WHOOP Podcast - Trauma surgeon Jamie Coleman on saving lives and how she's using WHOOP to better her own life.

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

Here at WHOOP, we are inspired by the work of doctors, nurses, and medical professionals, especially during these trying times. Dr. Jamie Coleman joins Will Ahmed to discuss her experiences as a trauma surgeon, plus how she uses WHOOP herself, and to help her colleagues lead better lives. Jamie shares why she became a surgeon (3:30), what it's like working in a male-dominated field (4:16), how a matter of minutes or even seconds can be the difference between life and death (9:48), staying calm under pressure (12:10), how emotion in the trauma bay can prove dangerous (18:40), coping with death (22:34), being unable to save a patient (28:41), the struggles trauma surgeons face (32:42), how her colleagues can optimize their lives with WHOOP (40:10), what she has learned from WHOOP (51:41), how to deal with red recoveries (54:19), and what she hopes to accomplish as she uses WHOOP to study surgeons (1:04:16). Also, Will answers some of your most frequently asked questions (1:06:42). Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks. Welcome to the Whoop Podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, the founder and CEO of Whoop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. We build technology across hardware and software and analytics to better understand the human body. And I want to thank Fast Company, which just last week named Whoop the most innovative company in the world for wellness, certainly a humbling moment for us and an incredible recognition and we'll do our best to live up to it. It certainly feels like an important time for that. I'm just wishing all our listeners the best of health during this difficult time with coronavirus. I can feel how it's affected us as a business. I can feel how it's affected different governments and leaders

and strategies. So anyway, our thoughts here at Woop are with you. and your families. We have an exciting guest this week, and also it seems like a timely guest, in Dr. Jamie Coleman. Jamie is a Denver-based trauma surgeon and is also a professor, writer, and media health expert.

Now, we recorded this before coronavirus got going, so we don't talk about coronavirus. However, we do dive deep into the lens of what it's like to be a trauma surgeon. I mean, this is one of the most amazing fields, if you think about it, in terms of what these people have to go through and work through in order to keep society healthy and safe. We discuss what it's like to work in the male-dominated field of surgery,

how a matter of minutes or even seconds can be the difference between life and death, the physical, mental, and emotional toll that her line of work takes on her body, and how she balances her busy career with raising two children. Now, throughout all of this, Jamie has been a whoope. member as well. And so we talk about how WOOP has impacted her life and how she's using WOOP, in fact, in a study to understand the way that sleep and recovery patterns are affecting trauma surgeons. You know, in some ways we've looked at using WOOP data to improve athletes or to improve executives. Jamie's looking at how to use WOOP to improve trauma surgeons

and making sure that trauma surgeons themselves are as healthy as possible. It's an audience, believe it or not, it's a group that because of their long shifts and because of the things they have to go through, suffers from extremely high rates of depression, PTSD, alcoholism, and even drug abuse. And these are the people that are really designed to make all of us healthier. This is an incredible podcast if you're interested in the life of a trauma surgeon. And, you know, I think right now all of our minds are on doctors across the world who are doing incredibly brave work to keep society safe. So without further ado, I'm going to turn this over to Jamie. Jamie, welcome to the WOOP podcast. Thank you for having me. It's

great to be here. So we're recording this in Boston at WOOP headquarters. We've gotten to know each other over really, I think, the past year. And it's been amazing to see how you've introduced WOOP to the larger surgeon community and even the medical community broadly. I'm excited to dive into that. I think first of all, let's just start with, did you know you were going to be a trauma surgeon when you grew up? Like, is that, was that always the goal? Oh, that's a great question. You know, actually, I come from a family of engineers. So definitely a science-oriented family. And also very fortunate, my grandmother actually was a microbiologist. But she actually wanted to go to medical school. But back in the 1940s, that wasn't really the ladylike or the thing to do.

So she became a microbiologist. And so I always grew up with a love of science. And, you know, I always knew I wanted to go to medical school. And surgery just connected with me. Trauma surgery, I think I didn't fall in love with until I was in my surgery training. But yes, I definitely went into medical school specifically to be a surgeon. And the interesting thing about, well, There's a lot of interesting things about trauma surgery. But one of the most obvious is that something like less than 6% are women. Yes. There aren't that many of us.

You know, it's funny people often ask me, oh, well, how many women are there in trauma surgery? And I was like, well, let me just pull out my phone because I think I have all of their cell phone numbers. In a sense that there aren't that many women in surgery that is getting better. But surgery as a whole has been a very male-dominated specialty within medicine. for much longer than even a lot of the other specialties and then trauma surgery in particular. Now, just describe broadly speaking, what does a trauma surgeon do? That's a great question. A lot of people get a little bit confused with this.

So when I say I'm a trauma surgeon, typically the first thing I hear is, oh, so you work in the ER. I was like, well, I'm not an ER doctor. So trauma surgeons are first and foremost surgeons. So we go through medical school, and then we do five years of surgery training. So we're all board certified and general surgery. And then trauma is a surgical subspecialty, just like cardiothoracic or plastics or transplant. And so then we do additional training and trauma and surgical critical care, so taking care of ICU patients beyond that. And I like to tell everybody, I operate on everything but bone and brain.

So I take care of patients who have been injured by any sort of mechanism. So gunshot wound, stab wound, car accident, fall from a ladder. and we operate on basically everything. So heart, lungs, intestines, so everything but bone and brain. So I tell everybody, kind of simplify it. And you're literally saving lives. I mean, every person who comes in is under some severe stress or severe injury, right? Absolutely.

You know, I tell people I'm one of the least popular people or a type of physician you can have because no one wakes up in the morning planning to meet me. Right. Right. I'm like, you know, okay, I have a doctor's appointment or I have a problem that might need surgery and I'm going to get online and I may Google somebody or call a friend and get a recommendation. No one wakes up in the morning. They put on their shoes. They get in their car. They never plan on meeting me. Because if you're meeting me, you have been severely injured. How many trauma surgeons are there in the United States? So if we look at trauma surgeons who, especially we look at academic centers or academic trauma surgeons, whose primary job is trauma surgery, it's under 2000. Isn't that crazy? It's a pretty small. I know.

That number is like maybe a hundred times less than I thought it was going to be? Correct. We are a very small segment of not only the medical profession in general, but even surgeons specifically. We're a small segment. And we're at a national shortage, actually, because of it. Which is going to tie to some of what we're going to talk about here. which is around just the lifestyle of being a trauma surgeon.

Yes. So at what point did you recognize, so let's back up for saying, how long have you been a trauma surgeon? So I finished my residency. This is my 10th year out of residency. Okay, so 10 years. At what point over the course of those 10 years did you realize, wow, this is a group of people that is really putting their bodies through hell?

You know, actually, I recognize that as a medical student. So it was very fortunate. So it was always obvious. Yeah, no, it was very obvious. I was very fortunate in that I trained at three of the busiest trauma centers in the country. I did my medical school at the University of Tennessee in Memphis, followed by my residency at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, which many people are familiar with. And then I did a two-year trauma and surgical critical care fellowship at Grady Memorial in Atlanta. And so I still remember very acutely as a third-year medical student watching one of my attendings, one of the surgeons,

trauma surgeons, in the middle of a 24, 30, 36-hour stint. And I'm watching him be able to orchestrate, because it's really what it is. You know, when you're in the operating room, it's not just what the surgeon's doing, but it's what your trainee or your residence doing. It's what your scrub nurse is doing. It's what the anesthesiologist is doing. There's so many moving parts. It's fascinating.

Yeah, just to sit back and watch him. And I was just amazed at his ability to know everything. and yet to be able to focus on what was important at that exact moment, knowing that what was important at that moment could be very different two minutes later. Describe the scene that you were just starting to outline there of being on the job, right? So someone comes in, gunshot wound, boom, go from there. Let's take a gunshot wound to the chest or a stab wound to the chest. Patient comes into the emergency room.

And again, I think having that experience, being able to see some, somebody and say they're sick. Yeah. Right? Because I tell people it's trying to put a puzzle together, but it's trying to put a puzzle together with very limited information, right? He can't talk to me. He can't tell me what his past medical history is or what happened to him or what

surgeries he's had. And yet at the same time, it's under a time pressure, right? I don't have a whole lot of time to figure this out. And so we immediately take them to the operating room and you've got a hole. And you've got to figure out maybe two holes, maybe multiple holes. And you've got to figure out what's killing them right now. Because they can have multiple injuries. But what's the one that if I don't fix the next 10 minutes, it's going to end their life?

And it's literally 10 minutes. Correct. It can be shorter than that, actually, quite frankly, in some cases. So let's start with the basics. First thing you're doing is ripping their clothes off, right? Yep. We cut everyone's clothes off. Depending upon the type of injury, we may be in the,

the trauma bay, um, which is not the emergency, or it's part of the emergency room, depends on where you work. But we do some quick x-rays or do a quick ultrasound. Because again, you got to figure out where do I need to be, right? And they don't come into you telling you. So it's a little bit of deduction. Will you put this person under or are you going to be asking him, let's pretend to him, or are you going to ask him questions? Like, hey, where does it hurt or, you know, what's going on? When they're really sick. Yeah. You don't have time for. for that. And what's interesting is that then putting them under, you also have to be careful with. Because the body's physiology, you know, the body is just amazing. What it can cope with,

what it can account for. And there's so many mechanisms in place in the body to keep that heart going. But then once you put them under general anesthesia, we take away a lot of those mechanisms. Right. And we can actually induce death. Yeah, that's crazy. With anesthesia because we've just gotten rid of all their compensatory mechanisms. Isn't that fascinating? It's like your body knows what it needs. So you have to also know, correct. So you also have to know, okay, well, maybe I need to give some blood. Maybe I need to pause for a second, resuscitate this patient a bit more before we do the general anesthesia. And sometimes, honestly, we are prepping the patient with them awake. And as soon as they push the drugs, we start cutting. So at this point, let's pretend you've taken the, you've gotten the

the guy's clothes off. He's still awake. He's maybe screaming, right? And you've identified the wound. Yes. Right. And you now need to do something about it. How are you managing that situation? Who else is in the room? What are you saying? Well, in the emergency room, it's actually quite a few people. You can have anywhere from two to four nurses. You can have anywhere from two to four or five residents. You know, I think the main thing is I tell my trainees is that you're goal in the trauma bay or even the OR is just pour ice water over the whole room. Because being fast isn't about necessarily being fast. It's about being efficient. Totally. Whether that's about communication, whether that's about hand motion in the operating room. You know, repeating a movement

three or four times, even if you're doing it quickly, isn't fast. So I think part of it is really outlining for people the critical steps, because there's a lot going on. You're trying to draw blood. You're trying to put the stickers on to get their heart rate. You're trying to get a blood pressure. Why are you drawing blood? Great question. So we draw blood for a number of reasons. One is, again, there are patients that are so sick that you just look at them and you know that they're what we call paria rest, meaning that they're about to die. Yeah. But then there are patients who are still sick, but a little bit less sick. And so there are lab values that can help tell us how sick that person is. Their pH of their blood, for instance. Interesting. We also have what's called a

tag, which looks at how the body is clotting or not clotting at that point. So then I know, okay, they need regular kind of red blood cells or they need platelets or they need fresh frozen plasma. It helps me figure out there's surgical bleeding and there's medical bleeding. So surgical bleeding is a hole in the aorta or a hole in the heart, in which case I need suture, I need instruments. I'm going to fix that. But then there's medical bleeding because a patient's cold because they're acedotic. It then makes it so that their blood doesn't clot normally. Oh, wow.

So there's, again, there's all this physiology that's playing into a hole in the heart. And this is a puzzle you have to figure out in minutes. I mean, that's what's so amazing about it. But to give people perspective, there are times that a patient will roll in the door or they'll land from the helicopter, let's say, and we'll go straight from helipad to OR. or we'll go, I'll bring EMS with me. Yeah. And go straight.

I mean, I had a case with a gentleman who'd been literally stabbed in the back while working out at a gym. Wow. Came up with a knife in, you know, literally in between his shoulder blades and extremely pale. And I knew he was pari arrest, he was going to die. We just went straight to the operating room. I didn't even stop by the emergency room because sometimes you just can't spare those 10 or 15 minutes. for those patients. And in a case like that,

what's the first thing you're doing? Taking the knife out of the back? Well, so you have to be careful with that. Yeah. So what we did for this patient is we actually intubated him. So we couldn't lie him flat, right? Because he's got a large, you know, six, seven inch knife handle anyway, sticking out of his back.

Wow, seven inch knife is enormous. Yeah, I know it was big. and so we intimated him on his side in the operator and we meeting my anesthesia colleagues and pulled it very quickly and then flipped him and then opened his chest we did what's called a clam shell thoracotomy or a bilateral interilateral thoracotomy rolls off the tongue where we literally open from side to side all the way across the sternum across the chest bone and it's known as a clam shell because then you almost like pop the hood so you literally lift the chest up like a clam shell and he did he had a hole in his aorta just off of the heart

on the posterior wall of the aorta and we did in that you have seconds to minutes to control that I mean if you think about it that is blood coming out we call it audible bleeding when someone's bleeding and you can hear it oh my gosh because it's at such a speed so again you know there's every situation's a bit different, which is part of the chaos and part of the love for the job. Now, how do you create a calm in that environment? I mean, is it just that you've done it so many times that you're comfortable with it? Are there mental tricks that you're playing to yourself? Do you think about breathing? Do you try to focus so much on the moment? Are you trying to even visualize something else to take you away from the moment? How do you own that moment?

Definitely, I think for me, is getting in the moment. And I do think training is a huge part of it. I was very fortunate to train at very busy trauma centers. And when people are trying to ask me, well, what's busy? You know, I tell them my busiest night in Chicago, July 4th, we had, I still can't remember if exactly 22 or 23, but 22 to 23, patients with gunshot wounds that came in over a four-hour period. So 22 people with gunshot wounds over. over four hours and so you just learn you know a lot of and this is what I love too right

with this idea of exercise and professional sports into this is it it's all about load bearing right load tolerance in the sense of you get overloaded totally so that you grow so that you get better so you learn how to be efficient so you learn and you see what happens when someone isn't cool calm and collected in there and you see that that adds time that you just don't have and I think for me it's always having a plan your plan can change and I stress that because again as you know or as I think a lot of people can imagine when you go in not necessarily knowing what the injuries are what you're going to do dependent upon what the injuries are your plan's going to change so accepting that your plan can change but always having a plan and trying to really

focus on the next step and getting everybody focused on one or two things if you give people too much to focus on, whether it's too many words, too much emotion, too many different directions, you're just not going to move forward smoothly. And so I think having the opportunity to one, having trained and seen a lot, and then secondly, learning from other people's mistakes. Yeah. Seeing a trauma, what we call an activation or, you know, a really sick patient coming in and how that's managed. Seeing that done well and seen it done poorly. And you learn from both.

Describe a time where you've seen it done poorly. You know, I think the main mistake that I see is emotion and energy. And I try to tell my trainees this and that everything you do when you're in that room is conveying energy. Totally. So you don't have, I mean, definitely yelling is bad, right? I mean, that's a volume. We know that that's not how you lead people.

But also rapidity of speech and how much you're saying and how far you're saying it and do this, do that, do that. That's conveying a nervous sort of energy. Totally. You don't have to raise your voice. If you're running around the room pacing. Yeah. Instead of picking a spot, being calm, using words, I learned this from one of my mentors

is I'm a bit of a whisperer in the trauma bay. That's powerful, yeah. You know, plus I'm little, you know, right? so I can sneak up on people. But, you know, coming up behind people, and be like, hey, think we're ready for an X right now. Right? I mean, and then they're like, oh, yeah, okay.

Wow. And so it's learning different leadership skills and communication skills to get your team because you'd always get to pick your team, right? And it's a different team every day. And getting no matter who is on your team, but getting you to that finish line in the most efficient way possible.

That, I think, is what I'm still working on, right? It's always trying to be better tomorrow than you are today type of thing. But seeing that done poorly, and I'll say that it's easy to get caught up in that emotion. You've got 10 people rushing around a patient, cutting clothes off, trying to start an IV, putting stickers on, trying to get a blood pressure, trying to draw blood. And everyone's trying to communicate and, you know, you've got your pre-hospital personnel there too who are telling you the story and you can see this person in front of you dying right it's an emotionally charged environment but i think being able to not really step out of it

but step into it but stepping into it deliberately yeah and with a goal of just shushing you know like putting on i guess it's almost like putting on the noise canceling headphones right but getting everybody to do that. I love what you said about thinking about your voice level and whispering as a way to maintain the room. I was watching this master class. Have you ever seen the master class? Yes. Yes. It's a great. It's a great service for people listening. But I was watching this guy, Voss, who was a hostage negotiator. And he was talking about how he would manage hostage negotiations and he described there's all there's sort of a number of different types of tones that your voice can take and his favorite in negotiating with hostages was what he called the late night

DJ voice oh right I like that welcome to 95 5 we're going to be putting on some slow jazz we're going to be soothing and right it's kind of similar to uh it's kind of similar to what you're just describing with that with that whisper and I can't can just picture you in that room. Yeah. Like with that voice calming everything down. Mm-hmm. So if I'm not nervous.

Right. No one else gets to be nervous. Totally. And I think it just gives people a sense of calm in that it's going to be fine. I tell everyone, it's going to be fine. And even if it's not fine, it's still going to be fine. Right? We joke all the time, the number one rule of surgery is all bleeding stops.

So it does. But I think, again, that, that rule is a little bit silly as it sound, but that rule in of itself is meant to give a sense of peace and give a sense of calm and that it's going to be fine. We're going to figure this out. How have you learned to cope with death in this job? I mean, you know, just from an outside perspective, you're literally, it feels like playing God in some of these roles. Death is tough, obviously. I think it's something that a lot of us struggle with for a variety of reasons. One is because my every day or every day that I go to work, I am witnessing someone's

worst day of their life. Right. Yeah, right. And so there is this sort of second victim kind of atmosphere that happens within medicine, whether it's my pre-hospital providers, my nurses, my team, and yes, even us. And I think it's got a lot of levels to it in the sense of witnessing something And I think part of it too is death is hard to witness. And I've said this before, and I've actually written about this, the toughest part of my job, is actually involved in talking to the family members. I bet. Because you're witnessing pain on a level. It's a visceral reaction.

And it's interesting. People ask me again, like the worst part of my job. And it's not actually talking to the family. It's in those moments before. it's walking down the hall the anticipation of it it's knowing that right now i've got a group of people sitting in a room who have no idea that their entire life has changed yeah from what they woke up to that morning what they envisioned their life to be what they hoped for what they dreamed for their plans and it's in that moment when i walk into the room and they look at you

with hope, with longing, love, and knowing that I'm about to extinguish it. Knowing that I'm about to throw them in a world into a brand new world and then just shut the door behind them into a new environment, a new atmosphere, a new life that they never imagined. And it's tough. incredibly tough what what is your mindset in delivering that news is your is your point of view that you need to be a shoulder for them to cry on is your point of view that you're there just to communicate information and let them be i think it depends on the family i think it depends on the situation and yes i definitely kind of have a bit of a system and doing it and that i try to be very clear very quickly

and sit and wait and let them have their time because they're going to have questions. But it's again, it's a surreal experience because you can just see them, you can see their mind trying to grasp the words and trying to internalize them and process them and try to make sense of them. And I absolutely, I stay.

And some families are, have questions. Some don't. Some want to hug you. Some say thank you, which I think is the hardest part. Are they ever angry? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, we've had lots of that.

Chairs thrown, punch is thrown. Oh, wow. And again, it's a reaction. It's a visceral sort of, it's almost like a fight or flight reaction, right? It seems somewhat uncontrollable. It is. Yeah. And it's anger at the situation.

anger at what you're telling them and they're not angry at me yeah and i know that and it's a matter of allowing them to go through that and be there for them as a support and every hospital i've worked i'm currently at denver health and again we have chaplains we have social workers we have a whole team of people to help as much as possible with whatever kind of help they need during those moments and i'm very grateful for that and how long would you say those conversations take runs the gamut from five minutes they walk out they leave they don't want to talk to you they don't want to hear what you have to say to an hour wow in terms of well what happened and what did you do and what kind of surgery did you perform and did they suffer and did they say

anything were they talking to you yeah I mean you get you get people who try to intellectualize it. Yeah. You get people who are purely from an emotional standpoint trying to understand it. So yes, I mean, we see all the things

and part of that comes not just from the immediate sort of I had a patient who died on the table who I couldn't save, but being in the ICU or the intensive care unit and families that have had a severely traumatically brain-injured patient.

Right. Loved one, right? Who's been in ICU for a week and it's not getting any better. So, yeah, I mean, we have discussions that last, like I said, from minutes to over an hour. Now, how many patients will you see in, let's say, a month? Oh, gosh, a month? I'd say about, so new patients in a day.

Oh, yeah, we'll do a day. Yeah, I was just saying a month. I'm like, that's a lot. Ask me to do a lot of math. 15 to 30. Okay, 15 to 30. And what percentage of them die? Well, luckily, a fairly small percentage.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. But there's situations you can't even control. Correct. And that's what, you know, I was about to say is that it's interesting because our trauma systems have become so good that people are getting to the hospital now that we're never getting to the hospital before. It's this constant. So we're getting sicker and sicker patients brought to us and trying your darnest and everything possible and using every resource you have to save them. But you're right.

There are people that come in that you just. cannot save and it's hard i say it all the time and that my brain will tell me that they were never mine to save but your heart still feels like they are and it's this battle that occurs every time you lose a patient do you find that your your job and has i mean it must but has changed the way you feel about things and just completely the rest of your life like i i can't imagine you sitting in like traffic and being stressed? You know what I mean? It just doesn't seem like that would be a rational way for your body to process stress. You know, it's funny. So I'm a mom. I have two young boys, three and seven. And I will say probably poor things. Like, you know, they definitely

sometimes catch that, right? And that, oh, mommy, I have a boo-boo. And I'm like, you know the rules. No blood, no Band-Aid. Like, I mean, you know. So you're not overly coddling of your children in part because you know the spectrum of injured or whatnot. Right. I think, you know, emotionally I am. I'm definitely from the emotional standpoint. I'm probably the weaker parent in that sense.

I like to baby them. But I think overall, though, what you said is true is that, you know, people start getting nervous or people start getting stressed about things. And I'm like, yeah, nobody's dying. Yeah, right. Like, everything must seem so... And even if they were dying, we'll figure that out. I mean, yes, it definitely takes a... It gives you a big perspective on life and your family

and what it really means to show your friends and family. You love them every day because today literally may be your last. It definitely gives me a perspective from that standpoint. Like a huge feeling of gratitude, I imagine. Yes, absolutely. Gratitude and really, trying to show people and communicate that you appreciate them and that you love them when you can. And I think not getting as stressed out about the little things. You know,

not getting, I love this statement is not getting lost in the thick of thin things. And that so much of our life is thinned things. It's our email inbox. It's, you know, traffic. It's my husband won't pick his socks up off the floor, hypothetically speaking, right? It's so much of the thin things that focusing on the thick things and that I have a family that I love very much. I have a job that I truly enjoy and I have a job that allows me to give back in a way and trying to focus on those things. Now, you strike me as potentially being a complete outlier as well, just in how healthy an attitude you seem to have about your profession. because what we also know is that, unfortunately, like, trauma surgery, trauma surgeons in general, have a ton of problems.

Yes, we do. Describe some of those problems. Well, you know, it's, well, really, it all starts with you. As you know, I've told you this story that, so my husband, I live at this interesting intersection. My husband's a former professional athlete. He played in the NFL. Yeah. And he's obsessed with Sports Center and all things, ESPN.

Sure. And you were on ESPN. And this was, you know, two, three years ago. And you were talking about the Major League Baseball study that you just completed and how I was taking these 20-year-old professionally conditioned athletes two to three days to recover from traveling. And I look at my husband and I was like, if it takes them two to three days to recover, I would love to see what my 60-year-old out of shape, you know, overweight partner looks like.

potentially like five days after doing 36 hours in a row. And this was several years ago. And so I started looking at it. It's true, they did a survey of surgeons. And out of 14 surgical subspecialties, trauma surgeons had the lowest quality of life score. One third of us screened positive for depression. Other papers have shown about 40% of us exhibit symptoms of PTSD. And the greatest number of hours of work.

of hours worked on average per week. And so it really got me thinking, wow, why us? I mean, medicine in general has a problem with depression and suicide. We lose the equivalent of an American medical school class, an entire medical school class. We lose the equivalent of that a year in physician suicide. Gosh, yeah, that's terrifying. And so when you think of that, and then to say, oh, wow, surgeons are outliers even from

the big group. But then you're talking about trauma surgeons being an outlier, even within surgeons, it makes you wonder. And you're right. The stress that we have, it's this chronic unpredictable stress because it's every day. Totally. You go in. You don't know what you're going to do. You don't know what injuries you're going to see.

You really have, you don't know if you're going to eat that day. You don't know if you're going to sit down that day. You have no idea what your day is going to look like. And it's this kind of chronic unpredictable stress. We know that surgery in of itself is stressful. we know that a surgeon to go into the operating room starts operating. They finish their operation. They leave.

Even if they tell you, yeah, no, that was an easy case. Not stressful at all. Their heart rate goes up. Their heart rate variability goes down. Test their salivary cortisol and their cortisol. They've had a spike. Totally. So even when we don't perceive being stressed, we're stressed.

Yeah. And it's doing that and the trauma activations, you know, trying to figure these patients out. and it's the critical care, it's tough decisions and the tough conversations. So it's a lot of very chronic and unpredictable stress. And because of that,

as a community, as a profession, trauma surgeons, we do. We have signs and symptoms of PTSD and depression. And it's, that is what's pushed me

and has motivated me in the space because we are needed. Yeah. It's not an obvious. option right like i mean it's a thousand percent you are needed we're needed how can we do this better how can we have longer healthier careers overall i tell people it's like being pregnant or a woman being pregnant and that you know the baby kind of gets first dibs on all your nutrients and your vitamins our patients get first dibs for us yeah that's a great analogy they get our empathy they get

our focus they get our patients they get our attention but then what suffers is everything outside of that. When we're tired, we wreck our cars. We lose our empathy to our families, to our friends. We focus everything that we have because we are tired and we are fatigued. And so it's like fight or flight. You figure out what's necessary until you give everything to your patience and then we suffer because of it. And we've got to do this better. So now describe the moment from seeing me on Sports Center and hearing about WOOP to the work that you've been doing with WOOP. Well, I'd already been a bit in that space because, again, as a female trauma surgeon

and a mom, it gives you a unique perspective just on that sort of things. I've probably kind of been in that space in terms of wellness and balance, which is the worst word on the planet. it. And so I saw this. And then I was on call one night. It was two o'clock in the morning. I just finished a case. And I saw this article that was comparing surgeons to professional athletes. Haven't been married to one. The article was a little hit or miss, but they made their point. They made their point where I'm like, yeah, okay, fine. But I don't have to go home and like sit in an ice tub, you know, after I finish my night of call. But it's two o'clock in the morning. And I was like, you know what? This is why.

I want to wear one of these because seeing the impact that whoop has made in sports in performance yeah faster pitches fewer non-contact injuries all around an industry or in general that is quote unquote for entertainment purposes yeah right so how can we parlay that into an industry that saves lives Yeah. And so it was funny. I sent out a tweet and I was like, oh, this is why I got to wear one of these. And next thing you know is in touch with your company. And we did really the first ever sort of continuous physiologic monitoring, 17 surgeons at my last institution for three months.

And it was great. So people who don't know, trauma surgeons on average work anywhere from 70, on average work about 70 hours. hours a week based on survey results. But a week can be over 90 hours. In fact, I just finished one, wait, what day is today? Today's Tuesday. I just finished one this weekend. I know. It's one of the other job casualties. I don't know what day it is. Lose the days of the week. Just finished 90 plus hours a couple days ago. And it includes, it absolutely includes periods of disrupted or no sleep. and so thinking about that and looking at it and saying because everyone knows we're tired it's like I tell people you know when a patient comes to you and you're like hey you know you're a bit overweight when

you talk about your way is a healthy weight the patient already knows that they're overweight but we also know that people that weigh themselves weigh less we know that data matters seeing what you look like matters and so I for an overweight patient oftentimes stepping on the scale scale is really the first action for them to make a plan to be better. And I liken this research that we're doing to our professions stepping on the scale. You can only manage what you measure. Correct. Yeah, I feel like I say that half a dozen times a week. And it's true because, you know, I get this sort of, oh, yeah, we know we're tired. Yeah. Yeah. And until you see it, until you see the direct impact that your glass of wine that you drink at night

trying to unwind or your lack of exercise or your weight or your eating habits until you actually see it you can't do anything about it and it's been so great we started this multi-center we have over 200 trauma surgeons across the country wearing these and it's just been wearing whoop wearing whoop and it's we're proud to be a part of this it's it's great And seeing everyone post their data, especially on Twitter, or I had a female colleague of mine who basically went home and negotiated with her family and said, hey, I need this amount of sleep. Wow. How can we do this?

That's awesome. Seeing the changes that people are making because one of the best conversations I've ever had on plane was this pilot who said, you know, the hardest thing he has trying to teach young pilots is teaching them that the best preparation. for the air is done on the ground. Right. And I think that it's true. The best preparation for us in the hospital is what we're doing outside of the hospital.

It's funny. It's like the same exact thing I was saying to coaches eight years ago. It's like you don't actually need to know more about practice and games. You need to know more about the other 20 hours of the day. So much of our focus has been on our work hours. And are we going to do 24 hours in a row or 30 hours in a row, 36 or only 12s or only 14s and how are you going to do it and how frequent and I don't disagree with that and but to me the low-hanging fruit the thing that we can impact today is what we're doing outside of the hospital

and whoop gives us a whole new insight into that that particularly as a as physicians as scientists we can understand and we can see and we get excited about and I think that's been the cool thing is really just seeing now all these surgeons across the country just super excited to text me or write a tweet or just share in whatever way all the things that they're learning about themselves and it's it's making a huge impact what are some things that you've noticed people have learned about themselves or changed as a result of wearing whoop I think one is like I said earlier that my female colleague who literally saw she's like okay I knew that I wasn't sleeping enough but then having that conversation with our family.

And to me, it's such a big part of our lives is looping our family in. So much of what we do is this black box. People's concept of what I do is based off of ER or Gray's Anatomy or something along those lines. So really sitting down and being able to talk to your partners, talk to your spouse, talk to your family about what you're doing. day is doing to you physically and physiologically and how to recover from that. So I think number one, people are prioritizing their sleep. I think secondly, people are really, which is great, but I think they're really understanding the impact of alcohol. Totally. I mean, I can't say it

enough. People shouldn't drink. I mean, and finding, and I think part of that is, again, finding different coping mechanisms. Oh, I need like my, you know, glass of wine to relax at night. Okay. And what else can we find that can help you relax at night? Right. Is it meditation? Is it yoga?

Is it a workout? You know, there are a variety of things that we can do. It doesn't have to be alcohol. And it sounds simple when you say it out loud. But it's having a true impact and people are making real changes. Well, a lot of breakthroughs from a lifestyle. standpoint or super simple yes now do you meditate personally i do what kind of meditation do you do so it's not consistent i will say like a lot of things um but you know i've got about five different

apps on my phone and i think it just depends sometimes it's at night and i need meditation to help me sleep because i'm still stressed you're still thinking about the day i'm still thinking about the day i'm still thinking about an outcome or you know anything from the day um so sometimes i use it to unwind sometimes i use it in the middle of the day just to help me regain some focus kind of break up your day to break it up to so you just had a tough conversation with the family you know you're about to go back in the room how do you reset for that i don't typically meditate it's a lot of deep breaths it's taking that moment closing my eyes taking a few deep like really cleansing breaths and refocusing it's more of a mindfulness but

it is and i think part of it too you know, my husband actually said it best one time. I'd called him after a very tough death. Again, it was one of those that there was nothing I could have done. And I called him and he gave me a few moments. He said, okay, the next person needs you more now. You did what you could for her. You did what you could for that patient for him.

And the next patient needs you now. Yeah, what great feedback. And so it's learning also, though, that I don't have to process all of that right then. It's processing some of it, putting it away, refocusing, but then also recognizing that I still need to process that at some point. Yeah. And I think that's where surgeons in general we struggle,

and that we're very good at compartmentalizing and moving on and refocusing, but then it leads to a whole lot of emotionally heavy baggage you're trying to cart around. And I think learning how to process through those emotions when you can in a timely manner is what builds resilience. It's acknowledging what happened, fully incorporating it and then moving past it. It's not ignoring it. It's not minimizing it. It's not negating it. It's absorbing it.

What are some other practices for you that help you manage such a intent? lifestyle definitely exercise yeah what do you like to do for exercise uh orange theory lately that's been my you know part of it part of it for me is something that fits in my lifestyle so we're talking something that's probably less than an hour about an hour um and something that i can again a lot of its logistics i am at the hospital before 7 a.m. every morning so and then knowing myself and that a lot of people can work out after so you'll work out before the day or Yes. Okay.

So that's key for me that I've learned over the years because if I say I'll go after work, I will not go after work. Yeah. So very first thing in the morning, wake up straight to the gym, shower at the gym, head straight into work from the gym. So a lot of it's logistics and planning and geography and where's a gym that's nearby the work that's on my way and all that sort of thing. But I do that about four to five times a week. That's great.

I aim for five, but, you know, we aim some. times we miss um but four to five times a week and when you wake up first thing in the morning do you have any routines no just get out of bed yeah it's 4 30 in the morning so 4 30 so i set do you drink caffeine i don't actually don't drink caffeine i that's not that surprising though because your your life is such a stimulant like i don't i mean it feels like well you know i i joke I don't really drink alcohol either. And so I joke all the time. It's very even keel.

Right. Well, I tell people, there's just not enough caffeine in the world to pull you through some things. And there's just not enough wine in the world either. So I just tend to ignore both. Now, do you think most trauma surgeons drink caffeine? Oh, yes, absolutely. The vast majority.

I mean, it's, you know, it's funny. I mean, I'm definitely one of the few that I don't drink coffee. I just don't drink caffeine. exercise off to the hospital will you eat breakfast typically not do you think of much about hydrating like is it is it i mean i would think that you might be dehydrating yourself over the course of the day oh absolutely we all are i mean yeah you're running around you're super focused correct you're on your feet yes so i think one of the toughest things for us is nutrition and hydration because you can plan all you want you can pack all the foods you want but if you

actually have a moment to sit and eat it. It's not that helpful. So yes, I would say that is one thing I'm trying to be better about is drinking water. And I do try to drink a liter during and after my workout so that when I start the day, I have anywhere from 750 to miles to a liter of water in. So then if I don't get much over the next few hours, I tell myself I'm at least trying. I imagine there's days you go in at 7 a.m. and you realize it's like 5 p.m. and you haven't eaten anything. Yes. And do you start to notice that that's affecting your performance at all? Or you just don't let it. I mean, that feels like a big theme is you don't let it. And I think too when it's that busy, you don't notice it. Yeah. And then, and it's one of those

things. It's after a long case, you can be in the operating room standing in a very abnormal sort of position with your neck, back shoulders, and you don't notice it at all. And then the moment the surgery is over, you stand up and you're like, oh, wow, I am sore, I am stiff, I'm starving, I'm thirsty, my neck hurts. You zone in to such a degree. Such an intense focus, right? That you don't notice your own bodily sort of discomfort. And then all of a sudden, in a very acute way, you become very aware of it. But it's, it's, it's, it's, almost like a light switch off and on. Do you find that sometimes after an intense day you have trouble focusing?

Yes. Like in your normal life? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. I think focus, focusing takes so much energy. It really does. And I think people just think, oh, just focus.

It's like, you know, to really focus takes so much energy. So yes, after a long day, we talk about decision fatigue. All day, you're making very, very important decisions. And then my husband, I think we've been together now almost 20 years. And he knows now to not ask me what I want for dinner after, you know, 30, 36 hours on the hospital. And he's trying, you know, he's trying to be nice and sweet and consider it and say, hey, what would you want? And I'm like, I can't decide anything right now. I can't even decide, I can't even decide if I want to change the channel or not on a TV or if I want to sit down or shower first.

I, you do. So I think that part of decision fatigue is also kind of in my mind, focus fatigue. Agreed. Because you have to focus so much to make those decisions. I mean, we have very different jobs, but I've, I mean, whoops now, maybe 150 people that I have to think about and manage in one way or another. And there's some days where you just realize you've made so many decisions at the end of the day, you're kind of switched off. Yep. And I've actually found that the healthiest way to deal with that is just to recognize that you're switched off rather than try to. to turn on. Correct.

I think you do have to recognize it. And I think for me, it's about communicating that. And part of it, again, seriously, is communicating that with my husband, you know, and saying, hey, I'm done for decisions tonight, you know, and communicating it so that you have to just let your brain rest. You just have to. I just had a guy named Mark Randolph on the podcast, who was a co-founder of Netflix. Yes.

And he was talking about one thing that he found that was. important was when you're not working, making sure you're not working. Yes. We're just relating to what we're talking about, but all this goes back to this idea of just letting your mind rest and sort of switch off when it needs to. Yes. And recognizing that. What are some other things that you've recognized through your own whoop data,

whoop journey? There are times where I think I can slide on something. Yeah. You know? Or I think for me, the big part is consistency in that just because I've quote unquote been good, right, or have gotten a fair amount of sleep doesn't mean that the next night I don't need to pay attention to these things. And I think the biggest thing is consistency and rest, really allowing that recovery to occur. And also how important and

how intricate sleep is. Yeah. You know, we get very little actually education about sleep during medical school. And I think that's been one of the cool things for me is really just delving into a whole new area of science and a whole new area of physiology that we don't get much training about and really understanding this slow wave sleep. And that's when your growth hormone is released. And so, you know, it's pulling all this together that, sure, like, I know about growth hormone, but then pulling it together and then really the importance of REM, especially for surgeons

when you're learning Procedures. Yeah, pretty critical of your surgery. Yes, and, you know, really making those memories concrete, you know, so that you do remember things. So, yeah, I mean, I think the whoop for me is, not really for all surgeons, it's so important. What we do is important. What we do matters. And it's not just what's in our head.

It's also literally what's in our hands. It's fine motor skills. There's a skill. and a dexterity to it, which is why, again, I've always been attracted to surgery because most of medicine is cerebral. It's how you think and how you interpret information and then how you're managing it. Well, you have all that, and then it's the physical skill. Will you change your behavior at all during the day or your mindset going into the day if you wake up in the morning and you see you have a low red recovery on whoop versus a high green recovery on

whoop? Yes and no. I'm very familiar with the red. You know, I love, I love the whoop and I love the feedback. I think my favorite, I actually took a screenshot of it. It told me to go back to bed. I said, you should consider going back to sleep, but I was like, I wish I could. I'm trying. And so yes and no. Yes, in that I think for my workout that morning, I'll try to be cognizant of it and how hard I'm pushing myself and making sure that I'm not over stretching, overreaching, just because I feel like I should be able to. And then I also think during the day, trying to be better with water, trying to take those moments if I can find the five minutes to sit down, clear my brain, meditate, and then at home at night, eating a healthy meal,

not drinking alcohol, which is fairly easy because again, it's just, it's, it's, it's, not in our house like we just it's not really part of our daily routine sure but then having a good healthy bedtime routine as well totally getting out my sleep mask i love the sleep mask right i know this do you have a favorite sleep mask you know i have a couple of varieties based on you and christian's recommendations we're kind of nerds over i don't know i know well we had a whole conversation just about sleep masks it was great this is what we talk about it whoop i know i love it and but it's cool because again that's something that i in my head i'm like okay i need to go to bed early okay Okay, fine.

Maybe I shouldn't look at my phone in the bed or watch TV. But then, oh, wait, I can actually increase and improve my quality of sleep with a sleep mask. Okay. So, you know, incorporating those things to really really, super simple thing. Super simple. It doesn't cost a lot of money. Dramatically improves your sleep. Dramatically.

Which, by the way, improves your life. Yes. Well, it improves everything. I mean, this is, you know, one of my favorite papers actually is a European paper. It talks about how fatigue and sleep deprivation impacts your ability to detect sarcasm. But I love saying it because it impacts everything we do. It makes small things feel big. It makes bad things feel worse.

Sleep deprivation impacts our mood and therefore our function and our performance at every level. And so when I wake up in the red and I see it, whoop tells me. And it's great too because whoop is. it's like your little coach. It tells you how much sleep I need that night. It helps me then have a conversation with my family with myself to say, okay, I need to be in bed by this time. I'm going to wear my sleep mask. I'm going to eat the right kind of food. I'm not going to have the TV on. I'm not going to have any sort of lighted screens so that then the next day I cannot be in the red. Because waking up in the red, to a certain extent, the milk has been spilled. So it's a matter

of how do I get myself better recovered next time? Yeah, looking forward to the next 24 hours. Exactly. Yeah, I think that's an incredibly healthy attitude. Let's zoom out for a second, right? I think you and I share a lot of beliefs about the importance of monitoring the body, the importance of taking care of the body. If we think about trauma surgery as an industry,

what are ways if you could wave a magic wand that you feel like you could dramatically improve the health of trauma surgeons? Better sleep. Better sleep's got to be number one, right? Number one, better sleep. And that, yes, I'm in the hospital a couple times a week for 24-plus hours at a time. But that's still five more nights in a week that I have to focus on my recovery. Surgeons in general, well, really physicians, we focused on everybody else.

And I go back to again, you know, you've heard this before, that when you're on the plane. I'm talking about the oxygen mask. Yeah, I love that. You're supposed to put it on yourself first before you put it on somebody else. Not really what trauma surgeons are doing. We suck at it. Yeah.

And I think figuring out how to give to ourselves more. Yeah. So that we can be more to everybody else. That's what we need to do. And it is. It's this huge mind shift. It sounds so simple. But when your whole training is how to make a lot of,

other people better, how to focus on everyone else's health and realizing if I focus on my own health, I'm going to make everyone else's health better. We make better decisions, smarter decisions, faster decisions, more consistent decisions. I'm going to teach better. I'm going to be a better role model to my trainees. I'm going to have a better relationship with my nursing staff. You're going to have a better everything when you have given to yourself. And that's what we've got to do. Now, one way to improve recovery is obviously to get more rest. Yes. Another way to improve recovery is obviously to take on less strain or take on less stress.

Do you feel that it's just a requirement that trauma surgeons should be working 70 to 100 hours a week given the demands of society? Or is there a better version of society in which those hours can be shorter? Well, sometimes it's a math problem. And that there's 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. And if myself or one of my colleagues, you know, the equivalent of me is not in the hospital, that hospital can't take trauma patients. I think it's twofold. One is we've always just routinely said, okay, in other words, people are like,

oh, what's your schedule look like? Or how much call do you take? And I'm like, well, 365. That's what we do. We multiply by 24 hours and we just divide it by however many of us there are, whatever haphazard way. I think two things. I think we, a lot of us are understaffed because again, there's a shortage. So I think better workforce management in terms of really concentrating trauma surgeons to the right number, to the right places. Where do

they really need to be is one thing. And the second thing is how we do it. You know, there's the, there's, when you look at trauma surgeons in our current situation, there's the who we are. There's a certain personality that goes into medicine, that then goes into surgery, that then goes into trauma surgery. And to a certain extent, we all function well under high stress. You know, you kind of filter out personality-wise and stress management-wise to get there. There's the who we are. Those are the what we do. In other words, people are always going to need you at 2 a.m. That's not going to change. Again, hopefully as a society, like you said, we improve on things. But we're always going to be needed.

So that's the what we do. And what we do is heavy work. So there's the how we do it. And I think that's really where we could look at different work models in the sense of do we only do 24s. What about 14s or 12s? I mean, there's so much that we could do is a week of nights better where then you get seven weeks afterwards to recover. There's so much that we can unpack and look at, which is what our current study is doing with Woop, to really say, is there a better way to do it? And I think the answer is obviously yes, both in the hospital in terms of our work hours and then definitely outside of the hospital. I mean, it also just seems like you have the, I'll call it the Navy SEAL problem, which is Mark Devine, who was recently on the podcast, described, you know, after 9-11, they're like, we want to make 500 Navy SEALs this year instead of whatever it normally is, 28, right? And it says, like, you can't just do that and maintain the same quality of what is a Navy SEAL.

And what's your thought? Like, how could we produce as society more trauma surgeons? Well. And should we? Right. Well, I think a couple of things. I think, number one, fundamentally, the United States graduates, quote unquote, or finishes around 1,000 general surgeons a year for the entire United States. Now that includes the people that then go into plastic surgery, the people that go into transplant

surgery, the people that go into trauma surgery. So that has to change. We've been at that thousand about ballpark number for over 20 years. Clearly our population has changed. And we're just not responding to that. By we, it's really kind of, it has to do with the government and funding those spots, those positions. I think secondly, we've got to change trauma surgeons in general. We've got to be healthier. It's really hard to recruit people. You know, this is, it's funny when I travel and I give this talk, talking about our

research with whoop, I always have to put a caveat in. Like, this is where I say how much I love my job, because I'm painting this horrible picture of, we're all tired, we're all unhealthy, and we're all depressed and stressed and all the things. I think we have to show and be healthier in order to attract young surgeons into the field. And I think it's this wheel of, yes, we need more supply and we need to be healthier ourselves and show that you can have a long, happy, healthy career being a trauma surgeon. Yes, you can be a woman and be a trauma surgeon. Yes, you can be a five foot one, five foot two on a good

day wife and mom and have other interests and other things and still be a trauma surgeon. And I think it's really showing that you can do it and you can do it in a healthy way. And that's where this research is taking us. And I'm so excited. Well, I think you're a true inspiration, honestly. Oh, thank you. One for aspiring trauma surgeons out there, but I think for everyone, just the way you've described, being able to manage all of the stresses of saving people's lives and doing it every day. I mean, I'm incredibly grateful to know that there's people like you out there. And should I ever get shot in the chest? I hope Jamie Coleman's hovering over me in that dark moment. No problem. And yes, and this is why, again, I think we are also so fortunate for you

and what you've done. Oh, thank you. Allowing us to be better, giving us an opportunity, giving us a platform to be better for ourselves, which means being better for our patients. And it's about performance. It's not just performance on a field, but it also means performance in the operating room and in the hospital. And that's what this research is allowing us to do. And I'm so grateful for it. Well, thank you.

And we're grateful to have you on Woop. And, you know, the mission of unlocking human performance has moved well beyond athletics for us. And so the fact that we can help trauma surgeons improve their performance to totally core to our mission here. And it makes me grateful every day that people like you are wearing this product. Well, thank you for designing it and getting it out there for us to use. Now, where can people find you if they want to learn more? People can follow me on Twitter, J-J-Colman, C-O-L-E-N-M-D, and it's the same. My website's www. jayckelmanmd.com.

All right, well, we're going to include all of that in the show notes, and we're going to have you back on once we have some results from this study that we're doing. Jamie, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you to Jamie for coming on the podcast, and thank you to doctors across the world who are helping keep society safe.

Coming up next, I'm going to be answering a few questions from WOOP members. This is something we're going to test out and see how it goes for the podcast. In the meantime, though, I want to let everyone know who's listening that they can get on WOOP for 15% off if they use the code, Will Ahmed. That's W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D, and that will give you 15% off a W-W-M membership. WOOP membership comes with hardware for free, software, analytics. It's a full package to help you understand your body's sleep and recovery and strain, and certainly an important time to be monitoring your body and getting as much sleep as possible. Science tells us that getting more sleep can increase your immune system,

can increase your cognitive function, and can help repair your body faster. Okay, we've got a few questions here from WOOP members. Most of these have been sourced via social media. You can reach out to us at Whoop, W-H-O-O-O-P, or at Will Ahmed, W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D on Twitter or Instagram. We check our DMs and we listen to you. All right, first question from Ralph is I have a number of things that I'm interested in tracking within my Whoop Journal. What is the best way to use this tool and will there be future custom inputs? good question from ralph uh the first thing for everyone to understand is that the whoop journal is designed

to help you track against really anything in your life that you think is important or could affect your whoop data we really want to help you understand how all these different things about your lifestyle affect your body and then you can ultimately create this perfect recipe for you we've gotten a lot of feedback on unique inputs that people may want to be tracking against We're going to be updating the journal every week to be adding more elements. And we are also working on creating a custom input field. So if you have a specific question that you want to be answering every day, you'll now be able to create that for yourself and then answer it.

In general, we recommend having about 10 questions a day that you're filling out a lot less than that. It may be harder to understand all the different things in your life, a lot more than that, it may be a lot of noise for you to pull out what is actually making a difference to your body. Sarah asks, what was the inspiration for the red recovery policy and the sleep bonus? Is this going well? Thank you for asking Sarah. So the red recovery policy is a new policy that we rolled out last week, whereby if a WOOP team member, so a member of WOOP, an employee here, has a red recovery. They are asked to work from home. And we do this for two reasons. The first is

that when you have a red recovery on whoop, we know it may be a sign that you're getting sick before you feel symptoms. We've seen that with whoop data before. And the second is if you have a red recovery, we recognize that your body is run down and you may be at risk for getting sick. So either way, it's in your team's best interest. or your best interest, uh, to work from home. So that's the red recovery policy. Uh, it's been well received since we've rolled it out. In addition to that, we've rolled out a sleep bonus. So everyone at whoop, uh, wears obviously our technology 24-7. We're on team leaderboards together. And the sleep bonus is such that if you get over 85% of your sleep need, uh, for the month,

you get a $100 bonus. So we're literally paying people to get more sleep during this time period because, again, science tells us that the more sleep you get, the better your immune system. So that's the red recovery policy. That's the sleep bonus. We at Woop have enjoyed having these policies now in play, depending on when this is released and when people are listening to it. It's very likely that we may be at a completely work-from-home policy.

however the red recovery policy was a nice interim step as we saw society reacting to the coronavirus and as there was a lot of uncertainty you know we like to use data at whoop to make decisions about our business and our bodies and that's what we've done with this policy okay so those are questions from whoop members thank you to everyone for listening again if you like this podcast please subscribe and like it on whatever channel you're listening to this on and you can find me at Will Ahmed and you can find Whoop at Whoop. We love to hear from you.

Thank you again.