I want...
August 27, 2024 By
Leanne Vogel
February 4, 2025
Andrew Lacy
But there are new techniques that enable us, we hope, to provide much greater insight into someone’s cardiovascular health during these scans. And another area is really trying to understand a lot of the biomarkers of chronic sort of metabolic conditions. So we’re able to now measure visceral fat volumetrically everywhere in the body. Liver fat to two decimal points, pericardial fat. So the fat around the heart muscle obviously is highly correlated with heart attacks.
Leanne Vogel
Hello, and welcome to another episode. Today we’re getting real personal, and there’s nothing more personal than getting a whole body MRI scan and then going through the results with you. And that’s what we’re going to be doing today.
Andrew Lacy
We’re going to be talking about my.
Leanne Vogel
Results, why I decided to get an MRI and what action items I’ve taken. And then we’re going to interview. We’re going to cut over to an interview with Andrew Lacy, who is the CEO and founder of Preneuvo, the company pioneering proactive whole body imaging for the early detection of cancer and other diseases. Under Lacey’s leadership, the company has expanded across North America, establishing Preneuvo as a recognized and trusted proactive healthcare service to both patients and referring clinicians. So at any time during today’s recording, if you’re like, I want to get in on this. This sounds so cool, you can go to Preneuvo.com leanne that’s P R E N U V O.com leanne and get $300 off your whole body scan. So a couple of pieces here. I am not getting paid to share this content.
Leanne Vogel
I found Preneuvo on Instagram. I was going through reels and a lady by the name of Jessica said that she got a whole body scan and she found all these things. And I was like, how do I get this? This sounds so cool. And I reached out to Preneuvo. They gave me a free scan. So I did not pay for my scan. But after I had my scan, I chatted with my husband Kevin, and we decided to get him a scan because I thought, babe, we need to have this data for you. And this has just been such an illuminating, encouraging process and I wanted him to have one too.
Leanne Vogel
So we did pay for his scan. And I just. It’s important for me to share these things with you because you have to know that a lot of podcasters, YouTubers, influencers get stuff for free. And it makes it a lot more accessible when you don’t have to pay for it. But when we’re talking about scans and these things and medical Approaches important that I’m always super honest. So I did not pay for my scan, but we paid for Kevin’s scan and I would do it again. And in fact, I’m going to do it again in two to three years because that’s when I need to get another scan. And I think Kevin’s at three years.
Leanne Vogel
And we will happily pay for this for the details that we got. So a full body mri, basically. I walked into Preneuvo. It is not a medical procedure type of place if you are concerned about medical establishments. I can tell you from the moment I walked in, I just felt so special. And if you’ve had experiences in the past that have made you feel really yucky, Preneuvo is not that. And I was super comfortable in the machine, though I didn’t super love being still for that long. Kevin said he didn’t mind at all and he was like, happy, happy to stay in there.
Leanne Vogel
They play Netflix for you. They take images. And Kevin got his results the next day. Mine took about two to three weeks, I believe. And I was really nervous to get my results only because I was seeking answers. So the reason why I was so drawn to get this scan is I’ve been dealing with inflamed, I want to.
Leanne Vogel
Say lymph nodes, but I really didn’t.
Leanne Vogel
Think it was a lymph node. These, like, bumps on my neck. And it’s been going on for almost a year. I’ve gone to doctors about it, I’ve chatted with nurse practitioners about it, and I kind of got dismissed every time. And I was just so frustrated that when I saw this Jessica on Instagram talking about this whole body scan, I thought, well, if this is something really serious, I’d rather know about it than be spinning my wheels on this. And so when I got my report, I was really nervous to open it up, but also really excited to finally have answers. And though I got no answers when it came to my neck, which was actually a good thing, in fact, they checked through my thyroid. The thyroid looked great.
Leanne Vogel
Nothing was viewed. No soft tissue issues. Lymph nodes were checked. Salivary glands, however, would not show up. And where those little lumps are is right around my salivary gland. So even the not having information like not seeing lymph as being an issue, not seeing the thyroid as an issue, it kind of eliminated a lot of processes. And I was able to find a doctor that specialized in salivary gland imaging and understanding. And I have an appointment with them to kind of go through what’s going on with this.
Leanne Vogel
And so I was able to kind of, through process of elimination, go directly to a dermatologist and chat with them about a fluid filled cyst and kind of go that route. I also really loved on my scan that it gave me some real answers in regards to neck pain that I’ve had since about 2017. And what I loved about when I got the scan, I got to sit down with a doctor and go through the results and ask him a ton of questions. He was so patient with me because I came fully prepared and we talked about my neck. And he asked an important question that I had not put two and two together. And he said, in 2017, when the neck pain started, had you been doing a lot of work? Well, 2017 was the year that I was writing all my books. And yes, I was doing a ton of work. In fact, I was doing a ton of work in an RV where I didn’t have a desk and I was looking down at my computer and that’s when my neck pain started.
Leanne Vogel
And so we went through the results of my neck and determined that there was nothing truly concerning about the neck, but that I did have some arthritic issues that needed to be assessed with my chiropractor. So I then took those images directly to my chiropractor, showed him my MRI results, and he knew exactly how to start adjusting me to assist with this. Now it’s been about three months since my scan and I can happily report that for the first time since 2017, I am no longer having neck pain. Yes. This is such a huge win, I.
Leanne Vogel
Have to tell you, like the amount.
Leanne Vogel
Of pain I’ve been in and if you know that nagging pain that just doesn’t go away and you’ve tried everything, this is phenomenal. So a lot of it had to do with actually ergonomics and physical therapy. And with some of these changes, in addition to my chiropractor adjustments, what a difference. I was also able to make some changes to my supplement regime with a little bit of inflammation that we found in my neck. And I’m now on a bone marrow supplement and a couple of others to support that inflammation. And things are going way better. Like, no pain, no pain. I can go left, right, up, down.
Leanne Vogel
It is fantastic. Another big piece. If you remember, if you’ve been listening for quite some time, I had Entamoeba histolytica, which is a pathogenic parasite which slowly just like annihilates your liver. And I had a ton of cysts when I was infected. And so it was good to kind of get a starting point with an MRI to kind of see how those cysts have either progressed or not. And though there were cysts in the liver, there were many of them, but they were very, very small. And so I’m excited to see over time how this progresses. Another really interesting area that I didn’t know I’d be really excited about is that dementia runs in my family.
Leanne Vogel
And to be able to get a full brain volume on the scan was really, really good. You can actually keep an eye on this over decades and the volume of the brain tissue will anticipate dementia. So as soon as that brain volume changes, I mean, I’m hoping it never does, but when it does change, I know to start getting alerted. So overall, I was so impressed with my experience. I am happy about the results. I am happy that I have direction. I am thrilled that Kevin has some direction with his as well. Now, in regards to Kevin’s results, we had just a couple of things that came up like a little bit of sinusitis that I was able to start working through just functionally.
Leanne Vogel
When it came to digestive system function, we had a little bit of fat deposition in the liver, so I put them on a couple of supplements for that. So a lot of this is just mild findings that help me as a functional medicine practitioner make adjustments to our protocol so things don’t get crazy out of hand. So I am just so happy to be able to share this with all of you. One of the main reasons I wanted to get this done is that cancer runs in my family and there were a couple of therapies that I wanted to start using for my pain that could grow tumors. And so I wanted to make sure that there was nothing like actively happening, even just the lump situation and the neck pain situation. I mean, this has made such a difference for me and I’m so excited to start using this as a benchmark to my health over the next 2, 6, 8, 10 years as we see the progression of aging in my body. So without further ado, let’s go over to my interview with Andrew where we talk more about the technology, the system, all the nitty gritty about pranovo and full body MRI scans.
Leanne Vogel
Hey, my name is Leanne and I’m fascinated with helping women navigate how to eat, move and care for their bodies. This has taken me on a journey from vegan keto, high protein to everything in between. I’m a small town holistic nutritionist, turned three time international veteran, bestselling author turned functional medicine practitioner offering telemedicine services around the globe to women looking to better their health and stop second guessing themselves. I’m here to teach you how to wade through the wellness noise to get to the good stuff that’ll help you achieve your goals. Whether you’re seeking relief from chronic ailments, striving for peak performance, or simply eager to live a more vibrant life, this podcast is your go to resource for actionable advice and inspiration. Together, we’ll uncover the interconnectedness of nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, and mindset, empowering you to make informed choices that support your unique health journey. Think of it as quality time with your bestie mixed with a little med school so you’re empowered. At your next doctor visit, get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn about your body and how to care for it healthfully.
Leanne Vogel
Join me as we embrace vitality, recognize, claim our innate potential, and discover what it truly means to pursue healthfulness.
Andrew Lacy
Hey, Andrew. How’s it going today?
Andrew Lacy
It’s great. Thanks for having me.
Andrew Lacy
Yeah, of course. Before we get into kind of the nitty gritty, I would love for you to officially introduce us. We did your official bio, but why are you doing what you’re doing and what lights you up every day?
Andrew Lacy
Oh, man. Well, it really started because I’m one of these sort of workaholics that don’t look after myself. You know, I’m an entrepreneur, and I think it’s a trait that a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs share. We’re sort of investing today for a future that we hope to be around for tomorrow. And I remember waking up in my 40s and thinking, well, how do I know that, you know, how do I know that I will be around? And it was in my own quest for answers to that question that I ran into a radiologist in Canada, of all places, who was doing these whole body scans. And I went there as a patient and had a scan myself, learned more about my health than the health system had told me my entire life. And I just had one of those moments where it was just clear that as an entrepreneur, this should be my mission to find a way to bring this to as many people as possible. And what keeps me going today is we’re now all around the US and opening more locations every month.
Andrew Lacy
And it goes from saving, you know, a life once every week to multiple times a day. And that’s kind of fuel for the entire company to keep doing what we’re doing.
Andrew Lacy
I’ve heard some incredible stories of individuals who go for their scan and they actually find something that does save their life. Can you talk a little bit about what is found and what that process is like that you’ve seen?
Andrew Lacy
Sure. So when patients come in, just to maybe center around what the process is, we put them in a machine where we screen them for about 45 minutes. And in during that 45 minutes, while they are watching television inside that machine, we are taking about 1.3 billion data points on their body. And we do this by imaging every organ in the body multiple times, filtering for different tissue compositions. And when we see a lesion, if we’re talking about cancer inside the body, we’re able to use all of these different images to really get a good sense of is this something that is benign that I don’t necessarily need to worry about, or is this something concerning that I need to go and do additional follow up tests. And we risk stratify everything that we see and some small percentage of these lesions we see get worked up and a reasonable percentage of those end up coming back with them being malignant and generally quite early stage, which is what you want to see in a screening test.
Andrew Lacy
And so is cancer the main goal that you’re looking for or are there other things or is cancer like the main thing?
Andrew Lacy
What is funny, I kind of think in some ways the service that we do really is two products in one. And a lot of people come because they hear of a life saving story, either online or a friend or a colleague, a family member, and they’re kind of worried about what we might find. But I think people stay because we are able to check comprehensively every organ and diagnose hundreds of conditions and really give folks a real good sense of how the way they’re living their life is impacting the underlying physiology of their body. And this is information that can often precede sort of chronic disease by 10, 15, 20 years. So it’s such tremendous information to empower people to make changes in their lives.
Andrew Lacy
It’s so true. I know with my scan I’ve been dealing with neck pain for quite some time. And the scan actually showed a little bit of arthritis in my neck. And when I shared it with my chiropractor, he’s like, see, this is why making the ergonomic changes to your desk are important. And I’ve been kind of pushing it off, like as if it’s really going to make a difference. And so finally I shifted my desk just a little bit and the neck pain reduced. And even that little change, like just actually seeing it physically and Being like, okay, I need to actually put something in place here. And even too, with my chiropractor now knowing exactly how to adjust me has been.
Andrew Lacy
He said, this is so great that you have these images and every couple of months I’ll just go back to them and make sure that we have the correct treatment plan in place. And so those little tweaks I know have already made such a big difference for me.
Andrew Lacy
Well, I had the same problem and I now work on a walking treadmill desk. So I try and walk a couple of hours every day and I spend most of the time standing up and my neck pain has completely gone away. And we’ve imaged my neck successfully from one year to the next, and we see these problems not only sort of arrest, but start to reverse. So, I mean, I think it’s just really exciting that there are these little lifestyle tweaks that you can make that can have such a profound impact on your life. Maybe as you get older, in your 50s, 60s or 70s, where mobility is so important for longevity.
Andrew Lacy
Exactly. So earlier you mentioned risk. Stratify everything that you see. Can you talk about what that means, the risk? Stratus Stratify, Yeah.
Andrew Lacy
Here we’re using, in some cases, existing stratification approaches that are well adopted in clinical practice. So, for example, when we image the prostate, I guess not a lot, a lot of your listeners will have prostates. But there’s a internationally accepted standard for how you classify lesions in the prostate. And similarly there are for thyroid, for breast and different parts of the body. We developed one together with an international group of researchers called OnCorads. That is a classification system for lesions that we find, no matter where they are in the body. And that’s slowly being adopted in other practices around the world. And the goal there is to really understand, okay, if this is, let’s say, a two out of five, then the likelihood that this is a malignant lesion is like less than 1%.
Andrew Lacy
If there’s a 4 or 5, then the risk is much higher. And we need to do some follow up testing just to confirm exactly what it is that we’re seeing.
Andrew Lacy
And so when we’re sitting in this machine, it’s an mri. I found myself. The hardest part of it was staying still, actually for that long period of time. That was the most challenge for me. But I know that there are a lot of concerns over radiation. Can we just nip this in the bud right now when we’re going through a scan? Are we subjecting ourselves to radiation?
Andrew Lacy
There’s no Radiation, there’s no ionizing radiation at all. And this is really a throwback to 20 years ago. There were a number of companies that were offering CT screening and you could sometimes get this in a shopping mall. And there are still in some parts of the country people offering CT based screening. And that’s an ion. CT is ionizing radiation. So for every scan you do, there’s a slight increase in cancer risk. And we just think that’s not the right way to be screening for cancer.
Andrew Lacy
Yeah, I would agree with you on that one. Okay, so we go through this scan and then normally in a regular MRI is just one radiologist or maybe a group of radiologists looking over the results. And how does that differ from what you guys are doing?
Andrew Lacy
So we typically have one radiologist that’s the primary reader of someone’s entire whole body scan. We’ve trained them on whole body radiology and then they’re supported by a community of radiologists that every hour are talking about things that they see and helping each other out. And in that community we have specialists in breast imaging, in neurology, and in different parts of the body. And collectively they sort of like bring the best to every person whose scan that we’re reading.
Andrew Lacy
So I read somewhere, or maybe it was somebody online talking about how Pernovo was using some sort of AI technology. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that factors into the review of results or where that factors in or if it does?
Andrew Lacy
Yeah, a lot of the AI that we’re working on is still at a research phase. There’s three areas where AI is really interesting. The first is in helping to speed up the time it takes to scan a patient. When I went and got my first scan, it was an hour and a half and now it’s about 45 minutes. And a lot of that is due to some of the underlying AI in image acquisition. The second area is really using AI as almost like a second look to the radiology that the radiologists are doing. And here we are working on models that help diagnose conditions in most organs of the body. And then the third area is an area that I’m most excited about really is using AI to identify really small changes in time, changes in what we’re seeing longitudinally.
Andrew Lacy
And so humans not really good at identifying these little tiny small changes, perhaps in your arthritic spine or in, or in visceral fat content in the body, for example, whereas AI is quite good at being able to quantify those and sort of measure from these small changes from one time period to the next. So those are the three areas we’re focused on. A lot of it needs to go through fda, so that takes automatically a decent amount of time. But we’re really excited about the potential for the AI to really bring down the cost of the scan, make it faster and faster and make it more accurate.
Andrew Lacy
Speaking of cost, I know that. So I’m originally from Canada, and both my parents have gone through some pretty significant health challenges over the last couple of years. And getting the healthcare system to agree to send them even for a small MRI in some small location of the body is like pulling teeth. And if we need to pay out of pocket, I know my mom needed her. I think it was just like her neck or something small, an MRI, and it was like $4,000 or something crazy. Can we talk about just what you see in the landscape when it comes to these sorts of scans and how you guys have been able to offer the prices that you are offering?
Andrew Lacy
Well, I’m originally from Australia, so I also come from a similar social medicine system. And although I work in US Healthcare, I still find it a pretty byzantine environment. I know that before, there are other places that do diagnostic quality whole body imaging that were around before us, and these were typically the large tertiary hospitals. And they did it for cancer predisposition patients. So people that had a genetic syndrome that meant that they’re absolutely going to get cancer multiple times in life. And they, you know, it was just a question of where and when. And those scans typically were paid for by insurance and cost, you know, 20,000, 50,000, in some cases, $100,000. So when we started screening folks, we wanted to offer that at a price that although still can be, you know, we’re working to bring a lot cheaper is something that many more people can afford.
Andrew Lacy
And you’re right, a lot. Oftentimes I’ll meet a patient in the lobby of one of our clinics and I’ll say, well, why are you here? And they said, well, this back pain and to get a single body part back MRI was going to cost me anyhow, $2,000. So why not spend just a tiny bit more and look at the entire body in one go?
Andrew Lacy
Yes, absolutely. And would you say that just the MRI itself is the idea of using these scans as preventative measures, like a newer idea within the health space? Like, is this, is this a new thing or not so much.
Andrew Lacy
It is new in the last 10 years. And I think that’s because the machines have got better and we can scan a lot Faster than we used to. MRI was always the best imaging modality for soft tissue anywhere, but it was slow and therefore quite expensive. So as it’s sped up, it’s become less expensive to deliver. And then secondly, there’s just such tremendous innovation in the MRI space. Every month there’s new papers, you know, exploring new sequences for cardiac. Mr. Or for using MRI machines to start to look at amyloid in the brain.
Andrew Lacy
Or every time there’s a new conference, there are hundreds of people presenting new ideas about how to use these machines. So it’s a really cool time to be working in that technology.
Andrew Lacy
Okay, so are you saying that it’s not necessarily that the machines themselves are changing, but the way that we interpret the data is changing, or kind of a mixture of both?
Andrew Lacy
It’s a mixture. The machines are getting more powerful. They’re getting supported by AI. When you come in and get a scan, we put these, we call them coils on your body that picks up the signal that we turn into an image. And those coils, there’s a lot of innovation there. And different frequency coils can actually listen to different elements in the periodic table as you’re lying there. So people are exploring those to measure, for example, sodium in the brain, which is an important measure of brain activity. So there’s just lots of cool stuff.
Andrew Lacy
It involves hardware, it involves software, involves AI. You know, our goal really, as a company is to explore all of that and see what we can then bring to the scans that we provide for our patients.
Andrew Lacy
So what you’re saying is when I need to get my next scan, I think it’s in two to three years, it might be very different or more detailed or those sorts of things.
Andrew Lacy
Yeah, I can talk to a couple of areas that we’re actually focusing on ourselves. One is in cardiac imaging. So we’re able to. The heart is quite fuzzy on the images that we are taking right now, and that’s because you’re breathing and your heart is beating at the same time. So it just takes too long to acquire really, really detailed images. But there are new techniques that enable us, we hope, to provide much greater insight into someone’s cardiovascular health during these scans. And another area is really trying to understand a lot of the biomarkers of chronic sort of metabolic conditions. So we’re able to now measure visceral fat volumetrically ever in the body.
Andrew Lacy
Liver fat to two decimal points, pericardial fat. So the fat around the heart muscle, obviously, is highly correlated with heart attacks. So these are some of the things that are coming down the path and I hope we have them by the time you come back.
Andrew Lacy
That’s really exciting.
Leanne Vogel
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Andrew Lacy
So let’s go through the type of individual that the scan might be beneficial for. Like just thinking about my scan and one of the main reasons there were a couple of reasons why I wanted to get a scan. One is that my father has had cancer multiple times and I just wanted to make sure all was well. The second being I’ve been dealing with a lot of sinus, upper respiratory issues, like stuff happening in my neck, and I just wasn’t sure and nobody could provide insight. And so just thinking about, I had kind of gone the distance with the resources that I had and I was just looking for some other answer that would give me something that I hadn’t gotten before. And so that’s kind of what drove me to want to get a scan. But are there other individuals or stories that you’re hearing of individuals like what’s driving people and who makes a good candidate to get a scan?
Andrew Lacy
Well, I think you sort of hit on the two most important categories. One are we have a lot of folks that for whatever reason have a higher risk of cancer and disease. That might be because they formerly had cancer or it might be because they have a strong family history of cancer. And for them not knowing is like causing anxiety. And so the screening can really help give peace of mind. The second category also that I guess you described yourself as being in is, you know, people that might have symptoms and they’re not feeling like they’re getting answers from the health system. Now more often than not, these are sort of indeterminate symptoms. Classic examples might be people have headaches or migraines frequently or particularly with Women like abdominal pain.
Andrew Lacy
You know, what’s normal abdominal pain? What’s abnormal abdominal pain? You know, what do I do if I feel like it’s abnormal, but my doctor’s not paying attention to me? So. So that’s the second category. I guess the third category are people that really just want to stay on top of health, like they’re fit, they’re interested in living as long as possible, and they don’t want to wait until symptoms present to get checked out. And these are folks, I think the best analogies are like, people that go to the dentist every six months. You know, they don’t wait until they have tooth pain. They just want to stay on top of anything. And doesn’t mean they won’t need a filling, but, you know, they’re much less likely to need a root canal. And we’re trying to do that same thing for the rest of the body that dentists do for teeth.
Andrew Lacy
You know, I was in Canada recently, and I realized, because we have that healthcare that we do, I grew up going to the dentist every six months. I just thought that that’s what people did. And when you’re in Canada, everyone has really gorgeous, well taken care of teeth. And I’m not used to seeing that now traveling as much as I do. And people don’t go to the dentist as much. And it’s so true. It’s. I will always be an individual that goes to the dentist every six months because I’d rather just have somebody else make sure that everything’s okay until.
Andrew Lacy
Waiting until. Sometimes those health issues kind of quote, unquote, creep up on you, and they kind of marinate in your body for years and years and years. And I never want to be in a position where my health is out of my control, and I feel like I don’t have a say in what’s happening. And so I find, even for individuals, which you say, that are more fearful about the answers that could come up, like the conversation we’re having, you know, we touched on the C word, cancer. Sometimes people hear that. It brings up a lot of, like, I’m not sure I want to know. Like, I’m good not knowing. Do you see people come in that are a little bit fearful about what they might see in the results of the tests?
Andrew Lacy
100%. I mean, I can even speak to my own experience. When I went and got my first test, I remember going out for dinner the night before, going to a nice restaurant, saying, well, who knows? Like, my life might change completely tomorrow. So I think that’s totally natural to feel fearful. I think it’s important to recognize that fear really comes. You know, it’s a consequence of having a healthcare system that’s very reactive. And when you have a reactive healthcare system, most everything is diagnosed at an advanced stage. So, of course we’re afraid.
Andrew Lacy
And I think for me, the most empowering thing, having done the scan, was just this. This notion that, well, now if I do this routinely, I never need to feel that fear ever again. But it’s a totally natural thing. And, you know, I’ve walked into clinics. I’ve seen people, you know, like, too afraid to get out of the change room to go and get the scan from time to time. And, you know, we do our best to make people feel really comfortable and have an environment that doesn’t feel like a hospital, doesn’t trigger some of that, you know, those feelings of stepping into, like, a medical facility. But, yeah, it’s a normal. I think it’s a normal thing.
Andrew Lacy
And even for us as a company, like, trying to figure out how to help people through those fears absolutely is an important sort of part of outpatient experience.
Andrew Lacy
I’m glad you touched on it, not feeling like a medical establishment, because in my head, like, preparing, you know, because you prepare, like, what’s it going to be like? Where am I going to put my clothes? Are they going to give me a place to put my jewelry? And I walked in. First of all, I was really surprised at how many people were there. I didn’t think that this was, like, a place where there would be quite a few people, but there were quite a few people, like, comfortably there. But I was not expecting that. And secondly, I had, like, my own room where I put my things, and then I locked it. And that was just so different from, you know, here’s the gown. Put this on. Lock your stuff up in this locker.
Andrew Lacy
And so it just had a very different feel from the very beginning, from the snacks to the place where I put my things. So it really didn’t have that same medical feeling, like, at all, actually.
Andrew Lacy
Yeah, And a big. The real motivator for that is this, is this idea that we don’t want your visit to trigger that anxiety that you might feel in a health facility. So as a result, it feels a bit more concierge. But really the intent is not. The intent is really just to be just to help sort of moderate fear and anxiety. And I guess the consequence of that is, like, we have nice snacks and the environment is cool, and people don’t dress like they’re doctors and there’s no white walls and hopefully that’s working.
Andrew Lacy
Yes, absolutely. Everyone was really friendly, took all my jokes really well, had really good pace with me. So it was, it was good. It was good. From a preventative standpoint, let’s say we go in for our first scan, we get the results. How often should we be doing this from a preventative standpoint? Like what’s your vision with that and how do you guys pick out how often to go for scans?
Andrew Lacy
Yeah, it’s actually a hard one to answer and it’s one that we often have a lot of internal debate around. I mean, a lot of cancer and disease is sort of follows like a binomial distribution, the statistics, which is, you know, the longer you wait, the more likely there’s going to be, you know, something bad that comes along. And so obviously the more frequently someone gets a scan, the more likely they are to be free of advanced disease. We have a lot of patients come in once a year. We have patients that come in once every two years. And if there’s anything that we see that’s concerning, we make sure that we note on patients reports, you know, what frequency would we recommend that they return. But the goal I think one day is that this is a test that you do every year. It costs a lot less than it does today because it’s covered by insurance.
Andrew Lacy
You know, it’s just a foundational part of like managing your healthcare, like getting a routine blood test.
Andrew Lacy
That would be incredible. Like as a functional medicine practitioner, if each of my clients had a full body scan and we did that once a year, it would be incredible. Like I would be so happy if I could look at their blood work and some of their other functional tests along with the scale scan. That would just be so cool to even track the individual that went through my results. Was even talking about the fact that we can track the volume of my brain because I had concerns with dementia and that that could be tracked over time. So I could see kind of how that’s evolving, even those little things. I mean, that is, that would be so interesting.
Andrew Lacy
We try hard to sort of future proof the scan and the brain is one example of that. We did an sequence on you that is typically only done on Alzheimer’s patients. It’s a very, very detailed brain scan that enables us to look at all the regions of the brain and understand longitudinally how they’re changing. And we don’t yet quite present that back to the patient, but the goal at one point is to do so. And now in your case, you’ve already had a baseline scan. So even if that takes a year or two to sort of be ready, we can still go back in time and compare you against you. It’s also great for research, by the way, because if we see patients that perhaps have had some sort of change in, in their bodies, you know, they might have been diagnosed with diabetes in the into intervening period, or they might have had brain volume loss, we can now go back to the early scans and actually learn, you know, are there biomarkers that are hidden here that would help us identify these conditions a lot earlier? And I think through that we’re going to help further sort of our understanding of human health.
Andrew Lacy
That’s so exciting. Do you sometimes sit back and get really excited over where this could go? Like, I see the giddiness kind of like in your face. Did I get that right? Like, I just saw like a. This is a big deal like this. This could be huge.
Andrew Lacy
Yeah. No, no one has taken the sort of, number of, sort of comprehensive health images of people than Pranuvo. And every day that grows and just I feel like we’re really scratching the surface, even as a company. I mean, we’re working really hard. I think we’re four or five hundred people now manning clinics and getting people’s reports back. And I, you know, we’re probably scratching about 5% of the data that we’re able to collect. And I think it’s super exciting to think what insights might be sort of lying there waiting to be uncovered.
Andrew Lacy
Yes, absolutely. So can we talk a little bit about the customer experience or the patient experience? I know that when I was sitting in the machine, that was fine. Like I said, the hardest thing for me was to stay still. I was surprised how much my body just absolutely needed to move. But once I got past that and just distracted me with the Netflix, that was fine. Then I waited a couple of weeks and my results came in. I had a chance to go through them just individually and just write down some questions. Then somebody called me and we went through the results together and helped me understand the report a little bit more.
Andrew Lacy
As a functional medicine practitioner, I already kind of had a pretty good sense of what I was looking at. But for the individual that’s not medically trained, do they have to have concerns about, okay, now I have this report. Now I need to find somebody to tell me what this report is telling me and what I do about it.
Andrew Lacy
Yeah, I mean, to start with, we have a internal process that I don’t think you experience which is if we find something that’s very concerning, we obviously reach out to the patient and their physician, if they have one, and sort of go through that in a slightly different way to someone that has, you know, what we would call, quote, unquote, kind of a normal report. Like a report, everyone has findings, but there’s no findings that require urgent attention or necessarily life threatening. So we do have a different system in place depending on what we’re seeing. Most patients talk to one of our nurse practitioners and they’ve seen hundreds of these scans, so they’re really able to answer the vast majority of questions that come up. Some people that are huge into longevity or they might be physicians. I mean, we probably can’t do as good a job as they can in sort of looking up their own symptoms and looking at their report and sort of doing their own investigations. But we wanted to make sure that there’s someone that everyone can talk to so that they have some context about what we found and know what to do next.
Andrew Lacy
Can you talk a little bit about the app? And just. I know for myself there were a couple of takeaways where I had to find a specialist. Specifically, I’m working with an ear, nose and throat right now. They were very resistant to even look at my phone for the images, so I had to like print out the report and blah, blah, blah. But can you tell us about the viewing of the app and kind of how that works with the reporting too?
Andrew Lacy
Yes. One of the other things I learned in this company is that as soon as doctors started requesting images, we’re like, okay, how do we. Let’s email them to you or give them on a USB kit? Oh, no, we need to have them on a cd. So we had to go and buy CD machines for all of our clinics so that we could print these things out and like send them to doctors. So, you know, the health system is a little bit antiquated, and that’s probably why you’re seeing this resistance. It’s a work in progress in a sense. As we do more and more of these scans, more doctors are becoming familiar with what we do. And then secondly, we’re starting to learn what primary care providers and specialists sort of get what we’re doing.
Andrew Lacy
And we’re starting to more proactively funnel patients to physicians and specialists that we think are going to do a good job in following up these findings and not give you a blank stare when they see that you got a scan.
Andrew Lacy
At Pranuva, I haven’t had that experience at all. It was actually interesting. Every ear, nose and throat that I contacted, I was able to tell them exactly what the MRI said, what I was dealing with in absolutely every case, because I called probably every ENT in my area to find the right one. They were like, let me just chat with the doctor and I’ll get back to you. What’s your phone number? And they would just chat with the doctor. This client is presenting with XYZ and she wants to know, blah, blah, blah. And so I was able to kind of vet the doctors initially, just like that, with the results that I had, instead of booking an initial consult and showing them all the things. So it actually probably saved me a good amount of money trying to find a doctor that would be willing to help with the boundaries and things that I had set for myself.
Andrew Lacy
So I think where I’ve found the most challenge is that most were unwilling to view the images digitally. Like, I have had to print off the scans using FedEx and print, a printing service, because initially I had printed them off in black and white on my printer. That wasn’t good enough. So I think that has been the challenge, I would say, for me, is just the paper that I’ve had to carry around. But my chiropractor was very open to the digital image and using the app, which was.
Andrew Lacy
And I think once you get beyond it, though, there’s something really important about MRI images, which is every single practitioner has seen MRI images before. It’s a modality that’s really well understood. And the images that we took of your head, you know, for your ENT problem, are not any different to the images that you would have got if you just did a dedicated sinus exam. And so you know that you can’t hide from a picture. You know, at least when you get the right modality to show it to your practitioner, there’s really. They really sort of have to follow it through. And I think that’s different to. There’s a lot of other emerging tests, like blood tests for cancer and things like this, where it’s.
Andrew Lacy
A lot of practitioners don’t really know how to interpret these things.
Andrew Lacy
Yes, that’s been my experience. Every practitioner where I’ve shown the images to know exactly what to do and what other tests to run if they need to. But everyone’s been really thrilled with, like, it just takes away a lot of the trying to say, but there’s something wrong. I don’t know what to do. Help me. Because that was what I was against for years and years and years, just trying to find a solution. So I couldn’t agree with you more. We talked on this a little bit earlier, but where do you see things going over the next 10, 20 years? I know that you’ve dabbled in a whole bunch of other businesses and done a whole bunch of things.
Andrew Lacy
I’m sure you’re applying much of what you learned in those other areas to Pernovo. Where do you want to take this?
Andrew Lacy
Well, I still think we’re really at the beginning of the journey. When we started five years ago, we were mainly word of mouth for consumers. Today we now have hundreds of physicians that refer us. We’re starting to talk to enterprise about finding ways to incorporate prenuvo scans in benefits that would be offered for employees. We’re having conversations with insurance companies. I mean, the health system doesn’t move very fast and so there’s a big roadmap ahead of us to arrive at a point where these are inexpensive and fast and available to everyone no matter where they are. So you’ll see us continue to grow our clinic footprint in the US and internationally. We’re opening our first clinics in Australia and in the UK within the next sort of six to 12 months.
Andrew Lacy
We are just opening a clinic now in Buffalo really to serve the Toronto market where it’s been quite difficult to get a clinic open there. And internally we’re reinvesting pretty much everything that we, we sort of bring in from these scans in research and development on the AI side and on making the sequences better and faster and on investing in a really, really incredible clinical practice so that we can continue to make this the best screening exam that you can do anywhere.
Andrew Lacy
That’s amazing.
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Leanne Vogel
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Andrew Lacy
I’m sure that you hear all sorts of stories and you’re kind of, you probably do a lot of these types of interviews and so you’re hearing people’s feedback too. What are some of the stories that you’ve heard either from individuals that you have interviewed you or just regular patients coming in and stories that maybe your team is updating you on, like what strikes you?
Andrew Lacy
Well, I would say we’re pretty mission driven company, so we get a lot of we use slack to communicate and we have a channel that’s called why we do this. And no matter who talks to a patient about their experience post scan, particularly where we’ve made a finding that could be life saving, we sort of anonymize it and we put on that channel for everyone in the company to read. And that’s sort of the fuel that just keeps us going. And I mean, I’m just trying to think about some of the examples I’ve had. Just the last couple of days I had one person who messaged me on LinkedIn saying that after months of convincing her husband to come in for a scan, they made it happen. He came in, was asymptomatic and we found a really aggressive thyroid cancer. You know, and most thyroid cancer actually is not necessarily aggressive, but this particular variant was, and it was definitely A life saving finding. And they told us that they’d probably brought in 25 people to get a scan through telling their story.
Andrew Lacy
And I just think these are happening every day. We had a lung cancer, a young woman in her early 40s that had never smoked a day in her life. And we found stage one lung cancer last week. And we’re seeing this a lot, actually. The sort of a fast growing category of people diagnosed with lung cancer are females that have never smoked. And we don’t quite know why. We think it’s something environmental. Every so often we find cancers that might have been missed on mammogram or on colonoscopy, or we find a prostate cancer in a patient that may not have an elevated psa.
Andrew Lacy
So there’s just multiple stories now every, every week, I think. And the real takeaway I get when I read these is, you know, wow, how do I convince more people to come in and not necessarily just wait to listen to the symptoms as they present? Because a lot of these cancers, you know, kidney cancer grows on average 2 centimeters a year. And we’re finding like 10 centimeter kidney cancers that are still I thankfully confined to the kidney, but that’s been in their body growing for, you know, five or six years. The average age of a pancreatic cancer, unfortunately, at the time of death, there was a study on this is about seven or eight years. And that means we probably think it’s, you know, detectable for two, three, four years while it’s still localized to the pancreas. So, you know, the real lesson I’ve taken away from this is just you need to look under the hood, even if everything feels fine, even if the check engine light is not, is not sort of lit up because it’s such a life saving thing to catch some of these conditions early.
Andrew Lacy
What do you think is driving these individuals to get a scan? Do you think it’s just not knowing about the service? Because I know I was just randomly going through Instagram one day and a girl named Jessica was like, I just got a whole body scan. I’m like, hold on a minute. I didn’t even know that this was an option. Do you think that it’s more just people don’t know that the resource exists or why are they walking in for the first time finally to get this done?
Andrew Lacy
Yeah, that’s the single biggest hurdle really is, you know, people often ask me, well, who’s your competitors? And I say the biggest competition we have is, you know, just not people not knowing that this solution even exists. And we spend a lot of time and effort and really money trying to educate folks and get the word out. And it’s a slow process. Word of mouth is slow, particularly in the health space. And even when you think that everyone has heard about you in your circle, there are other people that aren’t on Instagram or aren’t part of the sort of Silicon Valley echo chamber or may not be following Kim Kardashian. And for them, they hear about it for the first time. They’re like, oh, my God, I didn’t know that exists. And so we’re, again, very early in that journey.
Andrew Lacy
Probably fewer than 5% of people in the US probably know these scans even exist.
Andrew Lacy
Yeah. So much to do on that front. Well, I hope that the individuals that needed to hear this story today heard it and they get excited about it. I know that, like I said, when I was just randomly looking through reels, I was really excited to come upon it. And I hadn’t heard anyone talking about, I had no idea you guys existed. And I’m pretty good at staying on top of things. And so I was so excited to have you on and share your story and get more people to take this seriously because it’s just. It’s very much like you said, the blood work, the scan, having both of these on a yearly basis.
Andrew Lacy
Game changer. Absolutely. For our health. So thanks again for coming on. Do you feel like there is an area that perhaps we didn’t touch on today that you want to make sure that we touch on?
Andrew Lacy
Well, I’m really excited for, I guess, spreading the word to your audience in some ways, because I know and there’s so much research about just how much sort of health discrimination there is against women in particular, that, you know, it’s so hard to get up the courage to get something checked out when you feel something is not right. And then to be faced with a medical institution that, you know, normalizes a lot of these problems and maybe doesn’t do the testing that they should be doing. I think there’s just so much good that we can do. It sort of becomes an equalizer, these exams, because, again, once you have it and you get those results, there’s really no one that can ignore you.
Andrew Lacy
Yes. Couldn’t agree with you more. Thanks again for coming on, Andrew, and I wish you all the best. And I will be sure to include links to the Pernovo scan, including a discount offering in the show notes. So if you’re unsure of where to look, just head out on over to pernovo.comleanne or I will include the link in the show notes today for everybody. Thanks again for coming on.
Andrew Lacy
Thanks for having me.
Leanne Vogel
I hope you enjoyed our time with Andrew again.
Leanne Vogel
The link that you can go to.
Leanne Vogel
For $300 off your whole body scan is pronovo.com leanne that’s pronovo.com leanne see you back here next week. Bye.
Leanne Vogel
Thanks for listening to the Helpful Pursuit Podcast. Join us next Tuesday for another episode of the show. If you’re looking for free resources, there are a couple of places you can go. The first to my blog, healthfulpursuit.com where you’re going to find loads of recipes. The second is a free parasite protocol that I’ve put together for you that outlines symptoms, testing and resources to determine whether or not you have a parasite, plus a full protocol to follow to eradicate them from your life if you need to. That’s available@healthful pursuit.com parasites and last but certainly not least, a full list of blood work markers to ask your doctor.
Leanne Vogel
For so that you can get a.
Leanne Vogel
Full picture of your health. You can grab that free resource by going to healthfulpursuit.com labs the helpful pursuit Podcast, including show notes and links, provides information in respect to healthy living recipes, nutrition and diet and is intended for informational purposes only. The information provided is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor is it to be construed as such. We cannot guarantee that the information provided on the Healthful Pursuit Podcast reflects the most up to date medical research. Information is provided without any representation or warranties of any kind. Please consult a qualified health practitioner with any questions you may have regarding your.
Andrew Lacy
Health and nutrition program.
Hi! I'm Leanne (RHN FBCS)
a Functional Medicine Practitioner, host of the Healthful Pursuit Podcast, and best-selling author of The Keto Diet & Keto for Women. I want to live in a world where every woman has access to knowledge to better her health.