Kristen Holmes
Appearances
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 gonna have lower stress.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Hmm. That's a big statement.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It is. Yeah. And I say that because I think when we consider the circadian system.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And 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 the regulator. 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And, you know, 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And I think we think about all these other things, right? 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. 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Circadian misalignment, in my view, is the biggest problem in modern society.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Because we're fighting the natural cycle.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, I mean, we have access to artificial light 24-7. We have access to food 24-7.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Temperature regulation, everything.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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. Right. Right. We haven't adapted to eating, you know, huge meals after the sun goes down, like right before we go to bed.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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. Right. And when we bypass those internal preferences, we cause a lot of miscommunication. Dysregulation, sure. The cells don't communicate as effectively, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And we know that cellular miscommunication is the basis for aging and disease.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
You know, interestingly, I saw there was a sleep physician, I forget his name. He's got the long blonde hair, but he was on Huberman. Oh, Matthew Walker? Yes. Dr. Matthew Walker? Yeah. One of the statistics that he put forward, and I don't want to misquote it, so I'm going to paraphrase it, which was astounding to me, was about daylight savings time.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
and about the increase in cardiovascular events and the decreasing, the concomitant decrease in cardiovascular events. So when we lost an hour of sleep, there was a corresponding spike repeatedly in cardiovascular events. And when we actually gained an hour of sleep, there was a corresponding decrease. And this happened over and over and over on the daylight savings times each year.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And I mean, that just kind of shocked me that...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
When people are vulnerable already, sleep is just going to throw you over the edge. Yeah, you're right on that edge. And sleep regularity, right? Like mistimed sleep or changes in your typical sleep-wake time just really throw your system for a loop. And I think that study is evidence of that.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And I think it's becoming so much more mainstream and in vogue for people to really pay attention to their sleep. I know Brian Johnson talks about it being your superpower, the biggest superpower that he's discovered in his life. Journey with Blueprint. And 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It's working for you.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Nice. And what a dramatic difference it has made in... My psyche. Yeah. Just, I don't know 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 podcasts. I mean, that's why I put the podcast here in my home.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It's working for me. My family sort of split over it. My daughter's like, no, dad, you got to shave it. My son has a beard. So he's like, I like it. So we're going to run it for this podcast. But Kristen, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for taking the time to come here.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And just what you're talking about is circadian alignment. So when you look at the consequences of circadian misalignment, it's increases in cancer risk, it's cardiovascular disease, it's diabetes, it's obesity, mood disorders, psychiatric disorders, right? Like there is not a mental health issue that circadian disruption doesn't touch.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
100% of mental health issues will have some sort of circadian disruption present.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
No question. And I think sleep is just always the thing that we sacrifice, right? It's the easiest thing to forego. So we didn't have time to finish a project, so we stay up late at night and we go to bed and then we still have to get to work in the morning.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Or we just decide that we'd rather, we're going to a destination, we wanna have a whole day when we get there, so we're just gonna take the really, really, really early flight. 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. And I think it should be the thing that is the stable. Yeah, the constant.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I 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 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Because the way that modern medicine, in my opinion, looks at the human body is that this is completely separate 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And so we had a really interesting discussion about the psychiatric impact of thought and perceived stress on performance. Could you give us a little...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, yeah. So I'm a psychophysiologist. So I started kind of in physiology and expanded into psychology really because of, you know, so a psychophysiologist basically, you know, as a psychologist, I look at, you know, psychological processes and basically the interrelationships between your psychological processes and physiological responses and vice versa.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Thank you for having me.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
If we're looking at some of these physiological process, but don't have any psychological context in terms of their psychological functioning, again, we're probably missing a piece of the puzzle. So from my perspective, merging these two domains is so essential.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And that's really where wearable technology has enabled us to basically run these psychological kind of experiments or include psychological measures while collecting all of this physiological data. So we ran a huge study looking at blood pressure, stress, and sleep,
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Threatening.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It was your day threatening, you know, like, yeah. Um, and, and what we saw was, was really interesting. So folks who perceived their day as really challenging actually had lower blood pressure as measured by our stress monitor, which is not surprising. Um, and, um, had better night sleep the prior night. So I think what that tapped was, you know, feelings of self-efficacy.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So feeling like you have the skills and resources to tackle tomorrow are going to help you sleep better. Your preparedness kind of going into the day is going to help you sleep better. Right. So all of these feelings of challenge. But what was really interesting is is we our hypothesis was that people who perceive stress challenge are going to have lower stress.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I love that.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But they didn't. Oh, they didn't.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
See, I always say if your morning's hard, your day will be easy.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So on our stress monitor, which is a scale of zero to three, and it's taking in heart rate and heart rate variability continuously, they registered, if you perceive the day as challenging, okay, you're prepared, you actually register higher on the stress scale.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Wow, because you feel prepared for the stress, maybe?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I think you're just mobilizing energy. You're excited about your day. And this goes back, I think, to the thesis that stress is not bad, right? Stress is a gift, right? It gives us energy.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Well, hormesis is that you stress the body. It improves by strengthening. Yeah, it's adaptive, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, it's adaptive. And then conversely, when people perceive their day as threatening, so at the end of the day, they perceive it as threatening. Actually, their prior night's sleep was worse, right? Okay, so they kind of knew going into the day that they were not excited about it and that somehow impact their sleep.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 we're not using our brain as much, or we're not as excited about the day.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So I think 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?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Is it going to be, you know, fulfill my values, right? Yeah. And that has a real adaptive impact on our physiology. So it's pretty cool to see.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
That's very interesting. I often think as much of a big data person as I am, I also think that there's- And this was 35,000 people. It was 35,000. Wow, that's a huge sample study. See, here we go back down, you know, you're reinforcing my belief again in big data.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
on human beings 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, 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...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But they didn't. Oh, they didn't. Circadian misalignment, in my view, is the biggest problem in modern society.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And what I find fascinating about your background, 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 you were talking about your career in coaching and how...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
representative of every single night of their sleep.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, of every single night of every sleep. And they're like, REM starts here and deep sleep starts here. But rather than like what WHOOP can do, which is take a giant population of people and examine hydration and their environment and their sleep and their recovery and their strain in their own natural environment, which is where Human beings behave in communities, we don't behave in isolation.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 these 10-year long randomized clinical trials,
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
to get a drug or a synthetic or pharmaceutical approved sometimes very often have a very narrow hypothesis that you're trying to prove. And if they prove that, then it results in a treatment, a drug, pharmaceutical, chemical, synthetic, what have you. And then we get 10 years more population data and we realize we made a major mistake. But now we're 20 years down the road.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I think that time frame is being compressed to... 30, 60, 90, 120 days now because of things like wearables. It has the potential to. You know, so much data. Yeah. 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And I think sometimes when people are approaching wearables, like you can go pretty deep down the rabbit hole and whoop.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
right as much as you yeah as deep as you want to go you you can go so for the non-professional athlete you know for is someone that is genuinely interested in 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
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, I mean, I think the metrics that I pay most attention to, sleep consistency, which we talked about.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
That's a big one. I mean, I tend to be very consistent with my sleep, but it's one of the things that we didn't actually track.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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. I want to build strain. I want to build strain.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 make, 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 a hundred, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
The more consistent your sleep, the higher your sleep consistency score. So a hundred 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 sleep-wake regularity.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
everything that you were doing on the field 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So you went to bed at 10, you got up at six.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yep, and you did that for four days straight. Okay, so you'd have a perfect score. So on our platform, the average sleep consistency of our members is 66%. Wow. which- Solid D. 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
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
about two and a half hours.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
In our- Two and a half hours, you mean in their bedtime? Meaning 10 p.m. to 12.30 in the morning.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So basically, 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. So there's a lot of variability, right? When you're at that 66%. So what we see in the healthiest population, okay, so collegiate athletes, 18 years old to 23,
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
After just one hour of sleep-wake variability, we see a degradation in heart rate variability and resting heart rate.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Wow.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So you can just imagine as you age, you become way more sensitive.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Wow, just a single hour.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Just one hour of variability, we see declines in HRV and increases in resting heart rate.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Hey, guys. I'm beyond excited to introduce something that's going to transform your nutrition game. A new protein bar formulated by me, created in partnership with Body Health. Now, this is the kind of protein bar I would want in my own backpack. In fact, as I head out on the Great World Race, it's going to be in both my son's and my backpack. It is packed.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Act with Perfect Amino, the same essential amino acids I use every day for up to 99% protein absorption. Clean, plant-based protein, energizing MCT oil, and a powerhouse organic fruit and veggie blend that will fuel your body at a cellular level. And guess what? It's naturally sweetened with monk fruit for that minimal caloric and glycemic impact.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Whether you're hitting the gym, grinding through a busy day, or you just need that nutrient-dense boost, this bar is my go-to and your new secret weapon. This is not just any kind of protein bar, guys. If I formulate a protein bar, it's going to be made out of nutrient-dense whole foods, and that's what we accomplished here.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And if you're part of my Rule Breaka community, you'll also get an exclusive discount. So snag yours now before they're gone. Your body and your future self will thank you. Links to my protein bar and my Rule Breaka VIP community will be down below in the description. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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. Um, and we know heart variability, resting heart rate, you know, kind of ladder up to your readiness just generally, um, and your overall health. And so sleep, wake variability matters.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And we've seen, you know, sleep, wake, we did a study, um, that looked at basically COVID. Um, so it was the three months prior to COVID. We had all of the baseline data. So all of the physiological data and 20,000 people basically took our survey, which assess their mental health.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So basically right after lockdown, we sent this, um, survey out 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. Okay.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
wow, dude, I am gonna go down the rabbit hole of the sleep consistency. I mean, I knew it was important, but you're like blowing me away with this.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It's hard for those guys to get consistent.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So hard, right? Yeah. But the ones that, the more consistent... They were. The better workplace resilience, the better they could handle off-tempo, the more positive their social networks, more control they felt. Wow. And then just most recently, this study is in review right now, but we looked at four behaviors, four core behaviors.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
We looked at viewing morning sunlight, which I'm going to talk about in a second. Yeah. Viewing morning sunlight, zone two training, breath work, and time-restricted eating.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So can you talk to us a little bit about that, that,
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And 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 improved statistically meaningful, meaningfully improved their cardiorespiratory fitness and their parasympathetic activity by just engaging in these four behaviors.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah. So let's, what are the four again? I want to make sure it was viewing morning sunlight, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So when we talk about sleep, 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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. Wow. And get to that kind of sleep regularity.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I mean, your setup here is just, you got the sun set, the sun rise.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Just walk across the other balcony. Yeah. 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
That panoramic vision, which immediately drops your heart rate, increases your heart rate variability, drops your heart rate.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And I'll just do three rounds of 30 breaths. Don't put a lot of stress on myself. I usually just try to expose as much of my skin to sunlight, which my neighbors don't like. They love it, yeah. Whatever. I'm not fully in the birthday suit, but I'm down in my bathing suit and I'll just go out and I'll sit on the chair. I'll horizon gaze, do three rounds of 30 breaths.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And, you know, it really does.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
set my my day and you know again i keep shouting out to humerman but i was also watching a podcast of his where you actually talked about the importance of taking in this light and yes and your effect on your sleep that night and i do notice yep when i am consistently you know viewing sunlight and doing breath work um and allowing sun to hit my skin um and sometimes i'll even go down to the park down here and ground at the same time you do those those
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I mean, touch the surface of the earth, let the sun hit your skin, view the morning light, do a little breath work, cost you absolutely zero. I just don't think people realize how profound of an impact it is.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And I think like that's the message.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I wish I could like bottle it up and patent it and then charge it and write it as a prescription.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I know, I know. But that's the problem. I think people want a quick fix or they want... just take a pill, you cannot beat the natural environment. We need natural light so desperately. Our body is craving it.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Oh, we're photovoltaic beings for sure. I mean, when we look at these red light beds, 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 taking in that photovoltaic energy that our cells need.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And there's an enormous body of evidence that exposing your skin to sunlight, you know, 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, 85%.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Um, and I think we just over indexed on, um, what those two hours were actually doing to the athletes. And, you know, we had internal load, we'd external load, we had some, you know, subjective markers. Right.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I mean, mental health issues, clearly. I mean, people who are spending more time during the day in the natural light are gonna sleep better. You know, like it just has this like virtuous cycle that you just can't deny.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
You know, it's funny, 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 is 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 live music. There's had a great live music scene, but by the middle of the winter,
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
everyone had seasonal affective disorder. Like everybody was in a bad mood. And all everybody wanted to do was just drink beer and eat pizza and stay inside. And 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 and you could feel the energy of the whole city change.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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. I just remember those, they would have jazz in the park and like the whole city would come alive.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But there were three or four months there where absolutely your mood, your emotional state, 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. And so now that I live here, I never feel like that. You know, just having that exposure. It's easier down here.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But I can say, you know, someone who's lived in Maine and, you know, I live in Massachusetts, like my data is better in the winter.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah. I can train harder, I think, just because I think the hot weather reduces your capacity. 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So we were really, I think covering our basis 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 didn't predict their readiness next day. And so the challenge with that is, you know, it's, it's hard to plan practices. It's hard to understand.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But that said, I spend as much time outside in the winter as I do in the summer. So do I. So I think that is actually the solution for people who are in these more northern climates. Yeah, it's maybe not as comfortable. Right.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But I feel like... No, again, it's a hormetic stress, right? It is, yeah. You got to 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. You know, to eat at the first pang of hunger. I mean, these are collapsing our natural defense mechanisms.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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, for a little bit. Obviously, you have to be safe. But, you know, but... Or heat on your skin. Or heat on your skin. You know, yeah, those... It's your point. Those stressors, I think, are really important, right? And...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And we need to give our bodies a chance to adapt to that stress. Because when we adapt to it, we grow, we get stronger.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, I totally agree. What are some of the really exciting, like inspiring things right now for you that are going on at Whoop or going on with big data sets? Like where is your energy going right now? Where is your curiosity taking you with big data?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, I mean, I really want to help women understand how to have and maintain a healthy period. Wow.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
That is massive.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 this area. And, um, we are seeing really exciting things in the data and, you know, I have a daughter and. How old's your daughter? she's 16.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
If you're having a natural period, I think people recognize, oh, okay. You know, natural period is probably the healthier path, potentially.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Natural period, probably being the operative term there.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And not for everyone, you know, and I'm not demonizing hormonal birth control at all. I'm just saying that, um, the default shouldn't be, doesn't have to be hormonal birth control, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Just because it's inconvenient.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Because what happens, it masks symptoms, right? When we take hormonal birth control and, you know, in 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
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I want practitioners to be able to have more time to have conversations with young women around what their options are. 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 need.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 not hydrating enough or over-training or under-training.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 for me. So, um, 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
That is going to manifest- And can we give you that kind of data?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Okay.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
We're getting there.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
You're getting there. So this is what you're saying is exciting you. This is the promise.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It would help with time-restricted eating, all kinds of things.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And that's where a lot of these normative values we're talking about, you know, blood panels and hormonal panels and, you know, what is good for, you know, that girl is might not be good for me.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 making yours worse.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 say my heartbeat, my resting heart rate is 62.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And for me, that's 12 beats higher than my baseline. That's a problem. But I'll go to the doctor, they'll be like, oh, you're so fit and healthy. Right, right, right. 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah. Because perfectly healthy people have HRVs in the fifties and sixties and perfectly healthy people have HRVs over a hundred. My son's a pro athlete and his HRV is constantly over a hundred.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Well into the hundreds. Yeah. And, um, And my daughter's is, is a lot lower, but compared to, she's also very healthy, but compared to her, um, baseline, you know, we know what helps it and hurts it, sleeps, sleeps. Exactly.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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. Like you're, you know, there, so I think there's an opportunity of course, to improve your HRV through your behaviors.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Is there really ways to, to, um, look at follicular, ovulation and luteal phases of the menstrual cycle in menstruating women with a wearable day. Really?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Oh, yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
What kind of things are they? What kind of metrics are you tracking?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, so basically looking at the pole shape of your heart rate, we can see how the amplitude changes over the course of a cycle. We can tell you if that amplitude is kind of healthy range versus not. we can kind of tell if you're in perimenopause or not. These are things that we're going to be able to model and detect.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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. um, to, to look at actually what the athletes were burning during a training session, um, first beat technology that you probably are familiar with it.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
That's amazing because we also have the clinic side of our business and on the clinic side, our clinic director is a board certified OBGYN, she's a regenerative OBGYN, Dr. Sardis, she's amazing. And a lot of times we see that women that have been on birth control for a prolonged period of times, one of the things they use in birth control is, you know, SHBG, the sex hormone binding globulin.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And it does exactly what it sounds like it does. It's a protein basically that binds to sex hormones, mainly testosterone. And so what it does is it doesn't throw the level of their hormones off, it throws the ratio of their hormones off.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Oh, interesting.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah. free testosterone to testosterone, for example. And in men and women, you know, this testosterone level, even in young women, it has an impact on this erythropoietic process of the production of new red blood cells. And so we find in the vast majority of these young women that
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But it's the kind of anemia that hides in plain sight because red blood cells have a range but they're down near the bottom of the range. hemoglobin has a range, the fluid in the red blood cell has a range, but they're down near the bottom of the range.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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? It's crazy.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And as they come off, as that protein unbinds and their levels return to normal, like their energy goes back through the roof. So 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 have safer times to have intercourse.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
You can just understand what is normal fluctuation, right? Like what is abnormal fluctuation? Maybe I know why I just don't feel- My cycle length.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Really good right now, you know? Yeah. Okay, it's cuckoo time. But I mean, I think 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 normal pathic environment and
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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... Combined with artificial intelligence is going to absolutely lead the charge.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It's just going to cut down on the guesswork. You know, like there's no need. We're getting so close to not having to guess.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 them healthy. I wanted to keep them safe. I wanted to, you know, just be able to, you know, just, I wanted them to be able to thrive. Right.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And, 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 can't wait to answer a lot of these questions. And we're not far from being able to do that.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
You know,
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Um, and you know, we looked at hydration and we started building these models and, um, and actually built a technology, um, and some algorithms to be able to understand hydration levels, understand caloric intake, um, understand sleep patterns, and really try to develop a model around readiness that could account for the 24-hour period.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I'm excited to offer you free access to my premium membership, the Rule Brekkas. As a Rule Brekka, you'll be able to join me for monthly Q&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 Brekkas, head over to joinrulebrekkas.com. That's joinrulebrekkas.com right now.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Does it surprise you that I work with a lot of professional athletes 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 and even athletic teams are relying on just pure talent. Right? Athletic ability.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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, 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 really dialed in in their training.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But the paucity of real understanding of this type of data or the availability of data, I mean, I think still if you were to go to most professional teams and talk to them about heart rate variability tracking or... sleep tracking or, you know, readiness, recovery, strain, any of these metrics that were so easily available that could, I mean, you're way ahead of your time.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 bath, the less good it is for your recovery. Big data.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
What you were doing in your collegiate coaching at Princeton that you haven't even done for what, a decade? Yeah. They're not doing now. No, no.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
They're leaving so much on the table. So much on the table. And I'm in so many high-performance environments. There's a team superpower. Yeah, there's so much we could be doing. And a lot of the barriers, frankly, just are around trust. The athletes don't trust the performance science team to handle the data and to model the data. And it's such a shame.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah. Because it's very individualized to like some of them.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
They'll have their own team.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
One guy. Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But 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, some of the teams are doing it, but I guarantee it's not as dialed in as it could be. It could be way more.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
A lot of players take this into their own hands too, like the ones that are hyper dedicated. You look at somebody like Tom Brady that really took matters into his own hands.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And he had a lot of control over in that environment, just given that he was Tom Brady. He probably had a lot of say over when he practiced, how much he practiced, what his load was going to be that day. But I think 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
How I responded to yesterday's game is going to be very different from the guy on my right and my left based on how I slept, how I ate, just how I'm managing my relationships. There's a whole myriad of factors that are going to influence how I show up today. And being able to account for that And plan a practice around that, to me, is like the only way to do it.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And that's literally what I was doing as a coach. And one of the reasons why we were so successful is it was so individualized. And that became part of our culture. Because I think where teams go wrong is I think that they... they try to apply one model to all the athletes. And that is just not the way physiology and psychology works. Like we're so individual.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 gonna be different. And if you can't, create an individual performance plan for each athlete, you're gonna leave something on the table.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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. But I would imagine that early in some of those league championships, you weren't really down the rabbit hole in those other 23 hours.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, it's interesting. Part of our clinical practice is we do genetic testing.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Nice.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And what's becoming really exciting about genetic testing is that 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
If you have predisposition for, you know, early onset cognitive dysfunction, you're not guaranteed to get Alzheimer's or dementia, you know, early 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But it's astounding how, you know, I think like in early cancer screening, people are like, I just don't want to know. No, actually you do want to know, right? You want to know as early as possible so it is the least disruptive to your life. But I feel like in general, there's a slow adoption for this type, especially the pace that big data is moving and its pace of adoption.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Like people like you and I are like, dude, this is great data. You should be paying attention to this. How do you bring it more? Mainstream, how do you improve the adoption of it? I guess, prove the efficacy?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I think the science is there in terms of heart rate variability. It's accurate. We've got external studies that are able to validate. 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. I think HRV is a great proxy.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 in our sleep, sleep staging. Like all of that is getting better and better and better. You know, our algorithms are getting better.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Um, and, um, so I think there's a lot of insight to be derived and I think to get people over the hump, they have to be just willing to kind of face the truth and 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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. And I think that's where we need to get people to. It's just like, hey, it's not about the score per se.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
No, we absolutely weren't. We knew that we were leaving something on the table. I think that's where, as a coach, I didn't want to leave anything on the table. I really wanted to help my athletes optimize their potential on the field and off the field. I felt a lot of my responsibility as a coach was to educate them, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It's about understanding if how you're applying your effort is actually working. And that's really a lot of research.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
You don't really have a... No, I understanding.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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, right. You can see your body changing maybe. And that's good motivation, motivation. Um, 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. Yeah. Right.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 yeah, that's a signal like your skin health and your hair health, like all of that. Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Your nails and, um, 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 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?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And that's where like all of the research that we're doing is kind of basically distilling down the physiological and psychological variables that matter. When I say physiology, I mean like circadian behaviors, recovery behaviors, training behaviors, right? I kind of bucket them really loosely.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
On the psychological side, kind of the core psychological needs, purpose, self-efficacy, control, like understanding how these variables move around our internal status.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And how they relate to each other, the psychological aspect and the performance aspect.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yes, how they play off one another. They're just their interconnectedness, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Which I think is so exciting about what you do because having a psychiatry background and then having this big data, I mean, you must, I mean, I'd be like a little kid if I was you, No, it is.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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. Um, 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. Right. Right.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So, and we do, we do retrospective analysis, which we pre-registered. Well, we're going to look at ice baths, have some insight around that if you want to.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Oh, yeah. This is hot off the press. Please don't stop me from doing a cold plunge because I will chop this podcast off right here because it's my favorite thing. I know. I know.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
She's going to.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
She's going to. I'm going to burst your bubble.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
She's going to go my cold plunging routine. Tiny. A tiny bit. I knew it. A tiny bit. But we could still. We could do the end of one analysis. But. Okay. Yeah, but I don't even know. What were you going to say? Shit, I got thinking about the ice bath.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, let's go into the ice bath because when she got here today, I was actually in an ice bath. You were, you were.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I call it my drug 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 a place that you can take hormetic stress to the point where you're overdoing it. You know, 90 minutes in a 200 degree sauna is way too much. You know, you're baking your brain.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
To help them understand what are the factors that are going to impact your attentional capacity, your energy production, your motivation. Like I, you know, I wanted them to learn, not just, you know, win championships and be a sensational hockey player. Of course, it's more than that, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I think the really, really cold ice baths for prolonged periods of time can actually take the hormetic stress into a place where it's non-beneficial. Oh, it is. But I love this. Yeah. hear what you have to say about.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah. So, you know, this is not, Oh, I was just talking about pre-registration. Um, I was kind of going off.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So just to close that, yeah, we, you know, we really, we really, um, tried it. So basically what open science framework is and what pre-registration 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Okay, so yeah. So anyway, we wanted to- That's important. It's important, yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 statistics is, you know, you tell me where you want to go and I'll just- We don't care what the result is. Many people- We don't care what the result is. Right.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
We're just agnostic. We're looking at the data.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
We're trying to prove all the hypothesis. Okay, so moving into bursting my bubble about cold punching.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, so ice bath. So this is really interesting. So, you know, 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Okay. So folks who are high fit, we just looked at normative values. So we're just, you know, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, um, 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 bath.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So what's great on whoop is you basically can record when you start an ice bath and when you ended ice bath. So we have these really nice timestamps. So some people forget to stop it and it ends up being like- 12 hours.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So those we had to throw out, obviously, because 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 it got too much. We can actually see when it ended because there's very clear responses, physiological responses when you're in the ice bath. But anyway, we had plenty of data in both this high fit and low fit group.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And basically what we saw, the fitter you are, The more you ice bath, the less good it is for your recovery when you're ice bathing more than three times per week.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It's really providing a performance education over the course of the four years that helped them understand exactly how it is they need to apply their effort so they can take that education and then have it with them for the rest of their lives.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
We see a decline in your markers of recovery after three days of ice bath. And your ice bath is more effective on days that you are not exercising. Then going back, exercise, of course, is a hormetic stressor as well.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So when you're 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. But for the low-fit people, it's only beneficial.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Really?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Because right now I'll do three minutes, probably five days a week, sometimes six days a week if I'm home. I do three minutes, 50 degrees. And then 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. I know ice bath after the workout. because I don't want to shut down the normal repair process.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But again, I'm not tracking that. So this is completely anecdotal. This is just how I feel. 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
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
yeah just just because i want to do something hard i know i know it's so good for that and it doesn't get easier come down to the maybe what i'll do is is um start to measure and track these and maybe back off the number of times yeah but potentially you know just doing it again you know this is is we we have a quite a bit more to look into the data set to the timing of the ice plunge relative to exercise we don't necessarily know that um and then we we need to dig into sleep as well but the results it looks like
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
ice bath, regardless of when you do it, is sleep promoting, which was really neat.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, because I would have said... So sleep promoting should be good for recovery, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Sleep promoting is good for recovery, yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But the fact that the more deconditioned people, like there was an amazing study by Otto Warburg on multi-step oxygen therapy, and he basically took deconditioned mainly...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
geriatric patients and you know since he couldn't put him on a treadmill and since they obviously weren't going to go outside and most of them have even a hard time walking and what he did was he put him 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 at 50% O2 and ambient air is about 21% O2
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And the amount of improvement in fitness was incredible, just from marginal increases in their heart rate and exposure during that time frame to oxygen.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It mimics exercise, you know, the sauna.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, it mimicked exercise. So I have two elderly parents. 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 30 years on the left side of his body. And then my mother had dual knee replacements.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And so she's not highly mobile. So I got them a sauna. I do a lot of other stuff. I have my cerebral lysine 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. The improvement in their mood, emotional state, if that's a measure. Yeah, of course.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
You know, just, you know, my dad says mom's memory is better. Mom says dad's memory is better. I mean, they're a lot more active now. It's just, it was astounding how this little variable happened.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And I've heard you talk about how we never got late into the game or deep into a game, you know, the last quarter of a game and lost because of fatigue, which, you know, you see this happen in fights and boxing and you see it happen in every sport, you know, sort of... you know, over utilizing that athlete during their performance time and not knowing, hey, when do I back off of them?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
made such a noticeable change and um so exciting so you know there's there's hope even for the decondition but going back to your point of these ice baths for decondition or what you were calling the non-fit yeah i mean it could be a way to you know when i think about it as just like a way to kickstart maybe becoming more active right because all of a sudden you're like well you're getting like
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I mean, you know, and, 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
This is awesome, Christian. So for my audience that's really interested in this podcast, where can they find out more about you?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Instagram.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah. So I joined Instagram a few years ago. You need to write a book. Have you written a book? I have a book deal. I'm writing one right now. It's going to be out in May.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Okay. So I'm going to put the- I'm really excited about it.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Can they pre-order? Not yet, but I will certainly let you know when that's available.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I'll give you some love on the book.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But I appreciate that. Yeah. So yeah, Kristen Holmes, 2126 on Instagram.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Okay.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I post on LinkedIn. I don't have a big old team or anything, so it's just me. That's okay.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
We love organic content.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
My audience is very authentic. It's really low budget. It's not produced at all. No budget. I really try to get a lot of these insights out there. I've been very passionate about circadian health and sleep and recovery and training.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
You really woke me up. I'm going to go deep down the rabbit hole. I mean, you really, I knew that circadian health was important. I do the 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. And those things, of course, you know, like, yeah, I mean, alcohol, caffeine are going to shift. You saw my EMF tent.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I did. I'm next level with the sleep in there.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I mean, the amount of modalities in this,
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, this is a whole biohacking lab. It really is a lab. Yeah, it's a lab. But 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, you know, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I think just being able to wake up and live my values with joy and energy.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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, Kristen. 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's,
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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, 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I appreciate that so much. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Gary.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
All right, guys, and that is Just Science.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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'm gonna go deep down the rabbit hole in some of the science.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 are gonna influence how capable I am today to be able to handle the demands of a match. So you've got kind of that baseline readiness level.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
combined with artificial intelligence, is going to absolutely lead the charge.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So measuring and quantifying that is kind of table stakes at this point, right? For the most part, we have access to that information if we need it.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 post-oxygen consumption, to understand when do I get to that place where if I keep going, my quality is going to begin to diminish.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
We're getting so close to not having to guess. When we take this back to our original conversation with my athletes, 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, you need that data.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So how are you measuring that threshold? And for those people that don't know what EPOC is, can we just get a little explanation of what EPOC is?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, so it's basically when you are finished an effort, basically how much oxygen you can consume. Not VO2 max. Not VO2 max, right? So this is a little bit different. And when you get to a point where... your quality will just diminish, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 fatigue starts to set in. You can't run as fast. Your decisions start to wane. your body starts to not shut down, but it just is not operating as efficiently.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So you know in the first quarter of a game versus the fourth quarter, there's a difference 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 over the course of the game. It doesn't mean we're always gonna win, right? If a team is more talented than we are.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But I really was interested in putting ourselves in a position where we were never losing games we should win, right? Number one. And I didn't wanna lose because of fatigue. 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 on the field.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And how were you doing that in real time back then?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So we had a computer that basically was looking at training effect. So in real time, on the sideline. And we were monitoring EPOC, heart rate, heart rate variability, everything.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But how? Was there something on the athlete? Chest strap.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And we had four Bluetooth hubs that were surrounding the field. And they would let you do this? Or you just didn't say anything? I just went to my board and I was like, hey, I want to get this technology. It's going to help keep us healthy and safe. But really, and that's really what I was after.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
That's just amazing. I'm such a huge fan of that, right?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Well, we were just, you know, 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 success. 80% of team outcomes, right? Just literally how available are you to train and compete?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 the season. So I think for me, it was just part of the job.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
For someone that is genuinely interested in optimizing their health, where do they start? What kind of actionable steps could they take?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah, I think it's a very nouveau term to start talking about readiness. I was an amateur triathlete 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. 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 other things?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So I think it's probably, you know, Winder and Etel 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, 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
If we really want to optimize our health, the place to start is...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But sleep regularity, I think, might actually trump how much time you're spending in bed. Now, you need to get...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
When you say regularly, you mean same time going to bed, same sleep routine?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 prior to the study and then during the study.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And basically what he saw is that the one thing that predicted GPA was sleep-wake regularity.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
No way. Yeah. It predicted GPA?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It predicted GPA. Wow. Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Want to get an extra hour of quality good sleep every single night? Let me tell you how I do it. My wife and I sleep on Eight Sleeps Pod 4 Ultra. This is a technology that fits over your mattress to cool or warm each side of the bed, giving you up to an extra hour more of quality sleep every single night.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
My wife likes her side of the bed warmer than mine, but I've noticed that I've improved deep sleep at cooler temperatures. It even elevates automatically when it detects snoring to improve airflow. With 99% accurate sleep tracking, you can leave your wearables on the nightstand.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And I even had this thing independently EMF tested to make sure that I was not getting any extra EMF at night, which I'm not. Get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra at 8sleep.com forward slash Gary. That's 8sleep.com forward slash Gary and use the code Gary, G-A-R-Y for your discount. Transform your nights and elevate your sleep. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So I started, because at the time I was working with a lot of athletes. 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. And sure enough, sleep regularity kept popping up. I mean, I've seen it a lot.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And then so we started just basically running some experiments.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
So some prospective 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?
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, 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, Kristen, who is the Global Head of Human Performance and Science at Whoop, and I am a huge fan of Whoop.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And sure enough, yes to both those things.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
Really? Yes. 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. And we had thousands of people that participated in it. And what was astounding to me was that
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 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. Nutrition dialed in. Nutrition dialed in. Like their job, they had a routine for work.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 or when it's the end of the day or the night.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
It's an afterthought.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 we got a baseline and a couple thousand people. And We ran this sleep challenge. It was a three-day sleep challenge.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
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 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.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And what was pretty interesting was we saw, again, anecdotal in this big group, but about an 18%. increase in their sleep score, um, which obviously led to improved, um, you know, recovery and strain, reduced strain, improved recovery. And, uh, because we just brought their level of consciousness about sleep, you know, to, to the forefront.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
And it's interesting cause I, you know, I open up our, we still, I'm still in this whoop group and, um, My sleep score gets uploaded in there every day. 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, he's a charlatan. So I do make sure that I go to sleep, you know, routinely at the same time.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
But the one thing that we were not tracking was the routine, like bed at 10 p.m. or bed 9 p.m. Yeah, the consistency. The consistency. Yeah. So what you're saying is that is as if not maybe one of the most important factors for people to try to control.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
125. Kristen Holmes: WHOOP’s Principal Scientist Reveals Game-Changing Research
I think it's the biggest rock.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
One of the things I have been trying to do is increase the appeal to my female audience and not just get more women on to the podcast, but talk more about women's issues, things that are important to women that the biohacking space is sort of negating. And we started talking about time-restricted eating, and we have noticed in our clinical setting that...
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
Sometimes the women that have the most narrow feeding window have the highest level of hormone disruption. And very likely, according to our OBGYN, it has a lot to do with they can eat differently during different parts of the menstrual cycle. So if they wanted to sort of like accordion expand and contract their feeding window, which is a little difficult to do,
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
But a lot of these young women that just adopt strict intermittent fasting and they're very militant about it, their hormones go into a tailspin. Again, it's anecdotal, but we find quite a few of these women have this issue.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
Sometimes the women that have the most narrow feeding window have the highest level of hormone disruption.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
It was astounding to me.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
Certainly not late at night, right before bed. Disaster.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
Feeding and alcohol. I mean, alcohol almost in any amount right before bed, 100% impact on sleep disruption, negative impact.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
Same with the food.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
Yeah.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
I'm really excited to hear what comes out of your research with WHOOP. If I was to hypothesize, we're gonna see the big data at WHOOP support what we're seeing in lab values and whatnot for women.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
But it's crazy. Those were the two things that people clocked in that not only had no effect on baseline, had negative effect on baseline. And there was two that were consistent. They didn't change the temperature of the room. Sometimes the sleep score actually still improved. They didn't darken the room so much. Sometimes sleep score still improved.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
They didn't do like the breath work or the contrast shower. Some people even reported using screen time in bed and it didn't, the majority of the people, you know, it was below baseline, but you know, some people didn't have an effect on baseline. No one that clocked in eating right before bed or having alcohol right before bed in our little study, which is about 8,000 or so people.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
No one did not see a detrimental effect on their sleep. So those two are absolutes for me. Stop two hours before bed eating and then just kind of no alcohol before bed.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
I agree. And I've heard you talk about this with your previous experience with athletes and your own athletic performance that
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
you know if you're ignoring the basics sometimes we want to focus on the exotics everyone wants to focus on the training um everybody wants to focus on the exercise and my pr and how much i'm lifting and um but and and sleep gets tucked away hydration gets tucked away nutrition gets tucked away there's just some basic not you don't even have to be hyper disciplined you know just some basic parameters that you can shroud your day in that would dramatically you know improve improve your health outcomes but back to the time restricted eating with with
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
Women, we have tens of thousands of females that we actually do have blood work on. And so we pull 74 biomarkers. Then we pull 10 to 12 weeks later, we pull the same 74 biomarkers, and we'll look at changes in those biomarkers. But more than just anecdotally, in younger menstruating females that have very tight feeding windows.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
And I'm going to say very tight feeding windows, less than eight hours. So they report eight hours, six, somewhere four, and they're getting all their meals in four because either their husband or the boyfriend or something is doing it. And it has significantly less of a detrimental impact on men than it does on women.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
And then I did a podcast with Dr. Walter Longo, who's at University of Southern California. He wrote The Longevity Diet. I think he's probably the most published
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
researcher in the world on fasting intermittent fasting um um you know time restricted eating fast mimicking diets and i think he would agree with with your analysis and i know that he agrees with with mine that that even 10 to 12 hours but when he said as wide as 12 hours and i was like isn't everybody eating in 12 hours he said actually no most people start eating right when they get up in the morning and they do not stop eating until the average is 15 hours yeah
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
It was astounding to me.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
Yeah, we are in a bubble.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
They might have three big meals, but there are 17 times that they are consciously ingesting food. And I don't mean just throwing a Starburst in their mouth. I mean, actually eating little bitty meals.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
right it's not only effortful but evolutionarily it's so important right it's yeah it's such an important process that when the body is engaged in other activities that are necessary like um elimination of waste repaired you know detoxification you know waste elimination by waste i don't mean urinary stool i mean cellular waste right um the lymphatic system in the brain the the you know our lymphatic system you know eliminating waste from the body the when when we ingest food
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. Kristen Holmes, who's been on the podcast before, came back for a short, because we just thought it was so important to do a short anecdotal review of our discussion on time-restricted eating and the female menstrual cycle.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
those processes come to a grinding halt because the shift becomes the priority of digestion. And if you think about it evolutionarily, ancestrally, it makes a lot of sense. We didn't know when we were going to get our next meal. So when you ate, the body was like, this is a priority. I'm getting nutrition.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
Yeah, so your body's on its way to doing something else, and you shift it back to digestion. It's on its way to doing something else, you shift it back to digestion. You know, even when we did these short-term fasting challenges, most of the breakthroughs happened on days two and three, and people were like, whoa, like the level of mental clarity, like a light bulb just went on.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
And I felt cognizant, clear, clean, awake. It was for the first time sometimes in their entire adult lifetime that they actually didn't eat for a period of time. Just giving your body a break. Yeah. I'm really excited to hear what comes out of your research with WHOOP and what comes out of the big data at WHOOP.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
Because I think what we're going to do is, if I was to hypothesize, we're going to see the big data at WHOOP. Support what we're seeing in in lab values and whatnot for for women. So better for them to just restrict their calories over a longer period of time and to pile them in into a very shortened window.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
And what we also see on the labs is, you know, the pituitary, which actually regulates our thyroid, our metabolism is also regulating the menstrual cycle. It's releasing luteinizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone. And men and women, by the way. So these are regulating the production of testosterone, they're regulating the cycle, how they go from ovulation to follicular to luteal phase.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
And so one of the interesting things about time-restricted eating and the pituitary is if you don't eat very often or you don't eat in a wide enough window, And the pituitary begins to slow down the thyroid. It starts to throttle back the metabolism.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
So it drops that T4 hormone, drops the T3 hormone in an effort to save your life because it perceives low blood sugar over a prolonged period of time as starvation. And it's like, well, we better save this person. And although I don't personally know the direct mechanism
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
when when it's restricting the function of the thyroid it can also restrict through luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone it can also throw the menstrual cycle off right because we see the drop in thyroid hormone levels um almost to hypothyroid levels um in super narrow windows and then the concomitant response in the menstrual cycle and they're just all over the
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
She's working on some really interesting things at Whoop, which aren't ready for public dissemination yet, but using big data to look at how wearables can actually track the menstrual cycle in women and may be a potential alternative to birth control. And then we started to go down the road of time restricted eating. So I hope you enjoy this short podcast with Kristen Holmes.
The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
128. Kristen Holmes: The TRUTH About Women's Fasting Windows (Science Says You're Doing It Wrong)
fast once in a while but i'm saying is the the hyper restricted 14 hour like fast you know yeah 14 is plenty you know awesome yeah well guys all right i'm sure we're gonna shut the camera off and we're gonna start it back up again so let's just zip it and that's just science