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Welcome to the Healthy Brain Toolbox. I'm Dr. Ken Sharlin, neurologist, speaker, author, and host for this show. In each episode, I interview influential people whose work impacts how we live and how we think. My guests are leaders in the health and fitness industry, physicians, scientists. Authors and public servants. Here, you'll find conversations that break down barriers, expand your horizons, and give you the tools you need to protect your health and nourish your aging brain.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 0:33

Welcome back to the Healthy Brain Toolbox. I am Dr. Ken Sharlin, and today we're exploring a fascinating frontier, one that challenges us to rethink what we know about health, disease, and even evolution itself. My honored guest is Dr. Howard Urnovitz, a microbiologist, immunologist and biotech innovator whose work bridges decades of research in molecular biology, chronic disease, and environmental health. He's the founder and chief science officer of FBB Biomed and the author of the book, Unnatural Selection: How Industrialization is Rewriting Our DNA and Its Consequences. Dr. Urnovitz work asks a provocative question, what if? What if chronic illness isn't just something that happens to us, but something that our biology is expressing in response to the world we've built? Howard, welcome to the Healthy Brain Toolbox. I am really glad you're here.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 1:39

It's a quiet an honor. Dr. Sharlin I follow your podcast very in detail. to be one of the contributors.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 1:47

Let's start right at the heart of the message. You've said we're entering the age of personalized evolution, and that phrase really grabs me. Tell us what you mean by that and how this new era changes the way we think about human biology and health.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 2:03

Thank you. You can't listen to evolution. It moves very slowly, so we don't have devices to listen or to see it, the fact is that industrialization is in fact using us to continue. To Adapt our entire lifetime to the amount of pollution that we're exposed to unclean water and air and the like. And so that's why the consideration that we have a tool now to measure evolution in us. And that's basically our response to our environment. It gives us a new direction to go. We all know you're not going to stop, industrialization. we also know we have to learn how to live with it. So that's what we're doing and I think we found a solution that we're sharing. with

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 2:49

So an unnatural selection. You make this compelling argument that industrialization itself is the chemicals, the plastics, the radiation is literally rewriting our DNA. I mean that, that's not metaphorical, it's molecular.

Commercial break 1: 3:05

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Dr. Ken Sharlin: 4:50

So walk us through how exactly that happens and what are the implications for human health going forward.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 4:58

Yeah. In normal development during pregnancy, this marvelous time of creating a child you have a set of endogenous viruses within us. Without it, you wouldn't have a placenta. And so the placenta forms because of all these different endogenous retroviruses. the fact is then all of these programs are going. Here's the key point by By signaling mom is sending signals that this is the next stage we're gonna go into constantly sending these through hormones and everything else, and you nor normally develop. Then your born and your marvelous life is ahead of you. Those dormant genes are not necessary anymore. We don't need to build a tail to hold up a structure or a gill. Those are gone. They're all, the structure was there. We are who we are. It's time to sleep With all these chemicals they start to mimic outside. Signals that we should not be exposed to. And what we're now finding are a lot of these pesticides infectious agents, radiation, all of these things are in fact pushing buttons and wakening dormant genes. That's new information. And so that's the link is that they're causing us to go into development biology when we should not.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 6:19

Wow. And just for clarity for those listening,'cause I know there might be a few out there going wait. Are you talking about like the microbiome? And if the short answer, if I answer it would be no. That's something very important, but that's not it. We're talking about your DNA and that your DNA is not really just your DNA. That your DNA is really just a massive library that in which viruses have integrated their genetic information into ours to create really who we are, which is more than human.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 6:55

Correct. And you have to remember that the microbiome is who we are. We couldn't survive without it because we need those kinds of things. But the genome is what your mother and father give you. what we've learned is these very little pieces of this herpes virus and a little piece of this historical virus and this and that is very helpful for us to develop. Who we are and also the fact that we now know that in my book I address the fact that, look, we're all created equal, but we all fall apart uniquely, and we fall apart according to the variable region of our genome. This is my hypothesis that I believe the variable region is what makes us the very different races, whether we're the Chinese or the Indians, the Africans North, the Europeans, or South Americans. needed this to adapt to our environment that was not our original home in Africa. And so when these genes are activated, that's what we just need to work their part.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 7:54

Conventional medicine we talk about infections making us sick and functional medicine we talk about in these acquired right exposures, these in Lyme disease, that kind, we're saying that this is what makes us sick, but in a sense, you're also challenging this sacred foundation of germ theory. Not saying that infection doesn't matter, but that's not really the whole story. So in that sense, how does this singular focus on germs and genes how has it limited our understanding of what's really driving today's chronic diseases?

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 8:32

if you go to our website and or on YouTube, we posted in honor of this podcast our update of the germ theory. The germ theory was a combination of Louis Paste and Robert Kaul in the late 18 hundreds with this just brilliant observation. And Robert Kaul went on to discover the bug that causes tuberculosis and and set down some rules on how to study those. We honored that I drove up to Berlin and I put a rose, a white rose on Robert Kaul's statue to say thank you for all of the hundreds of millions of people that you saved. But after Robert Kaul's death, we discovered something called viruses and so it made sense said Professor Rivers, that we test the hypothesis. But he also said it may not work. It turns out it didn't work. And so why? Because viruses don't can't grow outside a body. They need the host. Didn't understand was in your words, Dr. Sharlin, the conversation, which was a coinage, is the information that has to flow from an infectious agent. Its host and how they interact. That tells you whether you're gonna go get a disease or you're just gonna get rid of it and move on. And so that's the missing link is we never appreciated the viruses. And that's exactly what the golden age of virology is, which we started. It's just a product design, strategy. Where if we say challenge virology to come up with new products, that's what we came up with is we study both the viruses that are among us and we study their interaction with the viruses within us. The breakthrough.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 10:20

And I'm thinking about the peak of the COVID epidemic. When COVID swept around the world, it went from, the Washington state area across the United States and we lost a million Americans. And before we had the PAXLOVIDs and all the other, treatments, vaccines, and so forth, at least commercialized vaccine. There was, very quickly we started to identify who was at risk for dying from COVID. And we know low vitamin D, obesity, diabetic, old age, immune compromise and all those things are absolutely true. I'm sure. But my point is, and I say this a lot with my patients that, look, the interesting thing about that, and of course it's tragedy, so I'm not intellectualizing it, I know there are many, these viruses, mutate, and Yes, but we're talking about like the early wave of the epidemic. You did have people who maybe they got a sore throat, a runny nose, not too bad. Over it in a few days. Another person, fulminant lung, inflammation, literally solidifying their lungs, crystalline their lungs and intubated, but dying. But it's the same virus. Same virus. So I'm wondering, just some of the principles that you're describing, the discoveries is are these some of the untold stories of the COVID epidemic itself, as to why certain people were vulnerable?

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 11:40

Oh, we're blowing them. This black box, open the if you're in a nursing home, by definition, your ancestral genes are activated. It means that you are at a point where your family can't take care of you. And these marvelous institutions can, but by definition, you are the incubator for any viral disease that comes by because all of your dormant, genome But a good amount of your genes are turned on because of your it's just, that's normal aging. unfortunately, when it gets to a point where you're debilitated, that's a little extra. We can explain all this, and in fact, we're starting to study right now where we're gonna take all the coronaviruses. There are the common cold ones the ones that wreak havoc worldwide, the mutations that are not at sphere. And guess what we're gonna do? In fact, normal white blood cells and then harvest the RNA and will tell you which endogenous viruses and which ancestral genes are the ones that make you get COVID and then disease and perhaps death, which ones weren't turned on by the just annoying everyday coronavirus, common colds. That's how you do science in the new era of the golden age of virology.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 12:58

So I love this. And by the way while there may be a little bit of an element of fear here, like what am I, what's in me? What's in my genome? OMG, what's gonna happen to me? We're really framing this as an awareness and then an opportunity in a sense to learn. Because what I'm hearing is it goes both ways. We were exposed to these things, we have this certain, this viral genome that's part of who we are. It responds to those exposures, but it can respond positively or negatively. We just want it to respond positively and it sounds like with the knowledge in hand, we'll be able to do that.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 13:40

I couldn't agree more. We're now entering an era. I was honored to come back to my alma mater on the hundredth anniversary of Professor Novy. Starting the Michigan university of Michigan microbiology department, I was honored to come back and the title of my talk was the Dynamic Genome. And I gave example after example, which is now codified in my book of why we have to think in terms of influenza. All of the growing up, sixties and seventies, all those major flus that came by, stop blowing up atomic bombs above the ground. In fact,

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 14:16

Hmm.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 14:17

them up altogether. Every time you blew up an atomic bomb, H one N one or the next one, it was just. Completely correlative what we're now appreciating is. Our genomes are dynamic and they're dynamic through our childhood years, our formative years as we develop into adults and our senior years. And as soon as we recognize that, that age old question, what walks on four legs and that two legs and that three legs, is the fact that our dynamic genome has changed. And functional medicine, we wanna put the tools in. Hands, the docs like you that says, okay, we're going through a shift and this is what means lifestyle wise and this, that the we, that to person by person.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 15:02

Nice. So we of course have the term neuroplasticity, but this is really genomic plasticity. We have the potential opportunity. Once we discover what exactly we're dealing with and what are the factors that can influence it in a positive way, then to take those action steps and actually do that. It sounds great.

Commercial Break 2: 15:27

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Dr. Ken Sharlin: 17:23

Going back to the origin story, if you will you helped develop the Rapid HIV antibody test. A huge milestone really in public health. Having been in training at Emory University during my, medical school and internship years and seeing the AIDS. Horrid AIDS epidemic firsthand. That must have been a formative experience for you to have had such an influence ultimately in identifying those who are infected and getting them the help that they needed. I'm wondering how that shaped the way you think about diagnostics and really even the speed at which biology speaks to us.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 18:01

It was exciting. We had everybody was rowing in the right direction. The people at Murex Corporation were just spot on. They had great technology. They just needed somebody to make a panel of antibodies to the virus. Put it in their platform and we got a 10 minute test. So I was honored to be picked that person. So we made the world's first monoclonal antibodies to HIV got it. It, the whole thing was six months and it was a five 10 k. That's the regulation thing. I give that all to the Murex Corporation. These guy knew exactly what we're doing. So you know what I learned? It was an exciting time for the development people, but I not having been a graduate of the John Papa John School of Entrepreneurialism, which constantly, they taught me how to do customer discovery. The world really didn't need a rapid just a rapid test. It needed as many tools as it could, if it had an alternative test. The market was saying that's really what we're looking for. So what I learned was is as we were hurrying up and getting tools ready we really needed to ask, what else can we do to fight this epidemic? So that was an exciting time when everybody was working together. We got a great product out and I learned that can-do, attitude is fine, but discovery is first. And that was a great time.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 19:25

So we're experiencing this challenge that you had where you're taking the science and the tools. But then you have to translate that into how do we put in the hands of human beings and make it practical, not just theoretical or, wow, this is cool science. That in itself must have been a challenge. How when you find that you're, bringing these new concepts into. The public space. Imagine at times, you, you get the pushback from the sort of dogma crowd that this is how we do things. This is how it is, what was your experience? Did you find there was a lot of resistance? And bring these very novel ideas into the public space.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 20:09

Total resistance total opportunity. So the marketplace clearly said we hate this. That's what we learned about it. What I learned was, a prominent individual in the HIV sciences was brought in to evaluate their RD about a urine test for HIV and, the first thing I learned was that doctors have learned and know for a fact that antibodies can't get through the glomeruli of the kidney. It can't possibly be true. so that's was the resistance was there is no antibody in urine. what did we do? We changed our pitch deck. taught people how antibodies get in the urine through the lymph glands, so nobody looks silly at the meetings. the resistance meant this is the problem I need to encounter. It was perfect customer discovery. If you take it from that you live longer. And and that was really fantastic stuff. So when we finally got to a point where the urine test was working, it was the fact that. We were able to get a lot of key opinion leaders on our side. And of course the greatest key opinion leader in HIV then now and forever will be Professor Luke Montagnier and one of the people that co-discovered HIV. he never believed HIV was the sole. Cause he knew there was a co-factor. And I can tell you before he died, I was able to show him the data. The data was the co-factor in AIDS. Your human genome and activated human genome and all the risk factors of IV drug use and et cetera, et cetera. You were turning on dormant genes like crazy. And we can go back and look at that with a fresh eye. lessons learned. Get as many key opinion leaders on as you work the the system, work the resistance so that you meet the resistance. It's not gonna go away, but at least it'll understand what you're doing if you present it correctly. at the end of the day, after 26. Thousand individuals. We got an FDA approval. Even then, they still didn't believe it worked, but at least lots of people do. So it was a great adventure, great science, got to meet some of the greatest scientists in the world, but most importantly, formulated my idea of how to introduce products into the marketplace is respect the system and don't be afraid to get as many experts on as you can.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 22:35

Let's dive back into the science because ultimately where we want to end up and this incredible test that you've developed. And we've already touched on some of this, but I really, I, you and I have had a lot of conversations and I'm so blessed for that. But I will say, even as a medical doctor and bit of a scientist myself, it's taken a few conversations for me to really wrap my head around these concepts. So I wanna make sure that the listeners are fast tracked on this and in unnatural selection. Use the phrase, don't anger the ancients. And it sounds very poetic. But in fact, deeply scientific. So who are those ancient and what happens when we disturb them?

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 23:17

It's just a great story of life and it's a different story of life. We're learning a different origin of life, and here's the fact that it's evolution and that as the earth is changing and it's cool and it's still dynamic and we're not helping. The fact is that we have to accumulate a library that will help us keep surviving. So these ancestral genes are the genes that are we've called them junk genes. They have up to this time. And the reason why is it's gotta be junk because it's in every living organism. Let's rethink this maybe it's supposed to be in every living organism. And that's exactly what we're seeing here, is that the, these ancestral genes are who we are. And dad pass'em down to you over the time. If you experience things this and the other, there'll be mutations, there'll be lots of things. what happens is we're not supposed to be living this long. We're living way past the time where we learn how to hunt and gather. Have some more progeny, some kids, then teach them how to do it, and then off to the ice flow. We're living to a hundred years now. None of these programs are supposed to be turned on, and so we just have to accept that. So that's why understanding what the, in endogenous, ancestral genes are doing is what I believe is the fundamental basis and inflection point for our what we do next. In medicine, it's an inflection point.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 24:46

So folks, these are endogenous, ancestral nucleotide sequences. Fragments of ancient viral code that actually live inside us, in our genes are part of our genes. And Dr. Urnovitz, how it turns out that the sequences can awaken right different stimuli, awaken these gene sequences and influence everything from immunity to neurodegeneration.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 25:12

The reason why was, let's start back with, a concept that I love, a cell inside of us called the formal title is pluripotent Stem Cell. This one cell can make any cell in your body. Just think about that is you have within you the power to regenerate any cell in your body. why is it not doing that? And the answer is that you simply woke up too many ancestral genes that don't wanna see that stem cell migrating right now because it thinks that you're developing. That signal you got from a pesticide radiation external virus is, has turned that on. And once it turns on. Once it gets to the point where it's a symptom, there's so many cells now damaged, you're having a motor neuron effects fog. That means we should have looked earlier that's why we developed this test. We wanna know now before there's a symptom if you have too much mitochondrial damage in your blood. I don't care what your disease is and I don't care what, and I love the fact you don't have a symptom, make sure you don't get a symptom. by coming up with a research use only test, it's not diagnostic. Respecting the FDA rules, then we can put in the hands of doctors. Listen, you've got all kinds of problems with this patient, with neuroplasticity. Why are of these ancestral junk genes turned on, which are causing problems for us to move forward? Fog. To me, fog is you just don't have enough energy, this amazing system. Start taking your doctor's supplements they recommend to start fixing your mitochondria. I took my own test and I don't have asthma anymore, and in fact I don't have any problems. I've got full strength. It's like I got my life back. These tests have to get better and better. We have a minimal viable product that will at least save the lives of people that we're concerned of right now, and that's people who are suffering from long COVID. There are things we can do right now, and that's why we're on this kick that long.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 27:24

Wow. So all of these exposures create this biological ripple effect showing up as diseases that we recognize as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS. And we've used the term for a long time in functional medicine, the biochemical individuality. So that's partly why we all are unique and the same exposure may not result in the same outcome. If I'm following you, correct.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 27:52

You are absolutely correct. so it, it's unfair for us to think that everybody's gonna react the same way to an environmental exposure. Twins don't even react that way. And in fact, I, identical versus fraternal twins will be one of our studies to show what happens during this whole process. I couldn't agree more.

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Dr. Ken Sharlin: 29:49

One of the things is, we talk about in Parkinson's Disease is, although compared to say, Alzheimer's disease, you have about a million or so Americans affected by Parkinson's, over 7 million probably current estimates around 7.4, 7.6 million affected. Symptomatically of, I mean by Alzheimer's, meaning there are probably millions more that have changes and don't even know it, but clearly many times more with Alzheimer's. But if we look at the rate of rise of Parkinson's, the accelerated rate of rise is much faster than alzheimer's and not perhaps coincidentally, that we think of Parkinson's as being heavily influenced by environmental factors. From your research, how is the modern environment accelerating that process?

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 30:38

Yeah. Thank you. So we have a real example, and that's what I spent a little bit of time in the book on, and that's this whole idea of polio. And the fact is that we know what happens when you spray people with DDT is you dummy'em up so that the endogenous viruses can now work with polio. But the real example here. Spanish influenza. called Spanish influenza because in 1918 the world was at war except for Spain. So they were the only ones reporting all of these multiple deaths. And so here's why we're, this is why we worked on our end as fast as we could to get this tool in the hands of doctors. What happened after the Spanish influenza, was just not. Influenza virus. The whole world was breathing in phosphine gas, chlorine gas, mustard gas from World War I. you got desperate, they just put the canisters on the battlefield and the world, took a beating and it's well referenced in my book. Here's the point. Three, four years later, there was a surge in Parkinsonian diseases because Parkinsonian diseases and their, probably their molecular basis being a dopamine receptor cell very sensitive to things like pest, chemicals, organo chemicals. And so as a result, Parkinson's wave. telling you right now, we're calling that disease long COVID. But it's going to turn into, for those people that have the neurologic part of it, it will turn into Parkinsonian diseases until we prevent them from doing it. And those people that have the lung version will have to come up with a different cocktail because they're gonna have different set of genes turned on. That's why it's a pulmonary disease. I will say it on your podcast, so that they will, when the aliens pick through all of the permanent records, I will tell you that lung COVID be the turning point in our understanding of medical systems in general, and it will be the inflection point. Again, I'll say this, it's the inflection point in medicine where we got it right. As far as the direction to go in and the more of us that get involved in this the more patients have better outcomes.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 32:58

Wow. Alright. FBB Biomed you've built this entire diagnostic platform for research use only around the idea that we can listen to what the genome is saying in real time. We have this test and I, the, first of all, I wanna say a couple things. It always reference things that I hear from my patients in the clinic, and I said we need to, you're coming in, you're having some memory difficulty. I need to do some blood tests. I was at my doctor's appointment last week and they did some blood work. All right? The Quest or the LabCorp Diagnostics catalog is like the Encyclopedia Britannica. There's a lot of tests, right? Now I'm thinking Lord of the Rings. Right? One test to rule them. All right, one ring. All right, so we now have this is fascinating, folks. This proprietary RNA test that focuses on an ancestral genetic sequences, right? As early biomarkers, one test, one test will be able to tell you what is your unique biochemical individuality. What genes could, might be turned on, what genes might be turned off, what factors can do this genomic plasticity and potentially either treat disease or prevent it from actually happening? Are we, am I on the right track with this?

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 34:23

Absolutely on the right track. And the reason why for this, it's a bold statement. I didn't even believe it while you were reading it, but the fact is that we did do it and we did it because and if you're really interested, go to our YouTube library again. Foxtrot. Bravo bio com, YouTube, you'll see that we made the discovery that really what we're looking at is the operating system of life. Your computer has an operating system. It moves files around. Our operating system of life is DNA, the instructions from our parents that they got through evolution but the files. And that's where the exciting part is. So why can we then say one test for all diseases we wanna know? In the vast of your metabolic activity, which means every chemical reaction that's going on the same time, if everything is not rowing in the same direction and something's a little bit off on your thing, that could be fixed by an antioxidant. We're gonna tell you that because we're really measuring the operating system of life.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 35:28

Wow. And then I.Understand there must be practical challenges. And it seems like serendipity to me that we're at this dawn of a new era of artificial intelligence. And I think you've said is this, that technology, The type of technology is essential to decoding the complexity of these RNA patterns. So can you explain how artificial intelligence actually allows us to see what the naked eye or even traditional bioinformatics might miss?

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 36:01

Absolutely correct. We've been suffering from big data. decades, especially when sequencers came online. And I remember this hallowed moment when I called a certain Steve Jobs for one hour asking him if he would give me his supercomputer, which is not even as powerful as an iPhone. the fact is that we needed these computers. Everybody knew that we had to organize big data. too many things going on. You're, let's start with 3 billion letters are in your genome, that means the number of possibilities that could happen is, and for you, math nerds out there, it's four to the 3 billion. So we're talking about trying to measure everything. And so you have to use ai. And what does AI do? It measures the patterns. So when you see certain things that are outta alignment, the subtle things, then you can get AI to put that together. We use things like principle, component analysis so that we see if in, in fact, things are clustering together that tells us there's a biological function that's similar with any. Disease group or a, a symptom group and the like. And then the fun part is you keep going down to the molecular level and then here's the bit we're proud of. We don't care what the gene is, what function it's interfering with. Was our breakthrough, was to understand chaos theory of shout out to Heisenberg, and the uncertainty principle that. The gene may be somewhere in this shell, we'll never know where, but the shell is mitochondria, so fix it. So that was our translational breakthrough is what does it have to do in the scheme of life? Because the docs need to know that. And I think that was the most exciting breakthrough that we came up with, was to just just translate genes into function. And now we're building our own proprietary database that when our network of doctors say, you're never gonna believe what reversed this thing. On our database so that more people can do it. It's a process. Don't think you can stop it. This.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 38:12

In when medical students and residents go through training there's a cliched situation of your attending physician, maybe the fellows, but a higher level, a physician. And they'll say Dr. Sharlin, I'm being a medical student, and turn out, okay we have this patient and the progressive cognitive decline in this room. Here's some details. What do you want to do? And I say, okay. I want to order an MRI of the brain, let's say, okay, I'm gonna let you order that MRI of the brain, but what are you going to do with the information? And I think in a sense that's what you're saying is that, I've heard a lot of omics talks, right? And a lot of precision medicine, a lot of big data talks, and they are fascinating from a science perspective. But in the end. The practice of medicine is a very practical endeavor of working with us, imperfect human beings, and asking the human being on the, that's facing, say me as a physician. Okay, this is what, this is the action step that I'd like you to take to do something about it. So there's all this, expose the exposome and the genome, the inflammasome, and wait a minute, but that's not a person, right? That's not practical in the sense that it's not really actionable. So what I hear you saying is we can look all this stuff, but in the end. The data has to be distilled out into action steps.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 39:44

Couldn't say it more clear is this is what has to be recommended and it, but it has to be a physician using all the experience to say, you know what, I've used this before, but I've never done it in a combination like this before. And so what we have to do on our side is when I got in this game five years ago, is we have to produce herd scientific, peer reviewed publications show why this is being recommended, It's our job, to be able to distill us. We can't be living on science by press release. We've done that for too long. I wrote a column on LinkedIn that was talking about the NAD supplements. It's a, it's a big fad. I'll tell you about half the reports. I look at recommend NAD, but half don't. we should be taking the stuff that. Is going to help metabolic dysfunction that we need to look at, and we need to look at it without symptoms or with symptoms, but we need to look at it. And then we need to figure out why did that thing go haywire? Did they just put a new electric plant next door, or is there a change in the water supply or whatever. So these are the clues for having one test. Everything. One test for your operating system, and that's what we're rolling out and we sure hope.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 41:06

It's almost kinda like reverse engineering in a way. You go to your doctor, like to use lots of practical examples, maybe your annual wellness checkup. They're gonna look at your cholesterol, they're gonna measure your blood pressure, you're gonna check your blood sugar. They're gonna, do all of these individual, we're gonna make sure your kidneys are functional, okay? Your liver is good. Blood tests. Let, if you're a male, maybe check your prostate. If you're female, you check your breast or whatever, gonna do a pelvic exam. What we're saying here is imagine you go to the doctor and you have one test. One test. That's going to, that, that changes the whole deal. It sounds like a scientific vision as well as almost a moral one that we need to be putting this test into the hands of every single doctor around the world.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 41:54

Of course I'm gonna endorse it. And we did it because it had to get done is I lost my whole family to cancer and I know that it was the 1969 explosion at. A certain car company that just blanketed carcinogens over us. And the problem is we didn't know nothing. We didn't even know where to start. This was done out of i'm gonna say love, but I'm also gonna say pure survival because if I was next to go to cancer, I'm not going quietly. So this was all the dedication of my mom and dad to the two greatest people on the planet Earth. And I'll fight anybody to death on that. the fact is that we can't let this happen anymore is that we worked hard we worked with the greatest scientists and minds on this planet. To be able to get something in the hands of doctors. And so this was born out of necessity. And while it took 50 years to do it, I plan to spend the next 50 years to figure out what is it all me. I jokingly told, we have a marvelous venture capital firm called Loyal VC. Shout out to you guys. And when they heard it's gonna take a little bit longer for us to exit, I said. That's why we pivoted to a longevity company. And all joking aside, this is a product that needs to be tested and that's why I'm honored to go on podcasts like this so that we can explain to people what the implications are and your conversation. And the questions are really essential for people to understand.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 43:26

A little fantasy play, if you will.'cause we were talking about pushing back against the establishment, the challenges of bringing these radical new ideas into the mainstream. I suppose it, ideally should go back to every young doctor or scientists who are starting. Their training, starting their education, would is that part of the vision? Do we need to really redesign how doctors or scientists learn their gift?

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 43:54

They have to and and medical school is really a critical part. Everybody who had my PhD advisor for virology became a. Phenomenal professionals because they were taught by Bill Murphy who gave you really the whole picture. And it's sad that one person could mold like a couple hundred people, but not a couple million. So that's different now. Now we have podcasts, we have Coursera, we like that. I'm hoping that. We're in the scientific method right now, so we made our hypothesis, we learned everything about it. We've tested the hypothesis and we have a minimal product. The next step in the scientific method is people have to re reproduce what we do, as they reproduce, they do they formulate a literature around it. That literature is then what future medical students need to study as it gets still down because it still. Has to pass peer reviewed. It peer review. It ain't a perfect system, but it's better than just putting something on Twitter and sending it out. So we're gonna keep with that process to make sure that the scientific method delivers the greatest patient outcomes we can imagine.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 45:07

So we have the opportunity with this one test potentially to detect disease before symptoms to. Use it to perhaps confirm the clinical suspicion of a diagnosis, meaning this kind of looks like fill in the blank. We've talked about a case of a woman who. You know a lot of folks she had ALS and sometimes, early stage ALS could look like a lumbar radiculopathy and you get a drop foot or somebody thinks that maybe you have cervical stenosis, right? And you're falling and you have some leg weakness, but you got a lot of arthritis in your neck, right? So those early, early. Hints maybe before the person meets full diagnostic criteria. Lemme say look, this isn't per se, a diagnostic test, but if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck. The test is consistent with your observations. This person may have that disease. And then there's a whole other opportunity, which is potentially therapeutics, because if we're really talking about how the environment influences the genome or the epigenome, if you will, then we have opportunities to do something about it. Would you say that all three are potential directions on where we're headed with this?

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 46:29

Yeah I simply just couldn't agree more that message gets out, of course, is gonna be critical too. That's else we're considering.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 46:36

This is so exciting. And you mentioned Loyal VC the venture capital group. You guys have a vision. What do the next five, 10 years look like for FBB Biomed?

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 46:48

This is going to be a diagnostic, I say that because we've done the proof of concept study now with some very big leaders and we can separate. This is in our patent. We can separate Parkinson's from a progressive Supra nuclear palsy from ALS, from multiple sclerosis with a hundred percent separation. a proof of concept study. So what does that mean? We, this is gonna take a lot more money and resources to do it in a lot larger group and more participants. And so that's the FBB story. We wanna hand this off. want somebody to acquire us and then set this up and take it through the FDA properly. That's not our super strength. Our super strength is just to think differently and produce minimal viable product intellectual property. And so we want, this is too important for a little company to hold onto for the next 10 years. So we're out there shopping this around right now so that people will make this into a diagnostics. That said, the entrepreneurial spirit of the company is. has still left the door open for research use products, and that's what we're doing. So we know it will be a diagnostic, but we cannot sell it as a diagnostic because it hasn't gone through the proper regulation. We respect that, we honor it, there's something we could do to help people with their lives. Give doctors research data. And so that's the pathway we chose as we find somebody to acquire us and. Take this rocketship out into the galaxy.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 48:30

I sometimes marvel at some of the things that culturally, historically, we as humans have done, and we've done it sometimes really in advance of the science, and then the science comes around and I almost see, i'll give a very specific example, but the sort of, I told you I'm thinking for example and I'm referencing various faiths in which, for example, in Judaism, the practice of kosher. Household the practice of and across many face and by the way, I know, I'm aware that in Islam, for example the practice of being kosher they don't use the exact same word, but is also very much part of the culture and the belief system. Also practices of various faiths have various types of fasting, right? Or restrictions. Lent and Yom Kippur and, and again among Muslims, there's a period leading up to Ramadan, right? And these came down from. The political slash religious leaders, yes, they're, in the great books and all that. But these were really done in my belief in a more secular perspective to really protect. The people, the population, whether or not there was the awareness of Louis Pasteur, and the theories of infection and so forth. The Jews knew that butchering an animal in a certain way, or that if you fast it has certain health benefits. There was some kind of ancient wisdom even there, and then it's so fascinating to me that the science kind of comes around a little later and goes. And we go, yeah. And I can just see all the rabbis and the other the priests and so forth and the imams and they're going, yeah I could have told you that. I could have told you that. We knew that the whole time, it's almost a Joseph Campbell kind of story, right? The narratives just repeat themselves over and over again. And these are just the great truths of our own existence. It's wonderful.

Dr. Howard Urnovitz: 50:28

you asked me in advance what have I learned on the last 50 years, and so I'm not gonna stand on one leg, but I am gonna say the following, that's an extension of your observations just now. You know what my hope is for the future is that all worked. These were clever people that realized eating pigs. Again, we evolved because the food we ate and the contact we had, and somehow, I don't know the tribes then knew we, this is a pig. We can't eat, we can't evolve with this thing. Those were important survival skills. What I'm telling you is when you have a world. there's 25 to 150 million people on it, you come up with a set of guidelines to live in your micro environment. And so this is my hope for the world. is my happy Halloween message, That part of that strategy for survival was. we You had to consider us versus them they were them was the other tribe, the other group, the other organization that was competing for resources. And so you had to have a strategy of us versus them. It's part of us. We had to learn how to lie. We had to learn all these things for survival. My hope for the world is evolution. And it's the evolution of the brain and the evolution of an idea. would like in hope that the world realizes that at 9 billion people, those set of rules may not apply for survival reasons. And I suggest we switch from a strategy of us versus them to us.

Dr. Ken Sharlin: 52:00

Lovely. Dr. UrNovytz, your work invites us to see disease not as malfunction, but as communication. The genome speaking. Back to us about the world that we have created for better or for worse, right? That's a message I think all of us, clinicians, scientists, and everyday people they need to hear. So thank you. Thank you so much for joining me on the Healthy Brain Toolbox and for the decades of persistence and brilliance that brought you to this moment. For the listeners who'd like to dive deeper, I highly recommend Dr. Urnovitz's book. It's available on Amazon Unnatural Selection and his company's work at fbbbio.com. Thank you so much for being on the Healthy Brain Toolbox.

COMMERCIAL BREAK: 52:51

Hi everyone. Dr. Ken Sharlin here with the Healthy Brain Toolbox. I'd love to hear from you. If you have general questions about brain health, neurology, or the science of keeping your brain sharp. Send them to questions@healthybraintoolbox.com. I'll be reading your questions on the upcoming episodes. Please remember, these need to be general questions, can't answer personal medical questions, or provide individual medical advice. So if you've ever wondered about brain health strategies, lifestyle tips, new research, or the future of neuroscience, send those questions in. I look forward to hearing from you and who knows? You might even hear your question featured on the show. Thank you for tuning into the Healthy Brain Toolbox podcast. I hope today's conversation gave you new insights to protect and nourish your brain. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with anyone looking to take control of their health. Until next time, stay sharp and keep learning.