The Skin Microbiome Revolution: Personalized Skincare Without the Guesswork (#512)

Speaker A: The future will be. You know, your your microbiome is an organ the same as your heart or your lung. It is a interconnected web of cells. They're not human cells, they're microbial cells, but they have functions and they're meant to keep your you healthy. And to the extent that you can take care of your microbiome, it will pay dividends for your health today and in the future.

Speaker B: You try to fix the current system or reimag we'll healthcare ever serve consumers just like me and you. The power's in our hands, but every side's gotta come together. We want the newer generations to get something better. Until we flip the script and talk about what gets prevented. Until we see the changes permanent as if we meant it. Until healthcare is finally consumer centered. We've got a lot to wrap about.

Speaker C: Welcome back to the leading podcast about how consumer health works. We spotlight how healthcare is being designed, marketed and delivered from the consumer point of view and profile leaders who are championing the move to preventive care want to understand healthcare both as a builder or operator and as a consumer yourself. This is the place for you. Here's what's going down today. First up, uh, we have the flava of the week about whether GLP1s will be more disruptive than AI. Yes, you heard that right. Does it mean that we can sometimes get lost in the current ways that healthcare grows its profits and forget the society's better off with less chronic disease? I'll talk about that. The Nathan Schatz, founder of Superbiome, reveals the results of my skin microbiome test live here on the air. Along the way, he teaches me when germs are good and how it motivated him when people told him he was too young to be a founder. I'm Jaron Johnson.

Speaker D: Let's get it.

Speaker C: Flavor of the Week A hot take on LinkedIn caught my eye this week. In a good way. It came from Michelle Davey, CEO and founder of Wheel and one of our favorite guests here on the show. If you're not familiar with Wheel, they provide the infrastructure behind virtual first care for some of the largest healthcare enterprises in the country, including Amazon Clinic. So consider that context. As I read her post, and I quote, hot take. I keep repeating, GLP1s are going to be more disruptive to healthcare than AI is not because AI isn't real. It is, and we're building with it every day. But GLP1s are quietly dismantling the chronic disease infrastructure that healthcare has been built around for decades. Obesity cardiometabolic disease, metabolic dysfunction and msk. These have been the backbone of utilization, drug spend and care delivery forever. But that's changing fast. We're in the most pivotal moment in healthcare I've seen, maybe ever. The combination of GLP1s and AI isn't incremental, it's structural. And the companies that figure out how to deliver cardiometabolic care at enterprise scale, not as a point solution, but as a real clinical program with outcomes, are going to define what healthcare looks like on the other side of this. So why did this catch my eye and why am I bringing it up? Because Michelle nailed it, in my opinion. Sometimes we can get so lost in existing revenue structures that it's hard to see what's good for us as a society. We should want less chronic disease. And if current provider incentive structures don't support that, we should advocate for reform. The other thing I'll advocate for either way is for more clinical voices to be part of the national dialogue here. And yes, there I go again, inviting us to drop the silos. What's the consumer lens? I'll continue to note that not all GLP1 medications and programs are the same and not everyone has the same experience with them. But one in eight adults are currently on them, according to the Kaiser Family foundation. So millions are at least willing to find out. It appears providers can choose to be part of those journeys or not, but they can't keep them from happening. So back to the premise here. Are they actually more disruptive than AI?

Speaker D: That's, uh, up for debate, I would

Speaker C: say, but if GLP1s demonstrate a long term impact on reducing chronic disease, I'll be one of the first in line to acknowledge their importance for an industry that hasn't always included them as part of their treatment plan. Let's have more open dialogue about the disruptive effects of GLP1s and encourage clinician voices to be heard. As we look to a future where our society has less chronic disease and enjoys the benefits of better health. That's another way that we'll build the healthcare of tomorrow. And that's the flava of the week. All right, everyone, let's get into the flow.

Speaker D: I'm, um, here with Nathan Schatz from Superbiome, the founder. And, uh, we're going to make some

Speaker C: time here to actually go through some of the results.

Speaker D: I took a quick test and we have my results here and we have

Speaker C: kind of what I, what I'm looking

Speaker D: at as, as a result of those tests. So let's dig into this. Let's talk about, like, what am I even mentioning here?

Speaker A: What am I describing?

Speaker D: Nathan, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Thank you, Jerry. Great to be here. So, like Jarrett said, uh, I'm Nathan. I'm the founder of Superbiome. And we're focused on custom skin health protocols around the skin microbiome. So the community of trillions of bacteria, fungi, viruses that live on you and are there to protect your skin and nourish you, we test your skin and then build action plans and products around the results of that test. So we sent Jared a kit. He's got his results. Super excited to dive in and share a little bit more about why we're doing what we're doing.

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Again, this is kind of a newer thing for us to be able to do this live on the air. I've taken a. I've taken a look myself, but, you know, I had some questions that will, I think, uh, help me understand them better.

Speaker C: So give us a little bit about,

Speaker D: you know, who you are, what you do. Why? Is there a problem out there that

Speaker C: you were looking to solve?

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: My journey with microbes started when I was 8 years old. I was a, uh, generally healthy kid. But one day I came down with a. My arm had become really swollen. And so I went to the hospital and it turns out that I had a very rare form of flesh eating bacteria, the type that gets into your bloodstream and eats the fascia and the flesh. And so I had many surgeries and went on a prolonged course of antibiotics. First it was liquid antibiotics, then oral antibiotics. And I was very lucky to survive that ordeal. But the antibiotics that were in my system for so long had all these downstream effects and side effects that affected my metabolism, the health of my skin. I had very persistent and irritating eczema and acne through high school and through college. And I didn't realize that my microbiome, I didn't know what the microbiome was until I got a little older. But there's all of this research that is now pointing to a, uh, dysregulated microbiome that is the good germs, one could say, leading to these sort of chronic, like, dysbiotic states. And when I was in college, I noticed that many of my peers, like, continued to have these persistent issues, myself included. And my junior year, I went to see a dermatologist. They offered me antibiotics to treat my acne, which has the systemic effect of killing all of the gut microbes that are there to protect you. And so as sort of a Fun little experiment at the time. My friends and I bought a bunch of face swab kits to go door to door in the dorms and see what bacteria our friends had on their faces. And so we did that in my time as a student, we tested 150ish students and got those samples. We did um, DNA sequencing on the samples to determine what bacteria were present and more importantly, which were absent, and then compared those profiles to the scientific literature. And it turns out that if you are an industrialized human being walking around in one of these cities or towns, especially in Gen Z, your microbiome is very depleted. And so we have this idea where, hey, instead of using an acid or an antibiotic to treat your acne, why don't we first assess what good germs theoretically could be doing those jobs for you and then try and build a custom skincare routine that restores those germs. And then, you know, now the company Superbiome, we're expanding to scalp gut oral, just like microbiome optimization in general. But this first product is called Superbiome and it's for your skin.

Speaker D: So, so how widespread, I guess was the problem of either not understanding what those microbiomes looked like and what they were doing to your skin or, you know, or what was, what wasn't there, what was absent? How pervasive was that? Ah, you did that help you see, like there's potential here to turn this into something that you, you could provide a solution for?

Speaker A: You know, it's interesting, most people don't walk around with this notion of I have a problem. And that problem is I don't have good germs. Generally the frustration manifests as I have X, Y, Z skin condition. And when I go out and try to find the products that work, many of them don't like these off the shelf products. They just don't work. They're not for me, they break me out. Or on the other extreme, what you'll get at a derm office is something systemic like Accutane or antibiotics. And so I think the frustration is trial and error. People don't want to buy a, uh, microbiome, they want to buy clear skin. And so we're essentially solving that trial and error frustration with, with using technology to do sort, sort of the matching between an individual's profiles and the right ingredients and the right approach. And it's a huge problem. I mean you just look at the sheer size of the industry. At the start it was kind of difficult to hone down on like what types of People and what types of concerns this approach is best for. We now know that Generally if you're 25 to 45, you've dealt with some mild acne, eczema sensitive skin for more than two years. You, you're preconditioned to perhaps believe that the microbiome might be at the root. And so those like high intent, uh, customers are willing to go through this whole process, learn about the good germs and what they're missing, and follow a protocol that within 30 or 60 days will allow your skin to take care of itself. So that's sort of the, the psychology of the problem. It's an interesting one.

Speaker D: Yeah, it is, it is. So at this point in the story, were you looking to start a business around this? Was that kind of the thought or, or did it become more evident that there was an opportunity to help other people? There's definitely some curiosity and your own experience and I'm sure that informed a lot of this. What took it from that stage to we're going to create a solution for this?

Speaker A: Well, so at the time my co founder and I were students, I was in my junior year, he was in his sophomore year. And really the shift from this is a fun side project to this is a business is when we would go around and swab people's faces. Uh, people became really curious. They thought we were extremely weird when, which makes sense. But people would ask why? And we would sort of tell the story in brief, like your microbiome is likely depleted and a lot of the things that you're doing on a day to day basis make that problem worse. Have you ever felt like you are dependent on products or like you have to go through trial and error to find products? And by having those conversations, people became naturally intrigued by the prospect of testing their skin microbiome and sort of like viewing these deficiencies and having some sort of like actionable steps beyond that. So you know, once we realized that we're like, we should productize this, we should make this into a service that people can access. So then the following year, my senior year of college and my co founder's junior year, we incorporated the company and started trying to build a product that we could sell on the market that was regulated, that had rigorous science behind it, that was scalable. Spent about a year doing that and then I graduated. He dropped out. That was last May. It's been almost a year since then. And we'd just been on this journey.

Speaker D: There is, I feel like a greater opportunity than ever. The tools and science and opportunities are to, to tell a story are, seems like they're, they're more available at least, uh, than in previous years. Previous times, Yeah. I don't think that means it's any easier to be a founder. I'm curious what this last year has looked like, especially as, as you've started scaling, creating, developing and telling the story more. What, uh, most often happens when you're telling the story about this is something that can help you, most likely. And here's how it works, here's how it's different. Like all those go to market motions, you know that that can sometimes happen so long after the product gets developed

Speaker A: that it's, it's hard to start from

Speaker D: scratch if you're not at least thinking about those things during the process while you're developing the product itself. At least from what I've seen from other others in the health and wellness space. Yeah. What does that last year look like? And what types of conversations are you having about it?

Speaker A: I guess. Well, if you're like a technical founder building something in a niche that you studied, it's very easy to sort of go down the, um, rabbit hole of perfection where I want to create this, like, perfect product before I put it in front of people. And I think what most people experience, and certainly what we experienced, is the reason the assumptions that you have for why someone would want to buy your product are rarely aligned with the reality. And for us, most people, especially busy professionals who have the money to afford some sort of a test, they want quick, easy and simple. They are not going to invest a ton of their time and their effort into like, understanding a personalized microbiome science. And so people are buying clear skin. And so the most difficult to convey thing to convey is when, uh, people are in consideration. They're asking, is this for me, we have to approach that question really honestly because everyone has skin and most people have a dysregulated microbiome. And so I have a lot of conversations with potential customers and existing customers as to why they do or don't think that our approach is right for them. And ultimately what it comes down to is having a preexisting set of beliefs. A lot of that is frustration, like with prior experiences with skincare that would compel someone to try something that's this in depth. But, uh, in terms of the past year, you can build a new type of company in 2026, and I hate to say it, but it's because of AI, there's so much that you can automate that you can, like vertically, you can chain together like different services in like a vertically integrated way. When we started, many investors or advisors especially, uh, our peers said that what we were trying to accomplish was too complex, too ambitious, that we were too young and didn't have the experience, which was a fair criticism at the time. Said, you are not going to be able to build a skin microbiome testing platform and all the software and technology to deliver that to the consumer, like an app and the actual algorithms and as well as the personalized skincare line that follows. Um, the past year has been a lot of building a lot of writing code, a lot of talking to customers, and then in the past four months actually slimming down our processes to be as simplistic in nature as possible so that we can communicate effectively with the customer. And now we're in this phase where we're really trying to nurture the relationships we have with our first group of paying customers. And so we actually shut our ads off. We want to like, really invest into these people, people's individual experiences so that when we go back for round two and we get back into the code, we change the algorithms, we add or subtract products to the SKU line. It's a better version. Superbiome v2. So just a lot of learning, frankly, for us.

Speaker D: So like we said, so there, there's a simple screening, a simple swab, face swab, you know, that I did and then sent in. And so we're going to look at live some of the results there. Sure.

Speaker A: Um, what we're gonna do is just start by talking about the swab and how the swab works. And then we'll move into like, the more supplemental data and then talk about, like, how that informs your actual routine. Oh, when you do the skin swab, essentially what you are, uh, actually doing sequencing on is the bacteria that live on your face. And most people have a billion or more individual bacterium on their face. And in your case, let's see, it detected 64 unique organisms, which is actually on the lower end, I'd say our, the average. We do 16s sequencing. There are various levels of depth that you can go with a test like this. Um, you can do shotgun metagenomics. You, uh, can do a qpcr, which is more targeted. I have my personal and business reasons for choosing 16s, but what you get a breakdown of is the relative abundance of the different species. We looked at scientific literature to determine basically different types of microbiomes, just like to broadly categorize people, they have names like aurea salva, forma, fossa. A bit abstract, but they mean things in Latin. Um, aurea is a pretty unproblematic microbiome. Um, there are like five sort of key microbes that generally play for skin microbiome. Um, C. Acnes is one of them. Staph epidermidis is one of them. It produces ceramides. So these, these microbes, you can kind of think of them as like workers for your skin. They actually, like, perform roles. Like they fight off viruses, they stimulate, uh, collagen growth. So we can sort of go through like, a few of these here. Kidibacterium acnes. 92.6% of your read was Ketobacteria acnes. That's generally on the higher end for someone, um, in their 40s. There are actually multiple subtypes of this bacteria that are relevant. We don't get strain, ah, level resolution from our test. Um, but this guy lives in your pores. It eats sebum.

Speaker D: Sebum.

Speaker A: So it sort of regulates, um, how your face, like, produces, uh, and cycles through sebum. Staph epidermidis is arguably the most clinically significant species for you, given your eczema history. It regulates the acne spherulence gene expression. It secretes, uh, a, uh, serine protease which disrupts Staph aureus biofilm formation. You might have heard of Staph aureus as, like a pathogenic skin bacteria. If you have Staph aureus on your face or on like a wound site, uh, it, it's prone to get infected. So all these bacteria kind of work together. The general rule of thumb is you want to have a more diverse microbiome, the more species you have and the better balanced they are. Uh, is an indicator for, um, essentially how healthy your skin ecosystem is. Uh, and then we have these metrics. These are extrapolated metrics, not like direct biomarkers in and of themselves. But Superbiome score of 5,3 is on the average end. This is like a composite of essentially like your, your balance and your species richness. I think it's being driven down because there were fewer species on your reading, which happens. Defense is the ratio of, like, beneficial bacteria to either commensal or harmful ones. Ketobacterium acnes is generally considered a commensal. It doesn't have a superpower like staph epidermis does. So I think that's probably driving the defense metric down. Um, and then structure and balance are analogs for diversity and richness. So Essentially what we see here is like, what do you already have on your skin that is worth protecting? And then when we go into sort of like the products, the prebiotics, it's meant to in certain cases upregulate certain types of bacteria. So we have a prebiotic in your serum. I believe that's meant to upregulate the relative abundance of Staphylococcus epidermidis, since that is good for your skin type. But I will move on. Jared, I know you did a skin quiz and a scan as well. So the way that the system works is every single day it will take your live weather, your most recent scan, uh, your most recent microbiome, and your quiz data and it will give you custom instructions for how to use the products that day, which are here for morning and night. So what it's saying this morning, it's referring to your damaged ah, barrier, um, saying don't use your cleanser, put cool water on your face, put your serum onto your damp skin. The sodium hyaluronate pulls the water in, uh, and then use the moisturizer while it's slightly damp. And so these instructions are based on like a set of sort of like hard coded heuristics that were developed by our doctors and our scientists, but they change every day. If it's more humid, you don't need to use your moisturizer as much. So it's kind of, it fluctuates on a day to day basis. There are tips based on diet and what whatnot, and then these are the actual custom products that were selected for you. But we'll get into that in a second. Regarding your skin profile, Your biological age, 43, it's younger than your chronological age. Again, this is a composite metric from the skin scan and also your lifestyle impact quiz. This score, 76 is meant to assess. Okay, how are things like your diets, your habit, your sleep affecting your skin? Higher is better, lower is worse. Pretty straightforward scheme.

Speaker D: And that was based on, that was based on primarily like quiz responses.

Speaker A: Lifestyle index, uh, is based on quiz responses. Biological age is based on quiz responses, scan and microbiome. Um, um, these are all like quantified metrics from the scan which are just interesting to track. But don't, these don't correlate directly into like what products you get. They're more like internal metrics. And then we track like every bit of your air pollution in your area, humidity, UV index, temperature, um, and then these are the primary ingredients that were selected based on your profile. And those ingredients are Actually in the customized products, which I believe you have sitting next to you.

Speaker D: You're right. Okay, so I've got the, the cleanser, the serum and the moisturizer.

Speaker A: And so essentially what happens is it takes all of these data points, your entire risk profile and rank prioritizes ingredients, and then it selects from a large set of, of products, like which formulations make the most sense. And then it also generates your instructions for using the product. So I have in front of me right now a uh, list of all your products with each of the ingredients in them and very detailed descriptions as to why they were included.

Speaker D: Let's do like the, the serum. Cause that's actually the one I know the least about.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay, so this serum, um, let's see, it's meant to hit sebum dysregulation, glycation, damage and PIH risk, which is like um, p. Basically pigmentation all at once. And so the ingredients that are in there, vitamin B3, niacinamide. This hits your PI risk and your barrier dysfunction at the same time. It's relatively inert for the microbiome. So there's a specific PIH mechanism that I could talk about. Niacinamide is one of like the golden hero ingredients in skincare. So that's not very differentiated. Obviously sodium hyaluronate is, it's a humectant, so it attracts moisture to your face. Some people get occlusives and humectants confused. Humectants are ingredients that attract moisture into your skin, whereas an occlusive is something like Aquaphor that locks the moisturizer in. So you need both. It's like why if you use Chapstick over and over again and your chapped lips continue to get worse, is because you're not actually attracting any more moisturizer into your, your skin. You're just putting a barrier on top of it that's preventing anything from escaping. So low weight sodium hyaluronate in there and then the. Oh, this one's interesting.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah, the hexoresorcinol. The justification is intercepting the Maillard reaction before your collagen pays for it. So what happened is it flagged your sugar intake and your processed food consumption. And it reasoned that basically glucose reacts non enzymatically with um, amino groups and collagen elastin, which is apparently called the Maillard reaction. I've never seen this before. It, it's generates these bespoke, um, but in your skin, it kind of makes your collagen fibers rigid and brittle and so, so the, this ingredient, how it works is it scavenges the carbonyl groups that initiate the reaction. So it's not just an antioxidant, it's actually anti glycation, which is good for aging skin. So this is kind of a taste of like how these products work. It aggregates all of your concerns. It figures out how to formulate them into a single vessel that doesn't have to be used more than once a day and is also either inert or directly beneficial to your microbiome. The serum doesn't have any prebiotics in them, but the moisturizer and the cleanser, sometimes they will have a prebiotic that is, is meant to target a specific imbalance in your microbiome. So let's say you had way too much Cryonobacterium on your face and not enough Staphylococcus epidermidis. We have ingredients that are clinically proven to improve the bacteria that you need more of and decrease the one that you need less of. And so that kind of like personalization happens as well. And just to sort of show off one more feature, we have an AI chatbot that I'm not going to interact with right now because I'm in this like developer mode where I'm like looking at your profile. But this knows you, so you can ask it questions like I'm going on vacation to this place, I feel dry. How should I handle that? And it will give you very tailored advice based on your products and your target concerns. So hopefully that's a pretty comprehensive walkthrough of how the whole system works. And I'm also very, very curious to hear how you actually like your products since that's the most important thing.

Speaker D: Yeah, uh, it's, it's truly, it's, it's a new thing for me.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: Like it's having anything custom. Myself, I wouldn't say I've spent the most time, you know, or had a skin concern for a number of years. I did, I did earlier on like in my early 20s and things and the eczema was pretty severe. The seborrheic dermatitis, you know, like scalp, like uh, dry scalp for a while. Both those things have gotten better over the years where I haven't had to, you know, think about them too much on a day to day basis. I was guessing, I was always guessing, right. Of just like, I don't know, you know, these things weren't too, too terrible. But you know, I don't enjoy itching my face all the Time. So, you know, I was always interested. If there had been a solution to come along, I think I would have zeroed in on that and paid attention. So, you know, I'm also not in the, in the same channels where I'm looking up things or you know, following people. So I like how scientific this is. It was one thing that came back to me. The products themselves are easy to use. Uh, they're great. I have a high confidence level that they are custom for me, you know, like that they are going to actually help with again. Even though the conditions are more minimal now than they were in years past, I still have been guessing my whole life. So it's uh, fantastic just, just to know. I mean I think this is what just about everyone would want to know and understand because I don't think it would shift too much on a day to day basis. But like you said, like you're on vacation, you know, or the things that do affect, I mean allergies are kicking my butt lately.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: So I'm like, I don't know if that affects things. Just the day to day questions that it can minimize and reduce for me of how even anything skincare related is affected by other things, uh, like to that point of allergies or just other things that are happening with my health and wellness. I'm trying to learn as much as I can about that for myself. And so there were a number of reasons why I was interested in this and to see the again, the process was. I couldn't believe how simple it was. I mean literally the swab was so fast, the quiz so fast. Right. And for how much information we were able to get from that, that was just a pleasant experience. So I'm learning a lot as we go from it. But I think that yeah, the product itself and where you want to go with it, it not only makes sense, it's like, yeah, if this had been available or anything like it that I knew about, I definitely would have paid attention. I would have had that in and like it. It's as simple as it can be.

Speaker A: We try to make it as frictionless as possible because it is more difficult than just picking up a product off the shelf. But I, I appreciate that you said that and I think something that's really important to us, ultimately our goal is not to sell you as much of our skincare as possible. I believe very strongly that there are so many ingredients and products that exist in the world that you could pick up and buy or that can be prescribed to you. The problem is not the absence of those products existing. It's the process of figuring out what works for each person. I want to help people navigate the fragmented industry. And so there are certainly many cases where the best product for someone, it's another company's product. And so I want to recommend that to people. We have the infrastructure to be able to analyze any product with our app. You can just scan, you know, if you're on vacation, you really need a moisturizer. You can go to the, um, gas station and scan it and it will say, okay, this makes sense for you, or it doesn't make sense for you. So it's kind of like a personalized yuka. And this is the effect we'll have on the microbiome. And you can add it to your routine. It will generate custom instructions for that product. So it's not just limited to, like, the milieu products. We just thought, you know, we have a, a good baseline for like, you know, what ingredients work, what ingredients don't work. Some general principles that make our, I would say our skincare products are better than 80% of the ones that are out there. And we can do the matching for you. But yeah, big, big picture is connect people to the right stuff, whether that's ours or whether that's someone else using the tech.

Speaker D: That's one reason why I enjoy having founders like yourself on the program is to hear not only the journey, the, the problem solving process, but the vision at the end of the day. And you just kind of shared that in terms of what this is designed to do, where it fits within other conditions and regiments and just habits and behaviors we have as health consumers. I think it's an, it's another piece of the puzzle, though. You know, we're trying to fit together here on the show. Any, any final words, Nathan, as we kind of wrap up anything else you'd like to share, either in terms of the vision you're trying to create or your founder's journey, like any other insights you've learned about how people approach their health or what, what it's like on the founder side, you know, for other builders and operators out there, I would

Speaker A: say as, uh, someone who has survived a severe bacterial dysbiosis and then lived through the ramifications of that, my main takeaway for people, if I could leave one mark on the world, it would be this. Germs are good. Germs are not our enemies. Bacteria, fungi, viruses, especially in the first one 80 days of life, if you're having a kid, let them roll around in the dirt, it's okay. You don't need to over sterilize your environment or the environment of your children. That's how we build strong immune systems. Um, and then for adults, like, just keep an eye on the microbiome science because it's, it's a relatively new area of emerging study, particularly the gut. We know nothing about the gut. And if you talk to the gut microbiome biologist and the skin microbiologist are in completely separate academic camps because they're focused on different things. But the future will be, you know, your, your microbiome is an organ the same as your heart or your lung. It is a interconnected web of cells. They're not human cells, they're microbial cells, but they have functions and they're meant to keep your, you healthy. And to the extent that you can take care of your microbiome, it will pay dividends for your health today and in the future. So yeah, give that word at Google. Read some cool stuff. I would also recommend reading a study that was published in Nature about the Yanomami people. And If I have 60 seconds, I think this is a really cool anecdote sort of leave off on, but there is a tribe in the Amazon called the Yanomami. They're relatively uncontacted, they're certainly not industrialized. They've never used a modern pharmaceutical or a skincare product ever. They have no inflammatory disease, no acne, no psoriasis, and they live in mud huts with dirt, flowers, pores, and they have a similar lifespan to us. And so some researchers went down to study their microbiomes and what they discovered is on the skin in particular. These people with beautiful skin have 115 species of bacteria that were completely previously undiscovered that live on their skin and have all these like gene level functional benefits. And essentially there is a huge disconnect between what our microbiomes look like and what our ancestors microbiomes look like and what the natural, healthy human microbiome is supposed to look like and do. If you take one of the Yanomami and you bring them into an industrialized environment in a matter of days, their microbiome looks like ours and vice versa. And I think that that's a testament to the power of our environment because it's what you surround yourself with and expose yourself with that ultimately determines who's living on you and, and how they're benefiting your health. So this is really, this is a really fascinating rabbit hole for anyone who's interested in microbiome or functional medicine, I would highly recommend reading the Yanomami Skin Microbiome study.

Speaker D: Fantastic. And that is a great place for us to wrap up. Nathan, thanks for joining us. Best of luck on your founder's journey. Looking forward to seeing how this scales and how other people benefit from it as well. And thanks for walking us through and everything. And, uh, thanks for everything you're doing to make healthcare easier and more consumer centered.

Speaker A: My pleasure, Jared. Thanks for having me on.