#141 – How med schools approach metabolic health, nutrition, & behavior change | Dr. Elias Eid & Dr. Lauren Kelley-Chew

Where does education around metabolic health, nutrition, and lifestyle fit into med school today? Levels’ Clinical Head of Product Dr. Lauren Kelley-Chew and Dr. Elias Eid discussed what it’s like living with Type 1 diabetes, how monitoring glucose levels can directly impact medical students and how CGMs can help everyone take control of their health.

04:27 – How Elias got involved with Levels

Elias shares how he got involved with Levels and how it helped him prepare for life and metabolic health.

I got involved with Levels because I saw them on Instagram and I just sends a DM, it’s got tons in the DMs, and I got a response which was surprising. And I was super interested in this technology. I said, “Hey, I’m a diabetic, I’m a med student,” I think it was second or third year at the time and ended up on a Zoom call with some of the founders, the leadership over there and it was supposed to be a 15-minute call, it went almost for an hour. So it was super cool, just because I’m involved in this space. I’m an athlete by background, kind of went with medicine and next thing you know, I got involved with Casey and we wrote an article together of my experience with Type 1 diabetes. So that got on the Levels blog, about a year ago, so that was pretty exciting to see. And now that I’m approaching graduation, I kind of reached back out and now that I’m able to kind of recap how med school kind of prepared me for life and metabolic health and endocrine health and endocrine dysfunction, metabolic dysfunction, all that good stuff. So yeah, now we’re here.

05:50 – How CGM helped Elias live a better, healthier life as a diabetic

Elias shared his experience on how CGM help with his Type 1 diabetes.

I’ve always been interested in this space. Living with Type 1 diabetes, I’ve realized with my peers and my colleagues, that the problems they’re suffering, fatigue, foggy cognitive ability, just general life, just feeling kind of crummy… We all just kind of live off caffeine and try to get through our days. I realized they were the same problems I have as the Type 1 diabetic, just mine are magnified tenfold. So some could say, “That kind of sucks,” but it also in the same way, it actually helps because I’m able to detect minor changes also at a tenfold impact. So it’s really to scale, living as a diabetic and so that’s when I really got excited, especially as the CGM technology has evolved. I’ve been diabetic since March of 2000, so I’ve been diabetic for 22 years, and I started off finger blood glucose sticks every two hours.

07:14 – The importance of real-time data

Having a real-time data enables immediate action, allowing businesses to be proactive by seizing opportunities or preventing problems before they happen.

Now we’re getting real-time data and I noticed in my own physical health, my own physical fitness, my own physical energy, I thought from being a diabetic, just me as a person, really is impacted by what I do. And I can see that reflected in the trends of my graph. So that’s why I got super passionate about it and I would start advocating it to my friends and family, but it wasn’t until finding Levels that I was like, “Oh wow, this type of technology can be used for the healthy 20 and 30 year-olds or the healthy people that think they may not need it. But hey, that data is now there and we can learn a whole lot more about ourselves in this technology.” So it’s nice to see it grow, for sure.

09:38 – Life without CGM

Having a CGM frees you up to live the life you want to live. Without a CGM, you can’t know what’s going on with your body.

It’s extremely difficult. I don’t know how I would have been able to do it without the CGM technology, without the real time data. I mean, even right before this podcast, my figures are going whoa. And I just think to myself like, “How are you able to live an optimized life without having that real time data?” I get it to my watch if it not my watch, I need to know what’s going on in my body to be able to be the best person I can be. So it’s extremely difficult, but especially in surgeries and stuff, sometimes I put the watch on the nurse like, “Hey, look at my watch and let me know what’s going on.” And I think that’s a premise though in general, it’s not just limited diabetic.

19:26 – Insulin resistance and its significance

Insulin resistance is when your body doesn’t respond well to insulin, which can lead to type 2 diabetes. It’s a great, easily acceptable first biomarker for those interested in better managing their health.

Insulin resistance is I think the most underrated biomarker that we are not looking at. And just one, I’m sure there’s many more, cortisol levels, epinephrine release, all these other sorts of things. But I think insulin resistance is a great, easily acceptable first biomarker that a lot of physicians are not really aware of just because it’s not how they were trained. And then sometimes people just are not motivated enough to learn these new things, but that’s why it’s important to have podcasts like these to really advocate for its use.

26:16 – The power of CGM

It’s really important to remember that the health media we consume is really not all-encompassing. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, and monitoring your own individual glucose levels can help you understand your body’s needs better than anything else.

The power of CGM, the power of like, “Hey, I don’t know the exact science of it, but anecdotally, it’s working, the cream of rice.” I give my insulin 15 minutes before, I’m riding it like a wave, I’m great. I put some berries in there, some honey, taste great. And I never knew that I was never even aware of that. And I just think like, “Man, if that’s such a cynical thing that mainstream health media with good intention, good virtue, not people are trying to give good information, but the reality is that we’re all so different.” We’re all different backgrounds, different fanatic, different socioeconomic background. It’s not a one size fits all. We need to really see, “Hey, if oatmeal works better for you, awesome, do it. If your sugars are awesome, if cream rice is not good. I don’t know, do a sprouted grains, do whole wheat, do whatever experiment and try.” And then I would challenge you every time you have a mood swing, go look at that graph. I will bet you good money, and I’m not a betting, man, but I’ll bet you good money that there’s going to be a fluctuation that’s preceding that. And I think that’s really transformative to give people those little changes to kind of look and see, “What am I doing my day to day?” And it takes a certain level discipline that definitely takes time getting used to.

28:35 – What is emergency medicine?

Emergency medicine is the medical specialty dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of unforeseen illness or injury.

I didn’t go into medical school thinking of and become an ER doctor, but I fell in love with the fast-paced real-time data. That’s really what I enjoy. I love the quick, actionable change. Although I love endocrinology, I love metabolic dysfunction, I do think it’s the answer to almost all of our chronic illnesses, the chronic inflammation, for the same reason we’re talking now, it’s a little too slow. I don’t want to get labs and wait a week. I want to look at things now and I want to go a little faster. I get more satisfaction as a person from helping people from that standpoint. Even during my interviews for residency, I spoke about my work with Levels quite a bit and I actually even translated my interest for CGM real-time monitoring into entitled CO2, which is the marker we use in the ER for early sepsis detection, sepsis management, sepsis protocol.

30:12 – The beauty of emergency medicine

Dr. Lauren Kelley-Chew said emergency medicine is a wonderful field, because it allows you to meet with people in moments of crisis.

One of the great things I think about emergency medicine is you are meeting a lot of different people and you’re meeting them at a moment in their life where there’s typically a high level of vulnerability. They’re having a crisis, which is what brought them to the emergency room. And I think there is a desire to change their health status, of course. And I think it’s really cool that there will be people like you, who are there, who of course are trained to deal with the immediate issue, but also have this kind of broader lens that there’s probably things that they can be doing that will really alter the course of their health in the long term. You’ll have so many moments with people, this snapshot in time when they’re at this potential inflection point in their life, which I think is really powerful.

35:57 – Be bold and add value

The best way to get involved in the future of medicine is to get involved and add value to a space you’re passionate about.

Be bold, be bold and add value. I think no one likes to dead weight, this is an emergency space. No one’s going to hold your hand, no one’s going to… If you’re passionate about this, I spend time in this outside of this podcast and because I see utility and I just love it. You become an expert in that field and the more you know about something, the more you’re able to share and collaborate. And I think that adds value. I think universally as human beings, we appreciate that someone who’s trying to help others and I think that that’s the biggest step. If this is not your space, then that’s fine. Find your space and add a value in that space.

48:18 – How cardio will help people control their sugar

Experiment with moving your body first thing in the morning or right after a meal. Go on a walk for 10 minutes and pay attention to how you feel.

It’s helping your life. Anecdotal for me, the way how I kind of rationalize it was like, “I don’t think my body is tapping into its liver stores. I think it’s tapping into the stores of the food. I ate, 2-3 hours ago,” and that’s why my sugars are not getting that same insulin sensitivity that I was when I was doing it fasted. So again, little bit popped into my head, but I noticed that for me was game changer because I was able to give 10 less units of insulin. So same way for a non-diabetic your pancreas won’t need to punch out 10 more units of insulin. And now, your body’s running on a leaner, you have a leaner machine. It’s like, you’re more optimized, you’re not having to do so much to compensate.

Elias Eid: (00:06)

People are trying to give good information, but the reality is that we’re all so different. We’re all different backgrounds, different genetics, different socioeconomic backgrounds. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. We need to really see, “Hey, if oatmeal works great for you, awesome, do it, if your sugars are awesome, if cream of rice is not good, I don’t know, do sprouted grains, do whole wheat, do whatever…” Experiment and try and then I would challenge you every time you have a mood swing, oh look at that graph, I will bet you good money there’s going to be a fluctuation that’s preceding that.

Ben Grynol: (00:38)

I’m Ben Grynol, part of the early startup team here at Levels. We’re building tech that helps people to understand their metabolic health and this is your front-row seat to everything we do. This is a whole new Level.

Ben Grynol: (01:11)

We’ve told this story before, and I’m sure we’ll continue telling it again. It’s the story of how a DM ended up leading to a conversation or a connection with the company. You never know when those DMs are going to turn into something more. And so for Elias Eid, that was very much the case. At the time he was a fourth-year medical student at the University of Central Florida. He had heard about Levels and he’d been living with Type 1 for more than 22 years. So he thought, “Hey, why don’t I reach out to Dr. Casey Means, one of the co-founders of Levels, because she has a shared similar background and she has a lens on CGM.” Elias wanted to share some of his insights, what he thought about how the space was changing and talk about what it meant to go to medical school, use a CGM and do things like monitor his glucose levels in real-time.

Ben Grynol: (02:04)

And so that DM ended up leading to a number of conversations, eventually with Lauren Kelley-Chew, Head of Clinical Project at Levels. Lauren’s also a doctor and can relate to what it’s like to go through med school. So Elias and Lauren sat down and they discussed his background and the way that he thought about monitoring metabolic health while in school. It can be quite challenging when you’re under a rigorous schedule and some of the things that he saw his fellow classmates experience, things like brain fog, things like fatigue, things like fluctuating glucose levels. So he started thinking about the insights that he was seeing through his own data and how those same insights can help many people to understand their metabolic health as they live their life, as they consume different foods, as they go through different lifestyle changes and they can see what their glucose levels are doing in real-time.

Ben Grynol: (02:55)

And so for Elias, using a CGM has been integral for monitoring his glucose levels. He can’t imagine what people would’ve done in the past without them, that being people in the Type 1 or Type 2 community. But he also sees the value and he sees the future where more people can be and should be wearing them so that they can realize what lifestyle choices they can make in order to optimize their metabolic health and their glucose levels. It was a great conversation and it’s always fun to hear from people within the Type 1 community and people who relate to Levels in so many different ways. Anyway, no need to wait. Here’s a conversation with Lauren and Elias.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (03:40)

Very excited to be here with Elias who just graduated from medical school, so congratulations, from the University of Central Florida, and he’s going to be starting a residency in emergency medicine. He’s also living with Type 1 diabetes and is super passionate about health tech and metabolic health, so very excited to have him because I get to relive my med school years a little bit. But also to hear a firsthand account of how nutrition, food is medicine, lifestyle intervention, and chronic disease are being approached in medical education and how students interested in health tech, holistic health, are shaping their career paths. Why don’t we jump in? Would love to hear how you got connected with Levels, with Casey, and your story going into medical school.

Elias Eid: (04:23)

Awesome, thank you for having me. I’m super stoked for this. I got involved with Levels because I saw them on Instagram and I just sends a DM, it’s got tons in the DMs, and I got a response which was surprising. And I was super interested in this technology. I said, “Hey, I’m a diabetic, I’m a med student,” I think it was second or third year at the time and ended up on a Zoom call with some of the founders, the leadership over there and it was supposed to be a 15-minute call, it went almost for an hour.

Elias Eid: (04:51)

So it was super cool, just because I’m involved in this space. I’m an athlete by background, kind of went with medicine and next thing you know, I got involved with Casey and we wrote an article together of my experience with Type 1 diabetes. So that got on the Levels blog, about a year ago, so that was pretty exciting to see. And now that I’m approaching graduation, I kind of reached back out and now that I’m able to kind of recap how med school kind of prepared me for life and metabolic health and endocrine health and endocrine dysfunction, metabolic dysfunction, all that good stuff. So yeah, now we’re here.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (05:36)

I’m curious in terms of your passion around metabolic health, was that something that you’ve had your whole life given, living with diabetes or is that something that really evolved over time and maybe even increased while you were in medical school?

Elias Eid: (05:49)

So yeah, great question. I’ve always been interested in this space, living with Type 1 diabetes, I’ve realized with my peers and my colleagues, that the problems they’re suffering, fatigue, foggy cognitive ability, just general life, just feeling kind of crummy… We all just kind of live off caffeine and try to get through our days. I realized they were the same problems I have as the Type 1 diabetic, just mine are magnified tenfold. So some could say, “That kind of sucks,” but it also in the same way, it actually helps because I’m able to detect minor changes also at a tenfold impact. So it’s really to scale, living as a diabetic and so that’s when I really got excited, especially as the CGM technology has evolved. I’ve been diabetic since March of 2000, so I’ve been diabetic for 22 years, and I started off finger blood glucose sticks every two hours.

Elias Eid: (06:49)

The data really wasn’t there to even figure out what was good as a diabetic. The first sensors only lasted 3 days. Now, they tend to last 7 and now working to 10 and 14 and they’re getting better and better. So the data, it’s readily at our fingertips, and real-time data. It’s not data… I remember the first sensors that came out were, “Oh, come in, we’ll look at the data that happened two weeks ago.”

Elias Eid: (07:14)

Now we’re getting real-time data and I noticed in my own physical health, my own physical fitness, my own physical energy, I thought from being a diabetic, just me as a person, really is impacted by what I do. And I can see that reflected in the trends of my graph. So that’s why I got super passionate about it and I would start advocating it to my friends and family, but it wasn’t until finding Levels that I was like, “Oh wow, this type of technology can be used for the healthy 20 and 30 year-olds or the healthy people that think they may not need it. But hey, that data is now there and we can learn a whole lot more about ourselves in this technology.” So it’s nice to see it grow, for sure.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (07:56)

It really is. And I’m curious when you share, and like you said, started advocating for this technology and really just for awareness around, it sounds like blood sugar control and the impacts on fatigue and all of those other things that you mentioned, what was the receptivity of your peers?

Elias Eid: (08:14)

For my peers it was kind of split. The people who are really into the space, the runners, the CrossFitters, they think it’s awesome. Most people are wearing Apple watches, most people are wearing sleep monitors or some sort of smart device, if you will. And so they thought it was cool. I think the implantable is definitely a step for them. It’s like, “Whoa, implant something?” But then there was the other crowd that think, “Well, I don’t really need that. I’m healthy. Oh, diabetes, no endocrine dysfunction, that’s for older people, I’m young and healthy.” So that was kind of the [inaudible 00:08:54] of fun.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (08:54)

That makes sense and I would imagine whether, like you say, I mean, there’s the diabetic experience, but there’s also just the experience of medical school in general and for everyone as a person, how challenging has it been for you and maybe just noticing your peers to manage blood sugar, despite the extremely rigorous unpredictable schedule of being a medical student? And for our listeners who haven’t been to medical school, you can think of it in terms of you’re working all night, you’re working all day you have no really very little control over your sleep schedule. For example, you’re eating schedule sometimes you’re in surgeries for 10 hours and there’s a lot of things that aren’t under control. How did you handle that? And how did you see your peers handling that?

Elias Eid: (09:38)

Oh, it’s extremely difficult. I don’t know how I would have been able to do it without the CGM technology, without the real time data. I mean, even right before this podcast, my figures are going whoa. And I just think to myself like, “How are you able to live an optimized life without having that real time data?” I get it to my watch if it not my watch, I need to know what’s going on in my body to be able to be the best person I can be. So it’s extremely difficult, but especially in surgeries and stuff, sometimes I put the watch on the nerve like, “Hey, look at my watch and let me know what’s going on.” And I think that’s a premise though in general, it’s not just limited diabetic. I think a lot of times, no, I don’t think people realize in medical school, our body compensates so well for so many years, from cardiovascular health to diabetes, to just overall wellbeing, our body can put up with a lot of beating until it can’t, right?

Elias Eid: (10:35)

And then all of a sudden, oh, we have all these illnesses, but really like what’s going on in our bodies from point a to point Z? You had a great day today. Today’s Monday, you went to the gym, you had a great afternoon, but then Wednesday, you don’t feel so good, why, what happened between Monday and Wednesday that we can’t reproduce that? “Oh, it’s just a Friday. Oh, which is…” No, it’s not just a Friday. There’s some, “Oh, that’s… It’s a Monday, you know how it is?” No, no, no, there’s something going on. We just don’t know it. So that’s always been my philosophy is, it’s extremely difficult, but you have to, you have to be very conscientious to the data, to the trends, and actually try to seek, “Hey, try to learn what’s going on.”

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (11:21)

Right, you’re basically becoming a pro in your own pattern recognition and how it feels in your body. And like you say, just being really attentive to every detail. I think it’s when I first started using CGM, it’s life changing and you realize how much every little thing matters. And like you say, you also realize how much our bodies put up with. I mean, I realized I had been going through years and years and years of high blood sugar for large portions of my day. And thankfully it felt like my body was still relatively healthy, but to your point, at some point, your body tires out and the strain is seen more. In terms of medical education and how you’re taught through the education to think about metabolic healths, to think about nutrition, to think about what you’re describing, which is essentially being your own kind of captain of understanding what’s happening to your own body. How is that being taught in medical schools now, if at all?

Elias Eid: (12:21)

I think it’s lacking for sure. I know I saw a survey, the national average for US medical schools, four hours in nutrition. I mean, it’s next to nothing. I think there’s some efforts to be made, but I think it’s more of just a [inaudible 00:12:35] accolade like, “Yeah, focus on your health.”

Elias Eid: (12:38)

I’ve always said doctors, we do not practice what we preach, like healthy living, balanced lifestyle. We know how to preach it, but I mean, almost, I don’t think there was one surgeon I saw during my clinical rotations that were not hyped up on caffeine or just sleep deprived or it’s overall, you can tell, this is not a physically healthy human being. This is not the ideal fitness human peak performance here. So I think medicine itself has some tough, we’re lacking a little bit behind, but it’s not something anyone denies. It’s almost like a cognitive dissonance thing. We know about it, but we don’t really do it, but we got to rough it off because it’s, “Hey, we’re trying to, this is how medicine is, and this is how it was and how it’s going to be,” type thing. But I think some of the newer generation kind of acknowledges, “Hey, this is probably not the best thing that we do to ourselves if we’re not trying to [inaudible 00:13:36].”

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (13:36)

Where do you think the gaps are in terms of it seems, and it’s been so there’s many, many years for reasons in medical school, but by memory of it is, it was relatively well acknowledged that so many of the chronic conditions that are rampant in US and in the world are reversible, preventable, manageable by lifestyle intervention. And that really, depending on what specialty you’re in, but certainly in the primary care fields, but really across the board, behavior change is one of the most powerful tools that physicians have and yet we don’t receive any education about how to do that.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (14:12)

And like you say, even the basics of the science around nutrition or kind of the research there is typically not covered. What do you think is creating that gap between acknowledgement that diet, lifestyle are a huge, huge factor. There’s so much research about what where’s the magic pill for all these things. And it’s like, “We know in large part what we can do to help with these conditions.” And yet we’re not training our physicians to help patients do that. What is going on with that from your perspective?

Elias Eid: (14:43)

Yeah, that’s a great question. And I thought about this a lot and I distill down to a very clear answer, it’s lack of data. I’m really passionate about this space for one reason alone. I have a lot of friends. They go to the doctor once a year, all my annual labs are perfect and they come back next year. But then when we all hit 50, most of us, 88% of Americans are going to get Type 2 diabetes. We get some sort of cardiovascular disease, liver and kidney dysfunction, why? Well, the reason is because our body, well say for example, for blood sugar, I’m a diabetic, this is what I know. I’ll give us an example. Let’s say your fast blood sugar, your annual A1C is perfect. You go to your doctor, “Hey doc, I’m fine.” One thing that most doctors and even most endocrinologists are infecting is for example, insulin level.

Elias Eid: (15:32)

So I’ll give you an example. Let’s say a normal insulin level is a level of five, correct? Let’s say you touch your insulin level. Your insulin is 20. “Well Doc, I have a normal A1C. My blood sugar, their fine, right? I’m healthy. I’m not going to get diabetes,” but you’re pancreas is putting out four times the amount of insulin to get the same results. Well, eventually you do that for 10, 20, 30 years, a little genetic predisposition, a little junk food on the side. “Oh, I’m drinking maybe a little too much. I’m not working out as much.” One day your pancreas says, “I’m done, why should I work four or five, six times high?” And in my pre-med years, and even my medical school years, I worked in a lot of endocrinology offices. And there was a few doctors that would check info Levels.

Elias Eid: (16:19)

And you would be amazed of four or five, six times the level, the pancreas having to work. Our bodies are working on overdrive. It’s like getting a car, never treating the oil. “Well, I don’t know, it was running fine for 50,000 miles.” Once you get 50,000, then your motor blows out, the transmission goes out and you’re scratching your head, “What happened?” Well, there was a whole lot of stuff that we just weren’t aware of. And that’s the problem, so to answer your question directly, the disconnect is, historically the data was on fast of labs once or twice a year and that was it. And that was all that medicine could offer, so off that this phase is that, that is no longer the case. We have a real time data, we have minute to minute. I mean, you’re talking to someone who is going from every two hours, pricking their fingers to get a blood glucose every five minutes.

Elias Eid: (17:11)

And the technology’s only getting better. It’s getting smaller, it’s getting more accurate. Even just a couple of years ago, you’d have to calibrate these sensors, now they’re calibration free. I mean, it’s insane how the technology’s going and medicine better jump on board because there’s a reason why big tech is putting money into this space. It is a growing field that’s adding value to people’s lives. So that’s kind of my thought on it. And I think the way how we address that more is, focus more on the real time data changes, and then recognizing those trends, then we can add inter add intervention.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (17:49)

That makes sense, have you been in situations as a medical student where let’s say you are in a clinic, in an endocrinology clinic, and you’re noticing that people aren’t doing fasting insulin testing, or maybe you’re in a primary care clinic and you see the pattern that you just described, which is, let’s say a normal A1C, but it’s pretty clear from other, kind of your evaluation overall of the patient that it’s likely that there’s insulin resistance happening under the surface. Have you been in a situation where you’re trying to advocate for the attending to order different labs or change their perspective on the patient? And if so, what are those conversations like?

Elias Eid: (18:28)

They’re never as impactful as you want them to be. Usually this conversation is surrounded around weight loss. I’m really talked about weight loss, weight loss management, and there’s a huge misconception. I think also our own personal bias plays a lot into it. A lot of times the traditions themselves are not necessarily in their best state possible. So then you’re trying to think of the literature of what proves weight loss. So let’s be honest, we’re like, “Hey, we’re preaching this literature, but I can’t even practice that.” It’s kind of hard to, as a human being, you kind of, it’s like a smoke or telling someone to stop smoking. It’s like, you’re not really going to do that, you can’t do it yourself. So not that you deny it, you just kind of shift the conversation to things you feel more comfortable, which unfortunately in my experience I’ve seen it, although we got to increase your insulin levels or fix what you’re eating.

Elias Eid: (19:20)

Maybe try keto, maybe try this, let try that. And it’s like, “We’re not adjusting the main issue and the issue is insulin resistance.” Insulin resistance is I think the most underrated biomarker that we are not looking at. And just one, I’m sure there’s many more, cortisol levels, epinephrine release, all these other sorts of things. But I think insulin resistance is a great, easily acceptable first biomarker that a lot of physicians are not really aware of just because it’s not how they were trained. And then sometimes people just are not motivated enough to learn these new things, but that’s why it’s important to have podcast like these to really advocate for a few.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (20:04)

It’s such an interesting point you’re making around how challenging it is for the physician community and the provider community to essentially address head on these issues with patients when they themselves feel like maybe they’re not doing even what they know to do, or maybe they themselves aren’t thinking in terms of insulin resistance, right? It’s more like you’re saying and I think experience of many medical professionals is just, they’re kind of just on this very rapid treadmill of practice, right?

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (20:31)

There isn’t much free time, and this is a whole nother conversation we will have to a second podcast right around. I think that the training process and the practice for many clinicians towards a career is just not conducive to health. And it’s unfortunate because we’re asking people to help other people with their health while we’re essentially structurally causing them to not be able to live healthy lifestyles themselves. So there’s a whole, I think really big problem there. I’m curious, I know that you have seen the power of CGM in your own life, and I agree that the pace that the technology is evolving is so incredible in some ways, and combined with the recognition of how insulin resistance is the underlying theme for so many chronic conditions, what are some ways that you see CGM being applied in the clinic and for patient populations and maybe also for provider populations?

Elias Eid: (21:23)

Well, I think as it becomes more accessible, the cost and availability. Cost can go down, availability goes up. I would say it doesn’t hurt, throw it on. The clinicians that I worked with that did advocate, they’d wear it themselves and again see one do one, right? So when patients see, “Hey, my doctor’s also trying to better his own personal life and I want to do that too.” So I think just getting more access out and I know historically sometimes it’s like, “Oh, well this is only for clinical use.” No, this is for everybody. You should not wear CGM only if you’re diabetic. I put my own parents on one, people should be wearing CGM. Now the trick is, and this I think, as a clinician, it’s really important.

Elias Eid: (22:21)

Well, we have all this data, how do we make sense of it? What does it all mean? Be able to all these numbers that go up and down, what does that mean in my life? What should I be changing in my breakfast? What should I be doing throughout my day? How it’s affecting my sleep? How is it affecting my work? How is it affecting my relationship? And I think that’s really where we’re at and what’s kind of the unknown, but we can’t figure those things out until we get all of this data to kind of recognize those trends to figure out, “Okay, this is a pivotal point, if I make this intervention, then we can affect the downstream.” There’s a lot to unpack, but definitely getting people aware and excited to use a technology is the first step.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (23:06)

It’s so interesting because I think historically some of the resistance to adoption of technology in traditional clinical settings has been a hesitancy from the physician perspective that there’s going to be all this data that they’re now going to have to deal with, right? And as you know, a patient encounter might be 15 minutes and maybe less, often less. And in that time they have to see the patient, make a plan, and then do all the documentation for the insurance side of things. And I think there’s been a lot of fear that adding wearables and data from all these other sources just going to make that even more difficult to kind of provide patient care. But my hope is that, software, whether it’s Levels or other things will do some of that work for physicians so that really in the end, they’re just seeing the most pertinent information they need to see.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (23:52)

And really most of the control and power is on the side of the patient who is living to your point, who’s living in the details every single day. For people listening who are in medical school or in medical training, or just have really busy lives, are there hacks or kind of strategies that you use during medical school to try to regulate blood sugar and keep things as consistent as possible within the constraints of a completely unpredictable schedule and very little sleep and not necessarily access to the food you want to eat all day while you’re in the hospital?

Elias Eid: (24:26)

Yeah, don’t adopt the thinking of someone who doesn’t have the results you have. What do I mean by that? So I’m in the fitness world, the body building world [inaudible 00:24:41] NPC bikini competition. I have a lot of friends and that’s kind of my community. And we also have this rule of thumb, you don’t go to the gym and ask someone who’s not how you want to look, how to get [inaudible 00:24:52]. You go to someone like, “Hey, I like your physique. I like… Everyone’s different, how do I be like you? Or how did you get there?” Learn from someone, you don’t have to go broke how to become rich, right? It’s the same idea so I feel a lot of the mainstream of nutritional information is not necessarily giving the people the results they want.

Elias Eid: (25:12)

For example, this is a good, simple example. I have one my personal life oatmeal, great breakfast. It’s advocated by the media, “Oh, low it’s cholesterol, this, that, and the other,” I thought from all the added sugars they put in. So I could tell you this, me as a diabetic, oatmeal was horrible tasting [inaudible 00:25:28] and that’s corroborated by my other fellow diabetic friends. And you’re nodding, I’m not sure if you-

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (25:34)

Same with me.

Elias Eid: (25:35)

But oatmeal, I don’t care what I do. Oatmeal for some reason, the way how my body metabolizes it’s like a spike, it’s a down. My younger years, I’d be in a bad mood when I got to school, maybe in high school or college, anything I’m having a bad day. That’s truly what I attributed to. I mean, I’m trying, I’m just in a bad mood. I’m in a bad day.

Elias Eid: (25:58)

And this was before the CGM be really where they’re at now. Now I correlated, “Man, my mood swings are correlated to how my sugars are.” I made a switch to cream of rice. You will not believe the difference, for me, white rice, not brown rice. Don’t ask me why, but this is just anecdotal. The powered CGM the power of like, “Hey, I don’t know the exact science of it, but anecdotally, it’s working, the cream of rice.” I give my insulin 15 minutes before, I’m riding it like a wave, I’m great. I put some berries in there, some honey, taste great. And I never knew that I was never even aware of that. And I just think like, “Man, if that’s such a cynical thing that mainstream health media with good intention, good virtue, not people are trying to give good information, but the reality is that we’re all so different.”

Elias Eid: (26:48)

We’re all different backgrounds, different fanatic, different socioeconomic background. It’s not a one size fits all. We need to really see, “Hey, if oatmeal works better for you, awesome, do it. If your sugars are awesome, if cream rice is not good. I don’t know, do a sprouted grains, do whole wheat, do whatever experiment and try.” And then I would challenge you every time you have a mood swing, go look at that graph. I will bet you good money, and I’m not a betting, man, but I’ll bet you good money that there’s going to be a fluctuation that’s preceding that. And I think that’s really transformative to give people those little changes to kind of look and see, “What am I doing my day to day?” And it takes a certain level discipline that definitely takes time getting used to.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (27:36)

It is, and it’s funny because it’s like you say some of these things that people wouldn’t necessarily attribute to blood sugar, but they’re experiencing them every day. And I think mood is such a good example of that. I can’t tell you the number of friends I have where they, and there’s one friend in particular who she noticed that she always thought it was just her personality to have these mood swings kind of. And what she realized when she put on CGM is actually that was just blood sugar dips.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (28:02)

It was directly correlated as soon as she leveled out her blood sugar, those mood swings in a way, and this is a personality she thought was hers, her entire life. And she thought she was just a kind of person that has that and so I think it’s really empowering to realize that there’s so much happening in our bodies that we actually, that we can alter if we want to, and it’s possible to do. Can you talk a little bit about how you decided to go into emergency medicine and how you’re planning to bring all of your knowledge and passion for metabolic health into that setting?

Elias Eid: (28:35)

Yeah, so emergency medicine for me… I didn’t go into medical school thinking of and become an ER doctor, but I fell in love with the fast-paced real time data, that’s really what I enjoy, I love the quick, actionable change. Although I love endocrinology, I love metabolic dysfunction, I do think it’s the answer to almost all of our chronic illnesses, the chronic inflammation, for the same reason we’re talking now, it’s a little too slow. I don’t want to get labs and wait a week. I want to look at things now and I want to go a little faster. I get more satisfaction as a person from helping people from that standpoint. Even during my interviews for residency, I spoke about my work with Levels quite a bit and I actually even translated my interest for CGM real time monitoring into entitled CO2, which is the marker we use in the ER for early sepsis detection, sepsis management, sepsis protocol.

Elias Eid: (29:36)

So there’s this theme of how can I get data quick? How can I make sense of the data and then what do I do about it? And that’s really the theme that I talk to people and advocate for this space. That’s the theme, get the data, analyze it, what does it mean? Now, what do I do? The what do I do part, fortunate that’s all that matters. You want to lose weight? Okay, let’s get a bunch of data. What does that data mean? How can we cause that to decrease your weight? So, yeah. That’s kind of where that all that ties in.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (30:12)

And one of the great things I think about emergency medicine is you are meeting a lot of different people and you’re meeting them at a moment in their life where there’s typically a high level of vulnerability. They’re having a crisis, which is what brought them to the emergency room. And I think there is a desire to change their health status, of course. And I think it’s really cool that there will be people like you, who are there, who of course are trained to deal with the immediate issue, but also have this kind of broader lens that there’s probably things that they can be doing that will really alter the course of their health in the long term.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (30:52)

You’ll have so many moments with people, this snapshot in time when they’re at this potential inflection point in their life, which I think is really powerful. How do you think that we can start to inspire others in medicine to think along the lines that you are, and to really start to view blood sugar control, or even just metabolic health, or even just food choices as, just as core to the packs of medicine as medications and other interventions that we do?

Elias Eid: (31:21)

Well, I think at first it’s starting with what people know, starting somewhere where the common ground, and there is moderate evidence and evidence supported medicine that uses this idea of metabolic function. For example, one lab test that most clinicians don’t use or don’t even know about is called the GlycoMark. I’m not that familiar with that. And this is I think one of the most underrated lab tests, the GlycoMark is a lab test you do with your normal lab work. It looked at post [inaudible 00:31:57] figure, after you eat, how high are your figures going before they come back down? And what I really like about it is it just builds it down to a chart, maybe a 12 or 5, or anything else, any other lab value, it gives you that a number and within a decent estimation, it can say on average, your figures are going up to 215 after meals.

Elias Eid: (32:19)

Now I’m not going to get into all the science of how it does it. So for me as a diabetic, that’s always told me, “Okay, you know what? I’m not pre-bolusing enough. I’m not giving my insulin early enough.” If I’m shooting up to 230 before they go back down to 120 or 100 or whatever the case may be, my A1C rate would be fine, my preds, they’re pretty good. So there’s current evidence that it’s just not widely used, but it’s there. And there are 30 clinicians who really are hyper focused and experts in this space to use that, so I think to kind of get people excited about the spaces, get them to start implementing what’s already there. And then once they get comfortable into the utility, then you can bridge pay. This is where we can increase the utility of it.

Elias Eid: (33:06)

It’s really hard to get someone who’s maybe been talking medicine for 30 years. It’s like anything as we get older, I think we just get more that in our ways, but I think that’s why it’s so important to, as the evidence increases to start implementing that. And I would say that the people too, I’m a physician, yeah. I believe it, evidence based medicine, yeah. But you know what? I also don’t discount anecdotal experiences.

Elias Eid: (33:32)

I really don’t and I think that’s maybe a flaw in medicine that we maybe we won’t… You can’t write off someone’s experience, if someone says X, Y, Z, take it with a grain of salt but take it to into consideration. If they’re saying, “Hey, cream of rice is better than oatmeal.” Maybe there’s something there, maybe the literature isn’t supported, maybe we’ll know exactly, but I will tell you this, it’s more about medicine we don’t know than we do know, so the odds of somethings there, and we just don’t know, and it may seem silly when we first hear or first glance, but people are very responsive to their bodies. And I think that’s the second biggest thing I would say in shifting of the culture is kind of listen to people and validate their concern.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (34:18)

I really like that, I think it’s so important. And you’re reminding me of some of my experiences in medical school, around how… First of all, medical students are not taught how to listen in general, despite the fact that that is one of the most powerful tools that physicians have. And in addition to that, I think, like you said, there’s this sense that if something isn’t validated in the existing science, then it’s not true. And I just think, like you said, I mean, I completely agree with you. The human body is a vast mystery, right? And we’re trying to find different windows into understanding it and I think modern medicine has done incredible things as have the traditions of Chinese medicine and other forms of healing. But the reality is, the vast majority, we just still don’t know.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (35:01)

And the person who knows each person’s body best is that person, right? And so their experience is the most valid piece of data. And I think to the extent that it changes in terms of how clinicians are trained, we take that as the beginning, and then we use all the tools we have, whether it’s technology, whether it’s existing science, whether it’s new research to create change around that existing core experience, I think that would be such a massive change in the practice of medicine. And it certainly would create a lot more empathy, I think. For medical students or even premeds or residents or physicians who are interested in technology, in health tech, really want to become part of this changing approach to medicine, do you have advice for how they can get involved these kinds of things or kind of just how to step out of the world of just traditional clinical medicine?

Elias Eid: (35:57)

Be bold, be bold and add value. I think no one likes to dead weight, this is an emergency space. No one’s going to hold your hand, no one’s going to… If you’re passionate about this, I spend time in this outside of this podcast and because I see utility and I just love it. You become an expert in that field and the more you know about something, the more you’re able to share and collaborate. And I think that adds value. I think universally as human beings, we appreciate that someone who’s trying to help others and I think that that’s the biggest step. If this is not your space, then that’s fine. Find your space and add a value in that space. I do think though, fitness in general and health and wellness, it’s like a thing now, especially in the young community, I remember maybe 10 or 15 years ago, people who worked out wanted to be healthy, there was a certain group of people, but now with social media and Instagram and Facebook and now Metaverse, that’s happening and this and that, it’s cool to be fit.

Elias Eid: (37:11)

It’s a lifestyle thing and I think it’s definitely something the new generation, and even younger than me are going to experience in a way that are historically we never have. And so I think the internet and technology is connected in such a way that we can keep each other accountable. “Hey, you didn’t go to the gym today.” It would’ve alerted me that you went to the gym today, or “Hey, you didn’t get your steps in,” or I think that’s the way people can become encouraged is to be develop a community and feel connected. One thing I’ve learned in medicine is you don’t really know what it is to be alone until you’re in a room full of people and still feel alone. And I think this idea, this journey of like, “I want to be fit. I want to be healthy. I feel crummy. I’m not living my best life. I’m not living my best self.”

Elias Eid: (38:00)

You could feel so alone and companies and spaces like Levels and others that are giving you a community to fare and validate your concern, validate, “Hey, this is what I’m experiencing,” and this is why, how we understand it is such a huge relief to people. And then once people have that community, they realize like, “Wow, I have that kind of, that faith space, that fallback, that I can kind of figure out what’s going on with myself.” Let’s be honest, most of us, we don’t know. We don’t know what the heck we’re doing. I don’t know, I’m like, “You doing still good?” I’m like, “Really? I just woke up and I don’t know how it got here.” I don’t know, I’m literally figuring it out day by day and giving that community I think is definitely going to give people the empowerment to be bold, and then to kind of advocate for whatever they’re passionate about.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (38:47)

Thank you so much for saying that because I agree, the sense of aloneness is such a blocker to change and can be just a, I mean, it’s a very difficult experience. And I hope that the people listening here, whether they’re patients or physicians or whatever their role is, that they know that every single person, you, me, every physician that you’re encountering, when you go to a doctor’s appointment is dealing with the same things that you’re dealing with in some way, right? Every person had their own flavor and their own experience, but no one is exempt, and the statistics show that, right? Nine out of 10 people have some form of insulin resistance and that should let everyone know that when you go to the grocery store, you might feel very lone, but everyone is on this journey to some extent just about, and if not in this moment, in another chapter in their lives. So it’s, yeah, I so appreciate you saying that. In 10 years, let’s say we’re talking again, what do you hope the conversation will be like around these topics? What do you hope medical schools will be teaching?

Elias Eid: (39:49)

Well, I know in this space of metabolic health, I think it’s going to be a lot different on the user end. I think as soon as these technologies, these products become available, the general public at scale. I think that’s going to be the stimulus to kind of wake up the medical community like “Hey, what’s going on?”

Elias Eid: (40:08)

I don’t necessarily know. I mean, to have changes and love for change, and I know already medical schools are shifting to a more technology-based learning. The traditional lectures and PowerPoints have already been phased out, they’ve kind of been phased out for some time now. So I think it just like the world is catching up the technology. That’s why it’s awesome to have gone through medical school, going to hopefully finish up residency and then able to be part of that technology space because the world is changing and you have to jump on board and we all have to bring our expertise from engineering, from design, from product development, from clinical medicine, we all need to come together and use technology to scale that, that’s the only way we’re able to help as many people as we need to.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (41:00)

For people who are listening to this, who are just stepping into this world, are there some resources you love that you think are good places for people to start learning, maybe podcasts or blogs or whatever else you’ve used to get up the curve on this space?

Elias Eid: (41:18)

Again, I’m in the fitness world, but I follow a lot of fitness influencers and people who are health conscientious. There’s a lot of new doctors that are on TikTok and Instagram and I actually really like a fine surgeon, fellow trained Dr. Webb, Antonio Webb, out of Texas. Nothing to do with his face, but I’ve been watching him for years and just seeing how he’s incorporated technology and residency and fellowship and now he’s an attending, doing really great stuff.

Elias Eid: (41:49)

Kind of seeing, I give him a lot of coup to the clinicians who can blog while they’re doing their clinical medicine of life. It’s like, “How do you have time for all this?” But just not being afraid to take that step forward and just reminding yourself that, “Hey, if they can do it, I can too.” You’re not better than anyone, no one’s better than you. We are all capable of greatness. We’re really the prisoners of our own minds that, “Oh, I could never do that.” We can, we can all do it. And we all have to encourage each other to do that because I think that’s also something we don’t do enough, is to encourage each other to really help bring the best versions out of ourselves.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (42:30)

Completely and especially in medical school and depending on what medical school you go to, but I think clinical training can be so competitive and it can feel like a zero sum game in terms of, right? If someone gets your residency spot, then that person is now your competition. And I just think, like you said, it’s not true and the reality is there’s so much work that needs to be done across the board, that there is more than enough for everyone and we’ll never get it all done, but I think encouraging each other is so much better than competing with each other. Is there anything we haven’t talked about that we want to make sure we touch on?

Elias Eid: (43:06)

I think it’s just getting people to realize that this actually kind of benefit your life. If you’re overweight, if you’re suffering from any sort of metabolic disease, getting involved in this space and seeking to figuring out what’s going on in our bodies, it’s so important. And that’s the point I really want to drive home to people. I really want people to leave listening to this and understanding that, “Hey, what you’re going through, it’s valid, it’s real.” I mean, I can stay here to our listing, all of the stuff that’s probably really personal to me, but we’re all going through stuff. And I think this is is a hope for a lot of things that we just don’t know about. This is hope for a lot of feeling alone, anxiety, when you’re not feeling your best self, you’re going to feel depressed.

Elias Eid: (43:57)

You’re not going to be great. It’s like, you feel you’re not energetic. You’re not where you want to be, you’re leaving potential on the table. I think a lot of things that people don’t realize, the feeling of sadness and depression, I know a little sidetrack it from a conversation, but it’s leaving potential on the table and that potential is not living your healthiest self and that’s how the CGM technology ties into that. So when you recognize, “Hey, I’m sad or I’m not in my best place possible,” it’s fixable. We just have to make sure we’re looking the right weight. And this is definitely a major avenue that has been neglected for so long. And that now we’re able start looking at.

Elias Eid: (44:39)

So I think it’s this idea of hope. There is a solution, there is a way out and we’re on the way. It’s not I’m just talking in the ether like, “No we’re actually doing this.” I know Levels just finished up series, A Awesome, so congratulations on that. That was again, huge milestone and then hopefully this kind of paved the way for other groups, to other people to kind of get involved in this space and kind of help contributing to that, so super exciting.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (45:06)

I completely agree with all of that and of course I’m very biased because I’m devoting large portion of my life right now to trying to push this forward. But I think one thing that I always share with people is CGM is incredibly powerful and I really believe in what we’re doing at Levels and also for people who don’t have access to CGM right now, there’s things that they can start doing tomorrow to help begin this path. For example, taking walks after meals, right? Or like you said, starting to notice mood swings and maybe altering the food that you’re eating before those, when you recognize those, obviously staying away from a lot of added sugar and processed carbs, right? There’s things that we can all do and you don’t have to do them all at once. I’m the kind of person where I tend to go all or nothing, right?

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (45:52)

I’m like, “Okay, I’m balancing my blood sugar.” And the next thing I know I’m trying keto and I’m really in it, but there’s also people who follow a much more progressive approach and that’s equally powerful and valid. And I think it’s what you said, everyone’s on their own path and there is hope. There’s a lot of reason for hope, if anything, it’s really game changing, how much blood sugar is coming into the conversation?

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (46:18)

Thank you so much for having this conversation. It’s really inspiring to me to know that there are physicians like you, who will be coming into the community and having a force in the conversation, in research and just really reshaping everything. Like you said, whether it’s about mood, whether it’s about fitness, whether it’s about endocrine health and chronic disease, it’s really just, it’s amazing to see physicians with empathy, super smart, super enthusiastic, and passionate, and really hopeful, so thank you for having this conversation.

Elias Eid: (46:51)

Oh yeah, absolutely. I do want to say one thing that I think also might help people a lot and something I noticed fuck that cardio, so underrated, do it, it is so good. I remember to do my clinical years, I was in surgery, waking up at 4:00 AM, supposed to do the hospital by 5:00 or pre-round. And I remember this vividly, if I would go on a 10-minute run, first thing I did when I got up, glass of water, I went on a 10-minute run. I would not need insulin for my breakfast. My breakfast was the same every morning during surgery, my body, it was like, I almost… Your body’s like a machine, right? That’s how I kind of visualized it. And when ran bursting in the morning, I almost depleted my liver from the glycogen it had to kind of fuel my run.

Elias Eid: (47:35)

So then when my body normally would have it every single morning, your blood sugar kind of go up to gets you ready for the day, it didn’t have that glycogen because I used it for the run. Then I ate, and my body as a diabetic, was living off of the sugars that I just had on my breakfast. And I wouldn’t eat insulin until about 12:00 noon. During my board exam, I couldn’t do the run and what do you think happened? Oh my, I started needing more insulin and it only went up and up. And I even experimented with it doing midday cardio, it didn’t have the same effect. It didn’t have the same effect because, and again, I don’t know how evidence-based, anecdotal, and that’s fine if it’s anecdotal for you, go for it.

Elias Eid: (48:18)

It’s helping your life, anecdotal for me, the way how I kind of rack wise was like, “I don’t think my body is tapping into its liver stores. I think it’s tapping into the stores of the food. I ate, 2-3 hours ago,” and that’s why my sugars are not getting that same insulin sensitivity that I was when I was doing it fasted. So again, little bit popped into my head, that for me was game changer because I was able to give 10 less units of insulin. So same weight, for non-diabetic your pancreas won’t need to punch out 10 more units of insulin. And now, and now your body’s running on a leaner, you have a leaner machine. It’s like, you’re more optimized, you’re not having to do so much to compensate.

Elias Eid: (49:02)

So that was something I think nondiabetics, anyone can do, experiment with it. Do 10 minutes, go on a bike, wake up in the morning, go on a walk. Go on a walk for 10 minutes and see and feel, do it for a week. See and feel, you don’t do good? Try it after meal, maybe that’s what your body, you need it right after meal. There’s no right or wrong answer, but do it and try it and look at the data. And if you don’t have the data, go by how you feel, the guys trust me. How do you feel sometimes the better indicator in the data because that’s most important thing how you feel and how we’re living healthy lives.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (49:36)

Such a great tip, and ultimately I think the hope is that when people do have access to the data, if they have access to that, it’s what you said, which is really what they’re doing is training their own self to understand what they’re feeling in their body. And that’s the ultimate goal is that we’re our own CGM to the extent possible. But I also love your example because 10 minutes is really doable, right?

Elias Eid: (49:58)

Oh yeah.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (49:59)

That it has that much of a difference and it’s the amount of time it takes you to listen to two or three songs on Spotify. I mean, it’s incredible.

Elias Eid: (50:07)

[inaudible 00:50:07] And again, maybe as a diabetic, I noticed that the effect tenfold, maybe a non-diabetic, “Oh, I don’t know that that would…” Pay attention, pay attention, you might, you might. And that’s so exciting is like, “Hey, I’m experiencing that and I’m a diabetic and it treated, it’s huge. My morning is so much better.” You as a nondiabetic or anyone else, if you don’t have diabetes, you’ll be amazed. You’ll be amazed how much better your mood is. You won’t be stressed out going to work. You won’t be fighting with yourself or this or that. It really is amazing and so anyways, I get packed. I could talk about this stuff all day long, so.

Lauren Kelley-Chew: (50:41)

Oh no, we should do it again, but it’s true. And I love the phrase, “Pay attention,” because so much of health is about that, right? It’s paying attention to your own body, it’s paying attention to the world around you, to your choices, like you said, to the complexity of all of this, right? All of our choices are happening in such a complex environment that it’s not as simple as, “Oh, I decided to eat or not eat a good or bad food,” right? It’s so much more layered than that, and I think attention is the first step. Where could people find you if they want to follow you or just to follow your journey?

Elias Eid: (51:19)

Yeah, so I’m on Instagram @imelias I-M-E-L-I-A-S underscore, so yeah. Do you have any questions or thoughts? I’m slowly merging in this space, just graduated a week ago, so I’m excited. I want to increase my digital presence, but I kind of, like you said earlier, it’s like, we’re all even I have doubt. So in my head I’m like, “Am I that person, could I do this?” So it’s just exciting to be a part of this and hopefully I can help more people and connect with others.