Dr. Sara Gottfried Joins Levels as Advisor

World-Renowned Physician-Scientist Partners with Levels to Solve Metabolic Health Crisis

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Apr 27, 2021, 09:31 ET

NEW YORK, April 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Levels, the first biowearable system to give real-time biofeedback on nutrition and lifestyle, today announced that Dr. Sara Gottfried has joined as a Research Adviso r. Dr. Gottfried is a Board-Certified Physician, a three-time New York Times best selling author, and Director of Precision Medicine at the Marcus Institute at Thomas Jefferson University. She joins current Levels Advisors including: Ben Bikman, PhD; Dom D'Agostino, PhD; Molly Maloof, MD; and David Perlmutter, MD.

Dr. Gottfried has been on the forefront of innovative thinking about how to optimize health, focusing on the body as a complex unified system and creating a model that incorporates all aspects of a patient's life that affect metabolic function, including sleep, stress, physical activity, diet, nutrients, environmental toxins, hormones, and more. Her science-based, holistic approach supports foundational and sustainable health, while championing N-of-1 experimentation and advanced diagnostic testing for understanding and optimizing metabolic health. Through her research in association with Levels, the partnership seeks to better understand the physiology that drives metabolic health and metabolic dysfunction in nondiabetic individuals, and understand how unique signatures of continuous glucose monitoring data and different "metabolic phenotypes" map onto underlying health.

"Dr. Gottfried's metabolic research, writing and speaking has modernized the medical community's understanding of strategies to approach metabolic health from a root cause perspective, as well as understanding the biomarkers that are most relevant to metabolism," said Dr. Casey Means, co-founder of Levels. "The mission at Levels is to reverse the metabolic disease epidemic. Our work together will pave the way for a better understanding of how metabolic disease develops, how to appropriately track metabolism and early metabolic dysfunction, and opportunities for optimizing current and future metabolic health."

Dr. Gottfried agrees: "The metabolic crisis affecting 70 percent or more of our population is a solvable problem yet most physicians lack the education, incentives and support to provide the personalized nutrition, lifestyle, and behavioral counseling that our patients most need. A systems biology approach direct to consumers can bridge the gap. Our research at Thomas Jefferson University, sponsored by Levels, will help us define the critical transition from health to prediabetes with multi-omic phenotyping, including dense continuous glucose data, which we know will more comprehensively identify the people at greatest risk, and potentially allow us to intervene before insulin resistance is more difficult to reverse. In our initial pilot study at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Medicine, we expect to identify the signature of multiple metabolic phenotypes along the spectrum from health to predisease (i.e., prediabetes), so that in the years to come we can rigorously assess the most effective ways to address the root cause of metabolic dysregulation and improve insulin and glucose pathways with a precision framework that is personalized to the individual using N-of-1 trials. We are tremendously grateful to Levels for their bold vision and leadership in metabolic health."

LEVELS' SOLUTION TO THE METABOLIC HEALTH CRISIS

Over 128 million Americans have prediabetes or diabetes. Of the 34 million people with diabetes, 25% don't know they have it. Of the 88 million people with prediabetes, 90% of them don't know they have it. Levels' mission is to solve the metabolic health crisis by tracking glucose in real-time and providing granular visibility into how diet and lifestyle choices affect health in real-time.

In the same way fitness trackers are worn to quantify physical activity and exercise, Levels measures the impact of one's diet and lifestyle on metabolic health by pairing continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) technology with intelligent software. The month-long Levels program includes two 14-day CGM sensors and access to the Levels app, which provides real-time analysis on how food, exercise, and other lifestyle decisions are impacting your health. Currently in closed beta, Levels has a 120,000+ person waitlist.

ABOUT DR. SARA GOTTFRIED

Sara Gottfried MD is a physician scientist who graduated from Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and completed residency at the University of California at San Francisco. Over the past two decades, Dr. Gottfried has seen more than 25,000 patients, and specializes in identifying the underlying cause of her patients' conditions to achieve true and lasting health transformations, not just symptom management. She is more likely to assess a patient's mutil-omic profile together with next generation biomarkers, and then prescribe a personalized protocol, using primarily nutrition and lifestyle (occasionally drugs) plus other proven interventions to optimize the gene/environment interface. Her focus is executive health and elite athlete care. For nearly every patient, she designs an N-of-1 trial to provide rapid information on whether the personalized plan will improve outcomes. It's not one method fits all. It's not disease-centered. It's a mission to transform healthcare, one patient at a time.

Dr. Gottfried is a global keynote speaker who practices evidence-based integrative, precision, and functional medicine. She is Clinical Assistant Professor in Dept. of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences at Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University, and Director of Precision Medicine at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health. Dr. Gottfried's clinical research focus is metabolic phenotyping. Her three New York Times bestselling books include: The Hormone Cure, The Hormone Reset Diet, and Younger, and her new book, Women, Food, and Hormones, is now available for preorder. Learn more at marcusinstitute.jeffersonhealth.org.

ABOUT LEVELS HEALTH

Levels makes it easy for people to see how their diet is affecting both their health and their lifestyle in a quantifiable way by measuring biomarkers in real time. We are expanding access to continuous glucose monitoring and making it mainstream, focused on people looking to find their optimal diet and improve their metabolic fitness. Our customers are losing weight, optimizing exercise performance, and developing ideal versions of their dietary philosophy of choice.

Casey Means MD (Stanford), Josh Clemente (SpaceX, Hyperloop), Sam Corcos (CarDash, YC), David Flinner (Google), and Andrew Conner (Google) founded Levels to reverse the trend of metabolic dysfunction. Almost 10% of the United States is diabetic and it's increasing globally at an increasing rate—84 million Americans are prediabetic and 70% will be diabetic within 10 years. We're starting with the performance and athletic market to build brand credibility and thought leadership and moving into mainstream health and wellness in 2021.

MEDIA CONTACT
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SOURCE Levels