There’s a moment before a product becomes public…

Before it feels polished. Before everything works smoothly. Before thousands of people arrive. Usually, only a small number of people ever see that stage.

Over the past weeks, more people have been signing up to follow what we’re building at Healhub. Some have asked if they can try the app early. And it made me realize something.

For many people, this may be the first time they’ve ever participated in something like this. When people hear “testing,” they often imagine technical knowledge, complicated reporting systems, or needing to know exactly what they’re doing.

But that’s not really what early testing is about.

Being a tester is not about technical expertise. You do not need to know how software works, write detailed reports, or worry about “doing it correctly.” What matters most is honesty. What feels clear? What feels confusing? What feels natural? Where do you hesitate? What feels meaningful? What feels frustrating?

Those reactions matter more than people realize.

Especially for Healhub.

Because this platform is not just about technology. It’s about people being able to share difficult experiences in a way that feels human, calm, understandable, and emotionally safe. And often, the small moments tell us the most.

A screen that feels overwhelming. A button that’s hard to find. A moment that unexpectedly feels comforting. A part that feels unclear.

That feedback helps shape the experience for everyone who comes later.

It’s also important to say this clearly: this will not be a finished product.

Some parts will still be rough. Features will be limited at first. Things may change quickly as we learn. That’s intentional.

Early testing is not about presenting something polished and complete. It’s about learning what actually helps people and what doesn’t.

Positive feedback is appreciated deeply. But confusion is equally valuable.

If something feels awkward, emotionally off, difficult to understand, or simply unfinished… we want to know.

That is how good experiences are built.

For those who do join testing, we also want the process itself to feel simple.

Since we’re currently building for iPhone first (Android will be next), testing will happen through Apple’s TestFlight system. You’ll receive an email invitation connected to the Apple account used on your iPhone, install the TestFlight app, and Healhub will appear like any other app on your phone.

We’re also exploring simple ways to let people share thoughts directly inside the app itself, so feedback feels natural and easy instead of complicated.

In many ways, the first testers help shape not only the product… but the experience and culture around it.

That matters deeply to us.

And to everyone following along this early, thank you.

It means more than you probably realize.

More soon,

Christian

Most software is designed around efficiency.

Buttons, menus, forms, text boxes. Clean systems meant to move information from one place to another as quickly as possible.

And a part of me keeps wondering: is that enough? Can it be improved? Does it matter if an interface feels human? That question has quietly shaped many of the decisions we’ve been making while building Healhub.

Because what people are doing inside Healhub is not emotionally neutral. They are talking about fear, pain, confusion, symptoms they may have struggled to explain for years. That is a vulnerable thing to do.

And vulnerability is deeply affected by environment.

People speak differently depending on where they are. A hospital room feels different from a kitchen table or living room. A therapist’s office feels different from a crowded waiting room. Late-night conversations in a car feel different from filling out a form.

Environment changes honesty. And digital spaces are environments too.

I think we often forget that.

Modern software design has become incredibly focused on reducing friction and maximizing efficiency. But humans are not purely efficiency-driven creatures, especially when it comes to health.

Sometimes an interface can be technically efficient while emotionally difficult.

A cold symptom form may be optimized for data collection… but still make someone less likely to open up. And we all know those long endless forms that was made in 1980s that have now been made digital. They are just the same. Often with no thought to how it feels to fill out.

That’s part of why we created Michael and Emma.

On a functional level, they help people point directly to where symptoms are happening on the body. That precision matters. But beyond function, we made a very intentional decision: we did not want them to feel robotic, clinical, or like generic hospital mannequins.

We wanted warmth in the design.

A little personality. A little life.

Michael is not designed like some perfect fitness model. He has a beard, a softer shape, a bit of character to him. Emma too was designed to feel approachable and human. Not exaggerated cartoon characters. Not polished corporate avatars.

Just… welcoming.

We spent a surprising amount of time thinking about this, because visual atmosphere affects people emotionally far more than we usually admit. People can feel when something is cold. They can also feel when something feels safe.

And when someone is already struggling physically or emotionally, those details matter a lot.

We also didn’t want Healhub to visually reflect sickness itself. Many medical environments unintentionally feel sterile or heavy. Muted greens. Cold lighting. Clinical language.

There’s a place for that in medicine.

But Healhub is trying to create a different emotional environment.

Not anti-medical. Just more human.

A place where talking about difficult things feels slightly less intimidating.

We’re also working on subtle animation and motion capture for Michael and Emma. Not because we want them to become entertainment characters, but because small signs of life matter psychologically. A slight movement. A welcoming posture. A moment of presence.

Tiny emotional details can make people feel more comfortable opening up.

And I think humans respond to that more deeply than we realize.

Humans naturally form emotional relationships with environments and objects all the time. Homes, cars, voices, games, even simple digital interfaces.

What we’re trying to create is not dependency, persuasion, or artificial intimacy. We’re trying to reduce intimidation. To make vulnerability feel slightly easier. To add small moments of warmth inside difficult conversations.

An app that smiles a little.

And maybe that matters more than we usually think.

More soon,

Christian

Not everyone thinks the same way.

Some people are deeply analytical. They can hold enormous amounts of information in their head, connect ideas quickly, and explain complex systems. Others work more through intuition, feeling, memory, observation, or lived experience. Some are incredible with their hands. Some notice patterns emotionally before they can explain them logically. Some struggle to put things into words at all.

One thing we think about a lot at Healhub is this: how do we build something that truly helps everyone? Not just highly educated people or people who know medical terminology, but every type of person. Because being sick is already hard enough.

Most people who are struggling with symptoms are dealing with uncertainty, fear, exhaustion, confusion, and frustration. And then on top of that, they often run into systems and language that can feel intimidating or difficult to understand.

Medical language has its place. Expertise matters. Doctors matter. Science matters. But human understanding matters too. And sometimes complexity itself becomes a barrier.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that the people who understand something deeply are often able to explain it simply. Not because the topic itself is simple, but because people who truly understand something can often explain it clearly.

When some books make you feel smaller with every page, others make difficult things suddenly feel human. That difference matters.

At Healhub, we intentionally try to speak in human language. Not because health is simple… it absolutely isn’t. The human body is incredibly complicated. Symptoms can overlap. The same symptom can come from many different causes. Two people can look similar on the surface and still have completely different underlying stories.

There is uncertainty everywhere in health, and we want to be honest about that. We also believe people should still be able to participate in understanding their own experience.

That’s part of why we built Michael and Emma.

Sometimes pointing to where something is happening is easier than trying to describe it perfectly in words. A child can understand: “It hurts here.” “It spreads here.” “It started here.” That kind of visual interaction matters.

And the AI side of Healhub is not meant to diagnose people or pretend to have all the answers. What we’ve found instead is that thoughtful questions can help people remember and reflect more deeply on their own story.

You might begin with something simple like: “I’ve been having breathing problems.” But then the conversation slowly helps uncover details you may not have thought about in weeks. When did it start? Where were you? Did something change beforehand? Was it sudden or gradual? Did anything make it worse? Did anything make it better?

And suddenly memories begin reconnecting.

“Oh wait… I forgot that started happening around the same time.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Actually, now that I think about it…”

That process is powerful. Not because the AI is magically solving the problem, but because sometimes people need help slowing down and exploring their own experience more carefully.

And that process should not only belong to experts or highly analytical people. It should be accessible to everyone.

Over time, as more people share their experiences, we believe patterns will begin to emerge more clearly. Not perfect truth. Not certainty. Not diagnosis. But meaningful similarity. People finding others whose stories feel genuinely close to their own.

And maybe that’s part of the future of health knowledge: not replacing doctors or replacing science, but helping ordinary people participate more deeply in understanding what they’re going through.

Especially in a world where so many people still feel confused, isolated, and without clear explanations.

More soon,

Christian

As we are building the platform, I have been reflecting on how can we make it as easy as possible to use… which made me realize how difficult symptoms can be to explain.

Not just emotionally difficult. Literally difficult.

Sometimes I’ll stop and think:
How would I actually describe this to someone else?

And I realize how quickly language begins to break down.

You try to explain what’s happening in your body and suddenly the words feel too small. You say “sharp,” “dull,” “pressure,” “tightness,” “restless,” “burning.” But many experiences don’t fully fit those words.

Sometimes a symptom feels more like a memory you almost remember… but can’t quite hold onto long enough to explain clearly. Or like a dream that fades the moment you try to describe it.

You know something is there. You feel it very clearly. But translating it into language is surprisingly hard.

And I think this is something we rarely talk about.

We often assume symptoms already exist as clear categories waiting to be reported. But many experiences don’t arrive that way. They arrive as sensations, shifts, patterns, fragments, a strange feeling something is “off,” a pressure that is not exactly pain, or a kind of exhaustion that doesn’t feel like normal tiredness.

Even location can sometimes be difficult to describe.

And then there are experiences like anxiety. We have the word “anxiety,” but what does that actually mean from one person to another?

One person says anxiety feels like electricity running through their body. Another says it feels like a weight pressing on their chest. Another says it feels like static in their thoughts. Another says they can’t sit still.

They are all using the same word, but they may be experiencing very different things… or they might use different words but dealing with the same thing.

And maybe part of the challenge is that, culturally, we still don’t have a very rich language for many internal experiences. Not because people are bad at communicating. Not because doctors are bad at listening.

But because subjective experience itself is difficult to translate.

For most of human history, there hasn’t really been a place to deeply describe what something feels like over time, across thousands or millions of people.

Usually, experiences disappear. Someone suffers quietly, finds something that helps, moves on, and their understanding fades with them.

At Healhub, one of the things we’ve been thinking about is how to create more space for people to express experiences naturally.

Interestingly, this has pushed us toward simplifying the interface, not making it more complicated.

Earlier on, I experimented with lots of lists, symptom categories, and predefined explanations. But over time, we started moving in almost the opposite direction.

Simpler screens. Less visual noise. More conversation.

Because when people are overwhelmed by interfaces, dropdowns, labels, and categories, they often stop listening to themselves. They begin trying to “answer correctly” instead of describing honestly.

And maybe that’s the wrong starting point. Maybe people first need space to pause and reflect in their own words. To describe things imperfectly. To point. To compare. To search slowly for language.

Then perhaps later, AI can gently help clarify patterns:

“Does it feel more like this?”,
“Closer to pressure or burning?”
“Does it come in waves?”
“Does it move?”

Not replacing the person’s experience. Helping them explore it.

And over time, something interesting might happen.

As more people share experiences honestly, we may slowly begin developing richer ways of describing what we feel. New comparisons. New metaphors. Maybe even entirely new language.

Because language evolves when human beings have enough space to speak honestly.

Maybe health language will evolve too.

More soon,

Christian

Most of life looks like noise while we are living inside it.

Bad sleep. Stress. Pain that comes and goes. Energy changes. Brain fog. Restlessness. Good weeks. Bad weeks. Small fragments that often feel disconnected from each other.

Patterns are there even when we cannot fully see them ourselves. A person wakes up exhausted every morning, but doesn’t realize they are barely getting deep sleep. Someone feels anxious for months without noticing how closely it follows changes in rest, stress, or physical symptoms. Another person slowly adapts to feeling unwell because it has become normal to them. What once felt unusual slowly becomes everyday life.

And it makes me wonder about the future.

Not just of Healhub, but of health technology more broadly.

Today, many of us already carry devices that quietly measure parts of our lives. Watches. Rings. Phones. Sleep tracking. Heart rate. Blood pressure. Movement. Rest.

Most of that information, by itself, is probably just noise. A single night of bad sleep means very little. A slightly elevated heart rate means very little. One stressful week means very little.

But over time, patterns can begin to emerge. Not perfect answers. Not certainty.

But clues.

Especially when connected to lived experience. Because maybe understanding health is not only about isolated measurements or isolated stories. Maybe part of it comes from slowly learning to recognize patterns that repeat across human lives.

A lack of deep sleep. Certain rhythms. Certain combinations of experiences. And maybe, one day, systems could help people notice things that are currently difficult to see on their own. Not replacing doctors. Not replacing human intuition. But helping widen the picture. Helping people connect dots that otherwise remain scattered across months or years of life.

But the moment we start talking about this, we also immediately run into another conversation. Privacy. Ownership. Trust. These are not small questions. Who owns this information? Who should have access to it? How much should technology know about us? At what point does something helpful become invasive?

And honestly, I think many people already feel uneasy about where the world is heading with all of this. Phones track us. Apps track us. Algorithms constantly observe behavior. More and more of human life is becoming measurable.

I don’t think pretending these concerns don’t exist helps anyone. If anything, I think we need more open conversations about them now, before these systems become normal everywhere. Because there may be meaningful patterns hidden inside the noise of everyday life that can truly help us all.

But human dignity matters too. Consent matters. Choice matters.

And if systems like this ever become part of Healhub in the future, I believe people should remain fully aware, fully informed, and fully in control of what they choose to share. Human beings first. Technology second.

Maybe the future of health will partly involve learning how to responsibly make sense of the noise surrounding human life. Or maybe some things should remain private forever.

I honestly don’t think we fully know yet.

But I do think these conversations matter.

More soon,

Christian

What happens when thousands of people living through the same illness start comparing notes?

I honestly don’t know yet.

And I think anyone building something like Healhub should be careful about pretending they already have the answer.

Because the internet has shown both sides of human nature.

It has allowed strangers to help each other in extraordinary ways. It has connected people across the world. It has allowed human experiences, observations, and ideas to spread outside traditional systems.

But it has also amplified manipulation, tribalism, misinformation, outrage, emotional contagion, and confusion at enormous scale.

Sometimes people help each other. Sometimes crowds lose themselves.

And those are not small problems. They are too real.

Groups can become emotional. People can stop thinking individually. Tribes form. Narratives spread. Certainty spreads. Fear spreads. Humans begin following each other instead of carefully facing reality itself.

The internet did not create those tendencies. It amplified them.

And now we are entering another era entirely, where AI can generate realistic images, voices, videos, and stories at massive scale. The line between what is true and what only appears true may become harder and harder to see.

So naturally, there is an important question underneath all of this:

Can large groups of ordinary people, sharing lived experience openly, actually help create useful knowledge without collapsing into noise and confusion?

Because the reality is, people usually begin searching this way when they do not have answers. Or when the answers they received do not fully explain what they are living through. And while formal systems are often careful for good reasons, they can also move very slowly.

Meanwhile, human suffering does not pause while people wait for studies, approvals, funding, or institutional consensus.

So people start comparing notes. That is where this becomes complicated.

Because while open human systems can become chaotic, they also allow something else to emerge: People living through the same reality begin noticing patterns together.

Warnings spread. Observations spread. Practical knowledge spreads. Sometimes long before formal systems fully recognize what communities are already seeing.

One of the conversations that stayed with me most recently was with Bob Wold.

Bob talked about his community of people suffering from cluster headaches had spent decades sharing observations, treatments, failures, warnings, and lived experiences with each other. Real people. Real suffering. Real lived data.

At one point, their community began noticing something alarming: the more people used Imitrex injections, the worse many of their cluster headache cycles seemed to become. People were getting more attacks, longer attacks, and more intense attacks over time. Eventually, formal studies validated what the community itself had already been observing.

That should make us pause. Not because science is bad.

But because it means human communities are sometimes observing meaningful patterns long before systems fully recognize them.

Bob then talked about psilocybin research and cluster headaches. Patients had been reporting benefits since 2006. Communities had been discussing it, sharing experiences, comparing outcomes, and trying to help each other for years.

And yet it still took nearly two decades before they were even presenting this work to rooms full of doctors. What finally helped create movement was a study involving mice under a microscope showing activity on the relevant pain pathways.

Then Bob said something:

“It took two mice to tell these doctors what patients have been telling them for almost 20 years.”

That is a profound statement. Something is structurally wrong if massive amounts of lived human experience can remain effectively invisible for decades while people continue suffering. That should not be acceptable.

And I think this is part of the deeper question Healhub is exploring.

Not whether crowds magically become truth. They don’t.

But whether human beings can openly share what they are living through in a way that helps surface meaningful patterns without losing themselves to noise, ego, tribes, manipulation, or certainty… and then if the system will dare to listen and act on what is learned outside their silos.

I honestly do not know the answers to these questions. But I do know that pretending these tensions do not exist will not solve them either.

So the question feels important enough to face directly.

Not carefully stepping around it.

But honestly.

More soon

Christian

At some point, many of us have done this.

Late at night, searching online. Reading old forum posts from years ago. Looking through comments from strangers we have never met. Trying to find someone whose experience sounds a little like our own.

Sometimes it happens after a doctor’s appointment. Sometimes after a second opinion. Sometimes after hearing that everything “looks normal,” while something inside still feels wrong.

So quietly, people keep searching.

Not because they reject medicine. Not because they think strangers online know everything. But because they are suffering. They need answers and other people’s experiences contains something real. They know the struggle. What does it actually feel like? And if one is lucky to find the right person, there are ways to compare things. What changed over time? What helped, even slightly? What made things worse?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot while building Healhub.

Because the reality is, millions of people do this every day. Not in an organized system. Not in a structured place built for it. But scattered across forums, Reddit threads, Facebook groups, YouTube comments, private messages, and conversations that slowly disappear over time.

People trying to help each other understand what they are living through.

It does not replace medicine. It does not replace doctors. And it should not.

Good doctors, good science, and good medical systems matter enormously. Healhub is not being built against those things. If anything, I hope it can someday help support them. But because there is another kind of knowledge that truly exists between appointments, between categories, and between official answers.

Human experiences.

Messy. Incomplete. Personal. Sometimes contradictory. But still real. People are trying to build this layer of understanding themselves. You can see it everywhere online.

Someone posting quietly about symptoms they cannot explain. Someone returning years later to update strangers about what finally helped. Someone warning others about something harmful. Someone taking the time to answer a message from a person they will never meet.

Most of this disappears.

Buried inside feeds, forums, and timelines.

And yet sometimes, hidden inside those conversations, are things that genuinely help people. Not always. Not perfectly. But enough that millions continue searching.

I don’t think the answer is to blindly trust crowds. Crowds can be wrong. People can follow each other without thinking carefully. The internet can become noisy, emotional, tribal, and confused very quickly.

But I also do not think the answer is to ignore lived experience, which is too common. We all know the dismissive response “It’s just anecdotal”. But if you have two thousand anecdotal stories… we are suddenly in a very different place of learning.

Maybe the real question is whether it’s possible to find the patterns from the noise, if we can build a healthier place for those conversations. A place where people can share honestly. Where disagreement is allowed. Where uncertainty is okay. Where truth matters more than ego. And where people who have gone through difficult things can leave something behind that may help someone else feel a little less lost.

I don’t fully know what that becomes yet.

But I believe it’s time we take our stories serious and listen...

And maybe that can lead to new knowledge, between us.

More soon

Christian

Sitting here on a Saturday, writing polls for Healhub, I suddenly stopped and thought… What do we actually ask people? Not the light, obvious questions. The real questions.

And sitting with that for a while, I felt the weight of all of this again.

Healhub cannot become a place where we quietly silence pain. Where we polish the tone until everything feels safe, flat, and emotionally distant.

Health struggles are not flat.

My thoughts went to my dad living with MS. My mom, who at times had to fight the system, while also being helped by the very same system. To Craig. To Bob. To so many people quietly carrying things most others never fully see.

The paradox of it all.

Medicine can save lives. Medicine can hurt people. People fall through the cracks.

Online spaces can help people feel less alone. They can also become places of fear, performance. Both things are true.

Healhub needs to stay sharp. Real. Honest.

Not cruel. Not cynical. Not ideological.

But also not softened to the point where reality disappears. Because people know when language stops feeling true. I repeat this often, truth has to remain our anchor.

Not outrage. Not tribes. Not performance. Not popularity.

Just people trying, as honestly as possible, to understand what is real together.

Christian

One of the core ideas underneath Healhub is very simple:

The truth has to be the anchor.

Not ego. Not identity. Not winning arguments.

Truth.

That sounds obvious at first. But I don’t think it’s easy, especially online.

The internet often pushes people toward certainty very quickly. Toward reacting quickly. Toward defending positions, tribes, identities, and beliefs as if changing your mind means losing something about yourself.

But reality is often more complicated than that.

Sometimes we do not fully know. Sometimes there is uncertainty. Sometimes there are multiple perspectives that each contain part of the truth.

And sometimes the most honest answer is simply:

“I don’t know.”

I think that matters. Especially when it comes to health, suffering, and human experience.

One of the things I’ve thought about a lot while building Healhub is the difference between what we truly know personally… and what we assume, interpret, infer, or hear from others.

There’s a tribe in the Amazon called the Pirahã people that became known partly because of the way their language relates to knowledge and experience. Linguist Daniel Everett wrote about how statements were often connected to how someone knew something: whether they personally witnessed it, heard it from someone else, or inferred it indirectly. Their idea stayed with me.

Because modern life often collapses all of those distinctions together. We move quickly between things we directly experienced, things we heard, things we assume, things we emotionally believe, and things we repeat confidently without really knowing.

But those are not the same thing.

And I think one of the healthiest things we can do is become more honest about the difference.

At Healhub, one of the core ideas is very simple: what did you personally go through?

Not what your coworker experienced. Not what someone online claimed happened. Not certainty about everyone else.

But your own lived experience.

What did this feel like? What changed? What helped? What harmed you? What did you observe over time?

That does not mean personal experience automatically becomes universal truth. It doesn’t. People can misunderstand things. Patterns can be incomplete. Experiences can differ wildly from person to person.

But there is still something deeply important in honestly saying:

“This is what happened to me.”

I think humility begins there.

Not pretending to know more than we know. Not turning experience into ideology. Not forcing certainty where uncertainty still exists.

And strangely, I think that kind of honesty can actually bring people closer together instead of further apart.

Because once truth becomes the anchor, disagreement changes too.

Changing your mind is no longer defeat. Listening is not surrender. Saying “I was wrong” is not humiliation. And admitting uncertainty is not weakness.

It’s honesty.

I hope Healhub can become a place where people are allowed to speak honestly about what they have lived through, while also remaining humble about what they do not fully understand.

A place where thoughtful skepticism is welcomed. Where questions are allowed. Where disagreement can exist without hatred. And where the search for truth matters more than the need to win.

I don’t think that’s easy to build.

But I think it may be one of the most important parts of all of this.

Christian

Bob Wold has spent decades living with cluster headaches while also helping others who found themselves searching for answers, relief, and understanding. In this conversation, we talk about suffering, community, the reality of navigating difficult systems, and what can happen when people choose to share what they’ve learned with others.

Watch here:

I spoke with Craig Stewart recently and did a podcast with him.

He lives in New Zealand. He’s in his early 40s, and when this started, he had just gotten married. Life was moving forward. And then one night, he woke up.

At first, it felt like a headache. Then it escalated… fast. Within minutes, it became something else entirely. He remembers gripping his head in bed and waking his wife:

“Wake up. Something’s really wrong.”

They got in the car and drove to the hospital. He thought he might be dying.

That was the first cluster headache. They came back the next night. And the next. And the next. Not once, but multiple times, every night… each one lasting up to 60 to 90 minutes at full intensity. No easing in, no easing out, just peak.

He didn’t have a diagnosis. Doctors told him it might be stress. He knew it wasn’t.

So he started dealing with it alone. At night, he would go out into the garage so he wouldn’t wake his wife. He would sit in a chair, rocking, head in his hands, waiting for it to pass. Then back to bed… until the next one came.

This went on for months. And then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.

The next year, it came back.

At some point, he found the name: cluster headaches. But knowing what it was didn’t mean knowing what to do. So he did what most people in that position do… he searched Forums. Message boards. Old posts. People sharing fragments of what helped.

Some of it led nowhere. Some of it was misleading. At one point, he almost traveled across the world for a surgery that turned out not to be real.

But somewhere in all of that, there were also people trying to help. Not doctors. Not institutions. Just people who had been through it, leaving something behind for the next person.

Eventually, Craig found something that helped him. Not perfectly explained, not fully understood… but it worked.

The attacks stopped.

And for years, they didn’t come back.

That could have been the end of the story.

But it wasn’t.

Craig didn’t move on. He didn’t close the chapter and leave it behind. He stayed.

He talks to people who are still in it… people sitting in their own version of that garage, going through it for the first time, trying to understand what’s happening to them. He shares what he’s learned. What helped. What didn’t. What it actually felt like.

Not as an expert. Not as someone with all the answers. Just as someone who’s been there.

At one point, he said something simple:

If even one person benefits… it’s worth it.

That stayed with me.

Because Craig is not the only one.

There are people like him everywhere… in comments, in forums, in replies to strangers. People who have gone through something difficult, found something that helped, and chose to stay and help others.

But here’s the problem.

That help doesn’t last.

It lives in scattered places… buried in threads, disconnected from everything else they’ve shared. Each time they help someone, it starts from zero again.

The world already has people like Craig.

What it doesn’t have is a place where what they share can stay.

Healhub is an attempt to build that.

Not around experts. Not around institutions.

But around people like him.

Christian

We spent a day in Los Angeles at Xsens, capturing movement.

What stood out wasn’t just the technology, it was how controlled everything had to be to make it look effortless. Two actors. Two suits. About 35 movements each.

Behind that, a system that requires precision at every step… calibration, timing, clean execution. Byron guided the session throughout, making sure the data we captured would actually be usable once we brought it back into the system.

When it works, it looks simple… It isn’t.

What we’re building isn’t just about movement… it’s about moving beyond text.

Most systems today are built around text. You type. You read. Maybe you speak. But at the end of the day, you’re still interacting with a screen full of words.

That works. It’s powerful. But it’s also… limited.

For Healhub, we’ve been building something different.

Not only a chat. Not only a response system. But something that begins to feel like an interaction between people.

Michael and Emma are part of that. Not as “avatars” in the typical sense, but as a way to move interaction away from pure text and into something more human. Something you can look at. Point to. Engage with.

You can already rotate around the body. Zoom in. Mark exactly where something is happening. Anchor the camera to specific areas. That layer exists.

What’s missing, and what we started building in LA… is how that system responds back.

The session itself went well.

We worked with Brendan for the male performance and Kerry for the female. Brendan has years of motion capture experience with ILM across major film productions. You can feel it immediately… the control, the clarity in movement, the ability to express something small without overdoing it.

We had done prep beforehand, direction, references, recordings, so when he walked in, it was execution.

Kerry stepped into a different kind of challenge. Motion capture isn’t natural. You’re wearing a suit with sensors, cables, a head rig. It changes how you move, how you think about your body. But that’s part of the process. You work through it.

And that’s really what this phase is about.

Working through things.

Half of what we captured is functional.

Simple movements that allow the system to respond to you. Subtle shifts. Small reactions. The kind of motion that makes something feel present instead of static.

The other half is expressive.

How does a character respond when you’re explaining something difficult? What does it mean for a system to “listen” without words? How much motion is enough, and how much becomes distracting?

These are not solved problems.

There’s also a technical side to all of this.

We’re building this natively on iOS, using Apple’s frameworks (Android will be next). That comes with constraints… memory, performance, rendering, animation blending. Things that are manageable individually, but complex when combined in real-time on a mobile device.

That’s part of why this session matters.

These first captures are not the final version. They’re for testing. For breaking things. For understanding what actually works when everything is connected.

Baptiste will take these assets and start pushing them through the system, seeing where it holds and where it doesn’t.

But the bigger challenge isn’t technical.

It’s behavioral.

We’re trying to create a new kind of interaction. Something between a tool and a person. Not fully one, not pretending to be the other.

And that space is unfamiliar.

If you’ve used systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, or others, you’ve already experienced how powerful text-based interaction can be.

But you’re still reading.

Still interpreting.

Still translating your experience into words.

What happens when you don’t have to do that the same way?

What happens when you can point to something… show it… and have something respond in a way that feels natural?

We don’t fully know yet.

That’s what we’re working toward.

This session in LA is just the first step into that.

We now have the beginnings of movement. Real motion. Real performances. Something we can start building with.

It’s early. There will be challenges. Things will break. Some of this won’t work the way we expect.

But that’s part of it.

You don’t get to something new without going through that phase.

More soon.

I had a call recently with Bob.

He’s been living with cluster headaches for decades, and for just as long, he’s been helping others who are going through the same thing. Not casually. He told me he’s spoken with over 10,000 people, answering emails, talking one-on-one, trying to help them figure out what might work.

At one point, I asked him something simple:

Is there value in people sharing what they’ve gone through?

His answer was immediate. Most of the real breakthroughs didn’t come from the system. They came from the community… from people comparing notes, trying things, reporting back, and slowly figuring things out together.

He said something that really stayed with me. He doesn’t learn from the people who say “this worked perfectly.” He learns from the people who say “this didn’t work for me.” Because that’s where the real questions are… why didn’t it work, what was different, what was blocking it. That’s where understanding begins.

It’s not clean. It doesn’t move in a straight line. But it moves.

He also told me something else.

If you give people a place where they can tell their story… and they feel like someone is actually listening… they will tell you everything.

That hit me more than anything else.

Because I’ve felt the opposite of that. Sitting in a doctor’s office, trying to explain what was happening, and feeling like it wasn’t really being heard.

When I told Bob about my own experience… years of eczema, and eventually realizing it was mold… he didn’t dismiss it. He understood it immediately. He had seen enough to know that these kinds of things matter.

We talked about building something. A way for people to find others who are going through something similar. Not to replace doctors, and not to diagnose… but to connect people.

And he said something important.

You can build something like that. But you have to be careful.

Communities are powerful, but they can also go wrong. People can mislead. Power dynamics can form. Things can spiral if you’re not paying attention. He’s seen all of it over decades.

And still, he believes in it.

Because he’s seen what happens when people find each other.

He told me about patient conferences where people walk into a room and, for the first time in their lives, meet someone who understands. They don’t have to explain anything. They just know.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about since the call.

Not systems. Not features.

Just people who have been through something, finding each other, and sharing what they’ve learned.

We’re still at the very beginning. And I’m still figuring a lot of this out. But this conversation gave me more clarity than anything else so far.

If you’re here, and you’ve been through something… even if you’re not sure you have “an answer”…. that still matters.

Christian

When you try to describe something happening in your body…
filling out a form, talking to a doctor, typing it into an app, words are usually the only tool you’re given.

But that’s not how it starts.

It starts with a feeling. A point, a pressure, something that doesn’t quite make sense yet. And then they try to explain it.

“It’s kind of here…”
“No, a bit lower…”
“It spreads… but not always…”

We’ve all done this. Trying to translate something physical into words that were never designed for it.

And even when we try our best, something gets lost.

Not because people aren’t paying attention. Not because they don’t care. But because the tool itself is limited.

Words are linear.
The body is not.

A symptom isn’t just what you feel. It’s where it is, how big it is, whether it moves, whether it stays, what surrounds it. All of that disappears the moment we turn it into a sentence.

So we simplify.

We say “head,” “chest,” “back.” We check boxes. We pick from dropdowns. We try to fit something complex into something manageable.

But the body doesn’t work in categories. Pain doesn’t stay neatly inside borders. It spreads, overlaps, shifts, and sometimes exists in ways that are hard to name at all.

So people adapt.

They point. They gesture. They use their hands to show what they mean, because instinctively we know this isn’t something words can fully carry.

And yet, almost every place we share health experiences forces us back into text.

Something gets left behind.

That’s where this started.

Not from technology, but from a simple question:

What if you could just show it?

Not describe it. Not translate it. Just place it, exactly where it is.

That’s where Michael and Emma come in.

Not as ideas… but as someone you can point to, and say… here.

A body you can interact with. A way to mark a precise point instead of saying “somewhere around here.” A way to show how something spreads, or changes, or returns over time.

That’s what the body map is.

Not a feature, but a missing layer.

And something else happens when you begin to see things this way.

Patterns start to emerge.

Not from one person, but across many. Similar areas, similar shapes, similar paths, things that wouldn’t match through words alone. Two people can describe something completely differently and still be pointing to the same place.

That’s where this begins to change.

Not by giving answers, but by making experiences visible. So they can be recognized, connected, and learned from.

Before anything is solved, it has to be seen.

And for the first time, it can be.



Christian

Most people who find something that helps them… move on.

They get their life back. The pain fades, and time fills in the space where it used to be. What helped them stays with them, but it isn’t written down or shared. It simply becomes part of their past.

Not because they don’t care.

Life pulls forward. Work returns. Family, routines, normal things. And whatever happened before slowly becomes something distant, something you don’t revisit very often.

The system doesn’t notice this. It records outcomes, diagnoses, treatments. But it doesn’t capture the path someone took to get there. The small adjustments. The strange details. The things that only mattered because it was their experience.

So what helped gets lost.

Not all at once, but gradually. Over time, person by person. And somewhere else, someone is still searching. Trying things, reading, guessing, moving through the same uncertainty, not knowing that something close to what they need has already been lived.

There are places where people share.

Forums. Videos. Comments. Conversations scattered across the internet.

But this kind of knowledge doesn’t hold well there. It gets buried, fragmented, taken out of context. It isn’t easy to find when you need it, and it rarely reaches the person it was meant for.

So even when it’s shared… it’s often still lost.

Part of the reason is simple.

There’s no clear moment where it’s expected. No structure that makes it natural. Sharing lived answers isn’t something we’re taught, or asked for, or even reminded of.

So the decision rarely appears as a decision.

It just fades.

And most people move on.

And then there are a few who don’t.

They pause. They turn back. Not because they have to, and not because they’re asked, but because something in them doesn’t let it end there. They take what helped them and leave it behind for someone they will never meet.

Most people move on.

Some don’t.

And more depends on that than we think.

Christian

I was speaking with someone about Healhub.

He mentioned his wife. She has a rare condition. No clear diagnosis. No real answers. The kind of thing where doctors can only do so much… so she’s been left trying to manage it on her own.

She wears a very specific brace on her ankle. For a long time, she felt like she was the only one. No one to compare with, no one to ask. Just trying to make sense of it on her own.

Until something unexpected happened.

They were on vacation in Rome, riding the subway… and she noticed someone standing a few feet away… wearing the exact same brace. At first, she wasn’t sure. Then she looked again. Same shape. Same structure. She hesitated… and then asked.

And it turned out, it was the same condition.

Two women. One Italian, one American. A world apart, now standing there in a subway car, holding onto each other, crying…

Not because they had found an answer, but because they had found someone who understood. For the first time, they didn’t have to explain everything.

They just knew.

That story has stayed with me.

Her condition had not changed, but it was no longer invisible. She was no longer alone.

In the last few posts, I’ve been writing about how hard it is to explain what’s happening in the body. How words often fall short. How most of us are left trying to describe something that doesn’t quite fit into language.

This is the other side of it.

Even when something can be seen, even if you can explain it… if you walk out of that doctor’s office alone, being the only person with it, there’s a certain isolation that comes with it.

Am I the only one?
I have these symptoms, yet my doctor says they’re not related… are they?
What are others feeling?
Something doesn’t match.
Am I the only one with this pattern?

Right now, many walk alone.

The patterns live inside cold buildings, seen only by those who have never felt them. How can small patterns be seen… lifted… if they are not listened to?

But if we connect, like a continuous subway train, people walking on and meeting their people…

This is where symptoms become visible.

It’s no longer just one experience. It’s two. It’s twenty. It’s thousands. Signs begin to emerge… across people, across time.

And that’s where patterns begin.

Not fully formed answers. Not final conclusions. But the first real signal that this isn’t random… that this isn’t just you.

Healhub is built around this exact moment.

Making what’s invisible visible, so these connections don’t have to happen by chance.

And over time, that’s where answers can begin to form. Not imposed or assumed, but emerging from what people are actually going through.

Christian

Most places on the internet teach you how to speak loudly.

This is an attempt at something else.

Healhub is an attempt to create a space where people can speak freely. Fully, honestly, without fear of being shut down because something they say is uncomfortable.

There are no taboo topics here. No forbidden directions of thought. Because if we are serious about finding truth, we cannot decide in advance what is allowed to be said.

Truth does not need protection. If it is real, it will hold. If it is not, it will fall.

But openness alone is not enough. If this works, it will only work because it’s paired with something else: responsibility.

You will meet people here who think differently than you. Who believe different things. Who have taken paths you wouldn’t take. That is not a problem.

That is the point.

Disagreement is not something we avoid. It’s how we learn.

But there is a difference between challenging an idea… and turning on a person.

You can say, “That doesn’t make sense.”
You can say, “I think that’s wrong.”
You can even say, “That’s a terrible approach.”

But if this works… we’ll learn not to make it personal.

To question without attacking.
To disagree without pushing someone out.

Some people will speak gently. Others will be more direct, even harsh at times. That’s part of being human. And sometimes, the people with strong opinions have spent a long time thinking.

Sometimes they haven’t. Both will be here. So maybe the simplest way to say it is this:

Be honest. Be direct. Stay human.

This will not be perfect.

We will get things wrong. We will misread each other. We will have moments where this breaks.

Because people are complex… and building something like this is not easy.

We ask for patience as we try. And more than that, we ask for your help. Because this is not something we can define on our own.

The tone of this place will come from the people who choose to be here. From how you respond… how you disagree… how you listen.

If it becomes thoughtful, respectful, and real… it will be because of that.

There are still some boundaries.

Not around what can be said… but around how we treat each other.

If this works, it will not include people who come here to provoke, disrupt, or tear others down. Not because they are unwelcome as people… but because that behavior breaks what we are trying to build.

There is one more thing, quietly built into this.

We’re designing this space to lean positive. Not by forcing it… but by guiding it. The small signals matter… what gets acknowledged, what gets seen, what gets carried forward.

Over time, those signals shape how people show up.

Because in the end, none of the usual divisions matter here.

Not politics.
Not identity.
Not status.

When you are in pain, those things fall away. What remains is simple:

A person trying to understand what’s happening to them…
and another person who might have something real to share.

If this works…

that’s what this place will become.



Christian

Most of the time, we don’t have answers.

We are in it. Trying to understand something that hasn’t been explained, trying to live with something that hasn’t settled, trying to make sense of something that changes.

Along the way, we learn things. How to handle the pain. How to get through a day. What helps a little… even if it doesn’t last. Sometimes it gets better, and then it comes back. Sometimes it never really leaves.

And still, we keep going.

There are so many of us. But even as a group, we experience it alone. We don’t know each other. We don’t see each other. We don’t hear the small things that could make it easier.

You go into an operation not fully knowing what it will feel like. What happens before. What happens after. You carry questions that are rarely answered, and in that space, fear grows—not always because reality is worse, but because we don’t know what reality is.

The system moves fast. Hospitals are busy. Doctors do their best. But often, we are handled as cases, as steps in a process. And the small human details—the ones that could actually make a difference—are left out.

But those details exist.

Someone else has been there. Someone else has felt it. Someone else has learned something… even if they didn’t “solve” it.

This is what we rarely share.

Not just answers. Not just solutions, but experiences. What it was like. What helped. What didn’t. What surprised us. What we wish we had known.

Because even without answers, there is still something we can give each other: clarity, comfort, and the simple sense that you are not walking into this alone.

In many ways, this feels like the most important part of Healhub.

Not the ones who found the answer,
but the ones who are still searching.


Christian

I’ve been noticing something.

There are people who spend years trying to figure something out… symptoms that don’t quite make sense, things that don’t fully add up, trying different paths, different ideas. Over time, it becomes part of how they move through the world… quietly adjusting, trying things, ruling things out, starting over again.

And then at some point, sometimes almost unexpectedly, something shifts.

They find something that helps. Not always perfectly. Not always completely, but enough to change things… enough to breathe a little differently, enough to feel like things might be okay.

And then… they disappear.

Not in a dramatic way. No announcement. No final post. They just go back to their lives. Which makes sense. After everything they’ve been through, why wouldn’t they?

I’ve done that myself. Quietly moved on from things that once took up so much space… without leaving anything behind.

But when they do, something else happens.

Everything they went through… all the things they tried, the small details that made a difference, the things that didn’t… it all goes with them.

And from the outside, it creates a strange kind of illusion. It looks like no one has figured anything out. Like everyone is still searching. Like the only thing that exists is uncertainty.

But that’s not really true.

There are people who found something that helped. There are paths that led somewhere. We just can’t see them.

And at some point, each of those people had a moment… not a big one, just a quiet one… where they could have left something behind.

It looks like no one has figured anything out.


Christian

There’s something we’ve been trying to understand…
We call them Wayfinders.

They’re not defined by titles or credentials.
They are recognized… but only if they make themselves seen.
Otherwise, they remain hidden among us.
Not lifted up. Unheard. Unseen.

Which makes it easy to ask… are they real?

How do we know who to listen to?

So to lift the fog, I’ll try to describe them…
and maybe a few will step forward.

A Wayfinder is not an expert. They’re not someone with perfect answers, and they’re not telling others what to do.

A Wayfinder is someone who has been sick and walked through something real.

They’ve experienced the confusion, the trial and error, the moments where nothing made sense. And at some point, they found something. Maybe small. Maybe incomplete. Maybe life-changing. But something shifted.

Instead of turning that into advice, they simply say:

“This is what happened to me.”

No claims. No guarantees. No “this will work for you too.”

Just honesty.

A Wayfinder is anchored in truth. They try, as best they can, to remember what actually happened… what they tried, what didn’t work, what did, and how it unfolded.

Even if it’s messy. Especially if it’s messy.

Because being sick is not clean. It’s confusing, nonlinear, and uncertain. Sometimes you don’t know if you’ve found an answer or just a step forward.

That’s okay.

On Healhub, there is space for both.

Some stories are still unfolding. Some have reached a kind of resolution. Most are somewhere in between. We don’t force clarity where it doesn’t exist.

What matters is that you share what you lived… as carefully and honestly as you can.

If something helped you, even a little, that matters. If something changed everything, that matters too.

Over time, others may find your story. Some may try what you tried. And quietly, patterns begin to form.

We mark this simply:

A sprout… this helped me
A flower… this healed me

Not as proof, but as human signals.

And signals… there are.

Recently, we came across Craig.

He lived with cluster headaches for years. Tried different things. Searched, struggled, and eventually found something that changed everything.

Craig found Pete.

Someone who had also gone through it.
Who had done the work.
Who was sharing what he had learned.

Not as experts. Not telling others what to do.

Just sharing what happened to them… so others might find their own path.

Craig hasn’t had cluster headaches since.

And he didn’t keep that to himself… he continues to share what happened to him, openly and publicly, through his talks, his work, and across the world.

That’s a Wayfinder.

They are real.