Moritz Wessely studied law for four years knowing he would never practise. Then COVID took him out for eighteen months, and the doctors told him chronic was his new baseline. He refused it, went looking for another answer, and found the gut microbiome. The protocol that brought him back became the company he now runs.In this episode Jen and Moritz get into what the microbiome does beyond digestion, why it is the most individual system in the body, and why two people in the same family can share as little as five per cent of theirs. Moritz explains how Precision Biome treats the microbiome as a data problem rather than a biology one, what the direct to consumer testing industry gets wrong, and why so many high performers with optimised sleep, training and nutrition still hit a wall at four in the afternoon.There is also a wider conversation running underneath it about what all the optimising is for. Moritz makes the case that better sleep and faster recovery are the means, and that a life lived in flow and aligned with purpose is the end.The episode closes with two questions submitted by the Collective community: where the microbiome sits in muscle building and healthy ageing, and how much chronic inflammation starts in the gut. Both answers stand on their own as short masterclasses.CHAPTERS00:00 Welcome and introduction00:45 Connect the dots: from law school to microbiome therapies03:35 Entrepreneurship as a creative act05:12 Rebels, radicals and building rather than breaking05:45 Precision Biome and Ravan: what is what05:53 Long COVID, and refusing chronic as a baseline07:31 Finding the gut microbiome by accident10:00 Old wine in new bottles: what long COVID renamed11:11 Standing on the shoulders of giants: the advisor and the algorithms12:01 Why your microbiome is more personal than your DNA13:36 How long recovery took, and what stability looks like14:46 Digestive health and microbiome health are different things16:35 What the protocol changes day to day18:20 How you know what good looks like for one individual gut19:40 Maintenance when the system regulates itself21:40 Treating the microbiome as a data problem25:02 Where the business operates and who it serves26:44 The high performers who were hitting a ceiling30:26 Chronic stress as the number one microbiome killer32:05 Optimisation as a means to an end35:00 What the Ravan process looks like step by step37:37 Testing at home, and cooking for two people with different needs39:15 Pricing, three month cycles and retesting41:09 Inside the gut testing industry: 16S, shotgun and lab quality43:30 Why standard reference ranges mislead46:20 Community question: muscle, sarcopenia and healthy ageing50:00 Community question: inflammation, the gut barrier and tight junctions54:26 The next twelve to eighteen months56:00 Collective spotlight58:29 Leaning into complexityALSO WORTH A LOOKDr Andrea Gartenbach, physician working in longevity and lifestyle medicine, adviser to Precision Biome and a personal mentor to Moritz. Moritz describes her as someone who can light up a room and give people their belief in themselves back, alongside the protocol work she does for CEOs and high net worth clients internationally.Sham Jaff, independent journalist and the writer behind the What Happened Last Week newsletter. Moritz calls it the single source of news he consumes, for the way it holds a balanced and multifaceted picture of global events in a moment when very few outlets manage it.LINKSRavan: https://joinravan.coMoritz Wessely on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-wessely/More episodes: https://wearethecollective.world/podcast

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