Our efforts at Nobody Studios are focused on building companies today that will change the future for tomorrow. And we firmly believe that precision medicine will revolutionize the health and wellness industry. Why? Because it just makes sense.
People want to be treated like the individuals that they are. More importantly, if the current system were genuinely working for us, we wouldn’t be in the dire situation we’re currently in regarding our chronic disease state and abysmal mental health rates worldwide.
Precision medicine is an innovative approach that considers each person’s individual variability in genetics, epigenetic expression, environment, habits, and lifestyle. It’s an all-encompassing approach that takes an integrative approach to optimizing health and healing. And the best part about it? It’s working.
Future startups in the health and wellness space need to embrace the importance of precision medicine, focusing on gut health, brain health, exercise, sleep, and wearable technology. It’s genuinely a yes-and approach.
The Gut-Brain Connection
For starters, our gut, often called our “second brain,” isn’t just there to digest food and eliminate waste. It plays a significant role in maintaining our overall health and quality of life. Research shows an intricate link between gut health and various chronic diseases, including diabetes, obesity, and even heart disease. There’s also evidence pointing to the importance of gut health in our overall brain health, with various species of microbes negatively affecting our mental health and cognitive processing.
Precision medicine capitalizes on this knowledge by providing specific suggestions for tailoring diets and treatments to individuals’ microbiome composition, thus significantly improving outcomes. And while we may not have all the answers to these questions, the preliminary results look quite promising.
The Brain Controls Everything
Similarly, precision medicine is fundamentally changing our approach to brain health. Our brains control everything, and if you don’t believe me, try having a conversation with a cadaver that has all the tissues, bones, muscles, joints, and organs needed for life. You won’t get very far without an intact nervous system.
Our brains are unique, and so should be the treatments and interventions used to keep them healthy. Precision medicine, using genetic and environmental information combined with novel therapeutics, can predict and prevent neurodegenerative diseases before they develop, enabling a new era of proactive brain health. It could also provide therapies and interventions to prevent and eliminate neurodegenerative diseases. Still, we may be far away from that as we wait for clinical trials in humans versus rats.
Movement Is Medicine
The domain of physical exercise and movement is not exempt from the influence of precision medicine. Exercise recommendations can be optimized based on individual genetic makeup. When combined with ADLs and personalized areas of interest, we can see this field yielding improved performance rates and overall health benefits. We are also getting closer to utilizing the various levels of exercise for recovery and rehabilitation, which could show significant gains long term as well.
More importantly, it doesn’t have to be complex to be effective.
A recent study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease reported improved performance on memory tests in healthy and mildly cognitively impaired individuals who walked 30 minutes 4x/week. If walking is therapeutic, working out consistently could be medicinal (hint: We know it is!).
Sleep Like Life Depends On It
There is still much to be learned about the brain and what happens when we sleep. Specifically, in the case of sleep, wearable technologies are already enabling personalized insights into our sleeping patterns, revealing essential information that can help optimize our sleep hygiene and overall health.
We’ve been aggressive with our efforts in the sleep space and believe it will be the future of precision medicine. What’s even more exciting is that we’ve teamed up with Dr. Gina Poe at UCLA to create Sleep Glide, a predictive algorithm that can inform people about the best time to go to sleep at night to acquire the highest quality and quantity of sleep!
Since sleep is such an essential part of our life, it only makes sense to build companies and innovate in this space. There’s a reason we sleep a third of our life away, so why not optimize our ability to enhance our sleep? We’re excited about this space and will continue to invest heavily in it as we grow our presence in the health and wellness space.
Wearable Technologies Keep Us Honest
Wearable technology will continue to play a pivotal role in precision medicine. These wearable devices provide insights into important health markers and allow the continuous monitoring of health metrics such as heart rate, sleep cycles, and physical activity. They can also generate a wealth of data that can be utilized to optimize individual health plans, thereby bridging the gap between patients and healthcare professionals.
But they’re not just being used for physical health. We know that sleep quality is heavily correlated with mental health and vice versa, which is why we’re exploring opportunities in the mental health space that rely on wearable technology data to help us make informed decisions for emotional health. This sort of critical and innovative thinking has us extremely excited about the future of this space!
Genetics Loads The Gun, The Environment Pulls The Trigger
Last but not least, at this point in time, we know that it’s not just about genetic predispositions and biometrics. Our habits and lifestyle choices matter far more than the inherited genes we’ve been provided via our genetic blueprint.
It’s essential to consider that we are the sum of our daily routines. From what we eat and drink to how much we sleep and exercise, each decision shapes our health or lack thereof. By aligning our habits with precision medicine insights, we can exponentially enhance our health and wellness.
And the future looks bright because we’re integrating all aspects of health and wellness into our daily routines.
The Future Is Now
These advancements in precision medicine aren’t a distant dream – they’re here and now, creating unprecedented opportunities for founders, entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators. Each advancement and each innovation is a step closer to a world where health and wellness are predictive, personalized, and precise.
As leaders in this transformative field, we are actively seeking collaborations with individuals and organizations interested in leveraging precision medicine to improve health and wellness. If you’re excited by the potential of precision medicine and its application in gut health, brain health, exercise, sleep, and wearable technology, we would be thrilled to learn about your projects and interests in this space.
Precision medicine is not just the future of health and wellness; it’s already leading the way in the real world. Let’s seize this moment to improve lives and reshape the health landscape for generations to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Erik Reis
Co-Founder and Director of Health and Wellness, Nobody Studios
Dr. Erik Reis is a Co-Founder, Director of Health and Wellness at Nobody Studios. As a clinician, entrepreneur, and international speaker, he’s spent the last decade working with complex neuro-orthopedic and metabolic disorders, focusing on ways to scale individualized healthcare to maximize medical outcomes. He believes the best companies have yet to be created in the health and wellness space and is focused on bringing patient-centered start-ups to the forefront of medicine at Nobody Studios.
