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Jack Rubinstein, Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Cincinnati discusses his medical thriller, The Perfect Dose, and how it relates to real-world problems in the healthcare industry.
Dr. Rubinstein is affiliated with multiple hospitals in the greater Cincinnati area, including Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center and University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Dr. Rubinstein talks about his book, The Perfect Dose, which is a medical thriller that highlights corruption within the healthcare system, and those who threaten scientific progress. He outlines his reasons for writing the book, specifically mentioning that he thought a fictional thriller with interesting characters and story would establish a stage for societal dialogue regarding the very real, demonstrable problems within the American healthcare system. He discusses the case of Martin Shkreli, the much-maligned, now imprisoned American businessman and former hedge fund manager who sent shockwaves across the country when he raised drug prices thousands of percent. He uses Shkreli as an example of the constant battle in the industry—helping the most people possible versus helping shareholders of pharmaceutical companies make large profits. Dr. Rubinstein points out that many drugs are funded by the government agency, National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds academia that conducts much of the research that leads to new drug development. Then drugs are often licensed to pharmaceutical companies who may charge a very high price for the drug as they sell it back to taxpayers, the very people who funded the drugs in the first place.
Dr. Rubinstein discusses many of the drugs and medical issues in his spectrum of study. He studies select drugs that have had success in specific areas of medicine and through his research has repurposed some of them for cardiovascular issues such as heart failure. He delves further into the off-label uses of many prescription drugs. Further, he expounds upon how his book highlights many issues in the American system versus other countries outside of the US. Dr. Rubinstein talks about his experiences caring for other doctors and their family members. He speaks extensively about what makes a doctor a good doctor, and the systems and standardized treatments that play a part in reputation.
Dr. Alan Christianson is one of America's revered naturopathic physicians and the bestselling author of several books, including The Metabolism Reset Diet, the celebrated book that teaches its readers how to repair the liver, stop storing fat and lose weight naturally. Dr. Christianson, or Dr. C as many of his patients call him, provides an interesting overview of the many factors that influence good health.
Dr. Christianson is a naturopathic medical doctor, a specialist in natural endocrinology who focuses on thyroid disorders. He is extremely passionate about bringing life-changing medical information to his patients and the general public alike. Specifically, he discusses the power of diet and how it can absolutely affect your body's hormones. An understanding of these issues provides insight into the many interrelated issues of diet, weight, and hormone balance.
The naturopathic physician talks about the personal journey that led him to his career path. Afflicted with cerebral palsy and seizures, abysmal coordination, and the onset of obesity, Dr. Christianson had many medical and physical struggles as a child. His struggles pushed him to learn more and shift his lifestyle, which led to a new physical life and career path as well. He talks about eating well, and being active, and discusses the studies in medical school that he found particularly intriguing, such as thyroid and adrenal problems. Hormones, endocrinology, and the connection points between lifestyle and health are the basis of his intensive study.
Dr. Christianson goes deep into an analysis of thyroid issues and explains the many problems that people can and do experience regularly. He talks about compounded thyroid medicines, and Dr. C discusses T3 in detail. As he states, T3 is a thyroid hormone that is often overlooked in basic lab work. And measuring T3 is critically important for understanding the complete functionality of the thyroid. He talks about the many medical issues that patients struggle with and how his doctors diagnose and treat the myriad of complex thyroid issues.
Dr. C underscores the importance of optimizing blood levels and taking a serious look at everything that patients are putting in their bodies, even down to the vitamins that they are taking, some of which could even block thyroid function for those being treated. From circadian rhythms to diet, hormones, and the importance of iodine, there are many impacting factors that will definitely influence health, and Dr. Christianson seeks to spread this important knowledge to everyone, to improve lives and health.
The power of gene editing is putting nutritious, convenient produce in the hands of people who otherwise might not have access to it. Ryan Rapp is the head of product discovery at Pairwise, a company whose mission is to utilize gene editing technology to explore collaborations focused on gene editing in the production of real crops, such as cotton, corn, and soybeans, as well as the accessibility of healthy produce options for consumers. Still, in the exploratory phase, the team at Pairwise is looking into how to help plants make the transition to the lab, which tools in the gene editing process are most efficient and effective for their goals, and how to overcome the challenges presented.
Rather than trying to breed new crops, the team at Pairwise has been focused on improving those that already exist in order to bring spectacular options to consumers. There are many products out there that hold great potential but suffer from one or more hang-ups—perhaps it's the taste, the convenience, or the production system. Regardless of what it is, the team at Pairwise is dedicated to fixing it and maximizing consumer satisfaction.
Rapp provides a few examples of real-world results of the type of work they're aiming to accomplish, discusses how the production of 'baby' carrots has significantly increased the general consumption of carrots, explains what drives their work, and what makes a plant a good food source for human food production.
Interested in hearing more? Press play and check out their website at pairwise.com.
As shown by many studies, a major commonality among chronic insomniacs is nighttime temperature dysregulation, preventing them from falling asleep. After beginning to explore additional research on the relationship between body temperature and sleep, it didn't take Nicolas Roux too long to realize that temperature plays a key role in the ability to obtain quality sleep and to realize that this is a seriously underrated consideration in the area of sleep health.
He's now the head of marketing at Moona, a company established in 2016 with the goal of developing a solution for poor sleep—something which is reported by over a third of the global population—by manipulating people's experience with temperature before, during, and while waking from sleep. So, how are they doing it?
The team at Moona has created a pillow insert that rests in the space between a pillow and pillow case that's designed to change temperature based on the needs of the user. The insert is connected to a bedside device that provides a constant, quiet flow of water at just the right temperature and at just the right time for an individual user. For example, cooler temperatures might be provided as someone tries to fall asleep because cooler temperatures facilitate the ability to fall asleep, and warmer temperatures might be provided before someone wants to wake up since they facilitate the ability to wake from sleep gradually and naturally, rather than jarringly from a loud alarm clock. The device is backed by AI-driven software that will provide temperature suggestions based on an individual's sleep history data, and this is something which will only improve with an increasing amount of user data.
This product is still in the beginning stages and there are currently only a limited number of prototypes, but feedback from user testing has been very positive, with almost everyone reporting the ability to fall asleep quicker and stay asleep longer. Roux joins the podcast to discuss all the details, including his own experience with the insert. Interested in learning more? Press play and check out the website at en.getmoona.com.
Andrew Koutnik, biomedical researcher, discusses cancer cachexia, wasting in general, the impact of inflammation within the body, and various other issues.
Koutnik is a seasoned researcher. His notable and extensive work studying nutrition and metabolism and their combined impact on health, disease, and even performance has generated much interest in the scientific medical community. He is actively involved in biomedical research with the Metabolic Medicine Lab at University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine.
Koutnik provides an overview of cancer cachexia, which he describes as a multi-factorial, dynamic, systemic wasting syndrome. And surprisingly, Koutnik states that in spite of its long history, the condition currently has no standard of care. Cancer cachexia is often characterized by a loss of skeletal muscle mass, sometimes with fat loss, that cannot be completely reversed by conventional and standard nutritional support and can result in progressive and significant functional impairment. Koutnik explains anabolic signals and synthetic responses as well as inflammatory responses. As he states, inflammatory signals may be inhibiting the synthesis response in the muscle. Koutnik explains, by citing specific examples, the ways in which atrophy is initiated, and why it occurs. And with up to 20% of cancer patients dying of this disease, it's clear that advanced research is needed ongoing.
The biomedical research expert discusses the process of fasting and how it affects the body. And he provides information on past research and recorded studies on ketone bodies. Koutnik explains why adipose tissue is not always used first as an energy source during fasting. He states that in a normal, healthy response to a fasting scenario or carbohydrate restriction, adipose tissue, over time, becomes a preferential fuel. He explains that while fat is a very important fuel that we also need to use intermediary metabolites. Simply defined, metabolites are the intermediate products of specific metabolic reactions that are catalyzed by select enzymes that naturally occur within the cells. Koutnik goes into detail on inflammation issues that relate to atrophy, as it is an underlying current in many of these cases though it may not always be rapid. He talks about his theories on how the body sees and understands subtle information it is receiving regarding atrophy issues. And ultimately, he states that from a physiological perspective the body will always do whatever it can to survive.
Koutnik continues his discussion on ketones. He cites various studies that provided new and significant information on ketones and specifically, exogenous esters. He explains how antioxidant responses are related to ketone presence. He states that much of the work in this area has been implemented in rodent-based studies, and now the desire is to try to translate these studies to the human scenario, and more research is needed to understand the compatibility with previous studies.
In this informative podcast, biomedical research expert, Andrew Koutnik, discusses nutrition as it relates to type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
Koutnik has dedicated his life to the study of the many biological factors that impact disease and their implications regarding treatment. His body of work has often focused on nutrition and metabolism as they relate to disease and general health. A significant amount of Koutnik's biomedical research has been conducted at the Metabolic Medicine Lab at the University of South Florida.
Koutnik provides an overview of the differences between type 1 and type 2 diabetes. He states that type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease and the current thought is that an inappropriate immune response targets specific cells in the pancreas that produce and/or secrete insulin (beta cells). And because the immune system response has targeted them inappropriately, they are seen as foreign, thus the body may produce antibodies against them or attack them. There can sometimes be a rapid change and ultimately the body may no longer be able to manage glucose levels. Therefore insulin and glucose must be managed by the patient/doctor, as the body is negligent in its normal duties in this regard. Koutnik explains that type 2 diabetes is generally described as insulin resistance, where you have the ability to produce insulin but the body is resistant to the insulin that is present.
Koutnik discusses the relative blood sugar levels in diabetics and various treatment protocols for both types of diabetes from the traditional to new emerging concepts. He details dietary issues for diabetics and how that relates to their insulin and treatment, with a special analysis of ketones and an explanation of ketoacidosis. Ketoacidosis is a complication of type 1 diabetes mellitus that can certainly be life threatening, a condition that results from dangerously high levels of ketones and blood sugar. Koutnik provides a granular overview of the many processes that the body goes through touching on details of elevated blood sugar, carbohydrates, molecules, proteins/amino acids, lipid molecules and more.
Delving deeper into other related issues, Koutnik talks about the relationship between sleep and glucose control. He explains how stress, caffeine, time of day, etc. can influence insulin sensitivity.
Koutnik details the many beneficial factors of regular exercise and how it directly impacts the effectiveness of insulin. However, he stresses that with type 1 diabetes there are numerous variables that influence insulin sensitivity. Additionally, the biomedical researcher provides an analysis of nutritional guidelines for diabetics. He talks about the effects of protein and explains the kinetics of protein. He expounds upon the benefits of a low carbohydrate diet and cites his own personal success after making the shift to low carb.
He underscores the importance of glycemic management and its great impact on the quality of life. He talks about the positive feeling that someone can get when they finally feel that they are taking control of their diabetes through diet, and succeeding! And while taking certain foods, foods we might love, out of the diet completely can be difficult, ultimately the healthy feeling that you achieve is worth the sacrifice.
For nearly a decade now, Adrienne Scheck, Ph.D. has focused her research on the effect of ketones and the ketogenic diet on brain tumors. As the author of Cancer and the Ketogenic Diet, senior research scientist at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Phoenix Children's Research Institute, research associate professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, adjunct professor at Arizona State University, and associate investigator in the cancer biology program at the University of Arizona, she brings an impressive amount of experience and knowledge to the discussion today.
Her research on the effect of ketones on cancerous tumors began in collaboration with Dr. John Roe, a clinician, scientist, and expert in the field who at the time had only applied the use to ketones to the treatment of epilepsy. When they studied the effects of adding ketones to an aggressive brain cancer cell line, the results were surprisingly positive: significant enhancement of the effectiveness of chemotherapy. This opened the door to many other questions yet to be investigated, such as the role of ketones as epigenetic modifiers, the confirmation of DNA within cells and how it dictates susceptibility to damage, whether or not cancer cells can use ketones as an energy source, phenotypic differences between different types of tumors, and the coming advances in technology that will lead to better data and analyses in this area.
Press play for all the details and search for Adrienne Scheck online to stay up to date with her latest research.
Over the last 20 years, there have been about 150 failed attempts to get different Alzheimer's drugs on the market. Why? Sometimes it's because the drugs showed toxicity in clinical trials, and other times it's because study subjects simply weren't responding to the drugs. When the clinical target and endpoint of a clinical study is not met, the drug simply won't move forward. But what if there are unseen variables at play that are pointing to the inefficacy of otherwise efficacious drugs? What if drugs which actually do hold great potential to treat Alzheimer's are being rejected simply because the trials themselves aren't being run properly, or because the right patients aren't being enrolled?
As the CEO and founder of Vivid Genomics, these are the kinds of questions Julie Collens and her team are investigating. "There are lots of reasons why drugs can fail aside from them not working," says Collens, as she explains how different stages and forms of Alzheimer's can affect how a patient responds to certain drugs, as well as cognitive impairment from vitamin B deficiency, vascular dementia, or having recently suffered a stroke. Their goal is to develop and implement genetic-based tests to identify forms of variation in the disease of Alzheimer's that are known to exist, and thereby help pharmaceutical companies run better clinical trials, perform better analyses, and get more drugs approved.
Collens describes in detail the four prototypes Vivid Genomics has already developed, how they are utilizing information from genome-wide association studies in combination with the data they're collecting to identify predictive effects on disease, and the general challenges presented by the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
Learn more by visiting vividgenomics.com and reach out via email at julie@vividgenomics.com.
"Democratizing access to good design is absolutely core to our mission of helping people make the world more beautiful…there are millions and millions of people out there who would like to have better design in their environments, but they can't afford an interior designer, and for all of those people, Lexset will be a go-to," says Leslie Oliver Karpas, co-founder of Lexset AI, a company that has built and applied an AI visual recognition system from 3D models of objects to the world of interior design.
The team at Lexset has created a synthetic data generation engine of about 80,000 different objects of furniture imaged from thousands of different angles and in different lighting conditions in order to maximize the system's ability to recognize those objects when presented with a photo or real-world space. The system is even able to distinguish between different styles of furniture (e.g. modernist vs. industrial) and materials (e.g. wood, stone, fabric). One of the use cases of this technology is a plug-in for furniture company websites through which images of what you'd like a space in your home to look like could be uploaded, scanned by Lexset AI, and compared to the products offered by that furniture company.
Karpas offers an exciting and intriguing glimpse into what the future of interior design might look like, explaining in depth how their technology works, the positive effect of good design on people's well-being, the objective versus subjective aspects of interior design, and use cases unrelated to interior design involving robotics.
Tune in for all the details and visit https://www.lexset.ai/ to learn more.
Erica Ramos is the director and head of clinical and product development at Geisinger, an innovative health service organization covering about 1.5 million patients throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and encompassing 13 hospital campuses, two research centers, and the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine. Ramos joins the podcast to discuss the MyCode program, a research effort that began as a Geisinger biobank in 2007 and has since become a collaboration with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to perform whole exome sequencing on the samples collected.
They very quickly realized the potential impact of the genomic information they were gathering—information with immediate medical relevancy,
such as that related to hereditary breast cancer, hereditary colon cancer, irregular heart conditions, and familial high cholesterol.
As a result, the MyCode protocol was changed in 2015 to include a return of results to patient participants for a defined set of conditions. Of the 92,000 samples they've sequenced, the team at MyCode has returned about 1,050 results to participants. Today, they are looking at how people respond to the information they receive, how the information is delivered, how chatbots could be used in the delivery of results to patients, and how to make genetics and genomics more accessible by primary care physicians.
To hear the full conversation and learn what's on the horizon, tune in and visit geisinger.org/precision-health/mycode.
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