The Concierge Doc Podcast with Dr. Jason Littleton, M.D.
The Concierge Doc Podcast is hosted by Dr Jason Littleton, M.D., where he features medical content to make smart lifestyle choices for optimal health, wellness, energy, youthfulness, longevity, balance, and happiness.
The Concierge Doc Podcast with Dr. Jason Littleton, M.D.
The Gut-Brain Revolution: How AI and Digital Twins Are Transforming Personalized Medicine with Dr. Leo Grady of Jonah
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Disclaimer:
Access to the Information and materials contained in this podcast is at your own risk. The information contained is presented for the purpose of educating the consumer on a variety of wellness and health care topics (the “Information”). Nothing contained is intended to be instructional for medical diagnosis or treatment. The Information contained is compiled from a variety of sources. The Information should not be considered complete and not exhaustive and should not be in place of a visit or consultation with your own primary care doctor.
The views, opinions, and statements expressed by our guests are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Dr. Jason Littleton or the Concierge Doc Podcast. We do not endorse or take responsibility for any statements, claims, or perspectives shared in this content. Viewers are encouraged to conduct their own research and form their own conclusions.
SPEAKER_02:Access to the information and materials contained in this podcast is at your own risk. The information contained is presented for the purpose of educating the consumer on a variety of wellness and health care topics, the information. Nothing contained is intended to be instructional for medical diagnosis or treatment. The information contained is compiled from a variety of sources. The information should not be considered complete and exhaustive and should not be in place of a visit or consultation with your own primary care doctor. Welcome to the Concierge Stock Podcast. I'm your host, CEO and founder of Littleton Constructs Medicine, Dr. Jason Littleton. Welcome to the podcast. Today, we have the founder and CEO of Jonah, a company pioneering the use of AI and deep metagenomic sequencing to decode and shape the human gut microbiome. With over 20 years of experience in AI-driven healthcare, my guest has led innovation across startups and major medical technology firms, including Siemens, Heartflow, Page.ai, where he oversaw the launch of FDA-approved AI tools and pathology. He has authored two books on artificial intelligence, published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and holds over 300 patents in areas bridging AI, diagnostics, and healthcare. He holds a PhD in cognitive and neurosystems from Boston University and is recognized as a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Driven by a personal connection to gastrointestinal health issues in his family, my guest is passionate about unlocking the microbiome's potential and to prevent and treat chronic disease. Welcome to the Conscience Doc Podcast, Leo J. Grady, PhD. Welcome to the podcast. Leo, how are you doing today?
SPEAKER_01:I'm doing really well. How are you?
SPEAKER_02:I'm doing excellent. You know, it's wonderful to have you on. Very excited about your company. And I just want to dive right into it, you know, with some of the questions I have for you and your company. Number one, you know, I I Jonah is an inspiring, awesome, innovative company. What inspired you to start it and what problems are you aiming at to solve in healthcare?
SPEAKER_01:So with Jonah, we're an AI company focused on analyzing the gut microbiome and determining what you can do to change it. And the reason I got interested in this in the first place is a couple of things. First of all, I did my PhD in AI 20 years ago. I've been building AI and healthcare this whole time. And I I know that some problems are really uh very challenging, very data-rich. And those are the problems where AI can really make the most difference because every single month there are more than 2,000 studies written on the microbiome in PubMed. And no human being can uh keep up with all of that. But this is exactly the kind of problem where AI can be extraordinarily helpful. Uh, in addition, several members of my family uh have Crohn's disease, colitis, celiac. Uh, my son has undefined gut issues, and I've just seen their journey, how long it took to get a diagnosis, even when they had a diagnosis, how they were managed uh almost exclusively by medication, even though food lifestyle had a huge difference for them. And so it felt that all science pointed to toward the microbiome as being not only involved in the the origin of the disease, but also in how you can manage it and how you can treat it. But in order to actually bring that information to doctors, to patients, we really needed to invest in a lot of technology.
SPEAKER_02:That makes sense. Um, you know, for those new to it and new to just the terminology of the microbiome, what exactly is the microbiome and why is it so important to our health? I think a lot of people would love to hear that from you.
SPEAKER_01:So when I'm talking about the microbiome, I'm talking about the gut microbiome specifically. There is a microbiome in your skin, in your mouth, vaginal microbiome, uh, but specifically we're focused on the gut microbiome. And the gut microbiome is all the organisms that live in your gut. Uh, it can be bacteria, it can be fungus, it can be viruses, protists, archaea. You know, it's the kind of things that you're targeting when you take probiotics. And what's really surprising, remarkable, is that every aspect of our health has been linked to the composition of organisms that live in our gut. So it's not just gut issues, it's obesity, it's metabolic disease, it is um psoriasis, eczema, um, even depression, Parkinson's, and uh, and even cancer. All of it's been linked with the gut microbiome. The the challenge with it is the complexity because you and I share probably 99.9% of our genes, but maybe only 10% of our microbiome. So it's very, very individualized per person.
SPEAKER_02:That's a great point.
SPEAKER_01:And there's a huge universe of organisms that have been found in somebody's gut. But the set of organisms that you have and that I have and somebody else may have can be very different from one person to another.
SPEAKER_02:That that's that's very that's a very, very good point. I I love what you said about the microbiome there and how only 10% you know is shared amongst individuals and how individualized it is. You know, um, how does how does Jonah use AI to analyze the microbiome differently from other healthcare companies? How do you distinguish yourself?
SPEAKER_01:So traditionally, the way people have looked at the gut microbiome has been through culturing specific organisms or doing a PCR test, you know, like the kind that we were doing during COVID, where you're looking for a specific organism. You're trying to see is there a pathogen here, like E. coli or C. divacyl or something like that. Um, what all of this incredible science is showing is that it's the whole ecosystem that seems to uh be associated with different states of disease and different states of health. And so, in order to actually understand what's going on in that ecosystem, you have to look across not just one or two pathogens, but at a set of maybe 30, 40, 50, 60 different organisms and see how that whole composition has changed and whether or not that that is linked to some aspect of disease or health. Doing that jump from looking for a single organism to trying to do an analysis at an ecosystem level uh really goes beyond what any human is is going to be able to do looking at you know sets of spreadsheets of numbers of you know tens of thousands of potential different organisms. So that's where the AI comes in. Uh not only is the AI able to read all of the science, but then the AI is able to look at all those different organisms, match the study findings in all of the science to what was actually measured in your gut microbiome, and then study by study say this person's gut microbiome looks like they have a pattern linked to you know everything from fatigue and bloating and brain fog all the way to you know a Crohn's disease or an Alzheimer's or or something more serious.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. That's yeah, that's that's impressive. Um, you know, that's that's major. So and this is kind of, you know, asking this question even a different way so that patients can understand like what kind of health insights can someone get from a Jonah test and how can it actually change how they live and eat? So taking that information, how does the average patient who may not know anything about health, microbiome, Jonah, how can they, you know, take the Jonah test and then translate to making modifications in terms of how they eat and live?
SPEAKER_01:Well, what we're finding is that uh there's three groups of patients that are coming to Jonah. Uh, there's there are people who have some sort of health issue. They're trying to find a root cause and they're trying to find a solution. So that's one group. There's a second group of athletes, biohackers, the longevity community, people who want to look better, perform better, feel better, that aren't looking to solve a problem, but looking to elevate their health in one way or another.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then there's a third group of general wellness of people who don't necessarily have a problem or not necessarily trying to change anything, but they want to do a checkup and make sure everything looks okay.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:So for each of those three groups, by having the AI read all of these studies in PubMed, 220,000 studies in PubMed, and analyze the gut microbiome data in light of all those studies, we can point out uh both uh disease patterns that have been established in the literature or opportunities for improvement in terms of improving your health. And then the question is, okay, well, after we do that analysis, how do we actually guide somebody to fix it or to enhance it? And that's where uh we built this uh AI digital twin of your gut. And for this, uh we had the AI go read all the interventional literature, how you can change your microbiome in predictable ways based on diet, lifestyle, supplements, even medications. And then with this digital twin that we build of the person's gut, we can actually simulate what happens if this person goes vegan. And we know based on all the literature how going vegan is going to change your gut microbiome. So we can apply those changes digitally for that person and see if going vegan is going to help them or hurt them or set them back. And then we can do that same analysis for gluten-free and for keto and you know, digitally, virtually, we can give them every dietary change, every lifestyle change, every supplement that's been studied, and really optimize how we can both you know reduce or remove some of these disease patterns, and then also how we can enhance the person's gut microbiome for health.
SPEAKER_02:That's that's that's incredible. And when I heard you first discuss this, that totally um bought me in. And I was like, my practice needs that the digital twin and helping people to find out what may or may not work before it's actually tried. I mean, that that sold me on the product. And good.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I was gonna say, you know, it's it's so powerful. And I I actually saw this at a previous company. Yeah. I was uh at a company called Heart Flow, yeah, where we were doing an analysis of coronary disease by calculating blood flow through the coronary arteries based on a cardiac CT scan. And one of the things that we built was a virtual stenting application. So if once you analyze the person's heart, maybe they have three blockages, three stenoses. Uh, does this person need one stent? Do they need three stents? If they need one, which lesion needs to be stented. And with this virtual stenting application, we were able to allow the doctors to try different treatment plans and recalculate blood flow based on all of uh what was known about that individual and and fluid dynamics and really assess which treatment plan was going to be most effective. And that was actually the first FDA-approved um digital twin in medicine back in 2019.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. Wow, I didn't know that. That's um, I mean, that's impressive. I mean, I think that's the future, digital twins to test, you know, uh therapeutics before we ever actually um try them in patients. I mean, that is without quite without without a doubt the future. Um, and you know, using the digital twin on Jonah, are we able to, you know, kind of see how a patient's current medications are affecting their gut too? I think you said that, but I just want to circle back to that.
SPEAKER_01:We can. Um, today we don't make that of information available in the product. Uh, however, it is possible to pull that from the literature, and it is possible to leverage our technology to make exactly those assessments. And in fact, even to go further, it's been shown that somebody's pretreatment gut microbiome is highly predictive of efficacy for a wide variety of different drugs. So, for example, uh biologics, uh, immunoncology drugs, GLP1s, uh, even SSRIs, it's been shown that if you look at somebody's gut microbiome before putting this patient on the drug, you have uh a high degree of predictive power of how well that drug is going to perform for that individual. So these are uh areas that we're working on for the future that we will, you know, be rolling into the product. When you're dealing with drugs or other considerations that you have to take into account that we're working through, but but the technology and the literature absolutely supports that kind of analysis.
SPEAKER_02:And I, you know, I actually have a left-field question, a left-field question about this that you uh I was thinking about as I think about my patient population. A lot of my patients like to intermittently fast. And some people go on a very long fast. Um is it possible to see how that affects the microbiome with Jonah? Or I mean, how do you uh account for that? If someone does a one or two-day fast, for example.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know uh if there are studies on on fasts that long in the literature. Um, however, intermittent fasting, like a 16-8 uh fasting structure, uh, has been studied. So we know that if you study somebody, you take somebody's microbiome before they go on an intermittent fasting, like a 16-8, and then you have them do that intermittent fasting uh protocol for six weeks, eight weeks, uh, we see predictable changes in a person's gut microbiome. So because we see these predictable changes, we can say uh, you know, if you we know where you're starting from, and if you were to uh adopt intermittent fasting, uh, we can predict where you would get to based on all of these studies. With the longer fast, the one to two-day fast, I don't know what the literature is. Um, you know, I often tell people just because our AI has read every study doesn't mean I've read every study. Um, but I I'm not sure I haven't seen, at least myself, uh studies on fast that long.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that that makes sense. I I like that answer. Um what are the biggest misconceptions people have about the microbiome and gut health?
SPEAKER_01:There are a lot. Um one that I hear a lot is that people think that probiotics are always good for you. Um and it's true that a lot of the organisms that are contained in probiotics can be beneficial for some people at some times. However, you know, if you're starting already with a high level of some of those organisms, they they can potentially actually have negative consequences. So for I'll give you an example. Like we we've heard a lot about acromancia recently, and for good reason, because low levels of acromancia have been linked with a variety of different health problems. However, several studies have shown that high levels of acromancia are linked with Parkinson's disease. So should everybody be on an acromantia supplement? You know, I think it really depends on where you're starting from and you know what you're trying to achieve. And so I think a concept misconception I hear a lot in the industry is that everybody should be on probiotics and you know, different probiotics, uh, you know, these are high quality, those are high quality, but not paying attention to these specific organisms. And we can do much, much better uh if we actually look at your microbiome and decide what you need and which organisms are going to deliver that. I can say on my my personal standpoint, I have stopped taking probiotics. Um except uh my most recent Jonah test told me that I there was one specific probiotic that I could benefit from. And so I started taking that one. But before that, my gut was fine, and so I didn't want to mess with it.
SPEAKER_02:So is it better for people uh to take the Jonah test and then find out if it's appropriate for them to use um a probiotic or prebiotic?
SPEAKER_01:Well, whatever their microbiome is uh when they test is what we're going to base the recommendations on. So if somebody's been taking a probiotic for the last you know few months and they continue they intend to continue taking it, then we will analyze their microbiome, you know, in the context of them taking that probiotic. Now, the results of the Jonah test may actually say you should avoid probiotics with these organisms. And if that were the case, then you know the that person would be best off discontinuing use of those probiotics. But basically what we we always say to people is you know, uh eat like you're normally eating, um, you know, take the supplements you're normally taking. And if there's something that that seems off or that you need to stop, uh, we'll tell you based on looking at your microbiome.
SPEAKER_02:You know, walk me through this. Um if I'm a patient and I come to my doctor and I'm like, I want the Jonah test, what does that look like from the time of ordering it to the time of giving the sample and turning it in and getting the results?
SPEAKER_01:So some clinicians that we work with have stock of the kits in their office. And so they'll just just they'll just hand one out at the um, you know, to that that patient. They would just register the barcode in their portal, and then when the patient sends the sample and they would get the results there. Now the physician gets the results first and they can choose to share them with the patient or not. It's it's really dependent on the practice. Although we find most clinicians do choose to share with the patient. The other option is that the clinician can place a drop order, drop ship order where we ship the kit to the patient's house and they can do the collection at home. From the time that they send the sample back in, they get results in two to three weeks.
SPEAKER_02:That's good. So now how does a patient log on to the portal and get into uh looking at their digital twin?
SPEAKER_01:So uh it's it's up to the clinician whether they have access or not. Uh if the clinician does choose to give them access to their digital twin, then basically uh the clinician would trigger an email invite to that patient, and then they could make an account with Jonah and then log in and access their results.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, that makes sense. No, that's great. I want my audience to hear that. I want my patients to hear that so that they know what to expect. Very excited about um this product, and I really think it's going to um really transform people's lives in my practice and um really abroad, really excited about this. And when as I ask this next question, looking ahead, what what what would you say is next for Jonah? And what excites you most about the future of personalized medicine? And how do you see it play out even in concierge medicine? Which I do. It's a long question, but I would love to hear your answer.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, it's a big question. Uh, from the microbiome standpoint, the literature is continuing to grow and to accelerate. In fact, it's almost 3,000 studies per month that are being published on the microbiome today. And we're learning more and more about uh the mechanisms of action, levels of causality, and gaining more and more evidence for the linkage between the microbiome and a variety of different disorders, which I think is opening up new uh treatment pathways for things like you know, uh some of the side effects of menopause and so on, uh, with some of the more recent studies. I think zooming out in terms of personalized medicine, uh concierge medicine, I think, is really on the cutting edge here and really leading the way uh in personalized medicine because it's a it's a it's a single uh unification point of all of the uh data about a person, um, their lifestyle, and then leveraging technology like AI to be able to integrate all of that data and uh integrate the current literature and present that to the physician in a way that allows them to make the most informed decisions about their patients. Um, I think AI is an incredible tool to be able to do that, uh, both to keep up with the literature to navigate this data, but then also with these digital twins to be able to provide very personalized custom plans that are based on an individual's biology.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think that's that's major. Um what type of testimonies have you had uh using Jonah for very complex cases? Now, for example, you know, and I'm thinking outside of the GI world, because when we talk about the microbiome, it really affects every aspect of a person's health. Um anything come to mind where you've uh heard of a complicated case and Jonah really helped dive into it and really caused a breakthrough to happen, even if it was un-GI related?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, um, gosh, there are a whole bunch of them. So one case that comes to mind is is a young woman who had um it, you know, severe adult acne like her whole life. And she was in her her mid to late 20s. And um, when she did her Jonah test and we got the results back, we found that there were the patterns that have been linked to acne in her gut were not present in her gut. Um but what we did find is that there were uh patterns of organisms in her gut that were linked to hydrogenitis. And when she saw that, she went and did uh a number of like research looking into hydrogenitis. She'd never heard of it before, and found that that it actually was a really strong fit for what she was experiencing, even more than acne. And when she followed the uh the action plan based on the digital twin to reduce those patterns related to hydrogenitis, she had a major improvement in uh what she was experiencing with her acne.
SPEAKER_02:Wow, that's that's major. I think that's gonna turn a lot of people on to Jonah because really, you know, in what we're saying in a lot of aspects is that there are many things where the answer does lie in your gut. And that makes a huge uh difference where people, we need to, as clinicians, as doctors, we need to start bringing that into our practices. One of the ways I know I'm planning on using this in my practice is um I'd like to get a baseline of people, uh a baseline uh Jonah test on people so I can use that to make therapeutic decisions going forward. I think it could be very advantageous and I can make a huge difference. Um, one of the things that I want to ask, I ask every person on my um podcast how they move, eat, drink, sleep, my meds protocol. And I want to ask you if you can give us a couple tips about how you move, eat, drink, sleep.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So on the the move side, I uh I do strength training every day. I go to the gym first thing in the morning. I do usually about an hour of rotating, um, you know, resistance-based exercise. Uh for eat, I um I generally eat a lot of whole foods. I avoid processed foods, a lot of soluble fiber. I'm an omnivore, so I do eat meat as well as plants. Um, and I uh I really also try to get more fermented foods, especially after uh, you know, starting Jonah. Uh and then I have a supplement stack that I I also have in the morning. Uh from a drink standpoint, a lot of water, coffee, and um and tea. Uh sleep is something that I need to work on. Uh, I've been a terrible sleeper my whole life. And uh I, you know, I'm one of those people that like does sleep procrastination. Like I get into bed and I just don't want to go to sleep. And then as soon as the sun's out, I'm up in the morning. So I uh it's definitely an area of improvement for me.
SPEAKER_02:Now can Jonah help you with sleep?
SPEAKER_01:It can actually. Uh there are studies that have linked the gut microbiome to insomnia, and um, and there are clear things that you can do if you have those patterns in your gut.
SPEAKER_02:I love it. I love it. I mean, this is this has just been incredible. This is I I I I love your answers. I'm totally um excited about Jonah, Jonah using it in my practice. Um, I'm totally totally excited about sharing it with my audience, sharing it with my patients because I really believe in this product. And that's why I had you on, because I really think the answer does lie in your gut and it does make a difference. And people need to know what they're putting in their bodies that affect their microbiome that can help their overall health. This is really big. And I I I'm targeting this because I really believe it's going to make a difference, like I said, in my patient population. And it just I want people to know and I want to bring awareness how important that the microbiome, the gut microbiome, is to your overall health. I think people disregard that sometimes, but we need to open people's eyes. We need people to see that doing uh a Jonah test can make a difference. So I I I I just want to thank you for coming on my podcast. Um, you know, again, I have um people, companies come on the podcast that I really believe in, and I'm just so glad to have you on.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much. Uh it's incredible how the gut produces 90% of your serotonin, 50% of your dopamine, 70% of your immune cells. You're you're absolutely right. It it's something that I think gets very um underappreciated, but has a huge, huge impact on our health.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I totally agree. You know, again, I um you know I want to bring awareness to Joan. I want to bring awareness to the gut microbiome. I'm so glad that we had Leo on today. And I I really want you guys to take this podcast to heart. Um, you know, if you want to know more about uh Jonah, you can you can definitely come to Livels in Concierge Medicine because that's something that we're uh implementing in our practice. Um, Leo, before we go, I want to ask you where can people find you and uh how can they know a little bit more about um your background in Jonah?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I personally am easy to reach. Uh I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram. Um, so please feel free to reach out. I love hearing from people. And uh from a company standpoint, our website is uh www.jonah.health, and you can find a lot more information about the technology and the test and how to get started as a practice there.
SPEAKER_02:Awesome, awesome. Okay, guys. So until next time, I want you guys to keep moving, eating, drinking, and sleeping, the meds protocol, and make sure that you download this podcast and listen to this uh thoroughly. Uh, you know, you know where to find us on Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and then as well as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Until next time, see you later. Thank you.
