Finding Genius Podcast

Chris Peng, the Co-Founder and CEO of Labfront, joins us to delve into the groundbreaking initiatives of their startup, poised to transform health research. Labfront is on a mission to bridge the gap between medical research and practical applications, aiming to remedy the deficiencies in our current healthcare system. In this episode, Peng shares the inspiration behind Labfront and how they are enhancing software infrastructure to consolidate data from various wearable sensors. By breaking down silos that often conceal crucial health information, Labfront strives to pinpoint and address underlying diseases. Labfront empowers researchers by offering a comprehensive software solution to manage studies. Whether dealing with a study involving 50 participants or thousands of participants, Labfront assists researchers in crafting customized apps that help ensure participant adherence through reminders and task management. Moreover, Labfront is at the forefront of innovation by developing an analysis engine within its platform. This enhancement streamlines the data analysis process, boosting efficiency for both researchers and studies. Press play to discover: How Labfront is set to revolutionize the landscape of health research The range of devices Labfront seamlessly integrates with The challenges researchers face in data analysis and how Labfront addresses these hurdles Strategies to motivate study participants, fostering engagement and adherence to study tasks Ready to explore the future of health research? Tune in now and explore Labfront | All-in-One Research Solution for Real-World Data. Take advantage of a 5% discount on Ekster accessories by using the code FINDINGGENIUS. Enhance your style and functionality with premium accessories. Visit bit.ly/3uiVX9R to explore latest collection. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/30PvU9

It can be difficult enough to manage our own diets – let alone the diet of our dogs. But what if there was a simple way to ensure our pups get the nutrition they need to thrive? Dr. Pete VanVranken, the founder of Voyager Dog Food Company, joins us to discuss the importance of feeding our dogs quality, safe food… Dr. Pete brings over 49 years of veterinary experience to Voyager Dog Food Company. With a passion for pets, he started this venture with a primary goal: to provide safe and nutritious dog food to enhance their daily health and overall longevity. In this episode, we explore: What a dog’s complete and balanced diet should consist of.  Various ways that high-fat diets can impact your dog’s health.  The benefits of balancing your dog’s microbiome. Voyager Dog Food Company offers recipes created by veterinarians, food scientists, and Ph.D. nutritionists. What sets them apart from other specialty dog food suppliers? Dive in now to see for yourself! You can learn more about Dr. Pete and Voyager Dog Food Company by clicking here! Take advantage of a 5% discount on Ekster accessories by using the code FINDINGGENIUS. Enhance your style and functionality with premium accessories. Visit bit.ly/3uiVX9R to explore latest collection. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/30PvU9

Levi Lascsak, experienced marketer, explains how social media can generate leads for businesses without traditional prospecting methods. Topics include: motivation for unique path, successful lead generation, passive prospecting, goal-driven business plans, and the power of using videos for business.

Gut microbiome influences many facets of the body. From depression to diabetes, a healthy gut is essential for both physical and mental health. In this episode, Dr. Jack A. Gilbert joins us to discuss how microbes interact with each other, the world around them, and what makes them a vital part of our health and wellness.  Dr. Gilbert is the Director of the Microbiome and Metagenomics Center and the Microbiome Core Facility and a Professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine. He also serves on the board of the Genomic Standards Consortium, and is the primary investigator for various research ventures – including the Earth Microbiome Project, the Home Microbiome Project, the Gulf Microbial Modeling Project, the Hospital Microbiome Project, and the Chicago River Microbiome Project.   As the author of more than 400 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, Dr. Gilbert is an internationally recognized expert in medical and environmental microbiology, microbial ecology, and biotechnology development. Are you ready to dive into the fascinating world of gut health? You’ve come to the right place! Join in to explore: The impact of fasting on gut bacteria.  The metabolic benefits of intermittent fasting.  Types of bacteria that cause infections in the body.  You can find more information on Dr. Gilbert and his work here! Take advantage of a 5% discount on Ekster accessories by using the code FINDINGGENIUS. Enhance your style and functionality with premium accessories. Visit bit.ly/3uiVX9R to explore latest collection. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/30PvU9

In this episode, we sit down with clinical nutritionist Dr. Michael Biamonte, the founder of the Biamonte Center for Clinical Nutrition and co-creator of BioCybernetics. Additionally, he is the author of The Candida Chronicles: A Manual for Candida Yeast Infections, a book that outlines candida and how to properly deal with it.  With over 30 years of experience as a practitioner, Dr. Biamonte is dedicated to enhancing the lives of his patients – and helping them get back to living life to its fullest. Coming from a nutritional standpoint, Dr. Biamonte helps patients make sustainable changes to their lives by improving their gut health…  Listen now to discover: What Candida is, and which symptoms typically accompany it.  What a blood test can tell you about your overall health.  The byproduct of gut health improvement.  Things that can kill the friendly bacteria in your gut.  To find out more about Dr. Biamonte and his work with Biamonte Center for Clinical Nutrition, click here now! Take advantage of a 5% discount on Ekster accessories by using the code FINDINGGENIUS. Enhance your style and functionality with premium accessories. Visit bit.ly/3uiVX9R to explore latest collection. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/30PvU9

Listen to your gut! It’s a saying we all resonate with on some level, but is there any merit to it? As research on the connection between gut and overall human health grows, it seems there is. Prebiotic and probiotic products boast the ability to improve gut health, but most of them have virtually no beneficial effect. Learn why, and discover: Why 95% + of probiotics on the market die before reaching the target (the intestines) The risk of taking prebiotics that feed bad bacteria in the gut What percentage of the immune system relies on gut health The connection between the gut microbiome and mental health issues like anxiety and depression The NIH Human Microbiome Project revolutionized what it means to have a “healthy gut.” As a consequence, it shed light on the serious shortcomings of most probiotics and prebiotics on the market. In essence, most of these products are either doing more harm than good, or not much at all. When Tina Anderson made this discovery, she decided to do something about it. She and her husband were able to license specific probiotic strains from London University—strains that, unlike most on the market, actually reach the intestine alive and are therefore able to confer benefits to the consumer. But that’s not all: this probiotic also produces antioxidants and carotenoids right at the site of absorption, adding even more benefits. Anderson founded Just Thrive with the goal of making this product available to everyone. They now offer a prebiotic that also stands out among others on the market. Anderson discusses all this and more, including exciting new products in the pipeline. To learn more visithttps://justthrivehealth.com/. Take advantage of a 5% discount on Ekster accessories by using the code FINDINGGENIUS. Enhance your style and functionality with premium accessories. Visit bit.ly/3uiVX9R to explore latest collection. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/30PvU9

Microbial sciences are experiencing a "gold rush of research," says Seed co-founder and co-CEO Raja Dhir. He discusses how Seed is a part of that work with a multi-technology approach to all aspects of the microbiome, from gut health to coral reef protection. Listen and learn How Seed's biology research takes on microbial activity for the entire body, from the stomach to the scalp; How they've expanded their research to environmental issues like coral microbiomes, plastic degradation, soil microbiomes, and even honeybee microbiomes; How their products work to reach the center of our immune system without interference from stomach acid; and Why their innovations make a difference compared to other techniques, such as their functionally redundant microbial consortia and precision delivery system. Raja Dhir is a life science entrepreneur who helped co-found Seed along with Ara Katz. The company is a venture-backed microbiome group that's pioneering the application of bacteria for both human and planetary health. Because he leads their R&D, academic collaborations, technology developments, and clinical trial design, he's able to give listeners a relevant and precise look at why their products work and how their research strives to help planetary health as well. He explains how they maintain their high scientific bar as they develop compounds for a variety of issues, including skin and gut treatments.  Unique among microbial science companies, Seed also researches environmental microbiome issues, including how to help coral reefs survive ocean acidification and ways to mitigate effects of neonicotinoids and pathogens on honey bees. Dhir also brings listeners on a deep dive into their techniques, explaining how they've achieved the 100% release of viable cells into the upper small intestines for their gut microbiome products, which allow the bacteria to be metabolically active. He also helps listeners get a more vivid picture of how their synergistic and complimentary synbiotics work by carefully pairing appropriate prebiotics with probiotics. Listen in for more about this company's fascinating approach to microbial science. Take advantage of a 5% discount on Ekster accessories by using the code FINDINGGENIUS. Enhance your style and functionality with premium accessories. Visit bit.ly/3uiVX9R to explore latest collection. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/30PvU9

The connection between alcohol and gut health is established in scientific literature: alcohol is an inflammatory agent. But as researchers like Vincent Maffei work to improve the quality of life for HIV patients, every bit of information of how that inflammation develops makes a difference, especially in how alcohol and bowel problems connect. Listeners will learn The difference between chronological and biological health and how HIV patients experience increased biological aging, The connection between alcohol and G.I. issues, particularly less diverse microbiota, and The significance of their findings, specifically the abundance of Prevotella spp., a bacteria that may be a mediator between alcohol and cell senescence. Vincent J. Maffei is with the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Parasitology at LSU. As a graduate student, he became involved in LSU's Comprehensive Alcohol Research Center (CARC) and studied how dysbiosis accompanies biological aging. He combined this with studying how alcohol affects the intestines, and now studies this specifically with HIV patients. More specifically, he works to find associations between alcohol use and advancing aging in HIV patients and their guts. He explains to listeners about several players in this complex mix of cause and effect: alcohol and gut health as well as alcohol and HIV patients. He establishes that any amount of alcohol can be harmful to someone suffering from HIV. Combine that with an already-established connection with alcohol and dysbiosis in the gut, and researchers are faced with a very real problem to solve for these patients. He does a careful job explaining the background to listeners, bringing in other studies more general to alcohol use and explaining its effect on T-cell senescence, which basically means they lack the ability to copy themselves—limiting their ability to fight infection. Senescence is also a characteristic of biological aging. He explains that the administration of alcohol breaks down the gut barrier, allowing microbes to migrate from the lumen of gut into tissue, which causes inflammation. He also explains their worthy end goal: to identify some sort of microbiota intervention to relieve this component of inflammation in HIV patients, improving their life span and quality of life. Hopefully their findings will lead to more precise mechanisms that can be leveraged in therapeutic modality. For more, see the CARC website: medschool.lsuhsc.edu/alcoholresearch. Take advantage of a 5% discount on Ekster accessories by using the code FINDINGGENIUS. Enhance your style and functionality with premium accessories. Visit bit.ly/3uiVX9R to explore latest collection. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/30PvU9C

Tiny microbes make a huge difference in our health. These internal ecological systems utilize communication or signaling to maintain this health, effecting immune system function. This podcast shares an important discovery in this communication that influences receptivity to cancer treatment. Listen and learn. How scientists knew the human microbiome influences cancer immunotherapy, but couldn't identify a key player in this mucosal immunology impact factor, What study Dr. McCoy put into play to identify this player in the immune system of the human body, and What steps they might now be able to take to harness the power of the microbiome and translate it to therapies. Dr. Kathy McCoy is a professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Calgary and the director of the International Microbiome Centre. Her research is focused on interactions between the microbiome and immune system and she shares an exciting just-published study that presents a key finding in cancer treatment. Specifically, her research asked how gut microbes play a rule in influencing or regulating the efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade therapy or cancer immunotherapy. She says that scientists have known for a few years that our microbiome is associated with immunotherapy success or lack thereof, but needed more information to make a difference in treatment. Here's the big idea behind her findings: while researchers have known there's a microbial immune conversation, they now know that it's a three-way conversation rather than a two-way conversation. In addition to the microbes and immune system players, metabolites sent out by microbes have a say; furthermore, this conversation gets enhanced by cancer immunotherapy. More specifically, they found that one of these metabolites, inosine, binds to a receptor present on T-cells and causes a signal transduction cascade that makes that T-cell turn on an anti-tumor response—it makes the cytokines necessary to attack cancer cells. If a patient doesn't have this metabolite, the immunotherapy may not work as well. The hope is researchers can figure out how to encourage this metabolite in patients. Listen in for more details about this study and about its life-changing implications. For more, see her lab website: kathymccoylab.ca. Take advantage of a 5% discount on Ekster accessories by using the code FINDINGGENIUS. Enhance your style and functionality with premium accessories. Visit bit.ly/3uiVX9R to explore latest collection. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/30PvU9C

A metabolic pathway study on an ocean floor compound led marine scientist Veronika Kivenson straight to our gut. When she found evidence that a genetic code expansion utilized for metabolism in an ocean sediment compound also appears in the human gut, she knew she needed to understand this pathway better. Listen and learn How both the human gut and ocean sediment have an amino acid that converts trimethylamine (TMA), What trimethylamine presence has to do with plant-based versus animal-based diets and the importance of gut health, and How these findings might lead to understanding the impact and function of gut bacteria like Bilophila have on preventing arterial plaque buildup.  Veronika Kivenson recently received her Ph.D. in Marine Science from UC Santa Barbara and is now working on a post doc at Oregon State University. She studies microorganism and how they react with their surroundings, especially their metabolism, and what they consume and produce. While studying marine sediment, she came across an interesting connection with gut metabolism. An amino acid that converts from a stop codon in order to metabolize trimethylamine appears in both places. Furthermore, trimethylamine is listed in the negative column in animal-based diet pros and cons. Animal-based foods are a major source of trimethylamine. In our liver, it becomes trimethylamine-N-oxide, or TMAO, which causes plaque, an element of cardiovascular disease symptoms. But if a pathway in the gut can prevent that formation of TMAO, that's significant. Veronika Kivenson is looking at the potential beneficial role in the genetic code expansion pathway that consumes and prevents TMA from becoming TMAO, or part of plaque formation. What's really interesting is that this consuming bacteria is also associated with meat consumption. The Bilophila genus bacteria, through genetic code expansion, prevents the formation of the harmful TMAO. Studies on these pathways could lead to probiotic therapies to address cardiovascular disease. Take advantage of a 5% discount on Ekster accessories by using the code FINDINGGENIUS. Enhance your style and functionality with premium accessories. Visit bit.ly/3uiVX9R to explore latest collection. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/30PvU9C