September 24, 2025 • 59 mins
Discover how eating only ultra-processed foods for 30 days can tank your testosterone by 30% and cause a 5.5x increase in dangerous visceral fat, even when calories and weight stay the same. In episode 817 of the Savage Perspective Podcast, your host Robert Sikes sits down with Throne founder Scott Hickle to reveal the shocking truth about how the standard American diet impacts your hormones, gut health, and mood. Scott shares the results of his 30-day experiment, discusses the future of health tracking, and explains how analyzing your poop can provide incredible insights into your body's performance and help detect hidden diseases like colon cancer.
Want to build a stronger, healthier body? Join Robert’s FREE Bodybuilding Masterclass to learn the exact methods to optimize your nutrition and training. Sign up here: https://www.ketobodybuilding.com/registration-2
Follow Scott on IG: https://www.instagram.com/scotthickle
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Subscribe to the podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/42cjJssghqD01bdWBxRYEg?si=1XYKmPXmR4eKw2O9gGCEuQ
Chapters:
0:00 - How Ultra-Processed Food KILLS Your Testosterone
0:46 - Meet the Man Who Invented the "Whoop for Your Poop"
1:42 - How a Poker Night Joke Became a Health Tech Startup
2:56 - Why Doctors Secretly Hate Getting Pictures of Your Poop
4:06 - The Untapped Health Data Hidden in Your Toilet Bowl
5:14 - What Is the Bristol Stool Chart & How Does It Work?
6:13 - How to Find Your Food Triggers (The Automated Way)
7:16 - We Paid Gastroenterologists to Label THOUSANDS of Poop Photos 8:06 - Is STRESS or DIET Worse For Your Gut Health?
10:14 - My 30-Day Ultra-Processed Food Experiment (The Rules)
12:52 - The REAL Effect of Sugar on Your Mood & Energy
15:51 - How a Processed Food Diet TANKED My Testosterone by 30%
17:26 - The Hidden Danger of Visceral Fat (And How to Measure It)
19:12 - Are You Eating The Standard American Diet? (The Uncomfortable Truth)
20:02 - What 3200 Calories of Junk Food Actually Looks Like
21:58 - The Day Energy Gels Almost Made Me Crash My Car
24:15 - My Testosterone Levels After 30 Days of Junk Food (The Exact Numbers)
25:00 - Did 30 Days of Junk Food Destroy My Cholesterol?
25:56 - Did I Lose Muscle Eating Only Processed Food? (DEXA Results)
27:02 - How a Junk Food Diet Made Me "Radiate Bad Energy"
28:33 - Whoop vs. Aura vs. Levels: Which Health Tracker is Best?
29:45 - The Single Best Feature in Wearable Health Tech Today
32:17 - Is Microbiome Testing a Waste of Money?
37:44 - How a Junk Food Diet Impacts Your Strength in the Gym
40:43 - The #1 WORST Processed Food I Ate
42:34 - What Does the "Perfect" Poop Look Like?
44:49 - The Most Common Poop Problem Affecting 40 Million Americans 46:52 - How This Smart Toilet ACTUALLY Works
49:54 - How to Measure Your Prostate Health at Home
52:14 - What Happens if You Poop in a Different Toilet?
54:41 - The Business of Poop: Building a Viral Health Company
57:26 - The Ultimate Goal: A "Smoke Detector" for Colon Cancer
59:01 - Where to Find the Throne Smart Toilet
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We had a whole bunch of gastroenterologist label
thousands of pictures of poop for us so that our BS classifier
model is as accurate as a gastroenterologist now.
One of the things I love is justbeing able to correlate your
diet to your digestive pattern. When I eat XY and Z ingredients,
I am 80% more likely to have a loose or liquid bowel movement.
(00:21):
That probably means that's a trigger or sensitivity.
What happens if you eat 100% of your calories from ultra
processed food? My visceral adipose fat
increased. I went from .2 lbs of visceral
adipose tissue to 1.12 lbs of visceral adipose tissue.
So that's a 5 1/2 X increase in 30 days.
(00:42):
The most interesting was I tanked my testosterone 30% in 30
days. And we are live, Scott.
How are you, brother? I'm great.
How are you, Robert? I'm good man.
Life is good, life is good. You and I get connected to a
mutual friend and I'm excited tochat with you man.
You're kind of like taking the biohacking world to another
level, man. You know, I, I don't know that I
would take it that far, but we're going somewhere that no
(01:04):
one's gone before. That is very true.
So like we're definitely in the day and age of wearables and you
know, I've got a garment watch on right now.
I had an aura ring before I lostit.
Everybody's got a whoop strap and you've got the whoop for
your poop man. So let's let's, let's dive into
this, which makes sense because like you think about it, that's
one of the most telling signs of, you know, gut microbiome,
(01:24):
health, digestion, hydration. But like I don't know of anybody
else really diving into that to the extent that you have.
That's exactly the goal. You know, there's, it's kind of
what we joke. The toilet bowl is the only
white space left. This is true man.
So I want to hear all the nuts and bolts of your device, but
what even gets you into this space beginning?
Give me some back story. All right, so for context, my
(01:49):
one of my now Co founders pitched me this idea the first
time we ever met. We were sitting around a poker
table back in 2021. He had moved to Austin as part
of the kind of the COVID diaspora.
San Francisco was not the place to be back then.
So he found his way to Austin and we're sitting around a poker
table talking about startup ideas you'd love to start but
wouldn't want your name associated with.
(02:10):
So everyone's pitching sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, vice
industry type stuff. And Tim was like, you're all
idiots. Smart toilets is clearly the way
of the future. And his idea back then was just
a toilet seat that weighed you before and after you took a dump
and just gave you kind of that vanity metric.
You know, how how big was your poop?
And we all laughed at it. You know, I thought that was
(02:30):
funny. And I was like, dude, and you
know, clearly the way you would take that to market is you.
You name that one throne, put a leader born on it, and sell it
into frat houses. And.
And exactly. So we we giggled at it, thought
it was fun. And then just the idea thrown
was like a brain worm That, you know, was a recurring theme of
our friendship. We talked about that for years
(02:52):
afterwards. And then it was, you know, back
in 2023, Tim and I decided we wanted to go start a company
together. We both come from healthcare
families. So Tim's mom and three of his
sisters are all nurses. Both my parents are physicians.
My mom's a geriatrician, my dad's a medical device inventor.
And so we're looking around for ideas.
And I called my mom and I was like, hey, mom, is there any
(03:13):
medical utility to looking at people's waste?
You know, I knew nothing back then.
And she, like, got so excited. She was like, Scott, like, all
my patients care about, right? Like people age 65 plus, She was
like, all they care about is their kids, their meds and their
poop. That's all they talk about.
And, you know, as you age, your gut motility starts to slow
(03:35):
down. You know, typically you're
retired, so you have a lot more time on your hands.
You start to notice these changes and like it's gotten to
the point where I had to stop giving my patients my cell phone
number because they would send me so many pictures of their
poop all times a day. And that's when Tim and I looked
at each other. We were like, whoa, that's
(03:55):
actually really interesting, right?
Because there's, there's a couple learnings in there,
right? And the number one is people
intuitively understand that there's health information in
your waist. If they're sending this to their
doctor and #2 it's a big enough problem that it fundamentally
change the way that she communicates with her patients
because she had to stop giving away her phone number, right?
Like, that was really interesting to us.
(04:17):
And then all this coincided with, you know, that that was
kind of the the early days of widespread AI.
But there's a whole conversationback then about how radiology
was going to be one of the firstmedical professions to be, you
know, maybe not automated by AI,but, you know, if at at very
least augmented by AI because computer vision is so good at
(04:37):
image analysis. And we're like, well, what?
We took those same principles and put them in the toilet.
You know what? People go for that.
And, you know, rest is history. Here we are.
So you all launched officially in 23?
No. So that's when we started
working on the product. We launched in January 26.
We're still marching towards launch.
(04:58):
We've distributed a bunch of beta prototypes.
You know we have. Yeah, we we've been through
several generations of prototypes.
I can show you another one over here, but the actual product
we're launching is this one and this doesn't come out until
January. Nice.
OK, so let's get into the nuts and bolts here.
So absolutely, a lot of people are familiar with the Bristol
Stool Charm. I think you'll use that as like
(05:18):
the primary reference that it's measuring against, right?
That's exactly right and. It's, it's interesting man,
because like I'm a nutrition coach, but I get questions day
and night. I don't, I don't get a couple, a
lot of pictures of poop, but I get questions all the time about
poop. And it makes perfect sense.
Like if your hydration's out of whack depending on what foods
you're eating, like it's a pretty telltale sign as to how
(05:40):
your body's responding to the foods and fluids you're
consuming. So it makes sense to measure it.
And also to like you, you can have your macros down, then you
have your calories on point. But if your body's not absorbing
that nutrition and you're basingall of your adjustments and
manipulations off of what you'reconsuming, but you're not
getting full absorption, it's not right on the whole picture
(06:01):
either. But if you're looking at both
ends of the spectrum literally, then you've got a much better
idea of what needs to be manipulated.
So how are people like what? What's the use case scenario?
How do you recommend people go about it?
Like what are they finding from it?
Like just kind of give me the play by play, OK.
So there are so many different use cases.
So we, we measure stool consistency.
So that's bristle stool scale, like you mentioned stool
(06:22):
frequency, the combination of those two things, you know how
often you're going and then the consistency of your stool.
We call that your digestive pattern.
And so one of the use cases thatI love is correlating your diet
to digestive pattern, right? And that's something like
dietitians, nutritionists, health coaches work with a lot
of clients and they'll ask them manually, like keep a food log,
keep a stool log, particularly people with like IBS who are
(06:45):
just trying to figure out like, what are my food sensitivities?
What are my trigger foods and the challenge there is people
hey like food logging stuff hardenough as it is.
Then you layer like keeping a journal of your poop on top of
that and like having to keep track of the Bristol stool chart
on that right. Like the Bristol stool chart is
(07:06):
the the reference that most people have is like a watercolor
rubric. It is like, you know, it's
scientific, but like very hand WAVY science.
And so we had a, we had a whole bunch of, you know, I say a
whole bunch, but like several gastroenterologists label
thousands of pictures of poop for us so that our BSS
classifier model is as accurate as a gastroenterologist now.
(07:30):
And that is a lot better than the average person who hasn't,
you know, not spent a career studying different types of
poop, right. And so one of the things I love
is just being able to correlate your diet to your digestive
pattern and be able to see, OK, you know, when I eat XY and Z
ingredients, I am 80% more likely to have a loose or liquid
bowel movement. That probably means that's a
(07:52):
trigger or sensitivity. Whereas like, you know, IJ and K
ingredients are associated with healthy bowel movements, right?
Like I should up my psyllium husk because that's one like,
fairly straightforward application, a surprising one
for me. You mentioned aura ring.
I, I wore an aura ring last yearbefore I jumped over a whoop.
(08:13):
And when I was wearing the aura ring, I found that the biggest
driver of my personal gut healthwasn't my diet.
I did a whole experiment for a month last summer where I ate
100% of my calories from ultra processed foods.
And we, we can talk about that later, but I was shocked at how
resilient my gut health was throughout that whole process.
(08:36):
But the thing that throws my guthealth off immediately is
stress. And so on days when my O-ring
was yelling at me right, like you were in the high stress zone
all day, like it showed up in mydigestive pattern, like more
loose, more liquid, higher frequency bowel movements.
And that makes sense. That makes sense.
I mean, from like from a metabolic standpoint, you know,
(08:58):
like when I'm thinking of clients that I know are under a
high stress environment and they're hitting the macros that
I'm prescribing them, but they're obviously not getting
any absorption of that food and it's affecting their
performance. Like that all goes hand in hand.
So that's that. It makes total sense, but like
being able to map it out and correlate it is pretty genius.
It was a totally unexpected result for me to see how much my
(09:22):
stress drove my gut health and the kind of the two kind of
anecdotes that painted that picture so clearly.
We're #1 like we had a teammate leave the team, you know, early
last year. And when you're a team of like 4
people, losing 1/4 of the team is incredibly stressful.
And like that just threw my gut out of whack for a week.
(09:45):
And then when I started fundraising late last year, like
you can see in my digestive pattern, it's like blue bar
across the screen, which is likea, you know, it's perfect
health, right? Like, you know, one healthy
bowel movement every single day.And then as soon as I started
fundraising, it's like all over the place.
And then I closed the fundraise and immediately got sick.
(10:06):
And then after I recovered, backto good.
Interesting. All right.
So you, you alluded to we're just going to talk about your
gut health because you're kind of like a Guinea pig to all the
device you're building. I'm assuming you know pounds of
data. You mentioned the highly ultra
process that what was that experiment and what did that
show from a data standpoint? Yeah.
So the idea behind this was whathappens if you eat 100% of your
(10:31):
calories from ultra processed foods, because I typically eat a
pretty healthy Whole Foods, balanced macros, you know, good
diet. And I got really into using all
these different health trackers last year just so I could
understand kind of what is the state-of-the-art as we're
building our own app. And so we had thrown like an
(10:55):
early prototype of throne back then, but I was also using Woop
and aura at the same time. And, you know, smart scales and
I was doing DEXA scans regularlyand I, I tried function, the
blood testing company. So the idea was like, first of
all, like it was kind of inspired by super size me,
right? Like, but the, the the
difference was a, there are so many more consumer tools trap
(11:20):
for health tracking available atour disposal today than there
were for Morgan Spurlock doing super size me 20 years ago,
right? Like we, we live in kind of the
golden age of personal health tracking.
It's awesome. And so my idea was instead of
eating McDonald's every single day and, and you know, he
structured it so that he was eating basically until he was
(11:44):
full, right. So like, you know, several
thousand more calories than he needed to every single day,
whereas mine was, I'm going to maintain a strict calorie goal
of 3000 calories And I, I targeted that so that my weight
wouldn't change. And So what happens if I keep my
(12:04):
caloric intake the same? My macros are, you know, a
little bit of all over the boardbecause I'm doing like what I
call theme days, right? So like there's one day I ate
only Krispy Kreme doughnuts. There was another day I ate
only, you know, health Halo foods are the things that are
marketed as healthy. But then you start reading the
back of the package and it's like clearly not.
And so the idea was what happensif I eat 100% of my calories
(12:26):
from ultra processed foods and track all of that?
What happens to all of my different biomarkers that you
can track, right? So I did blood tests before and
after. I did microbiome test before and
after. I recorded my mood, energy,
focus, and stress three times a day, every single day on a 7
point Likert scale. I recorded my blood pressure 3
times a day. When I was doing that, I wore
all these different health trackers tracking my sleep.
(12:48):
I'd I wore CGM so I could track my blood glucose and the
outcomes of that were pretty amazing.
So the the first was my gut health was way more resilient
than I expected it to be. The only days that really threw
my gut out of whack were donut day.
You know, I didn't poop right for two days after that.
And then spicy foods day was theclosest I've ever come to having
(13:12):
an emergency in public like thatwas, you know, truly just those
two days were awful. But for the most part I was
pretty healthy gut health wise. The biggest changes that I
observed were the 1st is my glucose levels didn't impact my
(13:32):
mood and energy so much is the change in my glucose.
So my glucose was spiking when Iwas like, you know, in the
middle of that uphill journey. I felt.
Invincible what? On doughnut day, probably.
Exactly. Yeah, On doughnut day, like when
your blood glucose is like on the rise, you feel amazing,
right, Which is like why runnershave those, like, sugar gels to
(13:54):
keep them going. But when my glucose was
crashing, it like I was impossible to be around.
I hated myself, you know, like it really did it.
Like it was dark. Like, I just remember, like, you
know, there was one day I was driving and just like, Oh my
God, like I had to pull over. Just like I was in such a bad
(14:16):
mood and like getting dizzy, youknow.
And so I think that was the other thing is because I was
eating so much trashy food and so much sugar for the course of
a month. By the end of it, I was just
like very sensitive and grouchy,particularly to my blood
glucose. And when I stopped the
(14:36):
experiment and started eating healthy again, like the time I
spent spiking was cut in half every single like just
immediately so that the time I spent in the high spike zone.
But the, the crazy part was my average glucose throughout the
day was completely unchanged throughout the entire
experiment, right? And so the, one of the things
that taught me is like, that's the value of continuous health
(14:57):
monitoring. Because if I had only looked at
like my A1C, which is like the trailing indicator of your blood
glucose, that I would not have noticed any of these
differences. It really was that instantaneous
monitoring. It was the, the ability to see,
you know, the levels day-to-day,minute to minute that were
(15:17):
really important for me. And so, you know, I, I think
about the, the parallels for like what we're doing at throne,
being able to see your digestivepatterns and correlate that to
your inputs is far more valuablethan taking a point in time
test, you know, one time or maybe once a year and trying to
make inferences based on that. I think some of the other really
(15:40):
interesting learnings were how much my sleep was affected by
this and then the actually I forget the most interesting was
I tanked my testosterone 30% in 30 days.
Let me get a couple clarifiers. So you did 3000 calories as a
standard and prior to this you were following your mixed diet
(16:02):
of generally accepted as healthyfoods, you know, Whole Foods,
single ingredient, nutrient dense foods.
And you did this experiment maintaining 3000 calories with
nothing but processed foods. How long was the experiment?
You said a month it. Was exactly 30 days.
OK. And in that span, your weight
(16:22):
stayed stable. Yeah, weight stayed stable.
Let me pull up the exact numbershere.
So my weight kind of went up anddown between 186 and 189.
So stable. Pretty stable, yeah.
(16:42):
And you're, yeah, this is super interesting man, because I'm all
about experimentation. So many people in the evidence
based community are like harpingbecause I'm natural bodybuilder
and natural bodybuilding is big advocates generally speaking,
for the flexible dieting, if it fits your macros approach, you
know, like eat everything you want in the moderation.
Obviously prioritize healthy foods, but at the end of the day
(17:04):
it's all about the calorie. And you can totally change your
composition based off of that soul manipulation, which is
true. But I'm trying to take a deeper
approach to like overall health and well-being, obviously.
So from a caloric intake standpoint, the fact your weight
held stable, you know, as a feather in their hands, which
makes sense. But you're obviously seeing a
lot of other markers totally independent of just weight that
(17:28):
are very, very valuable. So I think the, the most
interesting one from this side. So yeah, I, I did 3200 calories
a day. I continue to exercise, you
know, I, I lift four to five days a week.
I was doing yoga once or twice aweek.
I averaged about 14,000 steps a day.
I'm a big Walker. And then the other big keynote
here is I don't drink. So you know that that's another
(17:49):
big difference between this and Super Size Me is it kind of came
out after the fact that he'd been drinking throughout.
I think the most interesting thing that blew my mind was #1
just the effect on my testosterone was profound.
And then #2 my visceral adipose fat increased.
Let me see. Let me make sure I get this
(18:09):
number exactly right. So I went from .2 lbs of
visceral adipose tissue to 1.12 lbs of visceral adipose tissue.
So that's a 5 1/2 X increase in 30 days, despite the fact that
my overall body fat on the DEXA went from 11.9% to 11.5%.
(18:32):
So I lost fat on total and basically I just sucked all into
my visceral fat, which was what'd your testosterone do?
Less testosterone went from let me pull up the exact numbers
here. Shoot, I don't have those
(18:55):
readily Give me two seconds. Let me log into my blood
testing, but it basically dropped my my free testosterone
dropped 30% and my total testosterone dropped 25%.
And I can pull up the exact numbers for you here in just one
moment. And what you're eating during
that 30 day span is pretty much what a standard American diet is
(19:18):
on a regular basis. More or less, yeah.
That, you know, fast food packaged foods.
And you're probably eating honestly.
I mean, 3200 calories is probably less than the average
individual that's eating out a lot at fast food places because
in 3200 calories and I was, I went through a drive through
today to get some ice. You know, that's not the only
(19:38):
thing I get in the drive through.
And I was looking at the, the menu and they've got the
calories there. And like a meal is typically
1700 calories at Sonic, for instance, and you throw like a
Slurpee on the side of that. I mean you're you're a 2000 plus
calories in one meal pretty quick.
Yeah, exactly, exactly that was the other thing is trying to
maintain 3200 calories while eating nutritionally empty
(20:03):
foods. Sucked, right?
There was a lot of nights I wentto bed hungry.
Yeah. So like, what was the typical
day of eating like? Were you just using various
popular fast food chains like all the McDonald's, Burger
Kings, Dairy Queens, all that jazz?
Yeah. So the for the first I'd say
week it was kind of, it wasn't very structured.
(20:25):
So it's just whatever was convenient, which I think is
like a, you know, fairly accurate representation how a
lot of people move through life.And then I was live like
blogging this. So I post, you know, Tik toks
about it every single day and post stories on my Instagram.
And so then folks suggested the idea of doing theme days.
And so then I did about 15 days worth of theme days.
(20:49):
And those were, you know, there's like a candy day, you
know, there's a dessert day, there was that health Halo day.
There's a protein bars day and so those varied between awful
and not as awful because, you know, protein bars days like
fine, you know, like I can get through eating protein bars for
(21:10):
a day, but candy day is just like they're you're it's it's
moments of like extraordinary amounts of energy, but like
throughout the day, you're it's it's mostly crash, right.
And we do like, like if you're doing like candy day, like
you're not getting really any protein in on that day, would
(21:32):
you like have a day that would involve more protein the
following day? Or I, I tried to do that, yes,
just just for my own sanity, right?
Like about, I tried not to structure like the, the days
that were effectively 100% carbs, you know, I tried not to
do two or three or those in a row just because that, that
actually made me nervous. Like you, you feel so bad at the
(21:54):
end of one of those days. But like the, the, the, the
worst day by far was those, those runner energy gels that I
mentioned. I've never tried those before.
And one of my friends dared me to do a day that I ate only
those energy gels. And that was the only theme day
that I gave up on just because that that was the day I was
(22:15):
driving. And I had to pull over.
And I was like, because I'd eaten, you know, four or five of
those. Then went on a walk around the
lake with a buddy of mine. We're walking and talking for an
hour and a half. And I had to get back in the car
and head back to the office. And I got so dizzy that I was
like, oh, I was like, not safe for me to be driving right now.
Like, I'm in a bad mood and dizzy.
And I pulled into a parking lot.And then I looked up and it
(22:38):
wasn't even the parking lot I thought I'd pulled into.
Like, I was just like, fully a block away from where I thought
I was. And I was like, OK, I'm going to
take a breather and go get some Taco Bell, you know, some real
food, so to speak. Man, we were in like a CGM
during that. Yeah, yeah.
So what was your like? What was the highest you saw
your blood sugar and what was the lowest you saw your blood
(22:59):
sugar? Oh gosh, I that was last summer.
I don't remember. I do remember that was the most
dramatic spike in my blood sugar.
I saw my blood sugar fall like 45 points or something around
there. Like, you know, I think I spiked
it here actually. Let me see if I can pull up my
CGM results. I remember what my averages.
(23:20):
I have my averages here, don't remember off the top of my pad
but I do have them give me two seconds.
I'm having you pull up testosterone and blood sugar.
Yeah. So my average glucose was 94
milligrams per deciliter. And I remember seeing my highest
glucose was something like 135. And then I would crash down to,
(23:45):
you know, low 80s a couple times.
So nothing too, too crazy. I mean, my my blood sugar woke
up to like 1:30 when I'm workingout and then it'll kind of drop
just 7080 or so post training. But yeah, just from eating the
gels. That's that's Wildman.
Yeah, but that, but that's kind of what I'm saying is that the
absolute numbers matter less than the.
(24:07):
Fluctuation of volatility. Exactly than the speed at which
your blood sugar is moving, right?
So when it's crashing hard, that's when you have those
hypoglycemic moments, yeah. So would you?
Would you use testosterone dude?That one.
All right, yeah, I just pulled that up.
So my free testosterone went from all right.
So May 23rd, 2024, my free T was180.9 and fell to 125.9 which is
(24:32):
a decrease of and that that was 125.9 on June 27th.
So that is like a month and three days apart is when I got
those results and it crashed 30.4% and then my total T give
me just one moment that went from 912 on May 23rd to 691 on
(24:57):
June 27th. So that's a decrease of 25%.
That's wow man, did you get likelipids drawn too?
Yeah, the lipids were shockinglystable.
The lipids let me find those. So which ones you want to look
at? Just for simplicity, what was
your like? Total cholesterol?
(25:19):
LDL just like the basic lipid. Panel, yeah, total cholesterol
LDL from May 23rd to June 27th went from 122 to 89 so that.
Yeah, what did? What did your trigs do?
Just a moment. So my triglycerides were almost
(25:41):
completely stable. Those went from 58 to 57.
Interesting. Yeah, this is, this is, this is
fascinating, man. Cause like a lot of people, like
I wouldn't want to do this experiment.
I wouldn't want to eat nothing but processed food for a month.
I will never do this again. Yeah, but it's interesting.
Did did your lean tissue on the last DEXA?
Did your lean tissue change much?
(26:02):
Let me pull that up do do do. So my lean mass went from 21.4
kilograms per meter squared to 22.1kg per meter squared.
So the layperson hearing this probably all right.
Weight stayed stable, lean mass increased.
(26:25):
Let's just eat nothing but processed food for a month and
I'm get jacked. Sure, but but also but also my
visual adipose tissue like. Significantly increased.
Significantly increased and it took me another probably nine
months to get back down to my ranges work.
That's the other learning here, right?
It's like you can screw yourselfup pretty quickly, but getting.
(26:50):
Yeah. So your weight stayed stable,
lipids stayed stable, testosterone cut drastically,
visceral fat increased dramatically.
And this is literally what we'reseeing play out in real time in
this standard American diet society population.
I mean, people are significantlyincreasing and visceral fats,
(27:11):
testosterone is falling off a Cliff and people don't feel
well, I would assume on average.I mean, obviously the high candy
day and the the gel day you didn't feel good at all.
But like just in average. Like was your digestion
constantly just jacked up? Your sleep quality hindered like
overall energy unstable. So overall energy was the most
unstable of them all. And again, like I tracked those
(27:35):
things, mood, energy focused stress three times a day, every
single day on a 7 point symmetrical Likert scale.
And you can see energy and mood and focus in particular dropped
like that. Stress is a little bit more high
variance, but like, you know, that's the nature of working at
a small start up. Is this their stressful days?
And I, I think that's hard to avoid.
But the trend in energy, mood and focus for that month were
really bad. And then the other thing is I
(27:56):
had a colleague who is keeping track of my mood from across my
office. And I didn't know that she was
doing this at the time, but she was taking notes on my mood.
So, you know, she she kept a journal and like, you know, the
first couple days, you know, spirits are very high, seem so
chill, really amped, chipper andhappy.
You know, that's the first five days.
And then by the end of it, it's everything got bad.
(28:18):
And the last day is he came intothe rood all caps or he came
into the room all caps radiatingbad energy.
Well, that's some unbiased feedback there.
It's good. Wow, man, this is super
interesting. So when you did all this, you
were using all different kinds of wearables, which is also
interesting because like everybody in this space is
(28:40):
constantly testing out differentwearables, looking at the pros
and cons, the US versus them. What did you find in using all
these different devices? Like which ones do you think are
awesome and would recommend and which ones like man, it's
totally bogus. Don't ever spend your money on
it. So I don't think any of them I
thought were bogus, right? I think so.
So the, the the devices I use were aura woop levels for the
(29:02):
continuous glucose monitor. So I was using a Dexcom G7 with
levels app. I was using throne to track
hydration and digestive patterns.
I was using a wise smart scale and a generic blood pressure
cuff. I think all of them have their
pros and cons, I think. And then on top of that, I was
using heavy to track every set and every Rep at the gym, Apple
(29:22):
Health to track my steps before WHOOP and Ora had released those
features. And then I was using a self
report like Google form to trackmood, energy, focused stress.
And then I did point in time tests on DEXA, blood tests
through function health and thentiny health microbiome analysis.
I think. So for me personally, I found
(29:43):
the WHOOP to be one of the most that there's a screen on Whoop
that I think is the best screen in all of consumer health today,
which is the what they call their recovery insights.
And so and they have the screen here that shows how different
activities impact your recovery score ranked from best, most
helpful to worst and like you know, the most negative impact
(30:06):
on your daily recovery. And then you can tap in and see
the details and see how you stack up compared to the WOOP
averages. I think that is an amazing
feature, right? And so that.
So it it's looking at what you're doing and its impact on
like HRVI would assume. Pretty much, yeah.
So recovery score is is a composite metric that WHOOP has
(30:27):
that is probably 80% of it is HRV.
But in factors in some other things like sleep and you know,
resting heart rate etcetera. But it's primarily HRV, but it
it looks at whatever activities you log, right.
So like sauna, consistent wait time, consistent bedtime, early
workouts, you know, if you use any recovery tools like ice
(30:50):
baths or like the Nordic compression things.
And then it, it also has some automated things like it, it
knows and now tracks your stress, right?
And so if you spend more than 6%of the day in a high stress zone
for me that that decreases my recovery the next day by 3%.
And so like, I think that is such a interesting way of
(31:15):
thinking about things. So basically just saying here
are all the different behaviors that you're logging and their
direct impact on your recovery over the last 90 days And like
what? Was the best the the best
activity to, you know, account for a lot of your recovery?
So for me over the last 90 days,it's been anytime I have an 81%
plus sleep performance that increases my recovery that next
(31:38):
day by 8%. And then the next one that
there's 2 below that, which are sauna and consistent wait time,
both increase my recovery by 3%.And like those are interesting
things, right? Like those are very actionable
interventions that I can incorporate into my real life.
I think that what we want to do with Throne is I want to do
exactly that for your diet, right?
(32:00):
Like what are the ingredients you're eating that and how do
those impact my gut health? That is, I think this is the
Holy Grail of how to present interventions and make it
actionable for people. I, I love this screen.
I think the counterpoint of this, you know, on the flip
side, you ask about things that are bogus.
I wouldn't say that microbiome is bogus, but just that I don't
(32:25):
think it's, we are at a point ofour understanding of the
microbiome to where it's super helpful today, right?
And, and by that I mean, there are obviously some gut microbes
that are good and obviously somethat are bad, right?
Like Acromancia is one that like, you know, pretty much
everyone in the microbiome spaceuniversally agrees that's the
good one. And then there are, you know, if
(32:46):
you have an overgrowth of C diff, if you have an overgrowth
of E coli, those are obviously bad.
Those can send you to the hospital and even kill you.
But for the most part, you know,there are thousands of unique
species of gut microbes and the,the whole gut microbiome is this
multivariate compensatory system.
And just because you don't have acromancia, like when I first
(33:07):
measured my gut microbiome, I had 0 acromancia.
But like, my gut health was perfectly fine going into that
experiment. And my read on that is not that,
oh, my gut microbe, my, my gut microbiome needs acromancia.
It's that I might be compensating for the lack of
acromancia with 15 other gut microbes all acting in Symphony
(33:29):
to achieve the same outcome. And we as humans love linear
relationships, right? More of this is good, less of
that is bad. We love being able to simplify
the levers, and the gut microbiome just doesn't work
that way. And so most of the gut
microbiome testing services willtest for your gut microbiome and
(33:52):
alpha diversity and then try andsimplify it and reduce it to
say, you know, you should eat more of this food to increase,
you know, your concentration of this bacteria.
And I think I, I have a nuanced view on this, which is that that
is probably an oversimplification in like 90%
of cases. But if the interventions that
(34:18):
you are recommending and pointing to that data to justify
are still healthy, and that's what gets someone to do that
thing, right. Like, you know, I've, I've
talked to nutritionists and dietitians who say, yeah, like,
I get that the science isn't quite there, but I still ask my
clients to do this test because it allows me to point to a, you
know, a higher authority and saythe science is saying this.
(34:39):
If that is compelling to people and helps convince them to take
healthy changes, then it's probably still worthwhile.
And so it's, it's a, you know, right answer for the wrong
reasons type thing. But, and so for me, I just
didn't find it as valuable. I think there are, you know,
other inflammatory markers in your gut that are obviously
super interesting, right? Like calprotectin and
(35:01):
lactoferrin. And like those both increased
for me doing that, you know, 30 day ultra processed food
experiment. Like I went from having 0
inflammatory markers in my colonto like significant inflammation
in my colon, not on the level oflike someone with inflammatory
bowel disease, but like, you know, much higher than not 0.
And so that, that's very interesting.
(35:22):
And I think those have more like, you know, real clinical
utility than the gut microbiome,which we are we can all agree is
important, but our understandingof it is just not at a point
today where I think it is usefulto drive interventions on that
justification. Yeah, I would agree regarding
(35:42):
the microbiome for sure. And it's so malleable.
I mean, like, like I haven't hada carbohydrates in over a
decade. You know, like I don't eat very
much vegetation. There's people that are doing
strict carnivore and eat 0 vegetation.
Their gut microbiome acclimates to what they're putting in.
And I feel like it's kind of like that Symphony you're
referring to where it compensates in other ways that
the end outcome is desirable. And it takes, I mean it takes
(36:04):
several weeks for like the gut microbiome to acclimate to any
massive shift in dietary intake.And a lot of that's not even in
the conversation when you go geta basic microbiome test done.
Exactly. And so I, I, I think from our
perspective, you know, we view the gut microbiome test, I think
(36:25):
our positioning is that throne is to a microbiome test, what
like whoop and aura are to a blood test, right.
So like with whoop and Aura, you're getting a daily look at
your HRV, your resting heart rate.
You can track your heart rate through exercise.
You can see your respiratory rate, you can see your sleep,
you get, you know, a dozen biomarkers that you see every
single day. So you can start tracking trends
(36:46):
and see how your body responds to different stimuli and inputs.
Just like that screen we were just looking at.
I think Throne is trying to do the same thing, right?
Like give you actionable daily insights based on your daily
patterns, routines, you know, diet and similar to whooping or
(37:10):
you get like a dozen biomarkers but for you know, 400 bucks for
the device for a lifetime as opposed to 3 to 500 bucks for a
one time test that gives you 120biomarkers.
The difference is for blood biomarkers, like, you know, you
were just rattling off a handfulof them and like, you know
exactly how those markers are supposed to move and when they
(37:32):
move, what that means, right? Like there's a lot of clinical
study and validation around blood biomarkers that just isn't
quite there yet for the microbiome.
Totally agree. I want to talk about poop but
before I forget, since you were testing your you were tracking
everything too strong. What did your training metrics
look like as far as you know, overall intensity and total
volume during that one month experiment?
(37:54):
Oh gosh, that I'm going to have to go pull up the app.
Give me two seconds. I would imagine your sleep would
be hindered, which would impact your your training, but here's
what the strong numbers show. Let.
Me follow up with you after thisbecause I can see my volume here
(38:15):
in the app at a glance for the last three months, but going to
find it for a specific month. I actually don't know how you do
that in the app. Anything just top top of your
head? Like, did it seem like your
training was impaired at all? So my rate of perceived exert,
my RP ES were definitely up towards the end for the same
amount of weight. And and I think that was just
(38:37):
the the biggest thing there weremy protein macros were
absolutely down from the start of the experiment just because
it it's hard to eat that much ultra processed protein, right?
Like you're, you're effectively stuck with, you know, hamburgers
and protein bars. And so to just eating that much
(39:01):
UPF protein, what was tough, especially when you're trying to
stay within the 3200 calorie range.
And so by the end of it I was pushing less wake and working
harder. Do you think I may be kind of
hard to measure? So I don't even know what you
would measure, but like with allthe ultra processed foods, you
get the argument of it all beingproduced with seed oils.
(39:22):
Do you feel like the massive increase in just seed oil
consumption had any tangible impact directly, or is it just
too too fuzzy to parse that down?
That's too fuzzy to say for me. I think the the the tricky thing
with ultra processed foods is that it's the kind of thing that
like kills you slowly, you know,like at the end of the day, it's
(39:45):
it's you know, the dose is in the poison and the dose makes
the poison, I guess is the phrase.
And most of UPF is still food inlike the strictest sense, even
though the long term implications are like obviously
net negative, right. But you can get by eating, you
(40:09):
know, like for travel, right? Like, I think everyone's had
that experience where you eat healthy, you know, most of the
time, but then you're traveling for a day or two and like.
It's just hard to eat healthy when you're traveling,
especially through airports. If you didn't plan ahead and
bring your own healthy snacks. And you're not going to die
(40:30):
eating airport food right like that.
That probably won't shave years off your life.
But if you ate that same food every single day for every
single meal, that probably would.
Founding effect, yeah. Are there any like ultra
processed fast foods that you consumed that were like
legitimately enjoyable? Like oh man, I've been missing
this. This is totally worth it.
(40:50):
And there are there any that youlike?
Man, I hope I never see that again in my life.
Krispy Kreme So I I I've had Krispy Kreme like 3 times in my
life. I, I had my last one when I was
probably 1213 years old, like, you know, ate a bunch of candy
for Halloween one night and thenwent had Krispy Kreme doughnuts
(41:11):
the next morning and then went and played soccer, like Little
League pee wee soccer and just got the sickest I'd ever been
after that. So then I swore off Krispy
Kremes until that that experiment last summer.
And you know, a bunch of my friends, like, you got to do a
Krispy Kreme day. So I ate 16 doughnuts and that
was my only nutritional value. And like, again, like I did not
poop right for two days. Like that had me in absolute
(41:33):
shambles. So I will never touch a Krispy
Kreme doughnut again with a gladheart.
Like, that's not something I'm ever going to miss.
The one that was surprising to me that I had never had Taco
Bell up until last summer. And I don't miss it.
But that was one that was like, and I think part of it too is
just the contrast of going from things like candy day and gas
(41:56):
station foods day to eating TacoBell, which is like, you know,
on the spectrum of, you know, completely nutritionally devoid
to like at least having real macros like that was a sweet
relief. You get that Dorito Crunch,
shell, whatever they call it. Yeah, Yeah, it's pretty good.
Yeah, and like there's, and that's the thing with ultra
(42:18):
processed foods too. Like some of it's just
objectively delicious, right? Like there's a reason they are
as popular as there are. It's not just 'cause they're
cheap, it's because they are they they hijack your brain.
They do indeed. They do indeed.
All right, let's talk about poop.
So in a perfect world, if someone's monitoring their poop,
they're getting all this data ona, you know, regular daily
(42:39):
basis, what is like the ideal output?
Like what is the scenario that would, you know, what were they
looking for? In a perfect world, if
everything's dialed in a nutrition zone point, their
absorption is good, their stressis down.
Like what would a perfect score and digestion and poop look
like? It depends on your diet.
So if you're eating super high vegetable, high fiber diet, then
(43:02):
you'd probably be looking at like two or three healthy bowel
movements a day. But if you're eating higher
protein, then it might be anywhere between 1:00 or like 1
every other day. Healthy, well formed bowel
movement, that'd be like a Bristol 3 or 4.
And both of those are totally fine, right?
Like at the end of the day, you just want to have consistent,
(43:24):
well formed, healthy poops that are and kind of the medical
literature says that anywhere from three a day to 1:00 every
three days can be healthy depending on the person.
What you don't want is to be having constipated poops where
you are having like high evacuative effort.
You know, you're sitting there and straining that that's really
(43:45):
bad for your kind of anal, rectal muscles and pelvic floor.
And then what you definitely don't want is to be having
consistent loose or liquid bowelmovements because that can that
that is often a sign of inflammation of your column.
And when you're using your device measuring all this stuff
actually before I even get that when you're doing this
(44:07):
experiment and just when you're in normal day-to-day nutrition,
you know, kind of doing your norm, what is what kind of
frequency are you seeing and what was the frequency like
during that experiment? Did it change much?
No, I was still having, you know, between 1:00 and 2:00 a
day, except for the days that I was like, you know, really
suffering. Then I had multiple in those
days. Spicy day.
(44:27):
Yeah. Spicy day and donut day.
Like, you know, we we've all been there.
That's that's almost like havinga colonoscopy prep, right?
Just like sandpaper and pain. But beyond that, no.
I was like, shockingly consistent.
What do you think like the like with your, with your mother, for
instance, getting all these pictures from people like what
(44:49):
is the common issue that people are having?
Like are they going too frequently?
They're not going enough? Like is there like a common
denominator that the masses are experiencing with regards to
frequency and their their stool presence like where they scorn?
Yeah, So great question. So roughly, depending on kind of
which paper you're looking at, roughly 30 to 40 million
(45:12):
Americans have irritable bowel syndrome.
And there's two dominating typesof IBSIBSC, which is the
constipated version. And then there's IBSD, the more
diuretic version. Chronic Constipation in IBSC is
one of the most prevalent, like,you know, bowel disorders that
(45:32):
there is, particularly as you get older, and it tends to
affect women more than men. You know, I think the numbers
are something like 15% of men and up to 20% of women have IBS
or IBS symptoms at some point intheir lives, you know,
(45:55):
shockingly prevalent. And, you know, kind of the the
prevailing wisdom is that part of the reason that chronic
Constipation is as common as it is, is because we as Americans
eat very low fiber diets. And probably not hydrated enough
either I would think. Yes, that's, well, that's the
(46:15):
other one is that, that's another feature of Throne that
I'm really excited about becauselike, to your point earlier, you
know, you mentioned your, your gut microbiome takes a few weeks
to change, right? Like changes in your gut happen,
you know, over the span of weeksand months, whereas changes in
your hydration happen over hoursand minutes.
And so everyone knows you're supposed to drink 8 glasses of
(46:35):
water a day, right? And like, you might even do it
for a day or two after you read the CNN article that comes out
every three months. But that's very different than
seeing real time results that say, hey you are dehydrated
right now, drink water. So how how is how is thrown
measuring hydration levels? So I just talked about thrown
specifically. So it's a it's a camera that
(46:58):
points towards the toilet bowl. That's exactly right.
And then it it I guess as soon as you go before you throwing
toilet paper in there, it's it'staken imagery like how does it
work? Give me the play ball play
there. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So basically it's a device that
clips onto the side of the toilet bowl.
And you, you nailed it. It's a camera that peers down
into the toilet bowl. We, we joke, you know, looking
down into the toilet, there's a treasure trove of valuable
(47:20):
health information. Looking up, there is nothing but
liability and trouble. So the camera is like, you know,
hard wired to only look down. You cannot flex it.
It doesn't look up ever. Just, you know, it's.
I cannot emphasize that point enough.
Probably good to emphasize that because people be like, come out
of the woodwork, oh man, this iswhatever.
Yeah, yeah, it's just is like, Iget it, it's sensitive, it's a
(47:42):
camera in your toilet, but also like it is for legitimate health
tracking purposes. And so then it takes video
actually. And so it has a camera and a
microphone. And the way it works is when you
go, it's taking that consistent video.
So we can actually track the kind of what we call like the
(48:04):
session timeline. So we know when you sat on the
toilet, how long or, or if you're standing, you know, like
when the session started it, it uses the motion sensor.
So I should show you here. So there's a motion sensor on
the top. So when you stand over the
toilet, if you stand to pee or when you go sit on the toilet,
it knows you're there. If you have your phone with you,
then it uses your Bluetooth to identify, identify you.
(48:24):
So it knows based on my Bluetooth.
This is Scott versus. This is Robert.
So you never have to like push abutton, start it, open the app
like it's all automatic. All automatic as long as you
have your phone with you. If you don't have your phone
with you, there are two buttons on the device so you can push a
button. So like if you go to the
bathroom at night and didn't want to bring your phone with
you, you still have a way of it,like, you know, starting the
(48:45):
recording so that it knows it's you.
So, you know, we pay yourself toone of the buttons.
But yeah, for the most part, thethe goal is for this to be
completely in the background, right?
Like, don't think about it. You just get results and it
starts recording and then you leave.
The motion sensor tells it, you know Robert has left.
It turns itself off and then it all gets processed in the cloud.
(49:07):
We have like 10 different computer vision models that are
looking at hydration, looking atstool consistency, looking at
the timeline and trying to understand, you know, how
because like even the distribution of evacuation
events, like particularly the time to your first evacuation,
how long from how Like if you are having a bowel movement from
the time you first sit down to the time you have your first
(49:28):
poop is a way of quantifying Constipation.
They're like right now people just don't have because you're
not sitting on the toilet with astopwatch.
Like we can track that information totally passively
for you. And then you track all that, the
trends over time for all those metrics.
So we're looking at stool frequency, stool consistency,
we're looking at strain, we're looking at hydration, we're
(49:49):
looking at urine flow dynamics, which is like, you know, the,
your urine flow curve. So the shape of the curve can
tell you about prostate health. The height of the curve, like
the Max flow rate can is like the number one metric for
prostate health. The average flow rate is also
valuable. We can also tell you how like
your urine volume. So you can integrate that curve
(50:11):
to understand exactly how much someone peed, which we can then
feedback that back into our hydration estimates to know is
our hydration estimate any good?Because if you had, you know, a
super short pee and didn't have that much volume, then our I,
then our estimates aren't going to be good because we had a
lower sample volume to estimate with.
But if you have like an average PE of like 300 to 400
milliliters, then we are much more accurate.
(50:32):
And so all that happens in the background and then you get a
push notification 5 minutes later once you've done all the
processing that says here's yourresults, here's the numbers, and
then you can start to see that all charted out over time.
And the like if you all tested the the volume estimations of
like urine to see like those arepretty accurate.
Yeah, like it's crazy. So that that we we use a science
(50:54):
they're called Sono Euroflowmetry.
And so basically the sound energy, like the, the acoustic
energy of the stream entering the water basin is mapped 1 to 1
to the urine flow rate. And so we have our own AI models
that we trained in our office with.
We, we made a robot to simulate P streams.
(51:17):
And so we just ran this thing for hundreds of hours of the
microphone. And so we know exactly the flow
rate in any given 2nd. And then we correlate that to
all the audio data that we're made that we're recording.
And then we're able to train ourown AI model based on our data
that we captured in the office. And that is like, shockingly
accurate. Like ±5%.
(51:40):
Like when I'm like in a competition prep, you know, I'm
manipulating my hydration levels, my sodium slightly, I'm
flushing excess fluid out, I'm targeting certain fat ratios to
maximize, you know, fluid retained in the muscle but not
in the subcutaneous layer of skin.
To be able to measure all of that excreted based off of the
inputs would be super insightful.
(52:03):
Yeah, I that's, that's a use case I hadn't even thought of.
Yeah, this is interesting, man. What about like, if you're
playing devil's advocate here, like what if you're, you know,
going and using multiple different bathrooms throughout
the course where they, like you're just kind of out of luck
if you don't have the device with you, I assume?
So you can still track the basics of your digestive
(52:25):
patterns. So stool frequency and
consistency, we have two ways todo that.
The number one is you can use a form and like a slidering scale
to say, you know, here's what mypoop looked like.
And then we obviously logged that, you know, at the same
time. So you still get the times that
you went and you know, the basics of your stool
consistency. You also have the ability to
take a picture if you want to. The challenge of that is you
(52:46):
have to take the picture after you go but before you wipe,
which is a bad user experience, right?
Like it's just awkward, like turn around shimmy, Like people
don't like that. But we do have the ability to do
that. But yeah, like tracking those
things the the more advanced metrics like hydration and, you
know, urine dynamics that requires having the device.
OK, gotcha. Gotcha.
(53:08):
This is super interesting, man. And I guess there's like no risk
of somebody blackmailing you viacaptured audio recordings of you
ripping on the toilet or anything, right?
No, no, that's all. Everything is encrypted in
motion and at rest. Nobody ever hears the audio
recordings like that. That is literally only processed
(53:28):
by the like audio model to extract the urine flow dynamics.
That's not something even our employees have access to.
And then the only people that will ever see your stool data.
So we de identify it so it can'tbe traced back to you.
But then anything that looks like what we call out of
distribution, right? So like, hey, like our models
(53:49):
haven't seen something like thisbefore.
We flag that and share that backto a gastroenterologist so that
you can label it for us and tellus here's what's happening in
this poop so that we can retrainthe AI to get smarter and
smarter. So by using Throne, you're also
contributing to the, you know, utility of it for everybody else
using Throne. Got you.
(54:10):
Have y'all got any like out of distribution imagery thus far in
the beta testing? That's like, man, what did this
guy eat? One of the most interesting ones
was there are some rare medical conditions that can cause your
pee to be blue and we got one ofthose and that was bubbled up to
us and like my Co founder flagged me over.
(54:30):
He was like that is crazy. Have you ever seen that?
We like started Googling it, youknow ChatGPT.
Like what could cause this? Wow, that's weird I didn't know
about that. So what from a y'all going to
launch next year? Early next year, you said?
Yeah, January 2026. So what you mean like the the
business side of things like what have y'all been doing
marketing wise? Like what's been the roadblocks
and this is this is exciting. Man, I appreciate that.
(54:52):
So also I I got to run here in acouple minutes.
I'm meeting a physician for trying to kick off a research
project with her, but real, realquick to answer that.
So the business side of things have been awesome.
We haven't spent a dime on marketing yet.
We've pre sold about 300 devices, have more than 5000
people on an e-mail list that have, you know, expressed
interest in this. We've had a couple of posts go
(55:14):
viral on Twitter. We have had some amazing people
reach out to us cold. So probably the most notable is
John Capital. Lupo is my third Co founder or
the the third Co founder. He's my second, my second Co
founder, but he was previously Co founder and CTO of WOOP and
(55:35):
was there for over a decade, left WOOP and joined us as an
Angel investor and then ended upjoining us as our third Co
founder because he is so passionate about personal health
tracking. He also has the worst form of
ulcerative colitis that you can have called pan colitis.
And he's also, you know, very involved with the National
Crohn's Colitis Foundation as a advocate for people with his
(55:56):
disease. So he's just like the most
incredible triangulation of someone with the deep
professional experience and expertise combined with
personal, you know, empathy for our patients and our customers.
That's like, that's incredible, right?
Like, I would like never have guessed in a million years that
someone like him, I get to work with every single day.
(56:19):
And like, it's, it's really special.
You know, we had, we've had somelike one of the most followed
doctors on the Internet, a gentleman named Doctor Karen
Rajans, the most followed gastroenterologist has like
11,000,000 followers. He reached out to us or he
recently joined as an advisor. Like it's it's clear to me that
like this is an idea whose time has come and the world has said,
(56:41):
you know, we're ready for this. Like this was never going to be
the first health tracker, right?Like, I think there needed to be
two generations of wearables, like, you know, the first word,
Fitbit and Garmin and Apple Watch.
And then you had whoop and aura and like there had to be those
20 years of education to get people excited and ready for
(57:02):
something like this. But now, you know, it's actually
totally viable and people see this and you know, there's kind
of one or two reactions. The first is where's this been
all my life? I totally get this.
I need this yesterday. And then the other reaction is
like a camera in my toilet. Like you got to be kidding me.
And we talked about it for 5 minutes and they're like, wait a
second. I, I kind of get this because
(57:23):
the, the thing we haven't talkedabout is like the ultimate
vision here is not just to improve health with daily health
tracking. Like our ultimate goal is to
save lives by building what we call the smoke detector for
colon cancer. And that's, you know, the second
deadliest form of cancer in the United States behind lung
cancer. It's effectively random, unlike
lung cancer. You know, 88% of lung cancer is
correlated with smoking. Roughly 85% of colon cancer is
(57:46):
random. That and it doesn't have, you
know, a a genetic predisposition.
And this kind of goes back to the foods, right?
Like we're the, we are the firstgeneration of people to eat
ulcer processed foods from birth.
And, you know, colon cancer is on the rise, particularly in
young people. Like there's strong correlation
there. And so, and the earliest sign of
(58:08):
colon cancer is what's called fecal occult blood.
So that's blood in your stool that you can't see with the
naked eye. And not this version that we're
launching in January, but futureversions of Throne.
We, we are working on being ableto find that microscopic blood
and raise a flag to you before it becomes clinically
symptomatic. And you would, you know, have to
go to the hospital. And if we can do that, we'll
(58:30):
save lives. That's super cool, man.
I mean, to me it's exciting. Like I can see where people
would be like, OK, we got a camera that's, well, that's kind
of weird. But like we're weird people.
We do things. But like when you distilled down
to its simple essence, it's likepeople are all about tracking
macros, figuring out all their steps, all that stuff.
It's like that's an input, and you can't really know the impact
(58:50):
of the input without knowing theoutput.
So like to me, it makes perfect sense.
It just completes the circle. Yeah, that's exactly right.
So I'm excited for you, man. Where do people go to find out
more? And they get a hard stop.
But I want to give you a chance to let people know where to find
out more and dig deeper. Robert, thank you so much, man.
It's throne science.com is our website and you can find us on
all social medias Instagram X just at Throne Science.
(59:13):
Awesome, man. When when it's ready to run,
I'll buy one. We'll put it in my tool and
we'll see what my macro adjustments impact there.
Heck yeah, man. Thank you so much for having me,
Robert. This is a blast.
Appreciate this guy. Keep killing it man.
Cheers. Take care.
We had a whole bunch of gastroenterologist label
thousands of pictures of poop for us so that our BS classifier
model is as accurate as a gastroenterologist now.
One of the things I love is justbeing able to correlate your
diet to your digestive pattern. When I eat XY and Z ingredients,
I am 80% more likely to have a loose or liquid bowel movement.
(00:21):
That probably means that's a trigger or sensitivity.
What happens if you eat 100% of your calories from ultra
processed food? My visceral adipose fat
increased. I went from .2 lbs of visceral
adipose tissue to 1.12 lbs of visceral adipose tissue.
So that's a 5 1/2 X increase in 30 days.
(00:42):
The most interesting was I tanked my testosterone 30% in 30
days. And we are live, Scott.
How are you, brother? I'm great.
How are you, Robert? I'm good man.
Life is good, life is good. You and I get connected to a
mutual friend and I'm excited tochat with you man.
You're kind of like taking the biohacking world to another
level, man. You know, I, I don't know that I
would take it that far, but we're going somewhere that no
(01:04):
one's gone before. That is very true.
So like we're definitely in the day and age of wearables and you
know, I've got a garment watch on right now.
I had an aura ring before I lostit.
Everybody's got a whoop strap and you've got the whoop for
your poop man. So let's let's, let's dive into
this, which makes sense because like you think about it, that's
one of the most telling signs of, you know, gut microbiome,
(01:24):
health, digestion, hydration. But like I don't know of anybody
else really diving into that to the extent that you have.
That's exactly the goal. You know, there's, it's kind of
what we joke. The toilet bowl is the only
white space left. This is true man.
So I want to hear all the nuts and bolts of your device, but
what even gets you into this space beginning?
Give me some back story. All right, so for context, my
(01:49):
one of my now Co founders pitched me this idea the first
time we ever met. We were sitting around a poker
table back in 2021. He had moved to Austin as part
of the kind of the COVID diaspora.
San Francisco was not the place to be back then.
So he found his way to Austin and we're sitting around a poker
table talking about startup ideas you'd love to start but
wouldn't want your name associated with.
(02:10):
So everyone's pitching sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, vice
industry type stuff. And Tim was like, you're all
idiots. Smart toilets is clearly the way
of the future. And his idea back then was just
a toilet seat that weighed you before and after you took a dump
and just gave you kind of that vanity metric.
You know, how how big was your poop?
And we all laughed at it. You know, I thought that was
(02:30):
funny. And I was like, dude, and you
know, clearly the way you would take that to market is you.
You name that one throne, put a leader born on it, and sell it
into frat houses. And.
And exactly. So we we giggled at it, thought
it was fun. And then just the idea thrown
was like a brain worm That, you know, was a recurring theme of
our friendship. We talked about that for years
(02:52):
afterwards. And then it was, you know, back
in 2023, Tim and I decided we wanted to go start a company
together. We both come from healthcare
families. So Tim's mom and three of his
sisters are all nurses. Both my parents are physicians.
My mom's a geriatrician, my dad's a medical device inventor.
And so we're looking around for ideas.
And I called my mom and I was like, hey, mom, is there any
(03:13):
medical utility to looking at people's waste?
You know, I knew nothing back then.
And she, like, got so excited. She was like, Scott, like, all
my patients care about, right? Like people age 65 plus, She was
like, all they care about is their kids, their meds and their
poop. That's all they talk about.
And, you know, as you age, your gut motility starts to slow
(03:35):
down. You know, typically you're
retired, so you have a lot more time on your hands.
You start to notice these changes and like it's gotten to
the point where I had to stop giving my patients my cell phone
number because they would send me so many pictures of their
poop all times a day. And that's when Tim and I looked
at each other. We were like, whoa, that's
(03:55):
actually really interesting, right?
Because there's, there's a couple learnings in there,
right? And the number one is people
intuitively understand that there's health information in
your waist. If they're sending this to their
doctor and #2 it's a big enough problem that it fundamentally
change the way that she communicates with her patients
because she had to stop giving away her phone number, right?
Like, that was really interesting to us.
(04:17):
And then all this coincided with, you know, that that was
kind of the the early days of widespread AI.
But there's a whole conversationback then about how radiology
was going to be one of the firstmedical professions to be, you
know, maybe not automated by AI,but, you know, if at at very
least augmented by AI because computer vision is so good at
(04:37):
image analysis. And we're like, well, what?
We took those same principles and put them in the toilet.
You know what? People go for that.
And, you know, rest is history. Here we are.
So you all launched officially in 23?
No. So that's when we started
working on the product. We launched in January 26.
We're still marching towards launch.
(04:58):
We've distributed a bunch of beta prototypes.
You know we have. Yeah, we we've been through
several generations of prototypes.
I can show you another one over here, but the actual product
we're launching is this one and this doesn't come out until
January. Nice.
OK, so let's get into the nuts and bolts here.
So absolutely, a lot of people are familiar with the Bristol
Stool Charm. I think you'll use that as like
(05:18):
the primary reference that it's measuring against, right?
That's exactly right and. It's, it's interesting man,
because like I'm a nutrition coach, but I get questions day
and night. I don't, I don't get a couple, a
lot of pictures of poop, but I get questions all the time about
poop. And it makes perfect sense.
Like if your hydration's out of whack depending on what foods
you're eating, like it's a pretty telltale sign as to how
(05:40):
your body's responding to the foods and fluids you're
consuming. So it makes sense to measure it.
And also to like you, you can have your macros down, then you
have your calories on point. But if your body's not absorbing
that nutrition and you're basingall of your adjustments and
manipulations off of what you'reconsuming, but you're not
getting full absorption, it's not right on the whole picture
(06:01):
either. But if you're looking at both
ends of the spectrum literally, then you've got a much better
idea of what needs to be manipulated.
So how are people like what? What's the use case scenario?
How do you recommend people go about it?
Like what are they finding from it?
Like just kind of give me the play by play, OK.
So there are so many different use cases.
So we, we measure stool consistency.
So that's bristle stool scale, like you mentioned stool
(06:22):
frequency, the combination of those two things, you know how
often you're going and then the consistency of your stool.
We call that your digestive pattern.
And so one of the use cases thatI love is correlating your diet
to digestive pattern, right? And that's something like
dietitians, nutritionists, health coaches work with a lot
of clients and they'll ask them manually, like keep a food log,
keep a stool log, particularly people with like IBS who are
(06:45):
just trying to figure out like, what are my food sensitivities?
What are my trigger foods and the challenge there is people
hey like food logging stuff hardenough as it is.
Then you layer like keeping a journal of your poop on top of
that and like having to keep track of the Bristol stool chart
on that right. Like the Bristol stool chart is
(07:06):
the the reference that most people have is like a watercolor
rubric. It is like, you know, it's
scientific, but like very hand WAVY science.
And so we had a, we had a whole bunch of, you know, I say a
whole bunch, but like several gastroenterologists label
thousands of pictures of poop for us so that our BSS
classifier model is as accurate as a gastroenterologist now.
(07:30):
And that is a lot better than the average person who hasn't,
you know, not spent a career studying different types of
poop, right. And so one of the things I love
is just being able to correlate your diet to your digestive
pattern and be able to see, OK, you know, when I eat XY and Z
ingredients, I am 80% more likely to have a loose or liquid
bowel movement. That probably means that's a
(07:52):
trigger or sensitivity. Whereas like, you know, IJ and K
ingredients are associated with healthy bowel movements, right?
Like I should up my psyllium husk because that's one like,
fairly straightforward application, a surprising one
for me. You mentioned aura ring.
I, I wore an aura ring last yearbefore I jumped over a whoop.
(08:13):
And when I was wearing the aura ring, I found that the biggest
driver of my personal gut healthwasn't my diet.
I did a whole experiment for a month last summer where I ate
100% of my calories from ultra processed foods.
And we, we can talk about that later, but I was shocked at how
resilient my gut health was throughout that whole process.
(08:36):
But the thing that throws my guthealth off immediately is
stress. And so on days when my O-ring
was yelling at me right, like you were in the high stress zone
all day, like it showed up in mydigestive pattern, like more
loose, more liquid, higher frequency bowel movements.
And that makes sense. That makes sense.
I mean, from like from a metabolic standpoint, you know,
(08:58):
like when I'm thinking of clients that I know are under a
high stress environment and they're hitting the macros that
I'm prescribing them, but they're obviously not getting
any absorption of that food and it's affecting their
performance. Like that all goes hand in hand.
So that's that. It makes total sense, but like
being able to map it out and correlate it is pretty genius.
It was a totally unexpected result for me to see how much my
(09:22):
stress drove my gut health and the kind of the two kind of
anecdotes that painted that picture so clearly.
We're #1 like we had a teammate leave the team, you know, early
last year. And when you're a team of like 4
people, losing 1/4 of the team is incredibly stressful.
And like that just threw my gut out of whack for a week.
(09:45):
And then when I started fundraising late last year, like
you can see in my digestive pattern, it's like blue bar
across the screen, which is likea, you know, it's perfect
health, right? Like, you know, one healthy
bowel movement every single day.And then as soon as I started
fundraising, it's like all over the place.
And then I closed the fundraise and immediately got sick.
(10:06):
And then after I recovered, backto good.
Interesting. All right.
So you, you alluded to we're just going to talk about your
gut health because you're kind of like a Guinea pig to all the
device you're building. I'm assuming you know pounds of
data. You mentioned the highly ultra
process that what was that experiment and what did that
show from a data standpoint? Yeah.
So the idea behind this was whathappens if you eat 100% of your
(10:31):
calories from ultra processed foods, because I typically eat a
pretty healthy Whole Foods, balanced macros, you know, good
diet. And I got really into using all
these different health trackers last year just so I could
understand kind of what is the state-of-the-art as we're
building our own app. And so we had thrown like an
(10:55):
early prototype of throne back then, but I was also using Woop
and aura at the same time. And, you know, smart scales and
I was doing DEXA scans regularlyand I, I tried function, the
blood testing company. So the idea was like, first of
all, like it was kind of inspired by super size me,
right? Like, but the, the the
difference was a, there are so many more consumer tools trap
(11:20):
for health tracking available atour disposal today than there
were for Morgan Spurlock doing super size me 20 years ago,
right? Like we, we live in kind of the
golden age of personal health tracking.
It's awesome. And so my idea was instead of
eating McDonald's every single day and, and you know, he
structured it so that he was eating basically until he was
(11:44):
full, right. So like, you know, several
thousand more calories than he needed to every single day,
whereas mine was, I'm going to maintain a strict calorie goal
of 3000 calories And I, I targeted that so that my weight
wouldn't change. And So what happens if I keep my
(12:04):
caloric intake the same? My macros are, you know, a
little bit of all over the boardbecause I'm doing like what I
call theme days, right? So like there's one day I ate
only Krispy Kreme doughnuts. There was another day I ate
only, you know, health Halo foods are the things that are
marketed as healthy. But then you start reading the
back of the package and it's like clearly not.
And so the idea was what happensif I eat 100% of my calories
(12:26):
from ultra processed foods and track all of that?
What happens to all of my different biomarkers that you
can track, right? So I did blood tests before and
after. I did microbiome test before and
after. I recorded my mood, energy,
focus, and stress three times a day, every single day on a 7
point Likert scale. I recorded my blood pressure 3
times a day. When I was doing that, I wore
all these different health trackers tracking my sleep.
(12:48):
I'd I wore CGM so I could track my blood glucose and the
outcomes of that were pretty amazing.
So the the first was my gut health was way more resilient
than I expected it to be. The only days that really threw
my gut out of whack were donut day.
You know, I didn't poop right for two days after that.
And then spicy foods day was theclosest I've ever come to having
(13:12):
an emergency in public like thatwas, you know, truly just those
two days were awful. But for the most part I was
pretty healthy gut health wise. The biggest changes that I
observed were the 1st is my glucose levels didn't impact my
(13:32):
mood and energy so much is the change in my glucose.
So my glucose was spiking when Iwas like, you know, in the
middle of that uphill journey. I felt.
Invincible what? On doughnut day, probably.
Exactly. Yeah, On doughnut day, like when
your blood glucose is like on the rise, you feel amazing,
right, Which is like why runnershave those, like, sugar gels to
(13:54):
keep them going. But when my glucose was
crashing, it like I was impossible to be around.
I hated myself, you know, like it really did it.
Like it was dark. Like, I just remember, like, you
know, there was one day I was driving and just like, Oh my
God, like I had to pull over. Just like I was in such a bad
(14:16):
mood and like getting dizzy, youknow.
And so I think that was the other thing is because I was
eating so much trashy food and so much sugar for the course of
a month. By the end of it, I was just
like very sensitive and grouchy,particularly to my blood
glucose. And when I stopped the
(14:36):
experiment and started eating healthy again, like the time I
spent spiking was cut in half every single like just
immediately so that the time I spent in the high spike zone.
But the, the crazy part was my average glucose throughout the
day was completely unchanged throughout the entire
experiment, right? And so the, one of the things
that taught me is like, that's the value of continuous health
(14:57):
monitoring. Because if I had only looked at
like my A1C, which is like the trailing indicator of your blood
glucose, that I would not have noticed any of these
differences. It really was that instantaneous
monitoring. It was the, the ability to see,
you know, the levels day-to-day,minute to minute that were
(15:17):
really important for me. And so, you know, I, I think
about the, the parallels for like what we're doing at throne,
being able to see your digestivepatterns and correlate that to
your inputs is far more valuablethan taking a point in time
test, you know, one time or maybe once a year and trying to
make inferences based on that. I think some of the other really
(15:40):
interesting learnings were how much my sleep was affected by
this and then the actually I forget the most interesting was
I tanked my testosterone 30% in 30 days.
Let me get a couple clarifiers. So you did 3000 calories as a
standard and prior to this you were following your mixed diet
(16:02):
of generally accepted as healthyfoods, you know, Whole Foods,
single ingredient, nutrient dense foods.
And you did this experiment maintaining 3000 calories with
nothing but processed foods. How long was the experiment?
You said a month it. Was exactly 30 days.
OK. And in that span, your weight
(16:22):
stayed stable. Yeah, weight stayed stable.
Let me pull up the exact numbershere.
So my weight kind of went up anddown between 186 and 189.
So stable. Pretty stable, yeah.
(16:42):
And you're, yeah, this is super interesting man, because I'm all
about experimentation. So many people in the evidence
based community are like harpingbecause I'm natural bodybuilder
and natural bodybuilding is big advocates generally speaking,
for the flexible dieting, if it fits your macros approach, you
know, like eat everything you want in the moderation.
Obviously prioritize healthy foods, but at the end of the day
(17:04):
it's all about the calorie. And you can totally change your
composition based off of that soul manipulation, which is
true. But I'm trying to take a deeper
approach to like overall health and well-being, obviously.
So from a caloric intake standpoint, the fact your weight
held stable, you know, as a feather in their hands, which
makes sense. But you're obviously seeing a
lot of other markers totally independent of just weight that
(17:28):
are very, very valuable. So I think the, the most
interesting one from this side. So yeah, I, I did 3200 calories
a day. I continue to exercise, you
know, I, I lift four to five days a week.
I was doing yoga once or twice aweek.
I averaged about 14,000 steps a day.
I'm a big Walker. And then the other big keynote
here is I don't drink. So you know that that's another
(17:49):
big difference between this and Super Size Me is it kind of came
out after the fact that he'd been drinking throughout.
I think the most interesting thing that blew my mind was #1
just the effect on my testosterone was profound.
And then #2 my visceral adipose fat increased.
Let me see. Let me make sure I get this
(18:09):
number exactly right. So I went from .2 lbs of
visceral adipose tissue to 1.12 lbs of visceral adipose tissue.
So that's a 5 1/2 X increase in 30 days, despite the fact that
my overall body fat on the DEXA went from 11.9% to 11.5%.
(18:32):
So I lost fat on total and basically I just sucked all into
my visceral fat, which was what'd your testosterone do?
Less testosterone went from let me pull up the exact numbers
here. Shoot, I don't have those
(18:55):
readily Give me two seconds. Let me log into my blood
testing, but it basically dropped my my free testosterone
dropped 30% and my total testosterone dropped 25%.
And I can pull up the exact numbers for you here in just one
moment. And what you're eating during
that 30 day span is pretty much what a standard American diet is
(19:18):
on a regular basis. More or less, yeah.
That, you know, fast food packaged foods.
And you're probably eating honestly.
I mean, 3200 calories is probably less than the average
individual that's eating out a lot at fast food places because
in 3200 calories and I was, I went through a drive through
today to get some ice. You know, that's not the only
(19:38):
thing I get in the drive through.
And I was looking at the, the menu and they've got the
calories there. And like a meal is typically
1700 calories at Sonic, for instance, and you throw like a
Slurpee on the side of that. I mean you're you're a 2000 plus
calories in one meal pretty quick.
Yeah, exactly, exactly that was the other thing is trying to
maintain 3200 calories while eating nutritionally empty
(20:03):
foods. Sucked, right?
There was a lot of nights I wentto bed hungry.
Yeah. So like, what was the typical
day of eating like? Were you just using various
popular fast food chains like all the McDonald's, Burger
Kings, Dairy Queens, all that jazz?
Yeah. So the for the first I'd say
week it was kind of, it wasn't very structured.
(20:25):
So it's just whatever was convenient, which I think is
like a, you know, fairly accurate representation how a
lot of people move through life.And then I was live like
blogging this. So I post, you know, Tik toks
about it every single day and post stories on my Instagram.
And so then folks suggested the idea of doing theme days.
And so then I did about 15 days worth of theme days.
(20:49):
And those were, you know, there's like a candy day, you
know, there's a dessert day, there was that health Halo day.
There's a protein bars day and so those varied between awful
and not as awful because, you know, protein bars days like
fine, you know, like I can get through eating protein bars for
(21:10):
a day, but candy day is just like they're you're it's it's
moments of like extraordinary amounts of energy, but like
throughout the day, you're it's it's mostly crash, right.
And we do like, like if you're doing like candy day, like
you're not getting really any protein in on that day, would
(21:32):
you like have a day that would involve more protein the
following day? Or I, I tried to do that, yes,
just just for my own sanity, right?
Like about, I tried not to structure like the, the days
that were effectively 100% carbs, you know, I tried not to
do two or three or those in a row just because that, that
actually made me nervous. Like you, you feel so bad at the
(21:54):
end of one of those days. But like the, the, the, the
worst day by far was those, those runner energy gels that I
mentioned. I've never tried those before.
And one of my friends dared me to do a day that I ate only
those energy gels. And that was the only theme day
that I gave up on just because that that was the day I was
(22:15):
driving. And I had to pull over.
And I was like, because I'd eaten, you know, four or five of
those. Then went on a walk around the
lake with a buddy of mine. We're walking and talking for an
hour and a half. And I had to get back in the car
and head back to the office. And I got so dizzy that I was
like, oh, I was like, not safe for me to be driving right now.
Like, I'm in a bad mood and dizzy.
And I pulled into a parking lot.And then I looked up and it
(22:38):
wasn't even the parking lot I thought I'd pulled into.
Like, I was just like, fully a block away from where I thought
I was. And I was like, OK, I'm going to
take a breather and go get some Taco Bell, you know, some real
food, so to speak. Man, we were in like a CGM
during that. Yeah, yeah.
So what was your like? What was the highest you saw
your blood sugar and what was the lowest you saw your blood
(22:59):
sugar? Oh gosh, I that was last summer.
I don't remember. I do remember that was the most
dramatic spike in my blood sugar.
I saw my blood sugar fall like 45 points or something around
there. Like, you know, I think I spiked
it here actually. Let me see if I can pull up my
CGM results. I remember what my averages.
(23:20):
I have my averages here, don't remember off the top of my pad
but I do have them give me two seconds.
I'm having you pull up testosterone and blood sugar.
Yeah. So my average glucose was 94
milligrams per deciliter. And I remember seeing my highest
glucose was something like 135. And then I would crash down to,
(23:45):
you know, low 80s a couple times.
So nothing too, too crazy. I mean, my my blood sugar woke
up to like 1:30 when I'm workingout and then it'll kind of drop
just 7080 or so post training. But yeah, just from eating the
gels. That's that's Wildman.
Yeah, but that, but that's kind of what I'm saying is that the
absolute numbers matter less than the.
(24:07):
Fluctuation of volatility. Exactly than the speed at which
your blood sugar is moving, right?
So when it's crashing hard, that's when you have those
hypoglycemic moments, yeah. So would you?
Would you use testosterone dude?That one.
All right, yeah, I just pulled that up.
So my free testosterone went from all right.
So May 23rd, 2024, my free T was180.9 and fell to 125.9 which is
(24:32):
a decrease of and that that was 125.9 on June 27th.
So that is like a month and three days apart is when I got
those results and it crashed 30.4% and then my total T give
me just one moment that went from 912 on May 23rd to 691 on
(24:57):
June 27th. So that's a decrease of 25%.
That's wow man, did you get likelipids drawn too?
Yeah, the lipids were shockinglystable.
The lipids let me find those. So which ones you want to look
at? Just for simplicity, what was
your like? Total cholesterol?
(25:19):
LDL just like the basic lipid. Panel, yeah, total cholesterol
LDL from May 23rd to June 27th went from 122 to 89 so that.
Yeah, what did? What did your trigs do?
Just a moment. So my triglycerides were almost
(25:41):
completely stable. Those went from 58 to 57.
Interesting. Yeah, this is, this is, this is
fascinating, man. Cause like a lot of people, like
I wouldn't want to do this experiment.
I wouldn't want to eat nothing but processed food for a month.
I will never do this again. Yeah, but it's interesting.
Did did your lean tissue on the last DEXA?
Did your lean tissue change much?
(26:02):
Let me pull that up do do do. So my lean mass went from 21.4
kilograms per meter squared to 22.1kg per meter squared.
So the layperson hearing this probably all right.
Weight stayed stable, lean mass increased.
(26:25):
Let's just eat nothing but processed food for a month and
I'm get jacked. Sure, but but also but also my
visual adipose tissue like. Significantly increased.
Significantly increased and it took me another probably nine
months to get back down to my ranges work.
That's the other learning here, right?
It's like you can screw yourselfup pretty quickly, but getting.
(26:50):
Yeah. So your weight stayed stable,
lipids stayed stable, testosterone cut drastically,
visceral fat increased dramatically.
And this is literally what we'reseeing play out in real time in
this standard American diet society population.
I mean, people are significantlyincreasing and visceral fats,
(27:11):
testosterone is falling off a Cliff and people don't feel
well, I would assume on average.I mean, obviously the high candy
day and the the gel day you didn't feel good at all.
But like just in average. Like was your digestion
constantly just jacked up? Your sleep quality hindered like
overall energy unstable. So overall energy was the most
unstable of them all. And again, like I tracked those
(27:35):
things, mood, energy focused stress three times a day, every
single day on a 7 point symmetrical Likert scale.
And you can see energy and mood and focus in particular dropped
like that. Stress is a little bit more high
variance, but like, you know, that's the nature of working at
a small start up. Is this their stressful days?
And I, I think that's hard to avoid.
But the trend in energy, mood and focus for that month were
really bad. And then the other thing is I
(27:56):
had a colleague who is keeping track of my mood from across my
office. And I didn't know that she was
doing this at the time, but she was taking notes on my mood.
So, you know, she she kept a journal and like, you know, the
first couple days, you know, spirits are very high, seem so
chill, really amped, chipper andhappy.
You know, that's the first five days.
And then by the end of it, it's everything got bad.
(28:18):
And the last day is he came intothe rood all caps or he came
into the room all caps radiatingbad energy.
Well, that's some unbiased feedback there.
It's good. Wow, man, this is super
interesting. So when you did all this, you
were using all different kinds of wearables, which is also
interesting because like everybody in this space is
(28:40):
constantly testing out differentwearables, looking at the pros
and cons, the US versus them. What did you find in using all
these different devices? Like which ones do you think are
awesome and would recommend and which ones like man, it's
totally bogus. Don't ever spend your money on
it. So I don't think any of them I
thought were bogus, right? I think so.
So the, the the devices I use were aura woop levels for the
(29:02):
continuous glucose monitor. So I was using a Dexcom G7 with
levels app. I was using throne to track
hydration and digestive patterns.
I was using a wise smart scale and a generic blood pressure
cuff. I think all of them have their
pros and cons, I think. And then on top of that, I was
using heavy to track every set and every Rep at the gym, Apple
(29:22):
Health to track my steps before WHOOP and Ora had released those
features. And then I was using a self
report like Google form to trackmood, energy, focused stress.
And then I did point in time tests on DEXA, blood tests
through function health and thentiny health microbiome analysis.
I think. So for me personally, I found
(29:43):
the WHOOP to be one of the most that there's a screen on Whoop
that I think is the best screen in all of consumer health today,
which is the what they call their recovery insights.
And so and they have the screen here that shows how different
activities impact your recovery score ranked from best, most
helpful to worst and like you know, the most negative impact
(30:06):
on your daily recovery. And then you can tap in and see
the details and see how you stack up compared to the WOOP
averages. I think that is an amazing
feature, right? And so that.
So it it's looking at what you're doing and its impact on
like HRVI would assume. Pretty much, yeah.
So recovery score is is a composite metric that WHOOP has
(30:27):
that is probably 80% of it is HRV.
But in factors in some other things like sleep and you know,
resting heart rate etcetera. But it's primarily HRV, but it
it looks at whatever activities you log, right.
So like sauna, consistent wait time, consistent bedtime, early
workouts, you know, if you use any recovery tools like ice
(30:50):
baths or like the Nordic compression things.
And then it, it also has some automated things like it, it
knows and now tracks your stress, right?
And so if you spend more than 6%of the day in a high stress zone
for me that that decreases my recovery the next day by 3%.
And so like, I think that is such a interesting way of
(31:15):
thinking about things. So basically just saying here
are all the different behaviors that you're logging and their
direct impact on your recovery over the last 90 days And like
what? Was the best the the best
activity to, you know, account for a lot of your recovery?
So for me over the last 90 days,it's been anytime I have an 81%
plus sleep performance that increases my recovery that next
(31:38):
day by 8%. And then the next one that
there's 2 below that, which are sauna and consistent wait time,
both increase my recovery by 3%.And like those are interesting
things, right? Like those are very actionable
interventions that I can incorporate into my real life.
I think that what we want to do with Throne is I want to do
exactly that for your diet, right?
(32:00):
Like what are the ingredients you're eating that and how do
those impact my gut health? That is, I think this is the
Holy Grail of how to present interventions and make it
actionable for people. I, I love this screen.
I think the counterpoint of this, you know, on the flip
side, you ask about things that are bogus.
I wouldn't say that microbiome is bogus, but just that I don't
(32:25):
think it's, we are at a point ofour understanding of the
microbiome to where it's super helpful today, right?
And, and by that I mean, there are obviously some gut microbes
that are good and obviously somethat are bad, right?
Like Acromancia is one that like, you know, pretty much
everyone in the microbiome spaceuniversally agrees that's the
good one. And then there are, you know, if
(32:46):
you have an overgrowth of C diff, if you have an overgrowth
of E coli, those are obviously bad.
Those can send you to the hospital and even kill you.
But for the most part, you know,there are thousands of unique
species of gut microbes and the,the whole gut microbiome is this
multivariate compensatory system.
And just because you don't have acromancia, like when I first
(33:07):
measured my gut microbiome, I had 0 acromancia.
But like, my gut health was perfectly fine going into that
experiment. And my read on that is not that,
oh, my gut microbe, my, my gut microbiome needs acromancia.
It's that I might be compensating for the lack of
acromancia with 15 other gut microbes all acting in Symphony
(33:29):
to achieve the same outcome. And we as humans love linear
relationships, right? More of this is good, less of
that is bad. We love being able to simplify
the levers, and the gut microbiome just doesn't work
that way. And so most of the gut
microbiome testing services willtest for your gut microbiome and
(33:52):
alpha diversity and then try andsimplify it and reduce it to
say, you know, you should eat more of this food to increase,
you know, your concentration of this bacteria.
And I think I, I have a nuanced view on this, which is that that
is probably an oversimplification in like 90%
of cases. But if the interventions that
(34:18):
you are recommending and pointing to that data to justify
are still healthy, and that's what gets someone to do that
thing, right. Like, you know, I've, I've
talked to nutritionists and dietitians who say, yeah, like,
I get that the science isn't quite there, but I still ask my
clients to do this test because it allows me to point to a, you
know, a higher authority and saythe science is saying this.
(34:39):
If that is compelling to people and helps convince them to take
healthy changes, then it's probably still worthwhile.
And so it's, it's a, you know, right answer for the wrong
reasons type thing. But, and so for me, I just
didn't find it as valuable. I think there are, you know,
other inflammatory markers in your gut that are obviously
super interesting, right? Like calprotectin and
(35:01):
lactoferrin. And like those both increased
for me doing that, you know, 30 day ultra processed food
experiment. Like I went from having 0
inflammatory markers in my colonto like significant inflammation
in my colon, not on the level oflike someone with inflammatory
bowel disease, but like, you know, much higher than not 0.
And so that, that's very interesting.
(35:22):
And I think those have more like, you know, real clinical
utility than the gut microbiome,which we are we can all agree is
important, but our understandingof it is just not at a point
today where I think it is usefulto drive interventions on that
justification. Yeah, I would agree regarding
(35:42):
the microbiome for sure. And it's so malleable.
I mean, like, like I haven't hada carbohydrates in over a
decade. You know, like I don't eat very
much vegetation. There's people that are doing
strict carnivore and eat 0 vegetation.
Their gut microbiome acclimates to what they're putting in.
And I feel like it's kind of like that Symphony you're
referring to where it compensates in other ways that
the end outcome is desirable. And it takes, I mean it takes
(36:04):
several weeks for like the gut microbiome to acclimate to any
massive shift in dietary intake.And a lot of that's not even in
the conversation when you go geta basic microbiome test done.
Exactly. And so I, I, I think from our
perspective, you know, we view the gut microbiome test, I think
(36:25):
our positioning is that throne is to a microbiome test, what
like whoop and aura are to a blood test, right.
So like with whoop and Aura, you're getting a daily look at
your HRV, your resting heart rate.
You can track your heart rate through exercise.
You can see your respiratory rate, you can see your sleep,
you get, you know, a dozen biomarkers that you see every
single day. So you can start tracking trends
(36:46):
and see how your body responds to different stimuli and inputs.
Just like that screen we were just looking at.
I think Throne is trying to do the same thing, right?
Like give you actionable daily insights based on your daily
patterns, routines, you know, diet and similar to whooping or
(37:10):
you get like a dozen biomarkers but for you know, 400 bucks for
the device for a lifetime as opposed to 3 to 500 bucks for a
one time test that gives you 120biomarkers.
The difference is for blood biomarkers, like, you know, you
were just rattling off a handfulof them and like, you know
exactly how those markers are supposed to move and when they
(37:32):
move, what that means, right? Like there's a lot of clinical
study and validation around blood biomarkers that just isn't
quite there yet for the microbiome.
Totally agree. I want to talk about poop but
before I forget, since you were testing your you were tracking
everything too strong. What did your training metrics
look like as far as you know, overall intensity and total
volume during that one month experiment?
(37:54):
Oh gosh, that I'm going to have to go pull up the app.
Give me two seconds. I would imagine your sleep would
be hindered, which would impact your your training, but here's
what the strong numbers show. Let.
Me follow up with you after thisbecause I can see my volume here
(38:15):
in the app at a glance for the last three months, but going to
find it for a specific month. I actually don't know how you do
that in the app. Anything just top top of your
head? Like, did it seem like your
training was impaired at all? So my rate of perceived exert,
my RP ES were definitely up towards the end for the same
amount of weight. And and I think that was just
(38:37):
the the biggest thing there weremy protein macros were
absolutely down from the start of the experiment just because
it it's hard to eat that much ultra processed protein, right?
Like you're, you're effectively stuck with, you know, hamburgers
and protein bars. And so to just eating that much
(39:01):
UPF protein, what was tough, especially when you're trying to
stay within the 3200 calorie range.
And so by the end of it I was pushing less wake and working
harder. Do you think I may be kind of
hard to measure? So I don't even know what you
would measure, but like with allthe ultra processed foods, you
get the argument of it all beingproduced with seed oils.
(39:22):
Do you feel like the massive increase in just seed oil
consumption had any tangible impact directly, or is it just
too too fuzzy to parse that down?
That's too fuzzy to say for me. I think the the the tricky thing
with ultra processed foods is that it's the kind of thing that
like kills you slowly, you know,like at the end of the day, it's
(39:45):
it's you know, the dose is in the poison and the dose makes
the poison, I guess is the phrase.
And most of UPF is still food inlike the strictest sense, even
though the long term implications are like obviously
net negative, right. But you can get by eating, you
(40:09):
know, like for travel, right? Like, I think everyone's had
that experience where you eat healthy, you know, most of the
time, but then you're traveling for a day or two and like.
It's just hard to eat healthy when you're traveling,
especially through airports. If you didn't plan ahead and
bring your own healthy snacks. And you're not going to die
(40:30):
eating airport food right like that.
That probably won't shave years off your life.
But if you ate that same food every single day for every
single meal, that probably would.
Founding effect, yeah. Are there any like ultra
processed fast foods that you consumed that were like
legitimately enjoyable? Like oh man, I've been missing
this. This is totally worth it.
(40:50):
And there are there any that youlike?
Man, I hope I never see that again in my life.
Krispy Kreme So I I I've had Krispy Kreme like 3 times in my
life. I, I had my last one when I was
probably 1213 years old, like, you know, ate a bunch of candy
for Halloween one night and thenwent had Krispy Kreme doughnuts
(41:11):
the next morning and then went and played soccer, like Little
League pee wee soccer and just got the sickest I'd ever been
after that. So then I swore off Krispy
Kremes until that that experiment last summer.
And you know, a bunch of my friends, like, you got to do a
Krispy Kreme day. So I ate 16 doughnuts and that
was my only nutritional value. And like, again, like I did not
poop right for two days. Like that had me in absolute
(41:33):
shambles. So I will never touch a Krispy
Kreme doughnut again with a gladheart.
Like, that's not something I'm ever going to miss.
The one that was surprising to me that I had never had Taco
Bell up until last summer. And I don't miss it.
But that was one that was like, and I think part of it too is
just the contrast of going from things like candy day and gas
(41:56):
station foods day to eating TacoBell, which is like, you know,
on the spectrum of, you know, completely nutritionally devoid
to like at least having real macros like that was a sweet
relief. You get that Dorito Crunch,
shell, whatever they call it. Yeah, Yeah, it's pretty good.
Yeah, and like there's, and that's the thing with ultra
(42:18):
processed foods too. Like some of it's just
objectively delicious, right? Like there's a reason they are
as popular as there are. It's not just 'cause they're
cheap, it's because they are they they hijack your brain.
They do indeed. They do indeed.
All right, let's talk about poop.
So in a perfect world, if someone's monitoring their poop,
they're getting all this data ona, you know, regular daily
(42:39):
basis, what is like the ideal output?
Like what is the scenario that would, you know, what were they
looking for? In a perfect world, if
everything's dialed in a nutrition zone point, their
absorption is good, their stressis down.
Like what would a perfect score and digestion and poop look
like? It depends on your diet.
So if you're eating super high vegetable, high fiber diet, then
(43:02):
you'd probably be looking at like two or three healthy bowel
movements a day. But if you're eating higher
protein, then it might be anywhere between 1:00 or like 1
every other day. Healthy, well formed bowel
movement, that'd be like a Bristol 3 or 4.
And both of those are totally fine, right?
Like at the end of the day, you just want to have consistent,
(43:24):
well formed, healthy poops that are and kind of the medical
literature says that anywhere from three a day to 1:00 every
three days can be healthy depending on the person.
What you don't want is to be having constipated poops where
you are having like high evacuative effort.
You know, you're sitting there and straining that that's really
(43:45):
bad for your kind of anal, rectal muscles and pelvic floor.
And then what you definitely don't want is to be having
consistent loose or liquid bowelmovements because that can that
that is often a sign of inflammation of your column.
And when you're using your device measuring all this stuff
actually before I even get that when you're doing this
(44:07):
experiment and just when you're in normal day-to-day nutrition,
you know, kind of doing your norm, what is what kind of
frequency are you seeing and what was the frequency like
during that experiment? Did it change much?
No, I was still having, you know, between 1:00 and 2:00 a
day, except for the days that I was like, you know, really
suffering. Then I had multiple in those
days. Spicy day.
(44:27):
Yeah. Spicy day and donut day.
Like, you know, we we've all been there.
That's that's almost like havinga colonoscopy prep, right?
Just like sandpaper and pain. But beyond that, no.
I was like, shockingly consistent.
What do you think like the like with your, with your mother, for
instance, getting all these pictures from people like what
(44:49):
is the common issue that people are having?
Like are they going too frequently?
They're not going enough? Like is there like a common
denominator that the masses are experiencing with regards to
frequency and their their stool presence like where they scorn?
Yeah, So great question. So roughly, depending on kind of
which paper you're looking at, roughly 30 to 40 million
(45:12):
Americans have irritable bowel syndrome.
And there's two dominating typesof IBSIBSC, which is the
constipated version. And then there's IBSD, the more
diuretic version. Chronic Constipation in IBSC is
one of the most prevalent, like,you know, bowel disorders that
(45:32):
there is, particularly as you get older, and it tends to
affect women more than men. You know, I think the numbers
are something like 15% of men and up to 20% of women have IBS
or IBS symptoms at some point intheir lives, you know,
(45:55):
shockingly prevalent. And, you know, kind of the the
prevailing wisdom is that part of the reason that chronic
Constipation is as common as it is, is because we as Americans
eat very low fiber diets. And probably not hydrated enough
either I would think. Yes, that's, well, that's the
(46:15):
other one is that, that's another feature of Throne that
I'm really excited about becauselike, to your point earlier, you
know, you mentioned your, your gut microbiome takes a few weeks
to change, right? Like changes in your gut happen,
you know, over the span of weeksand months, whereas changes in
your hydration happen over hoursand minutes.
And so everyone knows you're supposed to drink 8 glasses of
(46:35):
water a day, right? And like, you might even do it
for a day or two after you read the CNN article that comes out
every three months. But that's very different than
seeing real time results that say, hey you are dehydrated
right now, drink water. So how how is how is thrown
measuring hydration levels? So I just talked about thrown
specifically. So it's a it's a camera that
(46:58):
points towards the toilet bowl. That's exactly right.
And then it it I guess as soon as you go before you throwing
toilet paper in there, it's it'staken imagery like how does it
work? Give me the play ball play
there. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So basically it's a device that
clips onto the side of the toilet bowl.
And you, you nailed it. It's a camera that peers down
into the toilet bowl. We, we joke, you know, looking
down into the toilet, there's a treasure trove of valuable
(47:20):
health information. Looking up, there is nothing but
liability and trouble. So the camera is like, you know,
hard wired to only look down. You cannot flex it.
It doesn't look up ever. Just, you know, it's.
I cannot emphasize that point enough.
Probably good to emphasize that because people be like, come out
of the woodwork, oh man, this iswhatever.
Yeah, yeah, it's just is like, Iget it, it's sensitive, it's a
(47:42):
camera in your toilet, but also like it is for legitimate health
tracking purposes. And so then it takes video
actually. And so it has a camera and a
microphone. And the way it works is when you
go, it's taking that consistent video.
So we can actually track the kind of what we call like the
(48:04):
session timeline. So we know when you sat on the
toilet, how long or, or if you're standing, you know, like
when the session started it, it uses the motion sensor.
So I should show you here. So there's a motion sensor on
the top. So when you stand over the
toilet, if you stand to pee or when you go sit on the toilet,
it knows you're there. If you have your phone with you,
then it uses your Bluetooth to identify, identify you.
(48:24):
So it knows based on my Bluetooth.
This is Scott versus. This is Robert.
So you never have to like push abutton, start it, open the app
like it's all automatic. All automatic as long as you
have your phone with you. If you don't have your phone
with you, there are two buttons on the device so you can push a
button. So like if you go to the
bathroom at night and didn't want to bring your phone with
you, you still have a way of it,like, you know, starting the
(48:45):
recording so that it knows it's you.
So, you know, we pay yourself toone of the buttons.
But yeah, for the most part, thethe goal is for this to be
completely in the background, right?
Like, don't think about it. You just get results and it
starts recording and then you leave.
The motion sensor tells it, you know Robert has left.
It turns itself off and then it all gets processed in the cloud.
(49:07):
We have like 10 different computer vision models that are
looking at hydration, looking atstool consistency, looking at
the timeline and trying to understand, you know, how
because like even the distribution of evacuation
events, like particularly the time to your first evacuation,
how long from how Like if you are having a bowel movement from
the time you first sit down to the time you have your first
(49:28):
poop is a way of quantifying Constipation.
They're like right now people just don't have because you're
not sitting on the toilet with astopwatch.
Like we can track that information totally passively
for you. And then you track all that, the
trends over time for all those metrics.
So we're looking at stool frequency, stool consistency,
we're looking at strain, we're looking at hydration, we're
(49:49):
looking at urine flow dynamics, which is like, you know, the,
your urine flow curve. So the shape of the curve can
tell you about prostate health. The height of the curve, like
the Max flow rate can is like the number one metric for
prostate health. The average flow rate is also
valuable. We can also tell you how like
your urine volume. So you can integrate that curve
(50:11):
to understand exactly how much someone peed, which we can then
feedback that back into our hydration estimates to know is
our hydration estimate any good?Because if you had, you know, a
super short pee and didn't have that much volume, then our I,
then our estimates aren't going to be good because we had a
lower sample volume to estimate with.
But if you have like an average PE of like 300 to 400
milliliters, then we are much more accurate.
(50:32):
And so all that happens in the background and then you get a
push notification 5 minutes later once you've done all the
processing that says here's yourresults, here's the numbers, and
then you can start to see that all charted out over time.
And the like if you all tested the the volume estimations of
like urine to see like those arepretty accurate.
Yeah, like it's crazy. So that that we we use a science
(50:54):
they're called Sono Euroflowmetry.
And so basically the sound energy, like the, the acoustic
energy of the stream entering the water basin is mapped 1 to 1
to the urine flow rate. And so we have our own AI models
that we trained in our office with.
We, we made a robot to simulate P streams.
(51:17):
And so we just ran this thing for hundreds of hours of the
microphone. And so we know exactly the flow
rate in any given 2nd. And then we correlate that to
all the audio data that we're made that we're recording.
And then we're able to train ourown AI model based on our data
that we captured in the office. And that is like, shockingly
accurate. Like ±5%.
(51:40):
Like when I'm like in a competition prep, you know, I'm
manipulating my hydration levels, my sodium slightly, I'm
flushing excess fluid out, I'm targeting certain fat ratios to
maximize, you know, fluid retained in the muscle but not
in the subcutaneous layer of skin.
To be able to measure all of that excreted based off of the
inputs would be super insightful.
(52:03):
Yeah, I that's, that's a use case I hadn't even thought of.
Yeah, this is interesting, man. What about like, if you're
playing devil's advocate here, like what if you're, you know,
going and using multiple different bathrooms throughout
the course where they, like you're just kind of out of luck
if you don't have the device with you, I assume?
So you can still track the basics of your digestive
(52:25):
patterns. So stool frequency and
consistency, we have two ways todo that.
The number one is you can use a form and like a slidering scale
to say, you know, here's what mypoop looked like.
And then we obviously logged that, you know, at the same
time. So you still get the times that
you went and you know, the basics of your stool
consistency. You also have the ability to
take a picture if you want to. The challenge of that is you
(52:46):
have to take the picture after you go but before you wipe,
which is a bad user experience, right?
Like it's just awkward, like turn around shimmy, Like people
don't like that. But we do have the ability to do
that. But yeah, like tracking those
things the the more advanced metrics like hydration and, you
know, urine dynamics that requires having the device.
OK, gotcha. Gotcha.
(53:08):
This is super interesting, man. And I guess there's like no risk
of somebody blackmailing you viacaptured audio recordings of you
ripping on the toilet or anything, right?
No, no, that's all. Everything is encrypted in
motion and at rest. Nobody ever hears the audio
recordings like that. That is literally only processed
(53:28):
by the like audio model to extract the urine flow dynamics.
That's not something even our employees have access to.
And then the only people that will ever see your stool data.
So we de identify it so it can'tbe traced back to you.
But then anything that looks like what we call out of
distribution, right? So like, hey, like our models
(53:49):
haven't seen something like thisbefore.
We flag that and share that backto a gastroenterologist so that
you can label it for us and tellus here's what's happening in
this poop so that we can retrainthe AI to get smarter and
smarter. So by using Throne, you're also
contributing to the, you know, utility of it for everybody else
using Throne. Got you.
(54:10):
Have y'all got any like out of distribution imagery thus far in
the beta testing? That's like, man, what did this
guy eat? One of the most interesting ones
was there are some rare medical conditions that can cause your
pee to be blue and we got one ofthose and that was bubbled up to
us and like my Co founder flagged me over.
(54:30):
He was like that is crazy. Have you ever seen that?
We like started Googling it, youknow ChatGPT.
Like what could cause this? Wow, that's weird I didn't know
about that. So what from a y'all going to
launch next year? Early next year, you said?
Yeah, January 2026. So what you mean like the the
business side of things like what have y'all been doing
marketing wise? Like what's been the roadblocks
and this is this is exciting. Man, I appreciate that.
(54:52):
So also I I got to run here in acouple minutes.
I'm meeting a physician for trying to kick off a research
project with her, but real, realquick to answer that.
So the business side of things have been awesome.
We haven't spent a dime on marketing yet.
We've pre sold about 300 devices, have more than 5000
people on an e-mail list that have, you know, expressed
interest in this. We've had a couple of posts go
(55:14):
viral on Twitter. We have had some amazing people
reach out to us cold. So probably the most notable is
John Capital. Lupo is my third Co founder or
the the third Co founder. He's my second, my second Co
founder, but he was previously Co founder and CTO of WOOP and
(55:35):
was there for over a decade, left WOOP and joined us as an
Angel investor and then ended upjoining us as our third Co
founder because he is so passionate about personal health
tracking. He also has the worst form of
ulcerative colitis that you can have called pan colitis.
And he's also, you know, very involved with the National
Crohn's Colitis Foundation as a advocate for people with his
(55:56):
disease. So he's just like the most
incredible triangulation of someone with the deep
professional experience and expertise combined with
personal, you know, empathy for our patients and our customers.
That's like, that's incredible, right?
Like, I would like never have guessed in a million years that
someone like him, I get to work with every single day.
(56:19):
And like, it's, it's really special.
You know, we had, we've had somelike one of the most followed
doctors on the Internet, a gentleman named Doctor Karen
Rajans, the most followed gastroenterologist has like
11,000,000 followers. He reached out to us or he
recently joined as an advisor. Like it's it's clear to me that
like this is an idea whose time has come and the world has said,
(56:41):
you know, we're ready for this. Like this was never going to be
the first health tracker, right?Like, I think there needed to be
two generations of wearables, like, you know, the first word,
Fitbit and Garmin and Apple Watch.
And then you had whoop and aura and like there had to be those
20 years of education to get people excited and ready for
(57:02):
something like this. But now, you know, it's actually
totally viable and people see this and you know, there's kind
of one or two reactions. The first is where's this been
all my life? I totally get this.
I need this yesterday. And then the other reaction is
like a camera in my toilet. Like you got to be kidding me.
And we talked about it for 5 minutes and they're like, wait a
second. I, I kind of get this because
(57:23):
the, the thing we haven't talkedabout is like the ultimate
vision here is not just to improve health with daily health
tracking. Like our ultimate goal is to
save lives by building what we call the smoke detector for
colon cancer. And that's, you know, the second
deadliest form of cancer in the United States behind lung
cancer. It's effectively random, unlike
lung cancer. You know, 88% of lung cancer is
correlated with smoking. Roughly 85% of colon cancer is
(57:46):
random. That and it doesn't have, you
know, a a genetic predisposition.
And this kind of goes back to the foods, right?
Like we're the, we are the firstgeneration of people to eat
ulcer processed foods from birth.
And, you know, colon cancer is on the rise, particularly in
young people. Like there's strong correlation
there. And so, and the earliest sign of
(58:08):
colon cancer is what's called fecal occult blood.
So that's blood in your stool that you can't see with the
naked eye. And not this version that we're
launching in January, but futureversions of Throne.
We, we are working on being ableto find that microscopic blood
and raise a flag to you before it becomes clinically
symptomatic. And you would, you know, have to
go to the hospital. And if we can do that, we'll
(58:30):
save lives. That's super cool, man.
I mean, to me it's exciting. Like I can see where people
would be like, OK, we got a camera that's, well, that's kind
of weird. But like we're weird people.
We do things. But like when you distilled down
to its simple essence, it's likepeople are all about tracking
macros, figuring out all their steps, all that stuff.
It's like that's an input, and you can't really know the impact
(58:50):
of the input without knowing theoutput.
So like to me, it makes perfect sense.
It just completes the circle. Yeah, that's exactly right.
So I'm excited for you, man. Where do people go to find out
more? And they get a hard stop.
But I want to give you a chance to let people know where to find
out more and dig deeper. Robert, thank you so much, man.
It's throne science.com is our website and you can find us on
all social medias Instagram X just at Throne Science.
(59:13):
Awesome, man. When when it's ready to run,
I'll buy one. We'll put it in my tool and
we'll see what my macro adjustments impact there.
Heck yeah, man. Thank you so much for having me,
Robert. This is a blast.
Appreciate this guy. Keep killing it man.
Cheers. Take care.
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