This Founder Has Built a Personalized Food Knowledge Base for People With Chronic Illnesses
By: Startup Health
Tags: Innovation, Moonshots, Chronic Illness, Nutrition, Nutrition And Fitness

This Founder Has Built a Personalized Food Knowledge Base for People With Chronic Illnesses

CEO and Founder Mory Bahar

Six in ten adults in the United States are currently living with at least one chronic disease. Four in ten adults in the United States have two or more. Chronic disease is the leading cause of death and disability in America and accounts for the nation’s $3.5 trillion in annual health care costs, the CDC notes.

There are many lifestyle risks that result in chronic conditions, like tobacco use, lack of physical activity, excessive substance abuse, and poor nutrition, to name a few. And in the midst of a global pandemic, those suffering from these certain underlying medical illnesses are more at risk than ever.

According to the CDC, healthy eating is essential to staying well across the lifespan and a proper diet can help people with chronic diseases manage their conditions and prevent complications. Yet despite these benefits, maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle can be challenging, and many people struggle to stay afloat. Personal Remedies, a StartUp Health company since 2018, is helping to change that. Their advanced technology enables custom diet plans that can lead to remarkable outcomes for patients and the world’s rapidly increasing chronic illness challenges.

“We are capable of providing fully automated and completely personalized guidance that takes into account a patient’s or consumer’s multiple illnesses, allergies, dietary preferences, and medications,” Mory Bahar, CEO and Founder of Personal Remedies, told StartUp Health.

The Challenge

There are six key nutrients that the body needs to function properly: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and water. Easy enough, right? Well, there are also hundreds of different diseases and conditions, hundreds of lifestyle restrictions, and hundreds of foods, adding up to thousands of unique possibilities to consider when determining the right dietary choices for someone who lives with multiple limitations.

“The biggest challenge for dieticians and doctors and specialists is the fact that they know their conditions well, like obesity, diabetes, heart disease,” Bahar said. “But, the moment you introduce all of these other restrictions, they are not accustomed to that and they have to go back and do other research before they can give you any guidance.” That is where Personal Remedies comes into play.

The Solution

Their team of professionals obtains research from top sources such as the US National Institute of Health (NIJ), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), MedLine (PubMed), EU agencies, top universities and clinics in the United States, and then compiles it into one comprehensive science-backed database of food-disease interactions, allergies, dietary preferences, and food-drug interactions, allowing users to create nutritional plans tailored to their needs.

How it Works

“How we do it?” Bahar explained. “Imagine your favorite food, let’s say raw oysters. Now, imagine some chronic illness, let’s say pancreatic cancer. There are no NIH-funded studies, no research or clinical trials underway to tell us whether oysters are harmful or helpful to pancreatic cancer. But, there are tons of data and research available that tell us about relationships between various nutrients and various chronic illnesses. And there is a ton of information available about the nutrient content of raw oysters or any other foods. So what our algorithm and software do is take all of that data and research into account in order to establish and quantify that relationship between every food and every illness in our knowledgebase. Once we do that, then it’s very easy for us to tell you ‘here are the top 10 foods that are good for you and here are the top ten foods that are bad for you,’ because we’ve already quantified all of those relationships, and we can sort that data and find the top foods that are helpful to your health or harmful to your health. We can also slice and dice it based on food groups, meats, fish, shellfish, nuts and seeds, desserts, beverages, and so on.”

Get Started

Personal Remedies allows you to create your own health profile where you can list any health conditions, allergies, current medications, dietary restrictions, or fitness goals you may have, and get a fully personalized list of suggested foods, natural sources, and natural remedies to live a healthier lifestyle.

The team also offers one of the largest collections of mobile apps on the market, each focused on one chronic illness and its common comorbidities, available on both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.