Andrew Steele went from Olympic sprinter to co-founder of DNAFit to CEO of Stride, and he thinks biological age testing is the "Wild West" of consumer health, with no standardized way to measure it.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig talks with Andrew Steele, Olympic bronze medalist and CEO of Stride, about why single-test health platforms leave people stuck self-triangulating their own data. Steele explains how Stride combines genomics, gut microbiome testing, and advanced blood work (75 to 100 biomarkers per draw) with human practitioner coaching to move consumer health from raw data toward accountable outcomes. He also details a recent grant from Innovate UK, the government's research and innovation arm, to help standardize biological age testing, and shares why Stride has seen over 90 percent member retention past the first year. What would it take for an entire industry built on dashboards to start taking ownership of results instead?

Andrew Steele is the co-founder and CEO of Stride, an Olympic bronze medalist in the 4x400m relay, and the former co-founder of DNAFit, which was acquired by Prenetics ahead of its NASDAQ IPO. Website: https://www.getstride.com/ | Instagram: @andrewsteele

Catch Andrew's first appearance on the show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-43-from-olympic-tracks-to-health-tech-with/id1738771019?i=1000686629712

LINKS:

https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/
https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/
https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig

Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/.

What if your biological age is hiding the one organ that matters most? In this episode of The DNA of Things, Dr. Jeremy Koenig sits down with Paul Coletta, Co-Founder and CEO of Vero Bioscience, to explore a new approach to predictive health built around proteomics and organ-specific aging. Paul shares how his own organ-age test flagged his kidney as years older than his chronological age despite normal traditional labs, ultimately leading to the discovery of a renal cyst. They unpack why different organs age at different rates, how Vero’s OrganAge™ uses thousands of circulating proteins and machine learning to identify early signals, and why the future of health may depend less on a single “biological age” and more on finding your weakest link before disease takes hold.

Key Takeaways

• 🧬 You aren't one biological age. Your brain, heart, kidneys, immune system, and other organs can age at different rates, making a whole-body age score potentially less actionable.
• 🩸 Paul's test changed his career. His kidney came back roughly seven years older than his chronological age despite normal traditional kidney labs. A follow-up ultrasound found a large renal cyst, which was benign.
• 🔬 Proteins provide a real-time window into biology. Vero's current OrganAge™ approach analyzes 11,000+ proteins from a blood draw and uses machine learning to identify organ-specific aging patterns.
• 🧠 Brain aging carries serious predictive information. In the 2025 UK Biobank study, an especially aged brain was associated with a 3.1x hazard of Alzheimer's disease, while youthful brain and immune-system profiles were associated with lower mortality risk.
• 🔄 Paul wants health tools to “close the loop.” His model is simple: measure the signal, make a targeted intervention, then retest to see whether the biology actually changed.
• 💰 The goal is healthcare, not “wealthcare.” Paul says today's broad proteomic assays are too expensive for mass adoption, and Vero is working toward a smaller focused protein panel that could dramatically reduce costs. The proposed future pricing discussed in the episode remains a company target, not a verified current consumer price.
• 🩺 Clinicians stay in the loop. Vero is currently working through clinical partners, including a new six-month study with Biograph comparing OrganAge™ with imaging, VO2 max, DEXA, clinical labs, and intervention outcomes.
• 💃 Healthspan is ultimately personal. Paul closes with the story of dancing with his grandmother around her 100th birthday, a reminder that the goal isn't simply adding years. It's staying healthy enough to live them.

CONNECT WITH PAUL + VERO

Learn more about Vero Bioscience / join the waitlist →
https://verobioscience.com/?utm_source=the_dna_of_things&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast_collective&utm_content=paul_coletta

Paul on LinkedIn →
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcoletta/
Vero on LinkedIn →
https://www.linkedin.com/company/vero-bioscience

LINKS:

https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/
https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/
https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig

Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/.

What if the biggest problem with modern sleep isn’t duration, but disconnection? Dr. David R. Samson, evolutionary anthropologist and author of The Sleepless Ape, joins Dr. Jeremy Koenig to explain why humans sleep less than every other primate studied, yet devote an unusually large share of that sleep to REM. They explore what sleep among the Hadza reveals about circadian health, how early humans built a protective “SHELL” around sleep, and why light, temperature, social structure, and evolutionary history may matter more than chasing a universal eight-hour target.

Key Takeaways

• 🦧 Humans are evolutionary outliers: comparative models predict we should sleep roughly 11.5 to 12 hours, yet we sleep far less than other primates.
• 🌍 Data from 54 populations found that small-scale societies averaged 6.4 hours of sleep, compared with 7.1 hours in large-scale societies.
• ⏱️ Sleep efficiency averaged 74% in small-scale societies and 88% in large-scale societies, challenging the idea that industrialized populations universally sleep worse.
• ☀️ Small-scale societies showed stronger circadian function, pointing to regular exposure to natural light and temperature as a major advantage.
• 🛖 Samson’s SHELL framework covers Shelter, Hearth, Environmental preparation, Lux, and Lookouts.
• 👁️ During 20 days of Hadza observation, everyone was simultaneously scored asleep for only 18 minutes; a median of eight people remained awake at any given nighttime interval.
• 👵 Intergenerational chronotype variation may have created a natural security system, with older “larks” and younger “owls” covering different parts of the night.
• 🧠 REM sleep helps regulate emotion, while slow-wave sleep supports immune function, placing a biological floor on how far humans can safely reduce sleep.

Connect with Dr. David R. Samson

• Website: davidrsamson.com
• University of Toronto: Sleep and Human Evolution Lab
• Instagram: @primalprimatologist
• X: @Primalprimate

LINKS:

https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/
https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/
https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenig

Here's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/.