wow there’s a lot of people up here hi
everyone my name is Jesse Lam and I
actually speak quite often for work but
today I’m actually gonna do something a
little different I’m going to talk about
something a little bit personal
I’m going to talk about my near-death
experience as well as something that’s a
little bit seemingly unrelated data and
so to help you understand my story today
I’m gonna give you a little bit of
background so I was born and raised in
New York two blue-collar parents in an
immigrant neighborhood I was a pretty
good student and went on to study NYU
finance and accounting and then for the
next ten years I worked in banking in
New York City in 2014 I moved to Hong
Kong where I later joined brink as a
tech investor and venture capitalist as
CFO I oversaw four offices globally as
well as 59 I think now portfolio
companies I was their financial advisor
so you can see I’m pretty outgoing
pretty type-a you know kind of person
well here’s a photo of my husband and I
after we had just finished hiking the
this photo was also taken the day before
I attempted to commit suicide
what’s that math what that smile was
masking was that I had actually been
diagnosed with clinical depression the
year before and had been actively
battling it even while I was working in
venture capital and in technology and so
the causes of depression are not well
known there are some studies that link
it with people that have smaller
hippocampus
and therefore they produce less
serotonin and so there’s a real chemical
imbalance in your brain but the thing is
with depression and more largely mental
health illness is that it’s not always
recognized as a real illness so
sometimes you’ll have people saying why
are you taking so many pills why are you
taking so many medication why do you
need antidepressants just don’t be sad
right but that’s like really saying to
someone who has diabetes why do you need
insulin sometimes you almost feel like
that your mental health illness is not
valid that you’re not suffering and now
you have to prove that you need help
some standing before you today because
obviously my suicide attempts were not
successful I worked with many doctors
I’ve gone through therapy and medication
and I’m here before you today but the
thing with antidepressants is that you
have to use a lot of trial and error to
find the right combination of medication
and dosage and so I’ve gone through
every medication that’s on screen right
now and eventually I was put on a
cocktail of medication for
treatment-resistant patients and it’s
actually so powerful and so potent that
it’s actually nicknamed California
rocket fuel because of how quickly you
can improve while on it back when I
moved to Hong Kong I had also bought a
digital scale and so I weigh myself
every day and the data would get logged
in the scale and get uploaded to the
cloud and you can track your weight
fluctuations on the mobile app so for
today I had downloaded all of that data
and I created this graph and this graph
contains over a thousand points of data
that tracks my weight over a three-year
period during the most acute point of
when I was suffering from depression
and when I grasp this out I actually
notice a pattern the pattern is every
significant weight fluctuation that I
see coincides with a change in my
antidepressant medication so there was
some medication that caused me to sleep
for 16 hours a day
there was other medication that caused
me to lose 20% of my body weight in one
week the side effects were very scary
because of how powerful this medication
is but the good news is is that I now
had my own health data I can go to my
doctor I can use this data to help
improve my course of treatment and so it
allowed me a small ounce of control and
what I felt like was a very out of
control life at that time and so that’s
not just it as a tech investor
oftentimes I now get tech toys for my
birthday for Christmas and so one year
my family had bought me a SmartWatch and
the SmartWatch also tracks your heart
rate
which is really good because I also
suffer from anxiety and so a normal
person’s heart rate their resting heart
rate normally ranges about 60 to 80
beats per minute and it can be less if
you’re a really great marathon runner or
some sort of athlete but for me I had
set the notification on my SmartWatch to
alert me any time my resting heart rate
rose above 110 beats per minute the
reason is because that generally signal
that I was having an anxiety attack and
so here you can see a record of every
notification that I received on my
SmartWatch in 2018 and actually in on
September 30th you can see there’s
multiple entries because there’s
actually a particularly bad attack that
happened on that day and so with anxiety
attacks one of the ways that you can
help kind of combat it or help yourself
through it is through meditation but the
thing is is that I’m really bad at
meditation I can’t clear my mind I’m
hyperactive my eyelids flutter I feel
like the weight of the world is on my
shoulders but luckily one of the teams
that I had invested in had developed a
blackout noise-canceling had I mask and
it’s actually using breath work to help
reduce your heart rate by up to 25
percent in five minutes and so as a VC I
tend to travel a lot I’m always on the
road I’m always in airports and so I
often times need to use this particular
eye mask to kind of quiet my mind and
give myself some peace and kind of let
that anxiety go and so I’m talking to
you today about a couple of different
types of technology that has helped me
with my mental illness but there’s
actually an entire world movement out
there it’s active in 32 countries and
it’s called quantified self and swear
people are using things like activity
trackers or sleep monitors or DNA
testing to gather data about themselves
to improve both their physical and
and so I’m standing before you today
with the help of my doctors and therapy
and medication as a high functioning
person hopefully living with clinical
depression I hope that I was able to
shed some light on the problem I really
hope I was able to bring down some of
that stigma and basically show how a
person can live really live with mental
illness thank you [Applause]
everyone my name is Jesse Lam and I
actually speak quite often for work but
today I’m actually gonna do something a
little different I’m going to talk about
something a little bit personal
I’m going to talk about my near-death
experience as well as something that’s a
little bit seemingly unrelated data and
so to help you understand my story today
I’m gonna give you a little bit of
background so I was born and raised in
New York two blue-collar parents in an
immigrant neighborhood I was a pretty
good student and went on to study NYU
finance and accounting and then for the
next ten years I worked in banking in
New York City in 2014 I moved to Hong
Kong where I later joined brink as a
tech investor and venture capitalist as
CFO I oversaw four offices globally as
well as 59 I think now portfolio
companies I was their financial advisor
so you can see I’m pretty outgoing
pretty type-a you know kind of person
well here’s a photo of my husband and I
after we had just finished hiking the
this photo was also taken the day before
I attempted to commit suicide
what’s that math what that smile was
masking was that I had actually been
diagnosed with clinical depression the
year before and had been actively
battling it even while I was working in
venture capital and in technology and so
the causes of depression are not well
known there are some studies that link
it with people that have smaller
hippocampus
and therefore they produce less
serotonin and so there’s a real chemical
imbalance in your brain but the thing is
with depression and more largely mental
health illness is that it’s not always
recognized as a real illness so
sometimes you’ll have people saying why
are you taking so many pills why are you
taking so many medication why do you
need antidepressants just don’t be sad
right but that’s like really saying to
someone who has diabetes why do you need
insulin sometimes you almost feel like
that your mental health illness is not
valid that you’re not suffering and now
you have to prove that you need help
some standing before you today because
obviously my suicide attempts were not
successful I worked with many doctors
I’ve gone through therapy and medication
and I’m here before you today but the
thing with antidepressants is that you
have to use a lot of trial and error to
find the right combination of medication
and dosage and so I’ve gone through
every medication that’s on screen right
now and eventually I was put on a
cocktail of medication for
treatment-resistant patients and it’s
actually so powerful and so potent that
it’s actually nicknamed California
rocket fuel because of how quickly you
can improve while on it back when I
moved to Hong Kong I had also bought a
digital scale and so I weigh myself
every day and the data would get logged
in the scale and get uploaded to the
cloud and you can track your weight
fluctuations on the mobile app so for
today I had downloaded all of that data
and I created this graph and this graph
contains over a thousand points of data
that tracks my weight over a three-year
period during the most acute point of
when I was suffering from depression
and when I grasp this out I actually
notice a pattern the pattern is every
significant weight fluctuation that I
see coincides with a change in my
antidepressant medication so there was
some medication that caused me to sleep
for 16 hours a day
there was other medication that caused
me to lose 20% of my body weight in one
week the side effects were very scary
because of how powerful this medication
is but the good news is is that I now
had my own health data I can go to my
doctor I can use this data to help
improve my course of treatment and so it
allowed me a small ounce of control and
what I felt like was a very out of
control life at that time and so that’s
not just it as a tech investor
oftentimes I now get tech toys for my
birthday for Christmas and so one year
my family had bought me a SmartWatch and
the SmartWatch also tracks your heart
rate
which is really good because I also
suffer from anxiety and so a normal
person’s heart rate their resting heart
rate normally ranges about 60 to 80
beats per minute and it can be less if
you’re a really great marathon runner or
some sort of athlete but for me I had
set the notification on my SmartWatch to
alert me any time my resting heart rate
rose above 110 beats per minute the
reason is because that generally signal
that I was having an anxiety attack and
so here you can see a record of every
notification that I received on my
SmartWatch in 2018 and actually in on
September 30th you can see there’s
multiple entries because there’s
actually a particularly bad attack that
happened on that day and so with anxiety
attacks one of the ways that you can
help kind of combat it or help yourself
through it is through meditation but the
thing is is that I’m really bad at
meditation I can’t clear my mind I’m
hyperactive my eyelids flutter I feel
like the weight of the world is on my
shoulders but luckily one of the teams
that I had invested in had developed a
blackout noise-canceling had I mask and
it’s actually using breath work to help
reduce your heart rate by up to 25
percent in five minutes and so as a VC I
tend to travel a lot I’m always on the
road I’m always in airports and so I
often times need to use this particular
eye mask to kind of quiet my mind and
give myself some peace and kind of let
that anxiety go and so I’m talking to
you today about a couple of different
types of technology that has helped me
with my mental illness but there’s
actually an entire world movement out
there it’s active in 32 countries and
it’s called quantified self and swear
people are using things like activity
trackers or sleep monitors or DNA
testing to gather data about themselves
to improve both their physical and
and so I’m standing before you today
with the help of my doctors and therapy
and medication as a high functioning
person hopefully living with clinical
depression I hope that I was able to
shed some light on the problem I really
hope I was able to bring down some of
that stigma and basically show how a
person can live really live with mental
illness thank you [Applause]
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