The DNA of Things with Dr. Jeremy Koenig

Episode 119: His Testosterone Was 159. What Happened Next Changed Everything with Kyle Hulbert

At 22, Kyle Hulbert was doing everything "right" — clean diet, eight hours of sleep, daily workouts — and still found himself standing on a 27th-floor balcony in Dubai, depressed and suicidal, with doctors telling him nothing was wrong. It took a functional medicine physician to uncover the real problem: rock-bottom testosterone and chronic mercury poisoning. That diagnosis didn't just save his life — it became the blueprint for Longevity Clinics of America, a functional medicine model built to be affordable instead of another concierge health perk for the wealthy. In this episode, Kyle sits down with Dr. Jeremy Koenig to unpack how pharma funding shapes medical school curriculums, why testing for root causes shouldn't cost thousands of dollars, and how he's scaling a business that runs consults at a loss because he believes access, not upsells, is what actually saves lives. Key Takeaways 🧠 Suicidal at 22 despite a "perfect" lifestyle — until testosterone testing changed everything  💉 His testosterone came back at 159 — ten times lower than normal for his age  ⚡ Mental health cleared up in just 7 days after starting hormone therapy  ☠️ Chronic mercury poisoning was the hidden root cause behind years of fatigue, brain fog, and joint pain  🏥 Why medical schools are funded by pharma — and what that leaves out of doctor training  💰 Functional medicine testing can cost thousands, pricing out everyone but the wealthy  🩺 How Kyle and his business partner built a pricing model that undercuts the concierge health industry by 10x  📉 Clinics intentionally operate consults at a loss because "treatment gives value, not the consult"  🌍 The goal: 10-20 clinics across America to make functional testing accessible, not exclusive  🏠 Simple home heuristics — mold, water filtration, movement — that can catch problems before they become a crisis  👨‍👩‍👧 Why parents should get their kids tested for the same toxicities they struggled with  📺 The "Netflix test" — a surprisingly simple gut check for whether your lifestyle needs an intervention  LINKS: https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/ https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/ [https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/].

Episode 118: How AI Found What 15 Years of Dermatologists Couldn't | OK Capsule's Dr. Andrew Brandeis

Dr. Jeremy Koenig sits down with Dr. Andrew Brandeis, CMO and co-founder of OK Capsule, for a wide-ranging conversation about the real reason personalized supplements fail: it's not the science, it's the logistics. Andrew shares his journey from naturopathic physician working alongside MDs in San Francisco urgent care to building a manufacturing-as-a-service platform that pre-sorts and drop-ships personalized daily vitamin packets for supplement brands worldwide. The two dig into supplement quality scandals, the psychology of adherence, and how AI — specifically Claude — is quietly becoming a diagnostic thought partner for both doctors and patients. Andrew even tells the story of how an AI chat uncovered the real root cause of his decade-plus psoriasis flare-ups after dermatologists came up empty. The episode closes with a look at OK Capsule's new MCP integration (basically an AI-native API that turns weeks-long tech integrations into a single click), plus a teaser for Andrew's upcoming satirical novel on how blockbuster drugs actually get made — through marketing, not medicine. Key Takeaways * 💊 Supplements only work if three things line up: the right formula for the right condition, verified label-accurate quality, and actual consistent adherence — most plans fail on that third one * 🏭 OK Capsule isn't a supplement brand — it's an API/MCP-driven platform that lets other supplement brands offer personalized, private-labeled daily packs at scale * 📉 Independent testing has repeatedly found a shocking number of Amazon supplement products don't actually match their label claims — brand trust exists for a reason * 🤖 AI tools like Claude are becoming a "second opinion" layer for both patients and physicians — pulling years of labs, wearables, and raw genetic data into one context window no human doctor could hold in their head * 🧬 Andrew's real-life psoriasis case: 15 years of dermatologists saying "it's genetic, here's a steroid cream" — until an AI-assisted deep dive into his raw 23andMe data flagged a specific immune overreaction to a common skin yeast, and treating that actually resolved it * 🔌 MCP (Model Context Protocol) is being called "the new API" — reducing what used to be weeks of engineering integration work down to a single click for AI-to-AI systems * 📊 Function Health and its wave of copycats nailed the "here are your results" part of personalization — but most stop short of actually delivering a physical product or solution, which is the gap OK Capsule fills * 👨‍👩‍👧 A fascinating tangent on where this is all headed: "family LLMs" that hold context across a household's health history, habits, and dinner-table conversations * 📚 Andrew's satirical novel Pillars: Science and Other Profitable Lies (out early 2027) pulls back the curtain on how pharmaceutical "blockbusters" are really built — through marketing narratives, not necessarily medical superiority * 🎯 Big picture theme: stop waiting for better information and start building better infrastructure — make the healthy choice the easy choice, and behavior change follows automatically Chapters List: 00:47 Transitioning Roles: From CEO to CMO 05:50 The Journey to OK Capsule: Foundational Insights 09:34 Building a Platform for Personalized Supplements 13:04 Navigating Quality and Compliance in Supplements 16:06 AI in Healthcare: Opportunities and Challenges 19:00 The Rise of Personalized Health Solutions 21:30 Innovations in AI and Health Integration 25:29 The Impact of MCP on Health Management 28:47 Personalized Supplements and Health Outcomes 32:40 AI as an Augmentation Tool for Doctors 39:02 The Future of Personalized Health and Family Dynamics 41:41 Closing Thoughts and Future Directions   LINKS: https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/ https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/ [https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/].

Episode 117: The Molecule That Made Rats Live 90% Longer — Chris Burres on ESS60 & The Science of Aging

Chris Burres has spent over three decades chasing a molecule most people have never heard of, and the story behind it sounds almost too wild to be true. In 2012, a French toxicity study accidentally discovered that Carbon 60 (ESS60) extended rat lifespans by 90%, making it one of the longest mammalian longevity results ever recorded in peer-reviewed research. On this episode of The DNA of Things, Dr. Jeremy Koenig sits down with Burres, co-founder of SES Research and founder of My Vital C, to unpack the science of oxidative stress, mitochondrial health, and his own BOSS Theory (Buffering Oxidative Stress System). From the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the molecule at Rice University to real-world testimonials on sleep, energy, and mental focus, this conversation dives deep into carbon nanomaterials, biohacking, and what it actually takes to buffer aging at the cellular level. Key Takeaways 🧬 The 90% Longevity Study — How a 2012 French toxicity study on Carbon 60 accidentally became one of the longest-recorded lifespan extensions in mammal history ⚗️ From Nobel Prize to Supplement Shelf — The 1985 Rice University discovery of the C60 molecule and its 11-year path to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry 🔋 Mitochondria & Oxidative Stress, Explained — Chris breaks down the BOSS Theory (Buffering Oxidative Stress System) using his now-famous Mardi Gras/bumper cars analogy 😴 The Sleep-Energy Connection — Why the most consistent testimonial from ESS60 users is better focus and energy during the day paired with deeper sleep at night 🧪 The Messy Supplement Industry — Why Chris resisted entering the supplement space for years, and what finally changed his mind 💊 Real Protocols & Dosing — Olive oil vs. avocado oil vs. MCT oil, and how Chris personally stacks his morning routine 📊 What's Next: Ongoing Research — Upcoming studies on headaches, HS-CRP inflammation markers, sleep, and skin aging 🎁 Free Resources for Listeners — Chris shares an 18-tip biohacking guide from his Longevity Summit interviews with 57 experts, plus an exclusive discount link  LINKS: https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/ https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/ [https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/].

Episode 116: Death by Five-Minute Paper Cuts: Fixing Functional Medicine's Data Problem with Jeremy Malecha

Jeremy Malecha spent his career building cloud-connected medical devices at ResMed before functional medicine pulled him in through the side door — literally, as his wife's first patient. What he found was a mess: lab results in one place, wearable data in another, supplement protocols scribbled into a Word doc, and zero way to connect any of it. That frustration became Biocanic, a platform now used by thousands of practitioners and over 270,000 patients to turn raw biomarker data, wearable streams, and intake forms into structured, repeatable protocols. In this conversation, Jeremy and Dr. Jeremy Koenig dig into why functional medicine is data-rich but action-poor, how AI changed the speed of building personalized care tools almost overnight, why "death by five-minute paper cuts" is quietly burning out practitioners, and what it actually takes to scale individualized health without losing the personalization that makes it work. They also get into the bigger shift happening post-pandemic — from "doctor knows best" to "I'm responsible for my own health" — and why that shift, not better algorithms, is what's actually going to disrupt healthcare. Key Takeaways: 🧬 How Biocanic turns scattered labs, wearables, and intake data into one trackable health record  ⏱️ Why "death by five-minute paper cuts" is the real bottleneck stopping practitioners from scaling  🤖 What changed for health tech builders once AI tools caught up to what Jeremy was doing back in 2018  📊 Why functional medicine is data-rich but action-poor — and what closes that gap  🔁 How practitioners build repeatable protocols without sacrificing personalized care  💍 Using wearables (Aura, Whoop, Garmin) and self-experimentation to catch health shifts before they become problems  🩺 The difference between functional medicine patients, health optimizers, and longevity biohackers — and why practitioners serve them differently  🏥 Why healthcare disruption is coming from outside the system, not from insurance or hospitals  🧠 The "teach a person to fish" philosophy behind personalized health coaching  ❤️ Why the real metric of long-term health might be relationships, not biomarkers  LINKS: https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/ https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/ [https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/].

Episode 115: Your DNA Isn't a Death Sentence - Kate Wilson on Genetics, Story, and the Future of Genomic Access

Kate Wilson has spent over twenty years watching the genetics field move faster than the people it was built to serve — patients in rural communities who didn't know their tumor could be tested, payers drowning in $60,000 EOBs with no answers, and clinicians too overwhelmed to keep up with next-gen sequencing as it was happening in real time. In this episode, Kate — certified genetic counselor, former product director at Quest Diagnostics, clinical instructor at Emory, and host of the award-winning All Access DNA podcast — joins Dr. Jeremy Koenig to pull back the curtain on what genomic medicine access actually looks like on the ground, why the research-to-clinic handoff still takes up to 17 years, and why the future of genetic counseling lives in primary care, not specialty clinics. From the Angelina Jolie BRCA moment that shifted public awareness overnight, to the quiet dismantling of the CDC's public genomics program, Kate traces the thread most people in the field haven't noticed — and makes the case that data alone has never changed a life. Story does. 🧬 Key Takeaways 🧵 The thread nobody's pulling — Kate spent 20+ years connecting clinical genetics, industry, payers, and the general public — a role that barely had a name when she started 💸 The $60K EOB moment — a single panel test, a patient in shock, and a lab with no answers — the story that pushed Kate out of clinic and into industry to fix the system upstream 🧪 Sanger → NGS → panels → AI — how the pace of genomic innovation outran clinician education, payer policy, and patient awareness all at once 📣 Why data doesn't move people — stories do — Kate's philosophy on science communication and why All Access DNA was built around human narratives, not lecture slides 🏥 The primary care gap — why genetic counselors belong in your family doctor's office, not just specialty clinics, and what a few pioneering practices are already proving 🌍 Access isn't just about cost — rural communities, under-informed clinicians, and outdated insurance guidelines are the real barriers to genomic medicine reaching everyone ⚖️ ELSI in practice — the ethical, legal, and social implications of DNA testing including life insurance blind spots and why Huntington's disease is still the clearest test case for voluntary genetic testing 🤝 The three-legged stool — why academics, industry, and government genomics programs have to work together — and what's at stake now that the CDC's public genomics group has been cut 🔬 Genetic counselors in industry — the surprising skill that makes GCs invaluable in boardrooms: translating between bioinformatics, C-suite, and payer policy in the same room ✨ Room for miracles — why Kate, after 20+ years of reading genetic data, still believes a result is never the whole story  LINKS: https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/ https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/ [https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/].