My Spoonie Sisters
Welcome to My Spoonie Sisters! If you're wondering what a "Spoonie" is, it’s a term lovingly embraced by those living with chronic illnesses, based on the Spoon Theory. It’s all about managing our limited energy (or “spoons”) while navigating life’s challenges.
Each week, join us to hear from your "Spoonie Sisters" host, co-hosts, and our inspiring special guests as we share real-life stories, tips, and encouragement. Whether you're here to learn, connect, or feel less alone, you’ll find a supportive space filled with understanding, laughter, and strength. Let’s journey through chronic illness together!
Tune in and join the sisterhood!
All guests featured or mentioned in this podcast will be listed for your convenience. Don't forget to rate and subscribe to My Spoonie Sisters and follow @MySpoonieSisters on Instagram for updates on new episodes and more. If you have a story to share or want to be featured on My Spoonie Sisters, please email MySpoonieSisters@gmail.com. We eagerly look forward to speaking and hearing from all our Spoonies!
Disclaimer: While we are not doctors or healthcare Practitioners, we want to assure you that this podcast is a credible source of information. It's based on our guests' personal experiences and the strategies we've found effective for ourselves. However, everyone's body is unique, and what works for one person may not work for another. If you have any health-related questions, it's always best to consult your Primary Doctor or Rheumatologist.
Remember, our goal at My Spoonie Sisters is to connect people and provide them with the support and tools they need to live better lives.
My Spoonie Sisters
Guava Your App to Health Tracking
Have you ever felt unheard or dismissed in a doctor's office? Join us as we navigate through the deeply personal health journeys of Isabel and Emily, part of the founding team of Guava Health, who share their compelling stories of battling complex medical challenges and the frustrating experience of not being believed by healthcare professionals. These stories aren't just about struggle—they're the catalyst for innovation at Guava Health, a personal health app designed to change the way we manage our health data. Along with Megan and Jenny, our Spoonie Sisters, we explore how these insights are reshaping healthcare experiences for countless others.
Discover how Guava Health is revolutionizing personal health management with its intuitive platform that brings together every aspect of your health data. More than just a tool, it's a powerful ally that helps you communicate effectively with your healthcare providers. From tracking symptoms and medication reminders to integrating fitness and wellness data, Guava ensures that users can present comprehensive health information, enabling more informed and efficient care. With the introduction of GuavaTags, effortless tracking of daily activities like medication intake becomes a reality, marrying the convenience of technology with the necessity of health advocacy.
Our conversation also takes a deep dive into the importance of accessibility and community feedback in healthcare technology. Guava Health stands out by offering nearly all its features for free, ensuring that financial barriers don't prevent anyone from taking charge of their health. By actively involving users in the app's development, Guava continually evolves to meet their needs, making your voice a vital part of its journey. Through collaboration, shared insights, and empowering tools, we're not just advocating for better healthcare—we're actively transforming it. Tune in to hear how innovative solutions and personal experiences are paving the way for a more inclusive and effective healthcare landscape.
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Welcome back to my Spoonie Sisters. Today, on the pod we have Isabel and Emily from Guava. We have Megan, our beautiful co-host. She's glowing and pregnant. We have Jenny, the original Spoonie sister herself, and then there is me, andy. First we have Isabel, the head of product and founding team member of Guava Health. With a background in molecular genetics, isabel is passionate about merging health and tech to improve lives.
Speaker 1:Joining her is Emily the head of marketing and a founding team member. We're excited to dive into their experiences and learn how Guava Health is transforming the way we manage our health and the incredible work they're doing. Welcome to the pod guys. Thank you so great to be here. Share a little bit about your personal health journeys.
Speaker 4:I've been very fortunate with the providers that I've interacted with. They have generally believed me when I've come in with pain or with issues. I think part of that stems from the fact that I grew up in a really small town in Vermont, so everyone knows each other and it's not like you go see a provider and then you leave and then you don't see them again for a year. You see them in the grocery store. Their kid is playing with you on the club soccer team. It's more of like a smaller community sense and I started having back problems, I don't know when we were in high school together. I was really debilitating when I was at high school and people would see me. They wouldn't believe me. We went to boarding school and the providers that we interacted with were not our local hometown ones. They were like oh you know, you're 14, 15, 16 years old. It's probably a tight piriformis muscle or it's probably just like a coccyx issue and it'll be fine. It took, I think, three or four years. Finally they wanted to try steroid injections. They got an MRI for me and they were like oh well, this looks like it's calcified. You have three herniated slash bouldering discs. You have degenerative disc disease. We can try the steroid injections, but it probably won't work. You're probably going to need surgery.
Speaker 4:I was 17 years old. My mom was not happy with that outcome, but after that point I got back surgery. It was debilitating. I got better, which was lovely. I also have some hormonal stuff which has led to me trying to get a diagnosis with PCOS.
Speaker 4:I recently, because of the back problems and the hip problems, I was seeing a physical therapist and I was trying to get a diagnosis for EDS, because I have since come in contact with so many people with EDS and they're like oh, your symptoms kind of remind me of my symptoms and it's a more mild case, for sure. But just because I was trying to do a lot of body work to try to stabilize my structure, I was trying to figure out exactly what was going on so I could be the best version of myself for my body. The provider was like well, you don't have the body type for EDS. That's more of a Marfan's body type. If you know about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or EDS, there isn't particularly a body type associated with it, it's every body type. It has nothing to do with body type.
Speaker 4:That was interesting where he was a really phenomenal physical therapist. I really really liked him. But that kind of disconnect of information was really eye-opening for me because even though he was great and he really did try to give me the best care possible, it was one of those like he didn't know what he didn't know and so that kind of shortened version of my health history. But that kind of brings me here.
Speaker 3:That was a great summary there was a child who was always in pain growing up. I had so many knee injuries and ankle injuries. I was that one kid who was always on crutches. Everyone had one. I was that kid and no one knew how all this was happening. I would be in such severe pain and there would be no clear reason for the pains. The doctor would just be like stay off your left ankle, let's toss you on crutches. It was never a broken bone or anything. It was really bad pain. They kept saying it was growing pains, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3:I did get screened for Marfan in eighth grade because I fainted. At the eye doctor. They were worried there was something wrong with my heart. I got screened for that in the cardiac sense. Then it kind of left. The connective tissue discussion just stayed there. In eighth grade In high school I was in so much pain too.
Speaker 3:It kept ramping up and I was a huge lacrosse player. I had to quit all sports other than squash. That was a good one. Anything that involved running for more than like three minutes at a time I couldn't really do. I had to quit sports, which was sad because in ninth grade that's a huge part of your identity.
Speaker 3:I saw the physical therapists at school. I went to all these doctors. As Isabel mentioned, we went to a boarding school. They were driving me around to all of these specialists in the area. Finally, one of them realized that my kneecaps were sliding out and that they were really unstable. That kind of explained everything for me. Still, there was no mention of why that could be happening, but at least he discovered what was happening. I, you know, worked on stabilizing my kneecaps, got a little bit better. I was getting really bad finger pain, though, and I went off to college and my fingers stopped working. That was so bad my fingers would just stop working, like once a week I couldn't use my fingers for an hour at a time, and it made doing homework really hard, but it was.
Speaker 3:It was so painful and I didn't know what was happening. Eventually I got actually really sick when I was on a trip with my family and that is the beginning of the end for me. I never felt better after that. I think it was a mosquito-borne illness, we're not quite sure which one. We think it was chikungunya that set me on a long journey of specialist visits. I think I saw 15 different doctors and none of them could figure out what was wrong. I got mono and I was so sick my senior year of college I was going to the doctor once a week. I was looking at my Guava profile recently at the doctor's notes. One of the notes from the student health doctor was like don't know how she's still smiling. This is her fifth week in a row coming in with the fever.
Speaker 3:I graduated and started working, but eventually I was too sick to work and I stopped working and made it my full-time job to figure out what was wrong with me. I was in so much pain every day. It was miserable. I was being bounced from specialist to specialist. I was living up in Boston at the time. Boston is considered one of the best places in the world for healthcare.
Speaker 3:I had access to these amazing doctors, but none of them could figure out what was going on. I was very lucky to have my parents support. They were driving me to all these appointments. It was amazing having them look after me when I felt sick. They could do all that, which I'm very lucky for.
Speaker 3:I was lucky enough to see a private doctor who spent three hours at least listening to me and then diagnosing me. She had all these guesses for different tick-borne illnesses that all came back positive on blood tests. She diagnosed me with EDS, mast cell POTS, you name it, and they were all triggered by these tick-borne illnesses that I had. I had three of them Lyme disease, bartonella and tick-borne relapsing fever in the Bartonellas. The reason I was having finger pain, because it was damaging my nerves and it was really painful. So that brings me to Guava.
Speaker 3:When Isabel messaged me after I made a post on Instagram about how sick I was and how privileged I was to be able to afford to go to a private doctor, I was really upset that others in my shoes who were struggling couldn't afford to see a doctor that took three hours of their personal time to talk to. You, wouldn't get a diagnosis and that really bothered me. I posted about it. Isabel reached out to me like hey, can I talk to you about Guava? I just joined, we're building this thing Now I'm head of marketing Crazy.
Speaker 2:I think that's a good segue. Do you mind telling us what Guava is for the people that aren't familiar?
Speaker 4:Guava is a personal health application that is a holistic platform and pulls all aspects of your health into one place. So instead of having 15 different applications for 15 different things that you care about, it's all under Guava. One of the things to consider is that when you go see a professional, go to the provider's office. That's a couple minutes of your time, so 95, 99% of your health happens outside of that time and it's really relevant for when you're trying to get a diagnosis or when you're trying to convey to the provider what's going on with you or when you're trying to figure out what therapy is going to work best for you.
Speaker 4:With Guava, you know we're integrated with over 60,000 different patient portals. We're integrated with top medical and fitness devices. You can pull in step data or sleep data or heart rate data. You can also track real world information like symptoms, med reminders, mood, reproductive health stuff as well. Guava will also broaden correlations. You can see how the weather is impacting your headaches or how the oatmeal that you eat for breakfast every day is impacting your gastro symptoms. With the visit prep experience. It was built in collaboration with patients and providers and that hopefully facilitates conversations between the patient and provider and tries to bridge the communication gap, to ensure that patients feel they're getting the best care that they can, and then they're articulating what's going on with them and providers have the data necessary to really help them in their health journey. At the end of the day, it's kind of an empowerment tool, I would say.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I met with you one time to have a chat. We're going over everything and I looked at you and, gosh, I'm not even utilizing this app to the best of the ability that it could. I was excited to put all my medical history in there and all that. Oh, maybe I should be logging everything better and more often. I don't think people realize that it's important. We need to log everything because the doctors are there to help us, but they can only do so much. If we don't provide information, we have nothing to give them. We're just like, well, I get this ache once in a while. How are they going to help me? They need to know what it feels like, how often it's happening if there's a certain time of day and then you know, okay, let's think about what the weather's like. What did I eat? Did I not drink enough water? There's so many things. Yeah, yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 4:Our chief medical officer is a really phenomenal doctor. She's great. I love her. Her name is she's my superhero. We want to be her when we grow up.
Speaker 4:But one of the things that she would always say is about and she's the one who introduced me to the phrase like, if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.
Speaker 4:But at the same time, zebras exist and so part of it, whether we like it or not, the onus is on the individual to kind of prove that they are a zebra and not just a horse. If a provider only has a few minutes with you and they look at you and they're like okay, well, based on your demographic, like you probably don't have these things, then it's like how can I convey that I in fact do have these things and I need to be taken more seriously? And provider most of the time. Obviously there's exceptions to the rule. Andy kind of mentioned some exceptions to the rule, but a lot of the times, like providers do try to do good. If you give them the opportunity to, they will, but there's always those providers who aren't that way. Hopefully data forces them to take you seriously, because it's a lot easier to discount someone's personal opinion or take on a situation, but it's a lot harder to do that when you have data to back up your claims.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, doctors love data.
Speaker 5:I want to say that it resonates so much with your guys' stories of just being diagnosed young. I remember when I was in high school and that's when my pain started. Nobody believed me. It was so frustrating. I remember my classmates thought that I was faking it because I had to be on crutches because it started in my knees, but then also having to quit sports. I was big into cross country and tennis and both of those things. I had to stop for a while because obviously I couldn't do it and I didn't know what was wrong with me for a while. So it's really cool to have this. I wish I had this when I was going through my diagnosis journey, because it wasn't until after I had a whole scope of inside of my knee that they realized oh, it's not a mechanical problem Like a torn meniscus, is actually something autoimmune going on. There's a lot of inflammation in here. What are you most proud of in terms of the features of the Guava Health?
Speaker 3:There are so many. I know what Isabel's answer is. Mine is a little bit different. We have an amazing engineering team and they have built many features that I could only have dreamed of, especially when I was going through this process of getting diagnosed. And so when we were building things out and Isabel was talking to me about product learning, about my pain points, I was talking with my mom just about my diagnosis journey because I think so much of it I kind of blacked out and she was at the forefront of it, advocating for me, fiercely supporting me and believing me. I think that I kind of took up a lot of her life for a while, which she says is what being a mother is, and she wouldn't change it if she had to. Well, I guess she would want to make me not sick, but whatever, we were really curious.
Speaker 3:I was going through a lot of different treatments when I was first diagnosed and we couldn't really tell if the treatments were making my symptoms better or worse. It felt like they were making my symptoms much worse every time. I had a list of symptoms that I was experiencing before I started treatment. We'd kind of compare after starting new treatments which symptoms do I still have. Which symptoms do I not have anymore? I kind of forgot about it was a lot of my mom reading symptoms and me being like, yes, yes, yes Now on Guava.
Speaker 3:Correlations can make that happen for you. So when you start taking a new medication, you can see how it affects your symptoms and it is much easier and also makes the treatment process a lot more efficient and effective, because you're not guessing, it's pretty clear all of the correlations are based in science, data science. They're all based in statistics. If you're seeing one that has just popped up, it's statistically significant. I think it's really helpful. I really wish I could have gone back to my doctor and been like okay, so this med was helping this, this med wasn't. I think it would have made my experience a lot easier. That's the one I'm the most proud of, because that was one of my biggest pink points and I hope that it helps others.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the correlations are cool. I hope that helps others. Yeah, the correlations are cool. Mine is the visit prep experience and that is because a common theme that I was hearing really on was this idea that patients thought that they were doing an excellent job of articulating what was going on with them and narrating their health, their symptoms and what they think was happening. Providers who I would talk with would be like I really want to be helpful but I have seven minutes or 12 minutes or whatever it is, and then the rest of the time is spent charting in those seven or 12 minutes, like a person is telling me about their day, like going to pick up their kids and walking up and down the stairs and all of these things that they think are important but aren't helpful for me trying to diagnose them in that particular moment. That was eye-opening because both sides of the equation were like trying to get to the common goal, but there was a breakdown of communication and I'm not a provider. I need to be very clear. I had a crash course on kind of the diagnostic process of like what the questions a lot of providers would ask when a patient comes in, when trying to figure out what's going on with them going through the differential diagnosis, the types of data that they're looking for and the adjectives that they were looking for when someone is describing symptoms. For me, the biggest eye-opening thing was that they were looking for very key adjectives when describing symptoms like dull, radiating, sharp. Even though those are common words, they're not necessarily super common for people to describe their symptoms. That individual thing can really change a diagnostic journey for someone. When we were building out the visit prep experience, we were sure to include the key adjectives that providers were very familiar with and looking out for when asking these questions of patients of oh, what are your symptoms? How would you describe those symptoms? And so they were already there. That way, the patient could be like oh, if I think about it, yeah, this is dull or no, it's not dull, it's actually radiating or sharper. I'm very proud of that experience because it was such a common theme.
Speaker 4:We had someone whose daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor, but it took them an additional two months, I want to say from the time that she started presenting symptoms and seeing specialists to actually being taken seriously, because they saw six or seven specialists and each one was like she's six, she's fine. This is normal that they fall. It took an intervention from a teacher. Being like this is what you need to say to the next provider that you see, because I deal with five and six year olds all the time this is not normal. So use these exact words and tell them. A teacher told you to say this. It was only after that intervention that he was taken seriously and they actually did a brain scan and found the tumor. It shouldn't like. It shouldn't have taken that long. It should have just been an immediate I know something's wrong with my kid and the provider says, ok, let's take this seriously immediately. That's kind of like the. I guess the catalyst for the visit prep was that conversation.
Speaker 3:One of my favorite parts of visit prep is there's a box. When you kind of have a gut feeling with what's going on with you, you can say what you think it is. I think that that's really important, because I always feel like weird when I Google stuff and then I go to the doctor and I'm trying to hint at something that I've Googled and I want them to be the first to say it, because I wanted to come in and be like I've Googled it and this is what I think I have, because then I feel that they'll dismiss me. So it's just kind of nice to have it out there Like all cards on the table.
Speaker 3:Here's what I think it is, and oftentimes I mean the entire time I was sick I kind of was convinced it was the tics, because I just was always getting tic bites growing up. I'd say that to doctors and they'd be like well, chronic Lyme isn't a thing. Yeah, chronic Lyme isn't a thing, or you wouldn't be this sick, or stuff like that. I wish I had been able to be like I swear it's the tics. White coat syndrome is very real.
Speaker 4:Isn't that when your heart rate goes up? That's when you see someone in a position of power, specifically in like a healthcare space, and then you get panicky and black out a little.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was always blacking out. I'd like forget why I was at the doctor. I'd be like, wait, I'm fine, why?
Speaker 2:am I here? I think that's a good point you touched on, though, because even when you're going to the doctor for, say, something like a sinus infection, we worry about sounding like that annoying person. But it's true, sometimes I get them all the time, so I want to just walk in there and be like, okay, this is what it is, I get it all the time. Can we just make this go away quickly? I think having something where you can put that note in real quick, helpful, yeah, game changer.
Speaker 5:I'm a little biased. I don't even feel guilty about Googling my symptoms anymore and telling my doctors, because I'm always trying to get a diagnosis. My primary care doctor he was just diagnosing you with all kinds of tendonitis issues and everything. He was literally on web md trying to figure out what was going on with me no way. So after that I was just like, hey, whatever, that's just kudos to that doctor, yeah I love it when they're not pretending true literally have providers google and webnd right in front of me, like with their back to me, like I can't see over their shoulder.
Speaker 1:I'm like at least you could tell me excuse me for a minute or have a privacy screen or something, say something, but I see you googling the same thing that I googled and I could have did that for free and not wasted any gas. So you know, leave the room google from your phone.
Speaker 2:Be respectful you know, have any of you had them bring in a book like the big giant book? I had them bring in a book because I have um pustular psoriasis and my daughter was starting to present symptoms of psoriasis and they wanted to make sure to let her know that they weren't sure it was psoriasis and to show the thousand different kinds of skin conditions there are and all the many different forms of psoriasis. So he brought out this ginormous book and was flipping through and showing the photos and we got nothing out of the appointment. No result. It's been a few years later and she's still not saying I should have used google at that point, yes, google would have been a lot easier.
Speaker 2:I think it's a scary thing when you see them Googling or bringing out a big, giant book. At least you're being honest, but that's a little scary yeah it is a little.
Speaker 3:It's like oh, I'm placing my diagnoses in your hands and you don't even know. You know as much as I do. Kind of crazy.
Speaker 1:That's a perfect segue, because while I'm over here, I'm up here tinkering away adding stuff into the app. That's what I'm over here. It's it. I'm up here tinkering away adding stuff into the app. That's what I'm doing. I'm nerding out over here, y'all, but I'm nerding out. So from your perspective, since we have this app I love it, by the way, I'm loving everything about it it has the department of veterans affairs in there. Yes, because most apps don't have the VA and I'm a veteran. Most apps don't have the VA and I'm a veteran. Most apps don't have the VA and they got a majority of my record. That's what made me happy. I kind of went out here uploading stuff. But anyway, from your perspective, what do you have in the app? What do you think are the biggest gaps in digital health management? That's a good question as a whole. What do you think are the gaps and how does Guava Health bridge the gap in digital health?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'd say dispersed health information is one of the biggest gaps. I think that's the first gap that we aimed to fill with Guava, just because so many people have those medical binders where they have all of their health records. I had my children's hospital records printed out. I had, you know, mass General, beth Israel, my pediatrician everything printed out in that one place. My mother would print out everything, keep every record, put it in there. Eventually it got too much. We stopped doing that. There's no way to keep track.
Speaker 3:I think Guava really fills that gap, because we'd go to doctors and they'd be repeating the same blood tests. I'd be like I could have sworn I'd had this blood test it's not on your record and I'd be like same blood tests. I'd be like I could have sworn I'd had this blood test it's not on your record, and I'd be like, well, I see five other doctors at different places. So I think Guava really helps that, because now I can pull it up on my Guava profile and be like okay, I just had it done last week. Here it is.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that's what's exciting me the most about it right now. Okay, is that every time I go to the VA they go well, did you have that done? But they send us out on community care that never actually sends the records back in.
Speaker 1:So then the veteran has to chase their tails trying to find their records to bring back to the veteran space right to give it to them for them to upload, and it's an absolute pain in the tail. I was just at the VA earlier today and they cannot find some of my records that were from community care. They never got them, so this conversation was needed. I'm all here and now all my records are going to be conveniently located, so they cannot tell me that I didn't do it. I appreciate y'all for this.
Speaker 3:I hope we can help with that. I mean, I'm sure we can. That's amazing.
Speaker 4:So this is not my answer to the question. It was just thought that stemmed from what you guys are talking about. But a lot of people have the misconception that there is a centralized health record database in the US for everyone in the US, and that could not be further from the truth, and so that was really interesting to learn more about, because I also, before working at Guava, it was like if I go see a provider in the state of Vermont regardless of where in the state of Vermont, because that's where I'm originally from any of the providers will be able to access my records and no, like they will be to this day, be faxing records. No, I don't know of any other institution that still uses fax machines, and on a good day, that's on a good day of like oh, we have this patient here, we need their records, and you get 70% of their records or some portion. It's never 100%, and so it's really the responsibility is on the individual themselves to get their information to all of their providers, and that is a full-time job that takes so much time usually. And so, hopefully, to Emily's point, with Guava, since it all is integrated into one place, it makes a lot easier because it's like okay, here's my seven different facilities that I've received care at and here's my wearable data. Let me just send all of that over and then one and done and that's good.
Speaker 4:Or if I'm sitting in front of a provider who asks like have I received that lab test recently?
Speaker 4:I don't have to try to remember all of my login information for all of my different patient portals and can instead just be like let me quickly search that lab test in particular and see what pops up and when. The last date of getting that test was. That's kind of like why we did the emergency card too, because one of the things that Emily said when we were chatting early on and she was still really sick was that she was always really worried about traveling because she didn't want to pass out near a hospital that didn't have her records oh, I forgot that I did this which most hospitals around the world, let alone the US. So we were like OK, if you have all of your information, guava, how can we make essentially a different vehicle for that information so you feel more confident being able to travel and if there's an emergency, that you aren't going to be given one of the 15 different meds that she happens to be allergic to or dies or whatever I know.
Speaker 3:I used to have a medical alert bracelet and that just wasn't cutting it. I have sometimes airborne anaphylaxis to walnuts specifically, but I have a million food allergies. I was calling all of the hospitals in Boston so they could have a patient record set up for me, just in case I was taken there by ambulance at any point. I called and set up a patient record and I had all of my drug allergies on there. I had everything and they were like why are you doing this? But now I don't do that because I have my Boba card on me always. It's a lot less stressful now I have a lot less anxious about it.
Speaker 4:Annie Tantor, your question about the gaps in digital health I think part of it is that logging is a pain. So the passive data coming from the healthcare facilities and the wearable devices is super easy, like that is no touch. So it's just like as you go to the provider, those records go into your patient portal and then they're automatically ported into Cova. Same thing with wearables. Like you go to bed at night and you wake up, that sleep is recorded and sent to Guava. The tougher ones are the ones that require you to be active.
Speaker 4:Where it's like I took this med or I'm experiencing this symptom, and when you're in a brain fog or a flare up or not feeling well, one of the last things that you want to do is log that information. It's really important to have it. I think that's kind of a big thing that we are constantly working on is trying to make it less manual and make it a lot easier to log that important information so that it doesn't take as many spoons or as much energy to do and that way that data is still quality without you having to press a bunch of buttons in an app. Can you tell listeners about?
Speaker 3:GuavaTags Sure, that's funny. So GuavaTags are our newest product, physical product. They're so exciting. We had so much fun. We did one week where all of us focused on making GuavaTags, coding it, doing the marketing for it, etc. Etc. The engineering team did an incredible job.
Speaker 3:But they're basically NFC tags and we have different stickers you can put on them. This is one for activity, these are meds, this is food, this is water. We all have them on our water bottles. What they are is an NFC tag and you just tap your phone to it. Bottles what they are is an NFC tag and you just tap your phone to it. I really am wishing that.
Speaker 3:But here is my coffee. I'm putting the water tag on it right now. Let's pretend there's water in there. When I tap my phone to it, it'll log that I drank water and I can set it up. So it logs how much water is in here and it's so easy to set up. I just tap my water bottle anytime I finish it and it logs 32 ounces of water and it's incredible. I have them on all my med boxes and I tap it and they'll be like hey, I'm meds taken, so it's a lot easier to log your meds. To admit, I was pretty bad at logging meds, but this has made it so much easier and a lot of people have had fun setting up their Guava Tags. We get pictures every day from people being like look what I did with my Guava Tags, and it is so fun seeing all of the creative uses for them. I love it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's really bridging like the physical and the digital world, because the digital exists kind of out of sight, out of mind, a lot of the time and Guava Tags are the physical reminder. I have it on my as-needed meds, which in reality are my everyday meds, but I still call them my as-needed meds. But it's helpful because I open the bottle, I take the med and I tap my phone to it and it immediately logs it without me having to tap into an app and then tap logging buttons. And it is fun to Emily's point, like people have printed out poop emojis, for example, and stuck them on guava tags and then put them in their bathrooms. First of all, there are some really cute poop emojis.
Speaker 3:So I am a huge fan. There have been a lot of poop emojis. We've been kind of into it. It's fun.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and same with mood or someone, I think, created one for like activities and they just, they get really creative because there's so many artists in the space of people who have chronic conditions and so it's been really, really cool to see people have like their own sticker set that they put on the guava tags, so okay yes, let's hear, I have a question.
Speaker 1:I have a live question. Okay, real time, you're here to answer. So what factors affect your health? How do I do this? Because I'm trying to figure out life in the right now moment. What am I supposed to be selecting? Because I know, like you should put like the factor right and the metric In my current, right now moment. I am trying to figure out why I feel like I feel, but my cardiologist can't figure out why I feel like I feel, but I can't put words to it. But I also want to select a factor, but I don't know what it is that you understand what I'm saying, totally know what you're saying.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Speaker 3:Trying to think creatively about how to answer this.
Speaker 4:Are you on the insights page or the insights tab? Yeah, okay, so you're on the correlations feature. That one will become more relevant the more you log, the more you log, or the more information that you have, so that will make it a lot more obvious. I would say, with what you're doing right now I'm assuming you got that free version, which you can then I think that steps is affecting my heart rate or I think that the air pressure is affecting it or the heart symptoms I'm experiencing the only thing that you could do is, with premium Guava will run tens of thousands of possible relationships and then surface the statistically significant ones.
Speaker 4:So as more information comes into Guava, it will be looking for patterns and then be here are all of the things that we found that have a relationship with the output that you care about or the metrics that you care about. That's actually really insightful, because a lot of people have been like oh, I had a theory that the ramen noodles that I was eating was impacting my gastro symptoms, but I didn't even think about the temperature outside affecting my gastro symptoms, but I didn't even think about the temperature outside affecting my gastro symptoms or the PT that I was doing or the yoga that I was doing was affecting my gastro symptoms, and also it's not causative, it's correlative. So take that as you will.
Speaker 3:Yeah, here's a little personal story. I was having the worst abdominal pain ever. I'm talking on the floor, couldn't get up. This was last year. I did not know why this was happening. I wasn't on my period. There was nothing that made sense as to why this was happening. I was in a phase where I was logging everything on Guava because we had come out with a bunch of new features, so I was testing them out and trying to get use out of them. To give feedback to Isabel, I was logging everything I ate, which includes the gum that I was chewing. I had switched guns. It was correlated with my insane abdominal pain. I stopped chewing it. I've never had it again. Insight popped up and it was like trident peppermint an abdominal pain up 79% or something. I didn't expect to check. And Guava told me and I think I also was checking every day all the food I was eating. I'd like put it in Is this going anywhere? Is X affecting my abdominal pain? And I'd be waiting for something statistically significant.
Speaker 2:Real quick. There's a free version, but can you explain what comes in the upgraded paid version? Sure.
Speaker 4:So with the premium version it will do. The automatic correlations is one of the biggest ones. The other one is unlimited access to the Guava Assistant. The Guava Assistant is where you can ask questions on your health. You can be like how are my symptoms trending this week? Or what have my blood pressure readings been for the last few times that I've seen a doctor, or something you talk to him every day. Yeah, you can also log with your voice, which is really nice. And that's another accessibility thing that we've put in recently, where it's log that I had coffee at 7 am and that I also woke up with a headache 6 out of 10 pain. Log that I went for a 30-minute run yesterday and that I have a mood of 5 out of 5 at noon today, and it will capture all of those isolated bits of information and will verify with you, like does this look right? Yes, no. And then it will automatically log it for you, which is great because there's no button pressing involved, it's just monologuing. That's part of the premium.
Speaker 4:Another one is for people with a lot of paper records. I think you can have one or two records with the free version, but with premium it's unlimited. You can take a picture of your paper record or upload it any other way you want, and it will parse out the information. So that's really big with lab tests where they exist all over the place and instead of having them just exist in those like 15 different pieces of paper, it will all be ported together and be put into one graph on Guava and so you can actually see the data changing over time for any individual metric, which is really nice. I think those are the main ones. You also get a Guava emergency card as part of it, and I'm sure missing a few things. To us, accessibility is super important because many people have very different financial situations and we want to make sure that we're not blocking for the end user, slash, end patient. That's kind of why the model is the way it is.
Speaker 3:I mean a lot of people who are chronically ill and in marginalized communities. You know they don't have the opportunity to be heard and listened in the healthcare space as much. They don't have many advocates. We wanted to act as kind of a stand-in advocate for those who need it most and be someone's partner in that and build them up and help them be the best advocate they can be for themselves. I think the best way to do that is by making it accessible to everyone. That is our reasoning for having almost every feature available on the free version. I think that it's something unique about us. I'd say.
Speaker 5:I was just introduced to this app today, so I am very, very excited to start using it. I didn't even know that it existed until very recently. I'm very excited to download it and use it and recommend it to my clients too, because I know that a lot of them struggle with a lot of the things that you were saying not being able to convey what you're experiencing day basis in terms of tracking or logging things and symptoms. Thank you for that. This is amazing.
Speaker 1:I second everything that Megan said. This app is phenomenal. I'm excited about it. It's already changing my life because I see a trillion people. I'm excited about it. It's already changing my life because I see a trillion people and I'm on all the meds right. It is literally just making my life that much easier in the right now moment. But I do have a question for both of you. So you did this big thing and this big thing is changing. It's going to change the game. What do you tell teenage you, looking back at her, when she was mad, when she was frustrated, when she wanted to give up? What do you tell her? Gaslit, I know that's a really hard thing.
Speaker 3:Maybe I would tell her gaslighting exists. I don't think that was even something that was 15 years ago and I would maybe tell her hey, some doctors will gaslight you. Don't listen to them. Don't give up. There is something wrong. Listen to your gut when you think there's something wrong with your body, there is Emily. I'd also tell her, the girl that lives down the hall from you, isabel, in our dorm, bissell. You guys will build something really incredible together and get to work together to help people who are going through something that you're going through right now, and it gets better.
Speaker 4:I would tell teenage me that providers are people too. They are not walking encyclopedias who know everything. From what Emily said and experiencing my own stuff, you do know your body best, and so, if you think that something's going on, to continue advocating for yourself and getting what you're passionate about, and try to work with people that you really love working with, because that makes a huge difference when you're in the thick of it day to day. I think that that's really important and something that doesn't get talked about enough, I think when you're a teenager, where it's, here's this tunnel vision of what the society expects of you and what we want you to do, and instead everyone marches to the beat of their own drum.
Speaker 3:It's okay if your path is linear. You know, mine wasn't. I let that get to me sometimes because so much of our value in this society is based on our productivity and what we do for work. And when I was sitting in bed, going through a year of treatment, not able to keep any food down for months at a time, etc. Etc. I felt like I was a drain on society and that it was so embarrassing that I wasn't doing the linear path of get an amazing job after college, move out, get an apartment. But I think that everything happens for a reason. I think there's a reason I went through that. It was so I could help others who were going through that as well and help them feel a little bit more heard. You're not in a drain on society. That's also something. Thanks, isabel. Oh, that's another thing. I'm not.
Speaker 2:I'm not Woohoo, no one is. There's something I tell people quite often and it's that we all have something to offer and it just might look a little different, and that's okay, absolutely. Thanks again for your time. This has been such a pleasure and I'm so, so excited for everyone to learn more about this. Thank you.
Speaker 3:We love any opportunity to talk about Guava because we're excited that it exists and that we can help people. So thanks for giving us a platform.
Speaker 4:Something that I do want to mention before we hop off is the fact that pretty much everything that we've built to date and we plan on building in the future is based on community feedback. That happens because, instead of building in a vacuum with eight voices, it's how do we get as many diverse voices to the table as possible to build something that is as effective as possible for as many people as possible. It's important to us that people continue reaching out. Hey, this works, love this. Or hey, there was a bug here. Or hey, it would be amazing if you could incorporate this into the Guava ecosystem.
Speaker 3:The best way to let us know what you think or if you have any ideas is probably social media. You don't even need to follow us, just mention us in a story if you want us to see something, or message us directly. Will see it and we appreciate your feedback. We take every feedback into account.
Speaker 4:We read every email too, and I are the ones on social media.
Speaker 3:But if you read every email, you might get a faster response from us on social media, but that's the best way to reach us. If you have any dreams of a guava feature, always let us know. We can maybe make them happen most definitely everyone out there.
Speaker 2:Don't forget your spoon and try to have a great day.
