WHOOP Podcast - WHOOP partners with Barbells for Boobs for groundbreaking breast cancer research

Episode Date: December 30, 2020

Kristen Holmes discusses our groundbreaking research with Barbells for Boobs, a non-profit working to improve the quality of life and overall outcomes associated with breast cancer. We are examining what WHOOP data looks like in women battling breast cancer. The goal of this study is to gain additional insights into how breast cancer impacts things like strain, sleep, recovery, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, and more. Dr. Oliver Glass, the Director of Research for Duke University Health and Well Being and Zionna Hanson, the founder of Barbells for Boobs, join Kristen for this episode. They discuss supporting women going through breast cancer (2:31), improving quality of life (5:26), early detection (6:52), optimizing exercise during breast cancer (10:02), dealing with trauma (14:43), initial study impressions (19:16), sleep and stress (24:02), listening to your body (27:00), being proactive about your health (28:08).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

What's up, folks? Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, the founder and CEO of Woop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. That's right. We build wearable technology across hardware and software and analytics that's designed to understand the human body. That's timely as you get into the swing of 2021, understand your sleep, your recovery, your strain, everything about your body. understand how different lifestyle decisions and behaviors affect your body and how you can improve your health. If you are not familiar with whoop or you don't have a WOOP membership, you can use

the code. Will Ombett, W-I-L-L-H-M-E-D, and get 15% off a WOOP membership. We've got a great episode for you this week. Kristen Holmes, our VP of Performance, returns and discusses our groundbreaking research with barbells for boobs, a nonprofit working to improve the quality of life and overall outcomes associated with breast cancer. We're examining what Woop data looks like in women battling breast cancer, and the goal of this study is to gain additional insights into how breast cancer impacts things like strain, sleep, recovery, heart rate variability, and other physiological metrics. Dr. Oliver Glass, the director of research for Duke University Health and Well-Being,

and Zayana Hansen, the founder of Barbells for Boo. join Kristen for this episode. They discussed their mission to help women going through this incredible challenge, how the study is being conducted, and what we know about the benefits of exercise while battling cancer. Without further ado, here is Kristen and team. So thrilled to have Dr. Oliver Glass, Director of Research for Duke University Health and well-being, as well as the medical advisor for barbells for boobs. And Zayana Hansen, founder of Barbells for Boobes. Welcome to the Whoop podcast. Hello, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us. Pleasure. Woop is really, really proud to partner with your organization to really help bring

awareness and just fight this deadly and debilitating disease. Ziana, and I'm going to just call you Zee from Aaron out. So folks can just key into that. Take us to the beginning. You know, what, what inspired you to start barbells and how has it evolved over the last few years? I think it's really important that I start with this, the stat of breast cancer that's so alarming to me that I didn't realize was going to impact a loved one of mine, which is one and eight women will be diagnosed in their lifetime with breast cancer. And I found out that my best friend was diagnosed at the age of 27 and I was 29 at the time. And it was, you know, it kind of stopped me in my track. I didn't think that breast cancer happened that young.

So myself, I was naive that that breast cancer could come at any age. I was naive that it could come so close so soon. At that time, I was, I owned a CrossFit affiliate in Lake Forest California. And I, again, was kind of like in this place where I was being proactive about health and life and teaching people how to improve their lives and through physical activity. And so to my best friend went in with a lump on her breast the year prior, or about six months prior to her diagnosis. And they told her that she was too young for breast cancer. And so they wrote on her medical documentation, mammography recommended at age 40. And six months later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

And I think that the fire for me came just hearing that part of her story was, it just, it was really annoying because, you know, sitting here, being physically active, running a CrossFit affiliate, teaching people about nutrition and movement and mobility. And sitting back and watching our health care system almost fail my friend's health was kind of alarming. And so I had never done a workout called Grace, 30 clean injurics for time, if you don't know. It's a very popular cross-fitted workout. And I had never done it. I was scared of the 95-pound weight. And I said, you know, I want to do this for her and I want to raise some money for her to get through treatment. And, you know, I didn't know what to expect.

And I really didn't know how to support her because it's kind of hard. You know, what do you do to help somebody that's going through something that you have no idea, no clue what they're really, really feeling? And so we raised about $2,000, and I saw Great Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, the next week, and CrossFit matched it. And so when I told her what I was doing and that I had $4,000, she told me that she didn't need any financial support and she wanted me to help others. And after that event, we went to a bar and one of my friends, you know, after a pitcher of beer, said that we just did barbells for boobs. And that's kind of the beginning of how Barbells for Boobes started almost 11 years ago. And how is she doing today? she's awesome she's just had a baby yeah yeah she's awesome and we're still best friends and

nothing has changed that's a happy story and um thanks for sharing that's that's amazing and so you kind of have these humble beginnings and and now you're you know quite a big community you know can you kind of talk about um just specifically like how you define your mission and just the complexion of the of the group as it as it sits today yeah so i really i say that we're just a community take an action in breast cancer. That's our big statement because, you know, I think that that's really what we represent is we see a problem. And anytime I see a problem, I just want to fix it and make it better. I'm a problem solver. We're problem solvers. And the biggest thing for me and what I've learned just through my own journey and I'm very lucky to have found such a great

community within CrossFit 12 years ago that I just want to improve people's lives, you know, the quality of their life. So we're really set on a mission to improve. the quality of life and redefine the standard of care because I think that the current standard of care across a lot of health care systems is just below average. And I want to kind of optimize that. Yeah. Where do you see the fact you're kind of in this space every day, you're talking to women who, you know, have experiences like your best friend did, you know, where you're just not getting the best information. Where do you see, I guess, the biggest gap and where, how are you trying to fill that gap. Where's the opportunity? Well, it's changed. In the beginning, in the first seven years of

Barbels for boobs, I was on this mission to make sure that young women pulled to come back when they're 40. And so the first seven years, we really focused on early detection and funding early detection. The biggest gap that I saw was if you are under 40, you don't qualify for any state funded programs. And so you're automatically discriminated on because of your age or your gender. They don't fund men. And one in a thousand men will get breast. cancer in their lifetime. And so we really went on this, you know, trailblazing effort to fund early detection. And to date, we funded over 52,000 procedures through our Right to Know program. And at about like 2015 is when things started changing for barbells for boobs. What I learned

is funding, screening, or funding anything in our healthcare system almost becomes political. And I don't think that I really wanted to push the political envelope. hope. And we can dive deeper into that, but I don't want to waste all of our good energy here for that. And so what ended up also happening about 2015, and this is where I met Dr. Oliver Glass is we started kind of building this momentum internally in the CrossFit space, in the community that we were kind of in already through our fundraising efforts and just overall community of women that had had breast cancer young. Like I was meeting cessies all over the place. And they felt like their fitness had to be abandoned after treatment. And they,

there, it was almost like, um, the information that the medical team was telling them about their physical activity, it was like, you'll never do a push up again. You don't pick up more than three pounds. You'll, and you're talking to athletes, you know, these women that identify themselves as athletes, which is above the average, right, above the current standard of care. And so we started, um, organically creating this community. And it was, is like, how do we connect all these women? Like, how does Whitney meet Brandy and Brandy meet? You know, like, it was like, you guys all need to meet each other because you all want

your pull-ups and your snatchback and you want to learn, you know, like, you want to do grace with us. Like, this is like such a beautiful community that's unlike any other because they're so strong, like mentally and physically strong. And so we started kind of gathering women together in 2015 doing these like annual collectives. And at that same time, Dr. Oliver Glass had reached out to me, hey, I do your breast cancer. And I'm like, this is what I want to do. I'm hearing these things. And it's not okay with me. And if we're barbells for boobs and we can't help women put barbells

back in their hands after breast cancer, I feel like we're hypocrites. And so we kind of really started talking in 2015. And Oliver kind of followed me around for a few years. It sounds like there's a really interesting backstory here that I feel like you're just going to have to share. Yeah, I mean, you know, as you mentioned, you know, I reached out to her in 2015 and, you know, around that time, I just finished up, you know, doing some interesting, you know, preclinical work and exercise in breast cancer, looking at sort of the direct effects of exercise and how it impacts breast tumor biology. And, you know, I was just became, you know, sort of fascinated with, you know, sort of how do we optimize, you know, exercise and breast cancer, you know, when's the right

time, like, what's the right dose? And, you know, I already had the background in CrossFit. You know, I used to compete way back when. And, you know, I did barbells for boobs and, you know, before I even met Z. And, you know, I reached out to her just with an interest just to know more about what they were doing and, you know, if they were working on any research pieces and their young women with breast cancer. And, you know, I think that's just kind of how it started. And we just had this, you know, ability to kind of click with one another and, and just really kind of come together on the same mission of trying to better understand, like, how can we utilize and leverage, you know, exercise or CrossFit and in that community. And so, you know, I just,

had that interest and as you mentioned i kind of just remained in i don't know i don't know if i would say like followed her out you know i did i remained in the periphery and he just wanted to check in see how things were you know moving how things were changing just because you know the landscape changes so much you know with regard to you know clinical management you know drugs that are available you know, what we're finding out about how exercise works in cancer. And so, you know, as these things are evolving so quickly, I just wanted to kind of stay in the site, so to speak, and just kind of see how their program was evolving. And, you know, I was just blown away, you know, what they're able to accomplish in such a short period of time. And just, you know, having experienced, you know,

working with Zee and her team in the past, I was really just kind of jazzed. to get back into that somehow and figure out how we can potentially work together. Right. And Dr. Oliver, there's, you know, obviously like quite a gap in the literature in terms of really understanding, you know, to your point, you know, timing, intensity, volume of exercise and folks who are, you know, in remission or are in treatment, you know, where, you know, if you were to kind of wave a magic wand, you know, what is it that you feel like we need to understand in order to, you know, give these women the information they need to really, you know, improve outcomes. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, you know, I'd say overall, you know,

when we look at the literature as a whole, you know, when we see women that are active versus women that are not, you know, women that are active had about a 20 to 30 percent reduction in breast cancer specific mortality, you know, versus women that do not. And so, you know, the question is, you know, why, why is that? Like, what is exercise doing that improves outcomes? And if we can, you know, kind of figure that out, then maybe we can optimize, you know, the exercise prescriptions, you know, to improve outcomes. But, you know, it's so hard because, you know, breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease. You know, there's, you know, hormone receptor positive breast cancer is hormone receptor negative. You know, there's different molecular subtypes. And so,

you know, it's hard to understand, you know, the impact of exercise, you know, on a heterogeneous disease. And also, it's treated much differently. You know, even the same type of breast cancer can be treated, you know, much differently depending on, you know, who your physician is or where you're getting treatment. But I think that, you know, one of the important aspects when you think about, like, what is exercise doing is, you know, exercise essentially is a stress on the body. And, you know, your ability to combat that stress, to adapt to that stress through recovery is one of the key pieces. So I would say that, you know, where the gap, you know, moving forward is, is really understanding recovery from exercise because that's going to be so personalized and individualized,

you know, depending on where people are in treatment or what type of, you know, surgeries they may have had or treatments they may have had. You know, I think that's where the key is. is understanding, you know, how women with breast cancer recover from exercise or recover from these stresses. And if we can optimize that recovery, I think that's where we're going to start seeing these, you know, improvements and outcomes. Right. And, you know, just being inside, you know, the data of these women, and, you know, it's clear to see that, you know, there's a lot of other stressors on the body beyond just the exercise. stress, right, that that they're facing. So, you know, Z, what has been, you know, how have you

kind of approached just that as a concept in terms of trying to help these women deal with all the external stressors that they're facing just generally that most of us face, right? But on top of it, you've got the doubt and the fear and the uncertainty that comes along with a diagnosis and everything that goes along with the treatment. How are you thinking about that? And what are, what is some of the programming that you're putting in place? to support these women. It's interesting because I've struggled with this a lot because I've never been through breast cancer, right?

And so when we first started thinking of an idea of a program, I kind of felt like a poser. Like, how can I really script a program to support a woman that's been through something that I've never been through? I've stood on the stands. I've been a spectator to breast cancer, but I've never actually experienced it. I don't know what their struggles are. I've listened to many, many stories. I've done a lot of research in it from a qualitative perspective, but how I almost felt

like I can't do this. Like it was a confidence thing for me because it wasn't something I really had the experience with. And so in 2016, my sister was diagnosed with stage four metastatic breast cancer at 43. And so it kind of came back into my life and made me understand it in a different perspective in a more aggressive perspective. And I'm so thankful that it wasn't my first exposure to breast cancer.

And my sister passed away in April of 2018. So she had a really good two-year battle with it. Oh, sorry. Thank you. And so what I realized after that loss was what we're all coping with is trauma. And it was I finally felt like I had. enough experience and enough trauma to understand their pain. And I knew that my scars maybe looked different than theirs. And I knew that my pain might feel a little different. I understood

the trauma. And I think that the way we're approaching it programmatically is looking at it really has a huge trauma to your life. That when treatment's over, it's the trauma isn't over. the trauma is for the rest of your life. And so they will have the scars. They will have the pain. They will have the side effects for the rest of their life. And so even though their hair grows back or they're not going into treatment or they look like they're fit again, they're not. And they still feel that trauma every single day. And they're coping with it, even though the outside world thinks that they're just fine. And I was able to finally understand it with loss. Because even though time goes on and yes, it does heal that scar, you still are missing a piece of you. And so we really have put together a program that is going from the root cause, which is the trauma that women are impacted by when they go through different types of treatment. And I think that breast cancer is one of those cancers that really dehumanizes a woman. And so really bringing them back their confidence in reminding them how beautiful and worthy they are as a woman.

What's been exciting for us is, you know, of course, you know, our core mission at WOOP is to help you understand your body, unlock human performance. And it's, you know, in this case, it's how can you, you know, understand your body when you have breast cancer, you know, because those challenges are going to be different, right, when you, when you don't have it. And that said, a lot of the principles that a, you know, a person without cancer are going to going to adapt to be healthier are the same principles that an individual with cancer is going to adopt, right? We just have to better understand from the data what those, when those challenges are going

to occur, what is the level of that challenge and how can we use the data to help them understand when they can do what and to what level and what intensity and how other factors like sleep might be influencing their capacity, even conversations in their own home environment. So I love, you know, Dr. Oliver and Z, you know, just we put Woup on, I guess it was like mid-September is when we got the women on board. What are your kind of initial impressions and how are they kind of taking the feedback and, you know, what are your thoughts so far? What's really great about it is you all are looking at the data, which I think is going to be really awesome to capture and it's going to help us create better interventions.

But I get to talk to these women every single day and just seeing how this loop has really changed their mindset in such a short amount of time and has created such an awareness on their health that it's mind-blowing to me where women now have the ability to call their doctor and say, hey, my resting heart rate is sitting at 120. Something's wrong. And we literally had that within the last six weeks and go and check and go see their cardiologist to make sure they weren't, you know, they weren't at risk of a heart attack or anything like that. And so, you know, I think that it because I get to work on the qualitative side and I get to watch their lives change. And right now it's scary. And this is the conversation I'm continuing to have with them. We meet with them every Sunday is the whoop gives us facts. Numbers are facts. They're scary sometimes, but numbers tell us a story. And if we listen to numbers, we can figure out the story and we can start doing something about it. And again, going back to that, Barbell Street Boobos wants you to take action. And if our biggest initiative is for us to be proactive, so we consider an early detection screening being proactive about breast cancer,

I consider the Woot being proactive about your quality of life after breast cancer. And that's the best thing that we can do for anybody that's suffering from trauma is tracking their information and their numbers so that we can prescribe the right interventions that are healthy, that aren't medicine. That's not just you are depressed. Here's an antidepressant. And that's probably 100% of what our women are coping with right now is here's a sleeping pill and here's an antidepressant. And I want to say, here's a workout, here's some meditation, here's a mental coach, here's a dietitian. And keep your whoop on. I remember talking to the ladies in September and I kind of, I think I said to them that,

you know, this information is going to probably be a little jarring at the start. You know, it's because a lot of it is, it's not always positive, right? But I think to your point, like, I do think there is something really powerful about the truth and being able to understand the facts so you can take. action that is is actually going to position you to, in the end, to kind of accelerate and fast forward some of the outcomes or accelerate the wisdom, I guess. Whereas if you just kind of ignored it, pushed it on the rug or had no idea, you don't really know where to start and where that intervention needs to be.

You know, for example, if we have, you know, ladies who are, you know, underreaching, maybe not getting enough movement for whatever reason when their capacity says, yeah, you actually can be moving, you know, being able to deliver that, seeing that truth and be able to deliver the feedback and, you know, make the change. Now of a sudden, you know, we're improving outcomes, right? We're positioning these women to be in a better spot than they were yesterday. So I think that's where, you know, this data can be a little jarring, but I think if we have the right mindset and we look at it from, from that framework, all of a sudden it's really empowering. Yeah, I mean, there's so much there. I mean, you know, a lot of times we're just focusing on, you know, the physical activity, you know, making sure, you know, that we all get enough physical activity. But, you know, as Z alluded to, you know, there's so many of those stressors and trauma pieces that, you know, just impact overall stress.

And I think that, you know, the loop can really shine the light onto, you know, the other aspects, not just the physical activity, but like you mentioned, the sleep, you know, the stress, potentially social isolation. I mean, these things have all been shown in, you know, research studies, peer-reviewed studies to have impacts on, you know, tumor growth or survival. And, you know, these are the elements that I think are really important that often get overlooked, you know, when we're talking about, you know, lifestyle modification and, you know, an exercise. So I think that that's what I'm really interested in with these studies, just kind of getting that data, you know, about sleep and about stress that that can really, you know, help us,

you know, better understand, you know, what these women are going through. I mean, in addition to that, you know, it's important to understand outcomes and what is quality of life. And, you know, there's a number of validated instruments that can kind of help us understand that better so that, you know, it's not just like, yeah, I kind of feel better, but, you know, that we can see that, you know, from a quantitative standpoint, you know, and see that it's improving over time. Right. And what we've been doing is just so folks have a sense of how we were approaching this case study is we've just been collecting kind of baseline data and actually will be delivering a questionnaire that will help or it's basically a resilience survey and

the ladies will take it and they'll be blind to the results and what we're and then we're deploying a few interventions and then basically just observing the data over the next you know couple months and then they'll retake the resilience survey at the end to see you know to Dr. Glass's point to see if we've been able to see any measurable improvements in resilience. So resilience basically is qualities that predict stress your kind of resilience to stress and adversity. So things like adaptability, optimism, self-control, self-sufficiency, and persistence. So these are kind of the core qualities that, you know, make up resilience.

So that would be just a great way to really look at it up against. the physiological data that we're tracking to kind of take all of these measures and do some analysis and see, you know, how these interventions might be influencing and, you know, improving, you know, the different physiological measures that we're tracking. Yeah, it's great to see, you know, in data, especially, like, when you can look at potential associations or correlations between, you know, physiologic, you know, biomarkers or physiologic sort of measures and sort of the qualitative measures, especially in quality of life outcomes. Because if you can kind of see, you know, what are some of the pieces that are kind of driving

improvements in quality of life, then you can try to hone in on those, you know, better and future interventions. Z, you've been around, you know, you've been in this environment for a long time now. You've seen a lot, you know, what would be your kind of core advice, you know, for women and men in terms of just you know early detection and you know what are kind of what's what are the steps or things that people need to be aware of to you know make sure that you know they're aware of of what's happening with their body and you know when did they get tested you know what would be your kind of advice listen to your body yeah advocate for yourself and know that no doctor

no nurse no friend knows your body like you know it and their cancer does not when no one is immune to it. We are all susceptible to it, all kinds of cancers. And again, the more proactive, I really kind of don't like using the word preventative. I think that we can be proactive about our health. And even just being a part of this case study with WOOP, I've learned so much more about what I feel like health should be just in the past six weeks. And I thought that I kind of knew, you know. And just because you think you know doesn't mean you can't keep, you can't keep learning. And so just be a student of your own health, figure out what health is to you and continue to advocate for your health and continue to create habits and discipline to that

health and protect it with all your heart. Dr. Oliver, what would be your kind of your advice for folks? Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more with Z. I think she said it the best. It's, you know, again, being proactive is the best. I mean, you know, improving your diet, getting enough sleep, enough exercise. I mean, you know, prioritizing your own health, there's not a drug on the market that's going to do, you know, what exercise, you know, a good diet, sleep. I mean, it can't be substituted. So I think that, you know, being proactive and prioritizing your health certainly is the best recommendation for folks moving forward. Great. Where's the Z? How would you recommend

folks get in touch with you, if they want to join the community, what's the best way to kind of reach you and become a part of this organization or donate? You know, what's the best path? So the easiest way is just going to our website, barbells for boobs.org. If you are a woman that has been impacted by breast cancer, so whether you're a previvor or a survivor or however you'd like to identify yourself, a warrior thriver, you can go to our work on our website and click on resources after diagnosis and apply to be a part of our programs. If you have a breast concern, if you're a man, a woman, anyone, any age, under our work is get screened and we will help navigate you to screening services.

We still do a lot of work in early detection. And if you're a loved one and you just want to support your, anybody that's been impacted by breast cancer, call them or text them, check on them, no matter how far out they are from their diagnosis. You can follow us on Instagram, barbells for boobs. that's pretty much where we put most of our content is on Facebook and on Instagram. So yeah, perfect.

And part of our partnership, folks should know that we are, we have this really cool band that has a white clasp and the barbells for boobs logo on it. And 100% the band sells for $25, but 100% of the proceeds go directly to BFB to help facilitate, you know, the future research and education. So it's definitely really,

encourage you to go out and, um, and, and represent, uh, with your BFB, Woop band. Yeah. And I and I will say, Kristen, uh, to commend Woop for all the work that you all are doing. This is, you guys are the first organization that has done a collaboration partnership with us, giving back 100%. So really appreciate that. And that's, uh, I commend you all for that type of support. Oh, I love to hear that. Well, I, you know, we're really just beginning. I, I'm so excited for 2021. Um, you know, we'll, we'll be able to, able to, we're going to have a, you know, in the locker, we'll have a, you know, the results of this case study, you know, where we'll be able to look at, as we've mentioned, you know,

we're examining all the whoop data, so sleep, resting heart rate, heart variability from all the members in the community. And then, you know, we'll basically be looking at all these baseline metrics and, you know, comparing and, you know, observed in trends and doing some comparison work. And, and then looking at the resilience, you know, questionnaire and kind of see what type of, you know, changes we see there. So all of it's going to be really interesting. And hopefully, you know, set us up to do something more robust and rigorous in the future. But really, you know, with the goal, obviously, of supporting and educating this population the best that we can. So it's definitely been, you know, such an honor for us to be involved. And, you know, like I said,

we're really just getting started. And I love that. We can have a collaboration that feels really meaningful. And yeah, you guys have just been awesome. So thank you. Yeah, this is going to be probably the most important work that Barbell's Redoves has ever done. The work that we're doing right now with Loop is going to really trailblaze a path that hasn't been, no one's been down. And so I'm really proud of that and we're proud of the team here at Barbell's Reviews, as well as our medical advisory board for taking risk and being innovative and, you know, kind of exploring something that people just are not exploring yet. So thank you for opening your arms to us.

Thank you to Kristen for leading another great episode. A reminder, you can get 15% off a W-W-P membership if used the code, Will Ahmed, W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D. Follow us on social at W-W-P-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W- Thank you. Thank you.