Man on a mission - Kristian Ranta

Guest Kristian Ranta, CEO and Founder at Meru Health, discusses turning personal loss into hope, nutritional psychiatry, sleep deprivation and complete care.

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​Nate:               
Awesome. So thanks for joining today, Christian. I was thinking maybe to get our bearings, you could start by sharing a little bit about yourself and your company, Meru Health.

Kristian Ranta:     
Thanks Nate. A pleasure to be here today. So Christian Ranta is my name and I'm the CEO and founder of Meru Health. Meru Health is a digital clinic for greater mental health with a digital program and with remote providers like licensed clinicians and psychiatrists. We treat mental health conditions like depression or anxiety and burnout. It's basically an app based on a 12 week program and it includes psychotherapy like CBT and mindfulness practices as well as some yoga practices. And then also sleep medicine, sleep coaching, sleep hygiene, as well as nutritional psychiatry, which is something we're really excited about.

Kristian Ranta:     
So there's a lot of food related things, what to eat, what not to eat and different deficiencies or nutrient related matters that are built into our program as well as icing on the cake. There's also, we help people figure out what are potential medical causes for depression. You know, that's something which is actually pretty common where there may be a deficiency or another medication or whatever that has a side effect that can also cause some mental health challenges. So in brief that's the company.

Kristian Ranta:     
And then, my background is that I've built healthcare businesses since I was 25, so that's already like more than 10 years ago. And I founded my first company in diabetes, a Medical Device Company and glucose monitoring, and then eventually sold that business in 2015 to a Korean public company. I'm originally from Finland. I'm living in the Bay Area now for a couple of years.

Kristian Ranta:     
Why I founded Meru, and this was in 2016, it was because I unfortunately lost my brother Peter to suicide because of his depression. I figured after selling my previous business that I just had to do something as my next venture. As my next impact piece to help the world in this way and help my brother also in some way. So that's who I am, a man on a mission.

Nate:               
Yeah. I appreciate that. That's a really powerful event and it's Kudos to you, I think, for turning something like that into an effort to help others. I think, for myself, if there's one thing that I think people need to know on the topic of mental and behavioral health, something as serious as suicide for sure. But even things that I've dealt with over the years of stress, anxiety, you don't have to work harder to get through it. You're not alone even though that sounds kind of cheesy to some people, but it's true. I think most people go through a period of stress, anxiety or depression at some point in their lives and it's no wonder with how hard we all work, the constant barrage of communication and information. And then if you layer on that, life happens, it can come to a breaking point for some people and you're going to have difficult times. So it's okay to take care of yourself, is it not?

Kristian Ranta:     
Totally. I think it's actually extremely important. Because we have in our world, we pretty much are totally okay with people having any physical illnesses or any kind of diabetes where I came from, or anything else, like a heart surgery or whatever. And no one would look at you in a weird way if you told someone that you have diabetes or you went through a heart surgery. But there's still so much stigma with mental illness, but you know, it's so common. I think that's what I'm also wanting to do with my own story, why I talk about my brother and the whole thing very openly. Because I want to just help reduce stigma because it's just so common. Everyone has someone in their family or their circles who suffer from some mental health challenge or mental illness. And it's totally okay. Like I think it's time to start being more constructive about these things. And I at least want to march for that.

Nate:               
There's almost this where we're looking up to the hardiest people or the people who hide it the best and we're all trying to do that. But it's damaging ourselves when we try to cover up where our breaking points are or what our issues are in order to compete for that. And I just think it's okay to acknowledge that not everybody can can work that hard, can deal with that stress, can whatever it is. You don't know what somebody is dealing with outside of the office. And I just think it's much healthier to acknowledge and work on yourself and you're going to be happier for it.

Kristian Ranta:     
Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think it's one thing that I've always, in my own life, tried to make sure that I at least take enough time also for myself. I love to work and I love my mission on all that. But I'm an entrepreneur so we are a certain type of individual I guess. But still I always reserve enough time for sleep and also I do my daily meditations and stuff like that because I think it's impossible, over longterm, to function if you don't take adequate care of yourself first.

Nate:               
Yeah. And sometimes you don't realize what you're doing because you are so passionate about it. My own story, I was working so hard and dealing with so many different things and then my father got sick and it just clearly was too much. But I didn't know it until my body told me so. So it will crossover from the mental health to physical manifestation. And I was having issues forming sentences and passing out and I couldn't talk in front of audiences anymore at conferences. And I mean, just all of these things added up and it really surprised me because I thought, I was just so passionate about all these things. I was very engaged in everything. But it does manifest itself physically eventually if you let it get to that point.

Kristian Ranta:     
Totally. Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate that. And some research based medical facts here, like 50% of people with depression have also somatic symptoms like back pain, which is very, very common physiological manifestation of depression or mental health challenges. So in that sense, you're absolutely right that there's a very strong interconnected factor with any mental health challenge. Stress is also in the body and all these signals from the body, all these aches and pains or whatever. They are to be taken seriously.

Nate:               
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I guess that's a piece that I'd like to pick your brain about. Specifically, in the employer market now for mental and behavioral health. I think more employers are realizing that these issues are bubbling up to the top of the list for all the reasons we talked about. You're a founder in the space. So how do you compartmentalize and think about the solutions that are out there to employers today? Because not all mental health solutions, or companies out there are the same?

Kristian Ranta:     
Yeah, that's a great question. I think that from my perspective and from my angle, there's definitely preventative stuff, there's definitely wellness, which is super important. Like stress management. And just helping people figure out new ways to manage stress and stuff like that. It's really important. But then there's also something which I feel is missing in the market to a great extent. Very rigorous mental health treatment options. And I'm not talking about in-patient, because most people, they don't need to go there or they don't want to go there and that's totally fine. But I'm talking about good quality care, easily accessible that is dealing with like conditions like depression and anxiety when it gets severe. And there's a lot of people, according to the statistics, something like 15 to 20% of Americans every year suffer from a serious mental health challenge including depression, anxiety, OCD, so on. And there's sometimes stress management it's just not enough for some of those conditions.

Kristian Ranta:     
Again, I totally think and agree that there's a place, a need for all sorts of stress management and stuff like that, but there's, I think, a gap in the market in the more kind of severe end. And that's also where the biggest costs are for employers. People who have depression or anxiety, when it gets severe enough, there's a lot of absenteeism. There's a lot of presenteeism which is basically like someone's at work, but isn't able to be too productive. Then it's not good for the employee. It's not good for the employer, everyone's kind of losing. It's something which is impacting the bottom line of companies. I think that there's definitely different types of companies and there's a lot of research and data on that if you are working in a more physiological profession or physical professionally in a way that you outside or doing whatever, like a physical activity as part of your work, then there's less prevalence, there's less incidence of mental health challenges. But if you're doing knowledge work or you know, software development or whatever it may be, the rates are a lot higher. So there's even some of the highest incidences of depression and anxiety are lawyers, are knowledge workers, healthcare professionals. These are between 15 to 20% annual prevalence in these populations. So those are a couple of important points to consider.

Nate:               
Yeah. And it's interesting because I think just like any other solution out there, it's really hard to find a one size fits all. I think to your point, there are free apps out there that'll help you regulate your breathing and practice mindfulness. And there are a lot of things you can do as the individual and I think sometimes maybe we need to take more responsibility as individuals to just keep ourselves well. But there's not really that one size fits all solution for mental health. The other thing I think is, and I'm really interested in what you guys are finding, around, do I have to use this solution for the rest of my life? Because that's one of the things that people are concerned about. Is this prescription going to be something that I have for the rest of my life or am I ever going to get better? Or what do those results look like? So I know you guys are doing some really interesting research in that area. And what are you finding around your program specifically and some of the results?

Kristian Ranta:     
Yeah, that's the one of my favorite topics. I think that when we founded the company, we founded it on the basis of, let's get get something that, let's build something that can help people get empowered and help people get back on track. And what it means is that we actually, are all about helping people with our program in our solution to help people get well and stay well. So, I actually think very, very much, having been in healthcare for a long time and seeing all sorts of things that there are definitely ways of becoming well and staying well. Or getting well and staying well. I mean, in a way, even from some somatic analysis, there's cool stuff out there starting to emerge where even people with diabetes can reverse their diabetes.

Kristian Ranta:     
So there are definitely methods. There are things that can be done. Like people can totally get rid of OCD or depression. You can totally put depression into remission. For good. There are ways to heal. And it's very often we are almost mesmerized by this. There's quite a lot of talk about you'll be on these medications for the rest of your life or whatever. That's just not necessarily the case. There are so many people who don't need to end up like that. There are so many people who can benefit from different lifestyle interventions or behavior change kind of interventions and stuff like that. That can help people stay better, get better and stay better. I'm a big fan of trying to solve problems in a way that can help people get empowered and stay better.

Nate:               
Yeah. And I think that piece around the clinical that you talked about at the beginning there in making sure that whatever program you're trying to do, unless it's that front end wellness focus, if you're really trying to impact medical results in some of the clinical issues that employees and their families are having, you really need to do that work to understand how clinically valid a particular solution provider is. I think it's just critical to make sure in all these cases that you're doing the research as an HR person to get yourself up to speed on what the space is all about. You know, we look at these reports and we're seeing more and more instances, like you said in the knowledge worker space of people dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, alcohol and drug abuse. How much of it do you think is related to people in unreasonable work environments? And how much of it is related to people just not having the skills, yet, to deal with everything they're dealing with?

Kristian Ranta:     
Yeah. So I think that there's a couple of points that I've learned during my past 12 years or so with dealing with chronic disease or from diabetes and now from mental health. There's actually a lot of factors that we don't necessarily always understand, or are just beginning to understand, as a society that have a huge impact on chronic disease, mental health conditions. And one of the major components is our food. And that's why we with Meru, we built in a lot of this stuff, we call it nutritional psychiatry and that's how it's being talked about also in some other circles. And it's emerging, where there's a lot of data, there's lot of research out there already showing that if you eat certain, like a lot of processed foods and stuff like that, you will definitely have a significantly higher risk of getting getting depression as an example.

Kristian Ranta:     
But then again, if you eat more whole foods and you have a less processed food based diet and you take care of certain key nutrients and we also manage your stress, which you see as an important trigger very often for mental health challenge. But it's not only about strengths. It's also about how resilient you are when you're facing stress. These things have a huge impact. And sleep is so important. I mean, people sleep chronically to little. This is just so important. And therefore we've also built in sleep because myself, and us as a team, we really don't believe that you can address mental health challenges only with doing one part of the equation, they are more complicated than just therapy as an example.

Kristian Ranta:     
Therapy is great. And I'd been through therapy myself after losing my brother and for several years and I loved it. It was one of the most important things I ever did in my life. But it's as a sole solution. It just doesn't cut it for many people. And you know, if there's something biological or something dietary related or something like that, that's what we would need to be looked at or reevaluate it then just going to talk therapy won't cut it. So I think it's holistic or I don't know, holistic, it's maybe not the right word always, But let's say complete care is something which I think taking the whole human body and mind into focus is something which is definitely the future for a chronic disease care, including mental health.

Nate:               
Yeah, it's interesting. And I think, just on that, it is your environment, what you put into your body. You know, alcohol has a major impact on how you sleep and even just a little bit of alcohol. And trust me, I'm a huge beer guy. I've got a massive beer collection that's ridiculous. But, I've noticed that if I have one or two beers, I don't sleep the same. The same thing with, like you were saying with food, going outside and doing some physical work is always a good thing of some kind. And so I think that's a really interesting way you're thinking about it. And I really appreciate that and look forward to seeing where you guys take that notion.

Kristian Ranta:     
Yeah, totally.

Nate:               
Well, great. Thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate the conversation and am really thankful that you're on this mission and wish you the best of luck.

Kristian Ranta:     
Thanks Nate. Really appreciate it. Hope everyone has a good rest of the day. Thanks so much.