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TrailCon 2025 Eternal interview: High Performance Healthcare for Athletes
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Jun 26, 2025
Jen interviews Dr Desmond Wilson Chief Medical Officer at Eternal Eternall is a team approach to high performance heatthcare for athletes and for long term longevity: coaching, health and fitness assessments, dedicated physician, on going support. First cities: New York and San Francisco. Currently a wait list of 6000 Website: https://eternal.co
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so hi I'm Jen Schmidt with Road Trail
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Run and we are here at the Eternal booth
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um at Trail Con so if you want to
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introduce yourself and tell us all about
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it so I'm Dr desmond Wilson i'm our
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chief medical officer here at Eternal
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eternal is high performance healthcare
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for athletes or intrinsically motivated
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individuals so however you identify um
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and what we do it's a cross-section of
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health and performance um we our current
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uh offerings it's essentially a
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concierge product where an athlete comes
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to us they have potentially goals in
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mind related to health related to
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performance um and they need a team or
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want a team to help them reach those
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goals or it can be baselining or it can
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be they have felt
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um as if they've not been listened to by
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traditional uh healthcare providers And
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so um when you come to us you meet your
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team you have a dedicated doctor you
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have a dedicated coach um we essentially
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have a portion that's an assessment uh
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where we look at healthbased blood
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biomarkers but with a performance lens
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uh we also have a physical uh uh
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assessment as well we have two
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assessment centers currently one in San
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Francisco one in New York City uh at our
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assessment centers you will do a
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strength and power assessment mobility
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stability uh we uh do body composition
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via DEXA and then we do aerobic testing
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um so assessing for V2 max we also will
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do a lactate test as well um after
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you've had your assessment you've met
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your team we essentially uh have
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something we call a round table which is
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where your doctor your coach other
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subject matter experts uh could be a
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registered dietitian could be a uh
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women's health expert convene talk about
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you and kind of flip over stones and say
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what is going to help this person get to
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where they need to be where they want to
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be uh we then reconvene with you and we
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land on what we call our strategic
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priorities which are essentially goals
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that we've identified that we um in
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concert with your input said this is
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what's going to be most additive to your
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life currently um and then from there
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it's a really close relationship built
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around habit formation built around
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small habits big ones how can we you
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know get you to that PR how can we just
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get you back on the road whether that's
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a bike whether that's you're a runner or
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get you back on the golf course whatever
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it might be how you identify as an
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athlete um matters to us but what that
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sport is does not matter because we will
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um speak to it regardless
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so you have this whole team around the
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athletes is this kind of a complement
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your traditional primary care stuff and
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just more focused on the athletic
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performance side so so it is a
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compliment in some respects um we want
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us to be your first call health related
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or not um if it's something that's more
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acute then certainly go to the
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appropriate uh clinician like a ER or a
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urgent care but for all other things we
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should either be able to manage it or at
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least speak to it um it's there's some
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aspects that aren't necessarily like
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traditional primary care i'll just give
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you two examples like vaccines is not
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something we would dole out because it's
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the um the medical portion at least
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right now is virtual so um so vaccines
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would be an example something like again
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like acute care acute injury acute
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illness um isn't something we're going
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to assess you for in person but you know
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uh how do you manage a cold as a trail
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runner who's running at altitude we can
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talk about that right right and that's
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something that maybe your traditional
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primary care doctor might not be able to
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do yeah or if I'm say I'm just a
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generally healthy athlete but suddenly
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I'm fatigued to my team and be like 100%
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we talk about energy availability all
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day long
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cool so if you had an athlete come to
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you with one of those scenarios then are
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you able to prescribe them things or
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it's you said it's about habit formation
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behavior yeah so um from a medical scope
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of p practice perspective there are
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certain things that we can prescribe for
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so um especially um when we think about
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the biggest drivers of morbidity and
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mortality in our country so uh disease
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and death and those are essentially
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around heart health around metabolic
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disease um uh cancer prevention um so we
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um can prescribe for many of those
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things not everything but for example if
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you have hyper lipidmia high cholesterol
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that's something not only will we speak
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to but we will prescribe for you have
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issues with glucose regulation and it's
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not related to performance because
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sometimes it can be um and this is truly
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an underlying issue um and we have
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really pulled all of our levers uh in
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the kind of lifestyle space um so
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meaning um performance as well as
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nutrition then yes we can prescribe
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accordingly and monitor accordingly
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and just going back to the the nuts and
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bolts so where can people get involved
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if they decide they want to Yeah
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so um you can go to eternal.co so
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um we have a wait list there you can
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sign up and um we'll reach out to you
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and hopefully get you involved all right
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cool and when when do you expect to be
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live and running launched oh you've
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launched we launched in April we like we
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have a way a weight list of about 6,000
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people right now oh my gosh wow so we
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have a um we have a robust weight list
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um Yeah so we're here ready and
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accepting members yeah very well thanks
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so much for telling us about it thank
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you thank you