WHOOP Podcast - Taking The Guesswork Out of Women's Health with Natural Cycles° CEO Dr. Elina Berglund Scherwitzl

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Women's health has long been underserved by research, leaving many women without the information they need to understand their own bodies. On this week’s episode of the WHOOP Podcast, WHOOP Global Head of Human Performance and Principal Scientist Dr. Kristen Holmes sits down with Dr. Elina Berglund Scherwitzl, Co-Founder & CEO of Natural Cycles° and Nobel Prize-winning particle physicist. The conversation explores how data is transforming women's reproductive health.After helping discover the Higgs boson, Dr. Berglund Scherwitzl turned her expertise in physics and data science toward her own health journey by creating the world's first and only FDA-cleared birth control app. Together, Dr. Holmes and Dr. Berglund Scherwitzl discuss how wearable technology and physiological data are giving women unprecedented insight into fertility, pregnancy planning, menstrual health, and perimenopause.The conversation explores the new WHOOP and Natural Cycles° integration, designed to make women's health feel less overwhelming and more intuitive by combining continuous wearable data with advanced insights on fertility, hormonal health, and perimenopause. Dr. Holmes and Dr. Berglund Scherwitzl discuss how body temperature and other biomarkers reveal hormonal changes, why perimenopause often begins earlier than many women realize, and how passive, personalized insights can reduce uncertainty, ease mental load, and empower women to make informed decisions about their health at every stage of life.(00:00) Cold Open (00:37) Meet The Scientist Behind Natural Cycles°(01:00) Why Dr. Berglund Scherwitzl Started Natural Cycles°(04:35) The Only FDA-Cleared Birth Control App(05:54) The WHOOP x Natural Cycles° Partnership(07:51) The Early Signs of Perimenopause (And How To Track Them)(13:08) What Really Happens To Your Hormones Over Time(17:34) Why Understanding Your Body Changes Everything(19:09) Your Sleep Could Reveal Early Signs of Perimenopause(22:03) The Small Habits That Make A Big Difference(24:14) The Most Common Menstrual Cycle Myths(26:09) What Your Wearable Can Tell You About Your Hormones(27:07) The Truth About Fertility Timing(29:16) Knowing Which Symptoms Matter Most(31:36) HRT: What Women Should Know(34:10) What You Can Expect From The WHOOP x Natural Cycles° Partnership(37:05) The Future of Women’s HealthFollow Dr. Elina Berglund Scherwitzl:LinkedInWebsiteFollow Natural Cycles°:InstagramYouTubeWebsiteSupport the showFollow WHOOP:Sign up for WHOOP Advanced LabsTrial WHOOP for Freewww.whoop.comInstagramTikTokYouTubeXFacebookLinkedInFollow Will Ahmed:InstagramXLinkedInFollow Kristen Holmes:InstagramLinkedInFollow Emily Capodilupo:LinkedIn 

I really understand what it's like to be a busy woman in the middle of life where you have like children, work, friends, a lot going on. I think the integration with WOOP is great because also it's a device that doesn't have a screen, right? It cannot really bother you. So it measures silently and then the data feeds into the WOOP app and then connects with natural cycles for everything related to reproductive health. I think we have this incredible opportunity to help women navigate. these stages of their life with more grace and dignity than what's been afforded to us in the past. Definitely. Dr. Alina, Berglan Sherwitzel, welcome to the Whoop Podcast.

Thank you. I am so excited to talk to you today. Number one, you're just a badass human, a force of nature, and you have developed a piece of technology that is helping millions of women. and we are here at Woop so excited for this integration. So natural cycles. I think innovation always starts with a problem that you're trying to solve. So if you don't mind, just what is the problem you're trying to solve when you came upon this idea of developing an app to be able to help us understand our cycles?

Yes, it was quite long ago now. It was 2012. and I'm originally a particle physicist, and I was part of the Higgs discovery at the time, which led to Nobel Prize. Which is phenomenal. Congratulations. Thank you.

It's an unlikely origin story coming from being a physicist, but actually not really. So I've heard you talk about this before, so I feel like there's more parallels than we appreciate. Yeah, it was such a pivotal moment in my life. And I guess the red thread is that I'm very passionate about data science, And around that time, I was looking for a natural contraception for myself. And there was no, like, effective, easy-to-use method on the market.

I wanted to, like, give my body a break from hormones before getting pregnant in a few years. I'm thinking, what can I do in the meantime? And because I was a scientist, I had access to, you know, all scientific publications. And I realized that the body temperature changes with your hormones. So, like, you can figure out when you ovulate, you. can figure out when you're fertile, definitely not fertile. And I was like, wow, if I'd only known this before, and I started creating this algorithm for myself initially. But then me and my husband, who's my co-founder, we quickly realized that this is a huge unmet need. So many women and couples

are in need of either a hormone-free, side-effect-free contraceptive method, or you can also use it to get pregnant. It's kind of like the two sides of the two sides of the same. the same coin. Of course, of course. Because I think a lot of women just default to the pill for a contraceptive, right? For contraception, for obvious reasons, right? You know, it's, you know, pretty darn convenient. It does potentially come at a cost, right? And I think the evidence is maybe a little unclear as to what that cost exactly is, but this gives women beautiful alternative that is actually quite accurate. Can you just talk through how your method or your algorithm, how accurate it is relative to, I guess, something like the birth control? Yes, absolutely.

And indeed, like when it comes to birth control, there's no one-size-fits-all. Right, of course. Women are different or they might need different things throughout their reproductive lifetime. So natural cycles, we've now performed 30 clinical studies, many of them investigating the effectiveness as a contraceptive method. and is 93% effective with typical use and 98% effective with perfect use, which means that... So the app gives you red days when you're fertile need to use protection to avoid pregnancy. So perfect use just means that you actually do use protection on that day. And when it comes to the algorithm, it's actually 99.5% effective.

So it means like most pregnancies actually happen with typical use because maybe you choose to risk it on those red days. or maybe the condom fails you. So the algorithm is actually very accurate. So to put into perspective, the contraceptive pill is also 93% with typical use. Those methods that are inside your body, you can forget about it, like the IUD, those are more effective. But just using, for instance, condoms alone is less effective. So it's similarly to the pill. You're also FDA approved, which is no small feat.

And the only, I guess, natural birth control method that is FDA-approved, is that correct? Is there at this point on the market? Yes, it's FDA cleared. FDA cleared. A small distinction between as a medical device for contraception. And indeed, like, it's the most effective over-the-counter FDA-cleared method for contraception, for instance. It's the only digital method that is FDA cleared on the market. Yeah, there's really nothing like it out there.

Yeah, that's incredible. Well, congratulations. I just know how it's not easy to get through the FDA. Yeah. It took many years. It takes many, many years. And I think that is a comment on the quality of what you're providing and the efficacy behind the science. So congratulations.

It's incredible. Thank you. We now actually have five FDA clearances, and this is actually how we will be able to launch with WOOP because we have a, what's called a PCCP, meaning that we can do a clinical study and validate the integration with WOOP. And if it passes certain criteria, we can launch it and be FDA clear with that launch. Talk through the integration. You know, what can members expect when they, in terms of the experience the feature?

Yeah. So one important part of natural cycles and the algorithm is that it takes, by, you know, markers into account, right? So it's not just your period or your cycle. It measures temperature. It takes also heart rate into account. So you need a device and you need a device that you sleep with because we measure during the night. That's the most important data for us. So whoop is a great wearable to measure with because if you use a whoop, you're also very likely to sleep with it, right? So it's a 24-7 device. And it's a very seamless experience if you wear your wop. and then the algorithm of natural cycles will read your biomarkers, put that into the algorithm

and return your fertility status if you use it for contraception or planning pregnancy, but you can also use it, for instance, during perimenopause. Amazing, and we'll get into that in one second. Is the information that you get pretty binary, like red or green, or is there a confidence interval associated? you know, how do you kind of distinguish between, oh, highly confident versus? It depends how you use it. So if you use it for birth control, you get red and green days, very clear.

Red days, use protection, green days, you're good to go. Okay. But if you use it to plan a pregnancy, we have kind of a scale of red days because really the most fertile days in your cycle is the day you ovulate in the two days before. And then you're fertile for six days in total, but those other days, days in your fertile window are still not that likely to get pregnant. So you kind of need to know what are your most fertile days when you want to get pregnant. And then we also have a mode for following pregnancy, postpartum and perimenopause, which is a little bit different.

Amazing. Amazing. And you just recently, I mean, I'm sure it's been years in development, but talk me through the perimenopause. You mentioned off camera that you're beginning that transition. So maybe talk through, again, you're kind of solving problems in real time for yourself, which we all get to benefit from, but maybe talk through kind of how you thought about that process and where you are today with that information. Yeah, indeed. I mentioned to you before, I'm kind of patient zero for both my personal need for the natural birth control method, then planning pregnancy. We managed to conceive our daughter on the first try, which we felt like we had to document to the world because We didn't want people to think that the contraceptive version failed.

You're like, we were planning this. Yeah, like, okay, we're going to try on this day. Yeah. And luckily, we actually managed to get pregnant on that day. That's incredible. But she's now, she just turned 12. So this is a while ago. But now also I'm starting to go through early paramenopause,

which I really only fully realized when we were developing this feature, natural cycles. So what we do with the paramedopause mode is that, again, we take in your cycle data, your symptom data, your biomarker data to understand where you are in that journey. Are you at all in paramenopause? Are you an early, mid, late stage paramedopause? Or have you already gone through menopause? Because different things happen with your hormones throughout this transition. Right. So that we have to develop a whole new algorithm with our science team. And I think it's very empowering because I think. feel like now when us millennials are starting to go through paramedopause, we will, we will talk about

it. It will no longer be taboo in that sense that it has been. And we want to figure out what's going on with our bodies. So I'm in early parametopause, which means like my progesterone is getting low and that has certain cycle characteristic with it. So you've tested your blood biomarkers and you've been able to see that your progesterone has declined or is, you know, has declined or is out of the data. We don't even, so if you measure it in blood, you only see it a snapshot that day. Totally. So what we actually see is like how this shifts over time because we follow the cycle and we follow the ovulation pattern and we follow the symptoms over time. And temperature is actually a proxy for progesterone. It's the progesterone that rises after ovulation that warms your body.

Right, right. So what I can see. So a lack of when the temperature doesn't increase as much, that's an indicator that you're probably not producing as much progestrone as you typically would during that. Exactly. And also usually what happens during that phase is that your cycle actually gets shorter. So the time between ovulation and your next period, the luteal phase gets shorter. And often many people, many women don't know that. They think, okay, cycles will get longer. Right. And that happens only in later perimenopause. Right. Because your period can stay the same, but you can start to have these. fluctuations which are kind of early indicators that are you're in this pre-perimenopause state

yeah indeed indeed and it can start happening quite early when I conceive my son at the age of 34 I realized that already my progesterone was a bit low so I took extra progesterone when I conceived him because I had two miscarriage just before which is very common so when you start to understand what your hormones are doing you can really truly be empowered totally The technology you built is incredibly empowering. I mean, every woman should understand her body. And, you know, I have a daughter as well. And she uses natural cycles and, you know, just more of, you know, I got her on, you know, early just to just to your point to get to understand your body.

You know, not that she's trying to use it as a birth control method right now, you know, but she will in the future, you know. And it's really, I think, given her a sense of empowerment, you know, in terms of understanding what these cycle phases look like. and what to expect. And when you know what to expect, you can get, you know, a sense of what's normal for you, you know, and because there's so much variation, understanding your own baseline becomes really important. And maybe just talk about your baseline and how you think about that in terms of what you've built here and how you expect women to use this information. Yes, indeed, most of our users come in because they want to have a natural birth control method

or they want to start a family. But once they start using it, usually what they talk about is how empowered they feel by just understanding what's going on in their bodies, understanding their cycle. We have, for instance, like a reminder when PMS might happen before your period comes, and we get the most amazing testimonials from our users.

I remember one user reached out and said, I was sitting there crying on the couch, and then I got the notification from natural cycles that my PMS is here and now it all makes sense to me. So I feel like we're really the companion for women throughout these different stages, throughout your cycle. And I feel very humbled and grateful that I get to build something like that that makes an impact.

For perimenopause, how are you able to distinguish kind of pre-perry and menopausal status, like just literally using the temperature data? Indeed. So we tell them, we have basically five stages that we tell a woman where she's at, either before perimenopause, so not yet in paramedopause, early paramedopause, mid-perimenopause, late paramedopause, or in menopause. And we establish that based on the biomarkers, the cycle, and the symptoms, because you need to combine it all to really understand what's going on. some women are using hormonal birth control in order to manage symptoms of perimenopause. Can they still use natural cycle? How does that change temperature? Indeed, in paramenopause mode at natural cycles, you can be on hormonal birth control and use it at the

same time, not for the contraceptive method, because we need to measure ovulation, and ovulation doesn't happen if you're on contraceptive pill, for instance. But in paramedopause, yes, you can still use the paramedopause mode if you're on hormonal birth control. That will be really wonderful for women because I know, you know, so many of my friends are using birth control just to deal with your regular periods and, you know, just to try to manage some of the symptoms. And it's actually quite effective hormone or birth control. And but you're obviously masking a lot of these underlying, you know, symptoms.

And so you don't necessarily know what stage you're in, right? So this is actually, could be a unique source of insight that you can't otherwise get, even from blood potentially. Indeed, because indeed hormonal birth control, it takes away your natural cycle, right? So it induces a bleeding every 28 days by the hormones in the pill. So it's not a period per se. So indeed, also when you use it in our paramedopause mode, it's, we cannot really see what's happening with your true cycle.

But what we can see is the symptom. You can also use it alongside HRT to see, like, is it managing your symptom? Are you feeling better? But indeed, like, also for us, we cannot really see what's happening with your ovulation because your ovulation is taken away, basically. Do you have enough data? I know you have 30 papers that have gone through peer review looking at naturally cycling women and your technology.

Do you have any perimenopausal data yet or enough data to start analyzing? We did three clinical studies. ahead of the launch of our paramedopause mode. Amazing. And there's so much to do there because there's so little few papers published on paramedopause in total. They compare to, for instance, pregnancy. We're collecting, of course, even more data now after launch to, and there's so much to do. Our science team is busy.

I know, I know. It's definitely an area that I'm very interested in for all the same reasons you are, probably. But I actually have a paper in review right now that, is looking at heart rate amplitude. So part of my expertise is in sleep and circadian kind of sciences. And what we saw looking at kind of second to second amplitude data, heart rate amplitude and skin temperature data, is that it predicts symptoms, severity, and frequency in both, well, in menstrual cycling, in women who have a natural menstrual cycle, and then both perimenopause and menopause. You know, this is a feasibility pilot, way more work to do, but it's in review right now,

so we'll see what happens. But I think to your point, to my point, like, There's a lot to do. And I think these data that we both have access to give us a window into the women's physiology that is just unprecedented. So I think we have this incredible opportunity to help women navigate these stages of their life with more grace and dignity than what's been afforded to us in the past. Definitely. So we should probably do some science together. We should a thousand percent do some signs together. I saw your eyes perk up. So I was like, I wonder if she'll bite on this. Yeah, definitely.

But yeah, we absolutely should. And we need more brains, you know, on the case. Right now it's literally just me. So I'll connect you with our chief science officer. Yeah, that would be amazing. Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited to take this work forwards and see what we find. But I think some interesting modeling to be done.

Definitely. So we talked about this a little bit, but, you know, one of the things I'd love about your platform is how supportive. it is you're never in a scenario where you're yelling at women, right? Like you you kind of approach its birth control, fertility, paramedipause. I mean, these can be sensitive topics. And I think we have gotten to a phase where millennials were way more open, you know, talking about these life transitions. But how does your app think about that relationship with your members? Yeah, that's a very important part. That's something I also learned along the way coming from the science perspective. I thought, like, that's all that matters, but I realized that communication, tone of voice,

it matters just as much. So we've taken the stance that we want to be kind of like, our tone of voice is like big sister, if you will, so we don't, women's playing. We don't talk down to our users. So like that's supportive. You know, we don't like, we don't like, we don't like, we don't want to be harsh. We want to help with education and information, avoid misinformation. but we don't want to do it in like a woman's planning way.

So indeed like big sister, supportive, like a friend, so like a companion in a way. So the information is all there. Like for instance, we send tidbits of information in our messages in the app. So it's not also overwhelm all at once. And we've seen that our users really, really appreciate this. They really feel like Natural Cycles is like a friend that's they're going through life with. Yeah. That's amazing. Now, you know, just having the sleep data, one of the things that we've seen in the data is,

I guess, like, four years prior to when you are kind of officially in perimenopause, we see sleep fragmentation increase, but by quite a lot. So it's happening, you know, just even before you even enter perimenopause. Are those data that, are you looking at those data currently? I'm sure that you are. You have obviously other integrations as well. Or that's a potential insight that we can use in the model. to just understand where you're at, obviously combining that with temperature and some of these other signals, amplitude potentially, you know, could give us some insight. Yeah, just wonder your thoughts on that. Yeah, we're actually launching a sleep feature in our app now in June.

I realized when this is coming out in August, June has already been. Right, right. But I think that will also really help us connect sleep together with all the other data and information that we have. So indeed, that's very interesting. And personally, I feel like sleep is really the key to everything. So when I worked at CERN, I remember my boss said, like, now there's no time to sleep anymore. Now we have to discover the Higgs particle. And I was like, no, but I have to sleep. I don't function without sleeping. But that was during the time when sleep was not trendy. Right. And now I'm so happy that the world has realized how important sleep is. I know. I know.

it's really now it's kind of seen as criminal to be dismissing sleep right as an important function it was already then no i i i same i you know i was at prince university for 13 years and same sort of thing you know our president wore our t-shirt that sleep is for the week and you know which was just a kind of a funny like coffee shop t-shirt which local coffee shop made the t-shirt and but but that was absolutely the sense of it on campus that you kind of you know sleep was really for lazy people you know and If you were sleeping, you weren't doing important work. So, yeah, I definitely had to fight that narrative whilst I was there. But it's been so cool over the last, you know, really decade or so, you know, in some to see that shift, you know,

and people in these really kind of influential positions, these folks in power who have a lot of control over the people underneath them are starting to see the value in sleep. So I think, as we know for women in particular, and not that it doesn't matter for men, but, I mean, one of the, the things that we see in our data is that women are more vulnerable to a lack of sleep, you know, to irregular sleep. And in it, in the more variability in kind of sleep regularity, the more variability in the menstrual cycle, you know, so it's less predictable, right? With, you know, less sleep, shorter sleep, more irregular sleep. So the connection to your point, you know, is, is profound, right? So helping, I think women put the pieces of this puzzle together from a behavioral standpoint is very important.

And so how do you think about the behavioral piece? Obviously, sleep is huge, right? Exercise, right? We know, you know, if you're training appropriately, not over training, you know, under training, it has, exercise has a profoundly important and positive impact on our hormonal profile. Is that something that you kind of think about? Obviously, this integration will be amazing in that regard.

Yeah. No, indeed sleep and activity are like two very fundamental parts to. to well-being and everything in life. And especially like going through paramedopause, I feel like this is even more important. Totally. So I think partnership with Whoop, helping our women connect all the dots

from hormones to cycle to sleep to activity is a very big piece. I think one of the, just for our members listening, as a reminder, one of the features on Whoop is called Strain Coach. and it basically your strain coach will calibrate based on your recovery. So strain is basically how much, how hard should you work your heart today based on your capacity, which is which recovery is a measure of.

And we see in our data that individuals who follow strain coach actually get fitter over time. So I think women who are coming into this experience who maybe, you know, are trying to conceive or are trying to minimize symptoms related to perimenopause, you know, thinking about potentially the use of strain coach. And then this is something that we can look at in the data. Does that minimize symptoms? Does it, you know, in both paramedopause and menopause? But I think kind of, again, putting this puzzle together is an incredible opportunity, you know, for us, you know, to look at these two data sets and be able to create an experience that really helps women understand how to apply their effort. You know, I think at the end of the day,

you know, you help women know what to do. Right. Yeah. And, and I, I think that is such, you know, going back to this idea of feeling empowered, you know. Yeah. No, in the end, I think it's really about, like, empowering women with the knowledge they need to be in charge of their health. Yeah. And, yeah. I love that. There are, you've probably, in your time, come up against a lot of misconceptions related to cycle tracking.

You know, there's lots of different methodologies out there. Just maybe talk through how you've thought about that and how that's informed. the experience that you've built for women. Unfortunately, women's health is so full of misinformation and also not enough education. Totally. I'm surprised now my kids are growing up here in the U.S., and they've actively decided to have no sex education in schools. And don't worry about my kids because I thought about it all the time at home,

but in other families, maybe they will be less so. Now 13 years into natural cycles, I'm of course very, very into this topic, but it's still so important for me to just talk to women out there. Because I realized, you know, going to a dinner the other day talking about natural cycles, I realized that many women still don't know that they're not fertile every day of the cycle, for instance. Because that's something they are taught when they're young, even though it's not true that you can get pregnant every day of the cycle. It's not true. You can only get pregnant on the day. you ovulate and sperm can survive five days leading up to it, which makes the six-day fertile window. Also, many women don't know that being on hormonal birth control actually doesn't give you a period,

but it gives you bleeding and juice by the pill. Exactly. So many women then think, like, oh yeah, I have a very regular period. Everything is fine. But then maybe they realize going off the pill that they might have PCOS or PMOS, it's now called. So I feel like there's, they're, there's still so much out there and there's still so much information education that is needed from my young age. Yeah. Early in natural cycles, women used a thermometer and would input those data. Just talk about how you've evolved from that.

Indeed. So like our first product was with a basal thermometer that you measured in your mouth when you woke up. But now we've transitioned over the years. and more FDA clearances and launch more integration also developed our own wearable because we realized that our users, it's easier to sleep with a wearable than it is to remember to measure in the morning when you wake up with a thermometer. So you've just eliminated so much friction from the experience.

Indeed. It's like we've done clinical studies and showed like the effectiveness as a contraceptive method is the same, but the continuation rates, which is also very important, is much better with a wearable. Yeah. So we've eliminated the thermometer and instead we've gone wearable only. Incredible. Incredible.

What do you feel like women might underestimate about fertility, reproductive health and just early stages of perimenopause? One thing we hear a lot is that women often think it's always easy to get pregnant, that they don't realize until later in life when they want to get pregnant that it's not a given. And then that can come with a lot of disappointment, obviously, because it's a very tough time if you're trying for a long time. It's not happening.

I mean, hopefully it happens quickly, but it might not. So one study we've done is to show that time to pregnancy can be reduced if you use natural cycles first as a birth control method, rather than coming directly off the pill to start planning a pregnancy. Amazing. Say a little bit more about that. It makes sense, right? Because like if you've used natural cycles before rather than the pill, you, you already know your cycle better. You understand like, oh, actually I ovulate very regular or maybe I ovulated later in the cycle than I thought.

I mean, this myth that everyone has a 28th cycle and ovulate on the 14 is actually only 13% of cycles that are like that. So it's very good for. Wow, that's a huge misconception. Yeah, it's a huge misconception. And we actually published a paper in nature about that. Incredible. congrats. So it's good for each woman if you want to get pregnant relatively soon to kind of understand your own hormones, your own cycle. And then if you switch modes to plan pregnancy,

on average, you get pregnant faster than if you start using natural cycles coming to plan pregnancy directly off the hormonal birth control. However, the good news is that after one year, the likelihood of pregnancy is the same. So the hormonal birth control doesn't have long-term effects your fertility, it's really only that first year after quitting that it might delay your time to pregnancy. Your body's just recalibrating and kind of finding its footing. Exactly. Yeah. But today, more and more women decide to have children later in life. So if you're not super young, that one year can make a difference. Right. So it's a good thing to think about. And when it comes to paramenopause, I feel like the level of knowledge is quite low.

Right. So much variability between women that we haven't documented, right? So we don't even know what the spectrum of kind of normal experience actually really is. Yeah, indeed. And it can be also so different woman to woman. Like some people go through parmenopause or menopause without even noticing it. Right. Well, others suffer a lot. And everything is normal, right? So it's, it depends on you and your hormones and how you handle that. So yeah. a lot more guidance and help and support is needed. What are kind of the top pieces of advice based on the data that you receive do you give to women across these phases?

I don't know if you kind of look at the, you know, if you're able to kind of analyze the symptoms or, you know, what are the big pieces of pain that women feel when they're naturally cycling and when they're in perimenopause, you know, what do you find women are dealing with the most, I guess? Do you see patterns there? Many associate paramedopause and menopause with half-flashes, but that really comes only when your estrogen starts going a little bit crazy. And what we see is the most common symptom, which happens earlier, is actually anxiety. And that's a tough one to know what's happening.

Like, why am I feeling more anxious lately? And that can be in that early stage when your parmenopause, sorry, when your progesterone starts declining. The GABA receptor. Yeah. Yeah, the anxiety levels increase. And that I think is a very important thing to know because, you know, otherwise you might feel something is wrong with your life. Right, right. So it's maybe the anxiety that's impacting the sleep first potentially and worthy of addressing.

You know, it's just kind of this underlying feeling of just like, ma'h, you know? Yeah. And then just like you don't really know why you feel the way that you feel. Do you help women understand that that might be what's happening? I mean, there may be a reporting anxiety, I suppose. And then is there a solution for women? Do you kind of coach them through that? Or how does that work?

Yeah, we make them aware that this is a common symptom and why this is happening. And when it's happening and what they can kind of expect of that journey and the future. And then we also help them understand like, okay. okay, what can they do about it? Beyond just like, I think what does help as a first step is indeed like sleep, diet, exercise, also just being aware why you're feeling that anxiety. But if this is not enough, there is also HRT. So maybe in the early stages, just taking progesterone might help.

And then later on also estrogen. Right, right. Working with a healthcare provider, you know, to figure out what your needs are. That's amazing. All right. So a little bit about just the integration, which obviously we're so thrilled about. When we think about just how much women juggle on a day-to-day basis, you're a professional, obviously your family life, you have social life, and you know, you're maybe trying to get pregnant, trying not to get pregnant, dealing with symptoms really did pari menopause. I guess what's your pitch to women who might be listening to think, to, to motivate you.

them to be like, you know what, create this integration. I really understand what it's like to be a busy woman in the middle of life where you have like children, work, friends, a lot going on. I think the integration with with whoop is great because also it's a device that doesn't have a screen, right? It cannot really bother you, measure silently. And then the data feeds into the Woop app and then connects with natural cycles for or everything related to reproductive health and women's health.

So it's there when you want to look at it. But it's on your terms, right? It won't be invasive for you. When I think about just how distracting life is just generally in the 21st century, you know, we're getting pinged all the time, you know, whether it's Slack or e-mail or I really do value the fact that this is just kind of collecting in the background. And to your point, I can just choose.

when I go in and observe my data, look at my data. I totally agree. I love that. That's a feature, you know, to not a distract. And it's really just doing the work in the background and there for us when we're ready to use it. What can women expect from this integration in terms of like maybe a new or novel understanding of their health? Let's say we have a woman who is, you know, in her mid-20s, she's just gone off birth control, and she's looking for a way to kind of naturally track her cycles. You know, just maybe talk through kind of her experience. If she uses a whoop, it will measure seamlessly while she sleeps

and feed in her biomarker data into the algorithm of natural cycles. And then when she wakes up or during the day, when she wants to, she can check her fertility status of the day. So basically she will see that it's, a green day, if she's good to go, or if it's a red day when she's fertile or might be fertile and need to use protection, she does not want to get pregnant. In addition to that, there's also a lot more insights that you get into your body and understanding of what's going on in general. So you can, we have a learn tab where one can go in and kind of explore, but also like messages

and a calendar and a prediction to know like, okay, when will I be fertile in the future? When will I get my period? When will I get my PMS? We also have AI insights that you can also track symptoms like when maybe you're not feeling that well or when you have uterus pain. And then we get the AI insights. You get prediction when you might feel that again. So you can kind of plan your life around.

It's amazing. When you think about the future of women and health. health care, where do you feel most optimistic? Well, I feel like we're really getting into an exciting area where we understand more and more about women's health or health in general. Like with wearables like whoop, we can measure what's going on in our bodies and we can be more and more preventative when it comes to our health and not necessarily, you know, have to fix something when it's broken, but we can really be on top of how we live our lives to live our lives to the fullest. And I think that's very exciting and it's an exciting phase to be in and see what's

going to happen in the future. And on behalf of all the women, we are just so grateful for just all the work that you have put into helping us navigate these transitions with, you know, grifs and hope and optimism. And so you are just incredible human and very grateful for all your work and so proud of this partnership between natural cycles and Woop. So, Thank you. Me too. Thank you so much. And thank you for having me on the podcast. Of course.