transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:09] You were just looking for ways to be healthy, and all of a sudden, you're getting gray market peptides from China and injecting them into your body. So it's a wild west out there, and there's no real regulation going on.
Speaker 2:
[00:23] Victoria Song is a senior reviewer at The Verge. You might remember her from our episode about the Meta Ray Bands. Recently, she's been writing about something that she calls the Wellness Wild West.
Speaker 1:
[00:34] Basically, wellness is just anything that's not medicine, right? You know, stuff like breathing exercises or AG1, which is athletic greens, supplements, supplements of all kinds. And online, people be out here making some wild claims as wellness influencers.
Speaker 3:
[00:53] I've honestly reverse aged myself using neuroscience and biohacking, and I've had testing done. My biological age is 18, which was the youngest that the scale would go.
Speaker 4:
[01:01] Here are four ways to biohack your body and truly feel superhuman.
Speaker 5:
[01:06] So this little guy right here is called NAD plus. And three days ago, I started injecting it into my body. Let me tell you why and what it does.
Speaker 1:
[01:16] And a lot of times what they do is they hock a product, and then they will tell you something that's sort of an actual fact, put it next to something that's quite misleading. So you push a thought or an agenda and that's how you get people, they're just starting off with supplements and somehow they end up in fascism. That's just basically kind of how the wellness wild list works. You know, like you start off trying to eat clean, and then all of a sudden you don't believe in vaccines. You start off just looking for sunscreen, and then all of a sudden you're rubbing beef tallow all over your face.
Speaker 6:
[01:52] You can't eat your skincare if you're not be putting it on your face.
Speaker 7:
[01:55] The biggest question I get asked is how long did it take to see results from your beef tallow? Because this is where I started in January, and this is where I'm at now. I'm 41, I don't have any Botox, no fillers, no Guadalajara facelifts.
Speaker 1:
[02:06] And it's very hard to tell fact from truth because oftentimes these influencers are blending facts or distorting them in a certain way. They're going to say, this is scientifically backed, this is clinically backed.
Speaker 7:
[02:18] Atacor actually included the clinically studied amounts to be fully effective. It's backed by science, okay? Like this is a 12 step Korean skincare routine in a capsule.
Speaker 1:
[02:26] And like what does that mean? What does clinical testing mean for a supplement that is not regulated? What does clinical testing mean for a skincare gadget that is, again, not regulated?
Speaker 2:
[02:42] It's not just influencers getting into this new Wild West. Tech companies are making money here too. There's luxury shoe inserts, hormone testing kits, AI enabled treadmills. You can strap a device under your wrist or if you want to go more official, you could embed it under your skin.
Speaker 1:
[02:57] The umbrella term for all of this is called longevity tech. It just funnels into this, I think, culturally existential fear of dying. So we're going to use our tech to optimize ourselves so we live as long as possible. That's a very human desire, but tech do be taking it to some extremes.
Speaker 2:
[03:16] Victoria's also taken it to some extremes here too. She's not just reporting on it. She's actively testing some of this stuff on herself.
Speaker 1:
[03:25] If you know anything about science journalism, if you know anything about health tech, if you know anything about the space, you're just sitting there and the internal screams just keep getting louder as you see it proliferate.
Speaker 2:
[03:41] So in keeping with the Wild West theme, on this episode, we're going to get into the good, the bad and the good Lord, why would you inject that into your body?
Speaker 1:
[03:50] I'm afraid.
Speaker 2:
[03:53] From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast, this is kill switch. I'm Dexter Thomas. Victoria writes a newsletter called Optimizer, and one of her recent installments was about the trip she took to this year's Consumer Electronics Show, or CES. So CES is a big convention where companies announce all the latest gadgets that are coming out this year. I remember I used to look forward to this back in the day because I could find- I'm like, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm like, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'm like, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. We'll find out what new video games are coming out. Needless to say, things have changed. Victoria's overall impression of this year's CES, as she wrote in her newsletter, was that it was, quote, a wash in bodily fluids.
Speaker 1:
[05:11] It's because there was a lot of bodily fluid tech that was at the show. Like, I saw a taint zapper, which was a wearable that men put in their taint to help them delay premature ejaculation.
Speaker 2:
[05:24] Yes. Sorry. We went right there, didn't we? I was going to warm up and maybe talk about that later. I was thinking, like, oh, let's save that for the fun part of the end of the episode. No. OK, well, let's go right into it. A taint zapper, please elaborate.
Speaker 1:
[05:40] It's a wearable band-aid with an electrical component that zaps you there to delay ejaculation. And is there scientific proof that this works? I don't know. The FDA has cleared it, so it's not going to harm you. They did testing on rabbits to make sure it wasn't going to rip off any sensitive hairs down there. So, cool. That's one example of the Wellness Wild West. Another would be, like, hormone testing gadgets. I wrote about this, like, a hormone egg called Mira, and you basically pee on a stick, and then you stick it in this little egg-shaped machine. And it reads your hormones, and you can diag... not diagnose, but it can, like, flag whether you show signs of paramenopause or other various things, and...
Speaker 2:
[06:32] And that thing that you did right there, though, where you said, diagnose, wait a second, not diagnose, flag, that's kind of a hallmark of all of this stuff, right? Is that it really feels like medical devices. And, of course, they have that little disclaimer at the bottom, this is not meant to treat or diagnose any disease or anything like that. But I think people just kind of ignore that, people look past it, you know, it's kind of like, looks like a duck, talks like a duck, I think it's a duck.
Speaker 1:
[06:59] So there's actually like a legal reason for that. And it's because if anything is diagnostic or could inform your medical treatment, that is a medical device, and it requires FDA regulatory oversight. Wellness does not. The definition legally is that a wellness device is just for fun, it's just for your education, it's for your entertainment, so that you know something about yourself. It's not diagnosing you with anything. So that does not require FDA oversight. And the process of FDA oversight is lengthy, it requires expensive testing, it has to be HIPAA compliant. If it collects any data and transmits it to your phone, all of that has to have appropriate data security protocols. They have to test for different skin colors. It's very expensive. Like I'm going to use the Taint Zapper as an example. I first saw it in 2020. It didn't get FDA clearance until like 2025, I believe, and they had to go through two rounds of fundraising for millions of dollars because the FDA was like, you're going to need clearance for that because that is a sensitive area that you're proposing to stick a device onto. So a lot of times with the wellness space is you have companies who are trying to circumvent that. And a really good example that happened recently, I think last summer was Whoop, which is a fitness tracker company. They had this beta feature which would kind of give you an estimate of your blood pressure.
Speaker 8:
[08:23] The all new Whoop is here. Get the most advanced view of your health with blood pressure insights right from your wrist.
Speaker 1:
[08:31] Now, the FDA was like, hold up, wait a second, this requires FDA oversight. And Whoop was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a wellness feature. And what was in contention was like this beta feature, you had to kind of calibrate with a blood pressure cuff. And then once you calibrate it in the app, it would kind of give you an estimate of your systolic and diastolic blood pressure and tell you whether it was high, medium or low. And the FDA was like, that is very close. And consumers could be ostensibly misinterpreting those results as a diagnosis of hypertension, of being told that they have high blood pressure.
Speaker 2:
[09:11] If it says high.
Speaker 1:
[09:13] Yeah. Right. So like the design of that feature fits in this very gray area that wellness devices kind of live in at the moment. And, you know, who was saying like, they don't know this is the same as us telling you what your respiratory rate during sleep is. And, you know, they had the appropriate disclaimers there. They had disclaimers saying, this is not medical, this is not a diagnosis. But I believe for the average consumer, they're going to look at that and they're going to say, oh no, it's telling me I have high blood pressure. And because it was calibrated with a cuff, it must be accurate.
Speaker 2:
[09:45] Yeah, because that feels and looks probably just like the same exact thing that you use at the doctor's office.
Speaker 1:
[09:50] Yeah.
Speaker 9:
[09:51] The 21st Century Cures Act makes it very clear that wellness intended features are not supposed to be regulated by the FDA.
Speaker 2:
[10:01] That's the CEO of Whoop in an interview with Bloomberg, explaining why he thinks his device does not need FDA approval.
Speaker 9:
[10:07] And the FDA is intended to actually just regulate medical devices that are diagnosing something. So then the fundamental question becomes, does blood pressure have wellness intended use cases? We believe it does.
Speaker 1:
[10:22] Once you understand the legal framework of what is an FDA cleared medical device versus a wellness gadget, you can start to see it in the features that these tech companies will release, like for the Apple Watch. They'll never give you a direct reading of what it thinks your blood pressure is. It'll tell you where you're trending. So it's by not giving you the reading and saying, you're trending this way, that's a wellness feature. So it's the very difference between flagging something and diagnosing you with something.
Speaker 2:
[10:54] This medical versus wellness gray area is a big part of how this entire industry is even able to function. The biggest trend right now is, well, trends. See, in the past, you could get some simple devices that would give you a basic number like say a step counter, it'll just tell you how many steps you took during that day. But now it's all about getting as much data as possible and putting all that data into a phone app that will show you a graph and then interpret that data for you. It can't show you a diagnosis because legally that would be a problem, but it can show you a trend, which means that analyzing your health is no longer dependent on a doctor. Maybe you think that's a good thing, maybe you think it's a bad thing. But it also means that you're going to be handing over a lot of information to some company and you just got to trust them.
Speaker 1:
[11:41] It's your blood, it's your sweat, it's your hormones. They want to track all of these things like blood tests, like Aura and Whoop, for example, will now partner with Quest Diagnostics so you can upload your blood test results tracing however many biomarkers into their platform. When you start doing that, when you start taking a Withings at home PP lab and installing it in your toilet, so it can tell you...
Speaker 2:
[12:09] Sorry, pause, PP, sorry.
Speaker 1:
[12:12] Yeah. It's called the U-Scan. It is an at home urinalysis lab. It has cartridges in it and it can tell you your hydration levels or your vitamin C levels and you know...
Speaker 2:
[12:23] You pee on it.
Speaker 1:
[12:24] You pee on it, yeah. And for some people who have specific conditions, like maybe you have polycystic ovary syndrome and you kind of want more information about your hormones so you can talk to your doctor, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's when you get to the sense of marketing and telling everybody you need to do this, everyone needs to have an at home lab on them at all points in time. And like the kind of the umbrella term for this, what I call the wellness surveillance state, because I find it very invasive that these companies want not just your activity data, but your blood and your blood sugar and your metabolic data and your urine and your sweat. And they want to know about your cycle. Once you give these companies your data, who's reading the data privacy policies?
Speaker 2:
[13:14] Right.
Speaker 1:
[13:14] When you have wellness versus medical device, where does that fall under HIPAA, which is grossly outdated for health tech in the state that we're in right now? It's very murky because let's say you trust Apple with your period data, and then you sync Apple period data with Aura. Well, you've just given that to Aura, so now you have to agree to their privacy policies in terms. You have to. So it's not one device you trust them. It gets very murky very quickly. The very dystopian fear is that corporate wellness programs start putting these things out to give you discounts on health care, and then finding, oh, we'll raise your premium but not the other person's premium. There's no evidence that that's happened yet, but that is the fear, right?
Speaker 2:
[14:05] This is a legitimate fear, and companies seem to at least be aware of this. In the case of Whoop, their privacy policy states, quote, we never sell our members' personal data. This is our promise, end quote. And yet, they're currently facing a class action lawsuit from a user who claims their data was shared with a third party without consent. And a peer-reviewed study found that Whoop exhibited, quote, substantive deficiencies in privacy protection, end quote. Despite having the longest privacy policy in the study, coming in at over 12,000 words. For reference, that is longer than the transcript of this entire episode. So just think of that as you listen to the rest of the show.
Speaker 1:
[14:45] The more invasive these things get, the greater the fear as to like, well, how is that data being used? And can you trust these companies to protect your data? Like Aura had a bit of a backlash last year because they announced a partnership with Palantir.
Speaker 10:
[15:01] People are throwing away their Aura rings because Aura just signed a deal with the US Department of Defense and Palantir. Palantir is kind of like those movies where they scan someone's face and all of the person's information pops up. That's what Palantir does.
Speaker 1:
[15:16] They were working with Palantir and the DOD for a specific set of enterprise use for their ring. They were saying that they kept that data separate from consumer data. But to the average consumer, that's just like, well, what the hell does that mean? You keep them in separate data silos. Like, do you trust that company?
Speaker 2:
[15:33] But hold on, speaking of which, I've seen you moving your hands. Is that an Aura ring?
Speaker 1:
[15:37] Yeah, this is an Aura ring. It is. I do have to test it for a living. I have come to terms in peace that my data is out there. Like, I cannot test wearable tech and not have it out there. I just live with that.
Speaker 2:
[15:51] Talk to me about that though, because a lot of people say that exact same thing, which is to say, my data is already out there. If they want it, they can come get it. But you're actively going out and finding this stuff that is the most privacy invading possible. And you're saying, cool, sign me up. It's for your job, but what a job. Does that make you nervous at all?
Speaker 1:
[16:12] It made my mom really nervous when she was alive. She kind of begged me to find a different line of work. But yeah, she did. She was very concerned about it. But I have limits as to how invasive I will be willing to go. Like I'm not ever going to test a BCI, which is a brain computer interface, like Neuralink. I'm not doing that. Like that's a little too invasive for me. It's a conversation I have with my editors too. If it feels too invasive for me, I am just not going to do it.
Speaker 2:
[16:41] Victoria has a pretty high bar for too invasive. So if she won't touch it, I think that's saying something. On the other hand, there are people who will inject gray market substances into their body because somebody on TikTok told them to do it. And honestly, some of the comment sections from unsatisfied customers get pretty weird. After the break, Victoria takes us into affiliate influencer code Industrial Complex. So, in terms of the wellness Wild West, we've talked about wearables a lot. Not everything you're putting on your body, some of it you're putting in your body. Tell me about Ratatouille.
Speaker 1:
[17:25] Oh, okay. So, Ratatouille is kind of a code word that wellness influencers and fitness influencers use for Rattatrutide. Rattatrutide is, it gets real technical, but it is kind of the latest, if GLP-1 medications for Pokemon, this is the latest evolution of the Pokemon.
Speaker 10:
[17:45] This is Charizard.
Speaker 2:
[17:46] Oh, no.
Speaker 1:
[17:47] This is Charizard.
Speaker 2:
[17:50] This is the We Gove Charizard, We Govemon. All right.
Speaker 1:
[17:55] Yeah. So, Ozempic We Gove, that's the Charmander, right? Then you have Monjaro and Zephound, that is the Charmeleon. And Rattatrutide is Charizard. It is also unapproved. It is currently going through these three clinical trials. The only way to get the bonafide Rattatrutide is if you are part of a clinical trial run by Eli Lilly. That is the only way. Wellness influencers are out there like, I'm on RETTA, I'm on Rattatui. Here's my crazy insane wellness results.
Speaker 11:
[18:32] Update that nobody asked for.
Speaker 12:
[18:33] I just finished my fourth week of Rattatui, and I say this shit's amazing.
Speaker 11:
[18:37] 25 pounds in four weeks. My strength is basically the same. I've lost zero muscle, and I did this while eating pizza and canes and drinking alcohol every day. So safe to say, it works.
Speaker 3:
[18:52] Today is actually my first official day working out on RETTA.
Speaker 11:
[18:56] It's like insane.
Speaker 3:
[18:57] I'm fasted right now.
Speaker 11:
[18:58] I had so much energy. I got all my cardio done.
Speaker 9:
[19:01] Like literally just get on it.
Speaker 1:
[19:02] You have nothing to lose. And they will say it's past phase three clinical trials. No, no, no, no. There are like, I believe seven or eight clinical trials that are ongoing in phase three. And they've completed one of those trials. And we don't even have the full results of that particular trial yet. We have the top line results of it. But you know, they're out there saying, it's totally fine, it's safe. And then they'll say something that's true, which is our healthcare system sucks. And that the insurance companies are charging a crap ton of money for these JLP-1 medications that could really change your life. They don't want you to have it.
Speaker 8:
[19:43] This is a reminder that RETTA will be FDA approved by 2027.
Speaker 11:
[19:48] So find a way to get it now before they start charging $2,000 for a month supply.
Speaker 1:
[19:56] Here's my affiliate code. I have vetted this particular lab that's selling research-grade RETTA Truetide.
Speaker 9:
[20:03] Check the link in my bio.
Speaker 8:
[20:04] You can get yourself some or shoot me a DM.
Speaker 13:
[20:07] We can talk about it.
Speaker 11:
[20:07] I've done a ton of research on it.
Speaker 13:
[20:09] If you're struggling to lose weight, I highly recommend you look into taking RETTA Truetide. If you want to pick some up from a trusted source, I have a link in my bio.
Speaker 1:
[20:16] You can buy it on TikTok in five minutes. I did. I bought a vial in like five minutes to approval point. I got a 10% influencer affiliate code discount.
Speaker 2:
[20:27] And you actually bought this. So this is something anybody can be doing on TikTok.
Speaker 1:
[20:31] It's something anybody can do on TikTok. You'll find influencers going like, here's how you reconstitute RETTA, because they're not selling it to you. When you get actual GLP-1 prescriptions from the doctor, you're probably getting pens where it's premixed. And you just like inject it. It's the appropriate dosage. You are going to see a doctor every month to talk about your levels and titrating your dose, talking about side effects and managing those symptoms. With RETTA, right now, you're getting some guy on TikTok, who's not a real doctor, saying like, yeah, you should use 2.5 grams, and here's how you use an online peptide calculator, and here's how you reconstitute Amazon link in my bio to buy syringes that I use.
Speaker 6:
[21:17] You just got your RETTA-2E, and you're confused on how to reconstitute it. I'm going to break it down as simply as possible, so even your grandma could understand this.
Speaker 14:
[21:25] I just opened this individually wrapped insulin syringe. I pulled some air back into it, and I am going to puncture the top of the backwater and then push some of that air in. And by the way, this is not medical advice. This is for research and entertainment purposes only.
Speaker 1:
[21:47] They are buying syringes off of Amazon. They are buying bacteriostatic water off of wherever, which is sterilized water, and they are mixing these things themselves and they are injecting it in their bodies. And then you read the comments and they're like, I got like a huge rash from the injection site. Is that normal? I'm vomiting my brains out because they didn't dose properly. Are they actually injecting Retatrutide into their bodies? I've talked to pharmacists, I've talked to doctors and endocrinologists, and they're just like, ain't no fucking way, excuse the French, ain't no way that that's the real Retatrutide. You do not know what you are injecting. You don't know what it's cut with. And they're saying things like, get third-party testing to verify. Well, how are you trusting a third-party lab when there is no, usually pharmacists and compound pharmacies have a sheet that kind of tells them, here are the active pharmaceutical ingredients, here's the sourcing. FDA has come out and said, we don't have those available for Retatrutide. There was a warning letter that was put out. So I don't know that these people are actually injecting Retatrutide into their bodies. And you have really irresponsible wellness influencers out here who are just like, here's why you need to mix Terzepotide and Retatrutide. Terzepotide is Manjaro and is that bound? Here's how you mix them. Yeah, here's how you mix them. You microdose with this and then you microdose with that. And it's sort of just like, No, I'm sorry. That's so easy to find on TikTok. It is not hard to find these videos.
Speaker 12:
[23:21] Why I'm taking Terzepotide and Retatrutide together, guys. And actually, this picture last year was just Terzepotide. So can you imagine how much better this is about to be?
Speaker 2:
[23:30] Speaking of what's easy to find on TikTok, though, I want to hit you with a counterpoint from the TikTok comments, which is a sentence I thought I'd never say, but let me just read some of the comments. So here we go. The FDA needs to keep an eye on the disgusting ingredients that they put in food and on artificial food and leave GLP alone. Another one, our food is straight out poison, so it's not about safety, it's about competition. The last comment I want to read is, that's fine, China got us covered, because a lot of these peptides are coming from China. Not that I'm advocating that, it was much better when we were all just really xenophobic and terrible and racist, but it's kind of wild to hear that somebody trusts a random influencer who is selling them stuff from a place that they don't really know much about rather than the FDA.
Speaker 1:
[24:21] Yeah. That's where this is so insidious because you have something that's very true, which is that Eli Lilly, Norvo Nordisk, they have basically patented these GLP ones and they want to charge what they want to charge for it. The insurance companies are like, these are hella expensive. We're going to put very restrictive conditions onto who can get these. But you have a lot of people who could potentially benefit from these medications. There's a lot of research being done about that. And so we live in a fat phobic society and you have a lot of people who are just very desperate, who could benefit from the medications, who are being told for arbitrary reasons, you can't get it, or you're going to have to pay $1,000 a month for it. So there's a grain of truth there that they're digging into. But then they go and say, oh yeah, so the FDA doesn't care about you. The FDA exists because people died. All of these regulations and the drug approval process exists because people died in the past when we didn't have these regulations. But you can see how insidious it gets because you take something that is very true, that is very emotionally true, that is just like in capitalism, very true that these drug companies want to make money and our healthcare system sucks. And we're going to put it with, you shouldn't trust healthcare institutions. And this influencer is here, and you have a parasocial relationship with them. They're using words like science backed, clinically backed. You're not thinking about the fact that they are profiting off of selling these peptides to you. They get a cut from the affiliate code. It keeps me up at night. Honestly, it's tough. It's tough to watch it happen. And you know, I write about it, and then I get called a big pharma shill. Like you're defending the big pharma company. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I've had commenters tell me I am a big pharma shill. And it's like, no, I just don't want you to put unapproved drugs sourced from God knows where into your body. I agree with you that the affordability thing is a problem. I think it's wrong. And there does need to be regulatory overalls. And the pharmaceutical companies do need to be held accountable for being so greedy. But for God's sake, can we have like critical thinking skills and not inject something that you bought dubiously off line into your bodies using syringes when I challenge you, I challenge you to find an influencer who is properly disinfecting everything, the surfaces, using gloves, washing their hands before they disinfect things, when they teach you how to reconstitute these gray market peptides. Because I asked a pharmacist and she was like, oh no, they are missing several steps. So, Oh no. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[27:05] Okay, we should probably acknowledge why this wellness wild west exists in the first place. Part of it in the US at least is the high cost of healthcare. If you're worried about being able to afford to see a doctor, you might also want to look for an alternative. There is also another factor here. People want to be liked and there is money to be made in telling people that we would like them more if they just looked a little younger or a little thinner or a little prettier.
Speaker 1:
[27:32] I think we don't talk about it a lot because regardless, if you lose weight for whatever reason, people will praise you. You could have lost weight through very toxic behaviors, but many people in your life, meaning well, will say great job, keep it going.
Speaker 2:
[27:50] We've been talking about doing stuff to your body. Victoria has gone far enough down this rabbit hole to know what this stuff can do to your mind. We'll get into that after the break. So just to be clear here, influencers aren't just recommending weird injectables to their followers. One trend is based on actual tested, legitimate medical technology. It's just that that technology isn't really meant for consumer use. I'm talking here about a continuous glucose monitor, or CGM. So these are small devices that are inserted under the skin, and they're originally developed for people with diabetes to monitor their glucose levels. But now you can just buy these things over the counter. And wellness influencers are encouraging people to use them to track the metabolism.
Speaker 1:
[28:41] There's influencers who will tell you that you have to optimize your metabolism. One of them being potential Surgeon General Candidate, Casey Means, who co-founded a CGM company and has a book called Good Energy about metabolic dysfunction being the root cause of everything in your life.
Speaker 15:
[29:01] What's really important for people to realize is that metabolism is actually the foundation of all health. It is the core foundational pathway that drives all other aspects of health. And so one thing that the Glucose Monitor does for us is just give us more awareness and agency into like what the trends of our glucose are over time, as opposed to a literally one data point snapshot once a year in the doctor's office, which is what the majority of us are used to.
Speaker 1:
[29:36] So you know, they are saying like, oh, if you're an athlete, you could use a CGM. Or if you're trying to lose weight, there are weight loss CGM startups that are like, oh, this is the easiest way for you to lose weight is to monitor everything you eat and see how it spikes your glucose.
Speaker 15:
[29:51] I want to share with you some of my worst offenders, my worst glucose offenders. Calm, the magnesium drink, I drink that every single night. It spiked my glucose significantly. Also what spiked my glucose? My melatonin gummies.
Speaker 1:
[30:04] And then you kind of fall into this mental trap of wanting your glucose to stay within this range when it's perfectly normal. I have talked to many, many, many endocrinologists and diabetic experts who are like, it's perfectly natural and normal for your blood glucose to spike above that level, and then it'll fall back down into the normal level. But you have influencers out here who are kind of gamifying, staying within a specific range at all time. And is that useful? I don't know that that's useful. Like I've used them. I found out that I had fatty liver disease through the use of one, but not before I got really scared that I was diabetic because my results were not looking the way that they should. And it took me, I want to say, about a year and a half and a very long time. So did I have a positive experience from using a CGM and testing them through my job? I think the experience was really mixed because it made food eating very contentious for a while for me.
Speaker 2:
[31:11] What do you mean?
Speaker 1:
[31:12] I'd be at Thanksgiving and I'd be like, oh, can I eat that in this order? Or will it spike my glucose? That's very kind of borderline disordered eating thoughts. It's not the end of the world if your glucose spikes. Like I know all of this stuff already. That doesn't mean I wasn't prone to falling into those mental traps if I was using it too often.
Speaker 2:
[31:34] I recently interviewed a philosopher who studies games and also gamification and this optimization thing comes right into that because say even not as far as glucose monitoring, let's say just weight loss tracking, sticking to macros or calorie counting can be productive for some people, but it can also get you into a point where you're not enjoying anything you're eating or where you're just literally like eating pizza or eating prepackaged food because you know the exact calories that are in it, because you're starting to focus only on the numbers. And this is something that I find really interesting about the wearable tech that you talk about so much and that you cover is that there's a way in which we've kind of been sold the idea that the more you track, the better it is, you know, what's measured gets managed, right?
Speaker 1:
[32:38] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[32:38] Sure. That's not untrue, but there's a way in which it can kind of make you sick in another way.
Speaker 1:
[32:44] Oh, incredibly.
Speaker 2:
[32:45] Maybe mentally?
Speaker 1:
[32:46] Health anxiety and wearables, it is the dark side of it. There was a study done and they found that this elderly woman did like 900 EKG readings in a year because she got so scared. And that's more than one a day, right? I think about that study all the time because I actually write about it quite often at The Verge where I say I have mandatory wearable breaks if I find myself getting too into streaks. If I find myself falling into these habits of perfectionism, I will take a break. I'll talk to my editors and be like, I'm going to focus on a different type of product for a little bit because it's impacting my mental health that way. And I have found those techniques for like 10 years of covering this space. And so I hope to share that wisdom with people. But it is anxiety inducing. I do find myself falling into some traps at times and perfectionism. Type A personality, what say you? I think a lot of us have that. I think it's very human to be that way. And let's be real, you are the product in a wearable life. It's not just health, it's also AI. Like the reason why they are pushing this concept of AI wearables right now is that you don't take a wearable off. They can collect so much data on you. They can say it's personalizing your health, feeds into this optimization, longevity narrative. And what they're really doing is profiting off of all the data that they're collecting on you, because you are the product. You make the AI better because you're wearing it. And the AI learns so much more about you because you're wearing it.
Speaker 2:
[34:26] This is your job. Like you're actually in the trenches testing just about everything. I mean, you're basically running like a 24-7 experiment on yourself with all of these different things. What would you say to somebody who is thinking about picking up that aura ring, or who's thinking about subscribing to that service where you get blood tests and you send it away, or who's thinking about getting some other kind of wearable or wellness device?
Speaker 1:
[34:59] All anyone wants is to live a healthy life. It's very simple, right? What are the keys to a healthy life? Every doctor will tell you the same three things, the same three things. No one's going to want to hear this, but it is the same three things. Sleep seven to eight hours a night, eat balanced meals, exercise multiple times a week. That's it. That is what is in your control. But nobody likes to hear that, and we all want shortcuts. So it's a very, like I joke that my beat is the cursed beat, the dystopian beat. But you know, I initially got into it because I too was trying to live a healthier life. And then I do live a healthier life. I do. I'm pretty much in the best shape and health I've been ever. But it's not to say that it didn't come at a cost. It did come at a cost, a lot of costs to my mental health. I talk with a therapist very frequently. Anytime I think of myself, just kind of going off the deep end with these devices. And then she'll be like, I think it's time you take a break. And I'm like, you're right, let me go talk to my editors about that. So what I would say to anyone who is thinking about it is to really go in with a strong why, like why do you want it? What is the goal that you're trying to achieve? If your goal is that you want something to help you be more active, get the minimally viable thing to help you get more active. If you think that or a ring is that for you because it has no screen, you just want to do your general fitness tracking, great. Try to limit yourself to checking once a day. Don't get too invested in these numbers. It's about seeing baseline trends over a long period of time. If you feel yourself starting to change your life to fit the ring, give yourself permission to take breaks from it. Like at one point I was like, I gotta close these rings. It's 11.45. Let me do jumping jacks at 11:45 PM so I can get the 10 calories needed to close a ring. That's, you need a break. You need a break. I know people who have done this. I know people who have been like, I have COVID. Do you think I should go outside for like a 15 minute walk? So I can close a ring. And I had friends say that to me. Do you like, do you think I should do this? And I'm like, no, you need to rest. Like that's insane.
Speaker 2:
[37:26] I haven't used one of these and close the ring. It's like finish your numbers for the day or something.
Speaker 1:
[37:30] Yeah. So the Apple watch just, you have three different rings for like how many exercise minutes you get during the day, how many minutes you stand up and how many calories you burn in the day. First of all, I'll also say that calorie burn and calorie metrics are wildly inaccurate. So don't get too obsessive about any of these numbers. These are tools meant to help you. It's just, you got to have a good support network. You've got to have a very strong reason why and kind of stick to that reason why and use the minimally viable methods. You do not need more data. Like I said, the three pillars are to sleep seven to eight hours a night, eat a well balanced meal most of the time and exercise. Like that's it.
Speaker 2:
[38:21] All right, Dr. Song.
Speaker 1:
[38:22] All right.
Speaker 2:
[38:22] I'm not a doctor.
Speaker 1:
[38:23] I'm not a doctor. But I am telling you that all doctors will tell you to do that. So, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[38:31] Big thank you to Victoria for coming back on the show and thanks to you for listening to Kill Switch. And by the way, we talked a little bit about peptides in this episode. If you want to know more about what exactly peptides are and where they're coming from and who's using these things, we got a whole episode about that and we'll link that in the description. Or if you want to know something else, you can email us at killswitchatkaleidoscope.nyc or on Instagram, we're at killswitchpod. And wherever you're listening to this, it would be amazing if you leave the show or review. It helps other people find the show, which helps us keep doing our thing. And this thing is hosted by me, Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Sheena Ozaki, Darla Potts, and Julia Nutter. Our theme song is by me and Kyle Murdock, and Kyle also makes the show. From Kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Oz Woloshyn, Mangesh Haji Gurdur, and Kate Osborne. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norville and Nikki Itour. Catch you on the next one.