Biohacking Healthier Workplaces

This transcript was made in part by an automated service, in some areas it may contain errors. 

AJ: [00:00:00] Welcome to Once Upon a Project, the podcast where we uncover the stories behind the projects that shape our world from the spark of an idea to the hurdles along the way and the lessons learned that linger far beyond the final reveal. I'm your host, AJ Perone, and this season we're exploring creativity, wellness, the intersection of design, science, and human potential.

Today we're diving into a project that quite literally reshapes how we feel and perform in the spaces where we spend most of our time. Our offices, my guest is Erin McDannald, CEO of Elevated, who is pioneering a biohacking approach to workplace design that blends automation data and wellness science. Erin, how are you doing [00:01:00] today?

Erin: I am great. Thanks for having me on.

AJ: We are so excited to have you. Every project has its origin story, so what inspired you to connect biohacking science to the built environment? how did this journey begin for you?

Erin: my daughter has had a, a neuroinflammatory disease, for about 15 years, and I spent the last 15 years studying the intersection of genetics, uh, neuroinflammation. and the immune system. And as a result, I started my career as an interior designer, so I have a, a love of, interior design and just, architectural interiors in general. I also have a lighting company. So, you know, we learned how to talk to things and get them to talk back to us. So it, it was the convergence of those three things, the technical background and the technology meets. a lot of the research that I had worked on

AJ: And this is why we like each other, Erin, because we have very similar stories, [00:02:00] This work as a mother has brought you into how you can make spaces better for everyone. So let's start with the science. So you've shared with me that so much of our health and cognitive ability back to one gene interleukin six or IL six. So for those that don't know what that means, can you unpack interleukin six, what it is tied to?

Erin: it's the number one reason for neuroinflammation in our brains. Interleukin six is a good and a bad thing. it helps us, fend off of, any kind of pathogens that are attacking our body. But on the bad side, too much of it. can, Erode some of the neurons in our brain, particularly in the prefrontal cortex of our brain.

and the reason why, that happens is because the architecture of our neurons in our prefrontal cortex is very, delicate. most of our executive function comes from our prefrontal cortex and it's really [00:03:00] required for us. To be able to have, pre-planning and self-reflection, in order for our brains to be out of fight or flight, we need access to our prefrontal cortex. and you want employees that have access to their prefrontal cortex too.

AJ: And you want children that have access to their prefrontal

Erin: absolutely.

AJ: they're older, so they don't make those bad mistakes. Right.

Erin: Yeah, and we definitely just, it's just about be having what, what we call coherence is, which is access to all the parts of your brain at one time.

AJ: Okay, so let's talk for a second. Erin, about the built environment and what things can a human interact with that might trigger some of the bad reactions that we don't wanna have from IL six.

Erin: clean air is absolutely necessary. thermal comfort is important too, but the flicker in the lights is something that, you know, we, we, we [00:04:00] really rushed to market in the early two thousands of, uh, the LEDs and they flicker, uh, more than fluorescence flicker. So that's something that needs to be considered, when we're building in the future, is eliminating that flicker because it disrupts our circadian rhythms.

and therefore can, cause more neuroinflammation

AJ: that flicker is stress. the very beginning of my research, you know, this was 25 years ago, and so when you would be watching television and you would see a camera capturing a computer screen in the environmental shot, you could see that it was, it was coming across.

The reception as a flicker, you could see that computer flicker. And that's how I would explain how people that have perception issues that are very, very, acute, they see that flicker in real life. and it causes so much stress and it's so hard to try and concentrate [00:05:00] tell us from a science standpoint how that all reacts.

Erin: you within 90 seconds of being exposed to a flickering light, even if you don't know it's flickering, the pathophysiology is your microglial cells are put on alarm in your brain, and then cytokines respond to your brain within. Like 90 seconds, meaning that there's interleukin six in your brain within 90 seconds of a flickering light and for the duration of the time it's under.

And what's interesting about that AJ, is there, there's something that's called an allostatic load for people. It means the, the maximum amount of stress that any one human can take at one time. And, all of these things contribute to constant stress and, burden on our allostatic load.

And once you, Breach that allostatic load your propensity to get disease increases, exponentially, that's how important it is that we get the [00:06:00]flicker out of our lights, uh, it within time and, manage our air pollution and our soundscaping within our environments.

AJ: And I, I'm assuming too, when you have all these environmental triggers that can have these negative effects, some of it is synergistic, right? It's not just one, but it's the combination of multiple at the same time and maybe some other things that might already be happening to you, you might be walking to work with.

Like right now it's high pollen season. Ragweed is like off the charts and I'm like, oh, things are not firing at all cylinders right now on me. and so you add these things in. It's not just one plus one equals two. It means it one plus one equals 255

Erin: yeah, it's at Force Multiplier for sure. I mean, that we're talking about one person and then what happens as a group, when everybody is feeling that way. and so, you know, when it comes to biohacking, you're treating the individual.

when I think about designing, I think about designing for the [00:07:00] brain. we're taking care of our brain, we're taking care of everything else.

and then if you design for coherence, which is, you when you know that everything is internally regulated and you have stable rhythms and low inflammation, you're designing for everybody, because you're designing for people who are neurally inflamed and people who are not neurally inflamed. you don't have to worry about being inclusive because you're being inclusive of all when you're designing for coherence.

AJ: I like that so much. So the science kind of shows us the risk, when we don't pay attention to these environmental triggers. what is your solution to, handle and mitigate some of these risks?

Erin: I turned to Tech for solution, and we, started. Doing this at the beginning of the pandemic. and I, I was trying to solve a problem anyway because I was so tired of everybody getting sick in, uh, our spaces and having, you know, the month of January with everyone with the [00:08:00] flu and things like that.

First of all, we, have a lab here in Baltimore and we started to learn how to turn air more so that we could keep the CO2 levels down in return.

Take some of the particulate matter, uh, away and the volatile organic compounds out of our space, which was really important because those three together, tell you what your virus risk is, along with the humidity.

AJ: So you actually have a math problem that can tell you what your virus risk is.

Erin: Yeah. and we have a, a scoring system at this point where that can tell us what our virus risk is based on all of those things. So, you know, when you, you know, have to spread out maybe a little bit more or that's been something that's very, very informative to us.

And, also with about direct current, we've been able to take the flicker out of the lights, which has been, proven, a good investment for us as well.

But, but by turning to tech, [00:09:00] you can kind of manage all these things And, and write software to, to tie them all together. eventually ai, will be able to mitigate all these things, because it's been trained to do so.

AJ: been talking about this for a very long time. Back when we didn't have LED lights, Erin, back when we had only fluorescent lights and there was still a flicker problem. But what I love that you're doing is that this isn't just theory, it's something you're actually putting into practice that both supports productivity and long-term health.

Is there a project that you would like to share with us today that highlights these aspects of what you're trying to accomplish?

Erin: Yeah, we had a, a [00:10:00] corporate project where, we designed a workspace. It was about 200 employees. and we got the opportunity to, go in their space and do some programming before. And, um, we, we, we put sensors in there. Previous space before we did the design for their new space

And

AJ: kind of sensors Erin?

Erin: we put air quality sensors and, and, and we put people counting sensors.

those are really important because they allow you to, understand how much space a human being needs in the built environment. and for this particular company we decided that based on the air quality in their existing space and the people counting and where people really communed, each employee needed about 192 square feet for this particular project in this company.

Um, and in that we would be able to control some sick days and, control the health a little bit. Also, we had hoped, This would be an interesting and a good [00:11:00] metric to design for coherence because, I have the idea that if you have coherent people, meaning that they're working with all sides of their brains, that distributed cognition among an organization happens easier.

AJ: And what do you mean by distributed cognition?

Erin: Yeah, I was working with some, uh, workplace psychologists, with the government on a project many years ago when I met some of them, and they talked a lot about distributed cognition. And what it means is it's like shared, coherence among a lot of people. It's, it means the information and the brand that you're.

Working on or selling is There are pieces of information in every person among the organization, so it's spread out, but it's not something that people actually talk about. and when you have distributed cognition, um, the results of that are, you know. You have faster decision making within the organization.

A lot of error [00:12:00] reduction, better employee retention, innovation capacity, and then resilience at the same time. So all of those things are, uh, are beneficial to have distributed cognition. So if you're, if you're designing for the brain and you want people to be working together, they have to be, uh, they have to feel good.

Essentially, and, uh, if they feel good, um, and are able to use all the parts of their brains, um, you, the. The environment can be used as a tool, to motivate people. but we have to know where we're at. And we just went through a pandemic and we're post COVID and we're all a little inflamed The best way to get people to be cognitive thinkers when they apply, they come to the workplace, is to dim the lights and calm people down and provide repetition. 'cause the brain wants repetition, it wants to know its safe, and its finds safety and repetition.

AJ: I [00:13:00] think the layman's term they would use is, oh, this feels like it's a good culture.

Like And not thinking through the aspect of, there's a reason why people are cohering better together and making faster decisions and, being more motivated because it feels better, but they don't necessarily know why.

They just like. the feeling, it's positive. Whereas you're actually explaining from a place of science how that really happens, which I think is fascinating. So you started with this project of, it was a client you already had. You knew, you knew some data sets of, you know, from air quality in people counting what you thought people would need.

So what was the challenge of this project that you now had to face?

Erin: Well, building it was number one. And, and, uh, capturing the return on investment, which is always the hardest in [00:14:00] tech. And so I think that was the biggest thing was, you know, it's not often you get carte blanche, but we had a nice, budget to be able to work with this client and, so we built it.

we have, lights that don't flicker. air quality meters and we know where people convene. We understand what the sound sounds like in their space based on decibels, which is a very important metric. we basically built out their space with all of the sensors that you could possibly want, and we made all of that, data transparent to all of the employees. because we think that's really important. they were able to utilize that data. They, they could book desks in places where they knew that the air was clean, or quiet spots, But the metrics were, they came out. I mean, they're interesting. You know, the first year we're only one year in, so I can only give you a year of data. Um, and this came from five years of data of what we learned [00:15:00] from our own space, but.

They've been able to reduce their sick days by one and a half days per employee and their particular, and they saved about 25% so far on their insurance medical premiums, which was really interesting as well. they use about 95% of the space, that they leased, which is really impressive 'cause that doesn't really happen

AJ: That doesn't.

Erin: but the great thing is, is that we just spread everybody out a little bit further than we would've normally. I think we overcrowd our spaces most of the time.

AJ: I don't think we realized how much we were overcrowding our spaces till we got to COVID and you're like, oh, please don't be this close to me. Like it became now, it became a threat that we used to ignore. So can we go back to the insurance for a second? Because I. I think that's really fascinating. Their insurance premiums went down.

Why was it the fact that you [00:16:00] could show them you were doing the censoring and you were building a more healthy environment? Or was it the health of the people actually through their data went up, so their premiums went down.

Erin: the health, within, you know, the environment compounds on each other. Right? So, let's just say. Mom gets sick at work, brings it home to the kids, you know, obviously it compounds so it all kind of drives all the way through the family and it is exponential, just to put a little investment in your space and, um, you know, to understand what your air quality. We had this thing that we kept seeing, I thought was fascinating.

And anytime we got above 800 parts per million in our CO2 levels within our office, our decibels crashed. So we just stopped talking. So the, as far as I'm concerned, the number one killer of collaboration was COVID. The number two is CO2 probably.[00:17:00]

AJ: Oh, that's really interesting. So let's say you have 20 people in a space that's not designed for 20 people and they're all talking and then all of a sudden everyone's like, they're at 800 parts per million of CO2. Everyone's like, oh, I gotta go. Like I've been in that situation. I've been where somehow it's like the air all leaves the balloon and fizzles out and everyone's like, God, I need a nap. That's exactly what's happening.

Erin: We spend each other, we spend a lot of time gaslighting ourselves on the heavy lunch we

ate, but it really is the CO2. Yeah. how did you convince the client to invest in this technology? 'cause this is a substantial budget line item, right? To show on a return on investment. So [00:18:00] what was driving the client that they wanted to do this?

Well, I think the easy return on tech is real estate utilization. That's easy because you can, you can get your return on investment immediately. So how much real estate did they have? How much were they utilizing? Um, and how much did they really need is the question. So that's a, that's easy and you can get your return on investment in under a year in something like.

That. when it comes to the soft costs, I think we're really still trying to prove that. and that's, you know, really what I set out to do is, can, can tech actually do that? And, that's where the, where the things like collaboration, where you have better distributed cognition, you get a better return on your investment in your staff, basically because they're able to, to work, more coherently. and you're seeing those returns in your medical insurance premiums and, sick days.

I mean, you think about 1.5 sick [00:19:00] days per employee, that's a couple hundred thousand dollars for, that organization that they save a year. Which again, it, it paid for the system itself. and their initial investment, Was about $25,000. So the return was pretty big considering, and they pay a $500 a month, fee to get metered and monitored with us. But that it's, it's, it's a very affordable thing and a great return on investment. when you can biohack your space,

AJ: that's actually a lot less expensive than I thought it would be. I've been in workplace design for a very long time, and there's nothing more frustrating than having a client come to you and say, okay, if we put this benching system in that you've recommended, can you promise me my employees will be 25% more productive? And it's like, well, it doesn't really work that way.

Right. It's, there's a lot of factors that go into it, but this client of yours. Must have [00:20:00] understood, and because they had worked with you beforehand, how this data was really shaping how their teams and their company was working. I'm assuming that they were kind of already bought in before you started this project.

Erin: yeah, I mean, you know, the early adopters are easy. it takes an early adopter to really try this out. But again, you're right. When you look at the initial investment versus, when you might be saving, hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's, it's, it's a no brainer. It's a very simple system to put in, and I heard something at a work.

Place, thing the other day where somebody said HR margin largely ignores the workplace as an asset.

I think that was, uh, an interesting, i, it really hit home with me and I think that's probably why, we're still, you know, hybrid work. The workplace can be a real asset, uh, to, to production. And I think we've lost sight of that in a lot of ways. we're, we're thinking about production as how much input can this [00:21:00]person give into a computer? but we're not thinking about production as, do.

I have the most critical thinkers. we need the most critical thinkers right now, and in order to get the most critical thinkers, we don't design for production, we design for the brain.

AJ: when people have been hybrid and they've been able to work in their homes, you know. For some of us that are older, we tend to have bigger houses than maybe some of the younger professionals. So like I have right now working at home at my fingertips, at least 20 different places, different spots, I can sit in my house and work as long as my children are gone.

Um. That have different levels of lighting, of heat, of, um, ambient noise, of all of these things that you're describing that you do need to have more control of when you're going into an office environment. And as we're seeing more and more companies mandate that office environment, we've been [00:22:00]hearing from people going, I felt so much healthier when I was working from home, but they didn't understand the reason why.

like. In Minnesota, it gets really cold. Some days I'm sitting next to the fireplace, like a real fire. Some days I don't wanna sit next to a real fire, So You are basically fine tuning environments so people can literally think, connect, and create at their best

Erin: during COVID we all got aura rings and while we were home we wore the aura rings and we also, uh, monitored and me metered our space that was not being occupied. At the time, so I had, I had two zero comma zeroes. I had two points of reference. I could look from the data and when we went back to work, our health plummeted and I was shocked because I have a beautiful office.

We have 300 linear feet of plants. Like we really invested a lot into it, and I, I, [00:23:00] I wondered what, what? What, what could that be? You know, I mean, we, we, you know, it's a brand new space that, and we understood that. It, it was the environment. You know, it was interesting, uh, I was talking to a colleague and he said that, um, building 20 at MIT was the most successful architectural building, uh, that he knows of because the most patents were written there.

And what was really interesting about the architecture of that was it was just a long building with hallways. And, uh, and you could see, uh, the professors standing outside their door in the long corridor. There was nothing special about it, but it was at the intersection of all these different great specialties and they all collaborated.

And so, um, I thought that was really interesting and important to note because like, you know. The adjacencies matter too. Right. You know, and we can't forget that. And you can learn a lot of adjacencies with that tech as well. Um, to really [00:24:00] understand how to design two adjacencies that might be a advantageous for the company.

AJ: So you talked a little bit earlier about CO2 levels and you know when it exceeds 600 per per million, then we're getting into a place that's probably not healthy. what are other, rules that you can tell people about? Like lighting, color, temperature, ambient noise, things like that that we should be considering that maybe are getting missed in these projects.

Erin: Well one of the big craze right now is design or uh, lighting to your circadian rhythms. So that means the light changes color throughout the day, um, and in the room. So it goes from cool white to warm, white to, you know, at the end of the day. what we learned from that is that actually it's.

Spurs neuroinflammation rather than helps you with it. So it was something that we, um, had good intentions and we learned the opposite, so I probably wouldn't

AJ: really controversial, Erin. Oh my goodness.

Erin: [00:25:00] know,

AJ: but it makes sense because I'm gonna just tell you, I have a circadian light I only like it on one setting. It's not the right setting.

Erin: You're

the, canary in the coal mine.

AJ: It's now too. I'm like, no, I want it warmer.

I want it warmer. And they're like, no, this is daylight time. It should be by, I'm like, no, I don't like that. I want it warmer. So you're telling me my gut reaction to that is correct.

Erin: It is correct. You should always trust your gut on any of those environmental things because it's you, you know, it's your brain telling you. But it, it is. What happens is the light moves and the light moves and it hits your retina at a certain degree, and, has a tendency to cause, Migraines, which is what was happening to us at five o'clock at every day. so now we step 'em, meaning that they don't move, they don't quietly and slowly move throughout the day. At, at the morning you'll have more of a blue, and then the afternoon we, we will change to more of an o, an orange or light. um, [00:26:00] so that's one of the things. soundscaping is huge, when you're.

Keeping the brain in mind because, some people just need no sound. but also, distributed cognition, really runs best at about 50 to 60 decibels, which I thought was really interesting.

AJ: And is that meaning what people are saying to each other, the 50 to

60 decibels.

Erin: yeah, when we talk of decibels, we're just listening to the, the, the hum, the back hum of the office. And I, and I decided I was gonna do that because the, the rainforest is measured in the, in decibels. So I thought, well, why not? Try it on your workforce and see what it tells us, which is where we learn that, you know, CO2, doesn't favor a collaboration.

that being said, We, we think that de decibels are really important and it really is a good indicator of how well things are going within your office. If people are talking and they're collaborating, that office [00:27:00] hum gives a certain amount of energy to your staff.

AJ: Yeah, I can see that. Because, you know what I hate more than anything is when I walk into an office and there's, it's full of people, but the lights are off and nobody's talking to each other. I'm like, what is going on here? Like, I don't wanna come in here and work. Everybody's got the lights off, like what's happening?

And I've seen it in lots of different environments. It's not just like, you know, people that are coding, right? It's like you could all do this at home if you sit out in here with no lights on being quiet, you know? So coming in and sharing information. We were having a conversation earlier today with a designer about your unconscious.

Creativity and how much you, you need to fill your bucket. You need to be, have that exposure and we forget about that. We talk about that with mentoring, that when one of the biggest [00:28:00] problems we had during COVID is that young designers sitting next to an older designer overhearing how they're dealing with a difficult client or dealing with a problem on a job site and how that.

Shapes their intuition of what they need to do next. And that was all dis it all disappeared, right? And so we, we have people that are hungry and to be around other humans and learn from them and be inspired from them and get communication from them that, that. That really sinks into your unconscious mind.

And if you don't have that stimulation, your job can be really hard. It can be really hard to come up with creativity and, solving problems that arise every day. So let's talk a little bit about results. You were kind of going through some of the things that you've seen. In this project specifically, but just in general, what outcomes have you seen for both individuals and organizations that focus on [00:29:00] the items that you're talking about?

Erin: there's a saying in the smart building industry that, you know, if you're not making money off of your smart building, then you're doing something wrong. So I, I think that it's, real estate utilization. I think coherence from a perspective of. You, you just have a, a more productive workforce. And I don't say productive in pushing people to get, product out the door. But you can do that if you wanted to do that in a factory, that's possible. You can get more product production out of your people by biohacking your workplace. we use it for hr, we use it for, all kinds of different things.

It's just the sky's limit. Well, the next thing will be AI and ai, managing our buildings and biohacking them for us, which I'm excited about.

AJ: And doing it before we even have to ask it to do it

Erin: it's been interesting 'cause we're training, our AI right now to do that. And, Some of this stuff is actually very [00:30:00] simple commands and, uh, we, our AI seems to be a little bored right now, so we're having to get even more creative. So it's been fun.

like actually having it control, the greats On your HVAC to get the air where you want it to be. 'cause we never do. someone's always cold and someone's always hot. So you can have your environment be different than anyone else's environment. which is also pretty cool to be able to provide for your employees. I

AJ: And gives people that when they need that hyper-personalization. To get them to be most productive. They, they have that ability then, because they can make it like, I'm always cold. I would want it warm. That would be me. So.

Erin: Yes.

AJ: This is extraordinary. I, I love the work that you're doing and it's really, it proves that when we design healthy environments there, there's ripple effects, right?

Like, it's not just you're doing it for one person. There's ripple effects that are felt everywhere. So, you know, in our [00:31:00] bodies, in our creativity, and even like. The return on investment, the bottom line that's happening for the company. So you're talking to a bunch of interior designers and architects right now. If you imagine the future of creativity, wellness, what role do you see for biohacking and data-driven design, like in the future? What's, what's your vision if you could build this perfect world, what would it be?

Erin: what I envision is, I think biohacking will be a very big part of, The workplace, it's there for the employees and, we should be able to cater to the employees and also, you know, the inhabitants, whether it's a school or anywhere else.

and I think that those places will become interactive. I think we'll get out of our screens and our walls will become AV and it will become immersive, a much more immersive environment. But I ultimately think if we wanna get people back to [00:32:00] work, they have to be better at work than they were at home.

And in order to do that, we have to heal people too. And I think it's very possible that we can do that.

AJ: it's inspiring to see how design and science can come together to create not just better spaces, but better lives. And that's what you're talking about. So thank you so much, Erin, for sharing all of your great knowledge. you are my new bio sister. Like you're my biohack sister. That's what I'm gonna call you because we've been on the same planes of looking at this research from very different angles, but it, it all leads you to the same, same spot, which is very exciting.

So thank you for the work that you're doing. I know you have a book coming out right?

Erin: I do, I do. Yeah. We're right now the talking to publishers, uh, it's called The Barometer of Man, and it talks about, um, interleukin six and how much influence it has on our brains society in general, and [00:33:00] how it's influenced our past. So I think, uh, it's really interesting and, uh, it, it gives you a good look into where I come from with, uh, with, with design and, and the brain.

AJ: Well, I can't wait. I wanna be first on the list to get the new book, so thank you, Erin.

Erin: I appreciate it.

AJ: That's our show for today. Thank you so much to my guest, Erin McDonald for sharing her incredible work at the intersection of biohacking design and wellness. Her story reminds us that creativity thrives when our bodies and minds are cared for, and that the future of design isn't just about buildings, but about the people who live and create within them.

And of course, I have to give a huge thanks to our brilliant production team, Rob Schulte, Rachel Santo, and Verity Lister. And if you love this episode and you want to hear more like it, head to surround podcasts.com, your hub for [00:34:00] design, stories that matter. I'm AJ Perone and this has been Once Upon a project.

Join me next time as we continue exploring the stories behind the projects that shape our creative world. Until then, keep dreaming big, keep pushing creative limits, and we'll see you on the next. Once upon a project I.