5HT: 5 Healthyish Things, including Pendulum and touching grass

I was honored to speak at the Consumer Health Summit last week—an invitation-only event for founders leading and redefining the future of health and wellness. It was my fifth (maybe sixth?) time attending and I always feel incredibly welcome.

My biggest takeaway this year: People are increasingly taking agency over their health. They’re seriously fed up with the system—and willing to spend out of pocket to take control, making the energy around consumer health feel electric. And, for the first time in a long time, it felt like change was coming (and coming in hot 🔥).

Another big topic was supplements 💊. (Fitting, given this week’s newsletter is sponsored by one of my favorites: Pendulum—more on them below.) Though I’d say I’m broadly supplement-skeptical, with nutrient levels in our food declining and the importance of gut health coming into the spotlight, it makes sense supplements are only becoming more essential to fill the gaps.

There was also this underlying theme of “remembering.” Lineage Provisions actually explains it well in their newsletter, “remembering how to eat like a human, live like a human, and reconnect with your roots.” It’s basically a nostalgia for returning to simpler times (aka when our food had nutritional value and connection happened offline). It’s something, well, worth “remembering.”

As always, I got to chat with some incredible people, including Mark Hyman, MD, Dave Asprey, Tim Chang (who I think of as the original consumer health VC), and more. Calley Means spoke on the political side of the growing consumer health movement, too. (BTW, his sister Casey Means—who I think is unfairly getting backlash over her exciting Surgeon General nomination 👎—is someone I wrote about recently on LinkedIn.)

I also got to talk to one of the largest female longevity podcasters (check out Nat Niddam’s podcast) and someone who built a red light therapy business out of his garage and is now seeing $20M+ in revenue. (Casual.) If you want to know where the industry’s going, this is the room to be in. It’s all run by consumer health legend Michael Fishman, who’s generous, thoughtful, and puts on a hell of a special, intimate event. If you’re in the space and interested in attending, apply directly on the site—and I’d be happy to put in a good word.

Last week, I also teamed up with friend, health tech investor, thought leader, and journalist Chrissy Farr (yes, so many superpowers) on a piece about why quality content—not ChatGPT—is the new growth hack for health brands. Together, we unpacked the content strategies founders and business leaders can (and should!) put to work, like: 

• 🧠 Answer every question consumers might have with “best answer on the Internet”-quality content

• 🔍 Plus, go deeper than the obvious and consider secondary searches

• 👩‍⚕️ Bring in expert voices and use medical reviewers (non-negotiable!)

• 🖼️ Invest in unique graphics, visuals, and interactive media to stand out

• 📢 Distribute like a media company—and repurpose like one, too

Chrissy and I both agree: Health brands that invest in quality content that includes these things will build a defensible moat, a loyal audience, and a sustainable growth engine. If you want to be one of them, steal our insights over at Second Opinion. (Orrr, yeah, hit me up if you’re interested in learning more about how Healthyish Content can do the heavy lifting for you.) Was a blast to work with Chrissy!

Okay, now how about a place where AI does have amazing potential? 😆 

Friend Jay Parkinson just launched Automate.clinic, a medical practice specialized in training and fine-tuning healthcare AI models. Basically, Automate.clinic will have doctors teach AI models how to think like them—with the ambitious goal of achieving 100% accuracy. It’s bold—but Jay always has been. 

I first met Jay in the early 2000s when Fast Company dubbed him “The Doctor of the Future.” Back then, he was first doing house calls in Williamsburg through his startup Hello Health (a tech-first model offering email access and video consults long before telehealth became a thing), and later I partnered with his second company, Sherpaa, at Greatist. Sherpaa was the first true asynchronous primary care messaging platform—basically a way to text with your doctor—and again super ahead of its time. (Aaand a model my former client Galileo and current client Counsel are mirroring.)

Jay just has this unique superpower of spotting where healthcare is broken and rebuilding it with empathy and logic. He’s the perfect blend of creative (I still remember his photography on Tumblr!) and strategic. I think, though, that’s all been a bit of blessing and a curse 😬 because the market hasn’t always been ready for what he’s building. But I’m hopeful this time will be different.

Because in a world where rushed visits and distracted doctors have become the norm, Automate.clinic has the potential to redefine how clinical decisions are made. By using real clinicians to fine-tune AI with nuance and judgment, it’s a shot at delivering care and precision—without sacrificing scale. To me, this could be the layer medicine has been missing.

Awfully good to see you back in the game, Jay!

In this week’s edition of underrated mental health hacks: Touching grass. And before you roll your eyes or scroll, hear me out.

For one, Charlamagne (yes, that Charlamagne) who’s been refreshingly open about his mental health—swears by it. He walks barefoot on his lawn to help manage anxiety and depression. And while we could use more studies, there is some evidence grounding can improve mood, boost serotonin, and even improve cognitive function. 

I’m not endorsing it yet, but then again indigenous cultures have long walked barefoot to stay connected to the Earth’s energy. And in Ayurveda (which we touched on last week), walking barefoot—especially in the morning—is said to calm the nervous system and balance anxious energy. It actually goes right back to that theme of remembering mentioned above.

Anyway, if you really need more proof that touching grass is good for you, just watch this baby doing it for the first time.👇

I’ve leaned on probiotics to get healthier—and I’m convinced the microbiome is still wildly underrated. If you’ve been here a while, you know I take a daily synbiotic and load up on fermented foods. (And yes, I’m aware nearly 100K of you know way too much about my insides.) 😅

A few months ago, I added Pendulum Glucose Control to my supplement stack to help me nutritionally manage blood glucose spikes. I noticed benefits early on—better post-meal energy, fewer crashes—and started digging deeper into the product.

One strain in the formula caught my attention: Akkermansia muciniphila. It’s a postbiotic-producing powerhouse with references in 4,500+ scientific publications because of its outsized role in gut and metabolic health. (It’s not a regular bacterium; it’s a cool bacterium. 😎)

And then (!) I found out they actually had a standalone Akkermansia product. This next-gen probiotic helps replenish gut balance by supporting the gut lining, improving metabolic performance, and (according to preclinical studies) increasing GLP-1 production*. Some researchers even call it a “longevity bacterium” (which makes me feel like I added the hottest trend to my stack). 

Speaking of my stack, these days my probiotic lineup looks like: Pendulum Glucose Control for glucose control, Akkermansia to go deeper on gut integrity, my daily synbiotic for foundational support, and fermented foods for diversity. Because it’s not about more probiotics—it’s about the right ones doing the right jobs. 

There’s more to say about why Pendulum earned my trust in the first place—and I’ll dig into that in a future edition. Until then, I don’t want to hold you back from a healthier gut, so…

Take 20% off your first Pendulum membership (works with any of their probiotics)—an exclusive perk for 5HT readers. 🎉 (And yep, it’s HSA/FSA eligible.)

*This product is not intended for weight loss

Other things

• Donald Trump just signed an executive order telling/threatening drugmakers to lower their prices. Will it work? I (gulp) kind of hope so.

• Teal Health, a women’s health company, just got FDA approval for the first-ever at-home test for cervical cancer screening. Now that’s making healthcare accessible, so cool. 👏 

• This Reddit thread shares underrated rituals that changed people’s lives. Mine? Back exercises in the morning and applying Cerave Skin Renewing Night Cream before bed. 

• Fellow Costco fans: Check out this dry cleaning closet you didn’t know you needed.

• Most clicked last week? My sun lamp from Northern Technologies. Glow on. ☀️

👋 Who are you again? I’m Derek Flanzraich—founder of two venture-backed startups in Greatist (👍) and Ness (👎). I’ve worked with brands like GoodRx, Parsley, Midi, Ro, NOCD, and Peloton. I now run Healthyish Content, a premium health content & SEO agency (among other things).

Every Thursday, I share 5 health things I feel strongly about so you can live healthyish. (Disclaimer: I’m more your friend with health benefits. None of this is medical advice.)

And oh, you also feel strongly about some health things? Hit reply—I’d love to hear it.