Jonathan Levitt: Personalizing Your Nutrition For Better Performance
About this episode:
In this week’s episode, Hillary talks with Jonathan Levitt from InsideTracker about personalized nutrition and tracking biomarkers to optimize your performance.
Episode Highlights:
- Personalizing your nutrition
- Tracking biomarkers to optimize performance
- The future of personalized nutrition
Guest Bio – Jonathan Levitt:
Jonathan Levitt is a runner from Boston, MA. He’s the Sales Manager and Endurance Team Manager at InsideTracker, a Cambridge, MA based health tech company that provides personalized guidance on nutrition and performance based on your blood, DNA, and soon, wearable device data, while also taking into account your habits and goals.
Jonathan graduated from UMass Amherst’s Isenberg School of Business with a double major in Sport Management and Marketing, and co-founded and ran an intramural baseball league while at UMass.
He started running in 2013 after the Boston Marathon bombing, and since then has run 6 marathons, a 50k and a 40 mile day in the Grand Canyon (Rim2Rim2Rim). When he’s not running or helping others with their performance, he has his own podcast called For The Long Run, which is an exploration of what keeps elite runners running long, strong, and motivated.
Read More About Jonathan Levitt & InsideTracker:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlevitt815/
https://www.insidetracker.com/
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform
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Episode Transcript:
Hillary Allen:
Jon Levitt is a runner from Boston, Massachusetts. He’s the sales manager and endurance team manager at InsideTracker, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based health tech company that provides personalized guidance on nutrition and performance based on your blood DNA, and soon, wearable device data, while also taking into account your habits and goals. Jonathan graduated from UMass Amherst Isenberg School of Business with a double major in sports management and marketing, and co-founded and ran an intramural-based league while at UMass.
Hillary Allen:
We’ll have to ask him about that later. He started running in 2013 after the Boston Marathon bombing, and since then has run six marathons, a 50K and a 40 mile day in the Grand Canyon; Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim. Maybe you guys have heard about that one. When he’s not running or helping others with their performance, he has his own podcast called For The Long Run, which is an exploration of what keeps elite runners running long, strong, and motivated. Welcome to the TrainRight Podcast.
Jonathan Levitt:
Thank you. Thanks for having me on.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. We’re talking. I mean, I know there’s a time difference. I’m in France at the moment and you’re in Boston?
Jonathan Levitt:
Yes.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. How has it actually … Well, now that it’s kind of the Boston marathon has been postponed. Yeah? Delayed, is it? Are people upset? Is it affecting the run community there?
Jonathan Levitt:
I think it’s been an up and a down. There was so much uncertainty before it was postponed and people were about to get into their peak training, so I think the timing of the announcement was good. I mean, what’s today? The 24th? 25th? This would have been-
Hillary Allen:
25th.
Jonathan Levitt:
… the peak week, I think. It’s good that people didn’t have the big ramp up and then find out. I have a lot of friends that are running this year, living here in Boston. I think a lot of people are just excited to back off and train and put in a lot of miles between now and then. I don’t know. I think we’ll see some really fit people come whatever made up holiday it is on that Monday that the city of Boston decides the second Monday of September is now a holiday.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. I know. I mean, I’ve visited Boston only one time actually. I’m not much of a city person, but I really, really loved it there. You’ve got an incredible run community. I mean, not only … I know you run road marathons and also trails. There’s still … I forget the name of the trail system that’s right there in Boston, outside the city.
Jonathan Levitt:
The Middlesex Fells are-
Hillary Allen:
Yes.
Jonathan Levitt:
… a couple miles north of Boston. It’s a good trail system. I did my training for my first 50K there.
Hillary Allen:
Nice.
Jonathan Levitt:
It got a little repetitive because it’s like a six and a half mile loop at most, so I spent four hours there one day and ran a whole bunch of those loops. It’s relatively flat as well.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah.
Jonathan Levitt:
You’re running around a reservoir basically with some punchy hills, but it’s 20 minutes from where I live and it’s not the road, so it does the job.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. I remember running there, actually. I was with the November Project. It’s like an outdoor workout group. Man, some of those trails. I love the Fells because you can actually … There are some really punchy hills and it can be pretty technical. You’re right in a big city. It’s like one of my favorite things. I’ve done a short intro for you for the listeners so they have a little bit of an idea of what we’re going to be talking about. You work for InsideTracker. I was wondering if you could do a short introduction of what is InsideTracker and what is it exactly you do.
Jonathan Levitt:
InsideTracker is a platform that provides personalized guidance on nutrition, supplementation and performance. It was born out of the idea that personalizing your intake can improve longevity, improve performance, improve sleep, improve energy, just based on getting your body what it needs. Company’s been around for 10 years. The first eight years were focused on using blood data to drive this guidance. Now we’ve incorporated genetic information, so we’re looking at genetic traits that are linked to health and performance.
Jonathan Levitt:
Then in the coming weeks, we’ll actually be adding wearable device data. We’re looking at sleep and resting heart rate and activity. We get this full picture of who you are as an individual and the impact that the decisions you make on a daily basis are having from the inside out. It’s good to just collect all this data, but it’s another thing to actually tell you what to do and prescribe action based on these dozens of variables that are so different for each person.
Jonathan Levitt:
Essentially the output is, do this, eat this food X number of times a week, take this supplement in this specific dosage, modify training in this way. You’re doing too much. You’re not doing enough. Do yoga. Do strength training. Things like that, with the idea of helping people cut through the clutter of all the noise out there when it comes to diet and supplementation guidance that we can find on the internet.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. I mean, actually, so it’s controversial about always talking to someone about nutrition because it’s almost like, dare I say, religion. It’s like people get pretty worked up about it and it can be very polarizing what people’s beliefs are. I’ve always been a very scientific person and I appreciate the scientific approach that InsideTracker takes to take the hard data and then make recommendations from there.
Hillary Allen:
From my limited experience, but also just my understanding of it, is that it’s not just like you give several options of, okay, what works for you in your … If you need more iron, you can eat A through D or something like this. It gives you options to optimize your nutrition, but not just a set like you must just only eat this all the time.
Jonathan Levitt:
Totally. Yeah. We don’t follow any prescriptive diet, so we’re not going to tell you to go vegan or paleo or cut out this or cut out that. It’s more about the specific things that will help. Let’s say you’re an athlete with low iron and high cholesterol, we would know how many times a week you’re eating meat so we might not recommend that you eat more red meat. We might say, “You should have shellfish or you should take an iron supplement.” Whereas some athletes may get a recommendation to eat less meat.
Jonathan Levitt:
It’s totally individualized based on food preferences and what works for you versus oh, you should be paleo or this and that.
Hillary Allen:
If athletes have certain dietary restrictions, you can still accommodate that through InsideTracker as well?
Jonathan Levitt:
For sure.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. I think that that’s really important because if someone has certain ethical beliefs like they follow a certain practice, yeah, you want to be able to follow that the best you can. My father is actually a food science human nutritionist, not a dietary nutritionist, but a research scientist, and so we’ve always had these discussions. He kept on driving the point home to me. He’s like, “Hillary, the one thing that all scientists know and believe and agree on is that there’s no one size fits all, especially for human beings.”
Jonathan Levitt:
Yeah.
Hillary Allen:
I’m like, “Okay. Yeah dad, that makes sense.” But I was-
Jonathan Levitt:
Our answer all the time is, “It depends.” You can’t ask a question and have a … If you get a straight answer, keep asking questions because it’s probably not personalized enough.
Hillary Allen:
Oh my gosh. That’s hilarious. Because as a person who loves right and wrong and this is the answer, this is not, the it depends infuriates me, but it’s the most accurate, so.
Jonathan Levitt:
Right.
Hillary Allen:
I’m curious, where did this idea of InsideTracker come from and were you involved at the precipice of the company or did you get involved later?
Jonathan Levitt:
Our founder had a death in the family when he was very young and I think he was nine at the time. Little nine-year-old Gil said, “I want to live forever.” So he devoted his life to anti-aging and aging-related research. He was studying in some of the top anti-aging labs in the world actually. He got to this pivot point and he said, “Hey, I can continue my research in a lab and I can publish some papers that a couple dozen scientists will see.” That’s great. If that’s your choice, that’s necessary as well.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah.
Jonathan Levitt:
He was like, “Or, I can start a company and impact millions and millions and potentially billions of people and change their lives.” I’m glad that he picked option number two. That was 10 years ago. I joined five years ago, five and a half years ago now. When I joined, I asked him, I said, “What’s the goal of this company? What’s your mission?” He said, “I want to help every human on this planet improve their life through this personalized approach.” I said, “Okay.” This was 2014. I said, “Okay. That’s a great goal, kind of lofty, but I can dig it.”
Jonathan Levitt:
Talk about big, scary goals. As time has gone on it’s actually becoming not that outlandish to say that we could one day have the potential to impact every person on the planet. It’s maybe not in the way that he dreamed up initially, but you look at improving the food chain or different pieces of the puzzle where you’re making buying decisions when it comes to food. Let’s say you’re making a better decision because of some of our research, whether you’re a customer or not, we could help you have an impact on either eating better quality food, or eating food that’s more likely to have an impact for you.
Jonathan Levitt:
Or you go through the testing and find out, “This is exactly what I need, and this is how I need to improve.” Long answer to the first part of the question. The second part of the question of how did I get my hands involved? I was at an event that they were sponsoring called Executive Athletes. As the name indicates, it was intended for executive athletes, or athletes that were executives. I was the youngest person in the room by maybe 15 years. My dad invited me to this event. After InsideTracker did their presentation, I went up to say, “Thanks. That was great.”
Jonathan Levitt:
The CEO and founder, who’s the chief science officer, started peppering me with questions about what was I doing here? What was I doing for work? This and that. We kept going and going and going. I was like, “Why do they care so much? I’m the least …” I thought. I was like, “I’m the least interesting person in the room. Everybody else is far along in their career and whatnot.” I guess it pays to be different. I was telling them what I was doing for work the CEO was like, “Cool. Why don’t we hire you?” I was like, “Oh, well, I like my job, but I’m open to a conversation.”
Jonathan Levitt:
Two weeks later I had signed with InsideTracker, which was awesome. We were very small at the time. Probably eight or nine employees. We’re at about 75 now, which is wild to see the growth. As time has gone on, my role has evolved from doing everything on the business side, including customer service and sales and marketing and blogs and Twitter and social media, to focusing very heavily on working with new customers and working within the endurance community. My two official titles are sales manager and endurance team manager.
Jonathan Levitt:
I have the pleasure of working with … We have about a dozen athletes that we consider a part of the InsideTracker team. I get to hang out with them and speak with them regularly and see them when I travel and all that good stuff. It’s a lot of fun.
Hillary Allen:
I mean, I know you mentioned the initial lofty goals of the founder was to touch the lives of pretty much everyone, not just athletes.
Jonathan Levitt:
Right.
Hillary Allen:
Maybe it’s just because of my focus in the ultrarunning community, but it seems like that’s your involvement, at least specifically in the ultra-endurance world. A lot of athletes that I see, at least in the U.S., are teamed up with you guys. Are you primarily focused on athletes or the ultrarunning world endurance role in general or?
Jonathan Levitt:
It’s been an interesting few years because when I joined I said, “Okay. It’s a great mission to try and conquer the world.” But Rome wasn’t built in a day. You can’t go get everyone right away and help everyone right away. I said, “As a runner, I know what it’s like to bonk. I know what it’s like to be injured and I know what it’s like to want to get better.” If you think about it, if you have a data-driven approach to improving your health, it’s very similar to a data-driven approach to improving endurance performance.
Jonathan Levitt:
You run, you do workouts, you assess data and metrics, you make changes and you improve. What I said was, “Runners need this, runners want this, and runners will pay for this.” As a very young company, we needed the people that needed us. I said from the beginning, runners need us and runners will use us. That was all I knew. The endurance community. I had plenty of contacts in the endurance community as well as the professional athletics world. That’s where I turned first when I was tasked with growing this thing. As time went on, I got connected to a handful of pro athletes and it worked for them.
Jonathan Levitt:
They continued spreading the word within primarily the trail and ultra world, because it was something that was working. I think that that trail and ultra world is really unique in that if you have something that’s helpful, you’re going to tell your friends. I’m sure there are triathletes that are listening to this podcast. I think that the dynamic of a triathlete versus a runner versus a team sport athlete, I think they’re very different people. We haven’t had a ton of success in triathlon, but we’ve had tons of success in trail and ultra and road marathoning and road racing as well.
Jonathan Levitt:
I think it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you have something that works and you have people that like to talk and share what’s working for them, it’s a no-brainer that it’s going to spread. The goal is to help with health, but people are using it for performance, and by the way, you’re improving your health at the same time. It’s like you’re doing these things that help facilitate someone’s career or their hobby or whatever and if it works for them, it’d be silly to keep it to yourself.
Hillary Allen:
I know. I love that you’re like, “Ultrarunners like to talk.” Yes, we do, but I think it’s also just in the community. If it’s positive results, it spreads like a wildfire.
Jonathan Levitt:
Right.
Hillary Allen:
I also think just with endurance, it’s like in these long races, nutrition can make or break your race.
Jonathan Levitt:
For sure.
Hillary Allen:
Whereas in shorter distances, obviously it’s like, maybe it’s not the nutrition of your actual race, like a two-hour marathon. You can get by without even ingesting a gel. It’s based more on fitness and it’s based more on your day-to-day nutrition versus ultrarunning and more endurance sports, triathlons even, those triathlons, like how about you give this a try? It’s more so it is your day-to-day nutrition, but it’s also what you’re ingesting on race day. I’ll come back to this. I wanted to ask you walk me through these start-up and these test kits that you have for InsideTracker.
Hillary Allen:
Before that, I wanted to talk to you about … Because I am such a science nerd and I loved you have … you said 75 people. A lot of those are researchers. I’m wondering if you could tell me about any … So all the data that you receive from people, do they sign a consent? Are you using this in active ongoing studies? If not, can you just give me a summary of any research studies that you are working on at the moment?
Jonathan Levitt:
Yes. The company makes all decisions based on data. When you sign up, you fill out a whole bunch of questions and everything that is asked is used somewhere in the platform. What we’re doing is we’re collecting all this information about people. We know their demographics, we know their food preferences, and then we know their blood work. Now we’re starting to know their genetic information and potentially sleep information. Yes. You sign a research consent. You can opt into this with both the blood and the genetic information. It’s not the default for the genetic information.
Jonathan Levitt:
What we’re doing is we’re looking at the data in an anonymized and de-identified manner so we can look at what do female Asians that are 40 to 49 look like? Or, white do males that are 20 to 29 look like? Or, what’s the impact of eating oatmeal daily on men? Or, what are the best interventions across the board? What works? All these different little inquiries or queries that we have that we’re curious about, or like, how do elite runners compare to amateur runners from the inside out? Looking at training volume.
Jonathan Levitt:
Compare 10 plus hours a week and less than 10 hours a week for runners, or triathletes that are training 15 hours a week, or triathletes that are training less than 15 hours a week, what are the differences there? We published a paper in Nature in 2017 that looked at the impact of algorithm-based personalized nutrition guidance, basically answering the question, does it work? We feel that we have the largest database of healthy people that exist in the world so we wanted to do some digging in that. We published this paper that basically looked at, did it work? Answer is yes.
Jonathan Levitt:
More importantly, what actually happened? What are correlations that can be assumed based on some of these relationships? It’s way over my head, but we published this table that looks at correlations between certain biomarkers. From a statistical significance, as say, ALT, a liver enzyme, goes up, what’s expected to go down? What’s interesting with this is nobody has this data, and nobody has such a thorough and complete blood panel on … I mean, we process tens of millions of data points on a yearly basis and so nobody has that.
Jonathan Levitt:
Initially, we based our data set on a database called NHANES, which it’s a database of about a quarter million people. They didn’t all go through a thorough blood panel, but they did some testing looking at that. We match the data that already exists with how it’s working within our own platform, and then using data science to actually create new science to give better recommendations. Yeah. You mentioned we’re at 75 now. We have a data science team and their whole job is to look at this and either do modeling, or I couldn’t begin to tell you what they do on a daily basis so I’m not even going to try and pretend.
Jonathan Levitt:
One of the initiatives we did recently was with the Olympic trials. We had about 30 athletes who were competing in the Olympic trials, do a blood and DNA test. The idea there is to look at the best long distance athletes, the best marathoners in the country and what’s the makeup of America’s best. Is there anything we can learn from that? I don’t know. Maybe the answer is no, but that’s the job of the researcher to figure out. We’ve done some other projects with other partners looking at the data. We work with GU Energy Labs and their team has been using InsideTracker for four years now.
Jonathan Levitt:
They actually created new products because of what they were learning from having their athletes go through the program. They came out with a couple of supplements based on nutrient deficiencies. Magnesium, vitamin D and probiotics all were created because those were some of the most common deficiencies or supplement needs that their pro athletes were having. Then we looked within our data and looked at some of the most common supplement recommendations. I mean, it’s not a surprise that more people need vitamin D and magnesium and probiotics. It’s really cool to see innovation happen and product development happen using the science that we’re a part of.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. I mean, it’s so funny because it’s like I think, “Okay. Well, we’re alive. I ate something today. I will eat again. I ate things my whole life. I’m 31. I’m surviving.” But sometimes it’s interesting to think about it when you’re like, “Well, we’re doing just fine. How can you optimize your nutrition to live longer, live better?” All of these things. I think the differences and the really cool thing about a company like InsideTracker is that, well, it’s actually really hard to gather data on human beings because we’re all basically … I mean, I’m a scientist.
Hillary Allen:
I’ve read a bunch of the blogs in InsideTracker and I encourage the listeners to go check it out, especially if you’re confused on, “Okay. Well, how in the world can my DNA tell me anything about my diet?” Well, there are several blogs on the website that can you tell you about that. No. Basically, just I’m constantly in awe of the lack of scientific data on the human population, because we’re all N’s of ones, we’re all unique. You need to have this broader scope and get a whole bunch of data from a whole bunch of different people to draw these correlations or conclusions, and so-
Jonathan Levitt:
Well, yeah. That’s the whole point.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah.
Jonathan Levitt:
That’s exactly what we seek to do, right?
Hillary Allen:
Yeah.
Jonathan Levitt:
Our whole platform is based on human studies and looking at a specific intervention and seeing if it had a statistical significance. Okay. We’re going to tell you to eat oatmeal daily, because that will help your glucose and your cholesterol and et cetera, et cetera. You don’t need oatmeal and you might need more carbs. You do that. Maybe it’ll work. It probably will work, but the only way to know is if you do these N-of-1 experiments. I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s like we have all this information, but we’re also unique.
Jonathan Levitt:
My favorite example is Keely Henninger. We started working with Keeley, I think in 2015. She just found the website and bought as a regular customer. It was fascinating. She had low iron and there are plenty of blogs on this. We can talk about her blood work because she’s talked about it openly. HIPAA disclaimer. She kept getting a recommendation of eat more meat and she was vegetarian and so she kept playing around with iron supplementation and it wasn’t working and it wasn’t working. She tested three or four times and you would expect if you take a supplement for six months or eight months it’ll work eventually.
Jonathan Levitt:
Well, it wasn’t, and she ate a burger and ate some meat and her iron jumped up for the first time, I don’t know, in a long time. She wrote a blog and she was like, “I had a burger and I won some races.” It’s just so simple. It’s my favorite because it highlights how personalized it is, where supplementation is the magic bullet for some people and for others, you need to eat meat. It’s so different. Had she continued just taking a supplement, she’d be wasting money. She potentially would be getting into iron toxicity and overload if she kept trying to take more and more and more.
Jonathan Levitt:
Instead, she was able to tinker with these variables and get an objective answer. Is it working? No. Okay. I should do something different and play with another variable. Yeah. I think that’s exactly what you said. It’s all about N-of-1 and figuring out who you are and what works for you
Hillary Allen:
The more N-of-1s that you have the more you can compare and be like, “Okay. If this worked for someone who’s similar in these aspects, but different here.” You can pull data from other places. That’s something that I love. Even if listeners don’t believe in this stuff and they think they have the perfect diet, that’s okay. Just join InsideTracker and start contributing to science. That’s what I think. It’s like a call to action guys. Like, “Come on.”
Jonathan Levitt:
I love that.
Hillary Allen:
Even if you-
Jonathan Levitt:
Do it for science.
Hillary Allen:
Please. Even if you already think you’re perfect. Cool. You’re going to help us all out with your perfect data. Please.
Jonathan Levitt:
I love it.
Hillary Allen:
I also think that everyone has something to learn. I had another question about specifically women. I think this is actually a common problem that women have. I mean, I actually know another friend who was able to figure out her low iron with supplementation and all that stuff because she was also maybe a vegetarian. Do you have … Because I know that there’s a lot of actually data lacking specifically for physiology studies for women. Do you have specific studies going on or certain data? I don’t know. Not data mines, but data reserves for women?
Jonathan Levitt:
Yeah. A couple of years ago we had a team of like three or four researchers spend like six months trying to determine if we could be useful in this quest, I guess you could say.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah.
Jonathan Levitt:
The problem is that there is not enough research. Most studies are done on healthy men and healthy white men and young, healthy white men because they’re the easiest to incentivize. They’re in college and stuff like that. The difficulty with all these studies on women is the timing. You need very specific timing of the testing. We spent like two person years researching this and we were not comfortable putting out a product that we could stand behind. Instead of putting out something that might be useful and might also be wrong, we chose not to do it, despite it being something that is very necessary.
Jonathan Levitt:
We stick to biomarkers that don’t fluctuate throughout the month for women and give guidance related to female hormones. DHEAS is a hormone that we do monitor in women. Improving it can be related to fertility or energy and recovery. It’s often low in the presence of amenorrhea or underfueling. That’s not always the reason, but it can be. We dabble in that area, but we don’t feel that we’re able to do it the right way so we choose not to do it.
Jonathan Levitt:
It’s a problem because it’s definitely an underserved and a necessary goal to understand these variables, but it’s hard to do without these studies that haven’t been done.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. Again, let’s participate in science. Maybe we can gather all the female ultrarunners that do this and then come up with a cool little study.
Jonathan Levitt:
We participated in some research studies and I’m hoping that this can and will lead to more. We’ve been a part of Western States research panel for a couple of years now facilitating the blood draw component, looking at a couple of biomarkers linked to bone density, injury prevalence, and genetic markers. It’s led by an amazing group of researchers out of Stanford, pioneered by Tracy Hoeg, Emily Kraus and Megan Roche. Megan consults for … or works for a genetics company called AxGen. They provided the genetic testing.
Jonathan Levitt:
We provided the blood testing, and then there was bone density testing. We had, I think, 51 athletes test the day before Western States and the results are just starting to be published there. It’s looking at the difference between men and women. It’s looking at injury potential and finishing times. It was fascinating. I’m hoping that we can help facilitate studies like that. Emily in particular has a ton of ideas with how she, as a physician and researcher, can push things forward. Then I have a friend here in Boston who is a nutrition science professor and long distance cyclist and spin instructor.
Jonathan Levitt:
Dr. Rachele Pojednic here in Boston, who also is fascinated by using this type of data for research and creating science instead of just using science. She’s pretty interested in women in particular, but also one of her passion projects is CBD and creating studies looking at CBD and the effectiveness from an objective standpoint, because it’s everywhere these days. Between all of that, we have some studies or potential studies, either ongoing, we hope to be a part of it this year with Western States. It’s currently on. We’ll see about that.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. We’ll see.
Jonathan Levitt:
Yeah. If not, next year, for sure. That’s just the beginning. It’s cool to be able to facilitate this and have our data science team and our science team involved in curating the new research that could be possible.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. Oh man, this makes me so excited. I’m jotting down all these ideas.
Jonathan Levitt:
Do it for science.
Hillary Allen:
Exactly. Let’s do it for science. That is basically the overall summary of this episode. Let’s all do this for science. The last thing I want to ask you is if someone listens and they’re interested in this, what are the next steps for them to get involved? You can visit your website, the website for Inside. It’s just InsideTracker.com.
Jonathan Levitt:
Yep.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. Then what are the next steps that someone can do to start the ball rolling?
Jonathan Levitt:
The next steps, great question. In normal circumstances, we use Quest Diagnostics for the blood testing. You order from our site. You tell us some information about you, and then we send you a lab slip, you print that out and bring it to Quest. We also have home testing options available. You can either have a phlebotomist come right to you, or we actually have something called a home kit where you prick your finger and send it back to us in the mail. That’s available as well.
Hillary Allen:
Cool.
Jonathan Levitt:
Then if you have existing blood data, you can use our DIY plan to get analytics on data that you may have done a test through your doctor. You can upload that, not do a new blood draw and get the same analysis as if you had done it through us on the values that have been tested already. We can’t extrapolate your testosterone levels from a test that was just done with lipids and glucose, for example. You can do it in a lab. You can do it in the comfort of your own home. Then everything is delivered through the website.
Jonathan Levitt:
Then the DNA kit is available online. We mail you a kit, you swab your cheek, you send it back to us and then you get a report looking at that.
Hillary Allen:
That’s awesome. I really like all that. I’m just thinking, I’m like, “I’m hearing Europe, what can I do?” Just kidding. I’m going to be back in the State soon so hopefully that’ll be good.
Jonathan Levitt:
Awesome.
Hillary Allen:
I mean, I can’t wait to get involved in InsideTracker and maybe just learn more about my nutrition as a whole, but also, like I said, contribute to science in a greater level.
Jonathan Levitt:
For sure. Cool.
Hillary Allen:
All right.
Jonathan Levitt:
Hillary, thanks so much for having me on today. This was fun.
Hillary Allen:
Yeah. This is great. Thanks so much for calling me in the morning from Boston and I hope you have a good day.
Jonathan Levitt:
You too.