00:00:06 Archita: Most of us treat the air like background noise. Invisible. Not my problem. But what if environmental awareness isn't a big global concept. It's a tiny daily relationship with what we breathe, what we're exposed to, and what our body keeps trying to tell us. Today, we are making the invisible practical.

00:00:29 Archita: Welcome back to the Wellness Reimagined, where we take wellness out of the trend cycle and bring it back to real life. Real bodies and real choices. I'm Markita and today I am joined by Eric Kloss, founder of Daily Breath, a mobile app helping people measure air quality, track symptoms, understand their specific allergens and pollutants, and take action both in daily habits and upstream interventions to avoid bad health outcomes. We are talking about environmental wellness, what it actually means, how it shows up in our lives, and how to respond without fear or overwhelm. So Eric, welcome, welcome to Wellness Reimagined and I'm so glad to have you today.

00:01:17 Eric Klos: Well, thank you very much. I really am excited about being on Wellness Reimagined because I believe that really, uh, environmental wellness is essentially wellness reimagined. Um, it's a component of our health. Um, when I started the business, I really felt that environmental determinants of health were neglected by the medical community. And so that's one of the reasons I felt compelled to start with, uh, respiratory conditions, um, initially as my focus. And now, you know, with the emergence of Covid and our understanding of air quality, uh, people are beginning to realize it has an impact on our overall health. So, um, and our wellness, our well-being. Right. And so, uh, we're learning, uh, every day more and more evidence is coming out about those impacts on our health. And so I think daily breath is an excellent platform for, uh, an individual determining what their specific, uh, vulnerabilities are when it comes to allergens and pollutants in the air they breathe.

00:02:22 Archita: Absolutely. And it's such a niche topic, but it, you know, in the long term, it is so important because everybody seems to care about the environment, but not in the way that it really matters. So yeah. Um, and today I, I, I really hope that this conversation helps them, uh, put things into a different perspective. So before we get into tools and data, um, Eric, what was the moment that made this personal for you? Not the business idea moment, but the human one that made you think that we need to pay attention to what we breathe.

00:03:02 Eric Klos: Right. Well, so when I was starting, um, in, in, uh, with technology, you tend to develop a minimum viable product, right? So I was developing an MVP. And, um, what struck me, uh, in the area of asthma specifically was, um, it's respiratory difficulty. So when people have difficulty breathing, you know, if they have asthma or COPD, they have an exacerbation and it's sometimes called an asthma attack or a COPD attack. And what that means is they've probably been exposed to something that's created some airway inflammation, um, that causes them to have difficulty. And more often than not, the medical community has either a rescue or relief inhaler that they prescribe for the person to use the patient to use if that occurs. Um, and then, um, it's also emerged that, you know, maybe an individual might have a daily medication that they take, um, to basically modify their airways so that they won't be impacted by a trigger, right. Um, so that's kind of where the asthma treatment paradigm is. But what really struck me is there was an article on one summer about a young woman in Iowa, um, actually maybe Nebraska, and she had gone to Iowa for, uh, the Fourth of July weekend and they were going to a, uh, an amusement park that weekend. And this story recounted how, um, her name was diamond and, uh, diamond went to the amusement park, had a really wonderful day and everything else, but, you know, out in Iowa, there probably was, you know, pesticides in the air and, you know, who knows what kind of pollutants were in the air? It was hot, it was humid. It was, you know, summer day. Right. And so all of that kind of converges in a way, um, to have some pollution that that is impacting you. But, um, in this particular story, then she, you know, had a nice dinner with the family, went to a hotel and then went down to the, you know, hotel pool and the pool, you know, you, if you've ever been to a hotel pool. It's often cleaned with chlorine, and chlorine is kind of a toxic chemical that can have some effects on some patients who have asthma. And so she had an asthma attack. And unfortunately she stopped breathing and she stopped breathing for, you know, more than, you know, essentially, if you don't, if you don't recover breathing within three minutes, there's serious health consequences. Right? And in her case, she didn't really, um, get, um, you know, assistance for about twenty minutes. So she was not breathing for twenty minutes. So that ultimately meant she ended up paralyzed. But what struck me is I found an article that said, um, doctors trying to pinpoint a trigger for asthma attack leaving young girl in ICU. Right. And so that was kind of the moment for me. It was like, why are we pinpointing triggers after the fact? Why can't we pinpoint triggers? You know, you know, that a that a particular individual, you know, is vulnerable to and then, you know, over time predict for that individual when they're vulnerable to having a negative outcome, a negative health outcome, you know, that ultimately is very traumatic. I mean, in this case, the young woman, she, I noticed about a year and a half ago that she actually ended up dying, but she lived almost eight years as a paraplegic, and her family was dramatically impacted by that event. And so, you know, it's like you, you hear about people who die of asthma attacks, but there's so many other people that are negatively impacted by these types of situations. And it just struck me that, you know, I think the statistic I saw at one point was there's thirty thousand asthma attacks every day in America and five thousand of those. Oh, you know, about, I think it's fifteen, Sixteen percent are lead to er visits. And then of that amount um a thousand of them end up in long term hospital stays. And then, you know, in the United States alone, there's ten people a day die of an asthma attack. So I realized that there just was a lot of gaps in how we were treating these patients who are vulnerable to allergens and pollutants. Um, and that was really the story that kind of inspired me. Um, diamond, uh, was the kind of the linchpin and this idea that, you know, why are doctors trying to pinpoint triggers after the fact instead of trying to anticipate, uh, what patient's vulnerabilities are?

00:07:53 Archita: Oh, that that story is indeed very scary. And I, I can definitely see how that was a turning point for you. And, but yeah, I'm really sure, I'm really glad that you at least came across that and had this wonderful idea about your, your app. So at least one good thing came out of it. So now. Yeah. So Eric, now I'm curious. Um, what's the biggest misunderstanding people have about environmental wellness? Like the thing that we get wrong right from the start?

00:08:29 Eric Klos: Well, I think there's two things. One is a misperception, um, around how the issue has been portrayed. Right? So it's been portrayed more of a public health issue. This impacts all lots of people in a community. And that's true, but it impacts individuals. And each of us, just like our genetics are, are unique, right? Our we have an environmental footprint. Different pollutant pollutants affect me differently than they may affect you. Right. Um, so we have a personalized, um, vulnerability or sensitivity to specific allergens and pollutants. And instead society has kind of an approach that says, you know, here's what air quality is for a community and it doesn't differentiate how the individual is impacted. So what I felt was there was a personalized approach that was needed, not just a public health approach. And so sometimes I use the term personalizing public health, right? Because we want to take this as not kind of, um, broadcast or distributed information. We want it to be information that's more personal to the individual so that they're compelled to take action. I think people are more often compelled to take action where they know specifically how things impact them personally, as opposed to just kind of seeing a weather report and seeing some AQI variable. So that's one component. The second component is, unfortunately, when you look at an air quality index, that air quality index is describing a measurement for pollutants that covers a five kilometer or three point one mile radius, uh, from, you know, where you are, where your geo located. And the reason that is, is because most of our data sources for air quality are satellite observational data, or they're fixed sensors that are ultimately modeled into estimates. So it's an estimated model of what your specific pollutants are in the area. So it's, you know, it's a it's an attempt to make the invisible visible, but it's a fairly poor attempt because it's not very granular information or very local information. Now, what's nice about this is, you know, and I started this almost eight to nine years ago. Um, but what's nice is that the sensor measurements that are coming are getting better and better. So we now have mobility based sensors where you have air quality sensors being placed on top of car vehicles, right? Those are really good for mapping urban air quality. Um, and you're getting down to like a one meter level, right? Which means that's, you know, basically, um, the air right around where you breathe, right? I've even seen wearable air quality monitors, right? Uh, that potentially daily breath will be able to connect to in the future so that the person is actually retrieving air quality information right from, you know, on a, on a sensor that's, you know, they're, that's a keychain that they're wearing, right? So, um, the opportunity now is coming where we're going to be able to have very, very localized information and therefore very personally relevant information, right? And that's what really should, um, provide people the environmental awareness and then intelligence by learning what their personalized pollutants are that impact them. Um, that allows them to take some action or change behaviors. We have some ideas coming with daily breath where we're actually, um, working on with this partner that's got the mobility based sensors, um, creating what we call healthy routes, right? We can actually map a city and then the user will basically be able to put a starting point and an ending point for their walk or their run, or maybe they're going to a park and it'll actually calculate in the background through AI based on what that air quality map is looking like. What are the best routes for you to take? That's like essentially a clean air route where you'll be exposed to less pollutants. So that's what's really, really exciting. There are some gaps that have been there from the very beginning. But I think we're beginning to move in both cases to more local environmental data available to actually correlate more personalized information for the individual. And that's really actionable information. It's like we're going to be able to create alerts once we realize you have a specific threshold that causes you more difficulty, let's say for nitrogen dioxide, which is specifically traffic pollution, you know, we'll be able to identify and send you alert that says, you know, nitrogen dioxide is very high in your area. So you need to be aware of that. And in some cases, I mean, you know, obviously with Covid, um, people got more comfortable with masks. In some cases, it may mean if you're vulnerable, if you have asthma or COPD, if you're walking down a corridor that has high levels of nitrogen dioxide. You probably should be wearing a mask. You don't want to create what I call kind of the onset symptoms, right? You don't want to develop the inflammation. That's the seeds for an asthma attack. It's called a symptom march. Right. You get exposed to something initially and that, you know, creates some level of inflammation. But then you go further along and maybe you have allergic asthma, and now you're exposed to a pollen allergen, right? A tree allergen or something like that. And that exacerbates the inflammation, right? Um, and then maybe you, you know, go into an area where it's exposed to another type of pollution, right? And then ultimately that's the trigger for an event, you know, an asthma exacerbation or asthma attack. Um, so this is where I think, uh, technology is catching up in various ways, whether it's sensors, um, whether it's the actual data or whether it's the personalization that Daily Breath offers.

00:15:06 Archita: Absolutely. Because, you know, it's not just about being sick or not sick. It's about, uh, exposure adding up quietly until your body finally waves a red flag. And, uh, most of the time it's, it's too late to realize that. So definitely. Exactly. And yeah, let's, let's stay with this for a moment. So, uh, Eric, if someone is listening and thinking, okay, but, uh, how would I even know this is affecting me? What are the everyday signs you've seen people connect to air quality or allergens, uh, fatigue, headaches, um, brain fog, sleep, skin, what tends to show up?

00:15:48 Eric Klos: Right. So, so that's a good point. And that's where we are expanding a lot of the symptoms that we describe in the app, right? So most of the symptoms initially were based on respiratory symptoms. Right? Um, you know, it would be, you know, sneezing or coughing or shortness of breath or various things like that. And usually what we ask people to do is, you know, record the symptoms as soon as you start to feel it. It's not like we're asking you to record the symptom. Like when you have an asthma attack, right? We're asking you to, to really, you know, be sensitive to what your body is telling you, right? So you need to know your body a little bit. And usually if you ask an asthma patient, they tend to know when they start to feel some onset symptoms. But to your point, when we expanded it to the air you breathe in your health, it really kind of opened up a whole range of other symptoms that we had to track. And not only symptoms specifically like headaches and, you know, brain fog and things like that, which, you know, were accommodated in the app. We don't have that in there yet. Um, but the other things, um, you know, essentially we wanted to start to track what I call wellness, right? Essentially, it's like what we wanted to do was say, do you feel better the same or worse than yesterday? Right? So we started so we could start to develop patterns that would say, wait a second, a person is indicating to us kind of this pattern of, they've been bad for like five days in a row. What's the pollution levels for that last five days? Right. And is that particularly impacting the individual when they say they feel worse? Right. And this particular type of scenario would be let's say there's wildfire smoke, which is more of an incidental event. It's not your daily pollution, but it's an event that's caused by obviously wildfires. But let's say, you know, you have a wildfire smoke event and for whatever reason, you're just feeling worse, right? If we can track that, then we're beginning to start to correlate that. You have more difficulty when there's wildfire smoke present in your community, right? So I think we're continuing to expand this understanding. And again, that's why this wellness reimagined is very important because we're reimagining what, how do we track the, the environmental conditions that are impacting everyday health and wellbeing? Right? That's what we're trying to do. And this is part of a new initiative, you know, across the, you know, around the world, you know, around longevity. You know, we're now suddenly realizing that, well, wait a second, maybe pollution has a deteriorating effect on our health, right? And that's not good, right? And if, if, if one of our goals is longevity and how do we maintain longevity, then we have to reimagine what actually wellness means, right? And wellness can't mean that we're consistently exposed to bad air pollution, bad air quality, right? And so that's, that's what I think is really transformational in kind of how things are changing. Um, and hopefully, you know, we're trying to create daily breath as a platform that can meet that, meet that challenge in the future.

00:19:20 Archita: Yeah, definitely. And I'm so glad for this conversation because now finally, so many people will actually know the impact, uh, you know, environment has on us and also about your app and like you just said, I think, um, wellness shouldn't turn into hyper vigilance. The goal isn't to fear the environment. It's to understand your body's language and respond with care. So yeah, you have, you have explained it perfectly. So Eric, for the listener who's struggling, tired, inflamed, foggy and maybe not being taken seriously. What would you want them to remember about their body and their environment so they don't feel alone or powerless?

00:20:06 Eric Klos: Right. Well, so here's where I think this is where, you know, an empowered patient. And I think we're seeing that, you know, um, the empowered patient, um, is beginning to emerge as, uh, you know, being much more willing to advocate for their own health. Right. And I think that's where the medical community and patients are beginning to come up, not against each other, but they're trying to figure out what does that look like? You know, between the patient and, let's say the physician, right? And I think in this case, you know, the, um, the patient needs to be, you know, aware of this, right? We're making the invisible visible. And once they are more aware of this, you know, we're going to try to empower the patient to have tools, right? And so like one example is, you know, we have something called the table view of symptoms. And what that does is that tracks when you record a symptom, it may give you the time of day. Um, it may give you the date. Um, and then it'll give you okay, here are the weather variables, here are the actual AQI measurements and here is the pollen measurements. And so the idea is we're starting to look at that. And you know, you can trend, you know, by week by month. And we'll offer these and we'll allow people to export that to, you know, a CSV file or an Excel spreadsheet. And we'll even probably be developing some visualizations, right? And so what we're trying to do there is empower the patient to have something that says, hey, listen, this is how I'm being affected by my environment. This is how it's affecting my body. You know, um, you know, what, what can you suggest? Or, you know, I've noticed that, you know, the medication that I have, you know, it seems not to be working on these particular days. You know, when pollution is really bad, right? Maybe the medication that's been prescribed has hit a plateau effect, and it's not really having the effect of, you know, relieving the airways, right? So, you know, maybe there's opportunities to modify. Um, you know, uh, the drug that's been prescribed to an individual in the future, but the idea is really empowering the patient to have more data. And by being empowered with data, be able to share that with the doctor for, you know, for a couple of reasons. I mean, yes, there's the issue of prescribing particular treatments, but again, we're trying to mobilize, you know, the health system to be more focused on preventative health, right? Um, and, you know, one of the things we're accommodating is where your symptoms indoors or outdoors, right? And so if we begin to understand that people are having more symptoms indoors, you know? Can we take proactive action indoors, you know, to, um, one of the things that I'm now focusing on is one of the goals is to help you inhale less of the problem, right? The problem is pollution or allergens that affect you, right? But how do you inhale less of those, right? So maybe it's you have an allergen spray that you use that neutralizes some of the pollen allergens that may impact you. Or maybe you need an air purifier. Um, you know, one of the things you know is the bedroom is a real problem for many people who have asthma. Um, and, you know, especially those who have allergic asthma, and that's because there's lots of allergens in the bedroom, right? So maybe that's where you spray an allergen spray, or maybe that's where you should have a room air purifier, right? So that you're, you know, taking out, you know, or cleaning the air in your immediate vicinity and again, giving you the best opportunity to inhale less of the problem so that you don't experience symptoms or have, you know, a deterioration of health. So there's lots of things that are emerging from a solution perspective. And then, you know, again, when we get to indoor air quality Covid exposed, I think that, you know, people can get, uh, you know, obviously ill in very close quarters, right? Whether it's at work or at home or whatever. Um, but I think that that's been another part of it that people are beginning to wake up, wake up and go, wait a second, how are our buildings made and how is our heating, air conditioning and refrigeration systems within our, our house or our or our buildings? How are they constructed? You know, are we are we, are we actually doing the things we need to do to have clean air systems in our buildings? Right? Um, you know, ironically, we have these systems with ducts that go through and convey air and then, you know, distribute it out, out of, out of vent into a into a room or an office or a, or a room in a house. And the, and the real question is, well, do we clean those vents, those, those ducts? You know, many times those ducts might go twenty, twenty five years not cleaned. Well, guess what's collecting in there? Dust, right? Pollutants, allergens, all of those kinds of things. So we're literally having air pass through something, pick up allergens and pollutants on the way and then come out the vent, right. And then we wonder why we have rooms that have poor indoor air quality, right? So, I mean, this is the thing that, um, we're starting to understand, um, going back to the invisible, making the invisible visible. One of the things that, um, I'm writing a blog on actually right now is basically about, you know, putting certain things out there that have filters in them and just running them for a month in your house. Right. And then, you know, look at that filter when it's after, after a full month, and you will be amazed at how much pollutants are captured in that filter in just one month. And it and it's a way of, again, making this problem that's really invisible, much more visible to the user, to the person, to the patient, so that they understand, you know, you're being exposed to this every day, right? And you need to figure out a way to fight a battle against the pollutants that are in your air. Right? I think we need to mobilize people, you know, against this problem. And yes, I believe that, you know, policy and regulation for managing air pollution outdoors is necessary. But at the same time, when it's an immediate issue that concerns your health, you need to take action personally, right? It's not we have time to wait for public policy to move. You know, you have to take, you know, a position of this is my health and I know that this is a threat. So what are the things I'm going to do to protect my health today?

00:27:02 Archita: Wow, that was really important. Whatever you have shared today, Eric, I think all of it is holds such great importance for our health. And this conversation has really made me rethink a lot of things, uh, about our day to day lives about, uh, you know, our surroundings and I'm sure our listeners feel the same way. So thank you once again for sharing such helpful insights and advice with all of us today. And yeah, Eric, uh, where can people find daily bread and what's the best way for them to start using it without overcomplicating things?

00:27:39 Eric Klos: Yes. Um, so daily bread is available via Google Play, uh, and via the Apple app Store. Um, just type in daily breath. You'll find it. No problem. It's daily breath. The air you breathe. Um, and there's a free version. And once you get in there, there's a ninety nine cent version annually. I mean, it's a small price. There's a couple of other features in there, um, that are beneficial things like automatic medication reminders, um, things like scheduled notifications. You can identify your favorites, places where you repeatedly go. So you want to check, uh, you know, the pollutants in that particular location, you can quickly do that. Um, and then as I indicated, there's a table view that's a, that's a part of the paid version, but then that gives you a sense of what the trending is associated with the pollutants that you're exposed to. When you experience symptoms. Um, so that's the, uh, where the app is located. And if you want to know any information, uh, w w w dot com is the website to visit. Um, and I really appreciate this opportunity to be on wellness reimagined and I hope people will reimagine wellness to include environmental factors.

00:28:54 Archita: Amazing. And we'll make sure all of those details are available in our show notes so that our listeners can feel free to reach out to you and access your app easily. So if there's one thing I can take out of today's conversation, it's this environmental wellness is the practice of noticing what you're exposed to and responding with small, steady choices that protect your future self. If today's conversation stirs something in you, let it be simple. You don't need to control the whole world to care for your body. Start with with one question what am I breathing and what is it doing to me? And from there, choose one small act of protection, one small act of awareness. This is the wellness reimagined. I am, and I'll meet you again soon for another honest conversation about living well in the world we actually live in. Take care of yourself.