Can a Hair Test Detect Autism? with Dr. Manish Arora

What if a single strand of hair could reveal your body's chemical exposure history, all the way back to the womb? Dr. Manish Arora, environmental epidemiologist, CEO of LinusBio, and professor at Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, joins Nurse Rosa Hart to explain why your environment shapes your health more than your genes ever could.

Dr. Arora's team developed the TRACED test, an at-home, hair-based exposure test that measures 15 essential and toxic elements (including lead, arsenic, cadmium, and aluminum) with time-stamped resolution across roughly 30 days. Unlike blood or urine tests that capture a single moment, TRACED gives you a molecular movie of your exposure over time; no clinic visit, no needles, no blood draw. His research also earned FDA Breakthrough Designation for an autism biomarker detectable as early as one month old.

🎧 Now available in the Health Podcast Library

🔔 Subscribe for weekly conversations at the intersection of nursing, innovation, and health

Timestamps

0:00 — Intro & Dr. Arora's background

0:51 — The story behind his name (named himself at age 3!)

2:43 — What is Linus Bio and why he founded it

5:10 — Personal journey: triplet daughters & a misdiagnosis of autism

8:38 — Why genomic medicine alone isn't enough

9:07 — Introducing the exposome: the complement to the genome

10:43 — How the TRACED hair-based test works