N-of-1 Health · Research & Series
Deep dives into the gap between population-level trials and individual biology — told through genomic variants, lived experience, and the research that connects them.
Video series
Each episode follows one genomic variant — what it does, how it shapes your biology, and what that actually means for how you feel, eat, and move. Told in plain language. Grounded in mechanism.
Coming next
Fixed Dosing
CYP3A4 & drug metabolism
The Satiety Gap
FTO & hunger signaling
Iron's Hidden Role
TMPRSS6 & absorption
The trials were designed to measure everything except what patients were living through.
From The Untold GLP Story — below
Research carousel
What 125 clinical trials with 70,000 participants missed — and what one enrolled subject's body made impossible to ignore. A mechanistic investigation into the downstream consequences that trial design couldn't see.
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Insulin resistance is present in most people with Type 2. But present is not the same as primary.
From The Phenotype Problem — below
Research note · Mechanism review
"Insulin resistance causes Type 2 diabetes."
I find a lot wrong with this statement. It discounts the pathogenesis of diabetes for at least 75% of those with the condition.
Following this narrative, it presumes that lifestyle excesses got you where you are. And while that's true for some, it's not true for the majority.
It's no wonder we're failing — diabetes and metabolic disorders keep rising even as the indicators show that excesses like sugar consumption have been decreasing, not increasing, in the U.S.
We've seen the profound success of precision medicine in oncology and rare disease — yet in our most prevalent and costly chronic conditions, it's rarely applied. A breast cancer patient will likely know whether they carry the BRCA gene, and it will shape their treatment plan. A Type 2 diabetic will rarely know whether they carry a beta-cell signaling defect like KCNQ1 — one that would make an insulin-resistance treatment plan largely miss the mark.
That information is available for under $100 through consumer DNA testing, and the phenotype classifications that make meaning of those variants are available through sources like the Broad Institute's public Type 2 Diabetes Knowledge Portal (T2DKP).
We'll start making real inroads against diabetes not with the one-size-fits-all fat narrative, but when we treat it as a genetic disease — with lifestyle and treatments targeting the underlying pathogenesis.