Introducing... Uncivilized

As mentioned in a personal update I was working on something new new. The working title is uncivilized.

​Here's the background - I had some weird symptoms I was chasing down earlier this year. Several sets of bloodwork, and doctors visits left me totally disenfranchised with the medical system and doctors to solve actual underlying issues.

​Several people shared the same sentiment with me when I discussed it with them.
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I started to form an idea for a universal health record that you could run AI over and move around the ridiculous insurance/healthcare system. This led to a memo.

Another several rounds of YC co-founder match on this and it was clear that I needed to pick a specific issue/problem and try and build a solution to that problem. I met great people who wanted to work on this with me.

This led me to a great match who wanted to work on obesity/weight loss. Said person was obsessed with CGMs and what they could do. Having been mostly keto of the better part of 8 years, and having intimate knowledge of both how CGMs work and what is coming in the pipeline with them (from my consulting work) I was seriously unconvinced.

This led to an interesting disagreement where this statement was made "It is all calories in vs calories out. The solution is a community that is so powerful it can overcome someone's lack of willpower"

Well here's what I know. Calories in vs Calories out is (a) circular logic, (b) observable after the fact as a result not a cause and (c) just a really lazy and naive argument to make.

For example - it is KNOWN that losing weight via restricting food literally rewires your brain and "triggers a long-lasting increase in food intake and body weight gain that enduringly persists".

So what causes Obesity? How do we solve that cause? If you manage to lose the additional body fat you are carrying, how do you maintain this loss without going insane? As it turns out - there are good theories but no one really knows.

From what I can see, the clues are scattered across several different fields that never talk to each other. To crack this we need to be infinitely curious and apply the principle of range.

I have now had at length discussions with several doctors who don't understand the GLP-1 drugs they are prescribing to patients. Hundreds of discussions with people suffering from obesity who have tried everything doctors and talking heads alike have popularized without reason and result. Tens of conversations with people who maintain their significant weight loss through obsessive calorie counting and tolerance of starvation signals. Plus many many more.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Maybe it is hubris. Maybe it was having another kid. Maybe it was visiting Kitty Hawk and appreciating the underdoggedness of the Wright Brothers who dared build a plane 30 years late to the party - but this is something I am working on and keen to make a dent in - ideally without pharmacology and open source.

You can find Uncivilized here.