A CLEAN SCREEN OF HEALTH

Even though medicine has advanced by leaps and bounds since the dawn of humanity, the best type of healthcare is still preventive care. It is usually far cheaper than healthcare intended for disease or medical treatment, and it can help people to lead healthier lives if utilized consistently, by giving them regular insights into their body and health.

Preventive health often takes the form of screening, or checking to see if a condition is present before symptoms start to show. One of the more useful, if not surprising, methods for screening is urine and stool sampling. Urine by nature contains waste products that are filtered out of the body, while stools contain bacteria and other substances from the digestive system, making both of them ideal for screening tests. Urine samples are commonly used to detect urinary tract infections and STIs, while stool samples are useful for detecting things like gastroenteritis and Crohn’s disease. Despite their usefulness, these tests often require visits to the doctor, and aren’t very accessible outside the hospital.

Clinicai is working to change that. The California-based company has been researching ways to use intelligent toilet sensor devices to scan stool and urine in homes, without the need for self-collection, and has also recently developed a sensing method for detecting colorectal cancer. I spoke with Chun-Hao Huang, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Clinicai, to learn more about it’s roots, it’s unique technology, and it’s future potential.

What was the original inspiration behind Clinicai?

I have been a cancer biologist and bioengineer for more than 10 years. The problem in the disease field is late detection. However, the main challenge is people only go to the doctor when they feel really sick, so most of the time the disease is already at a late stage when detected. Therefore, since 2014 I started to think about how we can solve this problem, and met my cofounders Medina, Juan Carlos, and “Mr. Toilet” Jack Sim at Singularity University in 2016 to create the solution. How Steve Jobs and Apple “merge technology with humanity” is a true inspiration for me. They brought computers and smart phones to our daily life so perfectly and changed the way we live. Therefore, Clinicai’s mission is to merge biotechnology with humanity, and our vision is to create a future where predictive healthcare is comfortably accessible to everyone.

In addition, the way Elon Musk and Tesla use cars as a platform to solve energy problems, as well as their master plan for providing scalable/affordable products is another inspiration for me. We use bathrooms as a platform to solve health problems, and our goal is to provide a scalable/affordable device which allows everyone to monitor their health.

Clinicai relies on a system of sensors to monitor health, could you talk more about that and give an example of how they would work in a real-life setting?

Phase one of our master plan, or what we are currently building, is an intelligent toilet sensor device that can identify different users in a family and scan stool and urine, meaning the users themselves don’t need to collect their own stool and urine. After that we will expand to other devices in the bathroom, like mirrors, toothbrushes, shower heads, etc. You would just need to do what you normally do in the bathroom everyday, and this network of sensors would continuously monitor your health.

Clinicai is also working on developing AI systems, what role do you see those systems having in the future?

We are currently developing machine learning algorithms to identify unique features from the sensor signals to detect colorectal cancer. In the future, I envision that our AI can be personalized, create your health signal pattern and identify any abnormal signals.

It appears that Clinicai’s technology could have a wide range of applications in many different settings, what do you intend your target market to be initially?

The first market we plan to target is the individual user at home. After that we will target the public sector, to allow hospitals to track diseases in a region or population in order to monitor public health.

What does the future of Clinicai look like in your eyes?

I envision that Clinicai will become the global health monitoring platform, and ultimately extend a healthier lifespan for humanity.

How Exercise Makes You Better at Your Job

Exercise boosts mental fitness, too.

Thanks to increasing globalization and human-replacing technology, the bar for intellectual performance is higher than ever. As a result, workplace doping — or the illegal use of drugs such as Adderall and other stimulants to enhance cognitive performance — is growing rapidly. But there is a far more healthy and ethical way to get the same, if not greater, mental boost. Exercise.

Now I’m not a professional athlete — as a writer, I’m far from it — but I do treat exercise like it’s a part of my job. And, I do this for good reason. Although exercise is commonly thought of as something that is good for physical fitness and health down the road (e.g., prevention of cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, and osteoporosis) it also brings immediate benefits for mental fitness.

Three neurotransmitters — serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine — are integral to brain function. Serotonin influences mood. Norepinephrine heightens perception. Dopamine regulates attention and satisfaction. When these neurotransmitters are in balance, the brain is ready for optimal functioning. When they are out of balance, however, cognitive ability suffers, and in severe cases, psychiatric disorders may arise.

Many drugs used to treat mental health disorders, including those implicated in workplace doping, individually target serotonin, norepinephrine, or dopamine. Yet, as John Ratey, psychiatrist and author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, explains, “simply raising or lowering the level of a neurotransmitter does not elicit a crisp one-to-one result because the system is so complex.” The effectiveness of exercise, however, is unmatched because it seems to promote an ideal balance of neurotransmitters.

Researchers have found that after a single 35-minute aerobic (fast walking or running) treadmill session, creativity and cognitive flexibility — the ability to think about multiple concepts at once — improve significantly. Another study found that even just a 6-minute walk can increase creativity. These findings are especially intriguing because cognitive flexibility and creativity are cornerstones of numerous jobs. Beyond professional work, exercise is also associated with better academic performance, which is why I firmly believe that meaningful phys-ed should be a primary focus for educators. It’s ironic that phys-ed gets cut for more time in math and science when phys-ed not only improves one’s ability to do math and science, but also helps develop healthy people. How can this not be a priority at a time when many consider the rising costs of healthcare to be the most serious threat facing the economy?

Now I’m not a professional athlete — far from it — but I do treat exercise like it’s a part of my job.

In addition to priming the brain for acute bouts of cognitive work — be them professional or academic — exercise simultaneously promotes long-term brain development by triggering the release of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a neurochemical that Ratey told me is like “Miracle-Gro for the brain.”

BDNF fuels a process called neurogenesis, which spawns new brain cells and facilitates connections between them. The link between exercise and BDNF helps explain mounting evidence that exercise lowers risk for and delays the progression of degenerative neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Pushing yourself physically teaches you to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Finally, and what I think is perhaps exercise’s greatest benefit, pushing yourself physically teaches you to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. In other words, stressing your body inside the gym helps make your entire being more resistant to stress outside of the gym. (This is a fascinating topic in and of itself, and one that I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about. Read more here.)

So, if you want to enhance your mental fitness, and do so in a perfectly legal and safe way, you should prioritize exercise in your life. This message is not particularly new. Modern science is simply proving what the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Thales began preaching over 2,000-years-ago: Sound body and sound mind go hand-in-hand.

If you’re not getting the support you need from your employer, I encourage you to share this story with them. The evidence is overwhelming. As more and more employers become aware of this, I expect (and hope) more and more employers to support and encourage daily physical practices.