Dr. Helen Messier | AI, Epigenetics & the Future of Aging

• Why do we age in the first place — and what can the longest-lived species teach us about extending human lifespan and resilience?
• How can whole genome sequencing, polygenic risk scores, and epigenetic clocks help predict disease risk before symptoms appear?
• Where does genetic testing add real clinical value — and where is it overhyped or misinterpreted?
• How can integrating genomics, metabolomics, proteomics, and AI create a more complete, contextual picture of health?
• Why must longevity focus on resilience, purpose, and emotional integration — not just extending years lived?

Who is Dr. Helen Messier?

Dr. Helen Messier is a molecular geneticist, longevity scientist, and Chief Medical & Science Officer at Fountain Life, where she leads the integration of advanced diagnostics, genomics, and artificial intelligence into proactive health care. With a career spanning biotechnology, genomics, and precision medicine, Dr. Messier focuses on identifying disease risk before symptoms appear and helping individuals extend both lifespan and functional health through data-driven, personalized interventions.

Dr. Messier’s scientific background combines deep expertise in molecular biology with a systems-level perspective on aging and resilience. Throughout her career, she has worked at the intersection of research, biotechnology, and clinical innovation, applying tools such as whole genome sequencing, polygenic risk scoring, and epigenetic analysis to understand better why people age differently and how disease risk can be detected earlier. Her work emphasizes that longevity medicine is not about chasing immortality, but about maintaining health, independence, and cognitive function for as long as possible.

At Fountain Life, Dr. Messier helps lead a new model of health care that combines advanced imaging, multi-omic testing, AI-assisted analysis, and precision medicine to uncover hidden disease and guide targeted prevention strategies. She is passionate about helping people understand their biological data, translating complex science into actionable insights, and advancing a future where medicine moves from reactive treatment to proactive, personalized health optimization.

What did Dr. Helen and Dr. Scott discuss?

00:00 Why we age and what longevity science is discovering
02:20 Dr. Helen Messier’s background in genetics and biotechnology
05:10 Lessons from the longest-lived species on Earth
08:40 What really drives aging at the cellular level
12:00 Genome sequencing explained: what your DNA can reveal
16:10 Polygenic risk scores and predicting disease risk
20:20 Epigenetics and how lifestyle changes gene expression
24:00 Where genetic testing is helpful — and where it’s overhyped
28:10 Fountain Life’s model of proactive health care
32:30 Whole-body scans, advanced diagnostics, and early detection
37:00 AI’s role in connecting fragmented medical data
41:30 Integrating genomics, metabolomics, and proteomics
45:40 The future of personalized, data-driven medicine
49:30 Longevity vs healthspan: what actually matters
53:10 Purpose, resilience, and the psychology of aging well
57:00 Rapid fire: habits for living smarter, not harder

Full Transcript:

Helen Messier: [00:00:00] You asked one of my go-to things. I, uh, I, one of my favorite is referring to, uh, EFT Emotional freedom Technique. Yeah. Such a powerful, uh, technique that, um, really can help people with relief right away, especially when it comes to anxiety. You know, we, we actually looked across, just aside all of our data.

Helen Messier: If you look at Fountain Life and we look at the, the one, number one thing that people want and help with, no matter age, gender was anxiety. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Anxiety is at the top one. 

Helen Messier: It's such an epidemic in our society right now. And so I think people need some relief from that too. And I, I find VFT can be quite helpful with that.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Can you describe EFT for those who don't know what it is? Briefly? 

Helen Messier: Yeah. It's called the emotional freedom technique. Yeah. It's a method of tapping at certain kind of neuromuscular points on the body.[00:01:00] 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Smarter and Harder podcast. You're home for 1 cent solutions to $64,000 questions. I'm your host again today. My name is Dr. Scott Scher, and it's a pleasure to be back with all of you. So I had so much fun recording the podcast today with Dr. Helen Messier.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Helen's been a friend for several years. We've had, you know, various interactions through her clinical realm, through her advisory realms and everything else that she does, and we had a great conversation today and I hope you stick around for it. So here's a quick bio on Helen, just to give you some background on her.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Um, she's, uh, she's a PhD in molecular immunology. She's a doctor of medicine and family practice. She's a IFM trained and she's been around with IFM for many years and a, a very great educator with. With IFM doing advanced practice modules, she actually educates across multiple spectrums, including Pier De Amanda's work as well, which we talk about during this podcast.

Dr. Scott Sherr: She's also, uh, known very [00:02:00] well as an in innovator and healthcare entrepreneur. She has a founding network of concierge medical practices. Initially in Canada, she was the medical director of Genomics at Human Longevity. We talk a lot about genomics during this. Actually this podcast as well. She's also was the founding Chief medical officer of Viome back in the day.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And we have some funny stories about that that we don't talk about during the podcast. That's for another time. Um, and then, you know, currently she actually joined Fountain Life, uh, in 2022 as the Chief Clinical and Scientific Officer, and she was promoted to the Chief medical Officer shortly, a thereafter in 2023, uh, she leaves the medical, clinical and scientific teams out, found life, and she also trains practitioners as well.

Dr. Scott Sherr: She oversees insights and publications derived from found life's expansive health data, and she actually remains their medical director at one of their newest centers in Lake Nona, Orlando. And I really just wanna have her on the podcast because she's just got the great breadth of knowledge in so many different things.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Longevity, focus, health. Patient care and so much. And so in this podcast, we dug into a lot of great things. We saw, we spoke [00:03:00] initially about her fundamentals of longevity and how she gives a talk every year at Peter Diamandes, uh, 360 Talk, where the longevity people, uh, sort of a group of people come together.

Dr. Scott Sherr: They talk about longevity topics. She, she gives a foundational framework and we kinda go through some of that. We talk about the evolution of aging and why aging occurs. And so the evolutionary basis of disease, which I think is really, really important. We talked about hallmarks of aging, at least sort of overall arching understanding of them.

Dr. Scott Sherr: We went into epigenetics and genomics in detail. Uh, Helen has a lot of background on genomics, and we talk about the various ways that genomics are being used. Everything from looking for various diseases that actually can be highly representative in the geno in genome, which is the rare type, along with pharmacogenetics, uh, and genetics as it as it kinda relates to snip analysis and then lifestyle, and then intermediate phenotypes, which are interesting.

Dr. Scott Sherr: So having, you know, one gene of something could help sort. Explain various things, but then she also was very understanding that you know, genes are not your destiny and that there are ways you can change these things. And that's how we spoke [00:04:00] initially about genes. But then over to epigenetics.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Metabolomics, something called the ome, which we spoke about in detail. Understanding how you can crunch all these various levels and then bring them to people and to patients. And to have them help them understand the story behind what's going on. And we kind of delved from that sort of more down in the nitty gritty with, with health and medicine, down to understanding how to work with patients more directly.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Helen has a lot of experience with this. She still sees patients on a regular basis, which I really appreciate. Talk about how communicating to patients the stories that we can create for them to help them with their journey and help them do better and feel better. And then we also spoke about the reframing of things like cancer and the placebo effect and the psychosocial emotional aspects of how our patients have a hard time healing and spoke about various ways that she intervenes in various ways in the practice.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Tell people understand their why behind things, including why they might have gotten cancer or why they wanna lose weight and. How we, she can get patients [00:05:00] from their A to Z where a, their A to Y in her case, in the sense of what are the things along the way that can really helpful. We talked about EFT or emotional, uh, family therapy or I think there's another term for that, but EFT is the, uh, the, uh, the acronym.

Dr. Scott Sherr: We talked about AI in medicine as well. So we transition to that and how AI is becoming like, sort of the country doctor with all the tools, which is super cool and kind of bringing all the sort of various things together. And then at the end, we of course spoke about the three ways that we all can live smarter la not harder, as we all do, as we always do at the end of these podcasts and being like Elsa and letting it go.

Dr. Scott Sherr: So this is a great, you know, fantastic podcast. One of my favorites to record in a long time. I, I enjoy all of our guests, but Helen has just got a great mindset, a great, a great clinical framework to convey to all of you, uh, to help us as clinicians to help us understand what's happening in medicine and where things are going.

Dr. Scott Sherr: So I highly recommend you listen to this one. Without further ado, don't forget to like, and subscribe below so you never miss an episode. And without further ado, Dr. Helen Messier. All [00:06:00] right, Helen. It's good to see you. 

Helen Messier: Nice to be here, Scott. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Well, thank you for taking time out of, I know you're a very, very busy schedule going all around the world, doing all the things that you do, still being a doctor, doing that, and also running and supervising like a huge, you know, consortium of doctors.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Now I found life. And so, um, it's, you know, it's really fun to have you and I one that, well, I think the way I wanted to start here, you and I, we were talking before we got started on the recording, that every year or very frequently you do. Uh, an introductory series for the Peter Diand group, and maybe you can talk a little bit about that and how, maybe how that got started and then how you kind of frame it and, and work with, you know, the, the material with these, these very rich people that are interested in, in longevity.

Helen Messier: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously longevity is, is the, the, the term that everybody's talking about right now, you know, it's a trillion dollar industry, really. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, you know, we as physicians are all kind of jumping on that bandwagon too, right? We, we talk about longevity and as you know, our [00:07:00] colleague, you know, Dr.

Helen Messier: Carol Fitzgerald also has a longevity medicine, or functional medicine is longevity medicine, right? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Indeed. Yeah. 

Helen Messier: But what, what, what even is longevity medicine is, is really interesting. But, but what you're referring to is a, uh, a trip that, uh, Peter Diamandis does every year called this Platinum Longevity Event.

Helen Messier: And he brings a number of people together that are. Clearly very interested, both in their own personal longevity, but also in potential investment opportunities. Mm-hmm. And things like that, sort of where this whole field is going. And, and I get that really, I think it's a huge privilege to, to sort of get them, give them an introductory, an introductory talk to, you know, what is longevity, right?

Helen Messier: What are the, the basis of longevity and, and the biology behind that. Right. Sort of the, the foundations of it. And so, so really, you know, we. We can talk about a lot of things from, uh, you know, what the, the, this, what is the cell, what is DNA, right? Because 'cause we all talk [00:08:00] about the hallmarks of aging, right?

Helen Messier: Sure, sure. A lot of us are familiar with those hallmarks of aging, right? And, and those are sort of the, the cellular, sort of the mechanisms that happen as a person ages at the cellular level. But what does that really, you know, mean? And then of course, what can you do about it? Right? What causes it? What drives it?

Helen Messier: And, and really the, the, the thing is, I was prepping for this year is one, is I was getting into some of the, the, just reading a, a number of articles and books and, and really understanding like, why do we age in the first place? You know, why does that happen? Because if you think back to the idea of kind of, you know, the primordial cells mm-hmm.

Helen Messier: Or the first, or the last, you know, common ancestor or the first common ancestor, all of those ideas mm-hmm. They were likely single cell organisms, but they, if you think about it, they continued to divide, they were sort of immortal. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Helen Messier: And, and there was no aging and death. And yet what happened [00:09:00] is every now and then, because they divide so fast, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: right?

Helen Messier: Uh, you know, they, they stay immortal, but they'll accumulate damage. If they get in a stressful environment, uh, damage will happen. And then they, they kind of will wall that section off and get rid of it and keep the others going. So that's sort of the idea of the first idea of aging is, is those trying to get rid of the junk and the damage.

Helen Messier: So aging happens with the damage over time. And if you look at some of the longest lived. Species. These are species that really, even the tortoise, the Greenland shark, you know, even the Sure. Yes. Sponge, which lives 10,000 years, they, there's some certain similarities to them and, and one of them is they continue to grow throughout their life.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. 

Helen Messier: Now, isn't that a great metaphor, right? Mm-hmm. When we stop growing, we start dying. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. 

Helen Messier: And I think we know that all the time, but that actually is true, obviously from a, you know, mental component. Right, right. For sure. But also [00:10:00] don't retire, right? Yeah. That is a tall component, right? At puberty, we really stop growing and that's at the point where we start aging.

Helen Messier: So I think, you know, just, it's, it's really fun to try to think about some of these whys and then can we tap into some of those lessons? You know, for example, the, the, the sponge, um, right, which can live 10, 10,000 years. Uh, one of the fundamental things that it has a huge symbiosis. Microorganisms. So it's a multicellular organism, but the microorganism, the unicellular microorganisms are a fundamental part of everything about it.

Helen Messier: So this this concept of the symbiosis with the, the eukaryotic and prokaryotic war. Yeah. I mean, we know we have our microbiomes, right? That, and those are a fundamental part of our overall health. So just trying to look at the context of sort of the evolution, the development of aging in the first place, and the, the idea of what do the longest lived [00:11:00] species, what are the traits around them?

Helen Messier: Um, and how can we then use that to. Optimize our longevity and aging and health span. You know, another thing about these long-lived species is they're, they're, they all live in, in like cold water environments. A lot of, you know, most of them. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Sure. 

Helen Messier: Uh, and so, and, and quite hypoxic conditions. And so oxygen tends to drive aging.

Helen Messier: Um, so these are really interesting things and you know, sometimes we start to hack those, right? With cold plunges and, and you know, little oxygen environment. Sure. All of those things, right? I think that's where some of these things come from. So, so that's really, uh, fun to just kind of mentally dive into some of these ideas.

Helen Messier: Uh, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: yeah. 

Helen Messier: But then I talk a lot about, of course, the hallmarks and what they are and, and what you can do. And then, um, you know, a lot of the really, if you think about the, the cutting edge potential interventions that will drive so-called longevity, you know, [00:12:00] we look at epigenetic reprogramming, right? That, that is a very promising field that I think really can.

Helen Messier: Um, is one of the epigenetics, of course, is one of the main drivers of aging. Of course we use epigenetics to, to measure your biological age, right? So we know that there's a consistent pattern of epigenetic changes as you, as you age. And, and so can we harness that? We also know that when you reset that epigenetics, like when you form a mte and an embryo, your whole re, your whole epigenetics is reset to ground zero again.

Helen Messier: So we know it's possible. Same machinery resetting the program. And, and we also know we can do that with induced pluripotent stem cells, right? We can reset the whole machinery to day one again. And so we know it's possible, but can we do that at a bigger level in, in the whole organism is always the question, right?

Helen Messier: And that's always not just the question, but the challenge. And then the second part of that, and I mentioned [00:13:00] already stem cells I think are also a very, very interesting. Um, so the field right now, you're probably familiar with the new Florida law. Yes. Which is where I am now. Right. The new Florida. You can, you can act all 

Dr. Scott Sherr: the clinics are opening.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yep. 

Helen Messier: Everybody's jumping on that bandwagon with that. But I think there's now an opportunity to finally start to study this. Right. Finally start to understand what's the best way of doing this? Do they work? They're not, nothing is a magic bullet, right? They have to, you have to still build the foundation and then add in.

Helen Messier: These are extra things in the, on top of the foundation. So this whole idea of cellular medicine, I think is hugely promising because it, you know, we're resetting the whole system, right? Instead of using small molecule drugs where you're targeting, you know, one very specific target and, and you're binding that really strongly, the idea of cellular medicine is really systems medicine.[00:14:00] 

Helen Messier: How can we affect the whole system at the same time? And harnessing what I call the wisdom of the cell is a really amazing way to do that. So it's just, it's just some amazing, it's such a fun time right now, Scott, to be in this field and to, like, the technology is moving so fast. Yeah. The ideas are so fast.

Helen Messier: So I just feel very privileged to be able to be part of this. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. I love the how you frame Yeah. The story there, which is the sort of the evolutionary basis of aging. And I think, you know, when I think about aging and I think about almost anything these days, I'm, I was also taught, uh, that my colleague and mentor, Dr.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Ted, who I think you've met, met over the years. Mm-hmm. Dr. Ted, Dr. Koosa, who started our nonprofit. He always likes to remind people what, what, what he calls first principles, part of the interruption. This episode is brought to you by Health Optimization Medicine and Practice Association, a nonprofit organization, training practitioners how to optimize health rather than treat disease.

Dr. Scott Sherr: For this episode, check out our metabolomics module. Metabolomics is [00:15:00] real time actionable data that you can do something with right now. In this podcast, we talked about epigenetics. Talked about genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, all these sciences are important, but metabolomics is where you can find real time data to help your patients.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Right now, if you're not using this, you should. It's a transformative way to optimize the health of your patients and clients. Check it out@homehope.org and save 10% on this module or any module at the certification by using code podcast 10 at checkout. Now, back to the show. And first principles really oftentimes are based on this sort of evolutionary basis of why these things are happening.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And if you kinda stay there as your starting point, it becomes much easier to kind of understand why the system does what it does. 

Helen Messier: Exactly, yes. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: And so what I, what I what I was interested first when you were, and there's so many things you said there that really wanted me, like throw on these all, all these different angles, but the one that I thought that might be kind of an interesting one for us to kind of maybe hone in on first would be what you described as epigenetic [00:16:00] reprogramming and also epigenetic aging.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Because there is some controversy here, right? In the sense of there's these newer. Epigenetic clocks that have come out over the last several years. There's people that have been prominently talking about them in various ways. Um, and we have interest in understanding, you know, what the chronologic age is of a human versus their biologic age.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. Um, and I know that you've had a lot of interest in genetics over the years as well, and the world of genomics and, and how this has sort of shifted over the years. So maybe kind of weaving these in, in together would be interesting. Like, you know, where, you know, the field of genetics has gone, where it has come, where does it, where does it now, and how does it role take a role in all this?

Dr. Scott Sherr: And then, and how do we think about, you know, epigenetic reprogramming and epigenetics and sort of that ecosystem? And, and there's lots to unpack here, but maybe we can start there and kind of see where we go. 

Helen Messier: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great, uh, great question and I, I love this because, you know, genetics, um, obviously I did my PhD back in molecular biology, and so genetics has [00:17:00] always been a real love of mine and I, I, I actually chose to do genetics in the first place as my specialty when I, you know, was undergrad.

Helen Messier: Choosing my grad school was really, because to me it was the central control center of the cell, right. That's kind of where everything happened. So this idea of root cause was still, I guess, something that I was really driving at even then. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it felt like the root cause of sort of everything was really it controlled by that DNA and that, that, that.

Helen Messier: Control centers. So, so being able to go in and use that from a clinical perspective, I think has been hugely, hugely valuable. And at the same time, I think there's still a lot of, a lot of misconceptions about what it can do and what it, what it can't do. Right. So I think there's, you know, I remember back when I first, the whole idea of being able to sequence your human genome 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah.

Helen Messier: Was amazing. Right. You know, so back in my day, I'll give my age away now, but when I was in the lab, we were se sequencing by hand. [00:18:00] And, you know, you could do 300 base pairs at a time and, and now we can do all genome, you know, billion, 3 billion base pairs in like a day. Yeah. So it, it's really phenomenal.

Helen Messier: And so when I first had this, this idea that, or sort of discovered that I could sequence my genome, I jumped in, I did it right away. Paid $10,000 for it at the time Wow. Bake. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Wow. 

Helen Messier: And now we can do it for, you know, 200, $300. Right. Yeah. It's really, it's really crazy. It 

Dr. Scott Sherr: took you probably like six months to get it back after.

Helen Messier: Yeah, yeah, exactly. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: That was Illumina. Yeah. And so, so we've really, you know, one thing that we all know about genetics is, is this whole, and when we first started using it, because we can sequence everything. The challenge is what do those sequences mean? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Sure. 

Helen Messier: Yeah. You know, and that's really, and we still don't know Right.

Helen Messier: Even a, a teeny drop of what the saw means. But we start with looking at these monogenic diseases. Right. Of course. So are there variants [00:19:00] or mutations in there? Right. A BRCA mutation or lynch syndrome or you know, cystic fibrosis. Sure. These mutations that can. Drive or, you know, put someone at risk for disease.

Helen Messier: And those are, you know, even those are not straightforward because you can have the same, of course, exact same base pair change in two different people with different genetic context. And it, you'll have different, uh, you know, different risk or different presentations, different expressions. Right, different expressions of expression of the disease.

Helen Messier: Exactly. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: And so and so, but those are still, I think even now still very useful. Clinically we use them because we're, we're, that's one of the things we're doing at Fountain Life is whole genome sequencing on everybody. Okay. And we are finding about 15, approximately percent of people are affected by a monogenic disease, which, you know, it's a small, these are adults that are.

Helen Messier: You know, that are, think they're healthy and, and these are diseases. Yes. You know, cancer, [00:20:00] potential risk, like the Lynch syndrome of brca, but also a lot of cardio. Uh, cardiac, you know, cardiomyopathies, long QT syndrome. Those are things that are so valuable clinically when you find them because they're very actionable.

Helen Messier: You can prevent people from dropping dead. You know, like we all read about the football player or the, the person who collapses course. Yeah. You think they're all healthy. So, so there's a lot of value there and I think it's still important. And then of course, genomics has moved on to the whole field of pharmacogenomics, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: right?

Helen Messier: How can we, you know, predict how you're going to metabolize your medications or your supplements or other things? You know, one of the most variable regions in the genome is the area that controls our detoxification genes. And so we can use it there and, and, and very valuably, like it adds a lot of really important clinical, um, guidance in, in what we do.

Helen Messier: And, and then, you know, over time, what we're doing now that with the, with the genome is, is going from those [00:21:00] very, those monogenic diseases with, you know, high, uh, the, the, the impact is really high on those to, to looking, but that's one single place in the genome, right, to looking across the whole genome and looking at these polygenic risk scores.

Helen Messier: So now we're looking, and those are rare diseases, of course, the monogenic ones. But when we use polygenic risk scores, we can start to get a sense of their risk for more common diseases. You know, the diabetes, the cardiovascular, atherosclerotic diseases. Those are very common. And when you look at all of, you know, hundreds, sometimes hundreds of thousands of places across the genome and take them all together, you can still get, you can get a sense of their risk, genetic risk for disease.

Helen Messier: Now, of course, that's still an early science and it works amazingly well at a population level, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: right? 

Helen Messier: But individual is all, it's still, is still, you still have to take some of that with a grain of salt, but it does give a lot [00:22:00] of, uh, I think, really important insights. So you can do that. And of course, looking at carrier status as well.

Helen Messier: And then, and then you get into the whole world of. You know, the snip based analysis, right? So these are the, the single nucleotide polymorphisms, and these are common variants in the genome, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: right? Like mt mh afar is like 80% population. 

Helen Messier: HR is a perfect example of that. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. What percentage the population has that one?

Dr. Scott Sherr: I think it's like 80% people have some 

Helen Messier: genetic other gene, right? So now if that was a, a serious disease causing, uh, mutation, you know, we, we would not have survived as a species. Totally. So, so we think we have to take those kind and that's exactly what I mean. Take those with a grain of salt. You know, there's a lot of.

Helen Messier: Other, like, they're a piece of the puzzle. They are not the whole puzzle, you know? Um, there, there's a lot of people that go, I have the M-T-H-F-R mutation, I'm going to die. And yeah. You know, it's, it does not work that way. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. I got, I got a lot of that for a [00:23:00] couple years. I still get occasional ones like that, but Yeah.

Helen Messier: Yes, exactly. Because there's a lot of people out there talking about that, right? And, and so, and then this whole idea of, you know, can you use genetics to say this is the perfect diet for you, or this is the perfect way to work out, or this is the, you know, this whole idea of lifestyle genomics. And, and that's still, I think, I think that's where it starts to get a little overhyped.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. I was gonna ask you what you thought about that, so, okay. 

Helen Messier: Yeah. You know, I think, I think you, I think the, we don't have enough evidence there to really say all of that. I think we can, we can look at it and it can help guide us, I think, but. I think it, you know, I've looked at, and I don't, I gave a presentation, I think, I don't know, it was eight years or more ago, uh, for IFM on the promise and pitfalls of genetic testing.

Helen Messier: And I, I showed an example, uh, 'cause I, I, of course send mine out to every test company out there of, uh, the same. Two different companies [00:24:00] measuring the same individual. Me one company says you have to do way more Omega threes. The other company says you have to decrease your omega threes. So I go a little deeper and I look and the exact same variant that they're both commenting on, and then they give publications and references and you look at, and they're call, they're actually quoting the same reference but interpreting it differently.

Helen Messier: And so, oh my. So you know, it gets a little bit confusing and, um. And so context is everything. And then to, you know, another thing I wanted to talk about the monogenic, just real quick. One thing we are seeing, which I think is also very interesting, is these intermediate phenotypes. So for example, you might have, uh, single copy of like the variant that causes, uh, phenylketonuria for example, right?

Helen Messier: A high phenyl lanine. We, we know, we learn about that in, in medicine and, and we know that that's a recessive, [00:25:00] um, uh, trait. So you take need two copies to get phenylketonuria, but we're finding that you have one copy. You actually have an intermediate Yeah. Your phenyl lanine tends to be quite high. But not so high that we can make a diagnosis at seno ca area.

Helen Messier: So we're like, there's such like being able to pull together, you know, metabolomics and, and the other sort of technologies to give you insight into these is really another exciting, um, field. And then, you know, to tie in the epigenetics back to your initial question. Exactly. Epigenetics controls how these genes are expressed.

Helen Messier: Right. So epigenetics, yes. We're all familiar with methylation. Methylation is adding methyl groups to the DNA and that tends to be when certain genes are methylated, they're turned off. Right. So they, they're not expressed, meaning they're not made into RNA and then the RNA into protein. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. 

Helen Messier: But methyl, but, but [00:26:00] epigenetics is also his stones.

Helen Messier: Right? Because the dna NA is wrapped around histones. Yeah. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. 

Helen Messier: Wrapped around these balls, like balls of wool and histones and how these histones are, are tagged as well as ation. Right. We all talk about histone, acetylation, deacetylation. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yep. 

Helen Messier: So, so there's a lot of components 

Dr. Scott Sherr: to 

Helen Messier: epigenetics. Even RNA itself controls how it's transcribed.

Helen Messier: So there's, there's a lot to it. Um, and environment, of course. Has a huge impact on, on the epigenetics. Mm-hmm. And of course, we all know this saying that genetics loads the gun, but environment pulls the trigger. Right? Right. So genetics, like looking at the sequence is important, but you have to take that into context.

Helen Messier: And so you have to, context comes from looking at family history. If you have someone with a BRCA gene or BRCA mutation, a mutation in the BRCA gene, you have to be careful how we say that. Right? Everybody has a BRCA gene, right? It's a mutation in the gene, a [00:27:00] mutation in that gene, uh, that the exact same mutation in two different people.

Helen Messier: If one person has a very strong family history of breast cancer, I don't get quite concerned about that specific mutation versus another person with, you know, zero family history of breast cancer. You might, you know, you'd look at it differently. Yeah. And so, um, so I think context is everything. Um, and that's something that I think.

Helen Messier: Every, all data we have to look at context. Yeah. Data is useless without context and genomics specifically. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I love how you explained all that so beautifully and detailed. He's like, there's so many different ways of thinking about genomics now and how much the field has evolved over the years, but in the end it's a percentage score, right?

Dr. Scott Sherr: You for the most part, unless you have mm-hmm. Like the 15% you mentioned that have like a monogenetic or monogenic disease that comes from the specific, looking at the whole genome sequencing. Other than that, I mean, which is, that's not a small amount overall. That 15% is not [00:28:00] small. Actually, I thought it was actually gonna be smaller than that when you said, when you were talking about numbers.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Um, but, but for the majority of people, you know, but, but I guess maybe my question would be within that 15%, like would you consider the BRCA gene being part of that 15% or would you Yeah, you would. Okay. So like the example as I, I was, I was thinking about like, as you were talking was somebody has the BRCA gene, somebody has.

Dr. Scott Sherr: History of breast cancer in their family. They have a mutation in the dream, right? And they decide they wanna get a prophylactic double mastectomy, right? Mm-hmm. This has been in the popular culture, but we know, yes, even if you have two copies of a mutated BRCA gene, that your risk of getting. Breast cancer is high, but it's not a hundred percent right.

Helen Messier: Correct. A hundred per That's exactly. I shouldn't say a hundred percent. You're right. No, it's not. Yes, no, I 

Dr. Scott Sherr: know exactly. I know what you 

Helen Messier: meant. Well, you, you, and that's the thing is you can have that mutation that we know is associated with the breast cancer. Right. Uh, but no, there's so many other components to it.

Helen Messier: You're not Right. A hundred percent guaranteed to get [00:29:00] it. That's absolutely true. Your risk is much higher. Of course. Definitely. So, so I think that the challenge is when we like to oversimplify, right? Yes. Yeah. And, and in medicine we do like, we like definite answers. Right. Tell me yes or no, right? Tell me, yes.

Helen Messier: Is this person gonna get breast cancer, aren't they? Well, the answers, I really don't know. It depends. Right? It's a, it's 

a 

Dr. Scott Sherr: risk. 

Helen Messier: That's the other thing they're gonna write on my gravestone probably. It depends. Right? She, whenever there's your question, that's always her answer is, and, and so that's what I mean by context.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Exactly. And that's, that's hard for people because everybody wants a, a black and white. You need to do this. This, X, Y, Z you need to do these five different things and you're gonna stop cancer, you're gonna sleep perfectly. And, and, but everybody's so different. And this is really what, I guess my sort of next question for you, so within this is that you, you kind of briefly mentioned metabolomics.

Dr. Scott Sherr: You, we talked about epigenetics a little bit. Talked about, you know, a little bit about proteomic, we talked about proteins. It's a little bit like how do you sort of envision this all coming together? There was a paper that was [00:30:00] written, I think it was in like 2012 or 2013, and it, it was, I think it was a Stanford paper and talked about being able to measure all of these levels.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Measure, measure your genome, your proteome, your transcriptome, your metabolome, your epigenome. And then being able to look that, crunch it all together into like this beautiful thing that they called the narciso, which I thought was a great, 

Helen Messier: I love that. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I mean, you're kind of in like the forefront of a lot of this Helen, like where do you think we are in that and being able to take a lot of that data because I, I personally look at metabolomic data all the time and I think it's great and I think.

Dr. Scott Sherr: That's where I find like a lot of great sort of real-time measurements for people. And maybe you can touch on any interest you have in speaking about that, but within all these sort of levels of omics data, like where do you think this, where we think we are now, where are we going? Like how do you kind of think about this and envision it?

Helen Messier: Yeah. That's such a great question. And you know exactly. I've been, I've always felt, and the reason I even got into this in the first place is because they give us a bigger toolkit. Right. [00:31:00] They give us, 'cause we've all had those people that have come into our office and you know, they slap down their book for Mayo or whatever.

Helen Messier: They have all of these symptoms and yet you do all the standard testing and it always comes back normal. Right? And, and so, but you know, there's something wrong with them. I mean this like the tight chronic fatigues of the world, right? They're not getting outta bed. So they're not making that up. We're just, something's wrong, right?

Helen Messier: Yeah. Something is wrong. So we're just not looking deep enough. And so that's really what got me started in the whole kind of omic world in the first place. And so, you're right. Is, but, but we're still at the point, just like I was describing with genetics, is that it's really data rich, but. Our interpretation of it, like I would say data rich, interpretation poor.

Helen Messier: Right? Sure, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: sure. 

Helen Messier: Still are still trying to understand it. And, and we, if we think about what, how even we define this, proteomics is really like the [00:32:00] proteome is all of the proteins. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The metabolome mix or the metabolome is all of the small molecules or metabolites. And so when we say we do proteomics or metabolomics, most of us don't measure the entire thing.

Dr. Scott Sherr: No. 

Helen Messier: Right? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: No. 

Helen Messier: We're measuring certain defined subsets. And most of those subsets are things we already know how to interpret for the most part. But when you start to look at that, it, what it gives us, even, even looking at certain defined sets is really valuable is that it gives us patterns, right? So we start to look for patterns in that data.

Helen Messier: Mm-hmm. Like are we seeing, um. You know, evidence of, you know, whatever insulin resistance or B12 deficiency or b like, but, but we start to see that across the data set. Got it. And when we can combine those data sets, so we can look at, oh wow. Their metabolomics shows that, you know, they're, whatever. Let's use a simple example.

Helen Messier: They have high [00:33:00] methylmalonic acid. Who knows that, right? You need B12 in order to metabolize that. Great. Okay. So now, now we start looking at. You can look at B12 levels, you can look at, um, their genetics. Like are they able to absorb it very, you know, well, like, so you can start to put it together. And the more pieces of that puzzle, if you think of it like you're looking through a keyhole and you're, you're sort of seeing a little piece of something of, and, and the more those pieces, the bigger the hole you can make to look, the better view you have of what's really going on in that person's body.

Helen Messier: And so, you know, the, the, of course the genomics is sort of that predisposition your, your metabol or your protein course genes, code for proteins, right? So your proteins is really the, the workhorses of the body, right? They're, they're a lot of the inflammatory molecules, immune activation. We can start to see sort of that real time physiology and the proteins and then the metabolome.

Helen Messier: Metabolites are really what's [00:34:00] happening right now. Right? What's this, what the smoke of the, you know, the, the, the proteins, the car and the metabolisms the smoke in a way, right? Sure, sure. And, and think of the genetics as the plant that puts the car together. So putting that together really gives you a much better picture.

Helen Messier: So I always like, like the more, the bigger, the more clear you can make the picture, the more, uh, confident you are in what you're seeing and treating. And the, you know, the, the easier it gets to figure these complex things out, like the ones that everything else is normal in. So again, that I think the power is in putting it all together.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. So the clinical value just becomes in the power of the multis perspective. And I, I think I'm interested in your perspective and how patients relate to the data, you know, because it becomes a very different kind of experience when you're talking to a patient across multiple spectrums of data genomics.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Metabolomics at least. I mean, the proteomic, the trans, the transcriptomics, those [00:35:00] really aren't clinically relevant for most of us yet in, in practice. But maybe some, I dunno if you guys are doing any now. Some are, yeah. Um, but I think it's still relatively early there. But again, from the clinical relevance perspective, you can look at all these different levels and then give people a bigger, a bigger picture of what's going on mm-hmm.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And why things might be happening. How do you think, you know, from the other side of the, the table or the, the telemedicine screen, like how do you think our patients and clients are kind of feeling about this so far? Yeah. Like as you have like this, you have like this in real time as you're working with people.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Like, does this help them feel better that they now really understand things more? Or is it like they just get so overloaded that they don't know what to do because you just gave them so much data to play with and like, like I don't know what to do. Like, I, so what is your sense of. How people are, how, how people sort of are engaging with the, with the information.

Helen Messier: Yeah. Yeah. Such a great, such a great question. So, you know, I think a lot now I'm gonna speak for the majority of people. Yes. There's always the people that just tell me what to [00:36:00] do. I don't wanna know anything else. Right. You're the doctor, you tell me what to do. There's always gonna be those. Sure. But the vast majority of people, and have been doing this for a long time.

Helen Messier: They love, like this insight into what's going on in their body, right? And, and what I do is I, of course, you have to look at this ahead of time with AI that's making that job a lot easier, right? Mm-hmm. It goes a lot faster because it sees the patterns before we do, you know, and, and there's just so much data now that being able to put it together using AI is really helpful.

Helen Messier: But when you, when you start showing them this. I built the story for them, right? Mm-hmm. Is, is I'm like, see this, you know, leads to this, which is kind of a sign of, you know, glycine deficiency. And, and by the way, you know, we also see this here, you know, that you're, you're, you know, we can say hip pur. I just used this example recently, so it's fresh in my mind, right?

Helen Messier: You have high benzoic acid and low hip uric acid. You [00:37:00] need glycine in order to convert that. So there's an indication that you might not have enough glycine. And look at this, you have high toxins in your glutathione is level is low. Glutathione's your master antioxidant, master detoxifier, call it the garbage truck of the body.

Helen Messier: Mm-hmm. And glycine is a component of glutathione, right? And by the way, you're anxious. And glycine is a calming neurotransmitter. Right? And, and so and so when you start to weave the story that starts to explain how they're feeling. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Sure. 

Helen Messier: And in most cases, people love it, you know, and I can tell you, they, they're not gonna remember the whole thing.

Helen Messier: They're not biochemists, they're not, but they know that, wow, that made sense. And wow, my doctor took time to actually figure that out for me. And wow, now that I saw that it made sense, I'm gonna do the recommendations. Right. I'm gonna take the glycine [00:38:00] because I understand totally why I need to take it now.

Helen Messier: And so you get a lot better, uh, you know, adherence and, and kind of buy into what the plan, because they now feel part of it. It's Right. They've been seen essentially. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. I love that. I mean, I think I've had a very similar experience over the years where if you can. Weave that story and sort of start integrating their data in a way that makes them believe that, again, they're seen, but also that they're not crazy for feeling the way they feel.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. 

Helen Messier: Yes. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Um, and I think that that's really challenging. Whereas a lot of our patients, a lot of people out there have, you know, multiple issues that they go to the regular doctor, like you said, do the standard blood work and nothing comes back ne or abnormal. And then they will be to say, well, you know, you're, you know, go see a psychiatrist.

Dr. Scott Sherr: You know, so 

Helen Messier: all in your head, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's definitely validating. Exactly. And that that's huge. And that's a big part of, of their recovery or their [00:39:00] healing processes to feel validated and seen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: and maybe we can touch on that a little bit because you know, before we get started recording, we were also talking about what you were describing as sort of like the mind-body connection and some of the challenges that you've seen over the years with healing.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And I, and I resonated very much with this, but maybe describe a little bit about what you were talking about before we got started and kinda how that sort of integrated with this. Because like we can look at data till the cows come home, right? Yeah. And we can try to help people, but there are some roadblocks that could be very significant if we don't address.

Helen Messier: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I, you know, doing this for the many years that I have now, right, and I'm sure you've seen this too, Scott, and we talked about this a little bit before the recording, is, you know, we can throw all of the, the physical modalities, you know, look at all the data, throw that. But if we don't start to understand and address kind of why from a, an emotional, you can call it spiritual mind connection, because the body and mind are absolutely [00:40:00] connected, right?

Helen Messier: We, we know that, right? We know that if you feel stressed, your mouth gets dry, your, you know, like that kind of connection we know very well. But there's also this idea, you know, Bessel VanDerKolk wrote the body keeps the score or was that, um, and, um, you know, Gache, when the Body says No, those are really fundamental kind of books and helping us understand that, you know, you, I don't think you can truly heal without addressing that.

Helen Messier: And you can start to see. Set of patterns in certain diseases. You know, who are the women who get breast cancer, for example? Mm mm They tend to have a certain personality type. They send tend to be the women who care for everyone else and not themselves, right? They put everyone else first and they put themselves last.

Helen Messier: You often see that pattern, right? And, and G matte talks about like an AALS assessment clinic. And, and the nurses at the clinic would say, oh, that's not a LS that person's not nice enough. You know, sort of this. [00:41:00] And so, you know, and again, this is not, not to blame the person for getting the disease at all, right?

Helen Messier: Of right. It's this, this idea that, um, again, another book called The Healing Power of Illness. What's it trying to tell us? What's it trying to show us, right? How do we take and feel empowered? And, and so, you know, the mime tries to ignore things, but the body doesn't ignore things. The simple thing is why do people get stressed or sorry, get a cold, right?

Helen Messier: It's often 'cause they're stressed. That stress decreases your immune sys, you know, immune resilience. And so you'll get sick and, and I'll, I'll talk to patients and, and say, you know, look. First the body is gonna tap you on the shoulder, and if you don't listen, it's gonna slap you across the face. And then if you still don't listen, it's gonna take a two by four and whack you across the head, you know, eventually.

Helen Messier: And so I think, I think sometimes we should be sort of, have a different approach to that instead of fighting. And a, a good example of this is cancer, right? Our whole, every, our whole [00:42:00] culture, all of our terminology in cancer is they're gonna fight the cancer. I'm gonna beat the cancer, the war on cancer, right?

Helen Messier: We killed the tumor. It's all about fighting and war versus like, what's this here to teach me? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: And if you can say, and I, and often I, I will tell people like, if you can get through this cancer journey and look back and say, that's the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. You are gonna get through it and it's not gonna come back.

Helen Messier: Right. You've, you sort of this, this idea that, you know, you've learned from the illness, you've learned what your body's trying to tell you. So I think that whole idea, we need to explore that a lot more. I think it shows up in physical, right? Obviously it does. Um, you know, why do we control for placebo, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: right?

Dr. Scott Sherr: No, 

Helen Messier: actually, if we didn't think that the mind was so powerful. Right? Yeah. We know it works. And so as you 

Dr. Scott Sherr: were talking, I was thinking exactly about the placebo effect there. Yeah, yeah, [00:43:00] 

Helen Messier: exactly. So I think we need to look at that more. I think using a lot of, you know, the technologies we've talked about, the omic technologies, other things, to be able to start understanding that context of a person, right?

Helen Messier: Like even, even using that to put context around the results. Right. So I've said this a few times now. Context is everything. Like 

Dr. Scott Sherr: mm-hmm. 

Helen Messier: You don't like, is that person stressed at the time you measure their cortisol, you know, are they thinking about that board meeting or that exam or, you know, that's gonna matter.

Helen Messier: And so are, if you measure an estrogen level in a cycling female, if you don't know where they are in a cycle, it's a useless number. Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. And so, so we have to understand the context of the person even when we collect those tests. Yeah. And those, those biomarkers. So I think so, I think that's a, an, an unexplored, well, a lot people are exploring and, and then we're talking about it a lot more now, but [00:44:00] I think from our, you know, we need to look at that more and really recognize it because my experience is that.

Helen Messier: You can hijack physiology for a while. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. 

Helen Messier: Uh, with, with medications and supplements and all of the wonderful technology that we have, you don't address that underlying cause it's gonna come back. Right. Yeah. You know, we see that a lot. Yeah. So, yeah. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Well, I love that. I mean, I think that your expression of how shifting the perspective for people as to the why this has happened is, is so big.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. And I think that the whole attitude that we've had since really western medicine has been around. Right. And since the 1950s and sixties is like, we need to kill everything. We need to shove everything outta the way, and then that's gonna be the way we do it. Right. But then there has been this movement, right?

Dr. Scott Sherr: And you're really talking about this movement, which is like, no, the body is showing us something. Right? We're getting shown signals that [00:45:00] all our body's trying to do, or our brain is trying to do. Compensate for things, right, is compensate and try to find some sort of homeostatic balance. Exactly. And when that happens, um, and then we sometimes you can go for a long time and usually when you're younger you can do it for a longer period of time.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And then somehow some day when you turn 40 or whatever it is, like you wake up and the next day it's like, holy crap, what just happened? The wheels fell off. But it wasn't just like, things just fell off the cliff like all, all in one day. This had all been accumulating over a period of time. Right. 

Helen Messier: Exactly right.

Helen Messier: Exactly right. You know, like people will come and they'll say, you know, they get a diagnosis of diabetes, I just caught diabetes. You know? Right. We know that it takes 20 years, or, you know, to develop cancer, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: the same thing. Right. 

Helen Messier: You know, that same thing with cancer, you know? Yeah. And we do know, like there's been enough studies to show that, you know, people that have sort of strong social connections, strong, you know.

Helen Messier: Uh, that, that support network. Yeah. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: They have lower [00:46:00] infl inflammation, right. They, they have better biological age. Their immune system works better, they have better outcomes and things like cancer. So, so, you know, we're starting to accumulate some of that evidence and Yeah. And show that that's how important that is.

Helen Messier: And so this this idea of, you know, having a purpose, right? Yeah. Having a, a, you know, a, a sense of meaning or something that's bigger than yourself, right. Um, you know, and I think it's at, so, uh, Sullivan that says that, um, you know, longevity is having a future that's larger than your past, right? Mm-hmm.

Helen Messier: Having meaning like, why, you know, what's the point of living longer if there's no reason to do it? Right. Right. This is, this is the, I think that's what helps create longevity as well. Dan Sullivan. Not m Sorry, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I was, Sullivan was the guy, the guy on tv. Right. But that's 

Helen Messier: cool. Dan, was Dan's the coach? Yeah.

Dr. Scott Sherr: There's lots of Sullivans out there. It's okay. Yeah. I mean, what, what you kind of just described I think is so important, and one of the things that I think about a lot in this context is the word [00:47:00] longevity. Okay? Mm-hmm. And, uh, Dr. Ted, you know who I mentioned earlier, he always likes to remind people of, I think it's a Greek parable, I can't remember which one it is.

Dr. Scott Sherr: It's some parable from a long time ago that says, if a genie is gonna grant you three wishes, and you ask one to be eternal life, you better hope, you better remember to make sure. The second one is to also ask for eternal youth, right? Because you don't wanna just live a long period of time, decrepit and old.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And actually that's the, I think that's the parable where the, the person asked for eternal life and was able to get that, but they lived in like a crinkled old ball of skeleton kind of thing because their whole system was broken down. So this is a conversation, I know that longevity's been the, the buzzword, right?

Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. How do you kind of integrate that with the conversation about healthspan and, and how do you sort of, uh, talk about those? And, and I think that where I'd like you to go with this eventually with your answer is I know that you specifically work with, you know, a high-end clientele and you've been doing this for a long time with Fountain before this, and I, [00:48:00] they have different, different sort of drives and needs and things like that.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. They don't wanna live a long time. They all always say, I want, like, I made all my money now I want to make you, you gotta keep me alive for as long as possible. Right. So maybe within that context, maybe think about how you would frame an answer. But like, my real question to you is kind of like longevity versus health span wealth.

Dr. Scott Sherr: How does it all play into to, to how you think about things? 

Helen Messier: Yeah. Wow. That's a big question. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I, I go, I go big. You're, you're the person I can go big with 

Helen Messier: big and go to home. Right? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Well, with you, Helen. I know anything's possible, so, you know, 

Helen Messier: that's awesome. Uh, so yeah, so I think, you know, obviously we know what longevity we talk about is the number of years lived, of course, health span, like life.

Helen Messier: So lifespan is a number of years lit. Health span is how, well, how many of those are in good health, right? So the eternal youth or where you, um, you're not dying, you know, not decrepit and have all these chronic diseases that prevent you from doing what you wanna do. So I think when, as most of us would [00:49:00] want health span, you know, 'cause if you, if you go and you actually survey the general population and ask them if they wanna live longer, surprisingly, most people don't.

Helen Messier: Because they equate living longer with exactly what you were morbidity saying that kind of morbidity where you, you know, you decline and, and so people don't want that, right? They want if, yes, if you're gonna be around longer, you wanna actually still enjoy life and be productive and contribute to society and have that purpose again that we were talking about.

Helen Messier: Yeah. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: So, so I think that's, that's a really important part of that. And a big, big part of that is resiliency. Right. So, so are you resilient to what the world throws at you? The world is gonna throw everything at you. Is are you resilient? Both, you know, from a physical perspective, right? Can you, can you recover physically as well as, um, mentally and emotionally, right?

Helen Messier: Can you recover and, and be resilient? 'cause that's what life is about, is, is throwing things at you. So [00:50:00] I really like to define kind of help span is resiliency. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Okay? Um, 

Helen Messier: and so, uh, 'cause that's when you enjoy it and it's the ability of a kind of no limitations, right? That you can do what you wanna do, you wanna climb the mountain, you wanna have a clear head to read the book or, or a board meeting that you have that, so, so I think that when we sort of transfer that into, you know, sort of people with money that have the ability to, to delve into this, yes, a lot of them are interested in longevity.

Helen Messier: I like to say that a lot. You know, they spend their. Their health creating wealth and then they want to now have spend their wealth, getting their health back. Right. Yeah. It's 

Dr. Scott Sherr: kind of an interesting, uh, 

Helen Messier: it's sort of back. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Yeah, 

Helen Messier: yeah. I think that that often you will see that. But, but here's the thing.

Helen Messier: People are people, I don't care how much money they have. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: It doesn't matter. Yes. Some people have more resources, some people have more access to. Some of these sophisticated tools that we've been talking about, you know, with [00:51:00] Fountain Life, for example, we'll do the, the multis and the full body MRI and all of these advanced therapies.

Helen Messier: I'm actually very grateful for those people because their ability to pay for some of these technologies is going to make that more accessible for people of everybody down the road. Right, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: right. 

Helen Messier: That's already happened. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Like the same 

Helen Messier: Yeah. Yeah. Same idea of cell phones, right? Remember the, the big cell phones that lost an arm and a leg and you, you know, and now we all have 'em and they're very, it's democratized.

Helen Messier: So, so that, like that first adopter group, yeah. Things are expensive right now, but that's where we learn and that's where we develop. And, and so, you know, the, the point is that. No matter how much money you have, you're still human. Yep. And the fundamentals still apply, right? They sleep, exercise, movement, nutrition, purpose, it doesn't matter, right?

Helen Messier: Like this idea that money doesn't bypass biology, right? And, and so, so we always, you just treat people who they are [00:52:00] and they're just as vulnerable. They're just as scared. They're just as worried about things as everybody else is. And so I really, you know, and at the same time they have resources and so we can dive deeper sometimes with them.

Helen Messier: And, and that, that's taught me a lot, the ability to do that. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Do you think that it's harder on some level? Because in my experience. I have a a, I was a big fan of the Dave Matthews band when I was a kid. Mm-hmm. And he used to, and Dave Matthews always to say, say something the same. The same thing on the stage.

Dr. Scott Sherr: He's like, I don't care who you are, you gotta take a shit, take a shit just like I do every single day. Right, right. So we all do the same things. We have the same basic things, but on one level, in my experience, not as much as yours, is that the more money you have, the more you feel like you are privileged enough to sort of dictate more of your care.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Right? Mm-hmm. And have more quote unquote say in it and kind of direct the doctor. Not always, but [00:53:00] like sort of as a group. What is your sense of that and how do you navigate it typically? 

Helen Messier: Yeah. See, you know, and that's a good question. And I think just like everybody, they look at the internet, they, you know, watch Dr.

Helen Messier: Google 

Dr. Scott Sherr: and now Dr. 

Helen Messier: Chat gpt Dr. Google and now Dr. Chat, GPT, and uh, and yeah, everybody is doing that. And everybody, you know, they also talk to their friends. They also, so I would say a lot, you know, I don't think, it doesn't matter how much money you have, you come in with certain expectations or questions.

Helen Messier: Right. And, and my job as their physician is to listen to them to understand why they, that is important to them. Okay. You want. Particular treatment, why? Right. What's the underlying kind of driver motivation that you really need that and explore that with them and then offer them the sort of the evidence.

Helen Messier: And so I'll do this with, it doesn't matter who they are. [00:54:00] Like here's, here's what we know, right? Um, let's look at the risk versus benefit, you know? Okay. What we know is there was a animal study or a study done in mice and we had this result, not great evidence. Um, here's the potential risk of that and here's the potential benefit of that.

Helen Messier: And together we can decide if that risk outweighs the benefit. And it's, that one's up to them because everybody has a different level of risk tolerance, right? Sure, sure. Some people wanna be astronauts and others like no way. That's way true. So, so you have to respect that with people as well. And so yes, I will, I will work with them on that.

Helen Messier: And um, as long as they're fully informed and understand things, it's not like, Hey, get me that. I wanna do that. It's, it's a conversation, right? They're coming to you because they value your expertise. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Right. I think a part of this, and I think it's important, that last piece you said there is that not every patient is the [00:55:00] correct patient for you.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And I think that's a big deal, right? Because you know, you have a certain patient population that you're out, you're gonna work well with probably as a clinician and other patients that might do much better with another type of provider. And so, I mean, I think it's important as clinicians, and I know there are many that listen to this, is that you don't always have to engage if you don't feel like it's a relationship that can be therapeutic on both sides.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And I think that's important for patients to be empowered there too. Um, you know, of course. And then having doctors have to be empowered as well. And I think. The positions that you know, you're in, that I'm in, and others, you know, that we have the capacity to do that. I know that's not always easy, especially if you're trying to make ends meet as a clinician and see everybody and, you know, pay for everybody's college or high school or dance recital or whatever.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And so what's your sense of that? You know, that's kind of like a, it's kind of, it's kind of like a, what's that called, that's a philosophical question on some level, but do you feel like it's okay to fire patients or if it's okay for patients to fire you? I, I didn't know I was gonna ask you this question.

Helen Messier: Yeah, absolutely. Because I think, I think the point you were saying is [00:56:00] that the, the doctor patient relationship is therapeutic. Right? It's a therapeutic relationship. Yeah. And so, you know, and it is, it, it's a two-way relationship. Right. Um, I have learned probably far more from my patients than my patients have learned from me.

Helen Messier: Right. A hundred 

Dr. Scott Sherr: percent. Yeah. 

Helen Messier: I I am so grateful for that. Every single person and I have this sort of sense that, you know, we get our teachers that we're ready for. Yeah. And so I look back through my career, you know, you get those challenging people and you're like, oh, I'm gonna figure this out. And, and, and they're willing to work with you and they're willing to put up with some of these crazy tests that you order or some of these other things you're doing.

Helen Messier: Sure. And they appreciate it. And, you know, I can look back, I think of a number of these, these patients that I've worked with over the years and, and go, wow. They ever teach me a lot? And Wow. Am I ever grateful that they had patients to let me help, you know, figure that out with 'em. Sure. Yeah. And so I think so yes.

Helen Messier: To, to answer your question, it has to [00:57:00] be the right relationship. It, you know, you shouldn't be working with as a patient. You shouldn't work with a physician. You don't trust. That you don't have that ther, you're not getting that therapeutic relationship from, and same thing with the, as a physician, you shouldn't be, I think working with someone who, who you don't think you can really help.

Helen Messier: Yeah. You know, but I do. I will always challenge you as physicians to say, is there something they're trying to teach you here? Right. What are you, I love that. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: Seeing Yeah. What are you not like, how can you grow as a practitioner by working with this person? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I love that perspective. I think that it's a really important one because there's a nuance there.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Like, there's like, what is this person teaching me? Like, why do, what do I have to learn here? And I, and I love that because I've certainly had many of these experiences over the years as you have, like, I really don't wanna do this. Like, I really don't wanna, like, I really, I really don't wanna go here.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Like, but okay, you've, you're here for a reason. Why are you here? What I, [00:58:00] what do I have to learn from this? And I think it's a great perspective shift. And I, and I think one thing I was thinking also when you were talking about working with wealthy people, that also kind of, I think trans, I think it transfers to almost anybody, is that there's still this sort of balancing act that we have to do as clinicians, uh, helping them right now.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. Uh, while we know that it's gonna take them longer. To feel better, you know, for example, right? 

Helen Messier: Yes. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yes. 

Helen Messier: Um, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: what are some of the, I think this is sort of like a little bit of a different tack because, but like, what are some of the, like the tools and, and tricks and things that you've found over the years to kinda get people through some of those, like, harder moments?

Dr. Scott Sherr: Harder times? Like, are there, like go-to like, this is, you know, go to supplements, go to technologies, like go to therapists. Like, like, you know, that you, you know that they're starting at point, you know, X or whatever A and you wanna get them to Z right. And like, but you know, it's gonna be like six months or a year until they get there.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. You know, like what are some of the things that you've found to be really good at sort of getting them some sort of, so like some of those roadblocks that might happen along the way. 

Helen Messier: Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's really interesting. [00:59:00] And I, I wanna reframe that a little bit. Please. Yeah. Get them from here to ZI want, where do they wanna go?

Helen Messier: Is the first thing of course, right? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yes. 

Helen Messier: And so I know that. But, but you're right. So where do we both agree that they want to be? And then establish the why they want to be there in the first place. You know, it's kind of like, I wanna lose weight. Well, why do you wanna lose weight? 'cause I, you know, I wanna fit into that dress.

Helen Messier: Well, why do you wanna fit into that dress? Because, love it. I wanna be good in my grad, you know, my high school reunion. Well, why? Because, well, I was looked down on when I was in high school and I wanted to throw them off and you know, it starts bringing a lot of things up, right? So the 

Dr. Scott Sherr: why 

Helen Messier: question can do that.

Helen Messier: So where you wanna go? The why? And then, and then, yeah. You know, setting the expectations I think is really important. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: Like, this is gonna, you know, this is, in my experience, it, it takes this long, um, to achieve what we're wanting to, and so making sure you set those expectations up front and, and I think people are usually really good when they know what to expect.

Helen Messier: I [01:00:00] think that's really critical. And at the same time, I know from a functional medicine perspective, we're all about, okay, let's address the root cause. Let's make sure that we, we, you know, fix this now. That's absolutely good. And at the same time as you do that, controlling symptoms so they feel better in the meantime is a good thing.

Yeah. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, 

Helen Messier: you know, so use what, like if they're in pain, there's nothing wrong with using a painkiller while you address some of the reasons for the pain. And so I think that's also, I think we, we. Kind of sometimes forget that. Yeah. You know, I think, um, again, helping people feel better and sort of immediately, because that also helps you get some wins.

Helen Messier: It builds trust. Um, they're willing to continue to work with you. You know, if you went to them and you said, yeah, I know you're in excruciating pain and we're gonna do this and this and this, and we're gonna cure your pain forever, but it's gonna take two years, [01:01:00] they're gonna go, forget it. Right. I'm in pain now.

Helen Messier: Right. And so I think you do need to address both of the, the acute component of it, use. We've gotta a huge toolkit in medicine. There are so many things we can use from, you know, pharmaceuticals and electroceuticals. Right. It's like electric, um, uh, sort of technologies and, and let's use all of those. Um, you know, one of my, you asked one of my go-to things, I, I, one of my favorite is referring to, uh, EFT Emotional freedom technique.

Helen Messier: Yeah. Such a powerful, uh, technique that, um, really can help people with relief right away, especially when it comes to anxiety. You know, we, we actually looked across, just aside all of our data. If you look at Fountain Life and we look at the, the one number one thing that people want and help with no matter age, gender was anxiety.[01:02:00] 

Helen Messier: So, it's fascinating. Right. That's fascinating. I 

Dr. Scott Sherr: was gonna say energy, but anxiety is at the top 

one. 

Helen Messier: Huh. It's such an epidemic in our society right now, and so I think. Um, yeah, people need some relief from that too. Wow. And I, I find EFT can be quite helpful with that. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Can you describe EFT for those who don't know what it is briefly?

Helen Messier: Yeah. It's called the emotional freedom technique. Yeah. It's a method of tapping at certain kind of neuromuscular points on the body, and at the same time, you, you talk through certain kinda emotional things, like, I know this is really bothering me. I'm really upset because, and, and, you know, I've taken the training level three practitioner.

Helen Messier: I, uh, but I tend to refer to my colleague who's just fantastic at the at and she does this all the time. Uh, Janine Crombie, she's wonderful. And, um, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I'll have to interview her. That's interesting. I'm interested. 

Helen Messier: You should. Yeah. Uh, but I find it so powerful for, um, definitely anything, [01:03:00] uh, can be addressed with it.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Is it something that. Is relatively fast acting for most people or is it something that takes a while? 

Helen Messier: Uh, well, I think to get at the fundamental root of things can sometimes take a while, but for immediate, uh, things like, uh, when I was doing my training as a good example, uh, a person in there was petrified of dogs.

Helen Messier: And it just so happened that a dog, you know, was outside the window of this little area where we were doing the training. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Hmm. 

Helen Messier: And she was, you could see her just completely, you know, frozen with fear. Sure. So we tapped, she, she ended up tapping through that with the instructor and at the end of that, which was about 20 minutes later, she's petting the dog.

Helen Messier: Wow. So it can be quite. Fast acting, holy exposure therapy, you know, I office. I've been able to, you know, take people out of panic attacks, you know, quite quickly, uh, with that. So it can be very powerful. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Wow. 

Helen Messier: And at the same time, you've got all these, uh, you know, years of [01:04:00] trauma. You know, sometimes it can take, it can take a while to kind of unpack all of those layers.

Dr. Scott Sherr: So many layers when it comes to anxiety, especially, but it's amazing to me, that's the number one thing. Across all your clinics that you've seen as the number one complaint. I was gonna think my, my, my sense was to be energy first. Mm-hmm. And then anxiety would be second. And actually, but it seems like it's 

Helen Messier: interesting.

Dr. Scott Sherr: It's around. Yeah. Yeah. One thing we didn't touch on that I wanna just touch on for a minute is sort of AI in medicine. You know, we talked about this a little bit earlier where you were talking about now how we can crunch all this data using AI to help with algorithms. How are you using it now in clinical practice, Helen?

Dr. Scott Sherr: And then where do you think this is going? Like where do you see it sort of transitioning or. Evolving into, you know, I think that is it all gonna be like, like a little microchip here in our arm where we have to like, we just tap it like every, every 10 minutes and it gives us more data or like, and then tells us what to do.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Or is it gonna be like, you know, like that? Or is it gonna be, maybe that'll happen in two years, I don't know. But where do you see it, how are you using it now [01:05:00] and how you seeing it being beneficial? Yeah. It's, where do you see it going? I know it's a big question and you don't have to 

Helen Messier: take it. It's a great question and a lot of very much smarter people have been sort of, um, talking about this, writing about it, but if, but yes, we are using it.

Helen Messier: So, you know, the easiest way we're using it is, you know, interpreting some of the imaging, for example. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Sure. 

Helen Messier: Doing AI overlays on CT scans and, and MRIs and they're 

Dr. Scott Sherr: better than radiologists now, 

Helen Messier: no offense to radiologists, but it's, you know, skin, take a picture of your skin and calling out the, the lesions that look concerning, those kind of, that kind of pattern recognition, risk stratification can be really.

Helen Messier: I mean, huge value using ai and yes, they are better a lot of times than the radiologists or they, they, they point out things for the radiologist to look at. Right? So basically they don't miss things, right? Which is, which is really, uh, critical. We also have an app, um, and a platform. So our platform is hooked up to, we have a wonderful technology team at Fountain Knife, and the [01:06:00] platform is hooked up to all the EMR and it actually takes all of the data that we collect.

Helen Messier: It creates an annual report. Um, sums up everything, but it also gives our clinicians access to asking it questions. Mm. Mm-hmm. You know, Hey, this, we had pre done templates for them, but also please, you know, make a timeline for this person. We know how long that can take. Um, boom. You know, or, you know, from a functional medicine perspective, looking at all this person's symptoms and medications and everything else, what's the three most important things to work on?

Helen Messier: And amazing. It does such a good job. Uh, and so we have that kind of backend for our clinicians to use. And then we also have the same kind of AI on the front end for our, our members. And so they, they can use it in the app. All of their data's there and they can start asking questions. Yeah. You know, can I like, based on what I'm supposed to be doing, and here's a picture of the menu, what's the best item I should eat?

Helen Messier: You know, that kind of thing. Like, cool, [01:07:00] so, so it can take so much data and synthesize it so well. I think it is amazing now. Where's it going? And is it gonna replace doctors? You know, it probably is. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: Uh, I think, you know, but that I think, you know, uh, where it's going is one of the, it is gonna take over that.

Helen Messier: And my friend Faccia actually came up with this, this analogy, this idea. It's gonna take over the, the beta waves, like the logical part of what our human brain does, right? The, the grunt work, the, all of that. And I think it's gonna allow us to be more human, right? Mm-hmm. That, that sort of, the, the theta waves, the, you know, the other components of what it is like to be human.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. 

Helen Messier: The emotional component, you know, I think, you know, immediately, yeah, we're gonna get digital twins, right? We're gonna say, here's all of your data. Here's going, we'll be able to predict based on your digital twin, what the [01:08:00] best intervention's going to be for you. Right. We can find things. We look at patterns, right?

Helen Messier: Just even from wearable data, you can see patterns that, hey, this person's probably gonna get a cold in the next few days. You know, just from listening to voice, you know, they're, they're depressed or like, all of those things already exist. But integrating, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: yeah. 

Helen Messier: The key is to integrate them all into a platform that's accessible for the individual, to help them make their daily decisions, right, to help guide them in their daily actions.

Helen Messier: And, and because it's so personalized, they know that this is gonna be right for me. You know, not, not, this isn't the generic thing. Everybody needs to sleep more. Everybody needs to exercise. No, what do I need to do as, as that person? And so over time, what I think will happen is it's going to connect us.

Helen Messier: So, you know, way back, I, well, I guess maybe five years, I wrote an essay called The Future of Medicine. And I, I was [01:09:00] envisioning this platform that connect a person, you know, longitudinally over time and as a whole person instead of, as we do in medicine, divide you up into different specialties that the, that technology was gonna actually allow us to do that.

Helen Messier: I did not think it would happen this fast, but I think we're at that point now where all of us can be seen, right? We don't have a medical record over there and one over there and, you know, so we can combine all of the medical with the, the wearable data with and with what we want, right? And, and, uh, feedback.

Helen Messier: So, um, I think it's a really exciting time right now. Like we started out saying such an exciting time to be alive and in this field. And I think AI is even as part of that excitement. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I hadn't thought about it in that particular way, which is like what medicine tends to do. Just to kind of maybe relay back what you just said in, in different words like medicine tends to do is, [01:10:00] is section things out by organs, by physiology or whatever it might be by processes.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. And like that's the problem with hyper specialization. That's currently the issue in conventional medicine. Right. You go see a pulmonologist, a cardiologist, like yeah, you might have an internist that you see like once a year. That just tells you which specialty or specialist to go to. Yeah. Right.

Dr. Scott Sherr: You have hyper specialist in all these other fields and cardiology and all these other things. Yes. So what you're saying, like what you sort of see here is that what AI could potentially do is kind of bring it all back together? Yes. As like sort of like that whole person back. Together in, and like the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And you can see that like with the, with the data, with the numbers over time, um, with the information that's coming from all these sort of separate sort of silos kind of thing. All being crunched together. 

Helen Messier: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's cool. Like if you think back to the time of the, the old family doctor.

Helen Messier: Yeah. Right. The small town family doctor. That family doctor, he, he saw, you know, the grandparents, the parents, the kids, he delivered the babies, right? Yep. [01:11:00] He knew you throughout your lifecycle and your family's lifecycle. And he saw you as a whole person. He knew your social circle, the community that you lived in and, and was able to, to kind of like, he saw you as a whole person in the context of your life that you are.

Helen Messier: And then what happened, you know, and this was, this was Alvin Toler as a future shock backer, you know, he predicted this was, was people start moving to cities. People start, you know, they're away from their families, that longitudinal view is gone, and then we start piecemealing the actual person up into the specialties, as you were just saying.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Yeah. 

Helen Messier: And so, so that, that we we're completely fractured. And I think what the opportunity, whether we do this is or not, the opportunity that AI offers us is to bring that all back together and see into the whole person that we are. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: So you're, you're basically calling chat JTA country doc. Just kidding.

Dr. Scott Sherr: There's with, with a lot more. That's 

Helen Messier: sort of tension of that analogy. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. But, but I would No, but I [01:12:00] like it because I like, it's like the country doc with sort of all the potential data at their fingertips, right? Yes. And that, that's Can I, I love the idea. Of that sort of rebuilding that country doc connection.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Right? Because that's what's been lost in medicine, right? And then you have all this data that's being played with on all these various levels, your narcissism as we were talking about. Right? Um, that's all being in the, in the background. And you're kind of like the country doc, just looking at somebody, just talking to them and like, I I, I love that picture, like that image in my, yeah, in my mind makes me a lot more optimistic than I was before this conversation.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Helen. 

Helen Messier: Yeah. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I taking, I ultimately, go ahead. Yeah. 

Helen Messier: Yeah. No, and ultimately just a final, it democratizes everything, right? It makes it accessible to everyone. And that's the, I think that's the promise and power of it. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I love it. Do you have time for just a couple rapid fire questions before we, we finish up?

Helen Messier: Sure. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Okay. Okay. I like, I always, these are kind of fun at the end. You can do short answers if you want, if you can go a little bit longer. Okay. I came across a couple fun ones for you. I think the first one. Part the interruption. This episode is brought to you by transcriptions. Make us a precision dosed, physician [01:13:00] formulated and pharmaceutical grade formulas in the form of a buccal troche.

Dr. Scott Sherr: This episode, check out our true calm. It will calm down your nervous system fast. On demand within 15 to 30 minutes decreasing your anxiousness, your stress, your restlessness. And Dr. Messier in this podcast spoke about the number one complaint at Fountain Life of all their patients is anxiousness. This is a big deal.

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Dr. Scott Sherr: Now back to the show. If you could clone yourself, what project would clone Helen take on first? 

Helen Messier: Oh, that's, I love that. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: So like what, like if you 

Helen Messier: had one, Helen would start writing her book that she's always wanted to write that she never has. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I understand. What would the book beyond, do you have a sense of that, 

or 

Helen Messier: do you It would be that combination of, you know, I think sort of [01:14:00] looking back at my, my journey as a scientist, as a physician, putting it all together, you know, the, the combination of the, the power and the data and, and the spiritual sort of emotional side of things.

Dr. Scott Sherr: That's beautiful. Okay. Next question. One, one test you would run on every human if cost and access weren't an issue. 

Helen Messier: Oh wow. Um, you know, uh, I think that I would do. Um, probably look at whole genome and epigenome, I think still the center. Yeah. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. But it's much cheaper than the $10,000 that you spent, um, or however, how much it cost, you know, when you first got it done.

Helen Messier: Yeah. Least it cost wasn't an issue, but you know, then we get into privacy and all of this course, these other things. 

Oh 

Dr. Scott Sherr: yeah. So many other things about it. Yeah. 

Helen Messier: But I think there's a lot of value there. Yeah. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Okay. What is okay here? What is the hardest part of leading brilliant high performing teams?

Dr. Scott Sherr: Because you do lead a very big team of very, you know, very smart docs. It's something we didn't talk about a lot on the podcast, but, you know, you have to [01:15:00] manage and, and, and supervise. So what, what do you think, what's, what's your thought there? 

Helen Messier: You know, I'm gonna say our doctors are wonderful humans. I think that's how we've chosen them.

Helen Messier: They're healers. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. 

Helen Messier: Um, you know, but, but yeah. I think with high performance comes ego a lot of times. Yes. Um, and, and being able to balance that and, and encourage that brilliance with their, with humility. Like just really supporting them to be the wonderful physicians I know they are. Right. And, and helping them bring that out in a very busy, busy.

Helen Messier: Like job. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: Right. Yeah. And, and really encourage them to continue with that. Um, you know, look for the, the re the quick wins. But yeah, I think, I think, um, making the space for building a team, like, you know, a lot of what I've been trying to do is build it on, uh, like the model of Mayo is your [01:16:00] colleagues support each other, right?

Helen Messier: That you're never more than five minutes away from a colleague consult. Mm-hmm. I love that. You know, that when you come to see us with a group of physicians, even though you might be sitting in front of one person, you get the brain of the hive, so to speak, the community, to support you. So we have difficult case rounds and all of those things because, um, yeah, I, my job is to support them to be the high performers They are.

Dr. Scott Sherr: I love that and I love that the mindset. I think all of us work better in groups for the most part. I think it's really hard being, you know, that doc that's siloed out and you don't have anybody to talk to. And I remember that being a huge transition for me, like going from residency and, you know, medical school and then all of a sudden being in an office like with yourself for like one of their doctor and like, and so I love that mentality and, okay.

Dr. Scott Sherr: I might be one more question for you. Mm-hmm. Um, you can choose either one of, one of these, maybe, um, the biggest aha moment you've had in the last year, or what's more important, innovation or consistency. 

Helen Messier: [01:17:00] Oh, that's a great one. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: Um, so I think, so I get to choose one of those. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: We can, we can take both. I didn't know.

Dr. Scott Sherr: If you don't have an aha moment, you can just go to the second one 

Helen Messier: too. Yeah. So I mean, aha, aha moment is every day is an aha moment. Like, I, I love the discovery of things and every single person is a discovery. It's like, wow, that worked or that didn't, or Wow. Um, and so, you know, I think from a overarching thing is you have, once you start looking deeply in this data, you have people who look on the surface and extremely healthy, but you start diving underneath and there's a lot of issues.

Helen Messier: And the other side of that is people who are like really like, you know, think they have a lot of issues and there's nothing when you start to delve into so, so sort of that people aren't always what you expect, I think is, is really it. And I think that, you know. The other question. Consistency or innovation.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: Um, it's gotta be both. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Helen Messier: Because you could be consistent with something that's dollar boring 

Dr. Scott Sherr: or [01:18:00] terrible. Right. You're consistently eating and innovate McDonald's day. 

Helen Messier: Exactly. You've gotta consistently apply the lifestyle, you know? Um, yeah, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: yeah, yeah. 

Helen Messier: And uh, but you know, I think that, I think it has to be both.

Helen Messier: I love innovation Of course, of course. But you know, you have to consistently do things if you wanna get any kind of results. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I love it. I think that's great. Um, so last question we ask everybody in the podcast and Helen is, uh, around the name of our podcast called The Smarter Not Harder Podcast. And so yeah, we ask all our guests at the end, and this could be related to some of your answers just recently, like, how can we all live smarter, not harder, make things easier for us and get there faster?

Dr. Scott Sherr: You know, so the smarter not harder mentality, life health. Politics, you know, anything in your life that you wanna describe here? What are three ways that maybe you do it or that anybody could live it a little bit smarter and a little bit less hard? 

Helen Messier: Yeah, I think, I think the number one thing that I've learned for myself and then I see is just the ability to let go.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Hmm. 

Helen Messier: I think we make our life hard by [01:19:00] holding on to things. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Ah, that we 

Helen Messier: have, you know, we set very specific goals for us and we, you know, if we don't meet them, we hold ourselves accountable. We get mad at ourselves, or, or if someone says a snarky word to us, we get all upset and it ruins our day. Or if, you know, we didn't, like, we didn't get our eight hours of sleep on our, or, or, or a ring.

Helen Messier: And we, we get all mad at ourselves. It's like, let it go. You're going to have a much better life. You know, you keep trying, but nobody's perfect. And 

Dr. Scott Sherr: you like Elsa let it go. Got it. 

Helen Messier: Yeah. They're, you know, there's the frozen Yeah. That's, that's 

Dr. Scott Sherr: what I say to my kids all the time, so, you know. 

Helen Messier: Yeah, exactly. So, um, I think that is.

Helen Messier: Smarter. 'cause otherwise we make our life harder. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Well, I love that. I think I really do appreciate your time, Helen, today. This has been great. Um, can, where can people learn more about you and about Fountain Life? You can give them a little bit of a kind of overall place and time and location. 

Helen Messier: Yeah.

Helen Messier: Fountain life. So, you know, [01:20:00] definitely we have four centers right now. We're in, um, Naples and Orlando and Florida, which is where I am. We have Dallas and New York come in, talk to us. Uh, you know, we do a lot of deep dive testing as we've talked about. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Mm-hmm. 

Helen Messier: You have a wonderful care team of physician made up of wonderful physicians that we also talked about.

Helen Messier: Yeah. I med 

Dr. Scott Sherr: several already. They're all, so many are great. 

Helen Messier: Yeah. Fountain life.com, I think, and you'll, you'll find all, all about us. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Well, again, thanks so much for being here, Helen. I really do appreciate your time and your expertise and just your. You're just your capacity to really just kinda distill things in really awesome ways.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And I really hope everybody enjoyed this. So please go check out Fountain Life. Um, Helen, I hope to see you sometime in person again soon. Absolutely. And until then, absolutely. You know, thank you for being here. 

Helen Messier: Thank you, Scott. So much fun. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Smarter and a Harder podcast, where we give you one send solutions to $64,000 questions.

Dr. Scott Sherr: This is such a great podcast to record with Dr. Helen Messier. I learned a ton. It was a fantastic perspective. Frameworks with longevity, health, [01:21:00] optimizing psychology, the issues with anxiety that so many of our patients face, what is happening with AI in medicine and so much more. If you like this podcast, don't forget to like and subscribe below so you never miss an episode.

Dr. Scott Sherr: We'll see you next time on the Smart Harder Podcast.

Find more from Dr. Helen Messier:

Fountain Life: https://www.fountainlife.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fountainlife/

Website: https://www.ifm.org/educator/helen-messier

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-messier-phd-md/

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