WHOOP Podcast - How to Optimize Hydration with Dr. Heather Logan-Sprenger

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

This week on the WHOOP Podcast, WHOOP Global Head of Human Performance, Principal Scientist, Dr. Kristen Holmes sits down with dual-sport national team athlete and exercise physiologist Dr. Heather Logan-Sprenger. The two take a deep dive into one of the most underrated and often forgotten about habits for human performance: hydration.Dr. Logan-Sprenger shares how growing up in Northern Ontario, watching her dad water flowers and her cat grow winter fur, quietly planted the seeds for a lifelong fascination with physiology, stress, and adaptation. From competing for Team Canada in both ice hockey and road cycling to suffering from heat stroke mid–PhD on hydration, her experience and education show just how fragile — and adaptable — the human body really is.Dr. Holmes and Dr. Logan-Sprenger identify what mild dehydration does to your metabolism, brain, and overall performance, and how hydration needs shift across the menstrual cycle. This episode will teach you the simple hydration strategies, how to calculate your sweat rate at home, and when electrolytes actually matter.(01:07) Dr. Heather Logan-Sprenger Intro: Background in Sport & Physiology(01:49) Training, Nutrition, & Hydration: Unpacking Your Body’s Needs(08:06) National-Level Athlete to PhD(10:51) WHOOP Podcast Rapid Fire Questions(13:08) Training At Altitude: Hydration Dos and Don’ts (14:49) The Physiology of Heat Stroke(20:33) Correlation Between Hydration and Carbs While Training(24:51) How The Menstrual Cycle Affects Hydration (31:19) Mechanisms of Dehydration: What Happens To The Body(36:52) Cognitive Disadvantages Of Dehydration(38:56) Dehydration’s Effects On The Cardiovascular & Thermoregulatory System(40:35) Dehydration’s Effects On The Brain (41:29) Measuring Your Sweat Rate As An Athlete(45:39) Essential Habits To Teach Kids and Athletes About Hydration(49:20) Overhydrating and Mineral Loss with Hydration(53:45) Debunking Hydration Myths(55:54) Heart Rate, Lactate, and Power Output’s Relationships to Hydration(59:48) Dr. Logan-Sprenger’s Ideal Hydration Study: Mitochondrial Hypoxia and Metabolism(01:05:23) OutroFollow Dr. Heather Logan-SprengerLinkedInInstagramPeakgenicsSupport the showFollow WHOOP: Sign up for WHOOP Advanced Labs Trial WHOOP for Free www.whoop.com Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

I had looked at mild levels of dehydration. So this is like what many people walk around with on a given day. And what we saw was that metabolism is flexible. That means that we shift to more a preference to carbohydrates instead of fat during mild levels of dehydration. The majority of athletes are showing up dehydrated. And majority of exercisers are showing up dehydrated. And yet we have all this education out there. 40 to 60% of people are still showing up to exercise in a hypohydrated state.

What we noticed was that in females, when they came hydrated to exercise, within even 20 minutes, they'd be losing 0.5% of their body mess. And yet they were shifting metabolism to using more carbohydrates. And so if you're blowing through your carbohydrates more at that final push at the end of exercise, so you can't get that next gear to really get the high intensity. This causes, you know, perceived effort to go up. It causes you fatigue sooner. The main takeaway for me, no longer could you drink.

to thirst. You actually had to have a performance strategy in place for hydration. Dr. Heather Logan, Springer. So wonderful to have you here. This has been a long time coming. I've been wanting to get you in this chair and talk to you for so long. You have had just an epic career that I'm continuously trying to wrap my brain around. Like you're a dual sport national team athlete, like national team athlete, which is wild to me. You played in completely different disciplines. You were cycling, road cycling, and ice hockey, and you played for the Canadian national team. That's just wild. And you also are a renowned exercise physiologist. So you kind of come at this from, you know, I think a place of just deep experience. And I'd love to

know kind of how that just, I think if you talk about your kind of athletic career just for generally and how that led into, you know, kind of your scientific pursuits, it would be a great place to start, perhaps. Sure. That sounds great. First of all, thank you so much for having me here. I love what you're doing in performance sciences here at Woop. So it's a privilege to be able to talk to you and your team today. I think I would like to start from the beginning because my curiosity around physiology began when I was a little girl. And I grew up in northern Ontario, Canada, and I spent all my time outside and just observing things. My gosh, we're the same.

I know, that was the same. So this was like observing how my cat grew thicker fur in the fall into the winter to, you know, for thermal regulation to keep it warm and to maintain that homeostasis for as a warm blooded animal. And I thought that was fascinating. And then the spring, feeling the fur coming off as it means to thermo regulate going into the spring in the summer. So that just, that's like, that was a beginning of my curiosity. And then seeing our sunflowers, planting sunflowers, and seeing them grow and adapt to the sunlight, where they would pop their head up and rotate to the sun in order to absorb more of sunlight. And I thought that was fascinating. So this like response to a stimuli, homeostasis, adaptation was all like common things across life forms that I was experiencing as a kid.

And then I was always, I had a paper route, and the big hill on my paper route got easier the more I did it. And so I was like, okay, so I was starting to understand stress response and how the body adapts. And that, to me, was like, foundational for me. It was very interesting. And then, you know, on top of that, as I became more mature as a person and as an athlete, I studied more about that stress response. And so that led me to really love training science that I would test myself with different,

okay, if I want to be fast on the ice, can I train slow off ice? Well, no, I can't do that. It doesn't translate. It doesn't translate to speed. So then I started to do more sprint and agility and work off ice. So I didn't know if what I was doing off ice, especially for running, was translating to on ice very well. And so I had to figure out what was the best dose for the response that I wanted. I tried running, sprint training, off ice. But then I moved to cycling and like loaded cycling, high intensity sprint interval training on the bike resulted in me getting faster on the ice. And it was a better recruitment of large muscle. Low intensity. No, high intensity. Okay. High intensity. And so I started to calibrate myself to this stress response to see what

was the best method for me to translate what I was doing off ice to on ice improvements. So I was like observing this all the time. And then my dad taught me a really important lesson when I was a kid. He was a really hardworking Millwright who would come home in the summers and we'd eat dinner together. And then we'd go outside afterwards and I'd want to play ball or play whatever the sport of the day was with him. And he'd be like, you have to wait. I'd need to water the flowers. And this watering process took about an hour because he loved his gardens. And I said to him once, I'm like, can't we just wait?

Can't you water the flowers tomorrow or wait a couple days or even a week? It doesn't matter. and he brought me over and he said we've created this we have this amazing soil for the plant it's nitrogen rich it's nutrient rich it's getting an adequate sunlight for photosynthesis but we're not getting enough water this summer and this plant the plant cells are reliant on water and I said are all cells reliant on water human cells animal cells he said yes that they are all reliant on water and then I asked him, I'm like, so what's my sunlight and what's my soil? And he's like, your soil bed is your bed. You need sleep. You need to provide enough sleep and rest and recovery. And your sunlight is food.

You need to eat proper biomolecules to support that cell. And so I was like, okay, so food, sleep, and water are the three things that I need to support my cells. And he said that if I don't water these cells, these plant cells every single day that they're going to start to shrink and wither. And over time, they're going to die. This blew up my mind because this whole adapter die really like sunk in as a small child. And so I was, I thought that you had this like beautiful framework. I did. I did. You know, it's such a young age. So I needed these three. Yeah. So I needed these three things in place in order to support my cells. The plant cells needed this in order to adapt. Otherwise, they would be in a state of stress. And my dad would always say, I don't want to

stress the plant cells. I want to set them up for proper adaptation. So they will flower and flourish. And it's the same with your cells. And so since then, like, I had a responsibility. I had to make sure my sleep was adequate, quality and quantity, sleep hygiene. That's right. Right? Food, eating biomolecules, protein carbs, fat, and nucleic acids. And I had a responsibility to drink enough water, which I never did before that day. Right? I didn't carry around a water bottle with me. So that completely changed me. And it made me like, okay, every day, what can I do? What is my plan for those three pieces to make sure that I was supporting myself, that they're exposed to so many stresses, posing myself to become more resilient and adapt over time, that every day

they're getting stronger. I love it. Your career now makes complete sense. Yeah. So that was the foundation, right? That was the seeds of curiosity were planted as I was a kid. And as I matured as a person and athlete, I had that base. So then I was like stress response. And that led to my love of training science and physiology. Were you, were kind of your academic and athletic journeys running in parallel, or were they kind of, yeah. Yeah, they were. So I started playing hockey when I was little, like, as I mentioned.

Did you have ponds? Yes. Oh, man, I know. Pons. I had a pond right in my backyard. I lived in Maine, so we're not, we're kind of neighbors. Yeah, yeah, for sure we are. Maine and Canada.

Yeah, so I just felt so lucky, you know, to be able to have access to that. winter, you know. And did you play hockey? I played a little bit of hockey. Yeah, I played, I played basketball. So, yeah, that was like my primary sport growing up alongside Feel Hockey, I suppose. But we didn't have, you know, honestly, like girls really weren't playing ice hockey at that time, you know, it was all guys, you know, but I played a lot of pond hockey. Oh, nice. And yeah, I was kind of bummed that I didn't have that offering because I probably would have really loved it, but I love basketball. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I didn't even have, well, I had bad. basketball and school. But my town was like, you were either a figure skater, a hockey player,

or that was it. So there's no buffet of options like there is now. So I started in figure skating. I had two older sisters who figure skated. And within a week, I was out of there because the instructor suggested to my dad that I should go into hockey because I was just doing laps around there. Just pulling a chime drop. Yeah. So I moved to hockey. And as you mentioned, it was only for boys. So my dad told me that you are entering a sport that's a boy sport at this time. You have to prove that you're there every single practice that you deserve to be there. And so I worked my butt off to make sure that I was in the top 5 to 10 percent on every team I played on. And I didn't want to have a reason why I shouldn't be there. It just created a strong work ethic that every

practice counted. I always wanted to be in that 5 to 10 percent. So that made me always think about adaptation off ice. Like how do I make sure that I'm prepared with the three things I learned about sleep, food, and hydration, but also how do I train myself to translate on ice to better performance to keep up with the boys who are growing and getting stronger. And me getting, you know, growing too, but it's different. It's different. You don't have the testosterone, unfortunately. Oh, yeah. I know. It's, I can definitely. really late. I grew up in my neighborhood was all boys. And, you know, we would play basketball and in order for me to like, you know, for them not to kick me off and, you know, actually

let me play. Like, I had to be good enough, you know. So that informed like every, all of my downtime. I was just like training and playing and, you know, just so I could compete with them and have somewhere to play, you know. Yeah. It's so funny. So we're going to do a little bit of a rapid icebreaker. And we're going to kind of dig into hydration and thermoregulation. and metabolic efficiency, all the things that you've studied in depth. And throughout that, we can kind of toggle back and forth to, like, your athletic experiences and kind of how they might relate. True or false.

Drinking 600 milliliters, which is like 20 fluid ounces, roughly, about 45 minutes before exercise can restore hydration effectively. Mostly true. Nice. Say more. Okay. So it is, you don't want to chug it. Right.

You want to sip it. It's over a time period. So it's over a 20 minute time. time period that you're drinking the 600 miles. 20 minutes. Okay. Right. Or longer. And it could be up to an hour before. 600 milliliters isn't like the gold standard. It could be 500. Right. So 600 is said because it's usually a bottle's 591 mils. So then you can drink that. That's easier. So, but it does. It floods your, if you drink it fast, it could cause acute diuresis. You need to drink it. Sip, water, just like we've all been told. Defined diuresis because folks might know what

Thank you. It gets too much flooding in your blood. Your blood has too much volume, and then your kidneys will filter it all, and you'll have a large amount of urine volume. So most of it gets filtered. Yep. True or false. Being just a little dehydrated makes your brain slower, not just your body.

Sure. Obviously, they're connected. True or false. Coffee counts toward hydration just as much as water. I would say no, because it's context. Right, right. If someone's a habitual caffeine user, then it counts. If someone's not, and all of a sudden you're traveling for sports and you're consuming a large amount of caffeine, it can be a diuretic as well.

It's funny. I did this hydration solo, so I was like deep into the literature. I did this whole review. And that was surprising to me to find out that I'm like, wow, okay, if you're actually habituated to coffee, it's just as hydrating as water. I found that really interesting. True or false, electrolytes only matter for sessions lasting longer than about an hour. I would say true. Okay. True or false. Training in hypoxia, law oxygen state, increases hydration needs.

Is this artificial hypoxia or at altitude? Let's say altitude. Well, then yes. Okay. So altitude, it has drier air. Yeah. Right. The higher you go up in altitude, the drier the air is. So now you have more respiratory water losses. Right. As well, altitude. So say if you're traveling to compete at altitude, it also causes the kidneys to filter more water. So it can cause diuresis. So you're actually losing more water and you don't even know it. Right. With the dryness, you have more efficient evaporation of sweat off your skin. So it's better for thermal regulation, but it's silently dehydrating you faster.

And you don't even see it. And some of my biggest problems when I was cycling were because of that. Yeah. Yeah, racing at altitude. And you don't see yourself sweating so you don't think you need as much fluid, but you actually need more. Gosh, getting that right is just, yeah. So I feel like cycling is so advanced in terms of sports science. you know, because you just have all these variables that you have to consider.

And, you know, in ways that maybe team sports aren't considering as much or as dialed in, you know, there just seems to be less, I think, rigorous protocols and, you know, investigations happening at that level, you know. I think, you know why it's hydration and nutrition become a non-negotiable for endurance sports. Yeah. Like, you are so fragile. If you don't have a hydration strategy in place, a performance strategy. It's not just drink to thirst. Yeah, you shut down.

In team sports, you can potentially do that. get away with it a little bit. But in endurance, first, you can't. You shut down. You get heat stroke. You go into the dip. We've experienced that before. And it was horrible. Yeah. And it's because I didn't fully adapt my drinking strategy to account for the higher altitude. And the recovery when you get into those states is not trivial. No, it isn't. Like you, like to get back to neutral takes a lot of time. A funny. Like heat stroke is just, it's kind of devastating. It is. I've had a few team meets who had like, you know, full-on heat stroke. And I mean, they were probably out for over a month, actually. Wow. Yeah. So I had heat stroke at a race at altitude. And I changed my

hydration strategy too. Accounting for the altitude. And it's, you know, it depends on the context of the race. Because if you're white knuckling and it's really close or you're in a break and you miss a feed and you have a hydration strategy in place, but this time I missed a feed, I subluxed my thumb, I couldn't get the last bottle, and so I was without a bottle, and I was like, okay, I train for this though.

You have to train for every possible bad situation, so you have to train dehydrated so that you know how your body is going to respond and to put yourself in the worst-case scenarios, so you mentally are prepared. So I was mentally prepared, but physiologically I needed that bottle. And so I had heat stroke.

I went into the ditch, kind of crashed. I had an amazing teammate, stop, help me back on my bike, and basically pushed me the rest of the way to the finish line, which was, I think, 15 miles, because I had to start the next morning. So I went to the hospital, had an IV bag, felt horrible, woke up the next morning feeling horrible. I had to start because cycling is a team sport, and everyone needs to be. Your team shuts down if you shut down. Well, and the next morning was a criterion, which is like a very fast short race, and we needed all cylinders firing. Yeah, and I was one of the last lead-outs for a sprinter, so I had to be firing, but I didn't feel like I was going to be firing. But what it taught me is the fragility, physiology to hydration and to recovery, that what I didn't, just missing a bottle or being down a little bit causes substantial change in my physiology,

that I was feeling horrible. So I raced that race. And then a week later, I was in Mexico and I got a heat stroke and I was in the hospital for three days. Because once you get it, you get it again. You're so vulnerable. Yeah. Yeah. My cells were so stressed. Yeah. And that's, you know, it's funny because it was in the lead up to Atlanta. This tells you how old I am. The Olympic Games in Atlanta. And my teammate got heat stroke at a tournament in South Africa, very, very, very, very hot. And we were actually training or on the track. And she, you know, she went down. And she went down and, you know, it's, it's, she didn't make the Olympic team. And I, and I, and I kind of wonder, I'm like, you know, because she was really vulnerable, you know, um, it, the Atlanta was like

six months, um, from that moment and, uh, where'd she got heat stroke. And then our trials were in May. And I think they were really worried how she'd respond in Atlanta. And the, you know, obviously the, the peak of summer is so hot. And yeah, I, I, that's in the back of my mind. I'm like, I wonder if that factored in, you know, because good player. And she was right on that she was an alternate. But yeah, I just feel like it's, yeah, it's just one of those things. I think folks don't recognize like how consequential hydration actually is and how it can make the difference, you know, in so many ways, especially when everyone is so good, you know, and you're competing at the margins, really. Oh, yeah. So how did, is that a moment in your career

that kind of defined how you thought about your research or kind of what you pursued academically or what time point was that heat stroke event relative to your academic career? I was mid-PHD. Oh, damn. Yeah. So it was like the PhD. Oh, my God. What was your dissertation on?

Oh, it was? Yeah. Yeah, no. Like I was, and like looking at the effects of muscle on, of hydration on muscle metabolism, all funded by the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. So I was mid. And then I had that. Which, you know, like, that's, it was humbling.

It made me realize how fragile. Yeah. Again, like going back to that plant, that plant cell needs consistent and you have to adapt to the environmental conditions. So for me, I was like, okay, I didn't get that bottle, but I should have had a backup plan. Radio calms were down. I couldn't ask for a bottle. It's just that was how it was. Right.

And so it's, yeah, it was unfortunate. Like I don't know what I would have done differently. Like I had a plan. I should have got that bottle. I needed that bottle. But I could have had another bottle in my back of my jersey or something. Right. So it's not really that your strategy didn't work. You just, you literally just lost a bottle of water essentially. So you just didn't have. Had you had that bottle, would you have not gotten heat stroke? I think it would definitely would have helped me. I'm not sure. Like it might, you know, like there's a lot. lot of steps before getting to the point of heat stroke. Yeah. You know, so I was probably, even if I had the bottle, it might not have been enough. I would have felt horrible after the race. I probably would have got, like, finish the race and got a better result. Yeah. But I would have felt horrible after the next day. Yeah. It's so funny because I, you know, I was reading, you know, I followed Peter Atia quite closely. You probably know of him. Yeah, Dr. Peter Tia. He was just talking about he's just had this recent bout of overtraining, you know, and I'm like, how does a guy like

that overtrain, right, given everything that he knows. So I think it's just like a moment, it's humbling, right? Like, given everything that we know, we still can make mistakes, right? But I think to your point, and I think it's a really important one, is that we are actually quite fragile when we're doing hard things. And it takes a strategy. So kind of what, I guess, when you think about the body of work, when you think about your research, and if we're just kind of staying on hydration. What kind of stands out to you as being that moment where you're like, wow, this is really interesting? I think the biggest moment for me was during my PhD, where I had looked at mild levels of dehydration. So this is like what many people walk around

with on a given day. This is kind of the norm for most humans. Maybe, perhaps. Yeah, if you're only drinking to thirst than probably. And what we saw was that metabolism is flexible. And so that means that we shift to more a preference to carbohydrates instead of fat when we're thirsty. Yeah, during mild levels of dehydration. So you end up by consuming more carbohydrates, less nutrients, dense food potentially? Yeah. So that was super interesting. So people, one, the majority of athletes are showing up dehydrated and majority of exercisers are showing up dehydrated. And yet we have all this education out there. Forty, 60% of people are still showing up to exercise in a hypohydrated state. And this is like developed world dehydration. So I'm meaning mild levels of dehydration.

It's not going to cause you to potentially die. This is like what you could have on a daily basis just by not drinking enough. So what we noticed was that in females, when they came hydrated, to exercise. Within even 20 minutes, they'd be losing 0.5% of their body mass. And yet they were shifting metabolism to using more carbohydrates. And so if you're blowing through your carbohydrates more at that final push, at the end of exercise, you don't have that available glycogen that's stored form of carbohydrate. So you can't get that next gear to really get the high intensity. And so this causes, you know, perceived effort to go up. It causes you fatigue sooner. And so it was eye-opening that hydration at rest and during exercises caused metabolic flexibility

to preferentially go towards carbohydrate use. You could even term it metabolic inflexibility. Yeah, it's a say it's a preference towards using more carbs and less fat. Right, right. The main takeaway from me was that no longer could you drink to thirst, you actually had to have a performance strategy in place for hydration, that you had to have a pre-plan, a during plan, and a post plan, right? So you had to arrive hydrated to support your thermal regulatory system and metabolism. So for a lot of folks who are struggling to lose weight, for example, I mean, this could be the unlock potentially. Yeah, potentially. Well, there is evidence, and my lab is investigating this right now, about the relationship between hydration and insulin resistance.

Yeah. So being in a chronic dehydrated state, there's some evidence to show that it causes more insulin resistance, right, which would predispose someone to potential diabetes. So, and that's just drinking, right? And going back to the three things that we can control, you can control the biomolecules that you ingest from a nutrient standpoint. You can control how much fluid you're taking in on a daily basis. And then you can control that sleep, right? That rest and recovery. It is just wild, all the behaviors that influence insulin. You know, I mean, you just think about sleep, you know, and its impact, I mean, hydration, like, It's crazy.

Yeah. That's cool. When is that work going to be? It's a large-scale clinical trial where we're looking at the effects of hydration throughout the menstrual cycle and how the needs change and layered on top of that, how it affects metabolism and how it affects mitochondrial health. So it's, we're doing males as well as females, but with females, we're looking at both phases. Amazing.

Just naturally sucking women. Naturally ovulating females. We're looking at the follicular and the ludial phase and looking at the impact of hydration state on metabolism and on mitochondrial function. That's so good to hear. We need more work in this area. You know, there's obviously, as you know, more than anyone, there's very limited research in this area. Yeah. You know, especially broken down in that way, you know, looking at the various phases and maybe just staying on women for a bit. What are some of the unique, you know, you just mentioned are, you know, how we'll bias toward carbohydrates if we're an under dehydrated state. Now, is that kind of doubly the case during the ludial phase, for example? And maybe talk about hydration, how the ludel fades, you know, kind of changes hydration demands. Even they're subtle, but they're still there.

Maybe just explain some of the mechanism behind that and what you recommend for women in the ludial phase who might be training hard and are trying to avoid, you know, this kind of subclinical level of dehydration. Sure, sure, sure. So the ludial phase, mid-ludial phase, so this is day usually 14 to 28 of a 28-day cycle. We see progesterone starting to peak mid-phase. And progesterone is a hormone that's released to preparation for a potential growing embryo. So it's preparing the uterus for a potential implantation,

which means that we're going to shift some of our. plasma volume, which is the water content of our blood. So when we drink water, it gets absorbed from our small intestine into our blood. That water will move interstitial. So we'll move into our tissues. So we sometimes feel bloated. But it's almost like a false bloating. It's not our blood. Our plasma volume can potentially go down. And it's a fluid shift into our tissues. So we have a feeling that we feel bloated and we feel like we have too much water. But actually, our hydration needs increase because we're losing our plasma volume. We're losing our blood volume because there's a shift to go interstitial. So the needs from a hydration standpoint increase that women

should be drinking more water during the ludial phase to support the plasma because that's where our sweat. That's where our sweat comes from is from our plasma. As well, progesterone causes our basal core temperature to be a little bit higher. In preparation, for incubation that we want to make our incubator warmer just in case we're going to have implantation of the embryo. And so we typically feel hotter, which means our sweat threshold has also increased. So working out. Yeah. So our onset of sweating has gone up. So we have a tendency to hold on to more heat. So hydration becomes paramount. Like we need to drink cold water to help cooler body, as well as replace sweat losses and maintain our plasma volume. I really

noticed this with myself when I was competing in the ludial phase that I couldn't handle the heat very well, that my thermal tolerance decreased. Interesting. Now, are you not, what's your sweat type? Are you a salty? I'm super salty. I see. I was like, I just have the sweat ring. I'm super salty and a fairly high sweater. So the combination is deadly. Totally. I know. I'm the same.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So in the ludial phase, I would just feel hot all the time. And then when I exercise, I would feel hot and I wanted to sweat sooner. And so I had to dig into the research and think creatively of what I could do to help with that because you have races right in mid-ludial phase. and I'm like, I can't tolerate the heat very well. So I used to swirl with a menthol.

Oh, interesting. So menthol is a mint that activates cold receptors in your brain just from swilling. So, and my lab has done quite a bit of research in menthol because of this. And so I would swill with menthol. Can it work with a gum? Like, chewing gum? Yeah, it can. I use a concentrate, so it's more.

So I create a little solution myself. And so I would swill with this and then spit it out or swallow it. It doesn't matter. But what it does is similar to a carbohydrate mouth rinse where it activates, carbohydrate activates reward centers, make you feeling more pleasurable. I've been missing out in this happen. The mental actually activates the cold receptors. Wow.

So it makes you feel cooler. So for me, I tested myself. My core temperature was actually not any higher when I was exercising my end core temperature in the ludial phase than it was in the follicular phase. It was my thermal tolerance. My tolerance of the heat was different. And so I could trick my brain by using menthol to make me feel cooler. And then I could just push harder.

And whether it was a placebo or not, it still worked. It doesn't matter. Yeah. And my research, like my lab has followed up with a lot of menthol research. And it actually shows it decreases your perceived effort for the same workload. There are some really cool mechanisms that are at play in activating those cold sensors in your brain. It's really interesting. So, and then I followed up with this with some sports teams that I work with in preparation for the previous Olympics, this past Summer Olympics, where they were having the same issues.

And I would monitor their core temperature. And it was nothing that they weren't experiencing in training. Right. And it was okay. It's just they felt really hot. And so by using menthol, it really helped them. You can use a topical spray. I like the mouth rinse just because it does activate or the proposed mechanism.

Yeah. The proposed mechanism is that activates the cold sensors in your brain. love that that honestly i've never heard that before so this is i love it this is amazing um i'm going to try that so they have topical sprays that you can just purchase at like cds or yeah they do i made my own concoction like you can buy the concentrated crystals with a beaker and strain it you can make up your own concentrate for a swill like chem lab and also love that what's up folks if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health performance fitness you may really enjoy getting a whoop that's right you can check out

whoop at whoop.com it measures everything around sleep recovery strain and you can now sign up for free for 30 days so you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free you get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. And that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests. Are there any other kind of hidden metabolic costs, like beyond kind of what we talked about so far that we should hit on with dehydration? So we can get into a little bit about the mechanisms for why dehydration. So let's hit it. Dehydration. So for example, when you're not drinking enough, what happens is you have to maintain. blood volume. That's a homostatic control in the body. We want to maintain a certain amount of blood

volume. So we have mechanisms in place to try to keep us at that blood volume. So when we're in a compromised state, we're not drinking enough. What happens is we shift fluid from our cell into the extracellular space, which is your blood in order to allow for the maintenance of our blood volume, what that does is it shrinks your cell. And as soon as it shrinks the cell, it causes a catabolic signal within the cell to start using more carbohydrates. And so like glycogen phosphorylase is an enzyme that breaks down glycogen into glucose, and then glucose goes through glycolysis and produces either pyruvate or lactate. And the reason why we activate and we're preferential to using carbohydrate is that we want to produce more osmolite.

And one way we can do that, osmolites are glucose and lactate. One way we can do that is by using more preferentially using more carbohydrate. And so that's one of the reasons why carbohydrate metabolism increases within a muscle cell, even at rest or any cell, for that matter, at rest when you're hypohydrated. Wow. It's really interesting. I think the other thing for folks to be aware of is that when you are in these kind of hypohydrated states, you end up compromising your ability to recover next day.

Like, do you know to what extent? And that would be an interesting experiment, you know, just to kind of see the resting physiology, you know, how it's, I mean, we see just at a population level when folks report being dehydrated, you know, we see quite significant impairments on resting physiology. So, and in sleep, actually, as well, sleep efficiency. So I'd be interesting to see what does your data kind of say in terms of ability to recover when we're kind of in these maybe there's a spectrum of dehydration and you know kind of low to mild to severe or whatever um is there a sense of like how long it extends recovery when you're in these different maybe buckets that's a really great point i don't i don't think there's a study that's like that

oh damn well we don't have to do one i know what's kind of interesting right because you understand the cost, right, necessarily. And I think it's good because it, because to me, especially in multi-day events, I mean, that becomes everything, right? Like if you're talking in Olympic games where you've got eight day, you know, 12 days of competition, right? And, you know, the compound effect of that could actually be quite, you know, there could be quite a lot to gain, you know, if we understood that better. Oh, definitely. Definitely. It is graded. So the more, the more dehydrated you are in a given session, you should replace 150% of your sweat losses within, you know, an hour or two after that bout, and then continue on with the recommended daily intake.

For women, it's 2.5 liters, males, 3.2 liters. No way people are doing that. So I think, like, the responses, the recovery, if you're not doing that, obviously we know that is compounded. Right, right. And then multiple days of showing up dehydrated, sweating, being deep. dehydrated after exercise is compounded. So I believe, and as you talked about earlier, it is compounded effect.

It's just, I don't think anyone has done that. Because it's so individually variable as well. Like what you're resting, like, I mean, what your daily intake is different than mine. Totally. What your sweat. My sweat rate. Yeah. And who know?

Like, I'm shocked at how many professional athletes I encounter who don't know their sweat rate. Like, that's wild to me. Like, that seems like just a foundational thing to go sleep. hydration and it's your responsibility as an athlete to know those three things a hundred percent so it is shocking to me because i think there's so to your point i mean the way you lay it out i mean this is just such a foundational element of human performance that i think is probably under leveraged and underappreciated we kind of think about hydration yeah yeah but there's actually quite a science to it oh huge yeah i mean there is there is a science to it i felt as an athlete there were

things that were my responsibility. Yeah. How I show up from nutrition, as we talked about, sleep and fluid, right? And then during was my responsibility, having a plan in place, a performance strategy to support my cells, support my body, support performance. And then post was my responsibility. And that is, like, if you ignore it and you just think, oh, I'm just going to drink to thirst, it's too late.

It's a silent transformation that's happening in your body. And it's not. It's like the responsibility needs to be put on the athlete or the user of any biometric piece of device that's giving you feedback. It's your choice how you use that to cause a meaningful impact in your life. Right. And it's like informing the user that you have a choice. What you do with this information has an impact. I think about this like beyond sports too, like, you know, military operators, frontline health care. I mean, hospital systems, there's no drier environment, I don't think, you know, than a hospital, right? I mean, those folks are walking around chronically dehydrated, just adding to, you know, I think that's just, especially, you know,

you later on shift work, you know, being awake during the biological night. Like, there's so much stress on the system, you know, for those folks. That's another study I would love to do is to understand the performance cost of dehydration in kind of these high stakes, high stress environments. and putting in place like protocols to understand, okay, what is this, what is the sweat rate? How much water do we actually need to drink in order to not have these decrements and performance decrements, you know, cognitive, physical, whatever might be reaction time? So maybe let's talk about that. Like what, so we've got some of the metabolic consequences. What are the cognitive and physical impairments that come with being dehydrated?

Yeah. Yeah. A lot. Right. It's a stress in the entire body where a living organism that requires has a reliance on water. So when you don't have enough water, all the systems are at stress. So the first is cardiovascular system, right? Remember, water balance in the body is there's homeostasis. You need a certain amount. So if you're sweating a lot and you're not replacing, you don't have the optimal amount of blood. So you're not pumping the same volume. of blood around the heart. So that means a heart has to work harder to pump the smaller amount of blood around the body to maintain what we call cardiac output. So heart rate rises. So we see cardiovascular drift. And we see your heart rate, if you're hydrated, it's like this. When you're dehydrated, it's like this with the same amount of exercise. So there's a huge, you know, your blood becomes more thick. You have to pump it around just as much to meet the demands of the body. So the heart has to work harder. So that's a stress. So that's a cardiovascular stress. So I think that's important to

pause there because for folks who have cardiovascular issues is one of the factors potentially just chronic dehydration? Because you can imagine just one or two days of that doesn't matter, right? But if you're chronically dehydrated, like that can't, that obviously puts a lot of stress on cardiovascular system, as you just outlined. So it does that increased risk? Do we know how much? Those are all great questions. I'm not sure. But it definitely increases risk. It's just one of the factors. Oh, yeah. Like hydration is fundamental. Yeah. Right. So that's the first thing you ask someone. Are you drinking enough water? Wow. Yeah. Right. Like that's the, we need to drink water. So that's certainly, it has a huge effect on the cardiovascular system. And then it affects the thermal regulatory system because we have this mechanism to maintain our internal thermostat at 98. 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees Celsius. When we get too hot, it kicks on our internal air conditioning system where we have an increase in skin blood flow. We have sweat on our skin surface through the evaporation of that sweat. We're transferring heat into the environment and it

cools us. So if we're not replacing what we're losing in sweat, we're compromising our thermal regulatory system, our ability to maintain core temperature. And our body has these homeostatic control systems in place because that's the optimal conditions for which we can function. So yeah, core temperature will rise, right? And then compound that with a hot day. We have heat coming in. We're not drinking enough. Now we have compounded effects on our thermal regulatory system. Right. And then maybe just effects on the brain. So just thinking cognitive function. Certainly. So a lot of that is related to blood volume too, right? So we're not, our blood is more thick. The brain as. Yeah. We're not delivering as much, blood to the brain, less oxygenation, slower reaction time, impact on decision-making.

And the evidence has suggested that we should minimize fluid losses to less than 2% of your body mass. But I say, try to limit it completely. Like, you should drink all the time and think to drink before you're even thirsty because you're supporting your whole system. So just strategy, just walking around. The water bottle is like the best thing, right? Yeah, sipping water all day.

Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like I see more people doing that, you know, but I still think there's probably a large percentage of the population who are not as aware or conscious of their hydration intake. Is there an easy way for folks to measure their sweat rate? Certainly. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe just walk through those steps. Certainly. So it's fairly basic. You do need a homescale that's relatively calibrated so that when you step on it once and step on it again within like a 30 second period. It's roughly the same number. So you have your bathroom scale in the morning. As soon as you wake up, you avoid your bladder, right? So you pee, you go pee, and then you take off your clothes, stand on your scale in the nude, figure out your body mass. Then what you can do is you can go from there and go out and exercise for a set duration.

Say you're exercising for an hour or going for a walk. Any water intake? You can drink water throughout that, but you need to be aware of how much the volume. So just have a bottle of water. Have a bottle of water. That's going to come into the calculations. Exactly. Yeah.

Just to make sure. Say it's 500 milliliters of water. So you know a set volume of water. Yep. Okay. So 16 ounces roughly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You don't know the Americans out there who are like a millilator. So you do your pre-body mass. Then you have your hour of exercise. It's easy to do with an hour or half an hour. It's quantitative like be on the on the clock for a half an hour or an hour. And then you're drinking your 500 milliliter. Then at the end, you come back into that bathroom, you towel off the sweat, you wipe off the sweat, you take off everything, and you stand on the scale and see the change.

You go to the bathroom if you need to before that because we don't want to factor, we want to factor that into the change in urine volume does affect your calculation of sweat rate. But the basic equation is pre-body mass before exercise minus post-exercise body mass plus your fluid intake. take minus how much urine you peeed out, which is, yeah. So that it's, you should put this little calculation in the show notes. It's super easy to do. And then if you know that it was a half an hour or an hour, I always tried to do an hour, whether it's walking for an hour, whatever it may be, the modality of exercise that fits into the person's schedule, then you know your sweat rate for that given activity and you know the time. So then, okay, so your sweat loss is two liters and it's over 60 minutes so that, you know, your sweat rate per hour is two liters, which is relatively

high. Right, right. Yeah. I always think, I'm like, this is how sweaty I am. Like, I'll, like, my ponytail will be soaking wet just from, like, hitting my body, like, in the sweat. So I'm like, this is making me heavier. Mine's like that, too.

I'm like, just dripping, especially the humid. Like, it's so humid. And it doesn't allow the evaporation of the sweat to cool yourself. Yeah. So you just, I'm just drenched. I love when I meet another salty sweater because they just, they understand. I would always be so annoyed, like just for like warmups in college. Like I got into, I was like, I need, I can't wear my game shirt for warm up.

And our, first of all, our warmness were stupid, long and intense. Like we were, it's like a game before the game. It was so unnecessary. This is when overtraining was just, more was better, right? All cases. Yeah. But yeah, it was like a practice before the game. But anyway, I would be like.

like drenched. So I'm like, all right, I can't wear my game shirt. So I got this like practice shirt and then it became like a thing. We all wore practice shirts. But I would be only one. Like my practice shirt was like gray colored and it would just be like literally drenched. And I'm like, why is no one else sweating like I am? But that is, that's what made me get into physiology is the individual differences. Yeah. It's fascinating. It is so fascinating. Your sweat rate, your sweat threshold, which is genetically determined. How much sweat sodium you have and how it changes with training. You adapt to heat. I don't. adapt to heat or something to that. Like, that is, I love that about physical. It's what got me

so excited about it as well. And, you know, when I became a coach, I was like, you know, I was like, everyone's different, you know? And that's where I had like individual performance plans for every single one of the athletes because I knew that, you know, like everyone was going to be different, you know, and I, you just observe this when you're growing up. Oh, for sure. You know, to kind of see. And I think that's what makes it, like, the puzzle is so fun, right? Especially in team sports. Oh, for sure. If you were talking, so let's say you're giving a presentation to coaches and parents, and you're trying to advise them on, you know, how to think about hydration. You know, what would be some tips that you would give them? So, okay, so you have to

force, if you're not a habitual, high fluid intake individual, you have to train yourself to drink. It's not, it didn't come easy for me. So after my dad told me that about the plants, I had to, like, set an alarm on my little watch as a kid that every 30 minutes drink something, the little little beeper, right? Because sometimes you don't think to drink. Yeah. So you have to train yourself to be able to drink. And then when I started increasing the volume, I had so much gut slush of water that I'm like, oh, I'm getting cramps and different things. Because you actually have to train your gastrointestinal system to be more efficient and absorbing water. So the tip I would say is you need to think to drink. You have to think in advance to drink. Don't go by thirst. Because if you go to

by thirst, you're already, you're getting the alarm signaling from your brain saying you need to drink because we're already low, starting to get low in blood volume. So you have to think to drink. You definitely carry a water bottle around with you all the time. You try to hit the 2.5 liters for females a day and 3.2 liters as you're recommended. And then you have to factor in. I always say, like, do the sweat test on yourself to see what your sweat rate is. And then account for that. And then once you know that, if you actually do that, then you can figure out what 150% of your sweat losses are. Right. And then make sure you drink that within the hour within recovery.

Game changer. Game changer. Yeah, for sure. So if you lose a liter in sweat losses based on the calculation and weighing yourself, you would drink 1.5 liters. That's 150% of your sweat losses. All those folks out there who direct message me about their HRV, listen to Dr. Heather right now. This is your way in. yeah so important for recovery so critical that pre during post is what you can control and so it's

really important to make sure you take responsibility of the pre during and post to get your performance strategy for hydration dialed in I love that I love that because it's kind of when you lay it out like that I'm like you know it's it's doable it's pretty simple like you know it's just a matter of awareness and then and then doing better exactly yeah and I think what what's so cool with hydration is that it's not that hard, right? Like, I mean, but the, the potential gains are crazy in terms of sleep and recovery and just how we utilize carbohydrate. I mean, it's just like the downstream effect of being well hydrated is just, you know, it's amazing. It is amazing. I love it. Who knew hydration would just be so exciting. I know, but it comes

back to the foundation of physiology. It's like homeostasis. I know. Whenever you put, A cell in a state of stress. It's not good. Right. And so just by drinking and giving your body what it needs, you know, 50 to 70% of our body is made out of water. The 70% is for people who are more lean, have more muscle mass. It means your hydration needs increase. How are other hormones impacted?

So like cortisol and, you know, are they impacted by hydration status? Oh, certainly. Yeah. I don't know all the complexities, but everything's interconnected. Right, right. It's stress. So if the cells in stress, you would have a cordial, you're in more catabolic state instead of an anabolic. Right, right.

So that's a cascade of events. Certainly. Certainly. Yeah. For sure, it does. Yeah. Cool. So I wanted to talk, this is a little dark, but I always, you can drink too much water.

So maybe just talk a little bit about, this is another reason why to just understand your body and how much should people be looking at their pee? and then how do parents kind of talk to their kids about it in a way that they're not overhydrating, you know, and losing, you know, minerals and things like that. So there's a sweet spot, clearly, and you've identified what it is, but maybe just kind of double back on that and, you know, what are some things to look out for? And certainly, okay, well, at rest, so say you're just going throughout your normal day. When you wake up in the morning, your first morning boy gives you an indication of how you did the day before. So you're trying that they're online, you can find a hydration scale, and it usually has seven colors.

So it's a seven-point color scale. You want to be less than three. Okay. Okay. Which would be kind of a... It's a light yellow. Yeah. If it's getting darker, then, you know, that means it's more concentrated urine.

And you don't have as much fluid to give away in your body. So it's an indication that you're a little bit in a hypohydrated state. So you want that to be relatively consistent from day to day. So looking at your morning void, soon as you wake up, it should be, you know, relatively clear, less than three on a seven point color scale. That's number one. Number two, throughout the day, if you're eating a normal North American diet, you're getting basically enough sodium and chloride.

The two, the biggest cat ion in your sweat is sodium and anion is chloride. So the North American diet has enough sodium and chloride that you should be getting enough of your main electrolytes lost in sweat through the food that you're eating. So you shouldn't have to supplement with any electrolytes. And then you drink plain water. And drink, I always say follow the recommended daily intake as a guide. So 2.5 liters. And then if you are exercising, as we mentioned before, follow your sweat rate.

So make sure that you're, you know, compensating for your sweat losses. For someone who's more an endurance athlete, then you need to focus on. a little bit of electrolyte replacement because you can overhydrate. And there's something, you see this every year at certain marathons. We're here in Boston. The Boston Marathon is notorious for this. And it usually. Disoriented, dizzy, like, yeah.

So the symptoms of being hyponetremic and dehydration are very similar. You get disoriented. It's a central, a nervous system issue. And so hyponetremia is when an individual drinks just plain water. Right. when they're sweating out. Remember, sweat is more than just water. You're losing essential electrolytes. Right. And so when you're exercising for long, sweaty periods, you need to replace with something that's more than just water to replace the essential electrolytes you're losing

in your sweat. So this is where an electrolyte beverage comes into play and or a carbohydrate electrolyte solution to replace not just the fluid, but the carbohydrate, you're oxidizing quickly, as well as electrolytes that you're losing in your sweat. So I always say if a kid is going to sports, usually they're fairly well fad. They go after dinner, they ate a healthy meal, and they can go into that hour practice and just drink water because they've had enough of their electrolytes in the food

that they ate and they're fad. So they don't need the added sugar. So they can go their hour of a practice and they'll be fine and just make sure they're drinking water and they drink water afterwards. If anything is greater than an hour, so long and sweaty exercise, that's when you have to have a strategy in place for replacing sweat losses with some electrolytes. So, and that first hour really sets you up for what your body's going to do in the second hour, right?

So if, you know, it's compounded. Right. So if you know you're doing two hours, you have a pinch of salt, you know, in the water in that first hour knowing that you're going along. That's right. Yeah. Exactly. So throw the pinch of salt in, sodium chloride, throw it in your water. water bottle makes you ready for that second hour. Second hour you do the same, even a couple

pinches because you're losing even more. And then that gives you, that sodium makes you want to drink more too. Yep. And it makes it hold on into your body more and it replaces your electrolytes. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Are there any like hydration myths that you kind of feel like you're always debunking and that drive you crazy? Any pet peeves around hydration? I think the kids showing up with Gatorade to a one-hour practice is a little bit of pet pee for me, especially if a person is going to the gym and they have an eight for three or four hours and they're going in a little bit of a fasted state, then a carbohydrate electrolyte solution will allow some blood glucose for you to be able to sustain the exercise intensity.

Not a bad strategy in that case. Yeah, not a bad strategy in that case. And the same goes for kids. If they're coming from school, they have an eight dinner and then carbohydrate electrolyte solution would be a useful fluid intake strategy. But for a normal kid who's coming after dinner, you want to eat the whole foods. You want to eat the food calories to provide the glucose. And then you come in to practice, you should be just drinking water. Right. Right. So having too much added simple sugars, you know, you should have whole foods on either end to get all the

biological molecules that you need to support yourselves. Yeah. So I think that's a major, like I would say that's my biggest pet pee. It's overusing carbohydrate electrolyte solutions when they're not needed. Yeah. I think that's a really great call out, especially when we look at just the trends in childhood obesity as well. Like we don't need more sugar clearly in the diet. You know, I think the way we're trending right now, it's one in three children will be obese. Yeah. I think in, you know, in the next five years if we continue down the current path. Right. So that's like pretty disturbing. So like all of these kind of hidden calories. We need to just be more aware of, I think. Yes. And I think some of it is to blame to the sport drink companies because they market their products

for any time. I know. I know. And yet like Gatorade, for example, was formulated. Like it's just as good as water, you know. Yeah. Gatorade was formulated for greater than an hour of exercise. Wow. Right. That's the utility. And very few humans are working out for more than an hour. Right. I have a very specific question. A couple specific questions just based on some of your research. In hypoxic sprint work, what did you uncover about heart rate, lactate, or power output that translates to everyday sport? That's a very specific question. I know, I know. It's a good one. It just cut my eye. I was like, whoof. So the evidence is. And just define hypoxic real quick. So hypoxic is creating an artificial environment that simulates altitude. This is why the true and false. You're like,

Is it artificial or actual, yeah? Yeah, so hypoxia is just changing the fraction of inspired O2. So say we're normally at around 21%, we can drop it down to 12%. So it's simulating the oxygen, the hypoxic condition that you would have at altitude, but it doesn't have the barometric. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. But it doesn't have any change in barometric pressure, which is another component of altitude. So it's merely apnic or creating.

an abnic or hypoxic environment. Yep. So what we showed is that when you're in an oxygen-deprived state, your lactate response is higher because you're using more anaerobic glycolysis, non-oxidative metabolism. So your lactate response is higher. You're using more carbohydrate. The heart rate is higher because, remember, the red blood cells carry oxygen in hemoglobin, bound to hemoglobin.

That's your little taxi through the highways of the circulatory system. So if you don't have as much onloading of oxygen onto this taxis, you need to pump faster, pump your heart faster in order to deliver the same amount of oxygen around the body. So in hypoxia, what we see is a higher heart rate response, a higher ventilatory response, higher lactate response. And so with training in hypoxia, we've seen adaptations happen. Yeah. Most of them happen at the ability of the muscle peripherally.

the ability of the muscle to handle lactate. So we see lactate response go down. We also see the muscle oxygenation increase. We don't really see any changes in red blood cells. Obviously, it's intermittent. You need a high dose of altitude exposure or hypoxia exposure to actually drive a change in your hemoglobin mass. But peripherally, with muscle lactate and muscle response,

we see some positive adaptations. Yeah, it can accelerate adaptation. Yeah, yeah. And I've worked with some Olympians in the past who wanted that competitive edge, that one to two percent margin that they're chasing. I'm like, I want to know. I want to get to the lab. Yeah.

So we did IHT with them, intermittent hypoxia training. And it was so, we only did it two or three times a week. I'm not sure if it actually worked that much because it's all dose response. Yeah. You need a high dose on the muscle for it to adapt. Right. And one session three times a week isn't necessarily enough to cause huge change. changes, hematological changes.

And do you know, have you measured that? Do you know what the dose is to get those hemologic changes? So individually variable. Yeah, yeah. But in the literature, it's three to four weeks of living high exposure, right? From intermittent, it's so variable. And my lab is studying that now where I have a hypoxia chamber and I can make it heat and we can change the entire environmental conditions.

And we're looking at the sex-based differences and how girls respond compared to males and how they respond at the molecular level moving up different epigenetic regulation as well as genetic turning on different genes the signals change and then we're moving up the chain to physiology biomarkers and then performance changes I love that yeah when you think about you know I just as scientists like there's always just too many questions not enough time but what and maybe you don't want to give away like your hypothesis I know like Scientists are always really precious about, you know, revealing things that they're thinking about. But is there anything that you are, like, dying to study that you just feel like is, like, missing in the hydration literature, like, the big blank space?

I think what I'm studying right now is a huge, like, how hydration impacts mitochondrial function. Yeah, that's so big. Yeah, that's huge. It's huge. Right. And then how hydration needs change throughout the menstrual cycle is really interesting for me. And then pairing that with this whole metabolic flexibility with hydration is big. What does that unlock, you know, just understanding hydration impact on mitochondria?

Like, what are you hoping to unlock for folks? Well, there's so much. This is my curiosity. I could go deep here. So hydration and mitochondria is such an amazing organelle, right? It's like the powerhouse of the sal that you hear about in grade 11 science. For me, it's like it's so particular. protected, right? We have double membrane around this beautiful mitochondria. It's home to your

electron transport chain where you just create so much ATP. It's like it's been considered where aging begins, where aging happens, preserving the functionality of the mitochondria. So hydration, just like it's so fundamental that mitochondria needs to be hydrated. And so I feel like there's a big connection there that we are yet to discover. And so I'm, I'm Yeah, I don't know exactly. I think. So understanding kind of the impact of hydration on pace of aging almost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And fat metabolism, lipid oxidation, what's happening in the electron transport chain with the passing of certain electrons throughout that chain. I think that will answer some of the information about metabolic flexibility too. It's exciting. Yeah, it's exciting. How long, how far away are you from having some results? pretty far it's a large it's a large study yeah is it like a five year study

oh no no no okay uh probably within eight months oh yeah that's like no time at all in research yeah so you'll have some results in eight months so you'll start to be able to analyze data yeah definitely yeah it's very exciting and be like we're using QPCR and different flow cytometry and different very specific things that we're looking at the

mitochondria for and mitochondrial respiration. So it's a very exciting project. So going back to that, I love the individual responsivity. And my big questions are all around why do you adapt to hypoxia faster than me? Yeah, the individual differences. But I want to know at the molecular level. So I'm moving a lot of my research into understanding the genetic and epigenetic. Epigenetic being like the DNA methylation and histone acetylation and why your signals are. different than mine and what are the underlying genes. To me, that's just fascinating. Everything I have in physiology is related to that. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to start to... You build the foundation to now go into this next layer of inquiry. Yeah. Yeah. And that's how I

always try to structure my research to be vertically aligned, I call it, from the cell. Yeah. Whatever cell we're isolating, whether it's a mononuclear cell in the blood or a skeletal muscle cell. And then moving up to, okay, biomarkers. What are the biomarkers in the blood that we can measure? and then what is the physiological markers that we can measure heart rate, core temperature, perceived effort, ratings of fatigue, and then moving up to, okay, what's the effect on performance? And if I can align all those in a given research design and research purpose state, I just love that. Same. Because it caters to my curiosity.

Yeah, yeah. I just don't know, I don't want to know the impact on performance. I was that type of athlete. Tell me the why. Yeah. And when my dad, going back to the plant, because he told me, the why I was bought in. So guess what?

The next night we went outside, I was the first one grabbing the watering can. That's the water of the flowers. Yeah, yeah. Because he gave me a responsibility and translated science into impact and gave me a responsibility. And that's where it's like, we can collect all this data, but I want to translate it into something that is impactful and connects with the human.

Totally. Right? So that to me is the whole goal of my research scope. Yeah, I think just the research that. sits on the shelf, you know, that like 10 people I know read is like kind of depressing. You know, like it's like, yeah. And that's where I think like these kind of forums are really great, you know.

Where do people follow you? What's the best place to track your work? At peak genics. Okay, great. I have my own company. It's called Peak Genics Innovation Inc. Where I do scientific advisory, consulting and contract research work. You have helped us on multiple occasions.

Yeah, it's been fun. Well, I came to know your work. Yeah. Yeah, I love leveraging science for storytelling and connecting with the end user. Yeah. So I love that about working with people like you and certain industry leaders who want that. Yeah. Right?

So it's like, let's find validated, rigorous research and translate it into meaning for the end user and creating that, you know, lifetime value for them with your product. So that to me is very exciting. I love it. Well, thank you for all your good work. Yeah, same to you. Thank you for what you're doing here. whoop and the performance science. It's just amazing. I love it.

I appreciate that. Yeah. Hopefully you can do more work. Yeah, I hope so too. Together. And then your future. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode of the Woop podcast, please leave a rating or review. Check us out on social at WOOP at Will. If you have a question was answered on the podcast. Email us, podcast at WOOP.com. Call us 508-434349.52. If anything about joining Woop, you can visit Woop.com. Sign up for a free 30-day trial membership. New members can use the code Will, W-I-L-L-L to get a a $60 credit on WOOP accessories when you enter the code at checkout. That's a wrap, folks. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast.

As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.