Dr. Stickler is the chief medical officer and co-founder of Apeiron ZOH Corporation. The company focuses on optimizing health, well-being and performance through precision genomics and epigenetic science.
Dr. Stickler is a visionary pioneer behind systems-based precision performance medicine, a new paradigm that redefines medicine from the old symptoms-based disease model to one of limitless peak performance in all aspects of life.
You describe yourself as a pioneer in system-based precision performance medicine. Could you please explain what it means?
Dr. Stickler: Well, what we looked at was that most health and wellness is based on a sick care model. And it’s also based on the assumption that the human system is a complicated system. And what we realized is that the system is truly a complex system. To simplify this, an airplane is a complicated system, so we can take every piece of that airplane and understand what it does and predict, based on an input, what the output is. A bird would be a complex system, so we can’t break it down. It’s unpredictable and in certain aspects, we can get probabilities, but in order to be complicated and to apply algorithms, you really have to have absolute predictability of outcomes. Right now, health and wellness is really using algorithms to determine outcomes. It’s a focus on disease, where what we said was we need a whole different system that makes the assumption that the human system is complex and that focuses on moving toward optimal health and not necessarily away from disease as a model. With that, we’re in this age of data, everything is data-driven now, and health has been something that has been falling behind on that. We took health from a population-based level and tried to make everybody clones of each other to determine research data and all this where what we’re saying is that we need to start looking at the individual as an individual, and not as part of a larger group. With data, we can actually get all of the information that we want to get to increase the probability of what we can predict as an outcome with a person knowing there’s a quite a lot of variables involved with that. So we use genetics, we use lab work, we use brain mapping, we use autonomic nervous system testing, we use epigenetic testing, we do urinary metabolites, body composition. So we gather all of this data that says: okay, what makes you “you” and where are you in this moment? And where do you want to be? And how do we get there based on what we’re seeing with you specifically?
How detailed and accurate is that data at the moment?
Dr. Stickler: It’s still all probability, even genetics. People are trying to make genetics an exact science and it’s far from it, especially with current genetic testing, where we’re looking at what we call snip (SNP) data, which are variants of base pairs in the genetic code. We try to predict outcomes with that and it just doesn’t work that way. It’s not designed to work that way. Genetics is truly only probabilities. So the more data we collect, the more we can narrow down what we call this orb of probability of each person. So with just an interaction with a healthcare provider, and a physical examination and some blood work you’ve got this big orb of probability. Now, we add genetics, additional brain mapping, autonomic nervous system testing, and we can narrow that orb of probability down so that we can have a more directed approach to interventions that are going to create outcomes.
We gather all of this data that says: okay, what makes you “you” and where are you in this moment?
I guess one problem is that this is still probability in terms of data collection. And also on the other hand, when we look into interventions, once we have that data, and we know what can be done, there are also a lot of unknowns. Is that the case?
Dr. Stickler: The human system is dynamic and it’s unpredictable. People think that we’re going to create an AI system that will be able to collect all the known data and be able to give predictable outcomes. And I don’t think that’s realistic. I think we can dramatically increase probabilities with more data but we will never get to the point with 100 percent predictability of input and outcome based on the human system. It’s just doesn’t work that way. So what we do is we look for the highest probability of outcome: so what dietary pattern is going to be the highest probability of giving you this outcome that you want to have, based on your data. And then we set up metrics to measure whether it’s working or it’s not.
That’s an important thing that is not being done right now. Most of the metrics in medicine are based on the change in blood pressure, change in heart rate, change in lab work. But we can get more fine-tuned than that. We now have wearable technology that I give to all my clients, where I can constantly monitor their stress levels, sleep patterns, resting heart rates and activity levels. And with that in conjunction with lab work, subjective outcome findings, and body composition scans, I can say: “Okay, if we do this intervention, this is what we expect to see.” If that’s not the outcome we’re seeing, then we step back and reevaluate, and go for a different probability of an outcome. But what it does is really accelerate the process by using all of this data. The more data we collect, the shorter the trial and error period is narrowed down for each individual.
Can you say a little bit more about what kind of interventions you would recommend?
Dr. Stickler: It depends. We do a lot of lifestyle interventions, such as sleep, nutrition and supplementation patterns, and hormonal modulations. We do environmental mitigation, so we look at their current environment. We do cognitive interventions, it may be a matter of working with the autonomic nervous system, neurofeedback or biofeedback. It really depends on what we’re trying to achieve with it.
But once we get optimized at that point, we can start looking at some more advanced interventions that take us beyond what the human being is capable of, from typical lifestyle or health patterns. We start looking at things like peptides, research chemicals, technology that can enhance the human state, as opposed to just optimizing it to what it’s capable of naturally. We now have the technology and science in place that can upgrade the human system to improve longevity, performance, body composition, cognitive functioning and stress response. So we’ve gotten ways to intervene now that go well beyond what we were capable of just five years ago.
