dietary ingredient, so let's start there, right? So let's say you can't even have that. It's not genuinely recognized as safe. So, like, how could you know, like it's it's my as an attorney and a marketer, by the way. I've I've I've marketed supplements my entire career, you know. Well, when I was practicing law and also working for companies, like we're I was working for marketing companies, so like that was our objective. Market this the hell out of this stuff and and and sell as much as we can and while substantiating the substantiating the claims. Anything that's labeled BPC as a supplement is just wholly like inaccurate and misblant, misbranded and mislabeled, right?

SPEAKER_04 18:59

Well, for sure, you're correct. It's not there's no way there's any framework that that could be a legal dietary supplement. It probably doesn't have BPC in it. Right. Uh, and even if it did, you're not gonna absorb any of it. Your stomach's gonna break down most. Now, BPC's a little interesting because I I I believe, if I remember correctly, it was actually derived from gastric proteins. Right. That's what it was. So BPC is the one peptide that at least can survive the stomach acid. You're still not gonna absorb it into your blood. Right. There's some people that believe that orally taking BPC might be good for BPC's effects in your gut if there's inflammation in your gut and things like that. I'm not saying you should use it for that. Right. There's not a lot of basically no data on this, it's all conjecture.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Right.

SPEAKER_04 19:41

Uh, but at least it's not getting into your bloodstream to help your elbow injury or your muscles surgery that's healing.

SPEAKER_03 19:46

And, you know, so yeah, it's a really um thank you for for spending some time on that because I think it's right now with what's happening in the world in the world of health and wellness as it relates to you know putting things in our body, you know, the peptide business obviously is is is continuing to grow. There's articles every day that's coming out on Wall Street Journal and Forbes and et cetera, et cetera, talking about the you know, the big gold rush of of these things. And I I think you know, just to cap it off, I think that after this meeting, I don't think anything's gonna happen uh as quick as people want it, want it to. I think it's gonna go through PCAC, which is that organization that you know analyzes it, you know, you know, it's a body of different people, doctors and lawyers and pharmacists. And um I still think it's gonna be a little while before before this stuff is um permissible for lack of a better term. Um, but it's gonna be really interesting, you know, to see like how it's gonna how it's gonna go, you know. And then and I guess, you know, like you said, it's cyclical, right? When you have a Republican administration versus Democrat, like the world changes a little bit, right?

SPEAKER_04 20:50

And what we can't yeah, so like, you know, and you're an entrepreneur, Mike. And so, you know, for the folks jumping in, I really heed like what happens in two and a half years-ish administration, boom, turns that off, right? All the peptide companies die, right? Uh, they just get deleted overnight. The other thing to consider is you're right, Mike. The analogies with CBD are pretty fantastical, which is like obsession with it, buzz, people reporting crazy benefits, almost no human data, markets growing crazy, grows to a billion-dollar market, everyone jumps in, market collapses, everyone goes out of business. And then all along, the savvy investors were like even if this is valuable as an intervention, which we still to this day don't really know. There's still not a lot of data on CBD, it's a commodity ingredient. What's your long term mote? Right. So if these companies jumping into peptides, you're just another hawker of an ingredient, just like cornstar. Like, you know, what's what's special? Uh so I think the business models are really weird right now. But again, there's buzz, there's hype, there's money flowing in, there's old founders going for it. And I don't think we're gonna stop that. Uh Uh so it's gonna be really interesting to see how this unfolds.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

Yeah, yeah. Let's transition, you know, into supplements. We're on with uh Dr. uh Jeff Chen. He is the co-founder of Radical Science. You can check them out at radicalscience.com if you're interested as an individual, as an organization, you can go there and get some more information. You can also put your information in there to be a part of uh Radical Science and what they're doing as they're as they're continuing to grow and to compile data and to ultimately really improve the safety and the quality uh and give you the decision-making power, right, to make the right decisions about like what's really ultimately good for you and and taking a look at the science. I think it's really fantastic, you know, what they're doing. Uh we're gonna talk a little bit about uh they're also creating essentially a uh seal of approval, so to speak, right? Um, that they're gonna start um you know being able to put on to you know food products and supplements as well. So if you'd like some more information, you can just go to radicalscience.com.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

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SPEAKER_03 24:12

Now you would said you use the word hype, right? Uh again, I've grown up in the in the dietary supplement space my entire career um since I was a kid. And uh you see the hype. Let's talk about creatine for a second. Okay, so uh I was taking creatine in high school. Uh I took it in college. When I took it in high school, people thought I was doing steroids because I I mean, I just I got big, fast, strong. Um, but if anybody knows anything about steroids, I wasn't ripped. I've never really been a ripped guy. I've always just been kind of a big dude. Um, creatine, like the resurgence of creatine now, right? Uh it's super interesting to see now there's gummies, women, it's it's being marketed towards women. It's it's it's being marketed for it, it's essentially like this panacea effect now, right? Like creatine does everything, right? Um, tell me about creatine. Like, what's the science really saying? Um, you know, our our 14-year-old uh is going to uh he's gonna play football for the first time, right? He's 6'4, 190 at 14, right? So I was like, hey, look, man, like uh, you know, he he's at he's big, right? But he's got to be bigger for the position he wants to play. I I feel comfortable with creatine. I've taken it. Um, so I have him taking five milligrams, which is actually probably on the low end, right? You know, for for 14. I have looked at the science, it's it's well tolerated for teenagers, but creatine. What what's yeah, so like what's the stuff really do for us? What's the science say? What is what is radical?

SPEAKER_04 25:40

What's your stance on it for the radical? Totally. And and just one quick thing before I jump in. So um the the radical science is is spelled R-A-D-I-C-L E. Right. And that means the first root of a plant. That and so we're getting to the root of truth. You know, we're using plants as medicine, you know, like all these things. So um uh, but it sounds phonetically radical because we're doing some cool stuff. Uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:02

I should have spelled that out. You're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:04

Oh, it's all good. Uh so creatine is not hype. Creatine is legit.

SPEAKER_05 26:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 26:10

Uh, and here's why. And it's it's safe. That's the cool thing. The amount of safety data we have on creatine, long-term safety data, may be one of the most studied supplements because of all the ways we were using it in professional athletics, collegiate athletics, Olympic, like all this stuff. So we actually have long, long, long, long-term safety data, people using creatine. And outside of some edge cases, it appears to be pretty darn safe. And then the benefits for um uh muscle and performance, clearly that's been studied again and again and again. But now you're seeing people start talking about its cognitive, right, long-term benefits, potentially uh being able to preserve long-term cognitive function. So we think about our aging population. And so I've had my mom take creatine. And some days I'm like, if I were, you know, the master of Medicare, I'd be like, it probably makes sense for many of my seniors to be on creatine for sarcopenia, for muscle preservation, and for you know, theoretical potential kind of brain, um, uh long-term brain health over time as well. Um, now you mentioned your your uh teenage son taking it.

SPEAKER_05 27:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:17

So I think that's where the data is a little sparser because so many of the studies were collegiate athletes and up. Right. So now when it's like adolescents or uh, you know, pregnant women, but you know, these are some of the populations that in general we unfortunately across science always have less data on. So that's it's harder to make a definitive answer as to net net um how how it might improve uh or do the benefits outweigh the risks in those groups.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

Yeah. In those scenarios, uh it's funny, uh, I we've had a lot of guests on, and and in a lot of things that were some sometimes we're talking, like I was just had somebody on and we were talking about um testosterone for women. There is no protocol, right? For for women, right? So these doctors or nurse practitioners, they're kind of like left to almost like get, and I wouldn't say guess, but they're like it's a it truly is a patient-by-patient specific, you know, kind of protocol that they that they develop. And um, you know, as it when I when I think of like, you know, the 14-year-old, you know, it's like, okay, well, you know, we just basically have to almost conduct our own little basic like experiment. Hey, take five milligrams for a week or so, but see how you feel. Do you feel weird? How's your stomach? Noticing any side effects, you know, all that stuff, and then just ultimately see. But but the safety profile of creatine for for for you know for for most populations is pretty safe. That that's pretty remarkable, yeah. Yeah. Um, hype though. Okay, back to hype, you know. So it I love that you said the creatine isn't hype. Um you know, I remember like, you know, seeing like you know, green tea extract or this, or this, you know, this uh this coffee bean out of Columbia's, like all of a sudden, you know. Um like what are you seeing anything now? Like, well, I haven't really honestly been paid too much attention to some of the supplements that are out there or some of the ingredients out there. I do find it so interesting though, where they'll take like something that's been around for a hundred years, right? And then all of a sudden, you know, somebody just comes up, somebody comes out. And I've been a marketer my whole career as well. I think it's just kind of almost brilliant where they're like, you know, vitamin D, right? Like vitamin D is uh is gonna is is gonna do all these things for you. Like, how do how do you guys keep up with all this stuff?

SPEAKER_04 29:27

Look, I I think here's here's here's my observation. You're right, that the supplement industry has been driven by this um ingredient hype cycle. Uh, and it hasn't really been driven by the science. So it's not the ingredients that have the most science that are pushed and promoted in sexy. It's just whatever tends to be trending uh uh is what people will push, even if the science is very thin. And then there's no hero product, there's very few hero ingredients that really just like our long-term just king of the hill, king of the hill, king of the hill. Now, contrast this in the pharma space, where you don't have a new blockbuster drug show up every six to 12 months. Lipitor was created, the category statins were king for decades, decades, decades, decades. Why? They had solid science that it worked. Uh and in my opinion, when you see these bad-based industries, it's because there's no, there's little deep inherent quality in any of the bats. So, like, think about movies where you just churn out one shitty movie after another and it's the same slapstick like storyline, you're losing innovation, you're losing quality versus other studios where it's just like this is the thing, this is the thing, this is the thing, or an entire industry. So when I see that in an industry, um, it makes me question the underlying foundation and a lot of the the uh quality of that. Now, that being said, there's a lot of amazing things in the supplement space, science-backed long-term, it just may not be the buzzy thing that's trending on TikTok, but here's the great equalizer in all of this. I think AI is actually fantastic of all of its downsides and hallucinations. Before you go do something based on a TikTok ad, go to AI and be like, tell me about this. Is it actually proven to work? Is it hype? What else is out there that is better? That's the interesting question to ask AI. And I'll be like, oh yeah, this new trendy like Colombian being an extract, there's like a rat study on it. But if you're looking for cognitive enhancement, here's like the time tested stuff that's also cheaper because it's been around long enough for scale commercial production to bring down the cost, and it's more safety established and like all these things. So that's a great uh uh transparent tool that never existed for consumers who unfortunately were often just sucked into the hype and they have no way to discern it. So I think it's a really exciting opportunity for a new era of consumer empowerment going forward, which is going to force the companies to no longer just be based on marketing, but true innovation, true science.

SPEAKER_03 32:01

Yeah, it's interesting that you say that because my previous guest, I was I said the same thing. I said, I feel like AI has actually helped kind of like declutter the space and the information. He's like, or it could make it worse. I'm like, Yeah, I guess it could make it worse too. But like I go to Chat GPT all the time. I'm like, hey, you know, tell me about this and and you know, and and just you know, just try to get get that information quickly, versus like a Google search or something like that could just take so long, and then you know, half the times you're clicking on a sponsored link, you don't even know if it's if it's an ad or what have you. I I like the idea like yeah, of of using you know AI um uh for that. So um we talked about supplements, obviously to spend a little bit of time about these these research peptides and and where they're located, but you also had mentioned like other things, like so um we just had um we just had this thing in our house called the biocharger. Uh and the biocharger is about a $15,000 uh device that emits radio frequencies and sound frequencies to enhance everything that you can imagine. From if you want to for your pets, they have a little program for that. If you want to improve your uh male product uh reproductive system, they could have a button for that. If you want to do female, I can if you like what what what's some of the wackiest shit that you're seeing that's out there right now? Um, this this I I said to Taryn, I said it's pretty wacky. Uh, but we like we like we had fun. I could we posted videos of it, and I don't know, I felt better, I guess, after it was what's some of the wackiest stuff that you're seeing right now that people are trying to like validate.

SPEAKER_04 33:46

Um that's that's probably uh pretty out there, honestly. Um you know, you I I think now here's one thing I'll say you know, the the absence of and I almost guarantee you this device of modality has never been through any sort of rigorous like clinical trial. You should see this thing.

SPEAKER_03 34:06

Like have you where where are you located? Uh well I'm from Boston. I'm in LA. Okay, so I'm from Boston. And the Boston Museum of Science, I don't even know what these things are called. You probably know those things where they conduct electricity and they come up and they shoot like purple sparks up in the air.

SPEAKER_04 34:18

Oh, the like Tesla coils or whatever. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

Yeah, so basically what this thing does, it's you have it in your living room. I gotta get out I'll send you a video of it. It's so funny. But yeah, you're right. Yeah, so yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:29

Okay, here's here's what's interesting, right? Like science with many industries, including like the scientific uh uh medicine industries, you're crazy until the day that you're a genius and it's right. Right. Right. And we're just as we discover all these things, like epigenetics. That was that was ludicrous. In fact, uh, remember Darwin and Lamarck? Darwin says, Hey, we evolve because you pass on your genes and the shitty genes like die out of the gene pool and the good genes continue. And then Lamarck said, Well, I'm pretty sure the things that happen to you as you live, like a giraffe always trying to go get the leaves and the thing, that you could pass on to. And he was lampooned and disgraced. Right. And then 150 years later, we're like, oh crap, that was epigenetics that Lamarck was hypothesizing about. And so both are true. So as we think about energy medicine, mind body medicine, these modalities, there may be something really valuable there. It's just rather than this company spending $15,000 trying to sell these devices, maybe they could benefit from investing in some objective research. And by research, not a lot of these companies, oh yeah, we do research. I got 50 people to try it, and they all said it helped them. And they this guy's sleeping better, this guy's walking more. No, I mean like have a third party come in and do like blinded, you know, uh so in it to do so. For those people listening, this is how you would do an experiment with that device. Like what when it's turned on, is it vibrating? Is it glowing? Do you what's happening when you turn it on?

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Oh, yeah, it's doing all of it, doing all sorts of humming humming, it's doing all sorts of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 36:03

You know, before you before you get to do, but I will say like same thing. Like I remember one one of one of the first like success books I read, uh not the first one, but one of the ones that was really like really kind of resonated with me, was The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill. And he talks about radio frequencies, right? And and and your thoughts.

SPEAKER_04 36:20

And the ether and your thoughts, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:23

And it seemed for 1915, I think it was written, you know, even when then when I read it 25 years ago, it just seemed, as my term, wacky, right? But we do know now, just from like taking a prosthetic arm, putting it across the room and thinking to move it in it without you touching, we we know that they're real things. So we know that radio frequencies 100% can change the chemistry of our body, right? We know that, right? And and so it's like, okay, even though when I was, you know, kind of joking with them saying this is wacky, wacky, I was like, I'm gonna say that I'll do it too. Like, I I I don't I don't not believe it, right? Um, but so it's interesting, yeah. You're saying that. Okay, so so back to what you're saying. I don't mean to cut you off, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:07

Oh, well, like these experiments are relatively simple. It's just the companies will invest all this money in marketing or sales or all this. This would be such a simple experiment. Take take that machine, yeah, uh, get get a few dozen of them, right? Uh, for some of them, turn like go inside the machine and take out the or turn off the thing that's blasting the radio waves or whatever, and still let it hum and buzz. Yeah. And then get that becomes your control.

unknown 37:34

Right.

SPEAKER_04 37:34

You know, or just, you know, so so the thing is a lot of people, if you do feel better from using a device like that, again, is it the placebo effect? Or is it just the fact that you laid down and you were just present and meditative? It was almost like uh NSDR, non-sleep, deep rest, that you just went through and oh, suddenly I'm and now you've you're put your out of. So the other thing is like, I'm not also out here necessarily trying to uh I'm here to elevate the good actors rather than punish and say all of that snake oil.

SPEAKER_05 38:04

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 38:05

Uh, because naturally, as the good actors, the good wellness devices, the good supplements, the proven ones, as they rise to the top, they will naturally win just through market forces rather than be trying to play whack-a-mole and take down all the kind of chamois stuff. Um, that's kind of the way we've strategically approached how we can, in general, help the industry advance and really help consumers figure out what's proven, and especially for someone like them, because all our bodies are also ultimately unique.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. You know, as an attorney, like I was telling you earlier, like I've you know, defended supplement manufacturers, I've gone against these non-governmental regulatory bodies and they're and they just like the BBB, the NAD, and look, their their sole existence, I mean, is just to basically just fight, right? And and and uh, you know, they get paid the annual memberships and they need to kind of justify like what they're doing out there, but they're they're as far as I'm concerned, like anti-business, right? And so um they're just gonna go out. Like, if you you could have all the studies in the world, all the research in the world, but if you become, you know, a target, so to speak, they are going to find something that says that you're like what you're doing is bullshit or what have you. And so I think that you know, um, the approach that you're what the way you're approaching is like, hey, we'll just elevate the good actors. We're not gonna bother, like you said, the whack. I love the whack-a-mole analogy, right? Because uh this other stuff just doesn't seem to work. I think the market, especially in this day and age, like I think it's really difficult to actually to create a shitty product now, like really difficult, you know to to create a shitty product and actually get long-term sales and and adoption, right?

SPEAKER_04 39:47

Right, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 39:48

Because, like, you know, it's either gonna work or it isn't. And and even if you're if you're relying on anecdotal data, you the market will tell you, your customers will tell you, like, right, they're either gonna keep buying.

SPEAKER_04 39:59

I love that you brought that up, Mike. Right. So it's like you can try to basically make up a bunch of stuff to acquire a customer, right? But no consumer product lives based on acquisition. It's all retention, live or die. And you retain someone by actually delivering the benefit that you promised, and when you don't, you churn. Uh, you see churn, and that's it's actually crazy. Like across the supplement industry, that the churn's pretty darn high for any given brand or SKU. The amount of customers that bought the prior month that don't buy again, it's it's it's very, very high, probably because a lot of people may not be expecting what they what they were promised.

SPEAKER_03 40:36

Well, yeah, having again they've been in this space for a long time. There's so many reasons why. But one of the things I think too is is that be almost because of the pharma industry, um we live in this world and also just the speed in which we're we live. Uh, we you know, we want a pill, pot, or a potion to solve our problem right now. Right. And and and uh most of the customers that I've dealt with throughout the years in the supplement space, they come to you because they already have a problem, right? And so they're looking to solve that problem immediately. The problem with that problem, right, as you know, is that it's taken years for you to get to the point where you're at now, right? So you want that immediate pill, powder, or potion to solve your problem because that's what we've been trained, but that's what we're used to. You take, you know, Advil, right, and within an hour or something, it goes away. Or if you get a shot of cortisone in your elbow because you have tennis elbow, it goes away, like almost immediately. And so we're so we're so used to that, and then they just leave, right? Because they're like, oh well, it didn't happen immediately.

SPEAKER_04 41:42

So Mike, I love that you brought that up actually, because it for me, it starts to uh there's several things here that it starts to bring up, which is um when it comes to supplements and the notion of nutrition, how much of this is to your point, it's I'm expecting an advil type reaction, and then then you're just doing what the sick care industry does. You're not getting to the root of the problem, you're just addressing the symptoms. But there are a lot of supplements that are core foundational products uh that are giving us uh the nutrients uh and the and the and the compounds that our bodies require for optimal functioning that we're not getting in our diet anymore, because either one, we don't eat well, or if we do eat well, all our foods have been stripped of those micronutrients with the conventional monocropping and the way the soil is depleted. So I think the renaissance that's about to happen for the supplement industry and for the food as medicine movement and all of this stuff, it's all intertwined. Uh, it's really this notion of I don't take supplements because something terrible is happening to me and I need this. It's I recognize that if I give myself the foundational building blocks, uh, and I'm not just talking fiber, fat, protein, all this stuff, it's all the micronutrients. Um, it's the polyphenols, it's the the prebiotics, it's like all these things uh that I can then have my optimal body, my optimal health. And then my body is intelligent. Uh it can self-heal, it can correct all these things. You know, how much of my anxiety is uh due to a chemical imbalance in my brain, or is it just that my body uh has is in I'm inflamed, right? And I don't have the anti-inflammatory micronutrients in my diet, you know, all these other things. Um so I think there's a big push right now under this administration as well for really decoding what is it in food that is good for us uh beyond just the macros. So it's a really exciting time to be as part of like this food is medicine movement, which has had some stops and goes and stops and goes. I think we're finally going to be able to actually meaningfully get there.

SPEAKER_03 43:49

Yeah. So uh I mentioned this earlier, uh, and I think we were definitely talking about it before before we went live. So radical science, R A D I C L E Science. dot com. You are um, I believe, I think this year going to uh introduce uh for lack of a better term you could probably do a better job describing it for me a seal of approval I think it of a of a uh as a you know a BBB uh in the pharmaceutical space there's um a thing called legit script certification um tell us a little bit about what you're doing now that's really going to have an impact really kind of like a direct impact on the consumer market like you know tell me about you know how it's built uh you know and and like really kind of like what people can feel or get when they look at a supplement or food product or what have you and it has that seal of approval what sort of uh vetting so to speak did that did that company have to go through in order to get that seal of approval sure so so speaking of vetting what what radical science really is doing is we're running gold standard clinical trials so uh that that the FDA expects for good human research that academic standards would expect that the FTC would expect for if you're going to make bold health claims but what we've done is through a lot of technology and AI and decentralization and citizen science, we've brought the cost and speed or the cost and time required for these dramatically down, orders of magnitude down.

SPEAKER_04 45:20

So for the first time ever, you don't have to be a pharma company to afford a clinical trial. So those are the clients we're working with some of the world's largest CPG companies, but it's so affordable and accessible that even the small and medium sized food beverage supplement companies can also come to us and they do to get this data. So that's kind of how we're helping the businesses, the good guys that want to be good and prove that they're good. But we also recognize the need that there now needs to be a way to help consumers understand and see that a product actually went through validation because our clients armed with their data they could make big bold clinically proven claims but that doesn't prevent the whack a mole bad guys from also just basically lying and throwing that on the packaging. So now we realize there needs to be this certification that is verifiable and authentic that allows you to know that the products promises it's giving you it is actually going to deliver on. And so when we came up with this idea we modeled it after some of the other very popular third party standards out there. And in fact we brought in the people that built those so we brought in the people that built USD organic non-GMO project we brought in the people that created the Clean Label project all third party seals of approval and then we brought in the former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. And that was the original think tank that we said, hey what does it look like to create history's first seal of effectiveness for wellness the only other closest thing is FD approval for drugs and devices. Nothing exists for foods and supplements and even digital wellness and wellness devices. And so the other thing that we said is that it can't just be radical data that makes you eligible for that. It has to be anybody's data it could be a university it could be another company in the future that builds something like radical. And so it's not even about who uh generated the data it's the quality of the data itself. So we actually put it into a 501c3 public nonprofit that my co-founder Payne had actually created and ran in a in a prior lifetime. So it's actually the holistic research and education foundation holistic is spelled WH Holistic.

SPEAKER_03 47:22

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 47:22

Yep holistic uh and they funded millions of dollars of university research into the health effects of botanicals and now they're the ones who are housing the certified effective seal. So we kind of helped uh found and create the concept we've got the initial people involved gave the initial capital and now it's housed in this nonprofit. So what it functionally looks like is uh a brand if you're selling a product on the market you can submit your data on your product to uh the the certification and they judge it against a very public pre-published standards document uh and it reads like the standards document that you'd expect again if you were submitting data to the FDA FTC or a professor publishing a paper in a medical journal and you as the brand you could have gotten that data from private company from a university from working with radical it's agnostic. It's is it high quality they review the data and if it meets all the standards that you are now certified effective and it's a seal you can carry on your pack. And it is also a program that would fast track you into certain retailers because a lot of the buying process in a retailer is a buyer being like is there anything in here that might be dangerous for one of my shoppers are you making any lies on your label that are going to get you pulled and get me kind of dragged into a lawsuit too and we also have big ambitions as well. What if we could go to payers and providers healthcare systems and insurers and basically say hey we know you guys don't take wellness seriously and you don't have the bandwidth to tease through 10,000 different wellness products in the market. But what if you just vetted that the certified effective standards would meet your standards for reimbursing for a product or for recommending a product in your healthcare system. And once you believe those standards could you then have a pathway with which wellness products that have the standard can now be reimbursed by United Healthcare or Medicare or prescribed and used throughout the Kaiser healthcare system. So we have big ambitions for what this could do for consumers, but also to give the industry new ways to deliver and new channels to deliver their products into traditional healthcare systems to really make an impact on health.

SPEAKER_03 49:34

I love it. I think it's so great um and I think it's going to really have a big impact uh you know on the space um briefly uh you just before we talked about this you'd mentioned again exactly like uh so like if I'm a CBG company, supplement company food, uh I have a medical device or what have you and I want to validate it. I want to you know I want to make certain health claims or they're we're gonna call them health claims or structure function doesn't really matter I just want to make some claims that are that would be uh that we could substantiate uh under the scrutiny of a FTC inquiry um so uh a company could come to you and you could basically uh at radical r-e-d-i-c-le science.com could come to you and be like hey this is what we're you know this is what we'd like to to look at uh for for this you know class of people or what have you and you will you set the whole thing up the protocol like everything that's exactly it okay you'll you'll you'll find the participants everything it's it's turnkey yeah so they so our clients come to us probably for there's probably four key reasons they're coming to us many are coming to us for claims yeah for a product that's already in the market right and they're worried that some of the claims they're making are maybe a little they're going over the speed limit and they were they're worried about by the way that's exactly how I used to look at it. Yeah yeah I have lawyers that work for me and and and barrelegals and I would say okay how how far over 65 are we going?

SPEAKER_04 51:05

Yeah so they're like oh we need some data to back up some of the stuff we're saying others are coming to us during the RD phase and they're actually handing us multiple candidate formulas and we're doing rapid blinded head-to-head testing we come back and we say formula number one it's not great formula number two works really well but it's got some side effects formula number three works well minimal side effects launch number three so it's to help their RD we become their outsource science team yeah the third bucket is sometimes these companies are actually trying to figure out for whom does their product work for so they can be much more focused in their acquisition dollars. So you know with your marketing background you realize how expensive acquisition is sure so if you're spraying and praying but why are people churning? Well maybe your thing doesn't work in young men that have really lean bodies and drink a lot of caffeine so when we do our studies because they're we do them on large diverse populations we're also able to tell our clients not just if it works but for whom it works for. So it totally informs our target marketing and acquisition. And then that's it that their job is to show up say here's my product we'll help them sometimes identify the best health effects that it could have sometimes our clients say I want claims on blank we'll go kind of take our best guess at the theoretical effects and we'll come back and we'll be like we know you want those claims we we're not sure if your product will actually be able to be placebo for that but what about these areas and they're like those are really interesting areas as well or oftentimes we'll study multiple health areas to have some backup health areas that can be claims enabling as well. And yeah, we handle everything end to end. It's our technology, our own in-house operations and what and uh you know we'll give our clients the report and then we'll go on to publish in in quality peer review journals as well, which is what a lot of AI is pulling from when they are asked about the health effects of certain products. They're not just going off of blog posts. They're literally going into PubMed and they're pulling journals and they're looking at the articles and they're quickly grading the quality of the peer review publication to then in one split second give you a response. So it's pretty fascinating what's now how valuable peer reviewed publications are for the wellness space. Whereas 10 years ago this stuff will just linger in a journal that no one would read but now it's becoming the prime thing that's determining your rank in gender revenge and optimization on these on these AI models.

SPEAKER_03 53:22

Wow that's so interesting you know having again having been in the space for so long it's really really interesting to hear kind of that cross section of technology and traditional science and uh and and also in the world of like consumer protection like all like all wrapped up into one I think that's I think that's that's that's really wild. And I you know uh having my own line of supplements having marketed supplements continually uh as well and and worked with other companies um the ability to run a clinical trial like a a a good one as you said is cost prohibitive for most especially if you just started right um and then when you run it when you run a clinical trial after especially if you're already making these claims um unfortunately the standard is is you it doesn't matter if you run a stop if you've made the claims you've already made the claims uh it's too late right um if you wanted to you know run the study you know post marketing and then to for some other claims that that's great but I um I I used to you know when I represented some companies we would look at the cost and it was just you know companies that are doing you know 100 million plus a year revenue still would have a tough time being like well we're gonna spend a million bucks on a study that we don't want to honestly even know if it's really gonna come back um so what so you're saying with technology ai your team that you've developed you and your co-founder and your and your employees you have figured out a way to get all that stuff that that that would pass in like an FTC inquiry um and put it together in a way that is fairly inexpensive compared to what it used to be like that right that that's exactly it so what used to cost millions and take years yeah we've shaved you know more than uh a 10x improvement off of that both in time and cost yeah and not only that so not only is it you know order of magnitude or more improvement in the time and the cost instead of getting a small study the problem with the small study is that you have to be placebo with a grand slam to be declared statistically significant and get your claim.

SPEAKER_04 55:41

Right. Uh and you're also studying a very thin sliver of society. So maybe your product works it just doesn't happen to work in these men that were studied in some village in India you know whatever. But in our model we're able to study large populations. Our studies are 10 to 15 times larger than your typical supplement study. We're running the largest wellness studies ever done in human history at that scale. And we're studying diverse people, real people, not people that are college students at a campus lab, right? That just they don't look like we're studying people on farms in cities, men, women we've enrolled participants in every single US state I've shipped placebos to Alaska and Hawaii to research people there, uh racial minorities, people who are single parents people who, you know, all these different people demographically lifestyle environmental exposure diet.

SPEAKER_03 56:33

Like a true cross section of society.

SPEAKER_04 56:36

Yeah. Real world right so the data you get back is again does your product work for what health areas? I can study multiple health areas for whom?

SPEAKER_05 56:46

Right.

SPEAKER_04 56:46

And so uh it's it's been a this has only been possible now because everyone has a smartphone basically you have a supercomputer in your pocket it's got a camera I can scan your face I can track your vitals you've got wearables I can send you kits because of COVID the direct to consumer testing of blood saliva stool urine that has advanced so dramatically so I can ship kits. I don't need you to come into a lab I don't need a phlebotomist I don't need a nurse all these things that I can now do in an automated decentralized fashion that's what's enabling all of this. So it's really a remarkable time for medical science and research there's about there's an explosion that's happening underway. You had mentioned wearables too like what what what are you seeing in like remote patient monitoring are you starting to see that really um really start to take up in fact that as I'm seeing got my Hume health uh band I haven't put it on yet but um yeah what's you know remote patient monitoring so like uh scales wearables um are you looking at that data as well and are some of these wearables like you know or some of these types of devices coming to you and being like hey you know we're we want some clinical validation on what we're saying yeah it's interesting yeah so we started in the food beverage and supplement space serving those companies and now we're starting to serve wellness devices right uh who need to deploy their device at large scale it could be a device to measure like a wearable it could also be a device to intervene like these light sound devices right or these vibratory devices and then increasingly we're also starting to do um digital therapies so like wellness apps that want to actually prove that their breathing protocols, their uh whatever, there's their soundscapes are actually dramatically lowering inflammation or whatever. Sure. But when it comes to the wearables it's an interesting thing uh it's it's it's getting really big in healthcare pharma's into it and yes obviously the the wellness space as well here's the rub though the a lot of these wearable companies have developed their own algorithms in independence and there's been very few studies that have taken like the top 10 most popular wearables and had the same people wear all of them to see if the wearables are consistent between themselves. And that data is just starting to come out and it looks like there's some pretty big discrepancies between what one wearable will say ah you were asleep or you were in a RAM or you were in deep sleep or you were in light sleep and what another exact same wearable worn by the certain person the same night will say. So that uh that concordance or cross validation data is pretty nascent still. Now despite that here's what's cool about any of these wearables at least within a given individual they're consistent. So when your wearable tells you Mike that you only had two hours of REM sleep last night, whatever, you may not know if whoop and aura and Garmin and Apple are all going to measure that same two hours, but you'll know that that two hours is meaningfully better than the hour and a half it measured on you last night. Because within the same person they're generally consistent. So that's the beauty. So don't freak out and be like I got to go find the most accurate wearable out there. If you're sticking to a wearable and it's one of these major ones, it's pretty darn consistent. And you as an individual, you're different than other people anyway. So what you really care about is your trend how's your trend versus like in any given night did I actually see two hours or was it 2.5 or was it 1.5 is measured by gold standard you know polysomography or something that's less important. It's how's your trend how can I change my lifestyle to further improve that trend wow you know man I'm sitting there listening to you I'm like I could keep you here for for hours and definitely you and I have to you know get together offline and talk a little bit too because this stuff is so interesting. Yeah I'd love that yeah I love your perspective on this so uh I know we're coming up on on an hour or so uh before we went live we talked about um uh what you're doing over at Radical um putting together one of the largest if not the largest mental health study um tell me about that um and and I'd love to hear your thoughts too you know just on as a as a as a doctor um as well like where are we getting better in the in the mental health space are there are there really improvements happening but tell me about the study and then also I'd love to hear about like are we making advancements you know in mental health yeah well maybe I'll turn that around I'll talk about what's happening in the mental health space because the work that we're doing there uh and the the collaborators we have are part of the exciting pushes that are happening in in mental health so the the biggest difficulty we've had with mental health well first off mental health uh rates of uh uh mental health disorders are definitely rising and it's it's no surprise the world we live in is not conducive to mental health living in a little apartment where you're out of sync with natural daylight you have your screens at you all day every time you get a notification yeah you're getting a little bit of dopamine and pleasure you're also probably getting a little bit of like corusal stress like alert is that danger or is it not? Is it danger is it safe is it not is it safe we're socially isolated the intergenerational family has been broken up I could go on and on and on and on and on as to what's driving this economic pressures where our brains are inflamed from all the poor diets all the all the and then there's like metabolic dysfunction that that can also drive a lot of mental disorders all the sugar and carbs that are in our diet okay we know it's bad. There are our reason we struggled to even combat it is we don't even know what we're measuring. Depression what we measure off this like survey that was developed half a century ago is like what so precision psychiatry we're just at the cusp of that where like depression is actually like 13 different things.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:28

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:28

And once you actually know what it is no precision.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:31

That's a that I have a you know I can talk currently there is not you're right currently there is not you get you come in you like oh you got MDD you're you you know you have some sort of you oh with a major depressive disorder with maybe some psychotic episodes maybe you're schizophrenic you're bipolar like nobody fucking knows what to do and I am dropping it up on because I'm frustrated with it because I've seen family members go through like just absolute hell and get all these different drugs and try all these other things and you're like you go to these professionals you're like aren't you supposed to know like aren't you supposed to know what's going on here? Like you gave a uh a diagnosis of MDD and the other one said it was bipolar. Same person.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:12

Yeah but that's exactly it and and so I think it's that granularity like here's a good example. Let's say uh oh I'm I'm making this up on the spot Mike but I might use this anecdote and this or this analogy in the future let's say you were so crude let's say you were a chef but your crude measurement was do people like salt or not? That was your measurement. And then what you find you bring in 13 people they all like salt they're all depressed and then you give them dishes and you're like why is it that no one's actually liking I the the there's salt in there and it's it's so blunt. But this person likes salt with sweet they like umami this person likes salt with a da that this person likes this level of salt this person so right now when it's depression it's just this one binary thing where it's again it looks like these subtypes of depression there might be 10 or more. And so no wonder most people that you give an antidepressant to don't really have much of a response because you they may be one of the 10 that don't respond to that drug or that that behavioral therapy or that transcranial magnetic stimulation. But we're getting to precision and that precision is going to be based off of anything some it's based on brain imaging some it's based on reading your EEG waves some people are going to be able to detect your subtypes of depression based on your voice and how your face looks yeah and now once we know what we're actually dealing with then we can match the right treatment to the right person. So that's all happening right now. Now where does that tie into the work that we're doing so many of you on this call may be familiar with an agency called DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They fund all the moonshot stuff in America related to technology and defense. So they their funding is what created the internet and the COVID vaccine and radar and drones and like all this stuff. They have a sister agency called ARPAH the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health they give moonshot grants so we are on a a funded we won a grant us and our partner Holobiome H-O-L-O-B-I-B-I-O-M e they're doing the most cutting edge stuff in microbiome um using your microbiome to heal your health and together we're doing the largest mental health trial that's ever been done in human history and instead of studying one pharma drug and a tiny amount of similar looking people we're studying 19 different food derived powders that modulate your microbiome in 19 different ways and we're studying them over 6,000 diverse Americans in every corner of our country to figure out which ones work for whom. And the beauty is because we're not studying drugs the second we figure out what works this can go into a grocery store shelf. This can be fortified into foods this can be taken as a supplement and we now know which ones actually can meaningfully improve our mental health and what types of people and this is not some 10, 20 year thing. This is how that's how long something this ambitious may have taken before we'll be That's like the latest we have so thankful for our partner studies all radical studies that are powered by citizen scientists. We want to learn more about their health. They want to do more design that isn't just harmabase, that isn't just a security and by being in our trials, they get these free natural products, they get free tools to track their health, and we give them all their data back at the end of the study. They never have to leave their home. It's really convenient, it's fun, it's interesting when you learn about yourself. So you can just go to radicalscience.com. You can sign up to be notified when there's trials. There's 15 different health areas that we run trials in. Uh uh, and if you're maybe someone who may be interested in one of those health areas or struggling with something there, you could qualify. Uh, and it's it's an amazing experience, and you really get to be a part of this historic science that's happening for all the things that pharma has ignored for the last hundred years.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:04

Wow, man, I'm just so blown away with you. And thank you uh for coming on uh and and just you know spreading your enthusiasm uh and your wealth of knowledge and what you're doing at Radical Science is really, really fantastic. I'm so glad that we were able to make it happen for behind the scenes stuff. Uh, for those of you who don't know, we've had some scheduling issues. Uh uh, but here we are today, and I'm super, super happy that you made it on. Again, we've been on with Dr. uh Jeff Chen from Radical Science, R-A-D-I-C-L-E, science.com. You just heard him say if you're just a consumer, right, and you want to participate in, you know, as he said, citizen scientists, and you want to even participate some of these trials, so you can just go to radicalscience.com, you can put in your information there, see if you qualify. If you're a company and you want to improve uh, you know, the quality of your claims, right? And you want to be able to substantiate the claims. And if you also want to build um brand equity, what I what we didn't spend a lot of time on the the brand equity of being able to say that my product has been independently studied and met the gold standard, uh the value of that as a marketer myself and as an attorney who has also defended the value of that, there is it's almost immeasurable, right? And so um uh it's a beautiful thing to be able to do as well. So, again, if you'd like some more information, you can just go to radicalscience.com. My name is Mike Alden. That is Dr. Jeff Chen. This has been another episode of the Better Body Lab of the Better Body Lab Podcast, and we will see you soon. Thank you, Mike. That's exactly why we've partnered with Body Care MD. Bodycare MD is built around one simple idea: give people access to high-quality, thoughtfully formulated wellness solutions with all the noise and all the confusion that's out there right now. So whether you're focused on weight loss, recovery, longevity, or just feeling better day to day, they've actually created products that are actually designed to support your body, not just market towards you. And the best part is they make it easy. So if you want to check them out, go to bodycaremd.com and use body25, that's body25 for 25% off of your first order. Now, if you've been waiting for a sign to dial things in, this is probably it.