122. The Silent Driver Behind Every Frustrating Midlife Symptom Every Woman Over 40 Needs to Know with Boris Berjan

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[SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome to the Wild Drop with me, Amber Burger, a podcast for Wellness Meet Simplicity, empowering you to own your wellness, starting at home.
[SPEAKER_02]: Each episode we dive into things we wish we were warned about, and explore practical, street forward strategies designed for busy days like you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whether you're juggling meetings, running errands, or managing family life, I'm here to help sift through the noise and show you how integrating wellness into your daily routine can be simple and stress-free.
[SPEAKER_02]: find out how by tuning in to today's well-drop.
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to the well-drop.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're a woman over 40 and you've been struggling with stubborn belly fat, brain fog, afternoon crashes, or waking up at 3am, there's a good chance it's not just your hormones, it's your blood sugar, and no one's ever shown you how to actually fix it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sugar is at the root of so many chronic diseases, and it's also driving some of the most frustrating midlife symptoms.
[SPEAKER_02]: But here's the problem.
[SPEAKER_02]: Most continuous glucose monitors give you a bunch of numbers and graphs and leave you to figure it out alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know because I've been there.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's why when I met Boris Barion, the co-founder of FA Health, I knew I found something different.
[SPEAKER_02]: Theya doesn't just track your glucose, it makes simple, personal, and actually actionable tips.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now we've partnered with them to give my clients and the well-drop community the answers that they need and truly deserve.
[SPEAKER_02]: In this episode, Boris and I talk about why most CGMs are failing women in my life, how Thaia turns confusing data into life-changing insight,
[SPEAKER_02]: And the one thing you can start doing right now to get your energy, focus, and metabolism back on your side.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's drop in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Boris.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, Amber.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a pleasure to be on the podcast in the show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Really, really thrilled to have you on today.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you remember, but when we first met, I was actually on a mission.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted a better continuous glucose monitor.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to just use the term CGM because it's easier experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt like at one of the ones that I was using, I tried, but it was only like two, then you could actually order as a consumer.
[SPEAKER_02]: It kept falling off from my workouts, and adding your food was super annoying, so I simply didn't do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had to go off of my memory, my memory, based upon what I eat.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know if you remember, but what went through your mind as you listened to my complaints?
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I was going to remind was this is the best conversation I'm going to have all day.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're like, you just stepped into the right place.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, why don't you become my sales rep right after you said that?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I jokes aside, I was excited because, you know, I was on a mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: Similar to yours, obviously in a different way on understanding how we can use technology.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, at a higher level like we use technology in every way to track, you know, whether it's your phone, your car, your ads, your metrics for your website for your business.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we have all these analytics for everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to me, the biggest miss was, how do we get analytics that makes sense for our body?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, why are we not all in as a human race optimizing our biology and our body using AI for our body?
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, because whether you believe in an afterlife or not, doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Today's body is your body, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, why don't we optimize this one and have it for the longest time possible in the healthiest way possible?
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you were saying that, I think the frustration amongst people in general is especially new technology when it comes hell, it's never optimized for somebody who's busy, who doesn't really want to know all of these numbers or what they mean, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They just want to know how am I doing, how did my decision impact my health?
[SPEAKER_01]: How does my practitioner, however I'm working with, know what I understand what's going on?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like most people don't care about the science.
[SPEAKER_01]: They just want to know the science is accurate, but then what do we do next?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that was like the spark of our first conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's spot on because literally the people, my clients, my community, they all come to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think they love the wild job.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like Amber, just tell me what to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is my role in this universe is to figure it out, which is what I had to do for women in midlife.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is no roadmap on what do we do?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I basically created that, and for me, the starting point is truly connecting with their cycle and throwing on a continuous glucose monitor.
[SPEAKER_02]: feel when your sugar dysregulation begins.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a huge thing, so much changes in midlife, but if you're getting to the root root cause, which is like how I always like to look at things, it starts with your blood sugar dysregulation, because I can lead to a cascade of a different midlife symptoms, and then chronic disease down the road.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, when we wait until it's showing up in our labs, for me at that point, you got like Mount Everest to climb, like why not we start sooner than you even think you need to, because most people don't think they even need to in the first place.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's fine if you think you don't need to, but just throw it on anyways.
[SPEAKER_02]: So at least you can learn about, I say, say, your baseline, learn how your body is responding.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then you can actually catch to see that it's changing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: 100%.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think your, your point is spot on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when, when there's blood sugar,
[SPEAKER_01]: changes a lot of people don't notice even if they notice they think it's just a headache or they ate something or didn't sleep properly it's like and once you're doing this all the time and becomes normal you kind of just forget that it's happening and so you just are like well you know I'm pretty good and you're like nothing can be further from the truth but your body just got used to feeling that way so that's what you think your normal is and then once you
[SPEAKER_01]: How healthy I thought I was.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I will say I've been, you know, using CGM now for a couple years, that this fall for me, followed what I mean, 24, my blood sugar won crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was interesting because I, I just turned 45, but at age 44, there was scientific studies that came out that you age the most at age 44, and again at age 60.
[SPEAKER_02]: And at 44 things went nuts and maybe that's why like nothing changed and it's your body changing, but if I wasn't tracking it, I didn't feel any difference.
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt the same, but I was shocked when I was like looking at my results are like, Oh, well, like I need to now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got it evolve.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to tweak my habits.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to lock this in more and if I wasn't looking, I would never have known.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that's the problem with pretty much all health concerns in the modern day is people have this massive event, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, this person had a heart attack at 57.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, for a person, nobody could have seen it happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just I think this rhetoric needs to change completely because it's not that you have a heart attack out of nowhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was 20, 30 years of decisions that you were making that compounded and then your heart
[SPEAKER_01]: like, I'm just telling you right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is your final chance to not treat me this way anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not even saying this to shame anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people don't even know if it's a good or bad decision, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, they're bombarded with marketing from every angle, whether it's fast food to even health food, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: You should be keto, you should be vegan, you should be carnivore only, you shouldn't, you know, plants can kill you or they're the best thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: To a lot of noise.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like people don't know, and it's, I think, you know, what you do is what is the root cause you're looking for the root cause and everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's literally the only way to approach your health.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, let's take a look and actually understand what's happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, you wouldn't treat me the same way you would treat a seven year old woman.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's completely the opposite metabolism, DNA lifestyle, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like none of these things made a lot of sense to me from somebody who had battled two chronic diseases and didn't have any of this technology and I had to like write notes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And basically I was like on an analog way tracking what I was doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which as you as you come in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like the most inefficient, non-scientific way of doing it, but you hope for the best.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what was your inspiration behind creating Thaia, like how is your experience different?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it the technology?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I basically, I'll go all the way back.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll make it a not a long story, but I think the context really matters here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but I was seven.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got diagnosed with asthma and before that diagnosis, you know, they put me in all these like health camps and these didn't you ruin with all these doctors and maybe hate doctors from an early age because nobody was telling me what what, you know, what are you guys doing what are you testing for can I actually have some information here and they just kind of said you have to do all these tests.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they told me, hey, you have asthma, there's nothing you can do about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's most likely genetic, you'll have it for the rest of your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now you have to, you know, whenever you have an asthma attack, take these steroids through that inhaler or that puffer or whatever you want to call it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even at the age of seven, I kind of rolled my eyes for those like, nobody in my family has asthma.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you make sense?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was just like, even at the age of seven, I have some intrinsic thing telling me that I don't think it's genetic.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the irony was, you know, I was living in Germany at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: We moved to Canada and I was playing a lot of soccer outdoors.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a lot less smoking in my household because in Europe, like everybody smokes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the early 90s and the 80s, it was craziness.
[SPEAKER_02]: And on airplanes.
[SPEAKER_01]: On everything, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I, you know, and I at that time, I was a refugee because I escaped the war.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was like, there was all these things that were a factor in my health.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now a lot to do with it versus just in genetic and the funny story was like by the age of knowing because I was going to a specialist and they would do breathalyzer tests to see how my lung capacity is improving or decreasing.
[SPEAKER_01]: At one point I got to like the 95th percentile of all lung capacity of kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're crushing it, you don't have asthma anymore, you can get off all the meds.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to me, that was a first time moment of one plus one did not equal to, right, like, all these white codes, people waste smarter than me with all these advanced degrees, told me one thing, and then all of a sudden, by happenstance, it's not like I was, you know, doing these crazy experiments on myself, like I do now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I got better and so that always stuck with me, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when I got to my early 20s Unfortunately, I got a second diagnosis like I I lost 50 pounds in three months.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've seen me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm six four.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've seen me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So oh
[SPEAKER_01]: When I lose weight, it's not the opposite problem of most people.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I lose weight, everyone notices.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I gain muscle, nobody knows anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, you look the same all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I lose weight, they're like, yeah, I'm like, come on.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just because my limbs are like 40 feet long.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I lost and when I lost 70 pounds, like it's impossible not to react like you almost just can't you just like are you dying basically and I didn't know I was like look I'm getting all these tests it was days of you let's do all these tests let's see what's going on long story short there is I got diagnosed with severe Crohn's disease
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was- Yeah, yeah, so my small intestine to my large intestine that area was almost completely shut.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did it hurt?
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you build up?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had this very unique problem, which was if I over eight, it would get stuck in that area, which resulted in me throwing up for like 16 to 20 to 40 hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not because there was anything left.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just my body's way of saying something is extremely wrong here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I always say the lowest moment in my life was like me sleeping on a toilet while throwing up because my body was just in this like state of shock, but I was so tired, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I was like, there's nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't stay up anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my only savior was go to the ER get IV's.
[SPEAKER_01]: and then to nausea and then my body would relax because it was like hey we have perfect hydration perfect nutrition all the electrolytes are in there we don't need to panic yeah yeah we don't need to panic we can stop convulsing so honestly Amber my North Star metric this is like getting nerdy now is like no I love it
[SPEAKER_01]: I was trying to avoid, I was like, my path to success is, can I avoid the times between hospital visits?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's how I was tracking if I was getting better.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like the, the longer the time between the hospital visit, the, it means something is going right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what of all the things that are medicine at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I did everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did hide seven different doctors, functional medicine, natural path, energy, healer, Chinese herbalist, MDs.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure I'm missing a couple there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I kind of did a schmorgas board because my approach was,
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't care who gets me better.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to avoid the surgery because they, they were like, do we might have to cut your intestines?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like, well, all the other get healthy old diet trying because if you come my intestines out, you know, I know there's people that have done that and it's helped.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just desperately trying to avoid that because, yeah, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Not that I didn't do, I was 14.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so this is what I'm seeing right and it's a scary thought, you know, you don't know like I know the life's style quality can be extremely high and all these things, but that was my moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, look, I need to like really take care of this or I have to have this massive surgery and who knows what happens the rest of my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I did do an immunosuppressant.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was kind of the the
[SPEAKER_01]: anything like energy healing I was drinking this like sludge to you that's my herbalist this was like one of the worst things and helped I'm pretty sure it helped but like you have to like boil this like nasty leaves and herbs for like five hours
[SPEAKER_01]: And your whole house smelled like it just you couldn't get it out of the walls.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you had to twice a day warm it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's hot and chug it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was just like, oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is absolutely brutal.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did lots of different diets.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I was on natural pathogen medicine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did functional medicine tests.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did the, you know, your whole eggs and the test your arm muscle testing easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I did all of those things, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And everyone always is like, when I tell this story, they're like, what exact diet should I eat to do when you did?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, I think there was a lot of these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know if they all worked.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just a sheer amount of,
[SPEAKER_01]: things I was willing to try, knowing that when I sat down, my biggest issue here was if I eat this, there was like a 50% chance I ended up in the hospital.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as you know, even better than me, if you're already worried about the food and like anxious about it, it's not going to be just as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I already have the just officials.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm in this like predicament all the time at that stage of my life, or I'm trying to make the best decisions possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I really was frustrated because my doctors would have different philosophies, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, you should fast.
[SPEAKER_01]: because you want to give your stomach a rest or rest, so it doesn't inflame.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then another doctor was like, no, eat every 10 minutes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So at least you have energy throughout the day and get better and get some of your weight back.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, logically, you could argue both of those.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why do they?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, right, because if I listen to one and not the other, I would have just done that and said, okay, that's the past to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: So having these unique perspectives, everyone was trying to be helpful, but then you don't know until you test them, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where I had, you know, when I mentioned to you if somebody doesn't know or doesn't feel it or is not prone to understanding what's going on in their body.
[SPEAKER_01]: At some point, I was just like, I felt sick of
[SPEAKER_01]: So then my only like understanding was in my gaining weight back and not hitting that emergency room.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like those were the big events.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I was like losing a lot of weight, or I was hitting the emergency room, I knew it wasn't going well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to really wrap this up, you know, I got past this or traveling the world again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was eating anything I wanted to eat, including like...
[SPEAKER_01]: street food and Thailand off, you know, spicy.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's major.
[SPEAKER_01]: She is, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like everything I shouldn't be able to eat.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was the second time in my life that I was like, man, this was a really terrible experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I fought for my life on my own accord against.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even people are trying to help me just to make sense of what's going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to look this back to say, uh, I think ever since especially that second time, I've had this want of, I would be really cool to understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not cool, but like, really useful to understand what's going on in my body.
[SPEAKER_01]: if if I had technology and things that could help me and so I actually went into advertising technology ad tech where I learned that technology is so advanced like I know everything you do online I can track every ad that you've clicked on every website how long you've been on there what your intent is if you were frustrated reading the page like this is how good the technology is
[SPEAKER_01]: Realization was, we should as a humanity be utilizing this type of technology on our biology.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I should be able to say, hey, 20 years has my health going to be giving the decisions that I'm making and how my body is responding to those.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we can do it with advertising, why not on our biology?
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, there's as many variables if not more on advertising as there was on our biological being.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could argue this here there, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But all I'm saying is there's this amazing tech out there, like it makes common sense of like why can't we use it for exactly, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've always had the idea for there and it wasn't until the glucose monitors became cheap enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: right and it was not that good and they lasted like two days, you know, the first one.
[SPEAKER_01]: So who's going to pay like $30,000 to monitor their blood sugar levels?
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Even even the most rich people, like it's still annoying to have to put them on every two days and and pay that price point.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when they became a lot more accessible and better and could last, you know, two weeks at a time, and they were declassified was the big thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were, they were realized that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But 20, 2017, 2018, they were declassified.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like six, seven years ago, they were declassified to a level two FDA device.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that means the scrutiny around them, in case people don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're a level three device and you prescribe it, the scrutiny for a doctor is astronomical.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like any little thing you get sued to this don't age because of malpractice.
[SPEAKER_01]: But level two is like just above over the counter,
[SPEAKER_01]: et cetera.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then a lot of countries that they came over the counter.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's when I was like, hey, I think Aia has legs now because it's a real biomarker that is directly correlated to your metabolic health that we can get always on data on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so my thought process was, these are medical companies making a medical device to those drugs, but we can use that technology.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's it for good.
[SPEAKER_01]: For good, for anybody to see what's going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what the key was, I knew that nobody would use it if it's hard to interpret, if they have to understand the science.
[SPEAKER_01]: If they couldn't correlate things easily, you know, like if you asked somebody what did you eat last Tuesday for breakfast most of the time they don't even they're like I have no idea right so it's like how would you In context know how your glucose is correlating to your health so we built an initial version of the software layer
[SPEAKER_01]: And our goal was to really empower practitioners to have this new unity with their clients where they can see their clients that eat at all times.
[SPEAKER_01]: That way they know if the care plans working, if that person's following the care plan, they can intervene before even seeing them and the client experience would be, hey, you know, Amber gave me this plan and I'm seeing results on everything that I do in real time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was kind of the first layer of data I always call that our first use case.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the essence of data is we want to build the operating system for biology.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I mean, CDMs are kind of becoming everywhere right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, aura just partnered with, I believe it's still low.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I just saw levels.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's using still low.
[SPEAKER_02]: But most women still haven't ever tried one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's part of my mission to get every woman to throw one on just for two weeks.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I created the Midlife reset to really educate women on.
[SPEAKER_02]: why do you need one, what does it tell you and to make it not overwhelming?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because a lot of times, there is just so much data be don't know what to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: How would you come up like how say a differentiates itself in terms from a data standpoint?
[SPEAKER_02]: So that it's actually useful data.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: The the first like year and a half of our company we really focused on creating an easy to understand score both like daily so what is your daily metabolic score and the way we did that was we score you from 0 to 100 and there's a there's a circle around that number that goes from red yellow to green.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was done on purpose because everybody since grade one knows, hey, 100 is the best score I can get.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something that you understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very relatable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the other part was if you're in the red, you know you need to stop and pay attention.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're like at a 50 out of 100, hey, you should really pay attention.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what's going on here?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can we make an immediate change to do something positive for your health?
[SPEAKER_02]: And just to be clear, because for most people who have never even put one on, like all you get is a chart typically.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like there's no other information for other ones that you might try, because I actually just had a meeting with a client over the weekends.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we went through her data.
[SPEAKER_02]: with one of the other ones and you're like, what is this?
[SPEAKER_02]: And their thing was spiking like crazy at night time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, well, what did you have?
[SPEAKER_02]: And like you just said, I don't know, because you have to also manually input your food if you want to sort of try to go back and see what you ate to where the spike was.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then an added layer for yours is amazing is that you just can do a one touch quick picture of your food.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't have to write anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was the other thing we'd push, which is like, everybody hates logging.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Never did it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, we just remembered in a lot of days.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would write it down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I used my fitness spell religiously for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially when I was doing something where I needed to track, like I climbed
[SPEAKER_01]: I was religious about my nutrition intake.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I didn't want to go climb the tallest mountain in Africa and not be prepared.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's made.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why would you waste your life doing that, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but the problem is it's like, as soon as you're at a restaurant or as soon as you're traveling, if you're not eating the same meals, it is so tedious.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't know how much oil is being put in something if you're not.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're not constantly cooking and preparing and if you have any variety at all,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, people absolutely hate that experience, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it, it strives them crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we came out with a system where we're using AI just to take a photo off that photo.
[SPEAKER_01]: We give the calories, the macro nutrients, the ingredients, the micro nutrients.
[SPEAKER_01]: So at the very least, it's one click now and you get a 90% accuracy on the meows of your eating.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then those get scored, so anything that you're logging gets it's own score.
[SPEAKER_01]: How did your personal body respond to that input?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really the only thing you have to do, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it makes it easy for a client to actually use the technology and makes it accessible for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They understand what's going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when they're meeting with you, they're provider.
[SPEAKER_01]: You both can say, hey, these things that end do so well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's how we adjust them.
[SPEAKER_01]: right versus a lot of providers you can crack me from wrong like when you're speaking with the client you're trying to get updates on what's been going on right have you been doing has your diet then sleep and a lot of the time unfortunately these answers are like my sleep didn't pretty good or I've been okay and it's like
[SPEAKER_01]: What does that mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm very proud to be a nice, like in order to make like real deep impact.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just want to see sort of like a peak behind the curtain and what's great with this technology is that I'm able to see on the back end and it makes it so easy for me to be able to.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also make the most of our meeting time, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, for example, it's valuable and people have limited amounts of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can like set the meeting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I already know like what I'm going to say, I already have everything ready to review.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's really more just like review.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, all right, do X, Y, Z.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you'll report back.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we can have a follow up on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Instead of asking a million in one question, trying to figure it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's really a puzzle.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are putting the pieces to the puzzle together.
[SPEAKER_02]: Regardless.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is an element that really helps to, like, it's a big piece of the puzzle that's filling that gap for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think a lot of people, they focus on one or the other, so they're like, oh, this is good for their practitioner, but it has to be good for their client, too, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It has to be easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is so overlooked in a lot of products, like it's really good for one, but not the other, and so.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were very mindful of how do we make a great experience for both because to me that's a secret relationship.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had a lot of doctors.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a doctor and how that I work with.
[SPEAKER_01]: I trust them and like the more context they had on me, the better our conversations go.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was, you know, that was really an important piece.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think the most exciting part is it really allows you to own your wellness.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, and I love how simple it is that you are getting a score.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it kind of gives you a brahmeter of like, was today a good day or not that great of a day.
[SPEAKER_02]: And not that the score has to like always be the guide in my, but like when you are looking at the data and you've never looked at your sugar before, it's all new.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can feel overwhelming.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that the setup of it is so simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of intimidation of like this new device that you're using.
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually, I just ordered one for my father, who's 81 is going to give it a try.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he can do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyone can do it just because he calls himself sometimes a tech dinosaur.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, he was really, it's so easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was showing him how it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was like, all right, let's do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like completely open-minded.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that it's just about.
[SPEAKER_02]: feel intimidating.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's probably one of the biggest barriers for most people for trying new things, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels kind of scary, but this is absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: If anything exciting, like I get excited by it, I get when we met.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, so jazz.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, oh, this is giving so much more than what I'm currently getting as a user.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I was wanting more information on myself so that I could just keep
[SPEAKER_02]: dealing with this sort of like writing down the notes on time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I forgot to write it down, you know, another time I would.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was kind of a mess.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how do you like if you can walk us through maybe the actual like dashboard?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we like use this data to know like sort of what to do next?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what are those?
[SPEAKER_02]: Are there advice that's given on there like generic advice?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what are the next steps?
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, for the provider for the cleaning user, like, if you're like, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Track to my food.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: My score.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: So obviously, like, in that point in time, if you scored poorly on something and you're going to eat it again, or you're going to do that activity again, or you're going to try a meditation.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you can log anything because not just food.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to reiterate that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can log anything because what we're doing is we're looking at your body's response to an event or an activity that you did.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you can try those things again and see if you score better.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of the easiest way to date and use it on a weekly basis.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do send a metabolic report in that metabolic report.
[SPEAKER_01]: We give you your best performers, your worst performers, and an overall trend line.
[SPEAKER_01]: So are you doing better this week versus last week?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're doing better,
[SPEAKER_01]: you know keep going and you're doing the right things you're improving if you're doing worse it's a good reminder to now look at okay well we're the things that I didn't score so well on and then how do I improve those and that could be you know going to you Amber and being like hey this is part of this care plan how do we prove it or these are the things that I'm doing that I'm not scoring is good on and then you have a pointed direction and focus on what you're going to talk about versus
[SPEAKER_01]: not really knowing or understanding where you're Elsa.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just was having conversation to, I like people to come prepared for their appointments with questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that that is perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: You said that that allows you to come with some questions to ask instead of just you're not working blind anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like your the data is like in your hands.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you just take a second to take a look at it, like you have to actually
[SPEAKER_02]: that it will create some really good questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think you just added a few new things to it, because obviously you could take the pictures of your food, but there are some logging options if you want to go deeper.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we just launched, we call it like a time-based activity.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're doing a fast, you know, maybe doing a seven to our fast, or 24 hour fast, you can log that now and I'll show on the graph and show how your metabolism responded during the fast.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can log sleep.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're like, hey, I went to bed at 10, woke up at six.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can now click on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Click on that eight hour period and we'll also score that and show you how your metabolism was doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: We already had this technology because we'd do a daily score of metabolic score, so any time period we can use that same algorithm and AI approach.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have some really cool things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know when this is going live, but we're actually going to be pushing a multi course function now, which means, you know, if you eat like a salad and then you're main and then dessert.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those were typically one individual thing on the graph and they were scored individually, but now with AI, we're going to know, hey, these were one meal.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how did that meal in total respond?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you can look at the individual things and how they contributed.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're trying to always improve the experience and make it more and more,
[SPEAKER_01]: Intuitive and logical on how it's going and also expand on bigger timelines to and things that you're working on to show you how those are impacting your health and body.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I saw the fasting, because I help to coach people on how to fast with your cycle.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that really excited me because fasting for everyone is different.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, fasting with your cycles a great way to sort of tune into your hormones.
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe that you shouldn't be eating the same every day.
[SPEAKER_02]: We sort of kind of get in this routine or most of us do the same thing every day when you connect to your cycle and work with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: it's amazing to be able to see how did that fast work for you or against you and then maybe for somebody who isn't even connecting their eating to their cycle yet, it can maybe show them that you actually need to do so because of how your blood sugar is responding because the hormones are going to also affect your blood sugar.
[SPEAKER_02]: So
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's really exciting for women and such a powerful tool.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's the best demographic is like women over 40, not only because of the hormonal changes, but the cycles.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've seen over and over again the most amount of insights in those demographics, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because there's a lot of things that are happening where if you're paying attention, you can easily make, even like seemingly small adjustments, have a huge impact.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that you said that, I couldn't agree more.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was going to ask, you see so many glucose patterns.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there one common mistake that you see often that you wish somebody would stop doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, do you see any sort of patterns?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you get to study like how people's blood sugar is?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there anything that's kind of a standout to share?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think most people,
[SPEAKER_01]: always think that food is the thing that drives glucose, and I want to really reiterate whoever is listening, a lot of things in fact are glucose, like just because you ate a meal that doesn't have any carbs doesn't mean you didn't have a inflammatory reaction to that food.
[SPEAKER_01]: If that inflammatory reaction does happen, your glucose will spike.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not that the carb load was too high for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And therefore you're creating insulin and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's that you might have been inflamed and now your body's producing energy to fight out that inflammation because it didn't agree with what you put in your body.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I know I used food even though I'm saying it might not be food, but I'm just saying it in a different way of thinking about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alternatively, there's been lots of people that
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, their glucose spikes are as high and then the providers like what what were you doing and that they find out they were stressed right yeah they were hanging out with the wrong person that stresses them out all the time they were reading a twitter thread that early made them upset they were watching the news which notoriously is negative driven because that's what we are drawn to as humans.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of things can imply the glucose, so it's not just in my diabetic and my not diabetic and my eating too many carbs and I'm not eating too many carbs, it's actually
[SPEAKER_01]: to some extent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's all layered.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, how do you sleep affects your blood sugar?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: That regulates stress is a huge one.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's why it's so important to throw it on just to see how your body's responding.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because again, those are the things you're not feeling your sugar like right.
[SPEAKER_02]: You used to think it's just a headache.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so much more, it's so much more layered than that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That it's great that you can actually catch something.
[SPEAKER_02]: because maybe you know that you ate super healthy and good.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're like, you have to actually think one step more like, oh, did I just like have a bed?
[SPEAKER_02]: meeting her phone call before I said my meal, it's helping like that and to see how sometimes your food pairings like what used to not spike your sugar, eating the same thing if it's starting to spike it now like okay you need to like focus on that and how could you maybe add some fat like do those six I love I always call them in life experiment experiment with yourself see if running fat helps to lower it and just keep like getting curious and playful like it doesn't
[SPEAKER_02]: serious and like it's a negative thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's actually like a fun it's like an adult toy.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a great way to put it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah Like you're gaming your own body, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_02]: Where do you see the glucose CGM tech going in the next few years?
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you see is the future?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I do think we'll iterate on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know there's a bunch of companies
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we're talking to that are working on like a patch that you take off like a ring or a watch and charge it and it doesn't actually pierce the skin and it can last, you know, maybe up to a year.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do feel like we're going to get more accurate and longer lasting ways to measure it, which would be amazing because then it's easier to measure over a long period of time right I think there's a lot of value in trying it even for two weeks and getting understanding that way a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: more value if you do it longer and have pattern maps over months versus weeks just because you can really nail them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Be amazing, you can have these charts, I mean, that's the thing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, and then you can actually predict the future of health because you have enough data to go off of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: there's other sensors that are supposed to come out in the market.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like to promise these things because these companies are excited.
[SPEAKER_01]: They want to partner with us notoriously.
[SPEAKER_01]: It always takes longer than it should.
[SPEAKER_01]: FDA approvals.
[SPEAKER_01]: Take a ton of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm very, you know, I think we've, there's no going back, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we're going to keep going towards.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like we're going to have health data and we're going to make decisions on our health data
[SPEAKER_02]: And what can you talk a little bit about the difference in the technology?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you helped educate me on why was mine falling off all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was definitely more bold.
[SPEAKER_02]: He versus this one is thinner.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you explain a little bit about the differences?
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, so now there is some over-the-counter options, which we're looking at integrating eventually.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they are cheaper than the prescription grade CGMs, the notoriously the problem is because we work with providers if the technology is not excellent and reliable than if you're on a care plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: The worst thing is the sensor falls off before it's supposed to, it stops working, you were just in the middle of an optimization, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You were just part of a care plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: So my highest priority is how do we make sure that the provider and the client have a great experience?
[SPEAKER_01]: as I know that they're working on something very important.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is why we're still doing the prescription only sensors.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are the most robust in terms of data accuracy.
[SPEAKER_01]: They also last longer.
[SPEAKER_01]: The over-the-counter ones, unfortunately, what they did was they took old technology and paired down the battery to make them last longer.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're seeing like 30, 35% failure rates before the end date.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that was really, yeah, it's really not in the times too.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't just once or twice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in the, in the, in the lens of like, you're working with a provider, you're part of a care plan, you're really, you paid money to optimize your health, you're adhering to something, and you want to do a good job, but the technology is going to fill you one in three times.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not going to work, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we, we make the provider look bad because that's
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so yeah, they're lower costs and I think the low cost sensors are excellent at getting the mass markets interested in trying right that's great but like when you're really dialing something in I we make sure we have the best sensor with the highest accuracy and we can you know those are still the the prescription ones they're also thinner so there's less of a chance of you hitting it off
[SPEAKER_01]: less bulky, lower footprint, especially in the women, you know, they like this smaller footprint.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it doesn't look like this massive thing on your arm.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I prefer it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that that's helpful.
[SPEAKER_02]: And do you think eventually it'll be able to track ketones as well?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's already prototypes that are doing this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there are sensors that just do ketones and then there's two and one's.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're very close to some of these companies because, you know, we built software that makes this stuff actionable.
[SPEAKER_01]: So whatever the best hardware is, we're happy to integrate.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exciting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think this amazing conversation really, thank you so much for, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: helping to create just such a great product both for the consumer and for the practitioner to close out our conversation today.
[SPEAKER_02]: What is one drop of wellness wisdom you like to leave with our listeners today?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'll keep it simple, you know, whatever you're doing, just make sure it's data driven when you're doing something for health right and I think it is cool to explore your own body, but having somebody who's seen what you're going through like an
[SPEAKER_01]: That's been the most helpful thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done even though I said I had like seven doctors at once all of them taught me something I still have a doctor or still have a health coach like even with all the tech that I have it just pinpoints where I shouldn't be focusing on and everything is data driven And it's personalized to me and I think nowadays it's easier for you to do that and ever so even if you're not doing a CGM Whether it's labs, et cetera That's the best starting point.
[SPEAKER_01]: I always give that advice
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for being on the well-drop today.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we will put a link in the show notes so you can order your own CGM.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have a partnership, they and the well-drop.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you want to dive in been deeper, you could do the midlife resets and also sign up for drops of wellness wisdom delivered Sunday to your inbox at thewelldrop.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: The well-drop podcast and content posted by Amber Burger and DinoWisma is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions.
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