What if a single strand of hair could reveal your body's chemical exposure history, all the way back to the womb? Dr. Manish Arora, environmental epidemiologist, CEO of LinusBio, and professor at Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, joins Nurse Rosa Hart to explain why your environment shapes your health more than your genes ever could.
Dr. Arora's team developed the TRACED test, an at-home, hair-based exposure test that measures 15 essential and toxic elements (including lead, arsenic, cadmium, and aluminum) with time-stamped resolution across roughly 30 days. Unlike blood or urine tests that capture a single moment, TRACED gives you a molecular movie of your exposure over time; no clinic visit, no needles, no blood draw. His research also earned FDA Breakthrough Designation for an autism biomarker detectable as early as one month old.
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Timestamps
0:00 — Intro & Dr. Arora's background
0:51 — The story behind his name (named himself at age 3!)
2:43 — What is Linus Bio and why he founded it
5:10 — Personal journey: triplet daughters & a misdiagnosis of autism
8:38 — Why genomic medicine alone isn't enough
9:07 — Introducing the exposome: the complement to the genome
10:43 — How the TRACED hair-based test works
11:43 — Why hair vs. blood or urine testing
13:41 — TRACED: what it measures (lead, arsenic, aluminum, and more)
16:13 — Weekend vs. weekday exposure patterns
15:39 — How AI models interpret your results
17:05 — Making it accessible: no prescription needed, available on Amazon
17:38 — Why they bypassed the healthcare system intentionally
20:24 — The rhythm of cholesterol (and a Springsteen analogy)
23:43 — Clinical blind spots TRACED addresses
25:21 — PFAS, microplastics, phthalates — what's coming in the next version
30:00 — Wildfire community deployment (Eaton & Palisades fires)
35:33 — How academics can turn research into real-world products
36:42 — What it took to build a business from science
43:44 — How clinicians should interpret TRACED results
45:11 — TRACED for telehealth, longevity & remote communities
35:07 — The research-to-practice translation gap (13–17 years!)
46:27 — The billion-dollar question: newborn autism screening + universal exposome profiling
37:33 — ClearStrand ASD: screening for autism at 1 month old
43:55 — How to order TRACED (traced.life) & connect with Dr. Arora
Connect & Resources
Dr. Manish Arora on LinkedIN
Nurse Rosa Hart on LinkedIn & your favorite social media platform @NurseRosaSpeaks
Nurse Rosa's INsights is a nurse-led healthcare leadership and innovation podcast hosted by Rosa Hart.
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