Will Your Bathroom Replace Your Primary Care Doctor?
Dr. Dave Heitmann on AI, personalized relevance, and the bathroom technologies reshaping the future of healthcare.
Your toilet, your mirror, your scale — in the near future, they’ll know more about your health than your doctor does. In this podcast, Dr. Dave Heitmann explains how AI, wearables, and bathroom sensors are transforming healthcare from annual snapshots to real-time relevance. What happens when your bathroom becomes the front line of preventative medicine?
Key Bullet-Point Summary
Dr. Dave shares his early journey from aspiring NFL player to sports medicine expert.
The shift from the “age of data” to the “age of relevance” in healthcare.
Why population health models fail individuals — and how AI personalizes care.
Bathroom technology (urine/stool analysis, smart mirrors, body composition scales) as the new front line of primary care.
Longitudinal data > annual lab draws: why continuous monitoring beats snapshots.
The flaws in medical research and why AI can reduce human bias in science.
Barriers to adoption: FDA regulation vs. the rise of direct-to-consumer health tools.
How cold plunges, saunas, and “energy buckets” fit into longevity and performance.
The future of “sovereign health” where individuals—not insurance—own their health data.
Practical tools anyone can start with: keystone habit tracking, wearables, and CGMs.
Five FAQs
1) What does Dr. Dave mean by “personalized relevance” in healthcare?
Personalized relevance = turning raw health data into actionable, individual-specific guidance.
It blends your wearables (sleep, HRV, steps), bathroom sensors (urine/stool/mirror/scale), labs, and context (stress, travel, routines).
Instead of “population averages,” AI builds a living profile of you and recommends next best actions (e.g., “protein after 6pm improves deep sleep,” “walk 10 min post-dinner to flatten glucose spikes”).
Result: fewer one-size-fits-all tips, more micro-adjustments that compound into better energy, metabolic health, and longevity.
2) How can bathroom technology like smart toilets and mirrors replace primary care visits?
Your bathroom becomes a continuous checkup instead of a once-a-year snapshot.
Smart toilet/urinal: tracks metabolites (hydration, kidney stress markers, glucose/ketone signatures, inflammation trends).
Stool sampler: flags microbiome shifts, infection signals, gut inflammation patterns.
Smart mirror (computer vision): maps moles/skin lesions over time, incision healing, posture/edema changes.
Body-comp scale + 3D mirror: trends visceral fat, lean mass, water balance—better cardio-metabolic risk readouts than weight alone.
AI fuses these streams to notify you early (“thyroid trending low,” “new asymmetric mole”), triage to virtual care, and only escalate to a clinic when needed.
3) Why is longitudinal health data more accurate than annual lab tests?
Health isn’t static—context and trends beat single numbers.
Annual labs are a single frame (and can be skewed by one workout, one poor night of sleep, or dehydration).
Longitudinal data is a high-frame-rate movie: daily urine markers, weekly body-comp, sleep/HRV patterns, CGM curves, and symptom logs.
AI sees direction + velocity (e.g., thyroid drifting down while sleep quality drops) and proposes early, low-friction fixes before you cross “normal range” cutoffs.
4) What role will AI play in interpreting health data and reducing bias in medical research?
AI is the translator and bias-buster:
Multimodal synthesis: pulls from your biometrics + labs + environment + behavior to produce personal recommendations, not generic rules.
Quality control: cross-checks studies, highlights conflicts of interest, and weights evidence across trials to reduce publication and selection bias.
Fast feedback loops: tests an intervention on your data (A/B habit trials), learns what worked for you, and adapts.
Bottom line: fewer human “telephone game” errors, more evidence that actually fits your biology.
5) What are the first steps someone can take to become “sovereign” over their own healthcare?
Start simple → layer tech → personalize.
90 days of keystone habits (paper or simple app): daily walk, water target, consistent bedtime. Consistency > complexity.
Add a wearable: track sleep, HRV, resting HR, activity. Use weekly trends to adjust bedtime, intensity, recovery.
One targeted sensor: CGM for 4–8 weeks (glucose awareness), or a smart scale for body-comp trends.
Own your data: export to a personal vault; keep notes on context (travel, stress, illness).
Run tiny experiments: change one variable for 2–4 weeks (protein timing, post-meal walks, sauna/cold). Keep what measurably works.
This is sovereign health: you hold the data, run the experiments, and use clinicians for escalations, not for every decision.
Resources & Mentions
Dr. Dave’s Energy Bucket FAQ Page
Dr. Dave’s Catalyst Journal FAQ Page
Dr. Dave’s Cybersapien Book Page
Key Quotes & Takeaways
“Health isn’t about more data — it’s about making the data matter to you.”
“Your bathroom will know more about your health than your doctor ever could.”
“A once-a-year blood test is a snapshot; your body needs a movie.”
“AI is here to translate the noise of research into the relevance of daily life.”
“We don’t need more doctors prescribing averages — we need tools prescribing for one human: you.”
“Health sovereignty means owning your data, your habits, and your future — not outsourcing them.”
“The real revolution isn’t more science. It’s turning science into something you can act on before breakfast.”
“Every sensor is useless until it tells a story about your life.”
“Longevity isn’t a pill or a plan — it’s the compound interest of tiny, personal experiments.”
“The question isn’t if your bathroom replaces your doctor. It’s whether you’ll be ready to listen when it does.”
Expanded Summary
In this episode, Dr. Dave breaks down a future that sounds wild at first but is already unfolding: your bathroom becoming your new primary care clinic. For decades, health has been defined by annual snapshots—blood draws, blood pressure checks, and cholesterol panels. But as Dr. Dave points out, a once-a-year test is just a blurry photo. Real health comes from continuous, longitudinal data—trends collected daily from places you can’t avoid: your bed and your bathroom.
The conversation begins with the idea of personalized relevance. For years, healthcare lived in two extremes: big population averages, or the N=1 quantified-self geeks tracking every number on spreadsheets. Most people were left in the middle, relying on cookie-cutter advice that didn’t fit. Now, with AI plus cheap sensors, the game shifts. Your urine, stool, mirror, and scale can quietly collect and connect data—hydration, hormones, microbiome shifts, even early cancer signals—and AI can translate it into insights that matter for you.
Dr. Dave dives into how research itself is broken. Studies are often designed for commercial wins, not patient truth. Negative results get buried, and doctors are trained decades behind the latest science. This leads to cycles of misinformation: one decade it’s low-fat, the next it’s keto, and patients are left confused. AI, he argues, can cut through the bias. By cross-checking studies, exposing conflicts of interest, and running personal feedback loops, AI can give each of us real answers—relevant not to a population, but to our own biology.
The tech isn’t science fiction—it’s already here. Smart toilets measuring metabolites. Mirrors spotting new moles or tracking healing incisions. Skin patches monitoring enzymes in real time. And wearables like CGMs, Oura rings, and smart scales layering in context. Put together, this builds a movie of your health instead of a snapshot, catching problems earlier and guiding lifestyle tweaks before they become diseases. Dr. Dave emphasizes that this won’t replace doctors—it will free them to focus on serious cases, while empowering people to handle 96% of issues themselves.
The bigger shift, though, is cultural: moving from a system where health is outsourced to experts, to one where health is sovereign. Sovereignty means simple keystone habits tracked daily, adding wearables once you’re consistent, and using data to run micro-experiments that improve your own energy bucket. Sovereignty also means community—sharing insights, building accountability, and avoiding the trap of dogmatic extremes. As Dr. Dave says, the bathroom revolution isn’t about gadgets; it’s about control. It’s about turning the most private room in your house into the most powerful tool for living longer, better, and more on your own terms.
Podcast Transcript: [Will Your Bathroom Replace Your Primary Care Doctor?]
00:00 – Introduction
Host:
We’ve got Dr. Dave Heitmann with us—though everyone just calls him Dr. Dave. He’s been training both kids and elite athletes for decades, over 30 years now. Dr. Dave, you’ve got quite a story.
Dr. Dave:
Yeah, I’m 43, and I started this path in fourth grade when I declared on paper that I was going to make it to the NFL. I eventually played in a national championship as a starting tailback in semi-pro football. But my body wasn’t built for the NFL—I had the mindset but not the genetics.
I ended up in the emergency room six times a year. That led me into understanding human performance, recovery, and eventually healthcare innovation.
05:00 – Personalized Relevance
Host:
You’ve used a phrase I hadn’t heard before: “personalized relevance.” What does that mean?
Dr. Dave:
We’ve lived in the “age of data” for 15 years. Everyone collected numbers—Google searches, blood tests, wearables—but no one knew what to do with it. Healthcare was stuck between big population averages (“32% of people respond to this drug, good enough”) or the quantified-self geeks tracking every stat on spreadsheets. Most people were left in the middle.
Personalized relevance means making that data meaningful for you. Instead of asking, “Does keto work?” the better question is, “Does keto work for my body, in my context?” AI can now merge wearable data, lab work, and daily habits into insights that are both personalized and relevant.
10:00 – Research Bias and Broken Foundations
Host:
One challenge is that even doctors disagree on what data means. Cholesterol is a perfect example—you hear one thing from Peter Attia, another from Andrew Huberman, another from mainstream medicine. How do we know what’s true?
Dr. Dave:
That’s the problem. The foundation of research is broken. Most studies are designed with commercial or career bias. Researchers often pre-qualify participants to make their therapy look successful. Universities need positive results to keep funding. Negative results don’t get celebrated.
Those studies then become textbooks, which train doctors, who then train residents. By the time it trickles down, medicine is 17–25 years behind the current research. Add in 4,000 new articles published daily, and no human brain can keep up. It’s the telephone game—by the time advice reaches the patient, it’s distorted.
15:00 – The Age of Relevance and AI’s Role
Dr. Dave:
This is where AI comes in. AI can scan all the studies, check for conflicts of interest, and cross-validate claims. It can identify bias, find patterns humans miss, and deliver insights tailored to your biology.
We’re entering the “age of relevance.” It’s not about more data—it’s about relevant, actionable data. Instead of the food pyramid nonsense that gave us obesity and diabetes epidemics, AI can now say: Here’s what your numbers, your sleep, your meals, and your habits actually mean for you.
20:00 – Bathroom as Your Primary Care
Host:
You wrote recently that your bathroom could replace your primary care doctor. Walk me through that.
Dr. Dave:
Think about it. The bathroom is unavoidable. We all use it multiple times a day. With sensors in toilets, sinks, mirrors, and scales, we can capture continuous, longitudinal data—not just snapshots.
Smart toilets analyze urine and stool for metabolites, hormones, microbiome signals, even early cancer markers.
Smart mirrors scan for new moles, skin changes, incision healing, and posture shifts.
Scales and 3D imaging track body composition, hydration, visceral fat—not just weight.
It’s not about one urine sample or one blood draw. It’s about thousands of consistent data points over time. That’s how we detect real changes early.
30:00 – The Power of Longitudinal Data
Dr. Dave:
When you get a blood draw once a year, it’s meaningless. Maybe you worked out hard that morning. Maybe you were dehydrated. That one data point doesn’t represent your health.
But if your bathroom tracks your thyroid markers trending down over months, while your sleep scores worsen, and your weight shifts—you now have a meaningful movie, not a snapshot. That’s the revolution.
40:00 – Data, Privacy, and Cloud Security
Host:
What about privacy? People may not want their mirror or toilet collecting everything.
Dr. Dave:
The next evolution is personal clouds. Each person will have a secure vault where their data is stored, de-identified, and only shared with consent. AI will process it locally and surface alerts without exposing identity. For this to work, privacy has to be seamless and secure.
45:00 – Sovereign Health and Self-Ownership
Dr. Dave:
This isn’t about replacing doctors—it’s about sovereignty. Doctors should handle the 4% of cases that truly require medical intervention. The other 96%? We can handle that with habits, wearables, and home sensors.
Sovereignty means:
Track keystone habits (water, walks, sleep) for 90 days.
Layer in a wearable (Oura, Garmin, Apple).
Add targeted gadgets (CGM, smart scale).
Run small experiments.
Own your data and decisions.
This takes the burden off doctors, saves money, and empowers people to stay healthier longer.
55:00 – Cold Plunge and Sauna
Host:
You’ve been experimenting with sauna and cold plunge. What’s the science behind it?
Dr. Dave:
It’s ancient wisdom backed by modern research. Saunas trigger heat-shock proteins that improve cardiovascular flexibility, detox through sweat, and reduce heart attack risk. Cold plunges activate cold-shock proteins, brown fat, and metabolic flexibility.
The real benefit isn’t the plunge itself—it’s the recovery. Teaching your body to adapt builds resilience. Start small: 30 seconds in a cold shower, five minutes in a sauna. Build up slowly. It’s like training muscles.
01:05:00 – Closing and Takeaways
Host:
Dr. Dave, thanks for joining. Your book and AI projects sound incredible.
Dr. Dave:
Thank you. My goal is simple: make health data relevant. Help people fill their energy bucket, live sovereign, and turn their bathroom into the most powerful health tool they have.