To round off our January series of talks with inspirational health and wellness experts, we speak to Florence Iwegbue, the co-founder of Livewello. A pioneering genetic data platform that merges wellness, innovation and heritage, Livewello is a confluence of Florence's own family's health struggles, groundbreaking AI technology, modern medicine and ancient wisdom. Nigerian-born Florence is on a mission to promote the conversation connecting our genetic heritage with our lifestyles, highlighting how understanding the influence of these elements can transform health outcomes and extend lives.  She told us her story: 

Livewello was born from our personal challenges. My mother (who was brought up in Nigeria but moved to the UK to work as a midwife) developed epilepsy at 48 and died of a seizure at 58 whilst at work. Following my son's diagnosis with epilepsy at just 2 years old, I knew there had to be a genetic connection, and I started looking into the environmental factors that might have predisposed him to, or even triggered this condition since the medics weren't able to give us any concrete information to guide us. (This was quickly apparent when they gave their real opinions to my husband, who is himself a physician.) Knowing that my father's parents lived to be over 100 years old in their village in Nigeria, yet he too was in very poor health living a Western lifestyle, was extra encouragement. 

Research shows that children born in the West may be exposed to elevated levels of environmental toxins even before birth, due to the mother's lifestyle and environment. So, for our son, we switched to organic products, going back to original sources to try to ensure no further harmful toxins were entering his system. We stripped the house of everything we could to clean up his environment, from skin creams and laundry products to the paint on the walls. He was also diagnosed with autism, and we learnt from others what they had found helpful for that, too – so I overhauled our family's diet, removing gluten (this was a challenge because my family loves pasta!) and hunting down ingredients from farmers' markets in pursuit of a clean, 'farm to table' diet. It's an overwhelming process to tackle, but we very soon saw improvements, with clear reductions in our needs for our routine medications, including my own asthma-controlling drugs, and crucially, fewer seizures for my son. 

I became obsessed with data collection from tracking these results. My son's care needs were complex, and I religiously recorded the daily goings-on and asked his various caregivers to do so, too, so that I could monitor the results. All this record-keeping led to my husband building the very first stages of our software, just a system that allowed me to interact with my son's many different caregivers and them to interact with each other, which we felt improved the level of care he was receiving. 

Now that we had experienced the lifestyle benefits for ourselves, we deep-dived into gene mapping and epigenetics. My husband, being a medical geek (I hope he doesn't take offence here!), immersed himself in any relevant research papers looking for answers to my health questions. We discovered the methylation cycle, the bedrock of the body, which essentially acts as a regulatory switch that influences gene expression, neurotransmitter function, and detoxification processes. If you have genes that are challenged within that cycle, it can cause all sorts of problems for the body. 

Due to his background as a physician, we were privileged to know what to look for, yet this raised the dilemma of what the average person does to make sense of their genetic testing results. So, we further developed the programme to allow someone to upload their genetic testing results, taking raw data from all the popular testing sites such as AncestryDNA and 23andMe. We could then provide a basic report for them that they could also take to their integrated healthcare practitioner.

Next, we developed it further by integrating the system with AI to do the heavy lifting on the research, and this allowed us to tailor recommendations on diet, exercise and medicines for individuals according to their own specific genetic profiles. Then we added the 'GeneChat' feature, which allows a patient to ask the system a particular question to help them gain insights and make plans from their data. We're now able to send monthly reports and articles on new research relevant to a customer's own gene profile – we are really trying to personalise medicine.  

My own health battles, including significant weight gain, chronic fatigue, depression, peri-menopausal challenges and fibroids, served as a great test; utilising this GeneChat tool, I was able to reclaim my health and vitality. The hardest lesson I learned through the GeneChat was the amount of exercise I needed based on my heritage, but it worked, and it's been a journey which I'm passionate about sharing with others. 

What is the best piece of advice you have been given? 

 Ironically, the best piece of advice I've had was from our own software – it told me that high cortisol was likely holding me back from losing weight. It said that if I could reduce my stress, that would be the gateway to losing weight, so I introduced meditation. I could only manage two minutes a day to begin with, but over the course of two years, I've built that up and it has changed my life. I would recommend to everyone that they talk kindly to themselves. 

What's always in your Tusting bag and what bag are they in?  

It's a black Dovedale backpack – I travel a lot and it's perfect for that. There are always two essential oils in there – lavender and bergamot. One is for stress, and one is for menopause symptoms. In a stressful environment (such as a crowded London tube train!) I put a little on my pulse points and it makes everything better! 

What's in store for 2025? 

A new launch! We are introducing our new test kit which can address so many more genes associated with diseases and lifestyles. We are so excited for a more thorough testing option for people to receive more information. 

Discover Livewello here.