125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research

Could sleep consistency, not duration, be the hidden key to elite performance? In this conversation with WHOOP's Global Head of Performance & Science, Kristen Holmes, we uncover revolutionary findings that are reshaping our understanding of sleep science. Together, we dive deep into data from over 35,000 individuals that challenges conventional wisdom about what makes sleep truly restorative. This isn't just another conversation about sleep - it's a masterclass in human performance optimization that could change your life. Watch now and discover why some of the world's top performers are abandoning traditional sleep advice in favor of this revolutionary approach. Connect with Kristen Holmes: Instagram: ⁠https://bit.ly/41MYiIK⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://bit.ly/3ByxiCl⁠ 00:00 ​Intro of Show 02:49 Kristen Holmes on Coaching and Big Data in Athletics 05:00 Shift from Training Sessions to Full-Day Readiness 13:00 The Role of Sleep & Circadian Rhythms in Health 15:55 Impact of Consistent Sleep Schedules 20:00 Sleep Research and Behavioral Interventions 23:26 Psychological Perceptions of Stress and Performance 26:04 Big Data and Its Future in Medicine and Wellness 29:18 Kristen’s Work at WHOOP and Personal Health Metrics 32:25 Ice Baths and Recovery: Insights from Big Data 41:45 The Role of Hormonal Cycles in Women’s Health 44:06 Potential of Technology in Personalizing Health 50:00 Athletics and the Importance of Individualized Training 54:52 Big Data in Athletic Performance 1:00:00 Gary’s Clinical Observations and Technology in Recovery 1:07:42 Kristen’s New Book - Coming Soon 1:08:50 ​Final Question: “What does it mean to you to be an Ultimate Human? GET GARY’S WEEKLY TIPS ON HEALTH AND LIFESTYLE OPTIMIZATION: ⁠https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU⁠ EIGHT SLEEP - SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: ⁠https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E⁠ BODY HEALTH - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF YOUR ORDER: ⁠http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV⁠ BAJA GOLD - 91 ESSENTIAL MINERALS PER PINCH! 10% OFF USE CODE "ULTIMATE10": ⁠https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa⁠ ELEVATE YOUR WORKOUTS WITH THE ULTIMATE HUMAN STRENGTH TRAINING EQUIPMENT: ⁠https://bit.ly/3zYwtSl⁠ THE COLD LIFE - BOOST RECOVERY & WELL-BEING WITH THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: ⁠https://bit.ly/4eULUKp⁠ WHOOP - GET 1 FREE MONTH WHEN YOU JOIN!: ⁠https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW⁠ MASA CHIPS - GET 20% OFF YOUR FIRST $50+ ORDER: ⁠https://bit.ly/40LVY4y⁠ PARKER PASTURES - GET PREMIUM GRASS-FED MEATS TODAY: ⁠https://bit.ly/4hHcbhc⁠ SHOP GARY’S TOP-RATED PRODUCTS & EXCLUSIVE DEALS: ⁠https://theultimatehuman.com/amazon-recs⁠ Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST on YouTube: ⁠https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8⁠ Connect with Gary Brecka: Website: ⁠https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs⁠ TikTok: ⁠https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo⁠ Facebook: ⁠https://bit.ly/464VA1H⁠ X.com: ⁠https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2⁠ SUBSCRIBE TO: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@ultimatehumanpodcast⁠ ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@garybrecka⁠ Download the “Ultimate Human Podcast” on all your favorite podcast platforms: ⁠https://bit.ly/3RQftU0⁠ Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Sleep regularity was a bigger predictor of all-cause mortality than sleep duration. Folks who perceived their day as really challenging actually had better night's sleep the prior night. People who perceive stress are going to have lower stress.

• 0:15Gary Brecka?

  Wow, I love that.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  But they didn't.

• 0:17Gary Brecka?

  Oh, they didn't?

• 0:18Speaker 00

  Circadian misalignment, in my view, is the biggest problem in modern society.

• 0:23Gary Brecka?

  I did a sleep challenge a few months ago with Whoop. What was astounding to me was that most people actually had no sleep routine at all.

• 0:31Speaker 00

  What was really interesting is ice bath, regardless of when you do it, is sleep promoting. And basically what we saw, the fitter you are, the more you ice bat, the less good it is for your recovery.

• 0:42Gary Brecka?

  The data, combined with artificial intelligence, is going to absolutely lead the charge.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  We're getting so close to not having to guess. When we take this back to like our original conversation with my athletes, like, I didn't want to have to guess, right? I just wanted to be able to keep them healthy. I wanted them to be able to thrive. If we want to manage load over the course of a season and keep athletes healthy, like, you need that data.

• 1:01Gary Brecka?

  For someone that is genuinely interested in optimizing their health, where do they start? What kind of actionable steps could they take?

• 1:08Speaker 00

  If we really want to optimize our health, the place to start is...

• 1:24Gary Brecka?

  Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, longevity, biohacking, and everything in between. And as you know, we have a very, very special guest on today, Kristin, who is the Global Head of Human Performance and Science at Whoop. And I am a huge fan of Whoop. And Neil, before the podcast started, when you got to the house today, I was telling the team, I'm so excited because we have very different but very similar backgrounds, big data backgrounds. I come from a big data background, so I have like a ton of questions for you. And it's also the first time I'm showing off my illustrious Colorado beard.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  It's working for you.

• 2:02Gary Brecka?

  It's working for me. My family sort of split over it. My daughter's like, no, Dad, you gotta shave it. My son has a beard, so he's like, I like it.

• 2:10Gary Brecka?

  So we're going to run it for this podcast, but Kristen, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 2:14Gary Brecka?

  Thank you for taking the time to come here.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me.

• 2:17Gary Brecka?

  You know, when I say my background is in big data, you know, I was a mortality expert or researcher for large life insurance and we, we used big data to very accurately predict life expectancy trends. I mean, to the point where large life insurance companies were willing to put tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in risk on somebody's life based on the modeling that we did. And what I find fascinating about your background is besides the fact that you're an amazingly accomplished athlete, incredibly accomplished coach and a brilliant scientist is that I was watching some podcasts that you were on before and, and you were talking about your career in coaching and how everything that you were doing on the field

• 3:01Gary Brecka?

  and everything that you were doing to prepare these athletes for the game had nothing to do with how they were going to show up the next morning.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:08Gary Brecka?

  And it was kind of maybe that realization, right? That we're exercising these athletes and we're training them, we're strength training them and we're training for different positions. And we've gotten really good at speed and agility and timing and strength and coordination. But it had no predictability to how that athlete was going to show up the next day. So can you talk to us a little bit about that, that journey?

• 3:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was definitely like the epiphany, you know, when we started, um, you know, having lots of different types of technology that we could measure, you know, what was happening, the adaptation during a training session, you know? And really I was in an Ivy League school, we only had the athletes for, at Princeton, we only had the athletes for a couple hours. And I think we just over indexed on what those two hours were actually doing to the athletes. And, you know, we had internal load, we had external load, we had some, you know, subjective markers, right? So we were really, I think, covering our bases in terms of all the things that we could, you know, quantify during a training session. But Yeah, when they showed up the next day, what we did in the training session actually

• 4:12Speaker 00

  didn't predict their readiness next day.

• 4:16Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  And so the challenge with that is, you know, it's hard to plan practices. It's hard to understand, it's hard to individualize training, right? When, you know, how you are going to respond to a training session, for example, is going to be very different from me. So, you know, we started, and this is, you know, 15, 16 years ago, we're like, all right, you know, it's not just the two hours of the training. It is the other 22 hours of the day that are having more of an impact. Let's start to unpack those 22 hours. And that's when we started to go really deep into sleep, sleep patterns, sleep architecture, sleep timing. We started looking at, you know, macronutrient intake. We got a little bit more robust technology to look at actually what the athletes were burning during a training session.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  Firstbeat technology, you probably are familiar with it. And, you know, we looked at hydration and we started building these models and actually built a technology and some algorithms to be able to understand hydration levels, understand caloric intake, understand sleep patterns, and really try to develop a model around readiness that could account for the 24-hour period.

• 5:24Gary Brecka?

  Wow. I mean, that's like way ahead of your time. I mean, you still won 12 league titles in 13 seasons. So, I mean, something was working, whatever you were doing.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:34Gary Brecka?

  But I would imagine that early in some of those league championships, you weren't really down the deep, down the rabbit hole in those other 23 hours.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  No, no, we absolutely weren't. And, you know, we knew that we were leaving something on the table. And I think that's where, you know, as a coach, you know, I didn't want to leave anything on the table and I really wanted to help my athletes optimize their potential on the field and off the field. And I felt a lot of my responsibility as a coach was to educate them, right? To help them understand what are the factors that are going to impact your attentional capacity, your energy production, your motivation. Like, you know, I wanted them to learn not just, you know, win championships and be a sensational faculty player. Of course, it's more than that, right? It's really providing a performance. Education over the course of the four years that helped them understand exactly how it is

• 6:22Speaker 00

  they need to apply their effort so they can take that education and then have it with them for the rest of their lives.

• 6:28Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. You know, you even talked about how you would apply some of these metrics during a game like to see, you know, when should I be taking athletes off the field? So that we always have fresh legs and I've heard you talk about how we never got late into a game or deep into a game, you know, the last quarter of a game and, and, and lost because of fatigue, which, you know, you see this happen in, in fights and boxing and, and well, you see it happen in every, every sport, you know, sort of, oh, you know, over utilizing that athlete during their performance time and not knowing, hey, when do I back off of them, give them a chance to recover in real time and then put them back out on the field. And I'd love to talk a little bit about that and then I want to go deep down the rabbit hole on some of the science.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I mean, it's, you know, it's really, I think having, and this is what Whoop has done so brilliantly is, you know, understanding capacity going into a match, right? So lots of factors going to influence my, how capable I am today to be able to, you know, handle the demands of a, of a match. So you've got kind of that baseline readiness level. So measuring and quantifying that is kind of table stakes at this point, right? You know, for the most part, we have access to that information if we need it. I think where we could go, I think to the next level, and I think a lot, actually what we were experimenting with is looking at things like EPOC, for example, excess of oxygen consumption to understand, you know, when do I get to that place where if I keep going, I'm going to have,

• 7:54Speaker 00

  my quality is going to begin to diminish. And what you need to do is you need to watch the data in real time to understand when they start to reach that threshold, pull them off, let them regroup.

• 8:04Gary Brecka?

  So how are you measuring that threshold? I mean, and for those people that don't know what EPOC is, can we just get a little explanation of what EPOC is?

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. So just, it's, it's basically when you are finishing effort, basically how much oxygen you can consume most likely.

• 8:17Gary Brecka?

  Not VO2 max?

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Not VO2 max, right? So this is, this is a little bit different. And when you get to a point where Your quality will just diminish, right? You're gonna basically adapt to a lower level of functioning. When you get to a point where you are asking where your body can no longer meet the demands. Right? And that's where, you know, fatigue starts to set in. You can't run as fast, you can't, your decisions start to wane. You know, your body starts to not shut down, but it just is not operating as efficiently. Right? So you know, in the first quarter of a game versus the fourth quarter, you know, there's a difference, right? And in the quality, but I think that's really what I was trying to tap is how do we maintain a really high level of quality, quality over the course of the game? Doesn't mean we're always gonna win, right?

• 9:02Speaker 00

  If a team is more talented than we are, but I really was interested in putting ourselves in a vision where we were never losing games we should, we should win, right? Number one, and I didn't want to lose because of fatigue.

• 9:13Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  So that's really what I was trying to solve with this 24/7 picture and with the technology that we were using to understand how athletes were adapting in the moment to the load that was happening.

• 9:24Gary Brecka?

  And how are you doing that in real time back then?

• 9:26Speaker 00

  So we had a computer that basically was looking at training effect. So, you know, in real time, on the sideline.

• 9:32Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  And we were monitoring EPOC, HARRY, HARRY variability, everything.

• 9:37Gary Brecka?

  But how, was there something on the athlete?

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Chest strap and we had blue, yeah, we had four Bluetooth hubs that were surrounding the field.

• 9:44Gary Brecka?

  And they would let you do this?

• 9:46Speaker 00

  I mean,

• 9:46Gary Brecka?

  Or you just didn't say anything?

• 9:47Speaker 00

  I just went to my board and I was like, hey, I want to get this technology is gonna help keep us to have healthy and safe. But really, and that's, that's really what I was after.

• 9:56Gary Brecka?

  I'm such a huge fan of that, right?

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Well, we were just, you know, I, I love, you know, I mean, you know, this of course, yeah, it was about a competitive advantage, but you know, I wanted to keep my athletes healthy and safe, right? We know that availability is going to predict 80% of team outcomes, right? Just literally, how available are you to train and compete? And, you know, to me, this was a way that we could understand, you know, how athletes cope with load, we could understand, you know, really how to just keep them safe over the course of a season.

• 10:28Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  So I think for me, it was just part of the job.

• 10:31Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I think it's a very nouveau turn to start talking about readiness. Like, you know, I was an amateur triathlete, you know, years ago, so I never was at a professional level, but my judgment of whether or not I was ready was just basically how I felt. You know, how did I feel climbing on the bike? How did I feel when I started out a run? And sometimes it was predictive. But really often, I was shocked by how unprepared I was. And, you know, now that I've been deep down the rabbit hole of data, I think if you were to distill all of superhuman performance down to a single metric in terms of its impact, I mean, would you agree that that would be sleep? Or would you say it's a combination of?

• 11:10Speaker 00

  So I think it's probably, you know, Windra Adal just published a paper in January of 2024 that basically looked at all the different markers of sleep. And what they found is that sleep regularity was a bigger predictor of all-cause mortality than sleep duration. Now, it doesn't mean that time in bed doesn't matter, it does, but sleep regularity, I think, might actually trump how much time you're spending in bed. Now, you need to get.

• 11:38Gary Brecka?

  When you say regularly, you mean same time going to bed?

• 11:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:40Gary Brecka?

  Same sleep routine?

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, so onset and offset. So if you think about your sleep, when you go to bed and when you wake up, and you want to make that as consistent as possible.

• 11:48Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  And this is, you know, I've been tracking this for a long time on Whoop. And, you know, a paper came out in 2017 by Andrew Phillips, who was at Harvard and did a study with Harvard students. And what he saw, looking at, you know, he had their kind of their daily sleep habits, you know, prior to the study and then during the study. And basically, what he saw is that the one thing that predicted GPA was sleep-wake regularity.

• 12:16Gary Brecka?

  No way.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:17Gary Brecka?

  It predicted GPA?

• 12:18Speaker 00

  It predicted GPA.

• 12:19Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:20Gary Brecka?

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• 13:05Gary Brecka?

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• 13:17Speaker 00

  So, you know, I started, because at the time, I was working with a lot of athletes. You know, this is when Whoop was deep into NC2A and professional teams. And so I was tracking all sorts of data. And after I read this paper, I started manually tracking kind of onset and offset to see what I could find in the data.

• 13:34Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  And sure enough, you know, sleep regularity kept popping up.

• 13:40Gary Brecka?

  I mean, I've seen it a lot.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then, so we started just basically running some experiments. So some perspective research, like just seeing, you know, trying to run some interventions to kind of see, and, you know, in more experimental kind of format to see, you know, what is the role of sleep-wake timing? You know, in terms of resilience of some of these other psychological markers? And, you know, does it actually predict, you know, any of these physiological markers? And sure enough, yes, to both those things.

• 14:09Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:09Gary Brecka?

  So, so if I was going to develop a good sleep routine, what I call good sleep hygiene, not in terms of being clean, but just hygiene in terms of your routine. It's amazing how, I did a sleep challenge a few months ago with Whoop.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:22Gary Brecka?

  And we had thousands of people that participated in it. And what was astounding to me was that when I would get people on these Zoom groups and we would open up a dialogue of questions, most people actually had no kind of consciousness about sleep. No, no, no sleep routine at all. And if I asked them about exercise, they had a routine about getting their kids to school. They had a routine.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  Nutrition dialed in.

• 14:45Gary Brecka?

  Nutrition dialed in, like their, their, their job, they had a routine for work. They, I'm like, what's your sleep routine? I'm like, well, I go to bed. And I'm like, well, what time do you go to bed? Well, when I'm tired, when it's the end of the day or the night.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  It's an afterthought.

• 15:00Gary Brecka?

  And it was astounding to me, the paucity of realization that people had about the importance of sleep. And so we just did something very basic and, you know, we got a baseline and a couple thousand people. And we ran this sleep challenge. It was a three day sleep challenge. And we did simple things like, okay, we're going to develop a routine, not eating two hours before bedtime, cooling the temperature of the room down, darkening the room, taught them a breathwork technique, you know, to do while they were in bed, no screen time in bed, the things that I knew that everybody could do without spending any money or buying any other fancy equipment, other than the whoop to track it. And what was pretty interesting was we saw, again anecdotal in this big group,

• 15:42Gary Brecka?

  but about an 18% increase in their sleep score, which obviously led to improved, you know, recovery and strain, reduced strain, improved recovery. And because we just brought their level of consciousness about sleep, you know, to the forefront.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:01Gary Brecka?

  And it's interesting because I, you know, I open up our, I'm still in this whoop group. And my sleep score gets uploaded in there every day.

• 16:10Gary Brecka?

  So now I'm like stressed about sleep because I'm like, heck, it's my group. So if my sleep score is crap, you know, then people are going to be like, ah, you're so charlatan. So I do make sure that I go to sleep, you know, routinely at the same time.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:22Gary Brecka?

  But the one thing that we were not tracking was the routine, like bed at 10pm or bed 9pm.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  The consistency.

• 16:30Gary Brecka?

  The consistency.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:31Gary Brecka?

  So what you're saying is that is as if not maybe the, one of the most important factors for people to try to control.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  I think it's the biggest rock.

• 16:42Gary Brecka?

  That's a big statement.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  It is, yeah. And I, and I say that because I think when we, when we consider the circadian system.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  And when you, when you think about the circadian system, like there isn't a cell, tissue or organ that it doesn't touch. So when you're, you know, it's, it's the regulator.

• 17:06Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  And, and so when you think about human health and functioning, and if you're not thinking about circadian rhythms kind of more broadly, and certainly thinking about your sleep-wake timing, you're just kind of missing a big piece of the puzzle. And, and I think we, we think about all these other things, right? And, and all those other things are important, and we need to do them. But when our foundation is unstable, we're just kind of layering inefficiency on top of inefficiency.

• 17:35Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  So if we really want to optimize our health, or if we just want to fix our health, the place to start is circadian alignment. Circadian misalignment, in my view, is the biggest problem in modern society.

• 17:49Gary Brecka?

  Is we're fighting the natural cycle.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, we have access to artificial light 24/7. We have access to food 24/7.

• 17:58Gary Brecka?

  Mm hmm. Temperature regulation.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:00Gary Brecka?

  Everything.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, we just, yeah, we're in like climate controlled environments all the time, right? So we just, we haven't adapted to blue light after the sun sets, for example.

• 18:12Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Right? We haven't adapted to eating, you know, huge meals after the sun goes down, like right before we go to bed. So a lot of these things, you know, you were just, we're kind of fighting our internal preferences, right? Every, like all of the clocks in our body want to do things at certain times.

• 18:31Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  And when we bypass those internal preferences, we cause a lot of miscommunication.

• 18:39Gary Brecka?

  Disregulation. Sure.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Right? You know, the cells don't communicate as effectively, right? And we know that cellular miscommunication is the basis for aging and disease.

• 18:46Gary Brecka?

  You know, interestingly, I saw, there was a sleep physician, I forget his name, um, he's got the long blonde hair, but, uh, he was on Huberman.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Oh, Matthew Walker?

• 18:52Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Dr. Matthew Walker?

• 18:53Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:54Gary Brecka?

  Amazing. You know, one of the, one of the statistics that he, he put forward, and I don't want to misquote it, so I'm going to paraphrase it, what, which was astounding to me, was about daylight savings time. And about the increase in

• 19:04Speaker 00

  Cardiovascular disease.

• 19:05Gary Brecka?

  Cardiovascular events.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  Events and stroke. Yeah.

• 19:07Gary Brecka?

  In and the decreasing, the concomitant decrease in cardiovascular events. So when we lost an hour of sleep.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:13Gary Brecka?

  There was a corresponding spike repeatedly in cardiovascular events. And when we actually gained an hour of sleep, there was a corresponding decrease.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:22Gary Brecka?

  And, and this happened over and over and over on the daylight savings times, you know, each year. And I mean, that just kind of shocked me.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. When people are vulnerable already.

• 19:33Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  Sleep is just going to throw you over the edge, right?

• 19:36Gary Brecka?

  You're right on that edge.

• 19:37Speaker 00

  And sleep regularity, right? Like mistimed sleep or, you know, changes in your typical sleep wake time just really throw your system for a loop. And I think that, that, that study is evidence of that.

• 19:49Gary Brecka?

  It's becoming so much more, you know, mainstream and in vogue for people to really pay attention to their sleep. You know, and Brian Johnson talks about it being your, you know, superpower, the biggest superpower that he's discovered in his journey with Blueprint.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:00Gary Brecka?

  And, and I, I'm a big believer in that. I mean, a few years ago, I stopped. I started scheduling all of my meetings and travel around sleep and exercise.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 20:11Gary Brecka?

  And what a dramatic difference it has made in my psyche.

• 20:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:17Gary Brecka?

  Just, I don't know how to, how to sort of paraphrase it, but just like my level of happiness and contentness and the readiness I have for meetings and preparedness for, for podcasts. I mean, that's why I put the podcast here in my home.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  And just what you're talking about is circadian alignment.

• 20:31Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  You know, so when you look at, you know, the consequences of circadian misalignment, it's, you know, it's increases in cancer risk. It's cardiovascular disease. It's diabetes. It's obesity, mood disorders, psychiatric, psychiatric disorders, right? Like there is not a mental health issue that circadian disruption doesn't touch. A hundred percent of mental health issues will have some sort of circadian disruption present.

• 20:53Gary Brecka?

  Question. And I think it's, sleep is just always the thing that we sacrifice, right? It's the easiest thing to forego, right? So, you know, we, we didn't have time to finish a project, so we stay up late at night and go to bed and then we still have to get to work in the morning. Or we just decide that we'd rather, you know, we're going to a destination. We want to have a whole day when we get there. So we're just going to take the really, really, really. Really early flight, you know, and so now we're getting up at three in the morning to make a 5:30 flight. And so it's always the thing that I think we push around in our life, right? And I think it should be the thing that is the stable.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Constant.

• 21:24Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, the constant in life. I couldn't couldn't agree with you more. You know, we had a really interesting conversation here in the unit before the podcast about some of the psychiatric impacts on on performance. And you have a PhD in psychology. And I think it's a really interesting approach to take psychology and apply it to physical performance. Because the way the modern medicine, in my opinion, looks at the human body is that this is completely separate.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  I know.

• 21:52Gary Brecka?

  From this, right? Like somehow, there's no connection here at the neck. We treat psychiatric disorders, not as gut issues. We don't treat gut issues as psychiatric issues. And so we had a really interesting discussion about psychiatric impact of thought and perceived stress on on performance. Could you give us a little?

• 22:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So I'm a psychophysiatrist. So I started kind of physiology and and expanded into psychology. Really because of, you know, so a psychophysiatrist, basically, you know, as a psychologist, I look at, you know, psychological processes. And basically, the inner relationships between your psychological processes and physiological responses and vice versa. So understanding kind of this connection, in my view, is so critical, right? When you have studies that just look at the physiology, but we don't know how someone's, or just the psychology, we don't know how someone slept. Their sleep patterns, like, we're just missing a piece of the puzzle. Same sort of thing. If we're looking at some of these physiological process, but don't have any of any psychological context in terms of their psychological functioning. Again, we're probably missing a piece of the puzzle.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  So, you know, from my perspective, you know, merging these two domains is so essential. And and that's really where wearable technology has enabled us to basically run these psychological kind of experiments. Or, you know, include psychological measures while collecting all of this physiological data. So we run a, we ran a huge study looking at, you know, blood pressure, stress and sleep. And, you know, in that, in the survey, we asked folks their perceptions of their day. To the degree that they thought their day was threatening versus challenging. So we asked them at the end of the day. We also asked them lots of sleep anxiety questions. Threatening. Yeah. Was your day threatening? You know, like, yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  And, and what we saw was, was really interesting. So folks who perceived their day as really challenging actually had lower blood, blood pressure as measured by our stress monitor, which is not surprising.

• 23:50Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Um, and, um, had better night's sleep the prior night. So I think what that tapped was, you know, feelings of self-efficacy. So feeling like you have the skills and resources to tackle tomorrow are going to help you sleep better. Um, your preparedness kind of going into the day is going to help you sleep better.

• 24:09Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  So all of these feelings of challenge, but what was really interesting is, is we, our hypothesis was that people who perceive stress, uh, challenge are going to have lower stress.

• 24:19Gary Brecka?

  Wow. I love that. I always say.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  But they didn't.

• 24:23Gary Brecka?

  Oh, they didn't. See, I always say if, if your morning's hard, your day will be easy.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  So on our stress monitor, which is a scale of zero to three, and it's taking in heart rate and heart variability continuously. They registered, if you perceive the day as challenging, okay, you're prepared, you actually register higher on the stress scale.

• 24:40Gary Brecka?

  Wow. Cause you feel prepared for the stress.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  I think you're just mobilizing energy. You're like, you're excited about your day. And this is, goes back, I think to the thesis that stress is not bad.

• 24:50Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Stress is a, a gift, right? It gives us energy.

• 24:53Gary Brecka?

  Well, hormesis is that you stress the body to, it proves by strength.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  It's adaptive, right? But, and then, uh, conversely, when people perceive their day as threatening. So at the end of the day, they perceived as threatening, actually their prior night's sleep was worse. Okay. So they kind of knew going into the day that they were not excited about it and that somehow impacted their sleep. And on the stress monitor, their stress was actually lower, but their blood pressure was higher. So I think what's happening is almost like this paralysis, right? When we perceive something as stressing, we don't move as much. We're not as energized or energetic or, you know, we, we're not using our brain as much or we're not excited as excited about the day.

• 25:35Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  So, you know, I think how, you know, what I take from this study is obviously how we frame our day is really important. And just understanding, I think the role of self-efficacy, like feeling like we have the skills and resources. To tackle our day, we've got some element of purpose, right? I think it taps purpose as well. Like, do I have, you know, is tomorrow going to be meaningful? Is it going to be, you know, fulfill my values, right? And that has a real adaptive impact on our physiology. So it's pretty cool to see.

• 26:06Gary Brecka?

  That's very interesting. You know, I often think, as much of a big data person as I am, I also think that there's, you know,

• 26:13Speaker 00

  And this was 35,000 people.

• 26:15Gary Brecka?

  It was 35,000? Wow, that's a huge sample study. See, here we go back down, you know, you're reinforcing my belief and again, in big data. I mean, I think that big data is going to revolutionize modern medicine in a way that, in my opinion, is going to be catastrophic for modern medicine. And the reason why I say that is that we will no longer be beholden to the randomized clinical trial, the isolated clinical trial that we're extrapolating out to a large population. We're going to have big data on on human beings in in real settings where everything, you know, is controlled. You know, we talked about a sleep study, for example, you know, five people go in or eight people go into the University of Miami and they sleep on them, you know, a plastic cot and some dude's looking at them through a two-way mirror and they got electrodes all over their head. And that's supposed to somehow be

• 26:58Speaker 00

  Representative of every single night of their sleep.

• 27:00Gary Brecka?

  Every single night of every sleep. And they're like, you know, REM starts here and, you know, deep sleep starts here. But, you know, rather than like what we can do, which is take a giant population of people and examine hydration and and their environment, their sleep, their recovery, and their strain in their own natural environment, which is where, you know, we're, human beings behave in communities. We don't behave in isolation. I don't think that we should be studied in isolation. I don't think that our cells should be studied in isolation. Sometimes when we do that and we extrapolate out data from that, it ends up being very detrimental. And what's happened historically, and I talk about this a lot, is, you know, these 10-year-long randomized clinical trials to get, you know, a drug or synthetic or pharmaceutical approved, sometimes very often have a very, a very

• 27:45Gary Brecka?

  narrow hypothesis that you're trying to prove. And if they prove that, and then it results in a treatment, you know, a drug, pharmaceutical, chemical, synthetic, what have you. And then we get 10 years more of population data and we realize we made a major mistake. But now we're 20 years down the road.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:00Gary Brecka?

  I think that timeframe is being compressed to 30, 60, 90, 120 days now because of things like wearables.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  Has the potential to.

• 28:08Gary Brecka?

  You know, so much data.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:11Gary Brecka?

  What are, so As good as big data is, you can also get paralysis of analysis, right? It's like trying to buy a stock and you got 50 different stock charts and eventually you just freeze. And I think sometimes when people are approaching wearables, like you can go pretty deep down the rabbit hole in Whoop. Right? As much as you, as deep as you want to go, you can go. So for the non-professional athlete, you know, for is someone that is genuinely interested in optimizing their health. Like where do they start? What are the key like one, two, three metrics that you should be measuring? And then when they get that data, what kind of actionable steps could they take?

• 28:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I think the metrics that I pay most attention to, sleep consistency, which we talked about.

• 28:55Gary Brecka?

  You know, I mean, I tend to be very consistent with my sleep, but it's one of the things that we didn't actually track.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  We see that, you know, after like a few, so the average, so healthy user bias, right? We have the folks who choose to be on Whoop usually are like, all right, I want to be healthier. I want to sleep better. I want to understand how to recover. I want to build strain. You know, they're pretty motivated.

• 29:16Gary Brecka?

  I want to build strain.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  I want to build strain. You know, they're probably pretty motivated, right? So, you know, just understanding that we've got kind of this healthy user bias, which is what I'm going to say. I think, I think that fact makes it, I'm going to say even more profound is that when you look at sleep consistency, the average sleep consistency, which is on a scale of zero to 100, right? The more consistent your sleep, the higher your sleep consistency score. So 100 be, you know, very consistent sleep onset, offset. We take the average of your last four nights compared to today and we give you a percentage. So 100% would be perfect, you know, sleep, wake regularity.

• 29:52Gary Brecka?

  So you went, you went to bed at 10, you got up at 6?

• 29:53Speaker 00

  Yep. And you did that for four days straight. Okay. So you'd be have a perfect score. So on our platform, the average sleep consistency of our members is 66%.

• 30:05Gary Brecka?

  Wow. Which solid D.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  So a solid D, right? So to get 85%, you have to have about 45 minutes of sleep, wake variability on either end. So these folks are probably at two and a half. On average, our members are probably varying their sleep. About two and a half hours.

• 30:27Gary Brecka?

  Two and a half hours, you mean in their bedtime? Meaning 10 PM to 12:30 in the morning?

• 30:32Speaker 00

  So, so basically, you know, they're going to bed at nine one night and then waking up eight the next day. And then the next day, they go to bed at 11:30. They wake up at six, you know, so there's a lot of variability, right? When you're at that 66%. So, and what we see in the healthiest population, okay, so collegiate athletes, 18 years old to 23, after just one hour of sleep-wake variability, we see a degradation in heart rate variability and resting heart rate.

• 31:00Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  So you can just imagine as you age, you become way more sensitive, right?

• 31:05Gary Brecka?

  Wow, just a single hour?

• 31:06Speaker 00

  Just one hour of variability, we see declines in HRV and increases in resting heart rate.

• 31:12Gary Brecka?

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• 32:25Speaker 00

  So we have a lot more analysis to do across different populations, but I think this gives us a sense of wow, okay. After an hour, you know, we start to see declines. And we know heart variability, resting heart rate, you know, kind of ladder up to your readiness, just generally, and your overall health. And so sleep, wake variability matters. And we've seen, you know, sleep, wake. We did a study that looked at basically COVID. So it was the three months prior to COVID. We had all of the baseline data. So all the physiological data. And 20,000 people basically took our survey, which assessed their mental health. So basically, right after lockdown, we sent this survey out.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  Over the course of three months, we're collecting this mental health data. They send it back to us. The one behavior that predicted mental health resilience, okay, was sleep, wake variability.

• 33:21Gary Brecka?

  Wow, dude, I am going to go down the rabbit hole of your sleep consistency. I mean, I knew it was important, but like you're like blowing me away with this.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  I think, and then we did a study with a thousand paratroopers in Army Alaska, and this is exploratory study. But again, we saw sleep, wake consistency bubble up to being predictive of psychological functioning, workplace resilience, control. So hard, right? Yeah, but the ones that the more consistent they were, the better workplace resilience, the better they could handle up tempo, the better, you know, the better, the more positive their social networks, more control they felt.

• 33:55Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  And, and then just most recently, this study is, is in, is in review right now. But we looked at four behaviors, four core behaviors. We looked at viewing morning sunlight, which I'm going to talk about in a second. Viewing morning sunlight, zone two training, breath work and time restricted eating. So the folks who did those four behaviors, this was a quasi experimental design. So we had basically the four weeks of the challenge and we could compare that to the data. The four weeks prior, and we also had a match control. And this was 38,000 people. So we had a match control of 38,000 that matched the challenge participants.

• 34:32Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  Basically, we saw that the folks who participated in this challenge and did these four behaviors improved their sleep, wake consistency, and then in turn improved statistically meaningful, meaningfully improved their cardio respiratory fitness and their parasympathetic activity by just engaging in these four behaviors.

• 34:52Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. So let's, what are the four? Again, I want to make sure.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  So it was viewing morning sunlight, right?

• 34:58Gary Brecka?

  Do that every day.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, exactly. So when we talk about sleep and for folks who, you know, are like, all right, I want to improve my sleep, a lot of the sleep industry is going to just say, spend more time in bed, cold, dark, quiet. Those are all really important. Yes. But in order to really improve your sleep, you need to stabilize when you go to bed and when you wake up. And to do that, you have to tell your body when it needs to release melatonin, right? Which is going to signal to your body that it's dark and it's time to be asleep. But to do that, you need to view morning sunlight.

• 35:31Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  So you got to set your alarm, you know, at for a time that you can adhere to. Get up at that time within 20 minutes. Get outside, view the natural light for five minutes, 10 minutes, depending on how cloudy it is. You might need to spend a little bit more time outside. But that is the best way to improve your sleep.

• 35:50Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  And get to that kind of sleep regularity.

• 35:54Gary Brecka?

  That's, I mean, that's one of my drugs of choice. You know, I have the right outside. So the sun rises on the east side of, you know, my building.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  I mean, your setup here is just, you got the sunset, the sunrise.

• 36:07Gary Brecka?

  Just walk across the other balcony.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:10Gary Brecka?

  But, but I love it because, you know, I'll go out there and I'll also just do some horizon gazing. So, you know, the ocean's out there.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Vision, which immediately drops your heart rate, increases your heart rate variability.

• 36:21Gary Brecka?

  You know.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  Drops your heart rate.

• 36:22Gary Brecka?

  And I'll just do three rounds of 30 breaths. Don't put a lot of stress on myself.

• 36:27Speaker 00

  Love it.

• 36:27Gary Brecka?

  I usually just try to expose as much of my skin to sunlight, which my neighbors don't like.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  They love it. Yeah.

• 36:33Gary Brecka?

  Not fully in the birthday suit, but I, you know, I'm down in my bathing suit and I'll just go out and I'll, I'll sit on the chair, I'll horizon gaze, do three rounds of 30 breaths. I'll take in the morning sunlight, I'll let that sun kind of warm my skin up, it feels amazing. Usually, you know, at first light, there's no real UVA or UVB for about the first 45 minutes. You get healthy blue light, not like the blue light we get from our screens. And, you know, it really does set my, my day. And, you know, again, I keep shouting out to Huberman, but I was also watching a podcast of his where you actually talked about the importance of taking in this light and, and your effect on your sleep that night. And I do notice when I am consistently, you know, viewing sunlight and doing breath work and

• 37:17Gary Brecka?

  allowing the sun to hit my skin. And sometimes I'll even go down to the park down here and ground at the same time. You do those, those few things. I mean, touch the surface of the earth, let the sun hit your skin, view the morning light, do a little breath work, costs you absolutely zero. I just don't think people realize how profound of an impact it is.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  And I think like, that's the message.

• 37:36Gary Brecka?

  Always like bottle it up and patent it and then charge it and write it as a prescription.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  I know, I know. But that's the problem. I think people want a quick fix or they, or they want, just take a pill. Like, you know, you, you, you cannot beat the natural environment.

• 37:49Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 37:50Speaker 00

  You know, like you, you, we need, we need natural light, like so desperately. Our body is craving it.

• 37:57Gary Brecka?

  Oh, we're photovoltaic beings for sure. I mean, you know, when we look at these red light beds, you know, these fancy red light beds, all they're essentially doing is mimicking the beneficial wavelengths from the sun. I mean, they're emitting the UVA, UVB, the damaging rays, but they're, they're, they're taking in that photovoltaic energy that our cells need. And there's an enormous body of evidence that exposing your skin to sunlight, you know, my, my opinion is that we're not getting enough sun, not that we're getting too much sun. I mean, you look at the levels of clinical deficiency in vitamin D3, I mean, 50% of the world's population, darker complected populations, African Americans, Latinos.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  I mean, mental health issues, clearly. I mean, people who are spending more time during the day in the natural light are going to sleep better. You know, like it just has this like virtuous cycle that you just can't deny.

• 38:41Gary Brecka?

  The whole reason why I live in Miami right now is I went to grad school in Chicago and I lived there for six years downtown. And Chicago's a great city at that time. And just clean, friendly. I lived in South Loop and I love Chicago. I learned to believe in like, uh, live music there. It's had a great live music scene. But by the middle of the winter. Everyone had seasonal affective disorder.

• 39:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:04Gary Brecka?

  Like, everybody was in a bad mood.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:06Gary Brecka?

  And all everybody wanted to do was just drink beer and eat pizza and stay inside.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:09Gary Brecka?

  You know, and I would, I remember the feeling, six years in a row, of that first, like, Indian summer day in the spring, where you could actually go outside, you could actually open your windows.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:21Gary Brecka?

  And you could feel the energy of the whole city change.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:24Gary Brecka?

  Right? Now, I was there when, like, Jordan and Pip and Rodman were playing for the Bulls. It was a great, it was really a great time in Chicago, but I just remember those, you know, they, they would have jazz in the park and like, the whole city would come alive. But there were three or four months there where absolutely your mood, your emotional state, even, even like your memory, the level of fatigue, you know, you would put on a little bit of weight, you would just be so lethargic, because you wouldn't see the sun for months.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:53Gary Brecka?

  And, and so now that I live here, I never feel like that.

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:59Gary Brecka?

  You know, just having that exposure.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  It's easier down here. But I can say, you know, someone who's lived in Maine, and, you know, I live in Massachusetts, like, my day is better in the winter.

• 40:08Gary Brecka?

  Better in the winter?

• 40:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I just, I can train harder, I think, just because I, I think like, the hot weather reduces your capacity, you know, like, I can't quite push probably as hard. I think that's what's at play. And I definitely sleep a little bit longer in the winter, which we're supposed to, right? We're supposed to actually adapt to the seasons.

• 40:25Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 40:26Speaker 00

  But that said, I spend as much time outside in the winter as I do in the summer.

• 40:31Gary Brecka?

  Mm-hmm, so do I.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  Like, I'm, you know, but, so I think that is actually the solution.

• 40:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  For people who are in, you know, these more northern climates, who, you know, it's, it's, yeah, it's maybe not as comfortable, but, but I feel like...

• 40:43Gary Brecka?

  No, again, it's a hormetic stress, right?

• 40:44Speaker 00

  It is, yeah.

• 40:45Gary Brecka?

  You gotta stop telling grandma not to go outside, it's too hot, not to go outside, it's too cold, just to lay down, to relax, to rest.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  I know.

• 40:50Gary Brecka?

  You know, to eat at the first pang of hunger. I mean, these are collapsing our natural defense mechanisms.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  Kids don't need to be buttoned up to the T, you know, like, the clothes, you know, like, it's okay to have cold on your skin, you know?

• 41:01Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  For a little bit, obviously, you have to be safe, but, you know, but...

• 41:04Gary Brecka?

  Or heat on your skin.

• 41:05Speaker 00

  Or heat on your skin, you know, like, oh, yeah, those, those, it's your point, those stressors, I think, are really important, right? And, and, you know... And we need to give our bodies a chance to adapt to that stress because if we, when we adapt to it, that we grow, we get stronger.

• 41:17Gary Brecka?

  I totally agree. What, what are some of the really exciting, like inspiring things right now for you that are going on at Whoop or going on with, you know, big data sets? Like where, where is your energy going right now? Where is your curiosity taking you with big data?

• 41:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I really want to help women understand how to have and maintain a healthy period.

• 41:38Gary Brecka?

  Wow. That is massive.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  You know, like I, I just, you know, it's one of those things where, um, you know, I, I feel like I've unlocked a lot for myself in, in this area and, um, we are seeing really exciting things in the data. And, you know, I have a daughter and

• 41:58Gary Brecka?

  How old's your daughter?

• 41:59Speaker 00

  She's 16.

• 42:00Gary Brecka?

  Oh, awesome.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it just, yeah, just, you know, being around, you know, her and her friends and, and just kind of seeing like all the confusion and noise that exists around that. And, and I think too, like the desire to, you know, have a natural period and not be on hormonal birth control. Like, you know, there's like a real change, I think, in terms of, it doesn't mean that you're not a feminist, right? If you're having a natural period, if you're giving birth. I think people recognize, oh, okay, you know, natural period is, is probably the healthier path, potentially.

• 42:32Gary Brecka?

  Natural period, probably being the operative term there.

• 42:35Speaker 00

  And, and, and not for everyone, you know, and I'm not demonizing hormonal birth control at all. I'm just saying that,

• 42:42Speaker 00

  the default shouldn't be, doesn't have to be hormonal birth control.

• 42:47Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, just because it's inconvenient.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  Because it would happen, it masks symptoms, right? When we take hormonal birth control and, you know, and, and the way that, you know, primary care physicians are like approaching this, I think we need like a whole revamp in that area. So it just in terms of what I'm passionate about, like, you know, I just, I really want.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  The time, I want practitioners to be able to have more time to have conversations with young women around what their options are.

• 43:16Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  You know, and I think that's where technology can step in and really help you understand when you're ovulating, when your fertile window is, so you can be smart about when you have sex and when you don't have sex and the type of protection that you you need. So you can maintain a natural period and you can get all the benefits of those fluctuations. And you can see when you might be under fueling or over fueling, or you know, not hydrating enough, or over training or under training, you know, that is going to manifest.

• 43:44Gary Brecka?

  Give you that kind of data?

• 43:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, we're getting there.

• 43:47Gary Brecka?

  You're getting there.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  So this is what you're saying. This is the promise. This is, this is, I think, helping people understand how to use their period as a signal and then be able to modify their behaviors to keep themselves in the healthiest possible range, to me, is the future. And we can, I think, delay the onset of perimenopause.

• 44:06Gary Brecka?

  All kinds of things.

• 44:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, all of these things that I think that when we understand how to apply our effort, right, and how you respond to certain interventions is going to be different than me. And that's, again, I think, the promise of technology. It is me against me, right? And that's where a lot of these normative values, we were talking about, you know, blood panels and hormone panels and, you know, what is good for, you know, that girl, it might not be good for me.

• 44:28Gary Brecka?

  I totally agree with you. It's like, it's like HRV, right? You know, people compare theirs to other people. And I'm like, well, you should really develop baseline and start to see what's improving or or or making yours worse.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  Exactly. And your genetics is going to establish your baseline, too, right? Like, just because I have maybe, you know, my resting heart rate is 50 beats per minute and my doctor is like, oh, God, you're so healthy. But maybe for me, you know, that's just because of genetics. So when I go to the doctor and they're missing my heartbeat, my resting heart rate is 62, and for me, that's 12 beats higher than my baseline.

• 44:59Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  That's a problem. But I'll go to the doctor, they'll be like, oh, you're so fit and healthy.

• 45:02Gary Brecka?

  Right, right, right.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  No, right? And that's, I think, that is another promise of like, just this longitudinal data, is that we can understand our own baseline and understand what is good for me, not just these reference values that, you know.

• 45:18Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Because perfectly healthy people have HRVs in the 50s and 60s and perfectly healthy people have HRVs over 100. My son's a. Pro athlete is HRV is constantly over 100.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:28Gary Brecka?

  Well into the hundreds.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:29Gary Brecka?

  And, um, and my daughter's is a lot lower, but compared to, she's also very healthy, but

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:35Gary Brecka?

  Compared to her baseline, you know, we know what helps it and hurts it sleeps, sleeps Exactly.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  Exactly. And you can modify, you know, that's, that's what's so fun is like you can do, your behaviors are going to support, you know, your, your kind of values or not, right? Yeah. Like you're, you know, there, so I think there's an opportunity of course to improve your HRV through your behaviors or improve your resting heart.

• 45:57Gary Brecka?

  Is there really ways to, to, um, look at follicular, you know, ovulation and luteal phases of the menstrual cycle and, and menstruating women?

• 46:05Speaker 00

  It's a very clear amplitude.

• 46:07Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 46:07Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:07Gary Brecka?

  What, what kind of things are they, what, what kind of metrics are you tracking?

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. So basically looking at, you know, the, the pulse shape of, of your heart rate, we can see, um, how the amplitude changes over the course of a cycle. We can tell you if, you know, that amplitude is, um, kind of healthy range versus not. We can kind of tell if you're in perimenopause or not, like, you know, these are things that we're going to be able to model.

• 46:35Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  And, and detect.

• 46:37Gary Brecka?

  That's amazing. Cause you know, we, we also have the clinic side of our, our, our business and on the clinic side, you know, our, our clinic director is a board certified OB GYN, she's a regenerative OB GYN, Dr. Sardis, she's amazing. And a lot of times we see that women that have been on, um, birth control for a prolonged period of times, one, one of the things they use in birth control is, you know, SHBG, the sex hormone binding globulin.

• 46:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 46:59Gary Brecka?

  And it does exactly what it sounds like it does. It's, it's a protein, basically that binds to sex hormones, mainly testosterone. And so what it does is it, it, it doesn't throw the level of their hormones off, it throws the ratio of their hormones off.

• 47:12Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 47:13Gary Brecka?

  Right? So free testosterone to testosterone, for example, and, and in men and women, you know, this testosterone level, um, even in young women, it has an impact on this erythro poetic process of, of the production of new red blood cells. And so we find in the, in the vast majority of these young women that are On birth control, especially if it's SHPG and I know there are other forms. IUDs and things, but that use this SHPG that their their testosterone levels seem to plummet. And when their testosterone and free testosterone levels are so low, they're not producing a lot of red blood cells. They become borderline anemic.

• 47:56Gary Brecka?

  But it's it's the kind of anemia that hides in plain sight because, you know, red blood cells have a range, but they're down near the bottom of the range. Hemoglobin has a range, you know, the fluid in the red blood cell has a range, but they're down near the bottom of the range. And so when you have, you're in the lowest percentile for RBCs, then you're in the lowest percentile for hemoglobin and these girls are just wiped out. They're exhausted and they never tie it back to the birth control. But when you look at a blood panel, you're like, you don't have any oxygen in your blood, you know?

• 48:25Speaker 00

  Crazy.

• 48:25Gary Brecka?

  And as they come off, that as that protein unbinds and their levels return to normal, like their energy goes back through the roof. So it's what's really exciting to me is that, you know, using a wearable to reliably time their menstrual cycle. So like you said, they can, they can have safer times to have intercourse.

• 48:49Speaker 00

  You can just understand what is normal fluctuation, right? What is abnormal fluctuation?

• 48:53Gary Brecka?

  Maybe I know why I just don't feel.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  My cycle like.

• 48:55Gary Brecka?

  Really good right now, you know? Okay, it's cuckoo time, you know? And but I mean, it just, I think it's, this is what again is so exciting to me. And when you can apply it to a mass population, especially a population that is in their own environment. And I think this is the downfall, the pitfall of a lot of clinical studies that have good intentions. But you take people out of their normopathic environment and assume that they behave the same way when you put them back in. Or you take a cell out of the body and study it in isolation. You assume it's going to behave the same when you put it back in the body. And I think nothing could be further from the truth. I think big data.

• 49:35Gary Brecka?

  Combined with artificial intelligence is is is going to absolutely lead lead the charge.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  It's just gonna, it's just gonna cut down on the guesswork, you know, like there's no need, we're getting so close to not having to guess.

• 49:49Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  You know, and that's what like when we take this back to like our original conversation with my athletes, like I was just, I didn't want to have to guess, right? I just wanted to be able to keep him healthy. I wanted to keep him safe. I wanted to, you know, just be able to, you know, just, I wanted them to be able to thrive, right? And, and a lot of this stuff that we, that, you know, frankly, are, is really noisy, you know, just this menstrual cycle, how do we actually, you know, train? Like, do we need zone two versus zone five? Or, you know, can women do zone two? You know, like, there's so much of this stuff out there that I, I can't wait to answer a lot of these questions. And we're not far from being able to do that, you know?

• 50:30Gary Brecka?

  I'm excited to offer you free access to my premium membership, The Rule Brecka. As a Rule Brecka, you'll be able to join me for monthly Q and A sessions, VIP access to all the challenges I host, and advanced access to my most exclusive content. To get your free 30 day trial of Rule Brecka, head over to joinrulebrekkas.com. That's joinrulebrekkas.com right now. Now, let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Does it, does it surprise you that, I, I work with a lot of professional athletes in, in the NFL. I also sit on the board of the NFL Alumni Association, Athletica. I work with a lot of professional fighters. It's pretty astounding to me how many athletes,

• 51:11Gary Brecka?

  and even athletic teams, are relying on just pure talent, right? Athletic ability. And, you know, okay, when you're 19, 20, 21, 22, you can just, pure talent will get you through just about anything. But, and, and, you know, they're into nutrition. They've really dialed in training. I think that like, strength training and position training and all, I mean, they're, they're really dialed in, in the training. But the paucity of real understanding of this type of data or the availability of data. I mean, I think still, if you were go to most professional teams and talking about heart rate variability tracking, or sleep tracking, or, you know, readiness, recovery, strain, any of these metrics that were so easily available.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:53Gary Brecka?

  That could, I mean, you're way ahead of your time. What you were doing, and you were coaching at Princeton, that you haven't even done for, what, a decade?

• 52:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:04Gary Brecka?

  They're not doing now.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  No, no.

• 52:06Gary Brecka?

  I bet.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  They're leaving so much on the table.

• 52:08Gary Brecka?

  So much on the table.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  You know, and I, I'm in so many high performance environments, you know, just have been over the course of the years. Yeah, there's so much we could be doing and a lot of the barriers frankly, just are around trust. You know, the athletes don't trust the performance science team, you know, that to handle the data and to model the data. And it's such a shame.

• 52:27Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 52:28Speaker 00

  Because I.

• 52:28Gary Brecka?

  It's very individualized too, like some of them.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, they'll have their own team.

• 52:31Gary Brecka?

  One guy.

• 52:32Speaker 00

  You know, but it, but that's where, you know, it's like, if we want to manage load over the course of a season and keep athletes healthy, like you need that data, right? And the coach needs to know, how many minutes do I play this guy? You know, and some of the teams are doing it, but I guarantee it's not as dialed in as it could be. Like it could be way.

• 52:49Gary Brecka?

  A lot of players, you know, um, take this into their own hands too.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:53Gary Brecka?

  You know, like the ones that are hyper dedicated.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:56Gary Brecka?

  You know, like you look at somebody like Tom Brady that, you know, really took matters into his own hands.

• 53:00Speaker 00

  A lot of control over, you know, in that environment, just given that he was Tom Brady.

• 53:05Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  Right. He, he probably had a lot of say over when he practiced, how much he practiced, you know, what his load was going to be that day.

• 53:12Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 53:13Speaker 00

  But I, but I think that, that to me is kind of the missing piece in a team environment is really being able to individualize training. And have that actually be part of the culture.

• 53:25Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 53:25Speaker 00

  How I responded to yesterday's game is going to be very different from the guy on my right, my left, right? Based on how I slept, how I ate, you know, just how I'm managing my relationships, you know, there's a whole myriad of factors that are going to influence how I show up today.

• 53:37Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  Right. And, and being able to account for that and plan a practice around that to me is like the only way to do it. And that's literally what I was doing as a coach and, and one of the reasons why we were so successful is it was so individualized. And that became part of our culture.

• 53:55Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 53:55Speaker 00

  And because I think where teams go wrong is, is I think that they. They try to apply one model to all the athletes.

• 54:03Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  And that is just not the way physiology and psychology works.

• 54:06Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  We're so individual. Now, you can have cultural norms, you have team values, like you have everyone kind of centered around this like common mission, but in terms of how you train someone and the individual protocols that each person needs, I'm sorry, it's going to be different. And if you can't create an individual performance plan for each athlete, you're going to leave something on the table.

• 54:30Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting. You know, part of our clinical practice is we do genetic testing.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 54:37Gary Brecka?

  And what's becoming really exciting about genetic testing is that, you know, our genes, you know, they say they load the gun, but they don't pull the trigger. I mean, you know, epigenetics, our environment, right, it's a set point, it's a predisposition, right? But you're not, you know, if you have the BRCA gene, you're not guaranteed to get breast cancer. If you have predisposition for, you know, early onset cognitive dysfunction, you're not guaranteed to get Alzheimer's or dementia, you know, early, you know, memory loss. You can make behavioral changes and environmental changes that have dramatic impacts on pushing that back or even eliminating it from your life. But it's, it's astounding

• 55:18Gary Brecka?

  how, you know, I think like in, in early cancer screening, people are like, I just don't want to know. No, actually you do want to know, right? You, you, you want to know as early as possible. So it is the least disruptive to your life. But I've, I feel like in general, there's a slow adoption for this type, especially the pace that big data is moving and the, and its pace of, of adoption. Like people like you and I are like, dude, this is great data. You should be paying attention to this.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  I know.

• 55:51Gary Brecka?

  How do you, how do you bring it more? Mainstream, how do you, how do you improve the, the adoption of it? I guess prove the efficacy?

• 55:59Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I think like, I think the, the science is there, you know, in terms of heart rate variability. It's accurate, you know, like we've got external studies that are able to validate. Yeah. I mean, I think people are starting to know that, oh, this is a really nice proxy for my overall mental and physical and emotional health resilience profile, right? Like I think HRV is a great proxy. Everyone I think recognizes heart rate, you know, resting heart rate is also a great proxy. So all these technologies are doing that pretty well. It's like table stakes. It's not, it's pretty accurate and our sleep, sleep staging, like all of that is getting better and better and better. You know, our algorithms are getting better. And so I think there's a lot of insight to be derived and I, I think to get people over the hump,

• 56:44Speaker 00

  they have to be just willing to kind of face the truth. And I, and I think that is the, to your point is the barrier for some folks. They're like, I don't know if I want to know, you know, or I don't know if I'm ready to make change. And so I think number one is people, all right, I want to make some change. And then, you know, not being intimidated by the data, but being all right, this is going to be a tool to help me understand if what I'm doing, if the effort I'm putting forward is actually helping.

• 57:10Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  Right. And I think that's, that's where we need to get people to. It's just like, hey, it's not about the score per se. It's about understanding if how you're applying your effort is actually working.

• 57:22Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 57:23Speaker 00

  Right. And that's really a lot of the research.

• 57:24Gary Brecka?

  You don't really have a, an understanding.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, you just, you just don't know if, if like how you're, the effort that you're putting in is if you're actually getting the return.

• 57:32Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 57:33Speaker 00

  Right. You can see your body changing maybe, and, and that's good motivation, motivation. But your body can change. For example, I could lose a lot of weight, lose a lot of muscle and I can look great, but what's my scorecard internally?

• 57:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 57:46Speaker 00

  Right. Like that's, that's what really matters, right? So it's getting people to recognize that, okay, whatever's going on the outside, that's one thing. Okay. And, and yeah, that's a signal, like your skin health and your hair health, like all of that. Yeah. Your nails and all that matters, but, but there is a scorecard internally too, that we now have insight into. And the things, the behaviors that are going to impact our, our ability to adapt to external stress.

• 58:12Speaker 00

  Are things for the most part that we can control. And my research is really about what is that taxonomy? What is the order of operation? How do we move the needle the most?

• 58:22Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 58:23Speaker 00

  You know, and that's where like all the research that we're doing is kind of basically distilling down the physiological and psychological variables that matter. The more, when I say physiology, I mean, like circadian behaviors, recovery behaviors, training behaviors, right? I kind of bucket them really loosely. On the psychological side, kind of the core psychological needs, purpose, efficacy, control, like understanding how these variables.

• 58:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 58:45Speaker 00

  Move around our internal status.

• 58:46Gary Brecka?

  And how they relate to each other, the psychological aspect and the performance aspect.

• 58:50Speaker 00

  How they play off one another. They're just their inner, their interconnectedness, right?

• 58:53Gary Brecka?

  Which I think is so exciting about what you do because, you know, having a psychiatric background and then having this big data, I mean, you must, I mean, I'd be like a little kid if I was you.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  No, it is, we, we try to pre-register like, so we, we try not to go in and just cherry pick, right? Like, you know, sometimes we're doing just exploratory study. We always call that out if we ever publish any of that type of exploratory research. But we pre-register on open science framework, every study that we do. We follow the scientific method.

• 59:21Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  Right? So, and we do, we do retrospective analysis, which we pre-register, well, we're going to look at ice baths, have some insight around that.

• 59:28Gary Brecka?

  You do?

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:29Gary Brecka?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:29Speaker 00

  This is hot off the press.

• 59:30Gary Brecka?

  Please don't stop me from doing the cold plunge because I will chop this podcast off right here because it's my favorite thing.

• 59:35Speaker 00

  I know, I know.

• 59:37Gary Brecka?

  She's gonna, she's gonna.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  I'm gonna burst your bubble.

• 59:39Gary Brecka?

  Cold plunge routine.

• 59:40Speaker 00

  Tiny, tiny bit, a tiny bit. But we could still, we could do the N1 analysis, but, um.

• 59:46Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 59:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. But I don't even know what we were even saying. Shit, I got, I got thinking about the ice bath.

• 59:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, let's go in, let's go into the ice bath because when she got here today, I was actually in an ice bath.

• 59:58Speaker 00

  You were, you were.

• 1:00:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Gary Brecka?

  I call it my jar of choice. I mean, it's just like three minutes and I go in there. I only do it at 50, 51 degrees was what it was today. So I don't believe in the colder is better, longer is better. I think there's, there's a place that you can take hormetic stress to the point where, you know, you're overdoing it.

• 1:00:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Gary Brecka?

  You know, not 90 minutes in a 200 degree sauna is way too much. You know, you're baking your brain. I think the really, really cold ice baths for prolonged periods of time can actually take the hermetic stress into a place where it's

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  That's what we see.

• 1:00:30Gary Brecka?

  Non beneficial. Oh, it is.

• 1:00:31Speaker 00

  That's what we see.

• 1:00:32Gary Brecka?

  But I love this. Hear what you have to say about.

• 1:00:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, you know, this is not, oh, I was just talking about preregistration.

• 1:00:37Gary Brecka?

  Oh, preregistration.

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  I was kind of going off. Yeah.

• 1:00:39Gary Brecka?

  No, you guys follow the scientific method.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. We, you know, we really, we really try to, so basically what Open Science Framework is and what preregistration is, basically you put your hypotheses out in the world, you say exactly how you're going to analyze the data, you know, you just literally put everything you're going to do out in the world before you even look at the data.

• 1:00:57Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  Okay. So, um, yeah. So anyway, we wanted to.

• 1:01:00Gary Brecka?

  That's important.

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  It's important. Yeah.

• 1:01:02Gary Brecka?

  So, so you don't have an end destination in mind and you sort of, because that's the other thing that I learned, you know, in, in statistics is, you know, you tell me where you want to go and I'll just.

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  We don't care what the result is.

• 1:01:12Gary Brecka?

  Minimize.

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  We don't care what the result is.

• 1:01:13Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  We're just agnostic. We're looking at the data. We're trying to prove.

• 1:01:17Gary Brecka?

  Gosh, that's the best thing about data. Okay. So moving into bursting my bubble about cold plunging.

• 1:01:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so ice bath. So this was really interesting. So, you know, I, I think this is a very, very big data set, right? There's lots of people on our platform who ice plunge very consistently. So what we did is we bucketed the group into high fit and low fit.

• 1:01:40Speaker 00

  Okay. So folks who are high fit, we just looked at normative values. So we're just, you know, heart variability, resting heart rate, BMI, like all that, just basically kind of created, yeah, and just like a high fit group and a low fit group. And then we looked at the frequency of their ice baths. So what's great on Whoop is you basically can record when you start an ice bath and when you end an ice bath.

• 1:02:00Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  So we have these really nice timestamps. So some people forget to stop it.

• 1:02:05Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  And it ends up, you know, being like.

• 1:02:07Gary Brecka?

  12 hours.

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  Exactly. So those we had to throw out, obviously, because those aren't, those are not going to be accurate. But we could actually go back and tell in the data. We did this for some, but then I got, it got too much. Um, we can actually see when it ended because there's very clear responses.

• 1:02:21Gary Brecka?

  Physiologic responses.

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  Responses when you're in the ice bath. But, um, but anyway, we had this plenty of, of data in both this high fit and low fit group. And basically what we saw, the fitter you are.

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  The more you ice bath, the less good it is for your recovery when you're ice bathing more than three times per week.

• 1:02:41Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:02:42Speaker 00

  We see a diminish, we see a decline in your markers of recovery after three days

• 1:02:49Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  of ice bath. And your ice bath is more effective on days that you are not exercising than going back. Exercise, of course, is a hermetic stressor as well.

• 1:02:58Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  So you're laying, layering on top, just all the stress that's happening during the day, the stress of your workout, the stress of the ice bath. It has a deleterious effect on markers of recovery.

• 1:03:09Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  So, but for the low fit people, it's only beneficial.

• 1:03:15Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  And potentially low fit people are not stressing their body as much. So they get big return on markers of recovery from engaging in ice bath.

• 1:03:26Gary Brecka?

  Because right now I'll do three minutes, probably five days a week, sometimes six days a week if I'm home.

• 1:03:33Gary Brecka?

  I do three minutes, 50 degrees, and then I, you know, I dry off, I warm up, I do 10, 12 minutes on the treadmill, and then I always feel like I have an amazing workout after that. An ice bath after the workout, because I don't want to, I don't want to shut down the normal repair process. But again, I'm not tracking that. So this is completely anecdotal. This is just how I feel.

• 1:03:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:56Gary Brecka?

  And I, and I sort of have this mental thing in my head where, you know, I wake up in the morning and I don't, as I exit my bathroom, there's the ice bath, and then I come down the hallway to the coffee maker and I make myself do an ice bath.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Gary Brecka?

  Just, just because I want to do something hard.

• 1:04:10Speaker 00

  I know, I know. It's so good for that.

• 1:04:12Gary Brecka?

  And.

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  It doesn't get easier when you ice bath.

• 1:04:15Gary Brecka?

  But maybe what I'll do is, is start to measure and track these and maybe back off the number of times.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, but potentially, you know, just, again, you know, this is, is, we, we have a, quite a bit more to look into the data set, sort of the timing of the ice plunge relative to exercise. We don't necessarily know that, and then we need to dig into sleep as well. But the results, it looks like ice bath, regardless of when you do it, is sleep promoting.

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  Which was really neat. Yeah, cuz I, you know, I would have said.

• 1:04:46Gary Brecka?

  So sleep promoting should be good for recovery, right?

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  Sleep promoting is good for recovery, yeah.

• 1:04:51Gary Brecka?

  And then, but the fact that the more deconditioned people like, like, you know, there was an amazing study by Otto Warburg on multi-step oxygen therapy and he basically took deconditioned mainly geriatric

• 1:05:06Gary Brecka?

  patients. And, you know, since he couldn't put them on a treadmill and since they obviously weren't gonna go outside and most of them had a hard time walking and what he did was he put them in a sauna. And used the sauna to raise their heart rate. And while their heart rate was elevated, he ran high concentrations of oxygen. In the study, he did it 50% O2 and ambient air is about 21% O2. And the amount of improvement in fitness was incredible, just from marginal increases in their heart rate and exposure during timeframe to oxygen.

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  Mimic exercise, you know?

• 1:05:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, mimic that exercise. So I have two elderly parents. My, my father's handicapped from a scuba diving accident. Fully cognitively functioned, but he has motor coordination issues. He got hit in the rear part of his brain by the prop of a boat. So he's had motor coordination issues for, for 30 years on the left side of his body. And then my mother had dual knee replacements and so she's not highly mobile. So I got them a sauna. I do a lot of other stuff. I have most cerebral license peptides and other things, but I got them in a sauna. And so, four days a week, they do 20 minutes in the sauna and I run a nasal cannulas of oxygen in there.

• 1:06:22Gary Brecka?

  The improvement in their mood, emotional state, chattiness, if that's a measure. You know, just, you know, my, my dad says mom's memory is better. Mom says dad's memory is better. I mean, they're, they're a lot more active now. It's just, it was astounding how this little variable made such a noticeable change in them.

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  So exciting.

• 1:06:48Gary Brecka?

  So, you know, there's, there's hope even for the decondition. But going back to your point of these ice baths for. Deconditioned, or what you were calling the non-fit group.

• 1:06:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, it could be a way to, you know, when I think about it, it's just like a way to kickstart maybe becoming more active, right? Cause all of a sudden you're like, you're getting, yeah. I mean, you know, and, and, you know, we're seeing it improve, you know, reducing heart rate and increasing heart rate variability, which should in theory increase capacity, which should give you more energy to exercise. And so it could be a way to jumpstart potentially.

• 1:07:21Gary Brecka?

  This is awesome, Christian. So for my audience that's really interested in this podcast, where can, where can they find out more about you?

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:29Gary Brecka?

  Instagram?

• 1:07:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I, I joined Instagram a few years ago. So I, I try to.

• 1:07:33Gary Brecka?

  Have you written a book?

• 1:07:34Speaker 00

  I'm, I have a book deal. I'm writing one right now.

• 1:07:37Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  It's going to be out in May.

• 1:07:38Gary Brecka?

  Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to put the.

• 1:07:40Speaker 00

  Really excited about it. Um, not yet, but I will certainly let you know when, when that's

• 1:07:45Gary Brecka?

  I'll give you some love on the book.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  But I appreciate that. Yeah. So yeah. Kristen Holmes, um, 2126 on Instagram.

• 1:07:50Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 1:07:51Speaker 00

  I post on LinkedIn. Um, and I don't have like this, a big old team or anything. So it's just me.

• 1:07:56Gary Brecka?

  That's okay. We love organic content, you know?

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. I just, mine is very organic. Um, yeah. So I just, uh, yeah, it's really low budget.

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  Not produced at all.

• 1:08:07Gary Brecka?

  No budget.

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, no budget. Um, but I'm, you know, I really try to get a lot of these insights out there. And, um, you know, obviously I'm very passionate about, uh, circadian health and sleep and recovery and training.

• 1:08:19Gary Brecka?

  You really woke me. I'm going to go deep down the rabbit hole. I mean, you really, I knew that circadian health was important. I do get sunlight every morning, but I did not realize that the biggest variable, you know, I don't have alcohol. I don't eat, you know, within a window.

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  And those things, of course, you know, like, yeah, I mean, alcohol, caffeine are going to shift.

• 1:08:36Gary Brecka?

  You saw my EMF tent.

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  I did. I know.

• 1:08:38Gary Brecka?

  Next level with the sleep in there.

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  I, I mean, the amount of modalities in this.

• 1:08:44Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  Fortress of yours is just, it really is a lab. Yeah.

• 1:08:48Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. It's a lab. Um, but I, I, I end every podcast the same way by asking all my guests the same question. There's no right or wrong answer to this question. And that is, um, you know, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

• 1:09:01Speaker 00

  I think just being able to wake up and live my values with joy and energy.

• 1:09:05Gary Brecka?

  Wow, live my values. That is a live my values. That's a really good one. I might steal that one. I like that. Well, thank you for coming, Chris, and I'm definitely going to have you back. I mean, your journey is one that's kind of ongoing. So, you know, I'd love to see where you are six months from today, 10 months from today, because it really is exciting what big data can bring to us. And to have your background as a professional athlete, as a coach, you know, as, you know, with a doctorate in psychiatry, now looking at the data in ways that are going to practically be applied to human beings. I can't wait to continue to follow your journey.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  I appreciate that so much. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Gary.

• 1:09:46Gary Brecka?

  All right, guys, and that is just science.