Pioneering Precision Nutrition with Theo Wiley of Myoform.io

Episode Overview

Episode Topic: In this episode of NutraPreneur, we probe into the world of precision medicine and personalized health and wellness with Theo Wiley, the Founder of Myoform.io. We’ll explore how Myoform.io is revolutionizing the industry through its innovative approach to precision medicine, genomics, and personalized health products.

Lessons You’ll Learn: Our conversation with Theo Wiley, Myoform.io’s Founder, reveals the profound impact of precision medicine and genomics on wellness. He highlights the crucial link between environment and well-being, guiding Myoform.io’s innovative approach. Myoform.io’s pioneering platform employs nutrigenetics and biometric data to create personalized health supplements, transforming accessibility and effectiveness. Theo also outlines trends in precision nutrition and Myoform.io’s commitment to staying at the forefront by integrating cutting-edge tech and expanding accessibility to a broader audience through future projects and goals.

About Our Guest: Theo Wiley, the Founder of Myoform.io, has a rich background encompassing healthcare, pharmaceuticals, SaaS, digital marketing, and data analysis. His passion for precision medicine and genomics has driven the creation of Myoform.io, a platform that personalizes health and wellness products for individuals.

Topics Covered: In this illuminating episode, we explore a range of topics with Theo Wiley, from his diverse career background to the founding of Myoform.io. We delve into the crucial connection between the environment and human well-being, which guides Myoform.io’s approach. Myoform.io’s pioneering platform leverages nutrigenetics and biometric data to craft personalized health supplements, making a real-world impact on individuals’ health, wellness, and athletic performance. Finally, we learn about Myoform.io’s future goals to enhance accessibility to precision medicine.

Our Guest: Theo Wiley’s Vision for the future of Precision Nutrition

Episode Transcript:

Theo Wiley: We have this massive quantities of data that we can potentially leverage to help detect signals in a lot of noise. And fundamentally, a human cannot go through that much data. So we can use machine learning to detect patterns and signals. And ultimately, the hope is that we can see or create or start to uncover some novel scientific discoveries that say these things have an impact on this part of the genome or outcome, etcetera. 

Bethany Jolley: Welcome to NutraPreneur, the Nutra Industry podcast. I’m your host, food scientist, and nutraceuticals consultant Bethany Jolley. Each episode we’ll be exploring what it takes to thrive in the nutraceutical industry. From conversations with successful nutraceutical entrepreneurs to venture capitalists to tech executives whose innovations are reshaping the nutraceuticals industry. We explore the innovations and trends that are shaping the next generation of nutraceutical businesses.
 
Welcome back to NutraPreneur, the hub for exploring the latest frontiers of innovation in the nutraceutical industry. I’m your host, Bethany. Today, we are delighted to have Theo Wiley as our guest. With a rich background spanning healthcare, pharmaceuticals, digital marketing, and more. Theo is the founder of  Myoform.io. His dedication to precision medicine and genomics has fueled his mission to enhance health and wellness outcomes. We’re eager to delve into his experiences and innovations. Welcome, Theo. It’s so great to have you today. 

Theo Wiley: Thank you for having me. Looking forward to it.

Bethany Jolley: So, Theo, your journey encompasses the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry as well as digital marketing and data analysis. Could you share with our listeners what really led you to founding Myoform.io and your vision for applying genomic science and precision medicine to health and wellness?

Theo Wiley: Yeah, absolutely. So my educational background is in the human biosciences space, looking particularly with a focus in genetics, evolutionary biology and nutrition. And it was always a bit of an avid sportsman but never really good enough to do anything with it. So I thought what’s the next best thing? Let’s go into the science, try and figure out where can I find some of those 1% gains that everyone always is looking for. So in terms of the business itself, being a budding teen, doing a lot of training for football, rugby, running, cycling, triathlon, etcetera. I was always looking for products that I could leverage to help me find extra performance as I dove into that world, had this realization that many of the products that are on the market ultimately are one size fits all. Once you dive into this sort of research as well. More recently, around 1 in 5 health supplements has been tainted with banned substances. So I ended up taking a product that was on the market. I won’t use the brand name, but ultimately it got banned because of the presence of a prohibited substance and which was ultimately an analog to Methamphetamine. So you have kids in their teens taking products that ultimately probably they don’t need in the first place, but marketed towards them, but also could potentially be dangerous to their health.
 
And then you think about it more holistically. Why would a 250 lbs linebacker and a 120 lbs female ultra runner need to take the same amount of the same products, right? So then diving into my sort of educational background got more of an understanding of the genetic or in particular the neurogenetic impacts that we all have individually that sort of have a reasonable impact on how we metabolize specific nutrients. And then later I spent the next or have spent the last sort of eight years or so in the pharmaceutical market, highly regulated market, very different from the supplement space. So bringing all of those experiences together, Myoform was really born out of that, because there’s this need in the market for having products that are both personalized to the individual, but also effective at improving performance in some capacity, have research, have data behind them to indicate their clinical efficacy. Right. So we’ve spent the last few years building this product out, the scientific basis for that. And here we are today. We’re running a closed pilot at the moment to assess the efficacy of our products, and hopefully, we start to see some really positive outcomes.

 Bethany Jolley: That’s really exciting. And so with your background in human biosciences, could you shed some light on the crucial relationship between environment and human well-being and how it really informs your approach at Myoform.io

Theo Wiley: Yeah, definitely. I think the personalization space, particularly in nutrition, is one that tends to be quite reductionist in its approaches. It’s asking a few surveys at a single time point and making generalized recommendations for your life. Right. And the same applies to even if it involves some form of biomarker testing, whether that’s genetic or otherwise. Oftentimes, personalized nutrition or nutritionists tend to say, hey, let’s take on some information at the beginning, and then we’ll maintain you on this same approach into the future. I think the really important thing to understand is, and this falls into the genetics bucket too, right? Is we’re although genetics are important to who we become as an individual, there’s the manuscript from which you’re human life is built or all life in most cases, as far as we have figured out so far. The environment plays a significant role in which genes are turned on or off and when it comes to nutrition, it’s not necessarily deterministic to say you have X gene, you have a poor uptake of vitamin D, right? So there’s a lot of factors there that need to be taken into account. And if you don’t take those into account, or if you don’t continuously introduce a feedback mechanism into that, you’re going to be losing out on a lot of components where there’s opportunities to leverage or change your outcomes. Right.

So from one month to another, if you’re an athlete, you’re different phases of training. You have periodization and the same applies to how you should be managing your nutrition is periodizing your nutrition over time depending on what outcomes you seek. So in terms of how those things impact your environment, impacts your well-being, that’s what really did the bulk of my work, my thesis was focused on how does our lifestyle impacts our well-being. And there’s lots and lots of data that really shows that it’s significant. And if you don’t take it into account, then you’re missing 50% of the equation.

Bethany Jolley: And I think that’s really interesting because there are so many supplements out there, and supplements can really be considered self-prescribed. So many individuals might be selecting some sort of supplement that they think they might need, and they really don’t need it, or they’re taking too much of something or too little of something. So I think the personalization aspect that you discussed is really key, especially for athletes.

Theo Wiley: We get the argument sometimes that it’s we’re solving for part of the fact that some people might be taking too little, but also too much of some products can be incredibly dangerous. Think about caffeine is a very obvious one, right? If you overconsume caffeine, it’s easy for it to be toxic. There’s certain water-soluble vitamins like vitamin C, where you can take as much as you want, and there’s not really been any upper tolerable intake level. But certain things like vitamin K2, sodic acid, vitamin D, calcium can lead to some significant health hazards when they’re taken for chronic periods of time over the upper tolerable intake. So we want to avoid both those two scenarios from happening where you have the completely non-health conscious individual, where they don’t take anything or don’t look after their health to the super health conscious people that think taking a mega dosage of everything is going to solve all their problems, right. There’s equal issues on both sides of that coin.

Bethany Jolley: Absolutely. And Myoform.io is pioneering a patent-pending platform that leverages Nutrigenetics lifestyle and biometric data for personalized sports and health supplements. So can you explain more about how this innovative platform is changing the way individuals access and benefit zoomable health products?

Theo Wiley: Yeah, absolutely. So our sort of central mission, I guess, first of all, is to make health accessible to all. And beyond that, what we are trying to do with leveraging things like genetic sequencing is to apply the principles of precision medicine, which is very present now in the healthcare industry when it comes to things like cancer treatment, etcetera. We’re trying to apply those principles of precision medicine to consumable health products. And with that, the way that we approach our business is like I’ve already talked about, it’s a few factors. One is we run genetic sequencing with all of our customers. So we do whole genome sequencing, which means we look at their entire genetic sequence and not just a small portion of it, which means they can take that data and apply it to their future health needs, whether it’s they want to look at their ancestry or whether they have a conversation with their doctor or so on and so forth, they shouldn’t have to pay for a separate genetic test in the future, unless it’s to make a specific treatment decision, right from a clinical regulatory perspective. So beyond the genetic testing piece, we also take customers through a really comprehensive nutritional and lifestyle survey and goals questionnaire.
 
And alongside that, we can run more in-depth blood biomarker testing to where we want to look at, hey, are we actually improving a specific biomarker that we need to? But really we are our algorithm and our system pulls all of those sort of different data sources together and then provides the customer with a Health Insights report. So an in-depth health insights report. Currently, we have around 100 reports on our platform, which look at everything from nutritional predispositions to deficiency and a range of minerals and micronutrients, as well as sensitivities, things like gluten sensitivity. We have carbohydrate fat sensitivity, salt sensitivity, those types of things. And then also we look at physical traits and predispositions. So what’s your muscle mass predisposition? Do you have a positive response to endurance training? What’s your VO2 trainability and things like injury risk too? So lower back injury, ACL injury, there’s lots of data that looks at cardiac remodeling and cartilage structures and how those can be impacted by certain genetic variants as well.

But then ultimately the end product, I think a big problem or I wouldn’t say a problem, but something that we saw as a gap in the market is you have these businesses like 23andMe, Ancestry.com, or slightly more health-orientated businesses that run some form of testing but don’t actually describe it as infotainment, right, or edutainment, where it’s giving a lot of individuals information, but little by way of frictionless outcomes that they can implement in their lives. Right. So what we thought to do is say, hey, let’s provide all that information with actionable items for outcomes as well as a physical product that they can consume to say, not only have I got an understanding of what’s going on, but I’ve also got a product that’s going to help solve some of those problems for me. And so we’re building this holistic approach that is a very low friction solution for consumers. Hopefully has the stickiness that means they’ll keep with it because of some of the outcomes that they see. And then also from an urgency driver perspective, they see some of the specific requirements right of their physical state on an ongoing basis that says, hey, I need more vitamin C in my diet. And I don’t seem to be getting that. So why don’t I think about implementing a product like that? So that’s where we’re at at the moment.

Bethany Jolley: So can you provide some examples of how  Myoform.io’s personalized supplements have really made a difference in individuals’ lives, especially in terms of their health, wellness, and athletic performance?

Theo Wiley: Yeah, absolutely. So one important thing to mention, first of all, is that our focus, for now, is in sports performance because ultimately there’s very clear, tangible outcomes that we can see in that category. Right? Usually what you tend to see with the market if and it’s very rare, well, it’s becoming more common. But generally, it’s rare to see businesses have a whole load of unique data on their products and whether or not they work, and particularly when it comes to just health and wellness, it’s very hard to measure because it’s ultimately a very subjective set of criteria to say, hey, how much better do you feel? Or are you sleeping better? So it’s hard to get really clear outcomes. But for us, where we see the greatest benefit to the personalization sort of journey, at least initially, is in sports performance and really the way that we measure outcomes. First of all, there’s three distinct components that we look at. One is biomarkers. So looking at blood biomarkers is the actual serum biomarker that we wanted to improve actually improved. So say Bethany you had an iron deficiency or your genetics were telling us that there’s a high likelihood that you’re going to have an iron deficiency based on the ability your body has of metabolizing that specific nutrient. Plus, your diet might not be fully providing you with what you need, plus the issues with your metabolism, right? So on top of that, we look at, okay, what if we can benchmark and retest those blood biomarkers? Let’s see what’s changed. And is your iron improving based on what we’ve provided from a dosage perspective that’s aligned with your physiology? So serum biomarkers is one thing we can look at as an objective measure.

Theo Wiley: The second is sports performance. So we look at a set of about seven distinct performance markers that assess different energy systems. So they tend to be very low-skill requirements movements. So things like a max six-minute aerobic run we have a chest of floor push-ups, pull-ups, two chin over bar etcetera, trap bar deadlifts, those kinds of measures which anyone can do in the absence of a whole lot of equipment. But it means that they don’t have to be particularly skilled to do those movements. And we look at do those specific tests improve over time. And then the third aspect we look at is the subjective criteria. So how much better do you feel on a sort of sliding scale? How’s your sleep, how’s your mood, how’s your work etcetera?

Those kinds of things that we pick up on. So we’re combining these kind of three different types of metrics together to see what the improvements are. So we’re running our pilots right now and we’re seeing some really positive data, particularly in those, that goals and outcomes are in the aerobic department. Obviously, we’re not running a sort of double-blind, placebo-controlled study, but we’ve seen improvements of up to 7 to 10% on some aerobic tests over monthly on a monthly cadence, right, with no changes to training structures, just from an impact perspective of introducing something to massively improve someone’s nutritional status and provide them with products that, from a performance perspective, they might not have been considering already. So we’ve rolled that in and we’re seeing some really positive outcomes on that front.

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I’m sure as athletes are seeing all this data and starting to feel improvements in their overall health, it’s really exciting for them as well.

Theo Wiley: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, if you look at something like use Ian as the example before, 50% of female athletes are clinically deficient in iron and that’s partly due to menstruation and things like that too. But a third of men, male athletes are also clinically deficient. So, we know that a reduction in iron ore being clinically deficient in iron can result from as bags of data on it, from aerobic performance perspective, is up to a 4% decline in performance of aerobic capacity. And so if you’re a marathon runner, 4% over a couple of hours adds up to a pretty significant chunk. So if we just correct that and then there’s 13 to 25 other nutrients that we can do the same for a lot of these, sort of incremental percentage points can add up to some significant numbers. So that’s I think what we’re seeing at the moment, of course, we’ll have to wait and see what comes out at the other end of the beta test. But I’m excited, optimistic!

Bethany Jolley: That sounds so interesting and it sounds like you’re moving in the right direction. As an entrepreneur, I’d say it truly is a journey. So what have been some of the key challenges and breakthrough moments in the development and growth of  Myoform, particularly in the context of precision medicine and personalized nutrition?

Theo Wiley: One thing that pops to mind off the bat is because we run whole genome sequencing. There’s sort of two things here. One is we’re dealing with a massive amount of data, and in some cases, we can have up to 80GB worth of data on an individual, which presents some scale challenges from a cost and storage perspective. So getting through some of those hurdles and thinking of thinking of some innovative ways in which we can store that data and reuse that data in the right way is really important. And alongside that, there’s also the implication of we’re dealing with the most personal data, right? We’ve got someone’s genetic code in our system. So we’ve got to make sure. And it’s probably a good time to talk about this because a couple of weeks ago, 23andMe, which is obviously a massive provider of consumer genetic testing, had a data breach. And depending on how much data was released, I don’t think we know yet. But ultimately, it’s it’s really important that we make sure we’re being incredibly careful with how we protect that data from an encryption perspective, and also how we store that data in the right way and keep the customer in control of that data. Really, what we will never end up being is, is a business that sells that data without the permission of the customer, because I think that’s ethically just not the right thing to do.

Theo Wiley: And also people have a right to own that data. So what we do is we provide the raw data files to the customers themselves, as well as we have it encrypted on our site or within our platform in secure servers that make sure that it’s sort of split up so that if there was ever some form of data breach, we don’t have to worry too much about whether or not someone’s gonna be able to piece those things together. So you can think about it like a shredder in a lot of cases. But that’s probably been the biggest challenge. And then also alongside that, because we’re early stage, we’ve bootstrapped most of our growth. And with bootstrapping becomes challenges of frugality. Right. So just being able to build a system in the absence of going through the Uber model of trying to raise as much money as possible and then expand as fast as possible, we’re trying to be very careful with how we do that because we know that there’s a there’s scale challenges as we grow that when it comes to producing one of one product we’re going to run into. So we’re just being careful as we go.

Bethany Jolley: Yeah, I think there’s always some growing pains with a startup company for sure. And I didn’t even think about the confidentiality piece that you have to deal with as well. And so that’s great that you were thinking ahead and you figured out how to keep all of that data confidential so that your customers can feel confident as well.

Theo Wiley: Yeah, it’s also dealing with scientific data and precision medicine. Right. You’ve got to be careful about the kind of language you use as to make the right kinds of claims, and also making sure that the data that we do incorporate into our algorithm actually features clinically relevant information. And that is reliable and valid. And in the age of misinformation plus AI and hallucinations and things like that, I think we’re we’re just being really careful about what we do include without diving too deep into the world of AI, before we know that it’s adequate for the purpose that we want, because what we don’t want to say to someone is, hey, you probably have a deficiency in this department, so you should take a load of this product. And then what ends up happening is they get unwell. And although that’s not uncommon in the world of sort of health supplements or nutritional supplements, generally, we have to be extra cautious because we’re making pretty specific recommendations. So yeah, we’re keeping all those things top of mind. 

Bethany Jolley: Yes, absolutely. And we’ve talked about this a lot. But each individual’s body is different and the deficiencies are going to vary from person to person. So I’d say that personalization is really a significant trend in nutrition and wellness right now. What trends do you foresee in the field of precision nutrition and how is Myoform.io planning to stay at the forefront of this evolving landscape?

Theo Wiley: Yeah. So I think ultimately when it comes to trends we’re seeing it already is the integration of and I mentioned it briefly, was the integration of things like AI and machine learning into algorithms and processes, which I think are going to become more prevalent as we grow or as the market moves and they’ll become more reliable. I think, again, we’ve got to be careful about what kind of recommendations we’re making off the back of those things because sometimes they do have a, I think ChatGPT has a 30% hallucination rate. So it’s making up references for scientific papers and things that don’t exist. So we have to make sure that anything that we do has been clinically validated. But really where we use AI and we plan to leverage it more, is as we grow our customer base and as, say, we have these massive quantities of data that we can potentially leverage to help detect signals in a lot of noise. Right? And fundamentally, a human cannot go through that much data. So we can use machine learning to detect patterns and signals. And ultimately, the hope is that we can see or create or start to uncover some novel scientific discoveries that say these things have an impact on this part of the genome or outcome, etcetera. So yeah, we’re hoping that I think really the way the industry is moving, I don’t think that personalized nutrition or personalized supplements, more generally speaking, is going to take over from the one-size-fits-all market.

I think that will always be there. The way I think about it is like buying a suit. You can go down to Savile Row and get a tailor to make you all the make it perfectly suited to you, or you can go the other end of the spectrum and take buy something off the shelf at Walmart. I think there’s two sort of different departments there and sliding scales of personalization that you want. I think you can one end of the spectrum could be a nutrition coach. Then you have the personalized solution slightly lower down that scale, perhaps with integration with nutrition coaches in some cases. And then the other end of the spectrum, you have the one-size-fits-all products that are cheaper and and more easily accessible. So I think it will just take time for it to the personalization space to grow into its own. But I think the sports market, much like how the world works with F1, Formula One cars, and regular cars, you’ll see the power steering and all the great stuff coming in the personalization space gradually filter down through the market as it gets adopted.

Bethany Jolley: Yeah, and I think there’s definitely a need for personalized supplements like you said, but I think it’ll just take time for consumer awareness. Consumers need to become more educated and do their research as to why personalization is so important. 

Theo Wiley: Yeah, as trust too, right? I think there’s over the last decade, there’s been a lot of trust issues. And like I talked about at the beginning, the 1 in 5 products is tainted with banned substances, which is not good news. So they have to build up trust that that a company or individuals within that company have their best intentions in mind, rather than it being a commercial win. For someone to say that we’ve got a personalization aspect to our business. 

Bethany Jolley: I think it’s safe to say that you are quite fascinated with biometrics and diagnostics. So how do you envision the integration of cutting-edge technologies and data analysis into Myoform offerings to further enhance health and performance outcomes? 

Theo Wiley: Yeah, it’s a really interesting space because you have a lot of changes to the landscape as to how we can measure certain biomarkers, right? And they’re becoming less invasive by the day. Traditionally, you’d have to go to a phlebotomist or a nurse and get your blood drawn and just to see your blood sugar, or just to see your onesie or take some various form of reading, whereas now you can do at-home tests, Fingerprick tests you can now have where your continuous glucose monitor, that’s smartphone integrated. You can also have the new Apple Watch. Everyone’s tentatively waiting for the sort of glucose monitoring through the wrist. Right. So it’s definitely a space we’re looking at. I think the challenge right now is thinking about how reliable those metrics are and actually what are the outcomes you want to achieve. Because the if we think about performance, glucose monitoring is really beneficial from a performance perspective.

But actually, there’s theories around whether or not it’s unhealthy or healthy to have spikes in blood glucose for just a regular your average Joe, right. Someone that’s an office worker having a chocolate bar. They spike their glucose and on an acute basis, is that unhealthy? We just fundamentally don’t know yet because we don’t have studies that are longitudinal enough to actually tell us whether that’s the case. So from a sports performance perspective, we’re absolutely looking at how can we integrate some of these technologies from an activity marker perspective to get that continuous feedback loop in to say, actually, is this person nutritionally we providing a product that’s nutritionally complete enough for someone that’s so active and we can see that their blood glucose is changing significantly all the way down to the more general consumer. We’ve got to be a little bit more careful about how we integrate some of these technologies because we only want to use things that have been clinically validated as relevant. 

Bethany Jolley: Right and looking towards the future, what are the key goals and projects in the pipeline for Formio, and how do you plan to continue making precision medicine more accessible to a broader audience?

Theo Wiley: So our immediate plans is running this beta test over the next 3 to 6 months, gathering data ultimately to tell us are the products that we’re producing doing the job that we want them to do, and that’s with paying customers. But also what we’ll plan to do as well is start to test this in more sort of professional environments. So we’re planning a pilot with the NFL Alumni Academy out the US players that have been cut from their roster and players preparing for the draft. And we’ll see some hopefully see some really positive outcomes from that too. And then we’ll probably go into, as I say, with the pilots in the professional standpoint, we’ll hopefully be working with some professional soccer teams in the UK, and once we’ve really got that clarity that there’s there’s efficacy there, the next step is to open this up to the general consumer. But we do have sort of a waiting list on our website. So Myoform.io is our website. And we have a waiting list there for people. And we are letting or drip-feeding people into the beta test if they have a willingness to engage with the process. So we’re always welcome to see new people. But the view is just to continue to iterate, make sure that what we’re doing is the right thing providing better outcomes, providing access to precision medicine and health for everyone. So yeah, stay tuned.

Bethany Jolley: Yes, that’s really exciting getting involved already with all of the various athletic programs worldwide, it sounds like. So that’s really exciting.

Theo Wiley: Yeah, absolutely.

Bethany Jolley: Thank you so much for joining us today and as we conclude this illuminating conversation, we’ve really gained deep insights into the world of precision medicine, Nutrigenetics, and the pioneering work of Theo Wiley, founder of Myoform.io. For our listeners interested in exploring Myoform.io’s innovative platform and personalized supplements will provide the necessary links. Don’t forget to subscribe, share your thoughts, and join us in celebrating the ever-evolving world of nutraceutical innovations on social media. Until our next episode, stay informed, perform optimally, and stay inspired. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of NutraPreneur. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and better yet, leave us a review as it really helps us grow the show.