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Sami Inkinen

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2026-05-20
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2026-05-20
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  1. “Again, I will say everything has to be individualized, but to use kind of average figures, we rarely have to massively change protein intake for our patients, maybe surprisingly to some people. The standard of American diet has a chemo take. Maybe it's a little bit on the low side, but more or less the right amount of protein. By the way, that's the most expensive maximotrend. So sometimes people are going to patients, it must be so much more expensive. Well, actually, protein is the most expensive. We rarely change that up a lot. In vegan context, that's probably the hardest thing to get right, to get sufficient amount of protein. You really have to get at least 1.2 grams per kilo. One kilo is 2.2 pounds of protein.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Energy levels or kind of excitement or mood and things like that change. I think lots of data will come out when millions of people on this shall be once four years, but eager to see what happens. But there's definitely a lot of things to be fully aware like lean body mass in elderly populations, 65 and plus, people who lose a lot of weight in ChLP once. Very kind of alarming reports coming up.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “We know the side effects of healthy nutrition. None. Every drug has side effects. So that's sort of one thing. And these jobby ones are tolerated much better than many, many other drugs, but there's a lot of things. Nausea and stomach issues. And it's interesting we've surveyed the patients who are on GLP once in our care. 80% of them say I either want to severely reduce the dependence on these drugs. Okay, completely awful. So this idea, which is prevalent at least in the press, like Americans just want to take a pill and keep taking the pill for the rest of their lives. Most people, if given the choice, if given the choice to be healthy without, they don't want to be taking drugs. Hopefully that answers the question of what are the user perceived benefits. Well, there's no user side effects when you're eating healthy food. But with the drugs, you usually have that. I'm not the expert to talk to kind of how...”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Perfectly or even optimally, metabolically healthy. And so one example is you lower your appetite, you eat less, but the second you come off these trucks, all the data shows that your weight skyrockets and more likely than not, you gain fat and you've lost once a muscle. By the way, we've shown the patients who come to us on GLB once. And once they discontinue the drug for whatever reason, a personal choice or side effects, we've been able to sustain that weight loss. This is Paulo Smier reviewed data, 18 months out. Soon we will have even longer term data. But 18 months, no weight regain. Why? Because we start changing what you eat while you're on the drug. And if you do that. But to kind of sharpen the point to your question, obviously.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “We don't. By the way, there are companies that do that at low cost of GLP ones, too. Absolutely, we don't do that. Aside from very basics, GLB wants... 100% affect your appetite. So they change how much you eat. So you eat less. But they alone don't change what you eat. So that's a starting point. And if you don't change what you eat, you're not going to be...”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “First, I will say our vertical providers prescribe both oral and injectable GLP ones when appropriate and unnecessary and when our client, the plan sponsor like an employer, helpline, have them in a plan design. So I just wanted to mention that so that nobody thinks like, oh, this is some sort of nutrition dogma. No, there's effective pharmaceuticals, and especially TLB ones in obesity and metabolic disease context are way better than the 1980s and 90s diet pills. So it's a real, real innovation.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “We have 83% adherents retention of patients at one year and look at any of the publicly available data. People stick to GLP once like 40%, maybe 50%, 30 to 50%. Why is that? Number one reason is the user perceived benefits. It's like, I can't believe I feel this good. I can't believe I've lost 35 pounds. I can't believe I don't need to stick the insulin needle to my body. The stories that we hear from people is like I'm 65. I thought I don't see my grandkids grow and I have so much energy that I'm gardening the first time in 20 years or whatever that is. And you know this like when you're feeling really, really bad, you're sick and everything's hurting. And then that suddenly goes away. That's like life is freaking awesome. And so I think the number one reason is the benefits are so strong versus like a calorie restricted diet where you're like”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Really empowering the patients with, we could talk about AI, like AI-based tools. You go to a restaurant or you're trying to cook something, you can take a picture, and we instantaneously say, like, hey, what kind of Situation. So, how do you change that? And this happens every day, two, three, four times a day. And that's the kind of the self-driving car analogy that a car that goes straight is fantastic until you have a corner. And that's 100% the diets in America today. So you can't do one size fits all. And then before you ask a follow-up question. This is mind blowing for people and ties to your earlier question as well. The adherence of vertebients, again, which are like real Americans, not Samis, real Americans. Is twice as high at one year as taking a deal with one drug.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “And I know, sorry if I started a diet war here. So, okay, so, example, you structure. Okay, so McDonald Cities may not be the pinnacle of hell, but we can reverse your metabolic disease with that. And let's forget the organics that we'll do that later if you can. Here's what you do. You go there, say, all right, well, you want your burger. Maybe you even add extra cheese, but please ask them to drop the bun and just have like a lettuce wrap. Get that. Then you go to the condiments. Yeah, Mayo might be fine, but don't take the ketchup because we can educate you and tell you that ketchup is colored sugar. You can't have that. Yeah, you want your soda. You really want your soda. Water is not enough. Okay, so go for the diet coke. Don't take the soda with the sugar. Again, somebody's listening like, oh, diet coke's bad for you. I totally agree. I'd rather drink water. But again, let's not let perfection be the enemy of progress. So that would be a McDonald's kind of session. And off you go. So that's kind of the second step with food. And then the third one is.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Perfect. Yeah. So that's the next step with Ford, and maybe I'll give you an example. It's like, okay, now that we know you are a truck driver and you will never become a vegan, you can never become a vegan. Obviously, I'm tongue-in-cheek here, but most of them don't.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Cool get homes. It's just like, okay, McDonald's City is we're going to reverse your diabetes on McDonald's diet. And by the way, we do that.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “This constant adjustment and constant adjustment is kind of like a self driving car. Then, if you have the cameras white lane and yellow lane align and you kind of try to keep it in between. So with the remote monitoring, we can kind of try to keep you between the yellow and the white lane. So that's the second thing. The third piece for adherence, and this we start talking about nutrition, the most important thing early is to understand the constraints that a person has. I'll give you silly examples. If we tell a vegan to have bacon and extra breakfast, you know what happens. They can say F-U-C-K. I'm out. There's no way to convince a vegan to have bacon and extra breakfast and vice versa. Like there's other things. Obviously, if you are, we work with US foods, large kind of actual food delivery, food service, it's truck drivers. Their concept of a lump is McDonald's. We can't tell them, oh, here's”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Exactly having to enter any. No, no, no. Goes to cloud and. To us. And I say that because it's kind of like if you say, oh, here's how to eat, here's a brochure, a book or something. It's kind of like telling to a car driver that just hold on to the steering wheel straight. It's going to be awesome. And here's brake and gas at all. And you know what's going to happen. The car is going to be beautifully stay on the road until the first corner. Like, whoa, forgot to mention that we may need to adjust, turn left, turn right. And so it's the same thing with nutrition that unless you have this kind of a platform.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “All of the above. Some patients get a CGM and some it's a finger broke, but not everybody gets a CGM. Tibeson's situation. We do lab drawers one to two times a year, so that's obviously going to happen daily.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Key piece, even if you know exactly what somebody should eat, is you kind of need the support system. And I guess that's my tech background with truly and other things comes to play that everything we do we do virtually. So what we can do is we can monitor your biomarkers remotely. We give you tools to do that. We can track bot ketones, blood glucose, your weight and other things. And then we have actual real medical doctors, not me, who are full-time employees who monitor you and coaches who can then make adjustments.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “More and the better you do it, the better outcomes you typically see. But that's sort of number one thing I will say, we use nutrition as a therapy to reverse metabolic disease. And I will say that as a physicist using nutrition as a drug or as a therapy is harder than sort of nuclear physics. Why, for all the reasons you mentioned. Because Every person makes a medical decision three to four times a day. That's when you eat. It's different today versus tomorrow. And then it's different between individuals. So it is a very, very hard puzzle to solve. Fortunately, computers and software is very helpful out there. So that's kind of one, individualized nutrition. And number two, so what does it take and how do we approach?”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “Little bracket, because you said we had big data. We absolutely have the largest data set of metabolic disease reversal in the world. Millions of patient years of data and data points from each patient every single day, not just qualitative information, but blood biomarkers. Yeah, so let me try to peel the onion to answer your question because a lot goes into it. So I guess just to take a step back. Yes, we use nutrition, individualized nutrition as the core therapy to treat our patients. It is our own protocol. I say our own protocol because any kind of generic label that you put into it, people go to Google and they Google and they can go wrong in 1000 different ways. So anyway, so we use our own protocol. But yes, to address and reverse insurance systems, you do have to reduce your total carbohydrate intake. And we have those response curves to know that”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “We didn't really define the poor metaphoric health in the beginning, but essentially it's high glucose levels, high fasting insulin levels and what you then might call insulin systems. Your body is primarily burning sugar. You're constantly hungry. You're constantly craving. So even if you're 100 pounds overweight, you're hungry and you want to eat more of that stuff. That's kind of the typical state of poor metabolic health. And then it manifests itself with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, fatty liver disease often, eventually chronic kidney disease, and many other things. And seems like, again, not the medical doctor here, but many cancers thrive in that kind of environment, in that kind of formability health.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “And we were able to show just about 35% LED extension on average in that arm, so chemo plus verta. Again, it's a very deadly disease. So 35% is stunning, but of course, you know, we're still counting months. It's not that you go from 12 months to 12 years. But on average, but I guess that going back to your earlier question, that shows the power of metabolic health and poor metabolic health and what might be possible. What is absolutely possible is reversing type 2 diabetes, losing weight, preventing liver disease. We didn't even talk about kidney disease and other things. The fact that we can drive outcomes even with some cancers, and I will say some cancers, I can't say like, oh, nutrition can cure cancer. Not quite, but poor metabolic health. And in our case,”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “This was a very well controlled, so randomized controlled trial for states for metastatic pancreatic cancer. We ran the trial with a number of academic oncology centers, so this wasn't just us. So very well controlled randomized controlled trial. And before I talk about the results, just a reminder, pancreatic cancer is number two or number three killer, depending on the year of cancers in America. So it's very deadly. It's usually diagnosed kind of too late. So at states four metastatic stage, and the life expectancy is usually sort of 12 to 18 months or 12 months. It's very, very deadly cancer. And so we had a trial where we had one arm, where we randomized people. It was chemo, three drugs, and then another arm, as you mentioned, same drugs, exactly same therapy, plus the word and nutrition therapy.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Not just weight loss, but we've been able so up to 75% reduction in liver disease. It used to be called fatty liver disease, but scientists changed it to liver disease, and so it's called mash and masseled. By the way, it's cost $100 billion a year in America today. There's one FDA-approved drug today, one FDA-approved drug today for mash. It's one type of liver disease. It costs $45,000 a year. No kidding. And it came out to market last year, first time, 2025. Billion dollars in sales. We deliver similar results nutritionally.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “So, to give you a couple of examples, someone may have had diabetes, type 2 diabetes for 15 years. They are on 100 units of insulin a day, sticking the insulin needle three times a day for 10 years. And we can reverse that kind of state of type 2 diabetes in six to nine months and then sustain it for long term. 13% average body weight loss. And this is kind of like on an intended to treat basis, not thousand starred and then you calculate results based on five successful ones. No, you calculate the average results from all the thousand. So 13%. So in our clinical trial, that was about 30 pounds or so average weight lasted one year and sustained and mostly fat because we did dexus cans as well. I would say the third one is the broad spectrum effects. And some of these up here reviewed. So we've been able to show not just blood sugar down and reversing type 2 diabetes.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “And exactly the same outcomes. We looked at race, ethnicities, exactly the same outcomes. And these are like large scale tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of patients. So that's one that's been very surprising, which is to say if you fix the biology, You fix the outcomes. This isn't, oh, you didn't even go to high school and you have a very busy life. So we need some sort of extra willpower training. No, you fix the biology. You fix the body and the outcome. So that's number one. Number two is the magnitude of improvements.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “Aside from the front end of your question, what's the most surprising? The most surprising is that we've been able to be successful with literally anyone. And I'll give you one example. And why is that surprising? Even overcoming my own concept of it's all about worldpower, I had this, but it's like people maybe not as educated as I am, maybe they're kind of busy lives, maybe they don't have my willpower or kind of the willpower of willpower Olympians. So that's been one of the most surprising. We work with Native American tribes, you know, 800 or so large employers as truck drivers. We've analyzed outcomes based on what's called ADI, so area deprivation index. So you take all zip codes in America and you rank them by average income.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Rides bread, apples, canola bars, ketchup pasta. You know anything that has a glucose molecule turns into blood sugar? And sure, if it's in an apple or if it's lots of fiber, it comes very, very slowly. But if you're eating 4,000 calories a day of which 3,000 is carbs, do the math, 750 grams of carbs a day or more. And so you basically trip feeding sugar into your veins constantly. Jamba juice in the afternoon once I get diet tired. I just remember it was my diet all the time. When you're in your 20s, you can overdose people say dose makes the poison. That's true. You can tolerate for a long time. But once you get to your 30s, you know, it gets very hard. So very convinced that that was it.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “Also, you can out exercise the calories and burn and not gain massive amount of fat, but you can still be elevated blood sugar, elevated insulin and be insulin resistant. And that's basically what I was doing. It's very, very hard. And I can tell you that I was hungry for 15 years as an athlete. It's like, ah, I'm always more hungry than I could. And if I eat to my appetite, I'm going to gain fat. I can't do that as an athlete. So now I'm going to answer your question. So my N equals one. I'm absolutely convinced, because I was able to fix and improve it, is I was eating six meals a day of essentially incredibly high. Copper heart rate, an incredibly high glycemic index foods and practically no fat for 10 plus years.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “Number one question I get like, oh, was it your genetics? Because you were exorcist so much. Obviously, genes play a part in everything. But I just want to remind that given about 60% of American adults, 6.0 either have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes today. Clearly, it's not like our gene pool has changed. So it can't really be genes. Or if 93% American adult summitability unhealthy, it's not like our genes have changed. So no, it's not that Sami was the NE equals one fin with very, very bad genes. This is happening to a lot of people. So that's, I would say one thing. The first one is there. The second thing is that it is possible to be skinny and lean and metabolically unhealthy. Some kind of people of certain background, especially kind of in Asia, it's more common that you don't gain 100 pounds, but you're very metabolically unhealthy.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “And look like, oh, it's your fault. Systematically reverse the condition nutritionally. Essentially, that's what we've done at Verdoh now with more than a quarter million patients and scaling fast. But let me just pause there. That's kind of the how did a Nordic skeer physicist from Finn get interesting in metabolic health and then we can take this down to different paths.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “Actually, driving poor metabolic health. And fortunately, met with amazing scientists who kind of helped me understand that fundamentally obesity type 2 diabetes and the other conditions that result from poor metabolic health, it's not a personal choice. People don't wake up on a Monday morning and say, I want to gain 200 pounds and develop type 2 diabetes. That sounds awesome. And sticking an insulin needle to my body for the next 10 years every day. Awesome. Sign me up. No, it's not lackable willpower. However, nutrition and food is the number one driver of four metabolic health. And if you know how to use nutrition, if you know how to use nutrition to actually improve and reverse your metabolic health, you can take an average, let's just call it 300 pound middle of America truck driver or average person that we, people on the coast.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “I don't know, 10% body fat dicks or whatever. And exercising 15 hours a week and performing well as a triathlete. I was pre-diabetic. All the numbers are often essentially on my way to type 2 diabetes. And I was like, shit, wait. I'm not one of those people with no willpower. I'm not one of those lazy people. I'm not one of those quote unquote middle of America 300 pounds, you know, seatbelt extender. Like that's not me. Seriously? What's going on here? And this was 2012, around the time my previous company Trullia went public. And I was like, well, first I have to figure this out for myself because if I can't avoid being metabolically unhealthy, nobody can. Well, guess what? Like nobody can. Like that is the status quo in America today with so many people metabolically unhealthy. And that got me very interested in this whole topic of what is...”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “Loser. And that's why I pay too many taxes because healthcare is five trillion a year, of which almost all of it is metabolically culture related. So that was my view. And I'm very, very embarrassed to say that's how I was thinking, sort of judging people, like you're unhealthy for reasons that are 100% in your control. And then at the moment where I had to eat a lot of humble pie and I discovered that despite being”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “Metabolic health and sort of chronic disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity. Was this very embarrassing to admit? Was the following, which is it's ridiculous. It's very simple. People know exactly what to do. Most people, most Americans, they just don't do it. And as a result, we have just obese people everywhere. Everyone has pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. By the way, it's more than 50% of American adults. Now the data is, I think, 93%. This is the public peer review number. 93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy in one way or another American adults. And either you have a high blood pressure or your lipids off or you're obese or you have type 2 diabetes. So prediabetes. And my view as judgmental as I was was always listen, ridiculous. You know what to do, but you're not doing it. You're eating too much. You're just eating too much and you're not excess.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “And a biathlon came handy, so carrying a rifle so I could shoot the bears when they were attacking along the way, which may or may not be true. But yeah, so I was athlete and have been athlete all those years. And then after coming to America, started doing triathlons, an pretty high-level athlete. Again, we're not talking about the Olympic gold medals, but as an amateur and many, many Hawaii Iron Mans, I think seven of those world.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “Yeah, sounds very idyllic. Maybe that was a punishment by my parents. So Nordic skiing to school indeed, first grade through sixth. So quite something.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “First caveat, which is that I do have two master's degrees, but I'm not a medical doctor and I don't play one on the internet. And I'm sure in this conversation we'll kind of go into that area. So I just want to be clear. I'm not giving medical advice to anyone and I'm not a medical doctor, but obviously have a lot of experience with the topic that you just asked. I guess the personal story, so just rewind, not quite all the way back to Finland. But again, my background is not in medical field. I'm a physicist by training and in fact started my career in a nuclear power plant way back when in Finland when it was still fashionable and I guess nuclear power plants coming back to fashion now again which is just to show that like my background is in sort of science and technology not in healthcare. However I've been essentially an athlete all my life cross country skia by athlete came to America started doing triathlons and”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “Viral sound is a very to get the loader right in a barrel sounder, which, by the way, I have at my house, is very, very hard because it's too small. The fireplace, you can't get high enough and you should be sitting kind of above the fireplace. So yeah, Lo is, if you know one word, Lolu and you want to impress Finns, you go to a sound and say, what a fantastic Lolu.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “Yeah. So hopefully for some of them. Yeah, yeah. So I guess Eskimos have dozen or so words for snow. They know every nuance and kind of detail, and Finns have dozens words for different things around Sauna that you can't even translate. Lone Luis is probably the most important. You judge the sauna and its quality based on LO. And Lolu is essentially, it's after you throw water into the rocks, the fireplace, the rocks, and then the steam comes up. It's not the steam, it's not the heat. It's the, I guess you could say the spirit of the steam, but how it feels, how it lands. And let me tell you, there's a million different variations how it happens. Is it too hot? Is it too kind of sharp? Is it soft? Does it sort of linger around? And how does it feel in your body? That is Lulu. And you judge the quality of the sound based on your Lolu. And there's a whole science to it, kind of like how big is the space.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  38. “And then you extinguish the fire, and then you make sure that the smokes goes away and the rocks stay hopped for a long time as you go. And that was the original. It's called, you will still have that kind of soundness today. It's called smoke sounder. Essentially, you don't have a way to get the smoke out other than open the door. So there's no fireplace where the smoke just goes through a chimney. So that's called smoke sounder. And it's a special sauna experience. And obviously it takes much more time to heat it and make it safe because you don't want to go there where there's smoke. But I think that's kind of the history. And then somehow I'm missing the link how it became sort of like a culture. But now nobody will build a house without a sound, like literally. First is where it's a sound and then let's figure out if there's space for a bathroom. Like that's kind of the order in Finland.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  39. “Yeah, and hopefully there's a historian who will check me on this, but it definitely goes back hundreds, let's say many hundreds of years where it was sort of necessary. So, you know, Finland four seasons incredibly cold winters. So Sana'a was a place to kind of basically heat and warm up in a winter. It was also a place where, you know, you could dehydrate food. So it gets kind of how it goes way back when and obviously now, you know, it's not necessary to stay warm and it's not necessary to dry your food. But I think that's kind of where it started. And initial san is where kind of duck into the side of a mountain and then you just, you burn wood on top of rocks.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  40. “It's serialized. There's one water. I think my mom was still ever at Densala. I was in a hospital just to be clear. So Sauna is beyond being part of the culture. It's part of the DNA. And it's culturally, it's an amazing place, actually, not just kind of let loose in your hair down, but you don't have your uniform. You don't have your titles. You don't have your whatever socioeconomic signals, symbols, fancy waters. And kind of everyone comes together, whether that's family or your friends or your community. And yes, Saano is definitely a place where a lot of things happen in Finland. And we could talk about Saunas and its role in a culture, but it's something way, way, way beyond cold bombs and sound.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  41. “Give me space. And everything's not awesome So, yeah, maybe there are similarities Yeah, alcohol, I'm sure, has been a mental health tool, not very effective at that in Finland for many, many decades. But Sauna, I have to, well, first of all, there's five and a half million people in Finland. There are more than 3 million saunas.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  42. “I think there's similarities, and you're definitely the connoisseur of a Japanese culture versus me, having just been to Tokyo and a few other places a couple of times. But that kind of space and distance and politeness that people, well, actually, there's no distance in Tokyo, obviously, but the sort of emotionally, there is a kind of distance in Finland and Japan versus when I came to America 2003, moved to California. It's like everyone's on your face and everything's freaking awesome. And it was, it took a couple of years to, it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. Come on.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  43. “You are just attached to your thoughts, eventually they're going to get you, and you can't really think yourself out of the hole that you've thought yourself into. So unless you can take a step back and kind of like op through them, like, oh my God, my brain's having a life of its own. So that's kind of the toolkit I would not do crack. So foundational health, you know, have different outlets, identities, have peers you can talk. It could be friends as well. And then some sort of understanding and kind of way of taming your mind, if you will, or being able to see that the mind has the life of its own. That's been helpful for me. And I will say, again, could happen tonight, but I haven't touched any prescription drug for anything sort of mind related. That toolkit has kind of kept me head above the water so far for 25, 26 years.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  44. “Can you believe this employer start bitching again? But obviously, you can't say that in front of the company. So having that kind of personal for me has been YPO, the young president's organization since, I guess, 2008 Now, for me, it's not anymore why the young, it's just PO because I'm old enough. I have that. And then I think the last thought one I would say is everyone has their own tools, but just understanding how your mind work could be meditation, could be some other tools, but that's been a process for myself to just realize that.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  45. “It's almost like a Jedi mental trick. Like, oh my God, work sucks. But at least my kids love me today. So having that outlet, and particular founder types, younger ones, it's often the opposite. They're sort of proud of the fact that I only have one thing and I'm ready and willing to die for my company. Well, that's all well and good when everything's going well, but you have the first kind of speed bump and then everything falls apart. So that's the second thing I would say. Third one is have peers outside of your company that you can kind of let your hair down. Sorry, sorry that your hair down and relax. For me, it's a group of CEOs, other CEOs was, oh my God, can you believe?”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  46. “One, you have to take care of your sort of foundational metabolic health. That's what is it? It's sleep, nutrition exercises. That's kind of one. If you are medabolically very, very unhealthy, it's very, very likely you're going to crack under pressure. So that's one. Second one is it's very helpful to have, especially for kind of founder, CEO types, but for anyone, have at least two or three kind of identities or outlets. For me, it's kind of parent-husband, one, CEO, two, and then wannabe athlete. And so if once failing, hopefully at least two other areas outlets in my life where I say, oh, it's going okay. And by the way, it's never that I'm rocking and winning and ringing the bell in all three at the same time. And it's very helpful.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  47. “Yes, second bucket. This is probably the most important as it relates to kind of like a burnout and you just kind of you're falling apart. And I'm going to knock here on my table, not too hard to create any noise. I founded my first software company in April 2000. So now it's with, we're here in 2026. So that's 26 years running, building fast growth companies. And I haven't cracked yet. And again, caveat is it could happen tonight. But there's a few things I've learned. I think these are applicable to especially any knowledge worker where kind of like everything's just coming to your brain and it's very easy to get stressed and anxious and cracked I've written about this as well. Here's my formula that has worked for me very well.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  48. “Architecture, then obviously on a Sunday evening it's like, oh, should I write a book or get a new job or just do this project that my boss was asking? So if you don't have that North Star, you could be kind of spinning like a compass.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  49. “Probably one or two things, but this again, we could launch into another part, which is obviously you need to an architecture of annual thinking, planning, what is the business need, for example. Like I have, in fact, I just have a text file ASCII file on my computer. Here's the four things to remember as a CEO now and 20 years from now. Here's the three things for this year. And here's the three things for this week. I literally have a text file and I just update it every Sunday. And a whole other topic, which I'm sure some people think I'm crazy, is I have a 15-year plan for myself, which I kind of accidentally stumbled. It actually could be useful. And I updated every year. And again, we can take that offline or take a bookmark, how that came about. It's been incredibly helpful. And again, I want to highlight structure allows spontaneity and flexibility. But if you don't have that.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  50. “Control your time. So this means absolutely no notifications. Maybe if you have get text messages for, I don't know, family emergency or something. But take everything else out and you kind of create that sacred space where you can do that work. Whether that's writing or coding or cold calling 15 prospects or whatever that is. It's super duper simple, but it's so easy to then sort of, again, Monday comes, Tuesday comes, and then the world takes over. And you're like, oh my God, it's 4 p.m. I haven't done the thing. So I'd say that would be the one category. And then the second category is the second. Yeah. For some people listening.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT