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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
This episode is brought to you by Apollo Neuro. And if you’ve listened for a while, you know that managing stress is important for health and that getting a good night’s sleep is pivotal for our wellbeing. And those are two things we talk a lot about on this podcast and they’re top of my priority list for this year. Now, if you followed me at all last year, you know last year was also a pretty emotionally taxing year for me. And at times I saw my sleep and my HRV especially take a hit. And one thing that helped a lot for me was the Apollo device.
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Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and this episode is about how to understand your own hormones, heart health, thyroid, toxin levels, metabolic health, and much more with a new tool called Function Health. And this is something I wish had been available over 10 years ago when I was trying to figure out my own health struggles, and it was not, and I ended up spending thousands of dollars and a whole lot of time trying to get answers that are now much, much, much, much more affordable and available at your fingertips. And we talked about that today.
I’m here with Pranitha Patil, who is the co-founder and COO of a company called Function Health that I’ve gotten to be involved with because I thought this was so important to get to the world. I love what they’re doing. She is a trailblazing entrepreneur who went through her own health struggles like I did and struggled to find answers. And out of that was born her passion for making health data affordable and available to everyone. She went through, like I said, her own chronic conditions, including PCOS, prediabetes, and genetic high cholesterol, and had to go on quite the journey to transform her own health. Now she runs Function Health, which has helped her improve her own levels, but more importantly, makes this available to everyone to be able to both access, understand, and make change based on their personalized health data.
I talk a lot here about how the future of, I think, of health is the personalized and individualized aspect. And that’s why I don’t share directly exactly what supplements I take or exactly what I do, because what I do is what works for me, but may not translate directly for you. Yet the lesson we can learn from any expert is to begin to do that experimentation to figure out our own answers. And I feel like this is a valuable tool to help us all do that. We get to go into the specific things that they test and why they’re important, as well as things like how they get a snapshot of biological age, even early cancer markers that they can evaluate, autoimmune markers. This is truly the most comprehensive testing I have ever done, and well less than 10% of the cost that I have spent to get this in the past. So I will let her explain what goes into this and how to access it, but I really am excited for this as a resource to all of us to really democratize access to our own health data. So let’s join her now. Pranitha, welcome. Thank you so much for being here today.
Pranitha: Thank you so much for having me, Katie. Really appreciate it.
Katie: Well, I am really excited to get to geek out a little bit because I’ve talked about before on this podcast how it’s awesome that we live in a time where we have so much access to data, but that sometimes there’s like an overwhelm that comes with that when you can access all the data of knowing what are actually the impactful data points to get and to pay attention to when there’s so much information out there. And for context people I mentioned it in your bio, but you work with a company called Function Health, which I think is revolutionizing this industry to begin with, but really helping put that power in each of our own hands. And I think there’s so much nuance to understand when we’re able to get lab testing affordably into what to look at, what we should test, and why different things are important. So to start a little high level, can you kind of explain the array of things that you guys test, and then we’ll get to delve into why each one’s important?
Pranitha: Yes, absolutely. So Function Health is building a revolutionary way that gives women, men, families, and everyone power over their health outside their traditional doctor’s office. It’s also the most affordable and convenient way to get on top of your health. So some of the things that we test are your heart, your hormones, your thyroid, your kidney, your liver, or think about all the organs and organ systems, how they connect to each other. And that is the answer, those are the answers we’re trying to get for folks is testing those biomarkers and connecting them together to help you as an individual get more information about your body.
Katie: That makes sense. And I recently, for context for everyone, I got to go through this testing, and I was blown away how comprehensive it was because as someone who used to have Hashimoto’s and I’m now in remission, but I’ve had various health challenges over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of lab testing in the past. And I was shocked because this was probably the least expensive lab testing I had ever gotten. And you guys tested things that had never been tested on me before, despite all these things I had done in the past. And so, I would love to get a little bit specific into some of these categories because I think having this information in our hands is so valuable, especially when we understand what to look at and how to interpret it.
And I know you guys also have this built in, and you are in partnership with Dr. Mark Hyman to have this education piece built in, but I loved how even within my results, it wasn’t just like high, low, normal, and then you get no other information. It was like, here’s what this means. Here’s some resources. Here’s what to understand. So maybe since a lot of people listening are women, let’s start with the hormone piece because this feels like an area that’s often a little bit overwhelming or confusing and there’s so many thing we can test. And then when we do, what do we actually need to look at to understand what’s going on inside our body?
Pranitha: Absolutely. So high-level context Function tests over 100 biomarkers, like you mentioned. One of those categories for women are our female health hormones. This includes AMH, FSH, luteinizing hormone, estradiol, sex hormone binding globulin, and the list goes on. These hormones are present in almost every system in our body. And so, when hormones are balanced, they constantly communicate with each other. They’re synchronizing the rhythms of our body. When they’re imbalanced is when so many people feel like, oh, what am I supposed to do about this? Maybe they go to their physician, and they ask for these tests, and they’re confused and or they don’t get those tests. So the purpose of this testing is to get people answers for why, what is causing that imbalance? How might that come out in your day-to-day life? Your sleep, your unexpected weight gain, your acne, your energy, anxiety, depression, the list goes on here. So hormone imbalance is super important to understand because there are so many forces that cause our hormones to be out of whack and the testing and the data gets people information to actually say, okay, here’s what’s happening. And maybe next time when I test in three months or six months, I see a change because I actually did a lifestyle change. And that’s the kind of data that we give you with Function Health is why something is out of range, but also what you might be able to do about it.
Katie: And I loved that that was all built in, like even the more intricate thyroid hormones that I remember 10 years ago having to sort of like beg my doctor to actually run a full thyroid panel and not just test one marker and say I was normal. That’s all included. And you guys like break down the ratios. I’m like, that information would have been invaluable to me 10 years ago. And it was also incredibly encouraging. Now, as you said, I’ve made all these lifestyle changes the last 10 years to see I’m not on thyroid medication, and my numbers were in a really good range. So that was like super empowering data to actually have in my hands. Can you speak to the thyroid piece a little? Because I know we’re seeing a rise in thyroid-related issues. And this is another area where it seems like women especially go to a doctor, get one or two things tested, and then get told they’re normal and they’re sitting there going, but then why do I still feel so bad? And so, I love that you guys put that whole panel in there as the baseline.
Pranitha: Yeah. So for the thyroid testing, we have TSH, we have T3, T4, and that’s obviously another huge section of the body that has had unanswered questions, right? So that’s exactly why we do that is thyroid, testing your thyroid hormones allows you to get the answers similar to somebody with Hashimoto’s in remission. There’s so many people out there who, who, who have this, who don’t know. And maybe the next step is they have to see an endocrinologist. Maybe the next step is they can make some lifestyle changes and fix that problem, right? So, you’re only going to know what you can do once you start doing the testing for something like thyroid.
Katie: And I know like thyroid is just one of the organ systems you guys look at in this testing. The cool thing to me is like when we get this data, there’s stuff that could be going on in our body that we might not know from a symptom-only perspective. And so when we get this, it’s like a deeper insight into what’s going on. What are some of the things that we can, from getting lab testing, kind of infer or know about other organ systems or what’s going on within the body?
Pranitha: Yeah. So, there are obvious connections between biomarkers, and then there’s some of the latent connections between biomarkers. If you think about how one hormone connects to your digestive system, right? And so, when you think about the testing, the broad idea here is how do we get you information to then unearth something you may not have unearthed with an external-facing symptom? That’s the point of saying we’re going to connect these two organ systems through our content to say, okay. You know what? This was off, so you might also want to look at this and look at the marker for inflammation. Maybe there’s something there. And that’s something that Function is working on is bringing you information to not just give you biomarker by biomarker information, but category-level information. So you can say, okay, here’s the state of my heart health. Here’s the state of my metabolic health. Here’s the state of my hormone health at a more higher-level picture so that you can start making those latent connections that may not have been made just through symptoms alone.
Katie: Let’s talk a little bit more about the heart health metric because I know from the data that when women go through menopause, for instance, their cardiovascular risk rises to more the level of men. But then until that point, women on average have a little bit lower cardiovascular risk than men. So I think often this means we aren’t paying attention to that as much until menopause, but it seems like there’s some early warning signs to pay attention to. There’s also just great data that comes from looking at what our heart’s doing and what our heart health is. So what are you guys looking at on the Function side when you’re testing heart health markers? And what can people learn from paying attention to those markers?
Pranitha: Yeah, this one’s one I’m really passionate about. I had high cholesterol when I was 22, and my physician literally said, we can’t put you on a satin because you’re too young. So can you imagine 22? I’m just in my life and have no concept of cardiometabolic health. And so, this one is incredibly important because there’s the traditional lipid panel, which we run, and then there’s the advanced lipid panel that we run, which is lipid particle size. And this is super important to understand because it’s a marker for cardiovascular risk based on your particle size. So, there’s so many people who, I think it’s actually 70% of people who have a heart condition who have a pretty normal traditional lipid panel. And then you can test the lipid size and the lipid number and it’s off, right? So, the importance for women to get this tested is just so high because so much of the data and the research is done for men and has been done for men. And there’s the term of women are just smaller men. And that’s just the opposite of the case. We’re so different. We have an entirely different makeup, obviously. So, when you think about your heart health and getting tested and understanding what’s going on, even to understand risk, it’s all about educating yourself so that you’re taking the right steps to avoid a heart issue in the future. And there’s signs of heart issues for women younger than 50, and that’s on the rise today. So it’s all about just understanding those advanced lipid markers, which is what we run in Function.
Katie: It’s still mind-blowing to me that women were not even really included in medical research until 1993. So, I feel like we’re still behind the curve. But things like what you guys are doing, where we’re getting all these data points and then like using the best of technology to analyze them and put them in comparison to each other and that overall risk, I feel like is invaluable in helping catch up with that learning curve that we’ve had by not including women in research. I also love that you guys look at the metabolic side because I’ve seen the statistics vary, but it seems pretty common that upwards of 80%, and I’ve seen some say as high as 95% of people are not metabolically healthy or have at least one marker that indicates some aspect of their metabolic health is not optimal, which I would love to confirm or deny on those numbers. Is that what you guys are seeing in labs? And what are you looking at to determine metabolic health?
Pranitha: Yes, it is. And it’s the traditional HbA1c, but we also look at glucose and insulin and inflammation, right? So, HSCRP and other signs of metabolic health. Metabolic health, you can also link to heart health here, obviously. So yes, it is. It’s the reason why continuous glucose monitors exist, right? It’s the reason why there’s a craze for an understanding for how food impacts our glucose. And yes, getting that in control is the effect and sorry, the output of our whole system, our food system, our health system, everything. And so, it’s like, how can the food we eat help our metabolic health versus if we live with status quo, the trajectory doesn’t look so great for our system, particularly the metabolic health system.
Katie: And so, like glucose and insulin, like HbA1c, those are all included in this panel.
Pranitha: Yes.
Katie: What are some of the like lifestyle and dietary habits that correlate with that? Because I would guess you guys get to see a whole lot on the pattern level of what’s going on with getting so many lab results in.
Pranitha: Yeah. So the lifestyle modifications are obviously all about refined foods as far as removing refined foods and adding more, we call it the rainbow. That’s one of Mark’s phrases is food is medicine. How can you use food to combat your body saying, hey, I’m inflamed. You got to help me here. And so much of biomarkers is your body and your internal organs saying, hey, please help. And so doing this testing allows you to say, oh, this part of my organs, these organs are calling for help. And so that is so much of what the lifestyle modifications include is it’s your diet, your lifestyle, what supplements you might consider. That’s the baseline. I almost feel like so much of what can be solved starts with that. And then, sure, you might have to obviously see a physician or see a specialist. Or get on a prescription. We’re not saying that’s completely eliminated. But we’re saying, what can we start with first and how many problems can we solve if we really attack our food, our working out, and go from there? That’s a starting point. Just because we feel it feels like so much so much of our lifestyle is just on loop. Like we just do things because we’re used to it. So this is meant to just cut there and say, no, stop. Like newsflash. Let’s take action based on what your body is telling you.
Katie: Well, and every time I hear those stats about especially metabolic disease being on the rise, to me the silver lining and the thing to focus on in that is that means actually the vast majority of the ability to change that is already within our hands. That means it’s not some obscure genetic disease that only a small percentage of people are dealing with. These are diet and lifestyle-based challenges, which means we as individuals have the power to make habit changes that affect that, which is actually, I think, really encouraging. Another thing you guys tested, and totally from a vanity perspective, I loved this. You did an aging test, and it tells you your biological age, and mine was like 10 years younger than my actual age, which was really fun and exciting. But I love that it’s not just you’re testing telomeres, because there’s all kinds of information about that might not actually be as accurate as we once thought to begin with. But talk about the aging piece and why you feel like this is important to keep an eye on and to look at and what goes into determining biological age.
Pranitha: Yeah. So biological age takes a subset of our biomarkers, not all, so I do like to caveat that bio-age isn’t, if you have a great bio-age, you’re good. You should definitely look at all the other markers. It takes a subset of those biomarkers, and we give an aging score. Obviously, with longevity at the forefront of so many people’s minds, the idea here and our mission, right, is to live 100 healthy years. And we really mean that. So how can we take kind of a summary score of a subset of these biomarkers to give people a place where they’re like, okay, here’s how I’m changing. And again, the next test that you do, your bio-age will likely update. And it takes into account inflammation and a couple other biomarkers in there. But again, that’s not the only biomarker that is important to look at. It’s the summary of all the biomarkers, particularly those that are out of range.
Katie: Now that was something else I noticed that I loved is that you guys are taking these into account as a whole and in sort of like ratio and weighted toward each other. Because one trend I’ve seen in these last 16 years in the health world is we’ll get like the trendy thing that everybody gets focused on. Maybe it’s like MTHFR, and then everybody’s taking methylfolate. But there are six other genes that you can throw out of alignment by taking too much methylfolate. And so, I love that you guys are keeping that whole body picture and looking at everything in relation to each other. Because also, like you said, one thing being out of range you might want to fixate on that, but it might be indicating something else going on somewhere else in the body or something else that might be in range, but is out of range and that ratio might tell you something entirely different. So I love that you guys put that education piece there as well. And you also test certain toxin levels. And I love this because this is another area I’ve been talking about for a long time. It’s not just what we eat. It’s what we’re exposed to. And it’s what can build up in our body. And you guys are giving people that snapshot as well. Can you talk about what you guys look at there? And maybe some of the things like big red flags to avoid that you’re seeing a lot in the testing?
Pranitha: Yeah. I mean, the big ones for heavy metal toxins are mercury, arsenic, selenium. These are super important for many reasons. There’s a recent study that showed how these impact fertility for both men and women. And obviously, with mercury, there’s the fish. It doesn’t mean completely take it out, but there’s advice in our work about what kind of fish to eat. And again, the biggest thing is knowing if you have toxins in your body, right? The optimal range, we talk about quest ranges and then optimal ranges or the reference ranges and then optimal ranges. And we’re trying to get everybody to the optimal ranges, particularly when it comes to these heavy metal toxins. And I can talk a little bit about reference ranges and optimal ranges in a bit, but it’s incredibly important for us to understand where we’re at or else you’re just making blind decisions. So that’s another piece that’s really important for Function is understanding heavy metal toxins because they don’t just impact fertility. They impact your daily life, your sluggishness, your fatigue. There’s so many things that could come out of toxicity.
Katie: Yeah, let’s delve into the reference ranges versus optimal or what I often hear people say, like, my doctor told me my labs were normal. And I have wanted to disrupt that term for such a long time because I’m like, normal is not optimal, especially in today’s world. But maybe give us some breakdown of what to understand when you get lab results, especially if they’re getting them from somewhere else, that it’s just like, you only see that narrow range of this is normal, and you’re within it, but with no education or explanation. What is the difference between normal and optimal?
Pranitha: For sure. So reference ranges that come from the labs are based on averages. And they’ve been set for forever, and then once the assay has been made, and when they’re provided to individuals, they’re usually given as a range. And there’s either below range, in range, or above range. And yes, I agree with you. The word normal is the wrong word to use because each of us are so incredibly different and complicated. So that’s the lab range. That’s important to have because it does set some, you know, some metric for us to look at when it comes to ranges. And then there’s optimal ranges. And this is still being developed in the field. There’s folks who have different optimal ranges. But the goal here is to get folks to optimal range over time and start thinking about optimal range. And the optimal range for each biomarker varies, obviously. And it is all dependent on getting folks to a place that we’re actually getting a healthy population versus, if you take the average, then that’s not the healthiest part of the population, right? We have to get people to a place where we’re thinking about optimal ranges, and we’re constantly understanding the research behind why and what those numbers are. And that’s a huge part of what Function is excited to think about is what happens when folks go from in range on the reference range side to in range on the optimal side. And what do your outcomes actually look like? How does your health actually change? That’s really exciting for us at Function.
Katie: And all these things we’re talking about are in just like the basic, and I use that term in quotations, panel that you guys run. Because, like I said, it’s more comprehensive than other labs I’ve gotten that were considered comprehensive. But you also, as I went through the process, I noticed there were all these cool like add-ons you could get if you wanted for insight. And I love that you’re making those accessible too. Because I know having gone through this process, some of those add-ons were extremely inexpensive, and they were ones I had paid a whole lot of money for in the past. So walk us through what the add-on options are and why you guys chose those.
Pranitha: Yeah, for sure. So, as I mentioned at the beginning, the membership includes the 100 biomarkers. And those were very intentionally selected with Dr. Mark and other experts in the field to figure out which ones that we want to include for every Function member. And the add-ons you’re mentioning are incredible purchases for people based on what they might need. So, if you think about some of the add-ons we have, which are allergies, so indoor allergies, outdoor allergies. We have IGF-1, which is a growth hormone. We have Gallery, which is a cancer testing test for 50 types of cancer. APOE, which is a genotype for Alzheimer’s risk. And there’s a few others. Those add-ons are all meant for folks who want a little bit of a deeper dive. So, for APOE, what is your risk? This is a genetic marker that you test once. Allergies. Are you feeling this is like actual allergens, not sensitivities? What are you feeling? Have you had this test done in a while? This is all meant to give people a double-click into some of these categories where we didn’t add them to the actual panel. But we’re looking to add additional add-ons over time as they become accessible so that we can continue to unlock information for our members and again, make those connections that haven’t been made in the past.
Katie: And I’ll make sure that, I know that you guys have a special link because there’s a waitlist and this is new and it has gotten very popular, but I’ll make sure the waitlist link is in the show notes for people listening. Definitely check it out because I have really enjoyed going through this. I think the other thing that is cool about what you guys are doing is you make it not just affordable, but like easy to access multiple times per year. And how often in an ideal world would we look at these things? I know there can also be like data fatigue where if you were doing this every week, for instance, you might not be helpful. But what would you see as the optimal time to pay attention to, to be able to see a change happen and like make these behavior changes that we’re talking about?
Pranitha: Great question. The cadence we have set for our members right now is the Function membership provides two tests a year. The first is your first test. It’s the full whammy. And then, about three to six months later, we recommend you getting another part of the testing, which is included in the membership. So total in the membership, we include about 160 biomarkers. The first one is 100. The one in the middle is about 60. The kick here is if you’re making lifestyle modifications and you’re taking supplements, you’re making food adjustments to your lifestyle, you’re going to see changes quicker than that. And I’m not a clinician, so I can’t say how quickly and which biomarkers. However, I will say that based on what you’re doing with your life, this is why we offer the ability to get tested any time for other tests. Let’s say you’re looking at one specific marker, mercury, and you want to get that tested more regularly. You can do that. So, with the membership, it’s the two, but then you can kind of test at any cadence. It’s honestly very dependent on what you’re doing individually, which is why we say, okay, hey, do this one and then do this three to six months later and then do it again the next year because it’s an annual subscription. But that cadence is really dependent on what lifestyle changes you’re making.
Katie: Yeah. And I felt like that was really motivating to get to see because most of mine were in really good ranges, but then the couple that were like, oh, there’s room for improvement here. I thought it was really motivating to be able to work on those things and then get to retest and be like, oh, look, change happened. It moved. And I feel like putting this tool in people’s hands is really helping revolutionize us being able to make those changes in real-time that actually change our health over time and not just wait till something gets to symptom level or even worse, like disease level before we know about it. And I feel like this is just like such a fascinating way to get that data to all of us as consumers. So I’m really grateful that this exists. And like I said, I’ll make sure the link is in the show notes for you guys listening because there is, I believe you can speak to this better, but there’s like a waitlist, but there’s a way to bypass the waitlist, I think for listeners?
Pranitha: Yes. So, we do have a waitlist and we do have a code for all of you Wellness Mama listeners, and I can provide that to you after, it’s just Wellness Mama. So yes, the ability to jump the wait list will give you access to the testing immediately. And honestly, with the new year coming up, it’s such a great time to think about establishing a baseline for your health and saying, okay, the first test gives you, like you said, a baseline. It gives you somewhere to start thinking about it. And then you can start to make changes proactively. And that’s everything that we stand for is proactive action on your health and giving yourself the power to take that action versus sitting and twiddling your thumbs and waiting for something to happen. None of us want to do that. So, that’s exactly what Function Health offers.
Katie: Well, thank you so much. I’ll make sure that code’s also included in the show notes for you guys listening, all of that lives at wellnessmama.com. But I’m so grateful for this work that you’re doing. Like I said, it’s very motivating and fascinating to me to see this. And I’m excited to keep paying attention to these over time and hopefully see things like that biological age stay the same or even go down even as I get chronologically older. I think data is incredibly helpful. And this gives us insight we wouldn’t normally have on what’s going on in our bodies without having to go to a doctor just to get the labs. We can still work with the doctors if we need to. But I think this really revolutionizes access we have to our own health. So thank you so much for that. And thank you for being here today.
Pranitha: Of course. Thank you, Katie. Thank you for everything that you do for this community.
Katie: And thank you for sharing your time with us today. We’re 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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