Adam Torres and Thoryn Stephens discuss Brain.one.
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Show Notes:
Listen to Longevity Leadership Conference coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Thoryn Stephens, Founder of Brain.one, explore Brain.one at the Longevity Leadership Conference.
About Thoryn Stephens
Thoryn is a prominent business and web analytics professional with expertise in complex data problem-solving, data architecture, consumer insights, testing/personalization/recommendations, and systems development. With fifteen years of management experience, he is responsible for growth and strategic development within companies such as Amgen, Unilever, American Apparel, and Fox Networks (Fox Broadcasting, FX Networks, and Fox Sports). His documented skill in analyzing user behavior data produces actionable results across a wide variety of platforms and applications.
About Brain.one
BRAIN.ONE, an evidence-based AI, designed to help us optimize our brain health with measurable results.
BRAIN.ONE offers customized protocols grouped in core pillars nudging incremental behavioral changes through microhabits grounded in scientific findings.
Full Unedited Transcript
Alright, so let’s start with the bio. So, Thorin Stevens is a leading expert in neurotechnology, longevity, business, and web analytics with a specialization in data architecture consumer insights, behavior analytics, and system optimization. He’s founder of Brain. One, a pioneering brain fitness platform featuring the world’s most extensive collection of brain health, micro habits, and protocols.
Brain. One. Thoren, welcome. Hi, thank you, Adam. How are we doing? Oh, man. All right. So I’ve been, I was on the site, I was doing my research, and this is super exciting. So I want, we’re going to go into it. We’re going to do a deep dive, of course. But first off, I see that I see founder, like, were you always an entrepreneur?
Where did that start? I was pretty entrepreneurial from a young age. Yeah, that’d be fair. My formal background is in molecular and cell biology. And I began my career working in biotech doing small molecule drug therapeutics. And that really set the foundation for my fascination around measurement of all kinds.
I find it very interesting when somebody that’s very highly educated decides to go into being an entrepreneur. I’m not going to say why, for all the entrepreneurs out there, but, like, what, what drug you into this project? Like, how did Brain. 1, how did that come about? Yeah, so began my career in biotechnology moved to L.
A. in the early, like, 2010s. And I had this weird skill set where I’d been working in biotech and and ultimately I needed to kind of reinvent my career. So I started off here in L. A. as a digital analyst. And that kind of, again, set the foundation where I was using different, I would say, structured, you know, thinking around using data to drive insights, hypothesis testing, and rapid iteration of testing.
And I applied that model to a number of industries here. Focused in media, focused in e commerce, and and ultimately what I found is I could optimize any human behavior online. I could have people buy more videos, they could, you know, buy more things online, and and then ultimately it kind of came full circle and wanted to really define my purpose.
And about two years ago, I was working with a group out of Columbia University called Neuro Rights Foundation. Neuro Rights Mission is neurological protection or essentially protection of your neurological data. Yeah. Yeah. And and going down that road, I was looking at longevity, and I thought longevity was a bit saturated, and there was this white space within brain, and all things brain, and that was really the initial impetus to come back to my roots in science, and and ultimately led to Brain 1.
How did you know that this was going to be a serious project for you? Because as entrepreneurs, as, you know, starting brands, like, we all have lots of ideas. And you, I mean, you said part of your background, but you work through a lot of disciplines and a lot of different industries. Like, how did you know that this was going to be a serious project for you?
Yeah, again, working with NeuroRites, what we saw was the white space within Brain. There was really no leader within Brain relative to information. And then even more specifically, you know, just the, the need within the public. You know, there’s a lot within Longevity, but within Brain specifically, there wasn’t really a market leader, and so that’s what we began to go after.
And what we began to see was that people are very concerned around you know, whether there are essentially there are, you know, maintaining their their brain function. And and ultimately that led to the idea of starting to build brain and health protocol. So, so now you have this idea, you know, you’re going to, you know, you’re going to proceed with it.
Where do you go next? Like talk about either building the protocols or what happened next. Yeah. So I was training for a triathlon. So I’ve also been, been very, very active. And and as I was training for triathlons, I was the most successful, two fold, one is when I was following a structured framework.
And so that was part of it. And with Triathlon, you’re looking at things like, again, nutrition you’re looking at your different micro habits for your exercises. And for me, what really put it over the top was measurement. And so many of the systems I’ve been building were focused around measurement.
And what I saw through that process was by using things like a wearable and heart rate variability, I could begin to optimize my own biology, essentially. And it was through that process you know, and specifically when I began to use, like, HRV and heart rate, I could see I could attenuate my lactic threshold.
And and so, as I was going down that road, I was actually training for the Malibu Triathlon a couple years ago, and that’s really when we began to look at this idea of productizing human health and brain protocols, ultimately. So all day long, we’ve been hearing this thing about, especially when the doctor panel was up earlier and they were talking about like, you know, a lot of people don’t want to change this concept of of nudges, micro habits, like, I don’t want to assume everybody knows what that is, myself included, like go into that a little bit.
Yeah, human change is quite hard, and it generally starts with a purpose or, you know, something you’re, you’re ultimately trying to change. And so, our general focus is through Change based on, like, incremental behaviors. And so you start small and ultimately you nudge people, you know, maybe there’s gamification, and that would drive them to the broader wholeness of change.
Can you give an example, like, of that? Like, what a nudge could be or something else, like, to, to change a habit? Sure. Actually, let me, let me run through maybe one of the protocols first and then we’ll come full circle. So, as we began to look at, again, the space within brain you know, I’m, I’m in my forties and, you know, I’m thinking about my own brain health, I’m thinking about my partners, I’m also thinking about my parents and, you know, potentially children.
And so, in general you know, there is a concern. And specifically with people of my parents generation, you know, they’re really thinking about dementia and Alzheimer’s. And so The bottom line is dementia is preventable, and you guys, I mean, how many people have heard this like that hypothesis that dementia is preventable?
So, a good number in the, in the audience. So generally that’s based on a study it was the Lancet 2020 paper. And fundamentally, it’s it’s based on you would call them risk factors or behavioral modifications. And there’s a set of 12, and it was recently expanded to 14. And these are small, incremental behavioral changes that you can make to ultimately prevent dementia.
And so these could be things like not smoking, it could be activity, it could be the level of activity and so forth. And so, as we were going down that road we began to see that there was just this, this opportunity. And so, what we’ve done is, we’ve built AIs. And we would feed in different papers, essentially.
And the papers would drive content. And they would also build a health protocol that we would then disseminate and give away for free. And that’s really the foundation for Brain1. So you can go and sign up, and you would have access to these different health protocols that you can follow. That again are based in these small incremental behavioral changes.
So things like, again, your level of activity, and the length of the activity, and intensity, and things of that nature. And so that’s where we started with, with that one paper. We then continued to build the AI. We’ve gone from 5 to 10 to 250. We now have nearly 500 papers that we’ve fed into this thing.
And these different protocols are now available. And, you know, we continue to see a lot of interest. And so that’s, that’s one type of protocol that we’ve been building. Again, based on this evidence or scientific based papers. And we’re also seeing a lot of interest within just health influencers in general.
And so as we built the platform, we’re starting to share it with people and influencers here in LA. The question would be you know, would your audience want to see your health regimen and protocol? And every single one of them said, yes, absolutely. And so that was additional white space that we saw.
And so that idea, again, you know, if you follow a health protocol or follow a health influencer, you know, what is their protocol? And so we’ve been working with health influencers. Asking that very question, and then fundamentally would someone pay for it? You know, would they spend a dollar, would they spend, you know, five dollars, ten dollars, you know, and so forth.
So that’s been really exciting. And then the third type of protocol are traditional protocols. So we’ve been building protocols based on ancient Indian Ayurvedic principles, or Shaolin based in China or Zen, and, and so forth. And, of course, I had to build one for Sparta. And so these traditional protocols are also, you know, Very interesting.
And then the final type of protocol are ultimately based in AI. And so the idea that you have multi modal inputs, and so those would be things like your self report, and then we’ve already built in biometrics, and then we’re working towards biomarkers. And this ultimately would recommend a health protocol tailored for you, Barbara, personalized to you as an individual that would recommend both microhabits, and then also specific variables within the microhabits and the protocol itself.
And we really think that is the future. And you can imagine, you know, you can get up in the morning and you have your sleep data coming out of Aura, and you would actually have a health protocol that’s tailored to you for that given day. Oh, I love it. You, you mentioned influencers, there’s lot, a lot of brands in the audience.
Some of them and, and influencers have helped, influencers have been mentioned multiple times a day. Why do you think you’ve been, and, and bringing, that one’s been so successful forming these relationships and and how do you recommend people, you know, dip into that, dip into that pool if they haven’t?
Yeah, I mean, I think with the health influencers, again, it’s just an unmet need. You know, we, we continue to hear that this just doesn’t exist. You know, if you guys follow health influencers, you know, you know this there’s just really no, and I call it a structured framework to understand what they’re doing.
And so to break down the, a general protocol, you have different micro habits. And a microhabit as an example could be something like cold water immersion or cold plunging, you know, and that would be one in a protocol of many. It also could include, again, nutrition, it could include supplementation, it could include peptides, and then of course, measurement.
And so you know, really fitting fulfilling an unmet need there within influencers in particular. Take me through the user journey. Like I was on the website yesterday messing around with it and I’m like, Oh, okay. I’m answering some questions. Like walk me through the user journey. Yeah, absolutely.
So so it depends again on the motivation of the consumer, but you can come to the site right now where we just came out of stealth. We’re still in beta, so there’s a wait list. But you basically just fill out a questionnaire. And then from that questionnaire we would put you into a different persona and then the persona would have a again, a personalized protocol that’s built for you.
Adam. And some of the questions were things like like your goals, right? Like, maybe give a couple of those so people understand. Yeah, so you know, obviously one of the most prevalent to many people probably in this room are things like sleep. You know, so what are your goals? So sleep is one that comes up.
It all could be it has to be your energy level you know, or fundamentally brain health. And, you know, we continue to come back to brain health as, you know, one of our major, you know, initially that’s where we started. But because of the structured framework that we’ve built, again, you have the idea of the protocol, the micro habits, and then feedback loops.
And it’s really, that’s the secret sauce is within the feedback loops. And there’s different types of feedback loops. There’s self report, again, there’s biometrics, and what we’re now integrating are biomarkers, and there’s And so you can imagine that you’re truly driving towards personalized, you know, healthcare or a personalized protocol for you, which really is, you know, the future I don’t think we’ve been able to fulfill it until now.
And so you mentioned you’re just, let me make sure I heard this right, so you’re just coming out of stealth mode still in beta? Yep, that’s correct. Okay. We’ve been in stealth for about a year, testing rigorously we just opened up. Still in beta, it’s a closed beta but if anyone’s interested, happy to get on the platform.
Did anything surprise you? From like the, the tests and the, the betas and just the feedback of the current users. Any, any surprises? Yeah, sure. So one surprise, I was at the Center for Brain Health. Does anyone here know the Center for Brain Health out of University of Texas? So, they’ve been in the brain space for well over 20 years.
And I was very honored to have dinner with with their founder Dr. Sandra Chapman. And we’re having dinner at her house and, you know, I explain the Brain1 platform and what we’re building. And, you know, the idea of self report and biometrics. And the son was like, yeah, Thor, that’s interesting.
You know, we, we started there, but you know what we really found to be one of the most prevalent essentially, you know, micro habits or, or, you know something that a human can do to really benefit their brain. And it’s connection and literally it’s, it’s, you know, it’s events like this, like, like literally coming together with other humans as well as purpose.
And I know that sounds fundamental, but you know, people lose that, you know, in a lot of the questions and the questions, right? Yeah. Like when you go into the a hundred percent, I was wondering why that was there. That is, I didn’t expect it. And so purpose and connection, you know, and people that don’t have connection, I mean, there’s a direct link to Alzheimer’s and dementia and so forth.
So that was definitely one of the pleasant surprises that we found. And it just shows the importance of connection and communication. Being with people and you know, ultimately come together. Oh, that’s interesting. So walking through there, like, say you’re, you’re participating, that was one of your goals in theory.
I, I believe there’s wearables too yet or no? Oh, yeah, yeah. We’re fully integrated into alpha health or a Strava garment. So if that was one of your main goals, then you’re like, you might get a nudge or something else and you’re like, Oh, I got, I got to go with my buddies. I got to go do something fun, right?
That’s it. It could be for sure. Yep. Oh, that’s interesting. I like it. Yeah. So where are you at in the next steps of this? So you mentioned you’re going like how far until like the general public can get on board. And so we initially went D to C and we have a wait list and, you know, we’ve been getting, doing just a ton of user testing, rigorously testing this thing.
And and then we actually just went B to B. So we have our first client actually based here in LA. They’re called Pure in Malibu and it’s Dr. Lisa Benya. She’s a functional medicine doctor. Okay. And, you know, it’s, it’s really interesting as we built this platform initially for brain, we’ve been seeing it really apply to a number of different areas of health.
And so Dr. Benya in Malibu is actually using this for her clients. And as a quick example so I live in Aspen, Colorado, and during the winter we ski every day. And two years ago, I broke, broke my clavicle. And I went to the number one orthopedic doctor in the country. It’s called the Stedman Institute.
You know, all everyone goes there from the NFL, and, you know, all the, the major sports players and so forth. And so I go into Stedman, and I broke my clavicle, and they’re like, okay, great, here you go, here’s your treatment. And she threw me a sling, and gave me, like, you know, a piece of paper, which just had a couple things to do, you know, relative to my rehabilitation.
And I just thought that was so odd. I mean, there was no, like, framework or anything. It was literally a piece of paper. And so, I reach out to my audience, or to my you know my close friends and so forth. And everyone’s like, Oh, collagen, bone broth, you know totally. And exactly, that was like in the beginning of this, this idea.
And so I began to build this protocol, essentially. And it also included some things a little bit experimental like PEMF, P E M F, if you guys are familiar. So it’s electrical current, essentially, through the bone. I went back to Stedman in four weeks and you know, they did the x ray. And, you know, the lead clinician was like, wow, it’s amazing.
You’re completely, your bone is huge. What have you been doing? And I was like, oh, nutrition. And she was like, I never would have thought of that. And to me, like, it completely blew my mind that the number one doctor, you know, group in the country just wouldn’t have thought of nutrition. And so that’s when I knew we were on to something.
And so we’ve been working with these different doctor groups and building these protocols ultimately for things across the board, and as another quick example too, I’ve met with five different doctors and nutritionists that want to use the platform for women’s reproductive health as an example.
So while we started with brain, this idea of the structured framework, micro habits, protocols, feedback loops, it can really be applied to any dimension of human health. I want to go back and jump around a bit to that, to that AI engine and what you’re feeding it. So yeah, I think you said over 500. Studies were fed into it.
Is that right? Yeah, exactly. So we started with a set of papers and we’ve just been expanding. And so the, the idea is we’re feeding in scientific papers, we’re summarizing them. And again, that’s generating AI driven content and then also protocols. And then we have a neuroscientist PhD from Oxford.
That’s the human in the loop. And they’re verifying every single protocol, every single piece of content that we publish. So at least, you know, there is some human validation there. But, yeah, it’s, it’s been quite interesting. And as we’ve been doing our user testing, I kind of did the content secondarily.
But the humans love the content. And like, they’re just, they keep coming back to that in particular. So, it kind of goes back to, you know, one theme that I’ve heard here. You know, misinformation. You know, there’s such distrust of science. And, and this is one mechanism that we’ve built. And it’s not foolproof, we know that.
But at least it’s a step in the right direction to, you know, You know, use scientific the scientific process, you know, in driving good content for the masses, fundamentally. And so that content for the masses, so, you’re taking these scientific papers, I’m not going to say you’re making them simpler, but more digestible, so that everybody can read them.
So I don’t have a huge science background, but I’d be able to get this information, I’d be able to read it, I’d be able to understand it. I’d be able to program my nudges, and then I would get my little, my, whatever my protocol was, it’s like, oh, time to do that. Totally. It’s pretty nerdy. So we’re taking one paper, we’re feeding it into one AI, and then we’re generating the summary.
We’re then, out of that, we’re generating a keyword list. We’re then feeding that keyword list into another AI. We’re generating the citation and the imagery and that’s kind of the basis, essentially, for the content, along with the actual health protocol itself. That’s awesome. How does that sound?
That’s fun. So I do want to get the audience involved here and have some fun here too with the audience. So any questions, questions, thoughts on this? There we go.
Yeah. Awesome.
Sure. Yeah, that’s a great question. So we have been finding our papers internally and, and ultimately from our scientific advisory board and our medical advisory board. So it’s really just recommendations. And then It’s a very social platform, so you could submit a paper if you wanted it summarized.
You could also submit micro habits and that’s also been really interesting, too, because we’re getting, you know, some of these, you know, not odd, but just interesting micro habits from all over the world, you know, how people are measuring different things, or You gotta give one. You gotta give one. Yeah, one of, one, okay, actually, I have two, I have two quick ones.
So one we have a, a woman who, you know, we’re, we ran her through the platform, and she’s like, wow, you know, my grandfather measured. His you know, essentially cognition by doing the New York Times Thursday crossword puzzle every week. And how quickly he could actually do the crossword puzzle is ultimately, that was a reflection of his cognition.
So I thought that was interesting. One other quick one we were training for the Malibu Triathlons. We did a brain one essentially a team. This was last season. We had about a dozen athletes from all over the country that came and raced with us. And one of my buddies, Dean, came down from San Francisco.
And his micro habit was cordyceps worms. And so, literally, they came, like, they’re really expensive. He had a jar, they’re about a thousand dollars, these cordyceps worms. We actually see the worms are about this long. And there’s a fruiting body coming out of the head of the worm. And that was his supplement, essentially, for the race, and he won his age group first place.
So does it work? I don’t know but that’s why we built the prop farm to ultimately try to, you know, really capture this empirical data. That’s amazing. So where do we get these worms? No, I’m not allowed. No, I, let me, I, I’ve got a source for you. They’re not cheap, though. Thousands of dollars, literally, for these worms.
Wow, but it was worth it. You won. Yeah. Amazing. Man. Any other questions? Oh, okay. These ones were for China, but that’s, I’m sure they’re from Tibet as well. Oh, cool. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Love it. Any final questions? Oh, there we go.
Oh, a hundred percent. Yes. We’d love to, love to chat. And you can actually submit in our chat pod any ideas and recommendations that we can reach out to you. And yeah, we’d love to. Love to discuss, for sure. And that’s what we’re seeing both on the protocol side as well as the microhabits. And so there’s this whole social component around what we’re building, and the vision is to build the largest health and microhabit database in the world, ultimately across multiple cultures and disciplines, and there seems to be a lot of excitement around that.
It seems like that would also build, like, the adoption, right? Like, the more people involved, the more they hear about it, the more they submit, and then also just the longevity of them staying with it, because they feel like, I mean, I wanna, I don’t have anything cool, but if I did, I’d submit it. That’s cool, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, there’s definitely an element of citizen science. Like, we were building these ancient Indian Ayurvedic you know, essentially protocols. And my team, who is primarily based in India you know, they’re like, Thorin, you know, like, how do we know if these work? And, I mean, these are like, in the Bhagavad Gita, you know, these, like, some of these microhabits are thousands of years old, but that’s why we built the platform, because this ultimately allows us the data collection to see whether or not, fundamentally, you know, these different microhabits and these different protocols actually work.
So that’s very exciting. That’s fun. Anyone else? Oh, there we go. Can you share?
Sure.
Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say, you know, fundamentally you take a step back and You know, whether it’s Peter Atiyah or Huberman or different cultures in societies, you know, the similarities are around activity, the similarities are around nutrition, the similarities are around connection and I know that sounds like a little bit, you know maybe trivial, but it’s, it’s like those are the major patterns that we see, you know, and if you oversimplify it, it’s, it’s in those areas, I would say.
We definitely are.
Not per se, not that I want to, you know, get to you empirically, but let’s chat in a year and we’ll definitely have more data. And I’d be happy to share that.
I agree. Yeah. Anyone else? All right.
