EFR 826: $100 Now or $900,000 Later - The 17 Critical Blood Biomarkers to Know that Can Prevent Heart Disease, Reverse Diabetes and Every Other Chronic Illness and Disease with Michael Dubrovsky

00:00 - Chase (Host) The following is an Operation Podcast production.

00:03 - Michael (Guest) The way I think about it is like it's helpful to know where the highest impact is. Like if I'm going to 80-20, this like seeing your blood work before you have a problem right, because you'll see issues in your blood work long before you have any symptoms that allows you to focus your energy on that issue versus something else. So you know, like, if you look at like the classic health advice, there's so much of it and it's all correct for somebody you know, or a lot of it is true for someone who has that like that specific issue. But it's it's hard, you know, following all of it can be really difficult. So it's like is it really that I need to sleep more, exercise more? Do I need to cut carbs or whatever? Like these types of things? So I need to focus on my lipids?

00:39 Like there's a range of things or it could be hormonal, right, and it's a range of things that could eventually cause very serious symptoms and illness. But it's it's hard to just purely by following all the best practices, like in theory you don't need to check, but in practice probably you're not going to be able to do everything right. So it allows you to to like apply like an 80, 20 rules like which, which preventative things are going to really matter for you, specifically because you might need to see that, like improvement or those problems to to like want to want to do all that. My name is Michael Dubrovsky, I'm the chief product officer and co founder of Cyfox Health, and this is Ever Forward Radio.

01:23 - Chase (Host) What's up Ever Ever Forward Radio family. Welcome back to the show. I am your host, Chase Chewning, certified health coach, wellness entrepreneur, army veteran and, especially in today's episode, a guy that gets so excited about the data. I get so excited about learning more about how I perform, what is going on externally and, more specifically, internally. I love learning what good feels like and how to keep it and how to optimize it, and that comes through a lot of different things that we talk about on the show Awareness, consciousness, higher levels of education, relationships, daily physical activity, a lot of healthy habit stuff. But specifically knowing what is going on internally, what is going on with your hormones, cholesterol, blood sugar, key biomarkers that we can't always put our finger on in terms of how we feel, we got to get a little bit of work. We got to get some outside help to get the inside snapshot, and that is exactly what today's episode with Michael Dubrovsky from CyFox Health is all about. Part of the reason why I wanted to have this episode today is because there is so much when it comes to our health and our wellness that we can stay on top of if we, first and foremost, become educated. With education comes empowerment, after empowerment becomes action, and these are the steps to maintaining a healthy life and, hopefully, ideally, getting ahead of anything such as a chronic illness disease, because, look, the number one killer in America is preventable Cardiovascular disease, heart disease. These are things that, besides maybe a few people here and there that have genetic predisposition and runs in your family, certain things by looking at blood pressure, cholesterol, key biomarkers, we can actually reduce and even reverse the potential threat of a heart attack, stroke or other forms of cardiovascular disease. You can't always feel it. You got to get your labs friend. In fact, from an article from the top 10 causes of death from US News, over 700,000 deaths in 2022 were from cardiovascular disease. This is all preventable. This is what blows my mind the most, and don't just take my word for it. The World Heart Federation estimates that 80% of cardiovascular disease, including heart disease and stroke, is preventable. How they say? Well, the main elements of CBD cardiovascular disease prevention are healthy diet, physical activity, avoiding tobacco and quote knowing your numbers, what are those numbers? High blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, all of these things that we can manage, we can measure, we can track, we can prevent.

04:16 If you are curious about what is going on internally. If you have a family history, people in your close family that suffer from obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, this message is for you. But also if you are someone that just cares about knowing your numbers, maybe it's been a while since you saw your doctor got your annual physical, had these labs drawn. Cyfox is here to bring the lab to you. I'm proud to partner with them today on this episode to not only deliver some very important education around diagnostic labs and the most current stats around chronic illness, disease and what we can do to educate ourselves about them and to introduce better habits. Different habits alter nutrition, maybe even key supplementation. Look, you can't really manage what you don't measure.

05:07 I had this incredible, very easy to understand report showing me 17 key biomarkers, such as A1C cholesterol, even looking at my testosterone all things that are going to empower me to make the best choice I can today and every day moving forward. And best believe I'm today and every day moving forward and best believe I'm coming back in a couple months to check these markers again to see what is moving the needle and where I still need some guidance. If you'd like to learn more, I'm going to have this link for you down in the show notes. Thank you, cyfox, for sponsoring this episode. Not only are you going to learn more about what makes you tick and how you can tick more better, but I love saving some money and improving our wellness at the same time. To learn more, head to scifoxhealthcom. Slash ever forward. That's S-I-P-H-O-X-H-E-A-L-T-Hcom. Slash ever forward. Like I said, you're going to get 20% off of your first test kit.

06:01 Knowledge is power, my friends, and there's no better power, no better knowledge than your own, your own body. Welcome to the show. What we're going to talk about today is hopefully going to be a reminder for some people, but an eye-opener for a lot of others. We are facing, have been facing, I think, a whole new level of pandemic in terms of chronic illness, disease, information, misinformation, and what we're going to get into here is meant to really deliver a lot of what is working in the healthcare industry, what is not working and how.

06:40 In my opinion, we, as the consumer and as someone who is just very interested and cares about our health, our wellness, lifespan, healthspan, can take that power back and, in my opinion, power starts first with information and education and then application. What we're really going to be talking about is you, your labs, your blood, and I found this really interesting article from Forbes. And everything we talk about here on the show always is going to be listed down in the show notes for everybody so you can check out the references. This Forbes article is actually talking about the decline of lab techs and the response by the industry is actually to not get your labs or push them off even longer because they can't handle the load. Just off the cuff man to hear something like that. How does that land on you?

07:38 - Michael (Guest) Yeah. So that's an interesting article. I wasn't familiar with it before. We talked about it briefly before the show started and I think it's.

07:47 You know it's just a health care industry. It's very it's its own world. It's kind of like, you know, maybe there's like capitalism, socialism, communism and health care industry, you know it's like its own universe of like upside down economics and so on, its own universe of of like upside down economics and so on. And I think it's sometimes they try to balance a lot of things that it's not like okay, what is the best thing for the end user? They're balancing a lot of things against each other and as an individual, maybe it makes sense, like from a system perspective, but as an individual, it can, it can like be super obvious. It doesn't make sense, right.

08:25 So, uh, if I, if I am actually want to get the best health care, I probably should get the labs that that I need to get, versus, you know, whatever the like the system is having trouble providing them right, or so they suggest like maybe you don't need these right, um, so that. But that that's kind of I think, um, I think there's a lot of countercurrents to that Right. So you see, those kinds of things happening in like traditional health care, and then there's so many other things springing up like in parallel. So I think it's probably more positive than negative. If you sum it up, you know across everything that's going on, but it's sad to hear that honestly.

09:03 - Chase (Host) Yeah, and again I'm going to link this article for everybody to check out and I encourage you to please do so. But in response to this we're hearing from governing bodies, authorities, even the organizations themselves. This is their response to hey, we are significantly understaffed and we're not having as many people trained as we need to become certified lab techs, and this is a direct quote. They're saying don't order baseline laboratory studies which are complete blood count, coagulation testing or serum biochemistry for asymptomatic patients undergoing low risk non-cardiac surgery. Now, I understand that's kind of specific, but I interpret that as going. Basically, don't run labs if you're not symptomatic. And in my opinion that kind of goes against what I believe, because you're going to find yourself probably needing deeper, more involved healthcare only once you have a problem. But running baseline labs, getting simple diagnostic labs, hell, even just going, getting your annual physical and what your doctor typically provides. In that experience you can learn a lot of information that can prevent anything from ever happening in many cases, right.

10:21 - Michael (Guest) Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that in you can see, like in other industries, there's a big effort to increase the amount of data that you collect because there's so much that can be done with it. Um, and I think it's. I mean, I don't know about this very specific case, but but like it seems seems obvious that, uh, we want more data than less um, and ideally, you know the, the data that like is based on the latest research and so on. So, like, we want a lot, like a lot of um, like something dynamic, rather than like, okay, let's try to pare back, uh, you know, and actually have less data than we used to they go on to say, um, this is part of uh choosing wisely this effort.

11:00 - Chase (Host) Up in canada it looks like their suggestions include don't do annual screening blood tests unless directly indicated by their risk profile. Again, I very strongly disagree personally. And then if you do enough tests, something will come back abnormal and lead to needless further investigation. Quote abnormal results are found in at least 5% of people, though it may be their norm, particularly vitamin D. And it's interesting they're highlighting vitamin D and they're saying don't routinely measure vitamin D in low risk adults. Instead, just give them vitamin D supplements. So now we're saying don't even get a test, just start supplementing which. I take supplements, I'm a believer in them, but only after knowing my body and knowing what I'm getting or not getting in my nutrition, and especially after looking at my lab to see what I can get rid of, what I need to maintain, what I should supplement with. Do you agree with this as well?

12:02 - Michael (Guest) Yeah, I think from our I mean, it's interesting, you know, like I think vitamin D is pretty low risk, but from our data we do get people that are too high in vitamin D and probably what it, what it is exactly this kind of thing where they're over supplementing but they're not measuring, um, and that that might be negative as well, right, so I think it's it's uh, again, it's just a matter of trying to create like convenience and abundance versus limitation and like austerity, you know.

12:30 So it's OK if we can measure these things and do it Like, basically, you know, would Jeff Bezos just take a vitamin D supplement without having his vitamin D measured? Like no, right, and so it's the same thing. You know he he uses the same iPhone that I use, right, so like, why can't I have the same blood test that he gets? Like it's. It feels like we should aim for a society where it's it's more flat, you know, in terms of, in terms of the kind of healthcare that everybody gets. So I think, from that perspective, it like kind of it's like a clarifying thought, like, okay, what would you do if cost was no object?

13:03 - Chase (Host) This other article from LabMe, and this is from Dr Anthony Close on their staff there back in 2021, talking about some shocking healthcare stats in the USA, and this statement hit me so hard, quote well, in the case of healthcare, $100 now could save you from $900,000 in the future or worse. How would you kind of break this down for the person listening right now, thinking about investing out of pocket or in contribution to your HSA, fsa or something like that, about a hundred dollars to get some labs in terms of prevention of potentially not only chronic illness and disease down the road, but hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars later in terms of what that unchecked marker could cost you heart attack, stroke, things like that.

13:55 - Michael (Guest) Yeah, I think you know, the greatest problem for American the healthcare system, the American healthcare system is this issue of, like people getting chronic diseases which are extremely costly Not just, you know, it's not just money, right, like it's a once you you lose your health, it's kind of money is secondary, uh, but it's um no-transcript. Knowing where you might be trending in the wrong direction helps you focus like, okay, I'm, I have this much energy every day to like try to live correctly. Uh, and I think for me this is like that because I'm not like a, you know, triathlete or whatever, you know who's like eating perfectly. So, like in my case, I, you know, I'm an engineer, I work on blood testing, but the way I think about it is like it's helpful to know where the highest impact is. Like if I'm going to 80, 20 of this, like seeing your blood work before you have a problem, right, Because you'll see issues in your blood work symptoms. That allows you to focus your energy on that issue versus something else.

15:20 So you know, like, if you look at, like the classic health advice, there's so much of it and it's all correct for somebody you know, or a lot of it is true for someone who has that, like that specific issue. But it's hard, you know, following all of it can be really difficult. So it's like is it really that I need to sleep more, exercise more? Do I need to cut carbs or whatever, like these types of things? So I need to focus on my lipids? Like there's a range of things or it could be hormonal, right, and it's a range of things that could eventually cause very serious symptoms and illness, but it's uh, it's hard to um just purely by following all the best practices. Like in theory you don't need to check, but in practice probably you're not going to be able to do everything right, right, so it allows you to to like apply like an 80, 20 rules like which which preventative things are going to really matter for you specifically?

16:07 - Chase (Host) And to kind of get to the end here on my portion of you know my goal is to educate people. Hopefully I'm not scaring you too much, but when it comes to life or death, I think maybe a little bit, a little bit of getting scared about your health, is a good thing. Chronic illness and disease the number one killer and it has been for many, many years of people in the US has been heart disease, cardiovascular disease. In fact, pulling from this article from US News recently, the top 10 causes of death in the US. The number of deaths reported was in 2022, 702,880. And that is about 167.2 per 100,000 population. That's not that crazy of a stat.

16:54 There's odds are for you, listening, you know, look around your office, look around the gym. For you, listening, you know, look around your office, look around the gym. Either them or somebody they know has unfortunately been on the receiving end of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke and it's preventable, it's flat out preventable. Some cases, some small amount of these cases, are in fact linked, you know, genetically. But even that's information. So if you know you're genetically predisposed, you can do things to really most likely prevent it or really reduce the detrimental effect it can have should you suffer a heart attack or stroke.

17:27 And this next stat is coming from the World Health Federation excuse me, the World Heart Federation and they're saying that an estimated 80% of cardiovascular disease, including heart disease and stroke, is preventable. The main elements of CBD prevention are healthy diet, physical activity, avoiding tobacco and, quote, knowing your numbers, and these numbers we're talking about are your labs looking at biomarkers such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity or even diabetes. So how does it land on you, michael, to know that the number one killer of Americans, maybe even across the world, but this stat, I believe, is just in the US is preventable, and preventable by just something as simple as getting your blood drawn?

18:15 - Michael (Guest) Yeah. So I think we think about this a lot and we focus on heart health and that's like a big part of the blood testing that we do is we do try to do like as comprehensive as possible, but a large chunk of the markers is heart health related and because it's so important. But I think the what's becoming more popular is to look at more markers because typically it's like HDL, ldl, the lipids that your standard physical is going to look at, but that doesn't capture the whole story and you really have to look at the proteins that carry the lipids. So, like ApoB, apoa, which have been known already for maybe 20 years years, it's like very agreed upon, uh in kind of in the medical research community that those are more predictive of heart attacks and cardiovascular events than ldl, hdl, uh, but but it's just like there's a lot of inertia because the ldl hdl tests are older, they've been used longer and so on. But I think that's kind of that's shifting. There was actually a wall street journal article yesterday about apo b which was very surprising.

19:20 Like it's getting really what did it say uh tester apo b, basically all right all right but it's like that's surprising.

19:27 You know, like I I didn't know it was like getting getting so mainstream, but it has been. You know, if you're, if you're going to like concierge medicine or whatever, it's standard, but it hasn't been mainstream, uh, or or it hasn't quite yet gotten mainstream, but I, I think in within you know 10 years probably it'll be much more widespread, but it's already something that you know. If you're going to Cyfox or another like specialty labs company, they're going to be testing that and I think optimizing for APOB increases your chances of actually you know, like like it's LDL works but but it works at a population level. But as an individual, you want, you want the thing that's like as accurate as possible again. So, uh, and we see a lot of people like we actually have there's one guy that wrote a whole thing about it.

20:12 Uh, you know, after this happened to him. So he he was uh like ran half marathons, he was maybe 40 years old, very like healthy looking guy, takes the Cyphox test and he has normal LDL. So that's why he's never had any like that, didn't know anything, but his APOB was very high and so he went and got a CAC scans and it turned out like he was very close to having a heart attack. Like his arteries were blocked he had to get several stents like very, very serious.

20:40 - Chase (Host) With running around, literally running around, with quote normal cholesterol.

20:48 - Michael (Guest) Yeah, he was a runner with normal cholesterol and you know, like, because he was a runner, I think he was a pretty high risk of like having a heart attack while running, right, and that happens sometimes. And so basically he, yeah, he got the stents and he's back to running and so he's just like super, and this was again. This is the a hundred dollars versus $900,000. Like, what is it worth to you to not have a heart attack, right, like it's much better to get the test. So I think, from that perspective, it's, you know, even if, even if you were just doing the math on, like, what the healthcare costs to the world is not even on the individual level I think it makes a lot of sense to do way more screening. So it's like the opposite, you know, instead of having less labs, it's more labs. But I think just the way that, the way that incentives work, you know people don't stay on the same health plan very long time. So it's like worrying about what's going to happen to you in 30 years doesn't really make sense for that health plan. So there's like there's reasons why there's not more screening. But I think it's a, it's something that we're like the world is evolving towards, for sure, and, and you know we try to make it as easy as possible for people to do and, and that's to me feels like the obvious direction.

21:46 You know, and it's true for many, you know, like heart diseases is one thing, but basically, again, like six out of 10 Americans have a chronic disease, so it's, it's just, it was a crazy stat, right. So if you're in the other four out of 10, you know you stay out of this, you don't want to graduate to that group, right? So it's, it's, I think, I think it's, and you it's also. Some of them are reversible, right? So, like it's reversible, or like very manageable in some cases, and again, a lot of it. It will come down to monitoring the markers and then adjusting lifestyle and other things to, you know, to improve them.

22:20 So, yeah, it's a, it's definitely, I think, an important problem that, luckily, you know, america is like a wealthy and happy place in general, and I know people don't think that way, but it's my family's from the Soviet Union and so it's, I think here things are pretty, pretty good, and so that kind of leaves the luxury of, like you know, thinking about like okay, what's my longevity going to be? Like, how can I stay healthy like past 40 and all these things? And I, I think that's great, right, because in many cases, like people don't have the luxury to even think about it, right? So I think I'm it's exciting for me that, you know, I I'm in my early thirties and I'm thinking like, okay, how do I keep this party going for, you know, for a long time, rather than kind of like turn into a 40 year old guy? That's like slowly, uh, becoming immobile and and these kinds of things, which is, which is maybe more, more like how life used to be for some people.

23:14 - Chase (Host) Nazdorovia, right, nazdorovia, yeah, yeah, to your health. So all my non-Ruski friends out there. Another thing that came up for me when understanding what Cyphox is doing and just this, this model really of delivering at home trustworthy, reliable, quick labs is access to care and in my opinion you know someone coming from working in concierge medicine as a clinical health coach for many years access to care was paramount and in that model it was a little different because, like I said, it was concierge medicine. These are already typically affluent people or people who can afford. I believe back then it was about $200 a month or so for access to care, more direct access to your doctor, faster labs, kind of more white glove service.

24:08 I don't know what things are nowadays, but let's talk about the people maybe who don't even have health insurance, people who are so far away from I don't even know when my last lab was, because it's what is the job? What are the benefits? Do I get health insurance? Am I paying for this out of pocket? And when you're paying for things out of pocket, every dollar matters and it becomes a difficult decision for a lot of people to go. Am I going to be investing in rent? Am I going to be investing in food? Or am I going to be investing into health insurance, HSA, fsa, investing into my health by organic fruits and vegetables? Or am I going to spend a couple hundred dollars or $800 to get some labs that, according to a lot of the things on the internet, I don't need or some entities are even saying don't get unless you're symptomatic? What would you say to that person that is going I've got this hundred dollars and convince me to invest it into my health through information, through diagnostic labs?

25:09 - Michael (Guest) Yeah, that's a good question. So I think you know. The starting point probably I have to agree with. Like you know, people generally say this, and it's probably true is that you know you exercise and sleep are probably the first step. So, like if you are not, free yeah, and they're.

25:26 they're almost free, like you know. There's maybe it's like the gym membership or buying, like you know, free weights or whatever, but whatever it takes to get to get those basic things, I think that's that those are probably on the whole more important than labs, especially regular labs. But I think getting your labs done once at least makes a lot of sense, because again there's this risk of you know once you have the, if you catch problem early, it's going to cost you much less in the long run. So that from that sense it's like financially makes a lot of sense.

25:56 I think in terms of regular testing, like, let's say, going from just your normal yearly with your doctor, which doesn't have that many markers, to adding like a quarterly home tests, like what we sell I think that's a it's. We try to make it as as inexpensive as possible, but it's still you know it's an out of pocket expense. I think if you're already doing the really basic stuff, like you're exercising and sleeping normally and so on, then it makes sense to layer that on to get like additional benefits. I think doing a single test for screening is really valuable no matter what, but doing regular testing is probably. I would only add that after the, after the really like diet, sleep and exercise, because you're not doing those. I mean the test might motivate you to do them Right. I mean the test might motivate you to do them right. So then I would say it's like a cost of getting the sleep and exercise and so on, because you might need to see that like improvement or those problems to like want to do all that.

26:47 - Chase (Host) What's up listeners, I got to remind you about the deal we have with Cyfox Health. Whether for you, a friend, a family member, no doubt you and your entire household would benefit from knowing the 17 key biomarkers to get this snapshot of your internal health. I know a lot of people like to do the 23andMe or these other at-home test kits to kind of learn more fun things about genetic testing and, yes, they absolutely can influence maybe your healthy behavior or your health in general. But I'm telling you these 17 biomarkers are crucial for la-di-da-di everybody to know whether you're feeling your best or not. A lot of things like chronic illness and disease we can actually get ahead of, but we can only get ahead of them if we know where we stand. Look, I get. It. Might be saying Chase, why do I need to get a blood test? I feel fine, I look fine, I'm happy with my life, my health, my physical health, my mental health. Look, so am I. But I still get my labs drawn for very important reasons. I have diabetics in my family, so understanding my A1C and glucose are very important. So, again, looking at my A1C, I also want to see my triglycerides. I'm also very curious about my testosterone levels as a guy pushing 40. So much value, so much information comes from a few moments and just a few pricks on a piece of paper that you put in the mail and then you get this incredible, easy to read comprehensive lab report a few days later. If this is for you, your friends, your family, your loved ones, if you're curious and you like saving money, I got the hookup for you.

28:17 Everford Radio listeners, you get 20% off of your first blood test. I have partnered up with Cyfox to get 20% off blood tests for this community. You're going to get 17 critical blood markers you need in a single at-home kit. It's the easiest, most affordable way to routinely check your blood biomarkers and stay on top of your health. This is clinically accurate. They got the best price guarantee and, not to mention, this is where you can lean into your healthcare benefits, your insurance. It is FSA and HSA approved. Order your kit, deliver to your door, collect your sample, drop it in the mail, get your report and then take action.

28:53 So if you're curious about where you stand in terms of diagnostic labs and or looking to optimize or hopefully get ahead of any potentially negative levels so you don't have to worry about a high blood sugar, becoming pre-diabetic, diabetic or God forbid cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart disease, stroke, heart attack. Head to scifoxhealthcom slash ever forward to learn more and to save 20% off of your first kit, linked for you as always in the show notes today under episode resources. But again, that is S-I-P-H-O-X-H-E-A-L-T-H scifoxhealthcom slash ever forward. Yeah, some people are definitely more quantifiable, quantifiably driven right. They need to see the numbers. You know, have that gamification go. Do I hold the line? You know, do I need to drop some things, improve some things? And sometimes, unless you're very brutally honest or have great, uh, personal biofeedback or can kind of do that body check which a lot of people takes many weeks, months, years to even get to that point until you get a number, you really kind of just throwing darts on the wall.

29:56 - Michael (Guest) Yeah, for sure, um, yeah, so I think I think it's that's kind of how I see it. But, uh, for me, it definitely helps to have the numbers because I, uh, yeah, I like, I like the, that it's more objective. So, like when I'm negotiating with myself about, uh, how I, how I should live it, it definitely helps me. Uh, you know, put more, put more of my energy into into health, to then see the numbers come back and uh, uh, and I, I think that's true for a lot of people. Right, it's kind of like buying a scale is a weight loss tool, you know, like it's. It's really your diet or whatever exercise that makes you lose weight, but the scale is like a big part of it, you know, because if you're not measuring, it's easy the scale is the truth teller.

30:34 Yeah, exactly it's easy to fool yourself or whatever, ignore it if, uh, if you're not getting the number. So I think from that perspective, for a lot of people it's, it's kind of part of that whole, of the whole equation. Um, I think also increasingly like, uh, getting your hormones measured is valuable, just because even if you live a decent lifestyle, like you could have exposures that screw up your hormones, like really lower your testosterone or other things and and that can be. There's also people, people like this is more rare, but people also develop like um, I just this a personal story, but you know, I know somebody that just discovered this and you know she she had like an adenoma. So she was producing a huge amount of cortisol or sorry, not I think it was. It led to a lot of prolactin. She was producing like a ton of prolactin and that caused like all kinds of health problems that were like went undiagnosed for years. Like she would go to doctors and say why do I feel like this? And and? So eventually she got tested and it's like okay, you have extremely high prolactin.

31:30 So basically, just getting your hormones measured at least once or twice to make sure that they're in reasonable ranges, it's a lot cheaper than you know, self-medicating with, you know, let's say, being depressed and having to take, you know, smoke weed every day, cause it could just be you. You know that, like you're, I don't know there are many ways this can happen, but you know you can be exposed to a lot of plastics and have very low testosterone, like that's a simple thing that can happen. And so at least if you have the number, you can start like figuring out okay, what's going on, because it's not always obvious. Uh, so. So I think there are many, uh kind of because blood testing covers so many different things, like there are many individual reasons why it ends up being valuable to people. But that's like another example that's not related. You know, it's not diet or exercise, it can be other things.

32:17 - Chase (Host) So knowledge is power and, speaking of now, we're in our homes, we want to run this at home lab test. I know that you guys and I've run through this test and I'm going to share. I'm going to share my results, actually interesting to me because I actually ran side-by-side tests. I ran the exact same day. Same morning I did my at-home test with Cyfox and then, about an hour ish later, I went down the road to a typical lab draw, went to a clinic, had to get in the car, drive, pay parking, go up the stairwell, do the whole thing Took about two hours out of my day. Cyfox I did in 10 minutes maybe, unpackaging it, reading it, all the things, and so I got some really cool side-by-side comparisons. The 17 biomarkers that you all put in there why, what are these 17? Or maybe kind of why, what was the process going through? Why are these so important for people to be aware of?

33:10 - Michael (Guest) That's a great question. So I mean, at the part of it, we're a blood testing company, so our expertise is really in making sure people collect the sample correctly, get their results. You know, making it very smooth. The selection of the biomarkers was done in a so so the first thing we did is okay, we want to maximize the number of markers you get out of a single collection, because the cost of the person it's not just money, it's also effort. Right, like you have to, it's not. People don't collect their sample for fun.

33:37 It's the same as like maybe some people maybe some people, yeah, uh, but basically, um, at the beginning we consulted. You know, we have great advisors like clinical advisors, and we talked to a lot of researchers like, basically, whoever would talk to us that kind of had, you know, expertise and we have a couple of people that remain on the team as advisors and, you know, help us basically update what we're doing and improve the analysis and so on. But essentially we did some of it empirically. So we started out with a different panel and we actually tested thousands of people and we found that some of these things, first of all, weren't coming up with interesting results. So, like, most people were normal, uh, or they were, and again, that might be because in the general population there's a lot of abnormal people, but they're not the kind of person who's like going out and getting a test for themselves right, right yeah so.

34:29 So we're like for the population that we're testing these markers. Like I think you know, we don't in the base panel, the standard panel, we don't do creatinine, because just everybody was normal on creatinine, you know pretty much and it never changed. That's another thing. We really focus on things that a are. You know, people do find something interesting, like it's important, something that you need to change or want to change or improve, and the other thing is actually something that can be changed, right, so it actually responds to lifestyle or supplements or diet or whatever, right so so it's really optimizing for those things, um, and then linking it to different systems in the body.

35:06 So we try to cover cardiovascular, metabolic, so like how your body processes sugar, like insulin, hba1c, those kinds of markers, cardiovascular, you know, including the APOs, the more advanced lipid markers, and then you know vitamins, minerals, as much as we can do in that panel, and then we have additional panels for more, and then hormones, um, and so it's trying to get like a balance so that basically you get a lot. You know, you do this one test and you you get a pretty, pretty broad coverage, uh, and it probably covers, like you know, many different early stage stages of chronic diseases like we'll find you know everything, ranging from like your typical, you know like, or you're at risk for heart disease, to like hemochromatosis, where you'll get people walking around with like 10 or 20 times more iron in their blood than normal, which is like it's like after you know. It's like this disease, where you start getting symptoms, you kind of don't feel great and then, like 10 years later, it's like a really, really bad and you're super sick and imagine catching something 10 years early.

36:13 - Chase (Host) 10 years early, that's incredible.

36:18 - Michael (Guest) Yeah, and it's just not tested. You know, like, until you really have like extreme symptoms, they're not going to test you. So that that's another one. That, because we test ferritin, that's another one that we find.

36:25 - Chase (Host) And if you guys are watching the video I'm going to actually share while you're continuing to talk there, michael, excuse me, I'm just going to actually show, I'm just going to scroll through so people can kind of get a feel. For you know, also, the dashboard is just so incredible. I found it so easily interpretatable. If that's a word you kind of you can break it down to, really, I think any person can understand. You know, through these categories you know, like you were talking about inflammation, we can kind of see my results there. We can see my metabolic fitness, which is of really most interest for me right now because, genetically predisposed, I've got diabetics in my family.

36:58 So this is really important information for me, one that I'm always monitoring. You can look at balance, hormones, testosterone, cortisol, even cardiovascular health. So a lot of things that you're talking about, you know, you can kind of really see on the screen here. And which kind of brings me to my next question interpretation. You know, getting all this information is great for some people that have the awareness and education or training or just familiarity with. I know what this is, I know how to interpret it, I have enough understanding to kind of know how then to apply it into my life in terms of lifestyle, nutrition, sleep, training. But for, maybe, the general consumer, is there such thing as too much information? Is this just going to bombard some people and go? I don't know what to do with this, so I'm not going to make any changes or I'm not going to get a follow-up test here.

37:46 - Michael (Guest) Yeah, I think what we do is we try to first of all make it easy to see what the ranges are and where you are in the range. We also give you some context, like this is where you are relative to the other thousands and thousands of people that have taken this test with us. You know the broadly, like in a population level, like where do you see?

38:05 - Chase (Host) What is your population size? By chance, Do you know you're comparison within ranges of other Cyphox testers?

38:13 - Michael (Guest) The ranges that we use are more based on the best published research and you know kind of like large population studies and where you're supposed to be, but we do allow you to compare yourself also to just Cyphox users.

38:25 So we'll tell you like this is where you are relative to Cyphox users, which is, you know, in the range of like 10 000 people okay, really solid population size, in my opinion, yeah and I think it's a little bit more representative because, again, it's like the people who are at least willing to like go out and get a test for themselves, right, so it might be you're going to get less people that are just like totally don't care about their health or whatever.

38:46 Um, so so, because that's how american ranges are built. Uh, typically, when you, when you go get a lab, they'll just tell you like okay, you're, you know, within the two standard deviations of the average and you know, even though, like, half of the population is obese and so on, but, uh, but, so we a we try to make the ranges very interpretable and you know, we, we use the best known ranges for actual health. You know, we try to say this is actually optimal, this is normal and this is bad, rather than just okay, this is like what typical Americans are. And then we have a whole insights engine which is personalized based on your results, and you can also connect your wearables so you get the sleep data in there and the activity data and heart rate data yeah, I was going to have that pulled up as well.

39:34 - Chase (Host) I activity data and heart rate data yeah, I was going to have that pulled up as well. I think it's really cool. I actually went on and I connected my Apple health from my Apple watch and my iPhone, as well as my whoop, and uh, that information was um, if you guys again are checking out the screen, you can check out. Uh, over here I'm going to show you. So there's a breakdown of all my results in the main categories, but then down here it links in my activity. My sleep brings in all the wearable data, so it's beyond just what's going on internally. It actually kind of shows me what that translates as and what that kind of looks like. So I can get a fair representation of activity, sleep, healthy behaviors, lifestyle and how that really shows up in my labs behaviors, lifestyle, and how that really shows up in my labs.

40:13 - Michael (Guest) Yeah, and I think, over time, as you like, if you were taking these quarterly, you would see how your sleep and so on are affecting these markers. And that's helpful, I think, because it's not always the same for each person, and it also gives us more information to provide insights. So we do kind of like insights and action items. So the insights are more informational, like here's something to help you interpret what you're seeing, uh, and then the, and that's always comes with like a reference. So if you want to read the science paper or you know wherever, whatever the source is behind that, you can also do that.

40:42 We all, we'll also provide you with action items which are kind of like here's some things you can try, uh, and that might be a supplement.

40:49 It might be seeing your doctor, it might be, it could it's, you know, it really depends it could be a suggestion for something in your diet, so that we have, you know, hundreds and hundreds of these that are built in combination with, you know, just best known research, our advisors and also actually working with our users right over the last couple of years, couple of years, um, and they're all customized to the data that we collect, both through questionnaires and also through the blood tests. So we kind of try to blend everything. And then there's a still human in the loop, so they're not just like a computer spitting it out. There's a human in the loop, a clinical team member that's actually looking at it. Um, so it's, it's. Uh, you know, we try to combine the best of like doing it some automation and then actually having a human being review it, because it's still not there where, like you know, you just type this stuff into chat, gpt and get like the best they'll say something, you know.

41:38 - Chase (Host) But it's like yeah it's still not.

41:40 - Michael (Guest) It's still not there and it's it's very kind of it gives you kind of like the average suggestion, not the best one. So we we're still very much, you know, have human in the loop and and doing like just hands-on, trying to give people the best, uh kind of like feedback and next steps that we can um and where we also have some like we try to make it easy. For example, if you have metabolic issues, we'll suggest, like you should wear a continuous glucose monitor for two weeks and see you know kind of how, how was your glucose response? Different foods.

42:10 So this is not a profit center for us or something, but we basically will help people get cause sometimes it's difficult to get a CGM, like you have to get a, you have to get a, um, a reference from a doctor to get it. So, yeah, and I think, however you get it, you know, if, like, if you're in the category of people and we see that in your biomarkers, right, that can that in your biomarkers, right, that can that can benefit from CGM, we'll help you get one. You can go to somebody else or whatever. But we try to make sure that it's like very low friction, uh, as low cost as we can make it. Even supplements Like we recommend supplements, and we partnered with a company that's like really focused on they do a lot of supplements for the military and like Olympic athletes and so on. So we we're, you know, built a bunch of stacks with them that are based on our blood work.

42:52 - Chase (Host) Can I ask and if you can say is it Fount by chance? It's Fount, yeah, oh yeah, I know Andrew and the team over there. I love Fount. I use FlyKit every time I fly. He was on the show a couple of years ago. I have not had jet lag in two, three years. Yeah, it's incredible what they do in supplementation and AI integration and also taking into account your lifestyle, your preferred diet, your circadian rhythm. Incredible. So I love to hear you a supplement company and that's not where you know.

43:21 - Michael (Guest) We basically just want to make it as smooth and easy for the person to just take action, improve your biomarkers, test again, right, so we built these stacks with them and that's available through us also. But we just give you know you can go go anywhere to get your supplements, but we try to give actual personalized recommendations so that you're not just buying supplements because of an ad or because you read something somewhere like a podcast, but it's, it's really, it's really based on your blood work and that's going to have, you know, much more impact.

43:57 - Chase (Host) Huge Love it Well kind of getting towards the end here, michael. Where can we go next with this information? I know that CyFox and this at-home diagnostic lab test is just really part of the long-term plan to educate people to become more empowered for your health, your wellness, both healthspan and lifespan. What's on the horizon? What can people do with this information truly, and what else do you see coming down the line to further empower the consumer for their well-being?

44:28 - Michael (Guest) Well, what we're working on is also more like verticalized health programs. So the first one we're doing is cardiometabolic, like really focused on heart health, and so there we'll actually, if the person needs it, we'll actually help them get medication and then manage it to the lowest dose. So basically, like statins or azitomib or one of the other like lipid lowering medications, I mean we'll always first recommend like do supplements and diet, and I mean there's a bunch of things you can try. But if you're not getting your APOB to where you want it to be, you probably need to be on a statin. And you know there are guidelines to this, like it's not something that we invented, but normally your doctor will put you on a statin and then they'll test you in a year.

45:11 But a year, yeah, that's very typical. I mean just you know they're like whatever it's safe, just take it, see how it goes. But that means that they can't dose it to the lowest effective dose. They just give you like an average dose. That's very typical. And so something that we're working on and we have a beta program. You know about 100 people uh is doing this lowest effective dose frequent testing, like actually dialing it in uh, which can really be better, because there are side effects of statins in some cases, like they can be worse or better and so on, but they're all to most medications.

45:43 - Chase (Host) Yeah, usually, in my opinion, you're solving one problem, but creating another one, especially long term yeah.

45:48 - Michael (Guest) So you want to dial it down to the lowest effective dose and then monitor it right, maybe even get off of it at some point, like, if you're able to improve to the point where you don't need it, then you get off, right, and so that that's uh, we're really excited about building programs like that. The one we're doing now is cardio metabolic and that'll become probably more generally available soon. Uh, and we built like a whole you know clinical team and system around this and I think we'll probably go next to maybe I mean, we're thinking about this, we'll see maybe testosterone optimization, because that's so many tests come back low testosterone. It's just based on our users, right. So we see a lot of hype would be low testosterone, not necessarily in the same test. But and then, you know, maybe we'll look at others. I think we don't want to become one of these companies that just like sells all the things you know. So like, oh, we sell erectile dysfunction pills and hair loss and oh, now we're like a weight loss company because of ozempic, you know, like that's very typical path for like a venture-funded company. So we're not like that. We're really looking at things that we're like where can we make a difference with frequent blood testing. I think statins is one where it's obvious because they're not, you know this kind of feedback loop can get you to a lower dose. And we're still looking around like what are the other areas where that can be like really impactful and where you know telemedicine can work right, where you don't need necessarily like an in-person visit.

47:09 But that's, I think, the future for sure is that you will have device in your home, like you know, cartridge like this. The second you know we don't sell this yet. This is like an experimental home blood test cartridge you can get, basically get this delivered by DoorDash. Let's say you're, you know you have a. This can even work for like more acute things, right? Like if you're sick, you get a cartridge delivered, you get diagnosed like more acute things, right, like if you're sick, you get a cartridge delivered, you get diagnosed. You get medicine, you know, same day, right? So instead of waiting, let's say, five days to know whether you have like a bacterial or viral infection, you could take a blood test. You find out it's bacterial, you get antibiotics same day, everything from DoorDash and you know you feel better the next day. That's the kind of future that you can imagine, if you have like a platform for blood testing in the home and obviously if you have, let's say, thyroid condition, right, you can take the thyroid panel right away, you get your result in two hours and your physician is updating your medication remotely, right, so it can all be very smooth right now. You know people that have to. They have to go to a lab schedule, they miss their appointment, you know it's.

48:08 I used to think that I preferred venus draws to finger pricks, you know, but uh, I've first of all gotten very used to doing the fingers, so I think that's become less of like a barrier for me. Actually, it's like zero I do it like. But I've done, you know, 50 of these tests or something over the last couple years. But uh, the last time I went to get a venus draw for something else, I don't know what's going on. I mean, it might be part of this issue of like, just generally there are fewer people who want to work in these jobs, but I had, uh, the first nurse like, stabbed me, did not get, but and I have veins like you can see them, you know no blood. Second, one comes, stabs my other arm no blood.

48:43 - Chase (Host) And uh, they're like you know what to do. I was like, just like human pin cushion.

48:46 - Michael (Guest) I'm done, you know, and it's so anyway. I think you know Venus draws also. I always forget, you know, until I go get one, that it's like maybe it's gonna work, maybe it's not. You know it depends on the operator. So it's, it's, that's. Another benefit that I kind of often miss to highlight is that at least through the finger prick it's pretty deterministic. You know it's not, you're not having somebody like you really need a skilled person to get the blood out of the vein Right, and that's something which, if you're lucky and you're going to a place with a great phlebotomist, then it's fine, but if you get unlucky, it's actually. It can be really not great no-transcript.

49:38 - Chase (Host) That morning I ran side by side tests with the at home kit getting Venus draw. I loved the expanded biomarkers I got from you guys, as well as the accuracy in comparison to this other you know other telehealth company where it was like a hundred bucks and you go do the labs. It was more time, about the same price point. But I didn't get some of the labs that you all offer that are very important to me, like triglycerides and cholesterol and things that I think matter for anybody, but especially in looking at things like cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke the number one killer of America is CVD, so why aren't we getting that biomarker drawn? So I had a great experience.

50:20 Thank you guys so much for partnering with us on this episode and everybody listening watching. If you wanna learn more about Cyphox Health and running your own labs, we got a great deal for you. You can check it out, link it in the show notes and uh and take care of it. So I'm on board. I can't wait to do it again, probably in another 30 or 60 days. Um, it's super convenient, super easy and I love the dashboard as well.

50:44 - Michael (Guest) Cool, yeah, thanks for having me on.

50:46 - Chase (Host) Michael, ever forward. What are those two words mean to you? How would you say you live a life ever forward?

50:55 - Michael (Guest) That's a good question. I did have time to think about this because you mentioned it earlier. Yeah, I mean, I think the way I think about it at least, is there's parts of society which are always improving. You know, like every every two years you get a phone that's twice as good, and you know, I think we just need to more things should be that way. There are, like more things should just get better all the time, and there are some areas where it's harder right, it's harder to improve them, but I like to work on problems like that. So it's definitely more headache, you know, than building software or electronics or whatever, but I but it's.

51:29 I think it's. It's very rewarding to try to create continuous improvements in things like healthcare and hopefully, you know, over the years we'll be able to do that. I think we've. We've already gotten something done, but hopefully it'll continue and it'll just be a doubling. You know, like Cyfox will just every two years, improve the offering, you know by by a couple of, you know like by a factor of two at least. So that that's kind of how I would interpret it, I guess.

51:56 - Chase (Host) Never a right or a wrong answer. So thanks for that interpretation. Yeah, again, everybody. If you want to learn more about Michael and what CyFox is up to, check the video description box, the show notes. I have it all linked for you, as well as all these other articles and references I had at the beginning of the episode. So with that I'll say ever forward, michael. Thank you so much for more information on everything you just heard. Make sure to check this episode show notes or head to EverForwardRadio.com