Episode 57: Dr. Gil Blander - Founder of InsideTracker, helping people live longer, better lives

Today’s guest is Dr. Gil Blander. Gil is internationally recognized for his research in the basic biology of aging and translating research discoveries into new ways of detecting and preventing age-related conditions. He leads a team of biology, nutrition & exercise physiology experts, and computer scientists at InsideTracker, and has been featured in CNN Money, The New York Times, Forbes, Financial times, and The Boston Globe to name a few. Gil received a Ph.D. in biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science and completed his Post-Doctoral fellowship at MIT. In 2009, Gil founded InsideTracker alongside leading scientists in aging, genetics and biometric data from MIT, Tufts, and Harvard to realize his mission to transform the way every human being eats, sleeps, and moves to live a longer, better life. InsideTracker is the leading personalized nutrition platform which generates ultra-customized recommendations to optimize an individual’s health by tracking and analyzing blood and genetic biomarkers using a patent-pending algorithm. The expert system matches the most relevant, science-based recommendations to each individual based on blood data, DNA data and demographics, as well as self-reported preferences and goals. I recently received my bloodwork results back from InsideTracker and was very impressed by the platform’s specificity of recommendations and more importantly, why it’s recommending a certain food, form of exercise, or supplement. If you’d like to try it out too, go to InsideTracker.com, choose a plan, and use the code DRIVINGFORCE (all one word) at checkout for 25% off anything sitewide. That’s DRIVINGFORCE at checkout for 25% off your plan. I’ve also included a link in the show notes to bring you directly to the InsideTracker plans page. In my interview with Gil, we discuss the origins of his interest in longevity, the inspiration to start InsideTracker, how the InsideTracker platform works, blood biomarkers vs. physiological markers, and much more!

Link to InsideTracker plans: https://hubs.ly/H0Fdd7h0

Timestamps

00:03:49 Growing up in Israel and interest in longevity

00:07:02 What his parents did for work

00:07:48 Inspiration to start InsideTracker

00:10:31 Story around starting InsideTracker

00:15:43 InsideTracker overview

00:20:00 Biomarkers vs. physiomarkers

00:23:56 How he determined which blood biomarkers they would test

00:28:27 Really important blood biomarkers

00:32:19 How someone can get tested using InsideTracker

00:34:48 How do the InsideTracker recommendations work?

00:40:48 The InsideTracker mobile app

00:43:15 Biological vs. chronological age

00:48:56 Challenges consumers face in adopting a personalized approach to nutrition

00:54:18 Biomarkers significant to fighting Covid-19

00:56:42 Key learnings from starting InsideTracker

00:59:27 Biggest challenges facing InsideTracker as they look to grow

01:00:53 Ultimate vision for InsideTracker

01:01:50 What he wants to accomplish 5 years from now

01:02:21 His daily routine

01:03:25 His driving force

01:03:54 Parting words of wisdom around optimizing our health