Healthcare is witnessing a paradigm shift—one that embraces a proactive approach to well-being, transcending the traditional reactive model. Individuals worldwide are increasingly seeking ways to not just treat ailments but to enhance their health, focusing on nutrition, supplements, and holistic lifestyle choices. Amidst this transformative era, the Comite Center for Precision Medicine & Healthy Longevity, situated in the center of Midtown Manhattan, stands as an institution of innovation and excellence.
Leading this innovative establishment is Dr. Florence Comite, MD, a distinguished physician-scientist and the visionary founder of the Comite Center. Recognized globally for her groundbreaking work in precision medicine, Dr. Comite has dedicated her career to pushing the boundaries of healthcare, leveraging N-of-1 data to detect, predict, and reverse age-related disorders, thereby optimizing health and vitality.
Established in 2005, the Comite Center is at the forefront of personalized precision healthcare. Dr. Comite’s unique and clinically proven approach, structured as a living clinical trial, sets the center apart. It offers a proactive and modern methodology for characterizing health trajectories, optimizing healthspans, and mitigating health risks.
Dr. Comite believes in the potential of precision medicine to enable humans to live up to 150 years while maintaining optimal health.
In an exclusive interview, our team had the privilege of engaging with Dr. Comite to dig deeper into her vision for metabolic health and how the Comite Center for Precision Medicine & Healthy Longevity and her new app Groq Health will add years to millions of lives.
Dr. Comite, could you share a bit about your professional journey and what inspired you to become a clinician-scientist in the field of precision medicine?
When I graduated from Yale School of Medicine, my father said to me, “OK, my doctor daughter, now, tell me how I can make myself healthier.” My father kept himself in good shape all his life, but he wanted to know more about how he could extend his healthy years. Honestly, I couldn’t answer him. In medical school, we weren’t taught how to prevent disease related to aging, getting older and weaker. My father wanted to stay strong and healthy, without declining, and live long. He loved life. In medical school, we are taught to diagnose symptoms and concerns to treat them—to find the etiology of the patient’s “chief complaint” and then fix the problem. My father’s question triggered an insatiable curiosity in me about finding ways to keep our health despite aging and disease. Why do we have to wait for symptoms to emerge? That’s reactive medicine. Why aren’t we proactive to prevent disease from occurring in the first place? As I continued in my career as a clinical research scientist at the National Institutes of Health and then on the Yale faculty in academia and private practice, I sought to identify early signs of disease brewing at the cellular level, identify patterns that predict future disease, and develop strategies that ultimately reverse biological aging because aging is the trigger for chronic disease.
Could you provide an overview of the Comite Center for Precision Medicine & Healthy Longevity and its mission?
The Comite Center for Precision Medicine & Healthy Longevity is a bespoke medical practice providing highly personalized healthcare structured as an Nof1™, a clinical trial of a single client. Our mission is to reverse aging in our clients to stop and prevent chronic diseases driven by aging. Interest in longevity, extending lifespan, is booming, but while I love the word “longevity,” I prefer “healthy longevity.” At the Center we are driven to not only help people live longer but to help them live longer in optimal health. To me, it is about achieving a healthspan that matches our lifespan.
What inspired you to establish the Center and how has it evolved since then?
Having an identical twin allowed me to innately recognize that despite the similarities, there are significant differences between my sister and me. The genes we inherit play a role, yet genetic expression is key. That allowed me a leap of faith to recognize that all of us are unique. Yet clinical studies that look at thousands of people, hoping to find significance, are flawed. One size does not fit all. The very essence of what makes each of us unique demands that we look at people individually to see how they differ and evolve over time and then assess their response to any intervention, whether it’s sleep, food, exercise, supplements, medications, or habit change.
The Center has evolved every year as we delve deeper and accumulate data about each of our clients. (We prefer to call them “clients,” not “patients,” because the latter suggests they are sick.) From a physical standpoint, our main office moved to a larger location to Central Park South in New York City over 5 years ago. Then, during the pandemic, I established satellite offices in Palo Alto, CA, and Miami Beach, to serve my growing clientele. In 2023, I launched the virtual GROQ Health app to scale precision medicine for healthy longevity that would be accessible, financially reachable, and available to everyone through a digital platform. GROQ Health (https://www.groqhealth.com/) is currently offered to businesses as an employee health benefit. In 2024, we will expand to offer the app direct to consumers starting with the thousands who have reached out and joined our waitlist.
How has your personal journey influenced your dedication to advancing the field and ensuring its accessibility to a global audience?
Every day, I see the promise of precision medicine to help my clients reverse aging and attain optimal health. Over the past 20 years, thousands of women and men have benefited from the Center. I’m delighted that our success is now being independently verified through OMICm Age, a phenotypically trained epigenetic methylation algorithm at the certified independent testing lab TruDiagnostic. Currently, five of my clients appear among the top 20 people reversing biological age on the Rejuvenation Olympics. In my own life, I’ve witnessed the power of looking at the human body on the cellular level to improve healthspan through targeted interventions driven by precise data. Each human deserves access to the wisdom that virtual GROQ Health offers to own their health destiny to stop future disease and live life to the fullest.
How does the Center integrate and interpret genomic, metabolomic, phenotypic, and digital health data to provide predictive analysis and actionable guidance for individual patients?
We begin with our Precision Health Analysis™, a comprehensive investigation of biomarkers that provide thousands of data points, which allows us to connect-the-dots, identify trends, and predict a client’s health trajectory. By integrating and interpreting the data, we determine the most appropriate interventions to extend healthspan to match lifespan.
What challenges have you encountered in promoting and implementing precision medicine on a global scale?
The greatest challenge in scaling precision medicine has been in condensing a medical protocol of many disparate yet connected biomarkers and data points into a simpler, hyper-focused program with accessibility on the small screen of a smartphone.
What do you see as the future of precision medicine, and how does the Comite Center for Precision Medicine plan to stay at the forefront of innovation?
Precision medicine will see exponential growth in the next decade as consumers recognize that our current reactive healthcare system is failing to prevent the chronic diseases of aging—diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, and more. Costs are rising, yet outcomes aren’t improving, especially among our aging population. More consumers than ever before want to take greater personal control of their health. Our GROQ Health app is a tool that allows each person to understand what’s happening in their body on the cellular level and take steps to reverse biological aging and keep their health for life. The GROQ Health app is poised to bring that level of D-I-Y to their fingertips through the personal guidance of top clinicians and greater than 20 years of successful clinical outcomes.
In-depth Analysis of Client Outcomes
Body Fat Loss:
98% of male clients and 87% of female clients at the Center have successfully shed body fat.
Visceral Abdominal Fat Reduction:
Body composition analysis reveals a significant decrease in visceral abdominal fat, observed in 97% of men and 90% of women.
Muscle Mass Increase:
Remarkably, 92% of male clients and 56% of female clients have experienced a notable rise in muscle mass.
Improved Sleep:
A positive impact on sleep quality is reported by 81% of male clients and an impressive 92% of female clients.
Enhanced Energy Levels:
Noteworthy improvements in energy levels are seen in 83% of male clients and 86% of female clients.
Increased Endurance:
Significant enhancements in endurance are observed, with 87% of male clients and 69% of female clients reporting positive changes.
