610: Dr. Matthew Dawson on Wild Health and Lessons From Precision Health

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the “Wellness Mama” Podcast. I’m Katie, from wellnessmama.com. And this episode is all about what Matt Dawson called Wild Health and lessons from precision medicine. And Dr. Matthew Dawson attended medical school at the University of Kentucky and completed his residency in emergency medicine at the University of Utah. He’s practiced medicine and is the Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky for seven years, with an acute interest in functional medicine, and now genomics. And this led to the development of a company called Wild Health, which is a precision medicine service that provides personalized genetics-based care to help patients achieve next level health. And he’s also trained thousands of physicians in this process.
We go deep on understanding this concept in this episode, talking about where this concept of Wild Health came from, how a return to nature is the root of good health, but how the best outcomes are happening when combining this nature-based approach with the cutting edge technology in AI. What separates precision medicine from traditional medicine, the problem with health trends and why dietary dogma can feel like a religious war. Why genetics are important, but they’re only about 20% of the whole picture. The importance of light, sleep, and stress. We talk about factors we can optimize for our kids for lifelong health, if diseases are actually preventable and how. His core pillars of optimal health, the studies about movement and how much we actually need, a reason to look at the calories versus nutrients equation, ways to improve sleep quality, and science-backed reasons to focus more on relationships and connection for better health. This was a fun episode record. I know you will learn a lot, so let’s join Dr. Matthew Dawson. Matt, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Matt: Thanks for having me. I’m really excited.
Katie: I am too. And I’m excited to go deep on Wild Health and precision medicine, and so many cool things. But before we get into that, I have a note from your bio that you won second place in a national breakdancing competition. And as far as I know, you are my first guest who competitively was a break-dancer. So I would love to hear a little bit about how you got into that.
Matt: You know, what’s hilarious, Katie, is, I did not. So I put that in a bio of mine a long time ago, just because I thought it was hilarious. But I cannot dance at all. So that’s a funny thing that someone pulled from my bio. But I’m not a break-dancer at all. That’s a dream of mine that I could do that. But yeah, it’s always fun to talk about.
Katie: Well, that is even funnier, I think, that way. And maybe that can be one of your 2023 projects to tackle. I always try to pick an out of comfort zone activity each year to tackle, which has led me to things like voice lessons and belly dancing, neither of which I’m spectacular at yet, but they’ve been fun to learn. So maybe that’ll be a future endeavor for you.
Matt: Yeah, for sure. I think I would actually break something of myself if I tried breakdancing now. So the time may have passed for that.
Katie: A literal definition. There you go. Well, something that you are an expert in today is kind of precision health. And we’re going to get to go deep and learn from you on a lot of these things today. To start broad, you use a concept Wild Health. I would love for you to explain what that means, and what led you into this particular area, and especially that particular name.
Matt: Sure, yeah. So, probably four, five years ago, we started to see that there was all this evidence coming out around personalized medicine and genomics, and actually being able to treat people according to their unique DNA. So that’s why we launched Wild Health. The word wild is really kind of an allusion to a couple things. We saw just how much we could do if we look at someone’s DNA and personalize their lifestyle, diet, exercise, supplements, medications, all of that. But we also didn’t want to get lost in that, how a lot of our problems today with health are related to a disconnection from nature. So the wild really has kind of two meanings. It’s, one, we’re doing the most advanced, AI-driven, personalized medicine in the world, is kind of wild and out there. But we also, when we talk to our patients, talk a lot about connection to nature, and what we’ve lost when it comes to that.
So that wild kind of has two meanings. And when we started actually doing this, we just got phenomenal results. And at the time I was in academics, I was at a university as an associate professor teaching others. And I just saw medicine, people weren’t getting better at all. And so after doing this for a little bit, and we can talk more about what it is exactly we do, we left our universities, Mike, my co-founder and I, and we started Wild Health. But that’s where the word wild comes from. It’s not a normal name for a health care company.
Katie: I really like it, and especially understanding why it came to be called that, I like it even more. I think that’s been a recurring theme for me in the last five years, and with guests on this podcast, is sort of that idea of a return to nature. But like you, I think actually, the best outcomes happen when we take that knowledge that we’ve had, you know, throughout history and combine it with a cutting-edge technology. And I think this is going to, to your point, lead to some really amazing outcomes. But I’d love to kind of delve into why maybe the conventional or traditional medicine, just basic labs, aren’t enough, and what you guys do differently?
Matt: Sure. So, I mean, as I mentioned, I was seen people just not get better. I worked in a hospital system, and traditional medicine, and what we were doing. We just kept seeing the same patients over and over. We were treating symptoms and putting band aids on things. And we really wanted to get to kind of the root cause. And to do that, you really do have to go deep and look at someone’s DNA, not just kind of the regular labs that people get. So when we first started doing this, Mike Mallin, my co-founder, and I, we first dug in just for ourselves. We looked at our DNA. And when we did, we were going through that… Mike went through kind of a difficult issue as well. For himself, he found out his lipids, his cholesterol was in a really dangerous range. It wasn’t a little bit elevated, it was in a really dangerous level. And so he saw his regular doctor. His doctor told him to do a certain diet, he got worse on that diet. His doctor wanted to put him on a statin, which lots of people were on. We were a little worried about the side effects from that. And sure enough, he didn’t tolerate it. He had myopathy, muscle breakdown from that, really had a bad outcome.
And as we were looking at his genetics, we saw that pretty quickly, looking at them, that he needed to be on the opposite diet of what his doctor told him to go on, that works for most people, but not everyone. And he had a specific snip, this polymorphism, made him almost guaranteed to get that muscle breakdown and myopathy from the statin. And we were a little aggravated, and maybe angry even, that he had to go through this. Why did his doctor not know this? And we realized that even though the science is there, no one is practicing this way. And while we already were seeing the signs, that really was kind of the proof point for us that we needed to be doing this for ourselves and for others. And so that’s when we dug in, and really dove in and started learning it more. So, what we look at is not just the regular labs, but also someone’s DNA, all the factors that give them a certain advantage or disadvantage, in combination with that lab work. And also microbiome, and a lot of phenotypic data and lifestyle data as well.
And when you have all of that together, that’s when you can make really great recommendations for someone. Right now, in medicine, when we say something works. What we’re saying is it works for most people, like the diet for Mike. It may work for 80% of people, but he’s not 80% of people. He’s a unique individual. So we really do have to take a holistic view of someone, not just look at one lab and say, “You should do this because it works for most people in the situation.”
Katie: That makes sense. And it’s been amazing to watch in the last 10 years, the ability to actually test these things, to look at genes in a more detailed way. And to kind of, like, take everything into account in a more, you know, accurate and snapshot at a given time, and then track those things over time. I think it’s both really exciting and possibly also a little overwhelming to some people, the amount of data that we are now able to have access to. So, I’m curious for someone who is maybe newer to this type of medicine, and in the past has only had traditional labs, what would be the new data points that you guys tend to look at first, or, you know, data that consumers can have in their own hands and learn from themselves?
Matt: Yeah, it is difficult. And honestly, Katie, it was really difficult for us. When we first started doing this, I remember Mike and I, it would take us 10 hours to prep for a patient, even with our medical knowledge, because we were looking at… I mean, right now, when we test someone’s DNA, we look at about 700,000 genes. We do over 50 biomarkers, whereas your regular doctor may do 5 to 10 that they look at. And all of that data, we end up pulling in millions of data points, because we also pull in wearables and all this other data as well. And you really can’t crunch all of that yourself. Like, the human brain isn’t set up to do that. So what we did is we actually developed the world’s first AI-driven precision medicine platform. So over the course of several years, dozens of doctors, MDs, PhDs, data scientists, we developed this algorithm to kind of bring it all together. Actually, in the last year, we were acquired by a company that was named by “Fast Company” to be the world’s greatest or the world’s most innovative AI company. And so with that, we’ve applied even more AI to it. So you really… And that’s the issue. Like, with traditional medicine, they look at a few markers, because if this marker, then this. It’s not actually that simple. But if they try to look at DNA, we just don’t have the ability to do that without this kind of machine learning and AI. So that’s why we’ve done what we have.
When looking at markers in general, I mean, if I told you in general, what we look at is DNA, it’s bloodwork, which looks at all the lipids, but also inflammatory markers, which aren’t always measured in medicine. It’s critically important. Also vitamins, minerals, hormones, all these things that make you feel and perform a certain way, that aren’t normally looked at in just a standard panel. We also look at microbiome. And then a lot of information about the patient, and things you can’t measure, like what they eat, when they eat, who they eat with, where they live. My mother was one of our first patients, and in a few months, she lost 40 pounds, reversed her insulin resistance, got a lot better. But when trying to come up, for her, for example, what is the perfect diet? Okay, so we can look at her DNA and see she has a VDR snip, so she may need more vitamin D. But then what is her vitamin D level? And then where does she live and what time of year is it? Is she in Florida in the summer or Alaska in the winter? So you really have to bring all of that together to get a really good recommendation of, you need to take a vitamin D supplement, or you just need to eat more shiitake mushroom, or your vitamin D is totally good. So all of that information is necessary to really treat the whole person.
Katie: That makes sense. And I would guess from having access to that data and the AI behind it, which is so exciting to me personally. I am a data nerd, and I love that we now have the ability to do this kind of stuff. I would guess that maybe if there are any sort of universal human trends that emerge, they probably tie back to the nature side that we talked about at the beginning. Like, I would guess things like morning sunlight, pretty much universally beneficial, because we’re humans with a circadian rhythm. Or things like moving some sort of way every day, is sort of universally beneficial. Getting enough sleep, sort of universally beneficial. But beyond that, are there any things that you’re seeing as patterns from all this data that tend to be sort of, like, universally good starting points? Or is it truly so personalized beyond those very basic things that each person is different?
Matt: Yeah, every single person, every single plan that we come up for someone who is very different. However, you’re exactly right, like, being and living ancestrally, like, getting outside and moving, the morning sunlight, getting adequate sleep, reducing stress, all of those things play a big role. The problem with that is, I think most people know and understand those things. But which ones to do in a very busy and hectic life are difficult as well. So where are the leverage points? Where are the things based on your genetics, where you’re going to have the biggest outcomes? Where do we need to focus the most? Because I can give you a list of 100 things that we think are just good in general, aren’t going to be harmful, but we just don’t have the time. You have six children, I have four children, we have busy jobs. So where are we going to get the biggest impact? And that’s where we usually focus with a patient. What are your top three goals? And then where do we see, in your DNA and blood work, where you’re going to make the biggest impact? So we really try to make it practical for someone too, instead of just giving them a laundry list, okay, here’s things that are probably going to help you.
Katie: And I feel like that ability to get super personalized is such a superpower. Because if anything, that seems to be what the data points to more and more, is how different humans are. I even think of this in terms of the online community, and I’ve said this before, but there are all these amazing experts out there, and many of them have figured out what works for them. And of course, they’re excited about it, and they want to talk about it. And I’m a big believer that we can learn something from everybody, from every situation. And that curiosity is also a superpower. But I feel like in most cases, and myself included, if I figured out what works for me, I have figured out what works for me. And giving someone else that as a blueprint isn’t going to yield the same results because of those differences. I know I’ve been hesitant to even share… Like, people ask, what are you eating? What did you do? What supplements are you taking? I always say, you know, I’ll tell you what I’m taking for me as a starting point, but only for you to do your own experimentation, because it’s not going to directly translate for you like it did for me.
And it seems like this might be sort of the underlying issue with a lot of these health trends that we see. I know right now, they are going around in circles on, you know, Instagram Reels or Tik Tok, or whatever it may be. It seems like there’s new health trends every couple of weeks. And my take on that is, I think these people have figured out what works for them. And that’s awesome, and very exciting. But we see these trends come in and out because that doesn’t mean they’re going to translate across the board. But what’s your take on that as far as these… You know, there’s been so many health trends in the last decade.
Matt: Yeah, you’re exactly right. I mean, that was one of our epiphanies we had with Mike and I, when we started Wild Health. And we looked at our…I’d mentioned his diet, and we looked at our diets and all our different snips related to foods. And we need to be eating almost the opposite diet. And we’ve tested this. When we looked at our genetics, it looked like I would respond really well to a ketogenic diet, where he needs to be almost vegan. And when we saw that, we actually tested it. We would eat the exact same thing for an extended amount of time and then see how we felt. We’d measure our inflammatory markers, measure our lipids, and measure all these other things we could measure. And sure enough, like, we needed to be on almost opposite diets. And then it made so much sense to me how, when you hear people talk about diets, it almost feels like a religious war. People are so sure that their diet is the right one. And they feel that way, because they’ve tried all these diets, and they found the one that works for them. So they think, I’m a human, you’re a human, it must work for you too. And it’s not that way. A perfect example of that, to really boil it down and get people a good example is caffeine. So we’ve known or we thought for decades that caffeine is an ergogenic aid when it comes to athletics. You take caffeine and you perform better. And for me, when I was doing Ironman races, it did make a big difference, or just playing sports, it made a big difference.
When you really tease out the data, if you’re a fast metabolizer of caffeine, you have significant improvements in your speed, and strength, and performance. If you’re a moderate metabolizer, you don’t get really any benefit, or it doesn’t hurt you. But if you’re a slow metabolizer, it actually hurts your performance. Most people are fast metabolizers, so when you do a study of 1000 people, most people are going to benefit. So what science would say is, caffeine is an ergogenic aid. But it’s not that simple. It’s an ergogenic aid for people who are fast metabolizers when you look at the DNA.
I had an NBA player recently who this played into perfectly. They came and they were having all these kind of mood issues throughout the season and difficulties. And they were doing exactly the same thing as the rest of their teammates. And this is a max contract player, high level player. And what they were doing is they were taking a ton of Red Bull, and caffeine, and other things prior to a game. The games are at night. It turns out they were a slow metabolizer, so it was hurting their game, it was destroying their sleep, and it was really having a negative effect on them. Whereas their teammates, who are fast metabolizers, it was actually helping them. So we’ve seen the science, how DNA makes a huge difference in what you eat and supplements. And this was a perfect example of someone who had a tremendous turnaround with just modifying that one factor that we found in their DNA.
Katie: That’s so fascinating. And I’m thinking of this in relation to my own experimentation with this, and how I’ve gone through some of these trends, and things like when the big rage was, you know, saturated fat is not the enemy. Which I think it was, in some ways, unfairly demonized. However, there’s, like you said, this big genetic component to that. So for a while, I was eating tons of coconut oil and things, because I was like, “Oh, this is not bad. It’s been unfairly vilified.” But when I looked at my genes, I realized I don’t personally do great with lots of saturated fat. And switching that made a big difference for me. Or things like with my vitamin D, you mentioned vitamin D. I respond really well to sunlight, not at all to supplementation of vitamin D. So for me, it became important to get good sun exposure. Things like that I wouldn’t have known without that genetic deep dive. And now, with six kids, I’m looking at, you know, each of them differently, and how even though they came from the same parents, they need sort of personalized different approaches to their diet and to their movement, and all kinds of things.
And I love that you guys seem like you also layer on the snapshot of what’s going on in the gut and in the labs as well, because it makes sense, these things all work together. But from my understanding, someone could have… Like, the genes are one level, but if they’ve got something sort of epigenetic going on, or they’ve got a gut disturbance, their body could still then also be responding differently, as sort of a layer beyond genetics. But can you kind of talk about how those things interplay?
Matt: For sure, yeah. And you may have heard that the same DNA is destiny, it’s not, it’s just not. DNA makes up about 20% of your health outcomes. But what you do, everything you eat, you’re exposed to, your stress levels, turn on and off those good and bad genes. So we think DNA is fundamental, we have to understand it. But it’s only a small part of the entire picture. Someone with great genetics may be doing really poorly if they’re smoking and eating horribly, not sleeping, high stress levels. And the opposite is true, too. So you really have to think about all those epigenetic factors in order to really come up with good recommendations for folks.
Katie: On that note, what are some of the biggest factors that emerge as sort of, like, the do not do list of things that regardless of your genes, are going to be epigenetically bad for you? For instance, you said smoking. I think that one’s pretty universally recognized as not good for health. But also we know, we’ve seen lots of headlines about stress and how, in a sense, it creates a lot of those same problems as smoking or being too sedentary. What are some of those things you’ve seen emerges sort of big risk factors that we can all be aware of?
Matt: For sure. And I think everybody listening to your podcast probably knows them, so they’re not going to be groundbreaking. But the ones you mentioned. I’m sure very few people listening to this actually smoke, thankfully. But it’s the other things. What you eat, staying away from the processed foods, the vegetable oils, and sugar, obviously, the sleep is critical. Sleep is such a leverage factor, not just because of the actual sleeping part, but it affects everything else. When you’re not sleeping well enough, you make worse decisions around food, you don’t metabolize food as well, even if you are making good decisions. You’re not working out as much, and if you do, you’re more injury prone.
But you mentioned the one I think that people don’t think about and talk about enough, which is just stress. And I’ll add on to that, relationships. I think relationships are really key. There’s good data now showing that if you’re lonely, it’s as bad as, I think, smoking, like, 10 cigarettes a day or something like that. Those are the ones I think most people know. Okay, food, movement, sleep, stress, those are critical. But relationships, I think we don’t spend enough time talking about. That’s a major leverage point as well for turning on and off, turning on good genes, off bad genes, just having those really strong relationships. I think that’s an area where we should be focusing a lot more.
Katie: And it’s definitely no secret that a lot of health problems and chronic health problems are pretty drastically on the rise, even now we’re seeing them in children at younger and younger ages. And of course, there are so many theories out there for this. But I’m curious what your take would be on some of the reasons that we’re seeing such a steep rise in a lot of these problems. And things like I’ve mentioned on here before, how the current generation of American children is set to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents for the first time in centuries. Like, why are we seeing these statistics start to change so drastically right now?
Matt: I think we’re living in such an unnatural environment for us as humans. I think that’s it. I mean, when I think about our kids’ daily life, this is a sad analogy, but I almost think of, like, animals in a zoo. Like, they’re not getting outside. They’re not in their natural environment. They’re inside all day, whether it’s at school or home. We’re feeding them all these processed foods because they’re easy and they’re quick. They’re made to sit still all day in school as well. And yeah, I think we’re just setting them up for a really difficult time in the future I think just because that is so unnatural. And again, that’s part of the wild component. Like, we can take a very personalized approach to their medical care, and what they should eat, or the supplements and things. But we really can’t forget that. Like, we’re just not made to live the way that we are forcing our kids to live now.
Katie: Yeah, that’s such a great point. I had another guest recently who said…who’s a neurosurgeon, who was talking about all the indoor lighting, just the absence of actual outdoor light and outdoor exposure in general. And how, especially for kids, that’s a really dramatic factor and a relatively easy one to fix. It doesn’t require, you know, any expensive supplementation or anything other than them spending time outside. And I think, as parents, if we can model that or create situations where we’re all outside, that goes a long way as well. But speaking of kids, I’m curious if as a parent, as well as a clinician, what things have emerged from this that you’ve implemented with your kids, and seen good results with?
Matt: Sure. Yeah. So we’re very fortunate, and I don’t want to… So a lot of the things we do, I realize that not everyone can do, but I’ll just tell you, in general. We live in the woods. I live on a couple 100 acres in the woods. So we’re kind of forcing the kids to be outside even when they don’t want to be outside. They should not be inside during the day, if they’re home, in our kind of general opinion. We grow a lot of our food, and having the kids be a part of that as well. I think a lot of kids don’t even understand where their food comes from. So having a knowledge of what is food and what isn’t, I think is good as well. I got in trouble recently, one of our kids was at a neighbor’s house and the neighbor mom served them some snacks. And one of our daughters, I think she was six at the time said, “That’s not food. My daddy says that’s chemicals and calories. We only eat food.” And so I felt bad I got in a little bit of trouble for that. But at the same time, I was very proud because just kids knowing what actual food is, is important.
So those are the few things. I mean, the things that we already talked about, about having a good bedtime, and having the lights out early so they’re not exposed to that light late at night, and just eating real food, and being outside, and getting dirty, getting their hands in the dirt, and improving the microbiome. Those are the things that we’re really focused on right now. And my wife is a child psychiatrist. Actually she double boarded in adult psychiatry and child psychiatry. And there are some really great books on nature-deficit disorder, I can’t remember who wrote that, and several others. But she’s a very strong believer in looking at all the literature that these things are critically important. We’re prescribing an incredible amount of stimulants and other medications for kids that we think at least that could be alleviated just by getting them outside and eating whole foods.
Katie: Yeah, I think kids are so capable of understanding even the kind of intricacies of health and nutrition if we explain it. I’m a big fan of trying to explain it in a informative but non-fear-based way. But, like, letting them actually have access to the information, which I’ve, with mine, seen, especially as they get older, lead to me not having to really control or even try to influence heavily their diets at all. Because when they understand it, they’re actually pretty capable of making good choices on their own, especially when they’re given that foundation. And so I think that’s a beautiful method of doing it. I’m a little jealous you guys get to do that where you’re outside all day in the woods. We’re at the beach, so we’re outside a lot as well, but different ecosystem. Based on what you’re seeing in the data with all these, you know, chronic health problems on the rise, what’s your take on, are these things actually preventable? Is it still within our reach? Even seeing the societal rise to prevent these problems.
Matt: Yeah, they’re 100%. We actually had really good data in our programs now. I mentioned my mother, and the results she had. Mike, my co-founder, his mother went on our program, she lost 80 pounds, and he got off all of her medications. And so we had these proof points that were just anecdotes at first, but now that we’ve seen thousands of patients, we actually are just publishing our first white paper. And you take something like diabetes, for example. And if you look at the literature, about 3% of diabetes is reversed with medical management in our program, not with medical management, just lifestyle, diet, everything else. Forty eight percent of our patients who have diabetes or prediabetes, at six months, they no longer qualify. Their hemoglobin A1C has completely normalized.
That’s unheard of, but it’s totally possible. And we know diabetes, metabolic disease is probably the biggest driver for all the things like heart attack, stroke, dementia, cancer, all of those things. We get about a 39% reduction in inflammation. Almost every biomarker that we looked at normalized, a large percentage normalized in our patients for triglycerides. I think it was something like 60%. So it’s not that I think we can reverse chronic diseases from these things, like, we’re seeing it happen when you take a holistic approach. When you don’t break someone down into organ systems and say, okay, you got a headache, so I’m going to think about your brain, or you have abdominal pain, I’m going to think about your abdomen. But you think about the person as a whole, you totally can reverse these things and prevent these diseases.
Katie: That makes sense. It is super exciting that this is now within our reach through the data to actually be able to do that on an individualized level. And you mentioned that genetics are only about 20% of this whole equation. And that, you know, lifestyle factors, and everything we do beyond that is actually…can be, it sounds like, much more important. Can you delve a little bit more into epigenetics and how we can turn on and off certain genes to influence health outcomes?
Matt: Yeah. And it’s all the things that we already talked about, those main factors. Those are going to be very positive. But we also can get very specific as well. I mean, you look at something like an SHB23 polymorphism. If you have this, you’re not going to tolerate wheat and gluten as well. So, we try to identify kind of kryptonite foods for people and super foods for people. So SHB23, you’re not going to tolerate wheat and gluten, so that’s kryptonite food. You have an MCM6 polymorphism, you’re not going to tolerate dairy very well. So stay away from that. But then also foods that are going to have a positive impact on you. So if someone has a FADS2 polymorphism, they need more omega-3, so we’re going to get sardines or other clean fish into their diet, or give them an omega-3 supplement. And in general, we know eating more fish is probably good, and eating wheat and gluten is probably not great. But again, coming to, like, what is the biggest leverage factor for this person, for their epigenetics, and affecting their DNA is the point. We want to get really specific to people, and that’s what we can do when we look at their DNA and figure out which epigenetic factors are going to make the biggest difference. Some people have maybe a PEMT polymorphism. And sleep, we know sleep is critical for everyone. But for those people, they need a lot more sleep, or they’re going to have a very inflammatory response. So, depending on the DNA, we’re going to focus on the epigenetic factors that are going to most plug those gaps and give them the biggest advantages.
Katie: That makes sense. On that note, in today’s world, I know we hear a lot about the food supply and the soil being depleted of a lot of nutrients that used to be there when our grandparents were our age, for instance. What’s your take on the question of if supplements can be not only just important, but in some ways, necessary for certain people in today’s world? Like, are we at a point, in your opinion, with the food supply, and with all these changes, that we actually sometimes sort of do need to supplement?
Matt: Yeah, I mean, I would love to say that we can get everything we need from whole foods. And I think a lot of times, we can, and a lot of our patients do, and they’re not on any supplements. But it’s variable. It depends on the diet, where the person is, and their genetics. And so I don’t really take a stance one way or the other, like, supplements are really critical, or they’re not. We try to take a very objective stance and actually just test. So we test for these things. I mean, some people would say everyone needs to be on a vitamin D and an omega-3 supplement. Well, not necessarily. For example, I eat probably a can or two of sardines a day on average. And my omega-3 levels are great without any supplementation. I’m outside a lot and my vitamin D levels are pretty good. So we actually test these markers, instead of putting everyone on supplements. Like the FADS2 polymorphism, I actually do have that. So in theory, I need more omega-3, but I’m able to get it with food. So we always start with food. If you can get everything you need from clean sources, we do that. We don’t normally start people on supplements unless we identify a deficiency, because we’re going to try to get it from nature first, that whole kind of wild part there.
Katie: That makes sense. And I know in researching for this interview, you’ve talked about the core pillars for optimal health. I would love for you to kind of explain what those core pillars are in your approach, and sort of maybe some steps that help optimize each one.
Matt: Yeah, and these are things we’ve already talked about as well. I mean, food, I think we get very specific with people, like I mentioned, the kryptonite and the super foods. But in general, it’s the whole Michael Pollan thing. You eat whole foods, and eat things. I mean, the general rule is, if your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize it as food, then it’s not food. When it comes to movement, it’s pretty much the more the better. When you look at a lot of the studies on this, there’s a really great dose response curve. And we see very few people who are actually moving too much. That’s pretty rare. It does happen, but pretty rare. So just moving a lot and actually focusing on things that you enjoy as well. Not necessarily going to the gym, but just being active and playing. I don’t think we play enough in our society as well. So we really encourage people to find things they enjoy and play in order to move. The stress reduction, we focus a lot on mindfulness and reducing stress that way. There’s actually some really interesting snips related to this. For example, if you have an OXTR snip, then you you’re probably going to do really well with love and kindness meditation. So there’s even some precision around what type of stress reduction and mindfulness activities you do.
And then sleep, there is an incredible amount of data on sleep. And we take a very data-driven approach to that as well. We’ll look at someone’s DNA, and they may have a specific polymorphism like I do, around the FAAH snip. That means they may do better with CBD supplementation, but some people don’t. Other people, depending on their snips, may do better going to bed earlier or later, these clock genes that help tell us about circadian rhythm. So we’ll look for sleep to optimize at least. We look at the DNA, but then we also measure and put someone…have them wear an Oura Ring, or a loop, or something else to measure their sleep. And then we’ll identify what are the top two or three things to do. And then kind of one at a time, do more experiments, and say, we’re going to add this, we’re going to add this. Because there’s 100 things you could do for sleep.
But over time, we’re able to first take the precision approach with genetics, and then narrow down, here’s the four, five activities or supplements that are going to make the biggest difference for you for sleep. So those are kind of the core things, and we try to take a precision and an objective approach. We take the shortcut of what’s probably going to make the biggest difference. But then we measure it. It’s precision medicine, not perfect medicine. So we don’t know for sure, there’s so much we don’t know, that affects these things. So we want to be very objective about our goals and measure before saying if something actually worked or didn’t.
Katie: Yeah, I love that. I also love that you mentioned play. I think this is one of the lessons my kids have taught me really well. And one that I had forgotten for a long time before having kids, is the importance of play, and sort of that low level movement. Which the data really reflects as well, is like, we don’t need to be in the gym for three hours a day. In fact, that would probably borderline on counterproductive if we were in the gym that long. But we are meant to move. And it seems like study after study keeps pointing toward even just walking. Like, even if you don’t have the ability, or the desire, or the time to do anything beyond that, just walking every day seems to make a huge difference. And even if you want to get more specialized with it, we know, like, walking after meals, for instance, to circle back to the blood sugar thing, can make a big difference in your glucose response after meals. And that’s an easy thing to do as a family.
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It also seems like, and a problem we’re seeing a lot at least from people I hear from, and I’ve heard other guests mention this, is, the sort of overfed undernourished equation. And it sounds like these are a lot of the things you guys are looking at in such a personalized way. Of not just, how do you make sure you’re not undernourished, but how do you specifically nourish your body for where it is right now. I know that in my own life, this is something I figured out in the last few years, is, I had been sort of chronically under-eating for so long. I actually had to become very aware of eating enough and especially enough nutrients in certain categories. And that really helped sort of rebuild my body after six pregnancies. But how often are you seeing this in the clinic with people who are sort of consuming enough maybe food by volume or by calories, but are having nutrient deficiencies in different areas?
Matt: Yeah, I mean, it gets back to the point my daughter made very embarrassingly to our neighbor that, I think most of the things people consider food aren’t food, it’s chemicals and calories. And just consuming calories doesn’t equate to consuming nutrients. I think about my lunch that I’m going to have right after this. I feel like I’m craving some sardines right now. It’s usually what I have for lunch. And a can of sardines is going to be a couple hundred calories, like 200 calories. So it’s not that many calories, but the nutrient density of that whole food, that kind of nose to tail animal with the organ meats, and everything, just the amount of nutrients in there is incredible. Whereas 200 calories is like a small… I mean, a soda has about that many, and it’s just pure sugar, and chemicals, and calories. I think just redefining what food is, is the main thing to fix that problem of being overfed and undernourished. The kind of equation of calories to nutrients is a really important one. Obviously, there’s omnivores, there’s vegans and vegetarians. I heard a term not that long ago called a nutrivore, just focusing on the most nutrient dense foods, which I like. Which in general are just whole foods. It’s not complicated. Foods that your great grandmother would recognize are going to be the best way to solve that problem.
Katie: Yeah. And perhaps people listening have seen those graphics that sort of compare, you know, like, 2000 calories from fast food, which is like one meal that doesn’t look like very much food, to 2000 calories from whole foods. And it’s like, you would almost have trouble eating that much food in one day if you weren’t used to it because it’s so much more food, so many more nutrients, and also so much more brightly colored. And I think for people who are more used to the processed foods, that can be an adjustment period for sure. But I hear from people over and over, who once you make that adjustment, like you said, your body starts craving those whole foods, and you sort of get a lot of intuitive knowledge about what your body needs in a specific day or time period as well. And I love your example of sardines. I’d love to hear kind of your personalized medicine take. Like, what are your personal non-negotiables or your personal 80-20 of things that you think are the biggest levers for your own health?
Matt: Yeah. So, movement is a non-negotiable for me. Working out in the day isn’t something that, oh, if I have time for it, I will. That’s a non-negotiable. Every morning, kind of the schedule is built around that. I have to do that. Also, with food, I do eat usually a couple cans of sardines every day for lunch. And that just gives me so much nutrient density. Sleep is just critical for me. It’s interesting, I still feel a little bit almost embarrassment when I talk about this because of the way our society is. But I take a nap almost every day. I mean, I get in bed early, like, when the sun’s down, I’m trying to get into bed. I never use an alarm, if at all possible, unless there’s an early flight or something else is going on. And when I feel tired in the middle of the day, I will probably take a 20-minute nap. But those three things for me are the non-negotiables.
Nutrient dense food, I always… Wherever I am, wherever I’m working, and even in my car, I have, like, cans of sardines and pickles, and some of the things that I really love. So I kind of design my environment to be able to optimize those things. And so I have, wherever I’m working… There’s a couple different places I work. And at home, I’ll have something, whether it’s… I always have a 50-pound kettlebell in my car, as well as the food. Just being able to design my environment, so those three things, I can always optimize. And if I get those three right, I feel pretty robust and resilient. I can put up with a lot of other issues that we all have. But those three are the three non-negotiables for me.
Katie: I’m with you. I’m team sardines as well. Actually, my lunch that I will also eat after this is a couple cans of sardines mixed with a bunch of veggies, kind of like in a chopped salad, and some fruit, and my vitamin stack that I take and kind of rotate. But I know people sometimes have a resistance to sardines. I think maybe we got some childhood programming about them being gross at some point maybe. But they’re inexpensive, and they’re sort of, like, nature’s multivitamin, I have found. And I’m working on getting all my kids to love them as well. And also when it comes to sleep, I think you’re right, this is a recurring theme as well. I’m yet to hear a single researcher, doctor, clinician, anybody say sleep is not important. Like, this is almost the only thing that I think we can universally agree on across the board. And so I’ve put a lot of effort in the last 10 years into really honing in my sleep.
I love that we have access to things like Oura Ring now that in real time, we can see how things are impacting our sleep. Which has led to me being able to personalize and know that I sleep better with a ChiliPad on my bed, and being slightly cooler, and blackout curtains, and doing meditation before bed. Any other sleep specific suggestions? I know there’ll be like a world of supplementation that’s more personalized, that would require the genetics and the testing. But are there other factors that sort of seem to, on average, improve sleep quality?
Matt: Sure. I mean, you mentioned some of them. So, light in general just because of the melatonin suppression with blue light. So, the less artificial light, the better. Coolness is a big one. You mentioned meditation. I mean, just turning the brain down, the environments we live in are set up to stimulate us. I mean, they’re designed that way. It’s not by accident that our phones and other social media are stimulating. They’re designed that way. As far as supplements go, some that generally work for most people without… And I always hesitate because everything is so personalized, but some that have had pretty good success in general are glycine, having a glycine supplement. A lot of us don’t get enough of that, in general, prior to bed. It seems to help most people. Magnesium, especially mag three and eight, it seems to cross the blood brain barrier and is very helpful as well. If I have a very stressful period, sometimes some phosphoserine at night can really be helpful as well. Those are just some of the kind of the general ones, that even if we don’t identify a genomic reason or otherwise, we’ll frequently try with a patient just because we’ve seen those make a big impact. And you can watch the Oura Ring, and deep sleep, and REM sleep improve with some of those supplements.
Katie: And like I said, I’m such a data nerd. I love that you have access to all this data. Based on that and on the research you’re seeing right now, what things and health are you excited about, looking forward? And maybe what are we going to have access to in the next 10 years that’s going to be something we haven’t previously been able to know or understand?
Matt: Yeah, so really, kind of the machine learning and AI behind this is what I’m most excited about. When we merged with this AI company at the beginning of this year, being able to apply a lot of that to what we were doing. Because again, there’s millions of data points coming off the human body. So we’ve talked about a lot, like the DNA, the blood work, microbiome, phenotypic factors, in questionnaires. What we haven’t really talked about much is the wearables. We’ve talked about them just now in terms of just one off. Like, okay, we’re looking at Oura Ring, we’ll see how deep sleep or REM sleep is affected by specific interventions. But being able to bring all that in together to see, okay, what is optimizing our sleep from an entire day standpoint? Our algorithms now, in our program, we were able to do that. Everything that Apple Watch, and Google Health can record, we pull in, and we can look at that every day. So over time, getting those insights, discovering science that we don’t have yet. We’ve been mainly translating all of the science and getting health people because medicine’s 10 years behind, and there’s good science, so we’re just applying now. But creating some of that science.
Being able to say, with this snip, and this bloodwork, and you living in this area, we’ve noticed on your wearable, that this food has a big impact on your sleep, or your stress levels. We’re going to look at your HRV. All of that data together is what I’m really excited about. I think the acceleration… And the outcomes that we’ve gotten are a magnitude of order better than what I’ve seen anywhere else. So it’s already having an impact just translating it, but accelerating that to really do personalized medicine for people. That’s what I’m really excited about. It’s not just… I mean, we went from what works for most people, looking at a study and saying, okay, caffeine is ergogenic aid for 70% of people, to, okay, caffeine is good if you’re a fast metabolizer, to getting even more granular. Caffeine in this circumstance with your genetics, and where you are in the season of the year for where you live. That’s what’s really exciting to me, to be able to push those kinds of recommendations out to people, and really give them control of the rails and be able to optimize health.
Katie: And on that note, I know there might be people who are really excited about the possibilities with precision health and want to do this for themselves. I know you guys have given me a link that people can find out more, and I’ll make sure that’s included in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm. But are you guys accepting new patients? And what does it look like for someone to be able to come work with you guys?
Matt: Sure, we are. And we’re actually in all 50 states in the U.S. wildhealth.com is where you could go to sign up. It’s quite affordable now. So when someone does sign up… Right now, it’s a monthly fee of around $100 a month. But we do the DNA, the bloodwork, you have a health coach, you have a physician assigned, you have access to the program. And we have an app, like I mentioned, that pulls in all this data, and kind of collects it all and gives you a recommendation. What I’m really excited about though is, we’re rolling out accepting insurance now. So we are in a couple of states, and we’re rolling out about 10 more. So, probably over half of your listeners in the next few months we’ll actually be accepting insurance in their states. Which has been really important to us from the beginning when we started out, to be able to do this was quite expensive, to do all this analysis. And we started out with pro athletes and CEOs. And we still have some really robust programs, kind of concierge and high level for those folks. We’ll include whole body MRIs, and AI cardiac scans, and all of this stuff.
But it’s been important for us to be able to do this in a way that everyone can afford it. And so now we’re actually doing that. So, if someone were to go to wildhealth.com to sign up and get all the testing done, and get into the program, even if we’re not in your state or aren’t accepting your insurance right now, we’re going to be very soon. So the folks that are signed up now and in the program, we’re going to be letting them convert to using their insurance over the next kind of three to six months. So that’s what I’m very excited about, to be able to do this for everyone, regardless of their financial situation.
Katie: That’s awesome. And like I said, I’ll make sure I put the links to that as well as more information about everything you guys do in the show notes, for you guys listening. And a couple of questions I love to ask toward the end of interviews. The first being, if there is a book or a number of books that have profoundly impacted your life, and if so, what they are and why.
Matt: Yeah. I think just from a general standpoint, I mean, this is a very generic one, but the Bible in general. I mean, there’s so much wisdom in that. Kind of growing up in that culture, there’s a lot of wisdom there and it’s kind of embedded in me. I think, more recently, a book that I read several times, which I always recommend, I’ve gotten multiple copies of my car at all times, is “Awareness,” by Anthony de Mello. I think that’s an amazing book for improving your awareness, for lack of a better term. And every time I read that book, I get something new out of it. And I think the last one I would mention is, probably less people have heard of, but in my role as a leader and CEO of our company, the book, “The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership,” is a really incredible book for anyone that is a leader or leading a team. It’s the best leadership book that I’ve ever read. And so I recommend that one a lot right now. Those are the three that kind of come to mind immediately when I think about my life and different roles.
Katie: That’s a new recommendation for me. I’m going to check that one out as well. And then lastly, any parting advice for the listeners today that could be related to everything we’ve talked about or entirely unrelated. Just life advice.
Matt: Yeah, I think I mentioned it earlier a little bit, but I think we don’t focus enough on our relationships. I think we’re all so busy and moving so fast. I think we would do a lot better to just slow down and focus on those relationships. Frequently I think about at the end of my life, what I’m going to regret or be happiest about. And I think it’s always going to be the time that I’ve spent with my friends, and family, and loved ones. It’s not going to be about the other accomplishments or things that I feel like I spend most of my time working on right now. I think there’s a real mismatch for me on how much time I spend on what is actually most important. And I think if this is advice I think I’d give to myself, so I think it’s probably good to give to other people as well, is to really focus on those relationships and be very mindful and deliberate about that.
Katie: Yeah, I think that’s a perfect note to end on. And certainly, to your point, the research reflects that as well. That is a commonality we see in blue zones, that loneliness, like you said, is very dangerous for our physical health. And that also, we know that connections and relationships really make a difference and correlate to longevity. And that’s one that I think, especially after the last few years, people can definitely benefit from really getting some time with those people closest to them that they love.
And thank you so much for your time today. It’s always so fun for me to get to sort of delve into this more personalized data side of things. And I love that you guys are making this accessible to people in a much easier way. So thank you for your time. And thank you for your work.
Matt: Thank you. It was a lot of fun. I appreciate it so much.
Katie: And thanks as always, to all of you, for listening, and for sharing your most valuable resources, to Matt’s point, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re most so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama” podcast.

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