Precision Longevity and Proactive Healthcare
How Personalized, Data-Driven Medicine Is Transforming Brain Health, Metabolic Function, and Long-Term Vitality
In Part One of the ANEW Insight Podcast, Dr. Supatra Tovar speaks with Erik Nelson, co-founder and clinical director of Human Sync, about the evolution of modern medicine – and why reactive healthcare is no longer enough.
The conversation highlights a powerful shift happening in healthcare today: moving from symptom management to precision longevity medicine.
After years working in high-acuity hospital settings at Mayo Clinic, Erik saw firsthand how traditional systems excel at crisis care but often fall short in prevention. Patients were treated once disease appeared, rarely before.
That realization sparked a new mission: help people build resilience, optimize performance, and extend their healthspan not just their lifespan.
From Reactive Medicine to Proactive Optimization
Traditional healthcare often works like this:
- Diagnose a problem
- Prescribe medication
- Monitor symptoms
- Repeat as needed
While this model is lifesaving in emergencies, it is not designed to optimize long-term vitality.
Precision longevity medicine flips the script. Instead of asking, “How do we treat this disease?” it asks:
- What are this person’s genetic predispositions?
- What early biomarkers are trending in the wrong direction?
- How can we intervene before dysfunction becomes diagnosis?
At Human Sync, the approach is comprehensive and highly individualized.
What Makes Human Sync Different?
Human Sync operates as a 100 percent virtual telemedicine practice available across the United States. But it is not simply lifestyle coaching, and it is not just lab testing.
It combines:
- Advanced blood biomarker analysis
- Genetic testing
- Pharmacogenomics
- DEXA body composition scans
- VO2 max testing
- Cardiovascular risk markers such as Lp(a) and LP-PLA2
- Deep lifestyle and behavioral assessment
What truly sets it apart is time and personalization.
Instead of 15-minute appointments, patients undergo an in-depth Foundations Phase. This includes a 60-minute deep dive into daily routines, stress patterns, nutrition, sleep, exercise, family history, and long-term goals.
From there, clinicians prioritize key risk factors and build a structured 90-day plan.
Not everything changes at once. Changes are sequenced strategically to ensure sustainable progress.
A Real-World Example: Pre-Diabetes
In conventional care, someone with an elevated A1C might receive medication and general advice to “eat better and exercise.”
In a longevity-based model, the evaluation expands:
- A1C, fasting insulin, and glucose trends
- Genetic predispositions toward insulin resistance
- Body composition and visceral fat
- Sleep quality and stress load
- Nutritional patterns and food quality
- Inflammatory markers
Rather than immediately defaulting to medication, many individuals begin with a structured 3–6 month plan targeting:
- Whole-food nutrition
- Improved protein and fiber balance
- Reduced ultra-processed foods
- Exercise programming based on VO2 max
- Sleep optimization
- Strategic supplementation when appropriate
Pharmacogenomic testing can also reveal how a person metabolizes medications, helping providers avoid ineffective or poorly tolerated treatments.
This is proactive healthcare rooted in precision.
Nutrition Without Dogma
One of the most compelling aspects of Erik’s philosophy is the rejection of rigid, one-size-fits-all diets.
Instead of pushing carnivore, keto, paleo, or Mediterranean labels, the focus remains on:
- Whole foods
- Individual genetic variation
- Metabolic flexibility
- Long-term sustainability
Two people can eat similar diets and respond completely differently. Genetics influence fat metabolism, carbohydrate tolerance, and inflammatory response.
Longevity medicine looks beyond trends and personalizes recommendations to the individual’s data.
Health Outcomes Over Hype
In the rapidly growing longevity industry, there is excitement around:
- Peptides
- Stem cells
- Hormone therapy
- IV infusions
- Advanced biohacking tools
While these can have a place, Human Sync prioritizes foundational drivers of long-term disease:
- Cardiovascular health
- Metabolic stability
- Neurological resilience
- Immune function
- Body composition
- Physical performance
The goal is not flashy interventions. It is measurable health outcomes.
Why This Matters Now
Chronic disease continues to rise globally. Many conditions — including heart disease, diabetes, cognitive decline, and metabolic dysfunction – develop silently for years before diagnosis.
Precision longevity medicine aims to detect subtle changes early and intervene intelligently.
Instead of waiting for disease, it builds health.
FAQs
1. What is precision longevity medicine?
Precision longevity medicine is a proactive healthcare approach that uses advanced diagnostics, genetics, and personalized lifestyle strategies to optimize healthspan and prevent chronic disease before it develops.
2. How is proactive healthcare different from traditional care?
Traditional care often reacts to symptoms after disease appears. Proactive healthcare evaluates biomarkers, genetics, and lifestyle patterns early, creating personalized plans to prevent dysfunction and optimize long-term vitality.
3. Is longevity medicine only for athletes or high performers?
No. While many high performers are drawn to optimization, longevity medicine benefits anyone who wants to improve metabolic health, brain function, energy, and long-term disease prevention.
Want to Learn More from Erik Nelson?
To explore more about precision longevity, proactive healthcare, and personalized optimization, you can follow Erik Nelson and stay connected with the work at Human Sync.
Links:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/erik-nelson-b05a1821a, https://humansync.com/pages/about, https://www.instagram.com/enelson_mn/
Continue Your Journey
- 🌿 Rebuild body trust and nervous-system regulation inside my step-by-step program: Deprogram Diet Culture course
- 📘 Go deeper on mindset, cravings, and sustainable health: Deprogram Diet Culture book (paperback, Kindle, and audio) find it via the book page on my site
- 🎧 Listen to the full ANEW Insight episode featuring these practices and Dr. Lavretsky’s research
View here the full podcast Transcript:
Erik Nelson Part One
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224:[00:00:00] Hello and welcome everyone. I’m super excited because I have co-founder and clinical director of Human Sync, Erik Nelson with us today. Erik, welcome.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: Thank you. Nice to be here.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: We’re excited to, uh, you know, find out more about specialized healthcare today. That is our goal. I’m gonna read a little bit about Erik, and then we’re gonna jump right into our questions.
Erik Nelson is the co-founder and clinical director of Human Sync, a precision longevity and health optimization company designed to bridge the gap between traditional healthcare and personalized proactive medicine. With more than a decade of clinical experience that began in high acuity hospital settings, Erik witnessed firsthand the limitations of reactive symptom-based care.
That experience shaped his mission to help people not just avoid disease, but actively build resilience, vitality and long-term health. [00:01:00] At Human Sync, Erik leads a highly specialized data-driven approach that integrates advanced diagnostics, biomarker tracking genetics, lifestyle science, and multi-disciplinary clinical care.
His work focuses on helping individuals, particularly high performers and professionals, optimize brain health, metabolic function, energy, and longevity so they can feel better now while extending their health span well into the future. Erik, welcome.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: Thank you. Thank you. It’s always interesting hearing that information. We’re working so hard every day that it’s kind of nice to step back and be like, okay, we’re doing something that’s fun. So I’m excited.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Something that’s really fun and, and this podcast is all about optimizing health and that’s why I connected with you and wanted you on this podcast because I think that there’s, you know, just this kind of growing market and this very specialized healthcare. So I wanted to find [00:02:00] out more about it and really, um, help our listeners understand how they can maybe take advantages.
Advantages in companies like yours, um, being more proactive in their health rather than reactive. That’s kind of the goal of the, of the whole podcast. We always start with inspiration. So I really wanna understand what inspired you to move beyond traditional clinical medicine, um, and how did you get into the world of this highly specialized, longevity focused healthcare?
Um.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: The inspiration. Uh, you know, I, I grew up in, uh, Rochester, Minnesota, so my whole entire family friends worked at Mayo Clinic. I eventually got a job at Mayo Clinic, and I was always a little health, uh, more, more health conscious, starting in high school, lifting weights, going to Sam’s Club and getting chicken breasts with a friend and driving home at lunch and eating chicken breasts and broccoli and, and trying to gain as much muscle as [00:03:00] possible.
I was always in sports. What got me into what I’m doing now, I would say, is a combination of what I experience in nursing school and being a, a critical care nurse at Mayo Clinic in the neuro unit, um, In nursing school after the first test, I remember getting the results back. The whole class actually got under 70% on the first test. I remember that as like, wow, we worked so hard. Then I step back and I’m like, we’re not even learning about how to prevent these diseases they’re teaching us about. It’s always about, okay, how, what can we do? The bandaid approach or what medicines? So I looked at my, my friend, uh, who’s still a critical care nurse in Michigan, he is doing great things.
Um. He’s like, stick with it. I’m, I’m sure the degree will work out. and I just kind of went with it. I was like, okay, let’s just, we’ll finish this thing because I almost became a dietician, nutritionist, personal trainer. I worked at Lifetime Fitness, uh, you know, for a while. And I thought maybe I could become a general manager there, but at the time I [00:04:00] did not have a business hat on.
It was more working with people, and their bodies and just how can I help people? And so I met a ton of people. In my life that I see carrying a medicine box with like eight different meds or a med pack, and I get curious and I’m like, hey, do you know what you’re taking? No, I’m not sure. I’m just told to take it.
And I always felt extremely uncomfortable in those situations and. So anyway, I, I finished nursing school. Did a preceptor ship in the ICU at a clinic in Duluth, Minnesota called Essentia Health. So there was an opening that they would take a couple nursing students to go learn about what it’s like to be a nurse in the neuro ICU. Um, at the time I was already a little interested in the brain. I had read Dale Bredesen’s End of Alzheimer’s book. My dad was a surgical assistant, um, at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota on the, on the ICU Neuro ICU floor. So patients that would have brain tumors removed or trauma stroke. [00:05:00] Motor vehicle accidents, all pretty sad. He worked in surgery and as a kid I remember him coming home and I would ask him like, dad, have you seen a brain? And he, yes, he saw him all the time and I thought that was really interesting. Never thought I would actually do it though, or do something with the brain. I just didn’t think about it. Um, so fast forward nursing school, I learned a lot about the body.
I learned, um, organization. Structure, all the good things that school really brings. It’s like, okay, you’ve got a test. You have to beat the test, you have to score on good on the test. Okay. So that’s when I started getting into the obsession of learning. Um, after every class I went to the, the Learning Center Library, and I pretty much taught myself the exact same thing I just learned. I just did a lot of studying and I did well in nursing school and found a passion for learning, which morphed into. How do we prevent people from getting sick? So I started listening to podcasts while I was in a, a nurse and I loved my job at Mayo. I, I, I was working with some of the doctors that wrote the book on [00:06:00] neurophysiology and I’d have a very complex patient because at a nursing school, new nurses don’t typically get hired in Mayo’s neuro ICU unit just because it’s sad. It’s a lot on, on the, the psyche ‘ cause many patients pass away. Um, I had some other life experience. I don’t need to cover it on this call. I worked social, social work and at-risk youth and I had some, been exposed to some life situations that they saw on paper might benefit me when I was a nurse. So I actually thought I’d do that for a long time.
But after about six months of doing night shifts and seeing, this is a, a big one is patients would come outta surgery, and they would have a diabetic wristband and they would be given cookies and Pepsi. And I was like, what are we doing giving people cookies and Pepsi? Well, they, and then I was told from the other nurses that patients need to eat food.
And I’m like, well, they could probably eat something different than cookies and Pepsi. We’ll just give ’em more insulin. And I was like, oh, [00:07:00] that doesn’t make sense either. Um.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Uh.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: I just noted it. I mean, I was getting paid a nursing salary and I was like at a good job. So I didn’t let it bother me a ton, but it kind of did. I’m still talking about it, so maybe it did bother me. Um, so all of this stuff kind of mixed up into, okay, what should I do? So I went on Indeed and I typed in integrative nursing, functional nursing. There really wasn’t a ton. This is 20 17, 18.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Right.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: Um, so I’m like, I’ll just keep on doing this and maybe become a nurse practitioner. Eventually get out at nights, maybe get my medical degree, the same route most medical providers are still thinking and doing in the US just ’cause the medical system is so ingrained. Um, so podcasts essentially brought me into this, this new space of personalized medicine. So I think back in 20 18, 19, the word longevity wasn’t being used too much.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: No.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: It [00:08:00] was functional medicine, integrative medicine, holistic medicine, maybe personalized, um, preventative
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: lifestyle.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: Yep. I heard somebody the other day call it modern medicine, which is kind of cool.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Hey, why not? I, I love that. I can totally relate to you. I was a dietician in the hospital for a while when I was just starting out as a dietician, and, uh, you know, it, it really did feel like slapping a bandaid on things, uh, you know, while they’re in the hospital and then sending them home with education that they may or may not follow really wasn’t satisfying to me.
And, um, you know, in integrating with clinical psychology was. And, and my fitness background. That was like the trifecta for me. I was like, hey, if I know how all of the systems work, mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, um, maybe I can help people on that holistic [00:09:00] level prevent the disease before it even happens, or actually be able to holistically treat, uh, if it ever does.
So, I, I love your background and I, I think that that’s amazing. So how did that evolve into what you’re doing today? What, how did you create Human Sync?
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: Yeah, so it started with podcast. Um, Ben Greenfield is a big podcaster. I think he was one of the nation’s top trainers back in the day.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Uh.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: Um, I think he started with personal training and he had the Ben Greenfield Life podcast. I can’t remember the exact name of it, but I started listening to that and that led to, you know, he would have a guest on and that person would have a podcast. Next thing I know, I’ve got a collection of about eight people I’m listening to, and there was a company called Wild Health. That was on their podcast in 2018. And there are two Kentucky doctors talking about this business they had started called Wild Health they looked at, um, the [00:10:00] body through a personalized genomic medicine lens.
So using genetics, blood work, lifestyle to optimize health like this is definitely what I wanna do. It was a Sunday afternoon. I remember I was working out in the gym at Mayo’s gym. I stopped everything. I never stopped my work, ’cause I’m pretty focused on my workouts. I’m, I never, I just sat there and I listened, called their, their, their phone the next day and they’re in Kentucky and I talked to one of the, uh, first people.
They had just started it actually on the podcast. It sounded like they were running for a while. But they literally had just started, uh, got ahold of the founder. Um, both are ran by medical doctors that were, they were roommates in college. One had high cholesterol, one had low cholesterol, but they had the same lifestyle.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Huh.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: So like, what is going on here?
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Wow.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: They’re like, maybe genetics, maybe lifestyle, family history. So they started the company I just said, hey, I would love to go to the school that you went to and get the training that you went to. I didn’t ask for a job. I didn’t, it was just like, where did you [00:11:00] get your training?
’cause that’s what I wanna do. And he goes, well, we’re kind of, we’re kind of winging it and we’re, we’re doing our own research. We started the company to help other people out. And they explained more about the product. It was about an hour long conversation. And I told him about my history with nursing.
Um, and then he asked me what podcast I listened to. And you don’t always hear that in an interview. Mayo Clinic never asked that. Um, but think of, that’s kind of where the world’s at. And, and it’s not that all podcasts have the golden source of truth, but it’s people that are listening to podcasts are aware that something needs to change with many different things maybe.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Mm-hmm.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: He asked the podcast and the books that I’ve read recently and they were the almost exact same list that he had read. So then he is like, okay, you’ve got Mayo experience. Maybe you would be a good, um, health coach for our patients that have goals related to brain health. Sure. Sounds good. So I [00:12:00] visited and three months later, my daughter was one at the time.
My wife has always been extremely supportive. She’s incredible. We moved from Rochester, which we had a very comfortable job at Mayo Clinic. To a startup in Kentucky and there was no hard decision. We didn’t have to sit down there for an hour or two hours and think about it, or two weeks or talk to our family.
It was, we have to do this. I’ll put my notice in a Mayo Clinic. And my family was a little uncomfortable. Mom and mom and my mom and grandma specifically. They’re like, oh my gosh, you’re leaving Mayo. Um, like, yeah, I am, because I have to, like, this is the future of medicine. That’s kind of what got me into the space.
And ever since then, I’ve now seen behind the scenes and worked with about six different businesses in the space. So three physical clinics, longevity medicine clinics. I can talk about those more if you want. And then, uh, Wild Health model, obviously. And then now Human Sync. Human Sync is a blend of everything I’ve seen
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Yes.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224:[00:13:00]Joined Hands with a business individual to help me get it, bring it to life.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: I love it. Give me a picture of now you, you know, you’ve got all this experience. Give me a picture of what Human Sync is all about. What kinds of, um, specialized care do you give? Who do you mainly work with?
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: So Human Sync is, first off, it’s a telemedicine model. 100% virtual. Uh, available in all 50 states and it’s highly medical. Sometimes people think it’s maybe just lifestyle, which is, I love lifestyle. It’s part of our program. But we, uh, we do have the ability to order prescriptions, imaging, any test. Um, we’ve dealt with complicated cases.
We have a referral network, so I essentially look at us as a quarterback to an individual’s health. Um, we are one year into launching, so we literally, about a year ago, January, we launched Human Sync. We casted a wide net, [00:14:00] of people we’d like to work with. We worked with Navy Seal snipers, police chief from, uh, one of the major cities in the country.
Um, stay at home mom, athletes, uh, younger. I’m 40, so when I say kids, 30 year olds. 30 year olds. Uh, um. We just casted a net and we’re just like, what? Let’s see. And some people that we shouldn’t have done that, but startups are just, it’s all about learning in that first year and refining the product. In my mind I was like, when we launched last year, I’m like, this is it. And we’ve learned so much and tweaked it. And about six months in we’re purely word of mouth as well. We don’t do any marketing. Marketing’s a whole separate conversation. We could talk about that and marketing in this new longevity space.
But, um. We started with our business network that we know, like who do we know that might be interested in membership? We reached out to those people. And thankfully we have a decent sized network of people that we’ve met that we trust and get [00:15:00] along with. And that got us our first 10 patients. Um, and what we offer is, like I said, it’s personal.
It’s, it’s, uh, not personalized genomic medicine. It’s, you know, you could call it longevity medicine. just a, a modern way. Speaking on that modern term of looking at the body in a systems-based approach to help an individual achieve their personal goals and, and long-term health goals. So we do genetics, blood VO2, Dexascan. We can do any test on the market. Um, but we don’t position ourself as a testing company. So that’s why we’re differentiating ourselves from a lot of the companies in this space is there’s a lot of focus on running a blood panel. Then getting automated recommendations.
So Function Health,
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Right.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: and Superpower are two great companies that are doing blood work. People are opening their eyes up to, oh my gosh, there’s more than just cholesterol to heart health. There’s LPPLA two and LPa and VO2 Max and [00:16:00] HRV. So they’re, these other companies are a kind of a scalable approach, like let’s reach hundreds of thousands of people, which is awesome. Get ’em this blood work.
They’re not meeting with anybody. They’re getting automated recommendations and advice on how to improve their markers. That’s not what we are. We are very, very human driven, human led. We do use AI for some operational behind the scenes stuff, data gathering, data collection, a platform, stuff like that. But it’s essentially, it’s, it’s a very personalized, um, program or experience. And we, our two main compasses in our business is health or health outcomes and quality of care. So in the market right now, and what I’ve seen in the businesses that I’ve worked with is there’s a lot of discussion on lets bring somebody through and do a bunch of testing.
Like Mayo Clinic’s executive healthcare program. They come in, pay about [00:17:00] $10,000, they get results. And, and it’s, it’s more, it’s, I would say it’s more valuable than traditional healthcare for sure, but it’s not extremely comprehensive and there’s no ongoing care. So we’re looking at all these different models and what’s really interesting is that there’s not a huge focus on making sure the health outcomes are met.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Right.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: On stem cells, peptides, hormone replacement therapy, IV therapies, gene therapy, which is a whole separate beast. There’s all these fancy things and we kind of back up and we’re like, that’s great, and those are tools that can be used in the right situation, but we believe longevity is, looking at the things that take people out early and lead to problems later in life. So heart disease, neurological disease, metabolic dysfunction, cancer, immune dysfunction, [00:18:00] and uh, their physical health.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Yes, gimme a picture if, say, we’re looking at the difference between reactive healthcare and more, you know, preventative or longevity based healthcare. Say if somebody was, you know, cusp of pre-diabetes, reactive healthcare, they’re gonna go to their professional and their professional. Well, let’s just say that they’re like maybe at pre-diabetes, where they would need medication.
A health professional will probably give them something like metformin and tell them to go and diet and exercise.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: Yep.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: How would it be different? With your company, what? What in addition would you do? How would you then turn that case, reverse it and help somebody then increase their health span beyond that?
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: For, yeah, that’s awesome question. I think it comes down to the, the time we are able to spend with our patients. The current [00:19:00] medical model, right? They have 15 minutes per patient a couple times a year max, so that’s 30 minutes in a year. So we spend
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Yes.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: a lot of time in our setting the foundations phase, so everybody that comes in. We get the demographic information where they live, all that stuff. And then we find out their personal goals and then we meet with them for 60 minutes and we talk to them about medical history, family history. We go deep with daily routine, so we walk people through their day and their life and sometimes they learn things they were doing that they had no idea.
We say at seven or what time you wake up in the morning. So we gather an extensive background on what the individual’s doing, eating, how they’re sleeping, how they’re exercising. All that’s really important to tie into the pre-diabetes thing you just talked about. Um, so we’re collecting all that information.
Meanwhile, they have genetics processing, lab work processing. They’ve completed a DEXA scan and they’ve completed a VO two max. If somebody needs a microbiome test, we [00:20:00] added that or somebody needs a mic, you know, whatever the test is, we can add that. So all this data and this testing is accumulated in that first stage. Testing comes back. It shows pre-diabetes 5.8 A1C. The range is 5.7 to 6.4. Um, so say, you know, even in western medicine sometimes it won’t even be touched until it’s up towards 6.4. Um, I’ve heard so many cases of people. had a 6.0 A1C and there was not a whole lot done. And I’m like, whoa, that’s like, that’s the, the danger territory.
I mean, the 6.0 is not good. if we find out somebody has a 5.8 A1C, we’ll we’ll mark that. We’ll note that we also look at insulin fasting glucose, and then at their genetics, we look at their lifestyle, we look at their current supplementation. We can also check pharmacogenomics. Have you heard of pharmacogenomics?
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know that much about it.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: Yeah, so our patients will, will give a saliva sample, send it to the lab, and get [00:21:00] genetic predispositions towards diabetes, pre
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Right.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: predispositions towards, you know, sometimes people think they should eat a keto diet and they’ll be eating a lot of saturated fats. Well, some genetic predispositions
don’t let people metabolize that, actually most.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Mm-hmm.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: Some people are more tolerant towards saturated fats. It’s kind of wild. So we, the genetic gives us a lot of information, then we’ll see the blood, and then we run a pharmacogenomics test, which is an add-on. So pharmaco, pharmaco means like medications,
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Mm-hmm.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: Genetics. So how do these medications interact with this individual that we’re working with?
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Great.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: and it can tell us, these medications in the red column should never be used with this person. Very, very helpful for mental health. We’ve had some people on psych medications. We don’t mess with psych meds. We say stay with your psychiatrist.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Mm-hmm.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224:But we can run the test and hand it off to the psychiatrist and say, by the way, this [00:22:00] medication that the person’s taking is circulating in the blood, it’s not breaking down. It’s probably contributing to some of their symptoms so we can find out if the medication for diabetes and blood sugar should even be used. We always, always, always, I should use that with an asterisk. I would say 90% of the cases we will put them on a plan for three to six months. That’s targeting diet, exercise, sleep, stress, dihydroberberine is a, is a supplement that you can be used that’s like nature’s natural, Um, Metformin for blood sugar have had great success with that,
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Yes.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224:Education, and I think it’s a lot of it is education. Because that’s not what they’re getting from their doctors,
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Not at all. And certainly the dietary advice is scant and very misinformed. Uh, you know, especially I, we could go on and talk an entire podcast on the new dietary recommendations that have just come out that [00:23:00] are very, very problematic. Um, but. Give me a picture of the, um, types of nutrition recommendations that you might give to someone who’s experiencing pre-diabetes.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: So the diet nutrition is a loaded one, right? So everybody’s so
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Mm-hmm.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: different. Um, I had a post the other day that we did on dogmatic diets. We’re not a big fan of that just because, you know, you go on Instagram, Pinterest, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard somebody say the carnivore diet’s the cure all to everything.
And somebody even said the other day, that fiber isn’t needed.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Ah,
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: We don’t need fiber. And I was like, oh, maybe
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: yeah.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: And a lot of the times what I’m. I’ve observed is people suffered for a long time and then they change their diet, which means they removed something and they feel good and they’re excited and they pass that on LinkedIn and, um, so the dogmatic diets like Carnivore, Paleo, [00:24:00] Mediterranean. all that, it’s tough.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Yeah.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: If somebody were to, what is the best of all of ’em? I would just say eating whole foods. So it may be a mixture between Paleo and Mediterranean or pescatarian, but I don’t even like doing that. Um, we have to know the genetic predispositions to how their body reacts to certain foods. Um, we have to know their and the daily routine, all that stuff in that setting.
The foundations phase gives us the ammunition to understand what to recommend.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Mm-hmm.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: A lot of it is avoidance of certain things. So we have a, process that we want to detect, which dietary habits they’re, they’re doing on a daily basis. So.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Hmm.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: Oatmeal. Somebody’s eating oatmeal. Okay, what type of oatmeal is it?
Quicker oatmeal in the packets. It’s amazing how many people still think that’s healthy. Maple sugar in the packets. There’s microplastics in there, there’s glyphosate and pesticides. Um, and it’s not enough calories usually for people, so they’re eating
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Right.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224:[00:25:00] small, so we’ll, we’ll go deep on that stuff. Um, we’ll recommend steel cut or something like, um, I don’t know if you’ve heard this before, but you know if you refrigerate carbohydrates? Um. glu glycemic index is much lower the next day. So if you make a, a batch of so spaghetti or oatmeal and then you refrigerate it, it’s the glycemic index and the blood blood sugar response is much better when it’s been in the refrigerator overnight.
It’s interesting.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Mm-hmm.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224:So we’ll say, okay, processed foods, seed oils, um, it’s kind of hard to answer that specifically, but if we. If we see high cholesterol or high vascular inflammation, blood vessels are every everywhere in the body. We can look at a marker called LPa and LPPLA two. That tells us the vascular environment.
In terms of inflammation, blood vessels are everywhere in our body, so that will move itself to the top of the list for this individual. Um, [00:26:00] so what we’ll do is kind of quarterback and puppet master all the data. And then we’ll clinically lay out what should be achieved realistically in the next 12 months for this patient.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: Mm-hmm.
erik-nelson_1_01-14-2026_134224: it’s anywhere from 5, 6, 7 things we can’t do all at the same time. So we clinically triage those in order of importance then put somebody on a 90 day plan to attack it.
dr–supatra-tovar_7_01-14-2026_114224: I love that. I, I think that that is probably one of the. I think if you were to take away anything from the dietary guidelines that just came out is that whole foods are very important. Um, I think the jury is still out on, uh, vilifying seed oils, uh, at this point, because it really does depend on the ratio and I th.
You know, as according to what you’re saying, it really does depend on what’s going on with us genetically. But if you do look at the longest lived cultures in the world, if the you, you know, to, to take a deeper dive into the blue zone, certainly their diets are primarily whole [00:27:00] foods. They’re primarily plants. So if you’re looking at like whole grains and beans and legumes and um, you know, vegetables and fruits. And I would say too, you know, it makes a huge difference for cardiovascular disease and a lot of people don’t really know this, um, diabetes as well, to be really watching your saturated fat intake and their fat intake in general because.
You know, this does depend genetically, but the more that you have, uh, in terms of ratio in your diet, uh, for, for, uh, diabetes, that’s the main driver of insulin resistance is too much fat in the body, especially, um, you know, interfering with insulin’s ability to inject glucose into the cells. Oh, there’s so much I want to ask.
We’re out of time for this half of this podcast, if you can believe it, but we’re gonna come back. Y’all. We’re coming back next week, uh, for the second half of this amazing podcast, uh, with co-founder and clinical [00:28:00] director of Human Sync Erik Nelson. Erik, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
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