Claudia von Boeselager (00:50)
My guest today is Naveen Jain. Naveen is a serial entrepreneur, visionary technologist, and an ambitious thinker shaping the future of human health and longevity. He's the founder and CEO of Viome, an AI driven precision health platform that analyzes the microbiome, human gene expression, and food deliver personalized nutrition and lifestyle recommendations aimed at preventing and potentially reversing chronic disease.

Naveen is also the founder of Moon Express, the first private company authorized to harvest resources from the moon and serves as vice chairman of the board at Singularity University, as well as a board member of XPRIZE Foundation. Across space exploration, artificial intelligence, molecular biology and education, Naveen is driven by one core mission to solve humanity's biggest problems at scale, especially the global epidemic of chronic disease.

by re-imagining how we understand food, health, and human potential. His visionary leadership has earned him honors, including Entrepreneur of the Year and Most Creative Person. Please

Claudia von Boeselager (01:56)
Naveen, welcome to the Longevity in Lifestyle podcast. Such a pleasure to have you with us today.

Naveen Jain (02:00)
Well, Claudia, the pleasure is absolutely mine and what an honor and a pleasure to be speaking with you.

Claudia von Boeselager (02:05)
Honored to have you on, Naveen, you've launched companies from landing on the moon, mapping the human microbiome. What is something about you or your mission that most people still do not know?

Naveen Jain (02:16)
think, you for me, it is about doing things that make you jump out of the bed every day you wake up in the morning. And this is my message to everyone who is listening to it, that find something that you're willing to die for and then live every day for it. That whatever that purpose in your life is, it doesn't have to be the same that everyone else has.

It has to be something that means something to you. What are you going to dedicate 10, 15 years of your life to say, this is the problem I want to solve. I wake up in the morning thinking about it. I go to bed thinking about it. I cannot wait to jump out of the bed when I wake up in the morning, because this means a lot to me. And once you do that, everything falls in place. And I think, you know, it doesn't have to be about

solving the word hunger and I'm not saying that we shouldn't but it has to be something that's meaningful to you that you want to solve.

Claudia von Boeselager (03:15)
I love that and I think it's very important. I talk a lot about people understanding their why and their purpose and typically it's something greater than themselves and you're giving back How did you find your whys in life? And you've had obviously multiple

Naveen Jain (03:29)
Yeah. And I think Claudia, every time I start any company and I think everyone should do that, I have a framework that I use for myself. I ask myself three questions, right? Why this? Why now? Why me? And why this is a really simple thing. You start back and say, God forbid, I am actually successful in solving the problem that I set out to solve. Whatever that problem is.

Would it help a billion people live a better life? And the reason for that is not because you're a philanthropist. It is the most capitalist thing to do because if you can build any product, any service that can help a billion people live a better life, you in fact can create a hundred billion dollar company, but you never wake up in the morning and say, what should I do to create a hundred billion dollar company? Making money.

is simply a byproduct of doing things that improve people's life. In other words, making money is like having an orgasm. If you focus on it, you're never going to get it. So just enjoy the process.

Claudia von Boeselager (04:35)
Great analogy. I love it. So you said your real focus isn't obviously the technology, but rewriting how humanity thinks about health. Where did that conviction come from?

Naveen Jain (04:44)
Yeah. So here I was, as you mentioned, building a company to mine the moon for helium three for building the fusion reactors. And we became the first company ever.

to get permission to leave Earth orbit. We in fact got the President Obama to sign into the law, it's called Space Resource Act of 2016, that anything we bring back, we as a company will own it, not the country. And we became one of the six companies to get $2.6 billion NASA contract to land on the moon. And I was feeling absolutely on top of the moon.

And then my dad was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. And it really changed my way of thinking that here I'm thinking that we can colonize the moon and Mars for humanity to be a multi-planetary society. Yet the people on earth are suffering every day. And it wasn't, you know, obviously as a stage four pancreatic cancer, there was not much we could have done. He was given few months to live and that's all he got.

Claudia von Boeselager (05:24)
So sorry.

Naveen Jain (05:47)
But it got me thinking that it wasn't really the cancer that caused him to lose his life. I had taken it for granted that as he was aging, of course he has diabetes. He's in 70s, of course he's got diabetes. Of course he's got a high blood pressure. He's taking his blood pressure medicine. Of course he's got a heart disease. He's taking his statin. It is something just happens because you're aging. And then I went back and start to think about, wait a sec.

There can't be anything in the human biology because at the end of the day, are a biochemical, electro biochemical body. If we can understand what is the biochemical activities happening inside our body, we should be able to diagnose this disease early. We should be able to prevent them from happening and God forbid outright reverse them. And that should be a really simple thing to do because there is

the underlying technology is now getting smarter and smarter. The sensors and all the stuff is getting smarter. The AI is coming along and we should be able to solve this problem. And the fortunate thing about chronic diseases is that it doesn't happen overnight, unlike the infectious diseases, right? You don't say, Claudia, I think we were going out and having a dinner last night. I think I might have caught diabetes, right? You don't catch it.

Claudia von Boeselager (07:04)
Thankfully not. Thankfully

not. I'm grateful that it doesn't happen like that. Yeah.

Naveen Jain (07:09)
And that's my point. That's the fortunate part is that these diseases don't happen overnight. It takes them eight, 10, 15 years to develop these diseases. That means there is fundamentally the changes that are happening inside your body that you should be able to measure and understand and actually do something about it. And that was the fundamental thesis behind my starting vile. And then obviously,

You look at the second part of my equation was that we realized that if we can solve this problem that says we can in fact understand what is changing at a molecular level, at a biochemical level in the human body that precedes the onset of a disease, that precedes the progression of these diseases, that would it help a billion people live a better life? The answer is.

8 billion of us. mean, every one of us is going to suffer through this if we don't solve this problem for our fellow humans. So we say, good, check mark that part is done. Now the second part, why now? And why now really comes down to is what had changed in the last one or two years, but more importantly, what do you expect to change in the next three to five years that will allow you to solve this problem at scale in three to five years?

and this problem could not have been solved five years ago. That means are you intercepting tomorrow's technology to solve tomorrow's problem or you're using yesterday's technology to solve tomorrow's problem. And if you do yesterday's technology, by the time you're ready to scale, someone comes along, uses the latest technology and basically you completely get disrupted. So here I'm thinking, okay, to solve this problem,

You have to digitize the human body. So this analog body that we have can be created digital twin. Can we digitize this human body? And we see the cost of digitization or sequencing is coming down. So when we started the company 10 years ago, you know, cost of doing a single sample sequencing was, you know, 1100, $1,200. And we said, look, you can't help a billion people with that. But look, it used to be.

Claudia von Boeselager (09:11)
Yeah.

Naveen Jain (09:15)
know, tens of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars and it's coming down. And I think in the next three to five years, it will come down to a hundred dollars. And today we sit here, we can do that for $4.73. Right. So even though we were 10 times optimistic, we were still 20 times pessimistic. And that's the beauty of these exponential curves.

Claudia von Boeselager (09:29)
Wow. Wow.

Naveen Jain (09:38)
that most people miss out because human mind cannot think exponentially. It thinks linearly. That's how we evolved. Right. Now the second part was cost of processing this massive amount of data. We realize is going to be, we won't have access to super computers. So we fired up the AWS and we actually start doing the processing. It costed $47. Took a deep breath. My God, that's a lot of money.

But look, cost of computing is coming down, cost of processing, cost of storage. I think in the next three to five years, this cost will come down to $10. And today we can do that for under a dollar. Right. So it is just mind boggling that exponential, right? And AI, there was no doubt in my mind that if we start with the AI 10 years ago, it will continue to become better, faster, cheaper, that it is going to be there. And there was no doubt.

Claudia von Boeselager (10:15)
Yeah. Exponential with technology.

Naveen Jain (10:30)
And we said, look, the timing looks really, really good. If you can answer the last question, which is why me and why me is not about, about me. It is about what questions am I asking that are different from what everyone else in the industry is asking? Because the questions you ask are the problems you solve. Right? So changing the question changes the problem. It changes the solution. So I can give you two examples and I'll come back.

in terms of how we looked at this market. So today we have 8 billion people on planet earth. And if you say, look, what if there are 20 billion on planet earth by 2050, how would we solve world hunger? And most people will tell you that, hey, that means we have a limited resources. We have to grow more food. We have to figure out how to increase the crop, how to get more food to be produced.

How do we reduce the wastage because there's so much food that gets wasted during transportation? We got to figure out the solution for the transportation. Maybe we need to grow the food close to where people are and they will focus on that rather than anyone asking, hey, why do we eat food? Because when you ask the question, why do we eat food? And you say, we need energy and we need nutrition.

What other different ways can you get energy? And suddenly you wide open that problem to the solutions that were never available to you if you were simply thinking about growing more food. simply asking the question, why do we eat food? Now we have 10 solutions. Could we do photosynthesis? Could we do some genetic engineering like bacteria that grow in the radioactive nuclear waste? We can now find different solutions to solving the problem of feeding 20 billion people.

than simply growing food.

Claudia von Boeselager (12:13)
And I might add to that Naveen as well, is also understanding what is the optimal fasting, intermittent fasting to nutrition protocols for people so that they're not overeating and they're eating what serves them when it serves them as well. So then you would also reduce all the waste or excess consumption as well.

Naveen Jain (12:24)
Yeah.

And we can go back on that. I'm going to come back to this intermittent fasting since you mentioned. And I know it is a controversial subject, enough research has come out, especially on the associative side. They did a very large research about 130,000 people. And they saw that people who actually do the intermittent fasting, their all-cause mortality goes up. They die sooner.

Claudia von Boeselager (12:54)
Well,

I would say that it depends. I've had a professor, Sachin Panda, who I'm sure you'll know on the podcast as well. It depends what you would define as intermittent fasting. So I think the rule of thumb across the board, what I hear from many experts that have been on the show, 12 to 13 hours to 14 hours overnight, considered intermittent fast is fundamental for the body and stop eating three hours before bedtime. Would you agree?

Naveen Jain (12:57)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I would agree with you on the three hour part. And when we come down to longevity, we can talk about that. So yes, we agree on not eating three hours before you sleep. And in general, you would sleep for anywhere between six hours to eight hours. It will come back. Is it really needed eight hours? So you don't need eight hours and what really matters there. But if you do that, you're looking at about somewhere between 10 to 11 hours. That is how body was designed.

but when people go 16, 17, 18 hours is where the problem starts to happen because now you essentially have a six hour window and that is a fundamentally what body is not designed to do. coming back to the why me, we looked at the problem in the human biology and notice that everyone in the industry

wanting to focus on understanding your genes, your DNA. And it was absolutely believed 10 years ago that if I know your genetic material, your genes, that's a software of your life. We will be able to understand what is causing you to be sick. Now, not being a scientist and not being a doctor has an advantage. I get to ask really dumb questions, right?

Claudia von Boeselager (14:25)
Me too.

Naveen Jain (14:25)
And

that is to me Claudia Why the biggest disruptions happen from a person who comes from outside the industry who is naive asking those questions that no experts have ever asked because experts take the foundational knowledge for granted. And the foundational knowledge is unless you challenge, cannot be 10 % better, right?

And that is a fundamental problem. So here I am and I'm thinking, I don't understand this DNA thing, but can you answer my one simple question? If I do my DNA test today and if I gain 200 pounds, has my DNA changed? And the answer is of course not. Well, now if I become diabetic, it must certainly change. No, it doesn't change. Well, if I have depression, anxiety and have a heart disease, it's still the same DNA. What happens after I die?

Well, a hundred years after I die, you can still look at my DNA is still the same, just like DNA of dinosaurs. Well, if DNA can't even tell you you're dead or alive, how will it ever tell you are you healthier or sicker? So that can't be the problem you should have. So if you're telling me the chronic diseases are developing in your body and your DNA is not changing, how measuring DNA will ever help you solve this problem? to me, it was so obvious, whereas everybody looks at me

What are you talking about? Of course DNA matters now, but it doesn't matter when it comes to these chronic diseases. Of course not. Right. And the second part of the puzzle was that 99 % of all the genes in our body don't come from a mom and dad. They come from these 100 trillion microbes in our gut, in our mouth and all over us. And my

Claudia von Boeselager (16:02)
Can you say that again,

Naveen, because that is so profound, I think for most people. The first time I heard it was a real pendulum. So could you just repeat that,

Naveen Jain (16:09)
So

99 % of all the genes that are in our body don't come from our mom and dad. Despite us have a tendency to blame our ancestors for all the problems we have. If I get sick, I get heart disease, my first reaction is really, I have bad genes. It's my damn ancestors that are causing me all these problems. Instead of saying, it's not my genes.

It is my choices that I make every day that is causing me to develop heart disease. So blame your choices. Don't blame your ancestors. And that's the theme. ⁓

Claudia von Boeselager (16:49)
Such an important

point. So I hope everyone heard that. All right. This is so fundamental. Okay. So please continue.

Naveen Jain (16:55)
the reason is that these 100 trillion microbes in your gut and your mouth, they produce somewhere between 2 million to 20 million genes compared to only 22,000 protein coding genes in the human DNA. Think about that for a second, right? So these microbes are not parasite and somehow people think that, Hey,

If these microbes are the one that causing me all the problems, why don't we just kill them? Right? We take antibiotics, we're throwing the bazooka and the nuclear bomb inside your body and boom, they're gone. Right? Now what happens is as we were evolving together, the nature realized that human body is so complex. It has to do so much instead of doing all the stuff ourselves.

Claudia von Boeselager (17:27)
Yeah.

Naveen Jain (17:44)
What if we can form a symbiotic relationship with all the organisms that are already there and they already know how to process these different biochemical activities? And if we can co-opt them, then together we can become a, what I call a super human or super biology. That means we become an ecosystem rather than individual cells.

we become a walking talking super organism. So we are an organism that is a super organism that consists of hundreds of trillions of these microbes and the human cells in a sprinkled all working in symbiosis together. So much so inside our human cells, forget these microbes for 30 seconds, even inside our human cell.

We have these organelles. One of them is called mitochondria. What is a mitochondria? It has its own genetic material and it's believed it is actually an ancient bacteria captured inside our cell that provides the energy to the human cells. So these bacterial DNA inside our cell are the ones that are actually providing the energy. So think about it.

Without them, we don't exist. And this creation of symbiotic relationship is what people forget. Now, just to tell you that how important it is, when the baby is born, especially through natural birth, and we can talk about the C-section, what happens there. In a natural born, when the baby goes through the birth canal, that actually is the first seeding of these microbes that the baby gets.

Claudia von Boeselager (19:03)
We wouldn't survive. Yeah.

Naveen Jain (19:25)
in the first week of mother's breast milk, is primarily is oligosaccharide, which is a fiber that cannot be digested by the human body. Think about that for a second. So nature just created an offspring and nature is saying the best way to actually grow this offspring is to feed them, not feed the offspring.

These fiber can only be digested by the microbiome in the body. These microbes actually ferment this fiber and in turn they release the short chain fatty acid. In turn they release the butyric acid, the propionate and acetate. In turn they release the vitamin that our body needs. And suddenly our microbiome are now training our immune system

What is a friend? What's a foe? What is good? What is bad? The baby didn't have the immune system that comes pre-trained. And this training is happening by our microbes because we as human body is like a donut. There is a tube that goes through us and the tube is tightly sealed. And these microbes, 70 % of our immune system is along our digestive tube. Think about it.

90 % of the serotonin is produced in our gut, not in our brain. Now all these immune system and our microbes are constantly interacting together. And when they are in symbiotic relationship, it is constantly keeping the body healthy, telling the immune system, now is the time to attack. Now is the time to inflame. Now the time to chill down here. is all good here. Right. And they are working together. When this relationship breaks down.

and we no longer have symbiosis and we have dysbiosis is what causes the body not to be at ease. And we call that dis-ease, which is disease. So disease is nothing but body is no longer at ease is because the symbiotic relationship is no longer working well.

Claudia von Boeselager (21:28)
And can you talk about some of the triggers for that? I know you're continuing.

Naveen Jain (21:28)
Please go. Yeah, of course,

of course. Yeah, of course. So I think now coming back to it, turns out as I was learning about that DNA is not your destiny. what is actually these genes are expressed. That means your genes don't change, but your gene expression is always changing. So understanding how the genes are expressed and what causes them to change their expression.

Similarly, if you were to look at research today, there are at least 100,000, if not million research papers out there that show that your microbiome, your oral microbiome, your gut microbiome, what they produce is directly connected to Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cancer, every cancer, even the cancer therapy, whether it works or does not work.

depends on your microbiome. So they did the research where these patients had melanoma. They gave them immunotherapy. It worked for about one third of the people and two third it did not work. And they took the fecal matter from the people where the immunotherapy worked and transplanted them into the other people and the immunotherapy started working. So think about simply changing the microbiome.

Claudia von Boeselager (22:47)
It's really powerful. I've had Dr. William Lee on, and he was talking about this study as well. And they found that people where it worked was they had Akkermansia which is interesting also a GLP-1, right? It produces a GLP-1 naturally in the body as well.

Naveen Jain (22:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So

I am going to contradict. Yeah. And here's why it is not the presence of this organism, whether it is Akkermansia or any other organism. And this was the biggest mistake the microbiome community was making that we set out to solve. Just like we realize it's not the DNA. It is the RNA that matters.

Claudia von Boeselager (23:03)
I like the page.

Okay.

Naveen Jain (23:23)
Same thing happens in microbiome. even though we know that microbiome is very important into metabolic health, but you mentioned GLP-1, it is important to your cardiovascular health. It's important to your mental health. So all of the, know, gut brain axis your depression, your anxiety doesn't start here. It starts in your gut. Right. And we can come back in a second here. Now, interesting thing is

When we know that microbiome is important, every microbiome company was making the same mistake that Dr. Lee mentioned. They focus on understanding what organisms are in Claudia's gut, what organisms are in Naveen's gut, what organisms are in your mouth, It turns out the same organism can do something good.

in one environment and the same organism can be toxic in a different environment, no different than a human being. You take a person, put them in a good environment, good behavior, you put them in the bad environment, the bad behavior. So Akkermansia can be good or Akkermansia can cause MS. So if you were to Google Akkermansia and MS, you will see the MS that most people who get MS have high presence of Akkermansia. It's not the Akkermansia. What is really interesting is

is Akkermansia producing butyrate or is Akkermansia actually releasing the toxins? So when the environment becomes toxic, each organism tries to protect itself and the way it protects itself is to release more toxins to kill the other microbiome and we become the casualty in their war. Right? So think about 84 % of you, the human beings,

Claudia von Boeselager (24:58)
Wow.

Naveen Jain (25:03)
have P. gingivalis in our mouth. Only 16 % will ever the only reason that Periodontists with inflammation of the gut happens when P. gingivalis starts to express something called is the inflammatory toxin.

that causes the gums to be inflamed. And when that happens, now the bacteria no longer have the tight seal. Now they're going into the blood and your immune system is inflamed and your constant inflammation is causing your organs to age. And that's the reason your oral microbiome in fact can cause diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer and many types of cancer. In fact,

you know, going slightly tangent. When you drink something sweet, your oral microbial activity actually sends a signal to pancreas. Something sweet is coming. It starts releasing the insulin and now the body is pumped with insulin. And when you eat the fruit and the sugar, it binds to the glucose and it shuttles it out. We, as human beings being as dumb as we are, we take

diet soda, we take artificial sweetener. Body doesn't know what to do with it. Your oral microbial activity says, release the insulin. And insulin says, there is no glucose here for me to bind to. And now you become insulin resistant by drinking diet soda. And that's the thing is people don't understand that these things are constantly communicating. Your oral microbial activity, your oral microbiome,

Claudia von Boeselager (26:16)
Yeah.

Naveen Jain (26:39)
produces nitric oxide. That is actually good to dilate your vessels. That gets good for your heart disease and incidental benefit in sexual health. Right? It's just good. It's basically a natural viagra Same thing, cancer. Many types of cancer, including colon cancer and IBD, is actually formed by a oral microbial activity that is a Fusobacterium nucleatum

when it starts to actually express the two and FadA transcripts. Those two transcripts are toxins that causes the inflammation in the gut lining. So it is not a fusobacterium nucleatum. That's bad. It is commensal most of the time, unless it finds in the environment where it is releasing these toxins. And that's what causes you to develop the inflammation.

So going back, it is not the organism, but their activity is their expression of their genes that causes the humans to actually get into this part. So yes, it is Akkermansia when it is actually not doing its job is what causes that things to happen. But when it's releasing the butyrate, that butyrate increases the production of GLP-1 and that is good for you.

Claudia von Boeselager (29:20)
So the environment is so fundamental as we're hearing from you here too and people listening are probably like, well, How do I know if I have a bad environment? How do I optimize the microbes to make sure that they're functioning as they should and not producing toxins?

Naveen Jain (29:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And this is really interesting. as you can imagine, so we started a company to understand all of this. So we launched this thing called full body intelligence. Vyom full body intelligence. You can go to vyom.com and get this. The first thing you will notice is imagine a world where illness is optional. We didn't say imagine a world there is no illness because I don't have a power to keep you healthy. But

can give you the information that you need for you to be healthy and that means choices you make every day are your choices. Inside that, there are in fact three tests.

is saliva. You give us a spit of your saliva, give us a four drops of your finger prick blood at home and a touch of your stool. We now look for 100 million biomarkers and then we take those 100 million biomarkers then we use AI. We have now done claudia year 1.5 million tests. We have now analyzed 400 quadrillion

Claudia von Boeselager (30:09)
Mm-hmm.

Naveen Jain (30:34)
biological data points, right? We can now tell you your biological age, your cognitive health, your heart health, your oral health, your gut health, your immune health. And if you want to be really nerdy with me, we will tell you your uremic toxin production, your homocysteine production, your LPS production, your sulfide production, your uric acid production. And based on that, we can now say, hey Claudia,

Don't eat avocado because your uric acid production is too high, it's going to turn into gout and you're going to end up having inflamed joints.

Claudia von Boeselager (31:09)
I love avocados, so that

would be quite traumatic, Naveen. Hopefully that won't be the

Naveen Jain (31:11)
But my point is it is good for some people and it is bad for some people, right? And

same thing is broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts can be good for you or they can harm you if you have high sulfide production. Everyone thinks that spinach is good for everyone or almonds are good for everyone. These foods are very high in oxalates. And if your oxalates are not being degraded by your microbiome, you end up getting a kidney stone. So we can now tell you, hey, eat this food.

Claudia von Boeselager (31:21)
Mm-hmm.

Naveen Jain (31:39)
Here is why this is the score it's going to improve. And here's the science paper to learn more about it. Don't eat this food. Here is why, here's the score it impacts and here's the science paper for that if you want to learn more. And then we walk you through everything, how to make recipe only using the foods that are good for you. If you are at a restaurant, you take a picture of the menu, we can say, order that item that actually you need. And then we actually make, tell you what

Claudia von Boeselager (31:45)
Amazing.

Naveen Jain (32:06)
nutrition your body is lacking. You need 22 milligram of Lycopene every day. Take 79 milligram of amylase every day. Take 36 milligram of elderberry every day. And we walk you through every vitamin, mineral, herbs, digestive enzyme, food extracts, amino acids, and we custom formulate for you only with the ingredients that you need in the dosage you need. There is no pre-made formula. There is no pre-made capsule.

We actually have a compounding pharmacy that makes it for you every single month. So these are my capsules. And if you notice, so this is manufactured on, it was made for me 10 days ago. So every month I get them made for me. These are my probiotics and prebiotics for my gut.

Claudia von Boeselager (32:43)
Yeah. So tell us about

Naveen Jain (32:55)
Right? These are my oral lozenges for adjusting my oral microbiome. And if you can see this is my name made for me. And then we also have personalized toothpaste for morning and evening for your oral microbiome. And here's very interesting. We did double blinded placebo control studies that show in 90 days, not some nine years,

In 90 days, if you take the personalized supplements and personalized nutrition, people who were pre-diabetic, their A1c came down by 0.42 and they became healthy. People who had IBS, 15 % of the population who suffers from IBS, those people, 64 % of the people who had constipation became healthy compared to 10 % on placebo.

57 % of the people who had depression and anxiety became healthy compared to 28 % people on placebo. This is using food as a medicine, right? And what is amazing in last one week is if you've been listening to the FDA commissioner, Dr. Amakari, he's been talking about, it's all about gut health. It is about feeding the right food for your gut. It is your gut microbiome. The food is the medicine.

Claudia von Boeselager (33:52)
of it.

And you're like, yes.

Naveen Jain (34:09)
and I was thinking, my God, is FDA really going to put the F into FDA now? It used to be all about drugs and he talking about food. Did you know the F stands for food?

Claudia von Boeselager (34:20)
That's a good one. Exactly. The FDA has put the F in the DA again. You're like, this is great. They finally caught on, Naveen They finally understood.

Naveen Jain (34:26)
So now

my journey. here I am. If you look at my pictures from 20 years ago, you will see me inflamed. was overweight. I was in fact had every possible sign that by the time I turned 60, I would be a couch potato.

My 23andMe told me that I have an APOE4 variant. That means I'm going to have dementia and Alzheimer's by the time I turn 60. Now here I am today. I'm 66. Last I do my brain MRI every year. I do my full body MRI, my prostate MRI. I do my cognitive tests, my hearing tests, my smell test, my VO2 max and

Claudia von Boeselager (34:50)
I have a single copy.

Naveen Jain (35:07)
I measure every biomarker and everything, right? Last year alone, my hippocampus increased by 8%. So not shrinking, it increased by 8%. So basically it's really about bringing the right nutrition to your brain. So it is, so I've been measuring everything in my body.

Claudia von Boeselager (35:15)
Wow.

Wow.

Naveen Jain (35:27)
So I look at what you need and we constantly adjusting and feeding the brain. So constantly changing my nutrition, constantly changing my supplements and keeping my body healthy. Now, know, Wyham told me that I'm really, really young. And I honestly thought, you know, these guys are simply doing it because they want a bigger bonus. it turns, so I went, I'm a nutcase. So I went and did a third party biological age test from glycan age.

So in fact, I don't know if I can share with you or not. was Okay, I'm going to ⁓

Claudia von Boeselager (35:56)
What's your glycogen age result, Naveen? Mine is 18 years younger. I'm 18 years younger.

But for people who have not met Naveen or experienced Naveen in person, he jumps around the place like a spring chicken. So, and he's 66,

Naveen Jain (36:06)
So,

18 months ago, I did my glycogen age test. was 33 at that time. was 64 chronologically. So I was 31 years, younger and I did my test again last week and 18 months later.

Claudia von Boeselager (36:14)
You beat me. Amazing.

Naveen Jain (36:22)
How much do you think I've aged?

Claudia von Boeselager (36:23)
You have decreased your age by another five years.

Naveen Jain (36:26)
and another one year. so 18 months later, I am now 32. think about that for a second. I mean, no, no, no, no. We can't have that. cannot go, I cannot be 18. I think thirties, I honestly, thirties was my best time of my life. I want to stay in thirties.

Claudia von Boeselager (36:29)
You're growing younger. You'll be in diapers soon. You'll be in diapers soon.

20 is my 26, I'm trying to get down to 20, so amazing.

Perfect. I know. And that's

the gift. And I think that's what makes it so exciting is that it's possible, right? And you said like you had issues before and you were able to reverse them.

Naveen Jain (36:50)
It is

And that's my point at any age. I want people to know when you are healthy at 20, you will be healthy at 50. If you're healthy at 50, you will be healthy at 70. If you're healthy at 60, you'll be healthy at 80. Right? So the point is it doesn't matter when you start, you need to start your journey now. And if you can look, I started my journey seven, eight years ago and look at how much my body had changed. And I was, you know,

I had very high LDL. I had very high triglycerides. mean, all my biomarkers were all out of whack. I did the test, just the results came out three days ago on my blood test. My total cholesterol is 140. My LDL is now 70. My HDL is 60.

My triglycerides are 54 and I'm looking at every biomarkers. My A1C is 5.2. My fasting insulin is 7.2. I'm literally every biomarker, I look at the stuff and say, I'm in a perfect health. There is nothing that I need. And by the way, every time things go slightly off. So for example, my vitamin B12 was high.

I start to cut down my vitamin B12 and start changing the thing. My omega-6 went up, my omega-3 didn't, so I started double the omega-3 and cut down my omega-6. I'm constantly because you can't improve something unless you measure it. So my philosophy is if you can measure it, you can improve it.

Claudia von Boeselager (38:27)
So Naveen, for people listening, because obviously you love all the data and all the rest of it too, and this is your life, right? And this is your someone who might say, this is a bit overwhelming, I don't see myself doing a test every three months. What is the journey you would recommend people that interested, but a to get them started?

Naveen Jain (38:29)
Ahem.

I think you should start with the Wyoming journey. And if you can afford it, every six month, if not do once a year. And I really think the reason is we published a paper about three months ago that shows that every six month your gut microbiome changes enough, the foods and the supplement that were good for you may no longer be good for you. So you need to readjust because your body adapts and changes. And if you don't adapt and change,

pendulum swings the other way and you really need to be in the middle and you need to get the right place and he's going to constantly swing back and forth. So you have to keep adjusting it. So some people say, well, do I have to do it all the time or am I done once I do it one time? It's like saying I worked out last year. Do I have to work out again or am I done for life now?

Claudia von Boeselager (39:30)
You got to take care of it and you got to adjust as well. think that's such a fundamental point because I talked to some people that like I take a hundred supplements a day for like 10 years. I'm you have to cycle these things. You need to see what your body actually needs. So you need to do the diagnostics in order to be able to do so.

Naveen Jain (39:32)
Ahem.

I mean, my point is don't treat your body like a black box. What is interesting is just like there is no such thing as universal healthy food. What we learned Claudia was there is no such thing as universal healthy supplement, right? you may have heard that people say everyone should take NAD. Well, guess what? NAD is good for some people and NAD does what?

increases that mitochondrial biogenesis. That means you have now going to have higher oxidative stress, higher cellular senescence, and by the way, progression of cancer. It actually gets your cancer to progress faster. So that is something people don't understand. Don't take Akkermansia willy nilly think is going to help you because it can actually harm you. And so any supplement you are taking, ask yourself, what is it?

doing in my body. And if you don't need it, it is only harming you because your body has to spend energy trying to get rid of it. Right. It's not just an expensive fee It is actually an expensive energetic thing. Your kidney, your liver have to detoxify the stuff you just put into your body. Right. And that's the reason the simple thing, if you can just remember is anytime you hear everyone should take this.

Claudia von Boeselager (40:50)
Yeah.

Naveen Jain (40:59)
Unless your name is everyone, just don't do it.

Claudia von Boeselager (41:01)
the other way, run the other such knowledgeable speaker, but I want to touch on AI, molecular biology and scale as well. with AI now capable of analyzing billions of biological data points, as you've shown, how close are we to making precision nutrition scalable at a population level, do you think?

Naveen Jain (41:13)
Yeah, yeah.

Well, we're doing it now because remember that once you automate something and you use AI to actually analyze all the data, we build the AI 10 years ago. We didn't become an AI company because AI is a fad. We had no choice. The head of IBM Watson research joined my team 10 years ago. The guy who developed the technology, actually the underlying technology to analyze the RNA of microbiome and RNA of human genes came out of Los Alamos National Lab. This was a 10 year.

multi-billion dollar project that we have an exclusive license for. That person who developed the technology is my chief science officer. So my point is we have been analyzing the things and what we did is we built a custom machine that has these bins. let's assume you're making a supplement for Claudia. It has a barcode. says Claudia's supplement is in this jar, is going to make a powder right now. It comes along.

It says, Claudia needs 22 milligram of this. It's in the bin number 10. And it goes, gets a bin number 10 and it's automates the whole thing, makes the powder, shakes it up, goes to encapsulation machine, puts them in the capsule, goes to a sachet machine, prints the sachet, puts your name, date and ships it out to you. Now that machine can make the same thing million times or it can make the million different things every time. It doesn't care.

It is exactly the same thing. So to scale, you have to automate. So we automated our lab. We have no human beings in our lab. And this is why. automation and AI allows you to scale very fast. Once you come out of our lab, it goes to the cloud and our AI does all the analysis. There is no humans reading your data. And this is the whole beauty of the thing is

by automation and AI, you can take it to the mass scale. And these labs are fully automated. I can put one in Singapore, I can put one in India, I can put one in China, I can put it in any country. It's a very low capex and we can build a lab every year. Same thing with the manufacturing. The same machine can go anywhere and now you can have custom manufacturing anywhere you want.

Claudia von Boeselager (43:26)
So exciting. Some people obviously would be cautious when they hear that. What are some of the concerns in terms of AI and healthcare? More in general, to your lab, but just in general with AI having, you know, you don't even need a human in the equation anymore.

Naveen Jain (43:30)
Why?

And I think first of all you have to remember what AI does. AI is only learning from humans. So when we say humans are not needed, AI is standing on the shoulders of these great humans who have done the millions of research papers. It is actually reading those millions of research papers. Every single day more research comes out than human brain can read in 24 hours. But guess what? AI can in fact read that. So what we're doing is

The AI is constantly learning from humans, not making up its own knowledge. So when I say humans are not involved, humans are in fact involved in doing, in the foundation and all the work that is being done. They're just not doing what I would call the manual work of doing things that humans cannot do well. There is no human I know of that can read 100 million biomarkers and say, Claudia, do this.

Claudia von Boeselager (44:15)
with the foundation.

Naveen Jain (44:34)
Because human brain wasn't designed to read 100 million things and remember them, right? But AI is really good at doing that. So humans do what humans are good at, and then AI does what AI is good at. And it's really that going back to the symbiotic relationship that really is formed. The beauty of the other part of the AI that is really problematic is it is the garbage in, garbage out. That means if you're taking

the data from public databases, you know, from hundreds of public databases and using AI on it. The problem is every lab has this own method and there is a bias in each method. And then you're combining the things together. What happens is the lab differences end up showing as if that's a biomarker for a disease. And the reason we ended up building our own lab

our own CMS CLIA certified lab. So CLIA allows us to guarantee that same sample, you run it five times, 10 times, you're gonna get the same results. And the same consistent result is coming in for every sample. So our AI is getting the consistent data for it to learn. And now it has learned from one and a half million tests. So every person who comes in now is benefiting from everyone who came before them.

and they are contributing to every person who comes after them. And this ecosystem is what makes it so powerful. Now imagine in the next five years, we're going to have 10 million, 20 million, 100 million people. The AI is going to become so good that it will be able to get better and better and more and more precise. And as we add more data, so for example, now in addition to just Viome data,

We can ingest all of your wearable data. So I know when you're not sleeping well and I can adjust your supplement and diet. When I know you're doing strength training, I can adjust your supplements and diet. When you're doing aerobics training, I can adjust your diet and supplements. So I'm constantly becoming your personal health AI agent that's guiding you, telling you what's happening in your life. If you do a blood test, put the blood results and we incorporate that into our guidance.

If you are going out and doing VO2 max, give that to us and we do. If you do a full body MRI, upload that and we take that into account. So essentially we are constantly adjusting to what's happening in your life. You tell us, hey, last two days I've been feeling bloated. Great. Let me change your diet and let me change your supplement next month and see how that works.

Claudia von Boeselager (47:06)
Amazing. want to dig into that, but just curious research that is being ingested in read because as we know, not all research is created equal, not all studies are done correctly or the same way, let's say. How do you set up those guardrails to make sure that the AI is not training on something that would not be considered full standard?

Naveen Jain (47:15)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Aha!

Very good.

So this is really what we do. So we look at the quality of research. What is the size and size? Where it is, which publication it's published on? What is the actually the reference data and underlying data? What is the p-value? Is the p-value really low or a p-value not a low that tells you how statistically significant it is? What's the Delta? Is it done on mice or is it done on humans?

And we take all of that into account. then we, in fact, out of the 100 million papers, we curated 100,000 papers that are high quality that we use in our AI.

Claudia von Boeselager (48:04)
Okay. So thank you. And then I want to discuss about the idea of the agent. obviously people yesterday was interviewed for a documentary. said, what do you think? 10 years. And I said, let's talk about five years because AI is so exponential. So this idea of having this personalized agent and you can upload all your data and your wearables, et cetera. How does it currently look with Viome, right? With that agent. And where do you see that developing in the next five, six years?

Naveen Jain (48:27)
mean, ultimately, you know, think of an agent as a good administrative assistant who remembers the things that you've told them to do. So, you know, more often than not, it's not inventing things. It's not going out and doing different things other than reminding you and taking care of the things. So yes, I don't think there's going to be a day.

where it says, I looked at your Viome results and I don't think you're supposed to eat ice cream. So I threw all the ice cream from your freezer box. I don't think that's going to happen. But every time you go to the fridge, it'll remind you that it's not good for you. But if you do crave, take a small spoon of it. And so yes, the humans will still have agency. I don't think the agency is going to be

given only in a limited sense. These agents will have a limited agency and there is going to be something called orchestrator and that orchestrator could be a human being or it could be a orchestrator could be an AI agent that we trust and we give it a specific permission that you can only do this. Right. And that orchestrator job is to say, now go look at all my data, look at all my recommendations.

Make sure you get all the food delivered to every day. Look at the recipes. Make sure that my cook knows all the recipes that need to be done. Make sure that all of my daily data from my oura ring my eight sleep, my withings, all of the variables is being fed into it. And is there anything when you're analyzing my smart toilet, is there anything you learned today from my urine, from my fecal matter that I need to worry about when I'm, you know,

out there in front of a mirror, it is constantly analyzing my body and saying, all right, see a new mole here. I need to make sure I measure the side is 0.02. And by the way, I've been watching it for the last 60 days. It has not grown. You don't need to worry about it. It is totally fine. Or it is actually growing. I made the appointment with a doctor, blah, a dermatologist. And I really think I need you to check this thing out. Or

having or can you take this device, put it there. I don't think it is cancerous, but if you don't like it, you can get it removed, we have determined that it's not cancerous, right? So all these devices at home are gonna constantly be analyzing everything. And by the way, this is not a science fiction. I use it, know, urine scanner. So I have a device like U-Scan

Every time I pee on it, it measures things. It's going to get more and more sensors in there. Smart toilets are going to start getting more and more sensors there. Mirrors are going to get more and more sensors there. My scale is now measuring, you know, not just my weight, it measures my muscle mass, my, you know, muscle fat, my heart rate, my heart rate, EKG, you know, it is going to start measuring more and more things.

Claudia von Boeselager (51:10)
It's real fun.

Naveen Jain (51:16)
and all of the data is daily is coming into your personal health AI agent. So you don't have to worry about all the things. It will notify you and say, Claudia, nothing of concern for you. Enjoy your life. Or I am monitoring the things. is some small concern, but don't worry about it. I'm monitoring it. And I let you know if there's any concern here, but here are the three things I'm really monitoring for you.

Claudia von Boeselager (51:38)
So do you think it's a gift of giving people more time and less anxiety because they don't need to do that thinking essentially?

Naveen Jain (51:45)
mean,

of fear around AI exists. And I think this fear comes from the fact that every time there's a new technology, we always had that fear. Go back to the printing press. When the machines came out and people said, you mind, I don't have to by hand do this, what will happen to all the artisans? And point is every time when the computers came out and say, my God, there's going to be mass layoff and the people aren't going to have any job because computers are doing everything.

And every time the technology has come along, allows humans to move up and do the things that they always wanted to do, but never had time to do. So humans will become really good at doing the things that humans do in terms of figuring out what is the purpose of their life. What is it that they want AI to be doing? Because at the end of the day, AI doesn't know what makes us happy. We will figure out what makes us happy and we'll get AI to do the things for us.

to make us happy.

Claudia von Boeselager (52:39)
I love that I had this conversation with someone the other day because I don't know if every single human on planet earth at this moment knows how to leverage AI in order to use it as a tool in order to step into their purpose and what they're doing. So for those people who are maybe looking at it as looking into the abyss, what would you encourage them to know about embracing AI, embracing their health and improving it so that they can be in the best version of themselves?

Naveen Jain (53:04)
And I think what's interesting is once the technology becomes good, it becomes so much part of our life, we forget it is a technology, right? So when people say, would you want robot in your house? And people say, no way in hell I want a robot in my house. Then I remind them, know, dishwasher is a robot. You know, the washing machine is a robot, right? So point is they became so ingrained into a culture. We don't think of them as a robot. And you know,

Today we still vacuum by hand, but we have room by another. So mean, someday it is going to be vacuuming and people are not going to think of them as a robot, right? so these things becomes more and more integrated. You know, someday you'll be able to just have a something that cooks the meal for you. And people are going to say, it is just natural. Of course that there's no robot here. And so point is, I would say is look forward to the amazing life that's ahead of you.

rather than worrying about it, use them as a tool to make your life better. I use AI every single day for something in my day, whether it is writing, sometimes email, sometimes I get this long document and I'm thinking, I'm not reading this document. I shove it down on AI, can you give me a two paragraph summary of what is it? What is this document all about?

Claudia von Boeselager (54:16)
We pull it.

I'm respectful of your time, Navin, I'm sure you have a very full Where should people follow you, learn more about your work? Where would you like to send them to? And we'll link it in the show notes.

Naveen Jain (54:27)
Absolutely, they can always go check me out at viome.com. That's V-Agent Victor I-O-M-E dot com. Or they can find me on Instagram, LinkedIn. Please send me a message. I look forward to hearing from you.

Claudia von Boeselager (54:37)
And Naveen's very responsive, by the way, I'll let you all know. So what's the single most important shift you want our audience to make today after hearing our conversation?

Naveen Jain (54:46)
I would say there two things. Dream so big that people think you're crazy. And unless you happen to be a crazy person, then all bets are off. But really big, so big. Dream so big when you tell someone what you're going to be doing, people think you're crazy. And second, never be afraid to fail because you only fail when you give up.

Claudia von Boeselager (54:54)
I'm crazy.

Naveen Jain (55:04)
everything else simply an experiment that gives you a way to learn and take the next step. So just think of everything you're doing. has an outcome A and B. It's not a success and a failure. When outcome A happens, you do C. When outcome B happens, you do D. When you do D, the next outcome tells you what to do and everything is simply a stepping stone. So don't think of success and failure. Think of them as experiments and one day you're going to find yourself doing things that you never thought was possible.

Claudia von Boeselager (55:33)
Amazing, beautiful. Thank you so much, Naveen for making the time to come on. Thank you, dear audience, for tuning in today.

Naveen Jain (55:36)
Thank you.