WHOOP Podcast - WHOPP Medical Advisory Board Panel: Understand Your Health Data With WHOOP Advanced Labs

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

GET OF THE ADVANCED LABS WAITLIST: The first 100 members to tap this link will unlock early access to WHOOP Advanced Labs.**Open the link on the same device as your WHOOP app.This week on the WHOOP Podcast, WHOOP Global Head of Human Performance, Principal Scientist, Dr. Kristen Holmes sits down with two members of the WHOOP Medical Advisory Board and experts on longevity and functional medicine, Dr. Robin Berzin and Dr. Dan Henderson. Dr. Holmes, Dr. Berzin, and Dr. Henderson discuss how the new WHOOP Advanced Labs feature can be a game changer for the future of personalized medicine. The panel unpacks what longevity really means and how to maximize healthspan. Dr. Berzin uses her experience in functional medicine to outline root-cause illness, while Dr. Henderson offers insight on data-driven prevention, lab testing and how behavior change impacts your overall health. The panel dives into the empowerment members will gain from biometric tracking in providing the tools for data collection, self-understanding, and implementing habits to proactively control their health. From insulin sensitivity and metabolic health to inflammation, hormones, and the power building muscle mass, this episode explores the biomarkers that matter most for long-term vitality.(00:00) Introductions: The WHOOP Medical Advisory Board Panel(00:55) What Does “Longevity” Really Mean?(03:00) Biomarkers: The 65 Important Metrics Measured with Advanced Labs(04:42) Understanding The Biomarkers That Matter Most(11:34) Insulin and Glucose: Mastering Your Metabolism(15:28) Women's Health and Hormones: What Biomarkers Matter? (23:26) Behavior Change and Motivation: How To Implement Lifestyle Changes(31:54) What Is Root Cause Medicine?(34:23) Benefits of Functional Medicine(36:17) Looking At Your Body as An Ecosystem(37:12) Navigating Challenges in the Healthcare System(38:32) Empowering Self-Experimentation(40:32) The Future of Preventative Medicine(42:51) Building Muscle For Longevity(47:20) The Role of Wearables in Understanding Your Health(56:05) The Importance of Sleep and Exercise For LongevityDr. Robin Berzin:InstagramFacebookXDr. Dan HendersonLinkedInSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Sign up for WHOOP Advanced Labs Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

We have such a special episode today. We have the opportunity to talk to two of the world leading experts in longevity science, Dr. Robin Bersen and Dr. Dan Henderson. You know, we are at, I think, an incredible inflection point in human history, where we have the opportunity to merge two extremely exciting data sets, to help people understand their bodies. with more fidelity. And I think, you know, when we zoom out and think about our mission here at whoop, it's really to unlock human performance and health. I think we have this opportunity to go

just even a layer deeper when we introduce laps. So we're going to talk about what that means and really dig into your perspectives on what are the opportunities for our members in terms of understanding their bodies better. And maybe we can start just by kind of defining, you know, What is longevity? Robin, why do you start? Longevity, I think, has different meanings to different people. I think for some people right now, it's about this quest to live to 120 or 150, and I'm like, I don't know who's going to be there giving you a pat on the back when you get there, but good for you. I think for me as a parent and as a mom, it's really about having my healthiest years be still to come.

And it's not necessarily about being healthier than somebody else when I'm 100, but it's about what does my next decade look like and the decade after that. and can I be an active participant in my kids' lives? And can I be still living the story of my own life? And can I look and feel the way I want to for that story? I follow you on Instagram, and you're just a beautiful role model in so many ways for those of us striving to live long, healthy lives. So just deeply appreciate the education that you provide.

What about for you, Dan? What's your perspective? Yeah, you know, it is a little bit of a misnomer. My epi professor who was Dutch, he would say longevity. but, you know, it really means more about how long you live. But most people, when they really think about what they really, really want, it's not to be 150, especially if the last 5, 10, 15, or even 20 years, if we're talking about 150, are really not that fun. So I do think that we talk about longevity a lot, but what we really mean is the quality, is the health span. And people who are in the

longevity medicine community, which is, I think, still somewhat nascent and evolving. So there's a lot of people who are probably part of it, even though they might not identify. Nobody is trying to figure out how to keep somebody alive at any cost to 160 or 200. It's really all about how do you preserve the function and capabilities that we enjoy in younger life. And I think whenever you're trying to achieve a goal, you have to have good measures. So part of that is deciding what matters most at each decade. And it's a lot of the stuff that you just mentioned, I think. Yeah, well, in terms of what matters, what gets you most excited about the biomarkers that will be tracking? And what are the biometrics that you think are also really exciting inside, inside whoop? I mean, I'm a health dork,

so it's all so exciting, okay? You know, when I was in my medical training, I was constantly told not to overtest. Like, there was this big fear of overtesting. And I looked at the vast majority of the people who were in the hospital when I was in, you know, that part of my training. And I said, well, most of these people would have really benefited from more testing if we had gotten to them earlier on and helped prevent the late stage endpoints of diseases like diabetes and heart disease, dementia, even autoimmune, or even women in their 40s and 30s experiencing fertility issues. If we had gotten ahead of some of those reasons, we could have done something about it. And as far as I could tell and some back of the napkin math,

I did, the little we would spend on more blood work earlier on would save us hundreds of millions, probably billions, possibly trillions of dollars because it would shift the health trajectory that people are on. So I get really excited about measuring longevity and I get excited about biomarkers. You know, in my practice, partially it's functional medicine. So for a long, long time, for a decade almost now, which is crazy, we've been doing advanced testing, more data, more biomarkers, and trying to understand. the whole picture of your body. And I think the unlock is when you don't just look at numbers

in a silo, but you start connecting the dots across the body. Sometimes people's brain fog starts in their gut. And so we need to understand the whole of you if we're going to really shift the trajectory of your health. Yeah. What markers really stand out, both of you see a lot of patterns, right, with patients and you see lots and lots of data. Like, are there any markers that really bubble up and are really indicative of, you know, someone's kind of overall health. You know, what do you really focus in on? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so many, right?

But I think a couple that stand out are fasting insulin, right? Let's not wait until your A1C is through the roof to declare that you have diabetes, right? Let's look at fasting insulin to see how your metabolic health is trending. Another one I think about a lot is, especially for women, thyroid markers. one in five women in her lifetime will be diagnosed with a thyroid condition and it goes missed all the time. I can't tell you how many patients have come to me, you know, put on an antidepressant or put on a weight loss med when no one properly tested their thyroid. So that's when I see all the time. And then, you know, in the world I'm in, there's few people who are truly nutrient

deficient, but there's a lot of people who are nutrient suboptimized for how they want to feel from things like vitamin D to magnesium. And you can use those types of markers and really, really easy, cheap interventions to really change how somebody feels. And so sometimes it's the marker like fasting insulin that's getting ahead of a serious illness like diabetes, and sometimes it's a marker that just helps us feel better right now.

Yeah, and I just think these little tweaks, you know, are, they go a long way. You know, we don't have to feel me. You know, there is a better path. And I think that's what this is going to really help accelerate our wisdom. You know, what about you, Dan? What markers are you really excited about? And what gets you going on the Woot Platform? You know, it's a great question.

And I think that as an internist, you know, a doctor who thinks about the complicated systems inside people's bodies and outside them that, you know, produce all this behavior we call health and wellness, it's hard to pick. A lot of these are really cool. you know, I experience the same tension as a professional and in my, you know, medical practice community about what's the right amount of testing and, you know, being careful not to do tests that people don't want and aren't going to learn from or aren't ready for, but not shying away from learning. When you're a doctor, your job really is to make sure that you're avoiding sort of easily avoidable disease in a short term and that you're diagnosing everything that's present. So I feel like if a patient comes into my office and I do a

good job, I'm expected that they're not going to have a heart attack in five or maybe 10 years. But that's about kind of the job. I'm not really supposed to think about every possible thing the way I would for myself or my wife or my mom or, you know, anybody where I'm sort of more invested. But of course, that's how we all feel about it. And so when you give individuals this level of information, they can really take hold of it more than health professionals would. And so I very much agree that the insulin and the glucose and the homa, I think diagnosing metabolic, you know, suboptimality, whether it's pre-diabetes or diabetes or what I sometimes... Pre-pre-diabetes? Exactly, yeah. I think that that's huge. And we are starting to understand

more and more of that, even irrespective of other risk factors, that much insulin running around in the body is probably bad and probably independently causes the things we don't want, heart attacks, strokes, and the like, as well as probably a lot of the feeling meh, having trouble losing weight, you know, not getting what we want out of certain workouts and things like that. So I love that. I'm also a big fan of APOB or APO lipoprotein B. You know, admittedly I'm sort of a heart health nerd. This is a test I used to only get on people who had sort of weird family history or a weird event and I would send them to the preventive cardiologists at Mass Brigham, you know, famous researchers and I would sometimes get this before or after.

But I love that we can check it on everyone because it is a slightly better and I think we may learn much better measure than the sort of standard bad cholesterol or ratio that everyone's used to checking. For a lot of people, that's maybe kind of icing on the cake. but sometimes you discover these kind of jaw-dropping disparities or discrepancies where somebody actually learns a lot. A test that I hope won't matter for too many of our members, but for some will legitimately save their life, is lipoprotein little A. And I actually checked that on a friend recently in the context, really, of kind of testing out a testing system. And he had the highest level I've ever seen in my career. And this is a very healthy guy. So I think that

that probably saved his life because, you know, if you don't know about this, it tends to show up in your 50s or 60s as a really bad event, you know. Maybe just pause to explain exactly what that is. So, you know, again, this is- People will be intrigued based on what you just said. Right. This is one of these things that as like, you know, I trained at Columbia where almost everyone who doesn't know that they want to do something else becomes a cardiologist.

So I think about this a lot. But it is this kind of scary thing. It's an abnormal lipoprotein that's five or six times more good at generating blockages and heart attacks and also has kind of a not just a blockage function, you know, narrowing the arteries, but also has some functionality to produce the clots that clog them up instantaneously. What kind of lifestyle behaviors lead to that situation? So that's a really good question. And, you know, lifestyle is a big part of everything.

but the L.P. Little A or lipoprotein little A, there's parentheses there. It's actually mostly genetic. It does go up and down a bit when you check it a lot. So this is a powerful test and really important because you can be doing everything right. Exactly. And this could show up as a problem. And in fact, one of the ways that I first learned that this was really important was I think it's Bob Harper, but a pretty famous kind of fitness celebrity, super fit who had a massive heart attack that if he had had it in a field somewhere, he would be dead. He was lucky had it, I think, at a gym in New York City and was brought to a really excellent place and was on effectively the heart bypass machine for a while. So it's those kinds of people and those sorts

of tragic stories that we think many are due to this. And I think giving individuals that information, and some of my friends say, why are you checking that? There's no medicines to treat that. There's actually a medicine in clinical trials, and I think a lot of us are knocking wood And we're in a really amazing time in medical science where almost anything, it's reasonable to think if you're looking at a 10 or 20 or 30 year time frame, we'll have something for that soon. You both mentioned insulin at the very top of your list. Maybe let's just pause and talk a little bit about the difference between glucose, which I think people are actually more familiar with.

And we live kind of in this glucose-centric paradigm. And a lot of that is because of, you know, the introduction of, you know, just regular folks being able to wear CGMs, for example, continuous glucose monitors. But why is insulin so important to understand? So glucose for everyone who's listening is the amount of sugar, literally, that's floating around in your blood. And your body actually has to have not too much and not too little of that all the time. And your body has this incredible mechanism for keeping it right at the right level that we often don't appreciate. And that mechanism is effectively insulin, which is a hormone.

and insulin puts that blood sugar when it gets too high back into your cells. And what happens is when we eat too much sugar, when we're too sedentary and we don't have good muscle mass and so our bodies can't absorb the sugar that we are eating, we get spikes in sugar and then insulin marches out and puts that sugar away back into ourselves. But over time, it loses the fight and it's not able to keep that sugar under control. And people say, well, who cares about that? I need sugar. It's how my brain runs on.

It's what my muscles run on. true. However, I liken it to frosted flakes and when you have too much sugar floating around in your bloodstream, it coats your red blood cells like a frosted flake and your red blood cells then can't deliver oxygen and then we get all those downstream problems. And what we know is that insulin irregularities or insulin sensitivity or insensitivity shows up before you see something like a hemoglobin A1C, which is a diabetes measure, but that's measuring how frosted the flakes are. And we don't even want the flakes to get frosted people. We want to avoid that, right? And so when we're talking about insulin or fasting insulin, by the way, high insulin levels have downstream

effects on your sex hormones. When insulin goes up, testosterone goes up, testosterone gets metabolized into estrogen. These are some of the pathways that really impact women around PCOS, PMS, fertility issues, endometriosis. So a lot of these conditions that we think about hormonally actually start all the way back at insulin, which again is a hormone. And when we think about insulin or what we were just talking about L.P. Little A, which I wasn't trained at Columbia. I also went to Columbia to test for. I trained in functional medicine. We've been testing L.P. Little A at Parsley for a decade, also APO B. When you get ahead of these things, you can start to make changes pretty quickly. And there actually are some ways. For some people, they will be responsive when it comes to LP. Little A. Others not and excited about the drugs that are coming. But for something like insulin, you can make real time decisions in a matter of weeks, a couple months. which can start to really turn that ship around. And I also get the question, well, can I defrost the flakes? And the answer is yes.

Your red blood cells turn over. The ones that are there now are not going to be the ones that are there in a few months. So if we can shift the way our insulin's operating, we can start to undo some of that damage. Well, that's a beautiful analogy. I mean, it's a bit of a weird analogy. And I truly hope no one out there is actually eating frosted flakes. But if you are, this is your message to stop now. I ate a lot of frosted flakes when I was in high school.

I eat a lot of special K. And I saw something on the Instagram today that was like, do we all remember when special K was like a diet? And the special K people said to just eat special K and that was a diet. And somehow that was like sort of legitimate in the 80s. And now you're like, what? I know. I know. I know. Just eating boxes of special K. And now they're just, you know, somehow. Frosted flakes are worse. Fosset flakes are worse. Yeah. So you're in a much better spot than I was. I know. I know. But it's just the reality of the situation. And we'll see. talk about just some healthy habits and how do we shift. But are there anything else on the kind of the biomarker landscape that you feel like is really important to talk about that you're really excited about? You know, I think testing in women's health is really important. And women experience a lot of bias in medicine. There's a lot of under-testing of women. A lot of saying, well, you know, live through your fertility issues, live through your PCOS, live through your menopause, and there's nothing we can do about it. And if you're listening to this, there's a lot

we can do about all of those things. And there is quite a lot of resistance in medicine at large to testing women's hormones. And when we test female hormones, we can take action on them. And I think part of the reason there's the resistance is that there hasn't been the type of training that you get in functional medicine where you actually can intervene through nutrition, through supplements, through lifestyle change, through medications to move the needle on the hormones. But so many women and benefit from getting a snapshot and a baseline, even early, even before they're experiencing problems around testosterone, around changes in progesterone or estrogen, around menstrual cycle, which Woop does such a great job of tracking. And these insights can take, I think, for women,

hormones from this place of, ah, it's my hormones. I don't know what to do about them, to something that we can take action on. And so, you know, we talk about diseases like diabetes and heart disease in the longevity world a lot, right? Understandably, they're the top killers in our population. But I think there's equal measure importance on some of the metrics and biobarkers in longevity when it comes to the things that affect how people feel every day and give them a lot more control. And female hormones are certainly one of them. I love that. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health, performance, fitness, you may really enjoy getting a whoop.

That's right. You can check out whoop at whoop.com. It measures everything around sleep, recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free. You get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. And that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests.

I think we already give members a lot of data and lots of trends and lots of different ways of thinking about and looking at their data, but we also provide a lot of coaching, which I'd love. Now we're introducing another data stream. Just talk a little bit from a clinical perspective, how you think about kind of data and information overwhelm, and how do you manage that with your patients? Yeah, so it is tricky. I've taken care of a lot of scientists and sort of quantitative people, and they often show up with spreadsheets and, you know, colorful graphs. And, you know, I can never get them into the electronic health record that has their test results. And even at the level of a hospital, just trying to see what medicine somebody was on when they had this, you know, this cholesterol readout, they had this inflammation readout on their CRP.

They had this, you know, glucose readout. It's frustratingly challenging. Everyone has a different approach to help. And CRP just for folks with, so we're not using too many. Oh, yeah. And if you were going to ask, that's another one of mine that I think is a really true. terrific marker. So C-reactive protein. It's a protein that was discovered in the context of the bacteria that causes most pneumonia and causes some meningitis. But it's made by the liver. It has

a half-life of 19 hours, so it literally changes basically every day. So it's a really, really great kind of speedometer-style readout of your inflammation level. And inflammation, you know, it's really bad for the blood vessel system, so it impacts heart attacks and strokes. It's bad for the brain, so probably a huge driver of dementia and neurocognitive decline. And I think it's often a signal that there's something more significant wrong when it's even a little bit high. Yeah. And usually you'll see insulin resistance and CRP levels are very highly correlated. Yes. Definitely a big kind of conversation between the organs there. And it also can sometimes be a clue to a smoldering illness or maybe you just need to suck it up and go to the dentist

after two or three years. But it's a really important kind of signal that something bad is going on, and on a 30-year time frame matters a lot. So data overwhelm. Sorry, I got, yeah, I got a soft track. So some people get really freaked out by too much data. And I think that everyone has the capability for this, for sure. But, you know, when it's presented the right way and it's handled the right way and people

are reminded of how they were feeling before they got that number, most people aren't going to get too freaked out by data unless it's sort of really. really scary stuff that I'm grateful is frankly not part of the panel. You know, nobody should open up their labs and see you might have prostate cancer, right? But so I think contextualizing it in someone's behaviors and what they're journaling and how they're feeling is the most powerful thing. So I can't do that in the $2 billion EHR system, no offense to the people who bought that or make it. But all of us can do it at home in the app. And, you know, like I said, we all are going to care so much more about that. And we're going to be thinking about how do I work on this issue

a little bit all the time when we're making breakfast or brushing our teeth. Wait a minute. Here's an idea of how I can move the needle on that insulin marker or get a little bit more sleep or, you know, add some zone two cardio this week. So I think that, you know, that context and that picture as presented to the user, you know, the gestalt, the total picture is what's so powerful and so enabling. I love that. What's your perspective, Robin? You know, I have seen the way that lab data really changes somebody's own understanding of their bodies and motivates them.

And one of the luxuries I have in working in functional medicine is our visits are 60 minutes or 30 minutes. We go over all of your lab tests with you, whether they're beautifully visualized or they're stuck in a crappy PDF. We will help you understand. we'll screen share and a lot of health can feel esoteric right and it's hard to also remember like how did I feel a few months ago I mean I know most people can't remember what they had for lunch last week like I can't let alone like what was my level of migraine and joint pain and gut health six months ago and so the data can really help people understand and kind of lock into this is real And this objective measure then becomes this trackable motivator for people to change their health.

And I always think, like, you know, we talk a lot in health care at large about how there's no time and we don't have time to spend with people. But I'm like, this little bit of extra time that we spend in a functional medicine context, not just showing you your data, but helping you understand it and tying it back to you how you feel and why we're recommending the interventions we're recommending goes so far. in terms of motivating people to actually make changes. And so as this kind of lab data becomes more and more available to people everywhere, we just get to double down on that motivation effect that I think is going to have really important implications for, you know, the medical cost curve, for people who care about that, and for health at large for people who care about their own personal health. I think too, we're, you know, just given that we're able to merge all of this data into one place

And not to mention, we have some of the context with the journaling and we can see what their activities levels are. We can see how much time they're spending in various zones. Like, we'll be able to really help people understand exactly how they need to apply their effort to get themselves into a better place. So I think for me, I get really excited about that. As a coach, I spent many years trying to get people to do things. Getting humans to do things is hard. How do you both think about just this idea of behavior change and getting people to because it's one thing to know what to do and in a lot of people even in the face of like some really sobering news still getting people to resist that bucket of chicken wings can be hard how do you think about motivation and behavior

change how do you how you as an individual maybe also with the patients that you work with you know I think that idea of long term or a longitudinal relationship really matters right like a lot of medicine is very episodic and reactive. I feel sick. I come in. I get an answer. I leave. Right. And what Woop has built in is this longitudinal relationship, right, where you can remind people of something all the time. One of the reasons when I started my practice parsley a long time ago was that I designed an annual program. And people said, well, why can't I just come once? And I said, well, do you get fit going to the gym once? No. And you also, unfortunately, don't get healthy going to the doctor once either. This is a journey. And so if you can be on that

journey with people, I think setting up this idea from the very beginning that this is a journey, this is a path, and we're going to be on it for a while, fundamentally changes the nature of motivation. So that's number one. That's beautiful. And I've seen it. And I've seen it. We've treated almost 50,000 patients. We've really seen it work. Like we're in this together and it's just like embracing the idea that this isn't going to happen overnight. And I'm going to see you again. And we're going to work on this now and next that world work on this and next will work on that. But we're going to start here at the beginning of a path. And then I think the other thing we sometimes forget about is, I don't know what the right word is, but sort of persona or personality. And we talk about it

in behavior change research as like finding people's motivation, finding their why. But what I've seen is it goes beyond someone's why. It actually goes to like how they're wired. There's some people who will be given information and make changes, right? They're that type of personality, right? You give them the intel. We see this all the time in my practice. These are the people who won't talk to a health coach if you hang them by their fingernails. Like I'm that person as well, so I get it. They just like want the information and they're going to go do it. Great. But then there's other people who are really motivated actually externally by someone else. A doctor, a coach, their community, someone around them who really wants them to make this change. It could be their friends. It could be their

family. And then there's another type of person who's more rebellious, who's sort of like, well, I'll do this if I think it's a good idea. And then you have to kind of convince them, it's their idea. Yeah, yeah. And so I think we don't give enough credit to the fact that we as human beings are all unique in the way that we ingest information and absorb information, but also relate to it on an emotional level, some of which is subconscious. And so as we get to the place where we can give people a lot more data, I think the next layer will be, how do we help you make changes in the way that change is motivating to you? Yeah. Just even, you know, the things that we talk about inside these walls, you know, just like the tone, that type of coach that you want. You know,

like we kind of have one voice right now. But, you know, the idea that, wow, we could actually talk to you in a way that is personally motivating for you also gets me really excited, you know, because there's so much to, I think, encumber there. To your point, everyone is just really unique in how they receive information, how they want to receive it, and how they're going to apply that change. Yeah. And it's not always obvious from like the condition or the age. You know, we'll have the same 45-year-old female patient with, you know, perimenopause symptoms, high cholesterol all in weight gain. And those two people, one of them loves their health coach and talks to them all the time. And the other one's like, what health coach? I refuse. You know what I mean? And I think

sometimes we forget that dynamic of like who we are as people is really driving a lot of how we relate to some of this info. Some people don't want to be coached. They do not. They just want the information to your point. Yeah. I think that's such an important perspective. What do you think, down. Yeah. So, you know, I think a huge part of behavior change is also the individualization. So we touched on some of this in how people like to, you know, lead themselves or be led and what they like to get in terms of information. But, you know, when we think about habits, you know, habits are sort of the emergent properties of our, of our lifestyle. And in the quality world, which I have had a foot in there for a long time, we say that every system produces exactly the results it was perfectly

designed to get. So if you sleep six hours a night, it's not because every morning you wake up and you say, I'd like to feel this tired again tomorrow. There's probably a lot of factors that land at that number. And so changing habits and changing behaviors and ultimately changing biomarkers and then health outcomes really has to do with customization to somebody's unique, you know, context and needs. And one of my favorite experiences as a doctor is, you know, being incredibly humbled by people who know their health so much better, and they're almost like, oh, I can't believe I have to explain this to you. And this is most common with a person with type one diabetes because living with type one diabetes and having so much data, you become an expert in it

and typically better than almost any doctor. So that combination of feedback and experimentation and curiosity allows people to understand things really well. And so when you enable somebody, to do this kind of perfectly. They have a reasonably clear sense of the goals. They've got the right metrics and biomarkers to kind of guide them on their journey like a compass or a GPS. They figure out these super clever hacks that no healthcare professional would typically offer. I remember one of the first times this guy had lowered his A1C from 8.6 to about 6.0. There's some nuance here. Everybody's A1C comes down, you know, after they sort of get things a little bit better, but not that much. He was just on a little whisper of medicine.

I was like, Kenny, how did you do this? So, of course, he says, oh, Doc, I don't want to explain this to. It's too complicated. And I was like, Kenny, I'm your doctor. I can handle it. But it was all of these little changes he had made. And he hadn't given up anything he really liked. So he didn't give up sandwiches, which you'd think if you have diabetes, maybe you should.

He hadn't given up ice cream. Again, like, maybe you should. he hadn't given up beer, but he had made little changes that added up, and he was giving up enough of the bad part of each lifestyle choice or each habit, but not the thing that really mattered to him. And so when you give people this information in this fun environment to experiment, they always find better solutions than any health professional can find for them. And those are the kinds of things that they can live with for a long time and then become the new habits. That's beautiful. And I really hope that that's why Whoop is so sticky is because it does, I think,

elicit. I mean, it's your own data to your point, Dan, like people love their most curious about themselves, right? And so there's this playground of information that, you know, you can get inside and then experiment, you know. I think that's a great way of putting it. And, you know, some of the best scientists are little kids because they're not afraid to fail. We're just always coming up with hypotheses and testing them. And, you know, certainly in the health care world, there's people who are doing a little too much experimentation, and it can be dangerous. But for most of the stuff that we're talking about here, that playground idea is exactly right. Yeah. And I think I, you know, as a scientist here at Woop, I get, I get so

excited about the data. You know, I mean, we're going to have unprecedented levels of data to be able to put together, I think, what are really novel patterns that have never really been analyzed, you know. So, yeah, I'm pretty excited about that. From the standpoint of Robin, you have this really good example. I mean, obviously root cause medicine is near and dear to your heart. You have been really, I think, one of the leading voices and helping people understand actually what that means. And you give a great example about just a migraine. You don't have a migraine. Because you have a pain killer deficiency. That is so good. So just talk a little bit more about that and just pull that thread as far as you can. Totally. So when we think about root cause medicine, what we're talking about is,

is treating the true cause of an illness rather than bandating the symptom. And it doesn't mean you let someone live in pain. So we'll take our migraine example. Let's give you a painkiller to help you with that migraine. But let's not stop there. Let's also figure out why are you having migraines? Migraines can be triggered by an imbalance in the hormones in the menstrual cycle or how you metabolize your estrogens.

Migraines can be triggered in people who are magnesium deficient, which is actually quite common. and migraines can be a result of uncontrolled high blood pressure. They can be a result of in one of my patient's cases. She had been to headache center, neurologist, gotten Botox, every drug for migraine pain you can imagine. No one had ever asked her what she ate and drank every day. She was drinking 40 ounces of coffee a day.

I had a student athlete. Same exact thing. Aaron, if you're out there. She, like migraines. And she was just literally dehydrated. Yeah. Would we, it was almost like, I can't even believe. She had a little bit of high.

Dehydration and caffeine. withdrawal and like sympathetic autonomic nervous system disarray, the whole thing. We titrated her off of her coffee. Literally, it took a couple months because you can't just go from 40 ounces of coffee today to zero. You'll implode. And her migraines completely went away. It can be chronic stress, right? And so when we take the time to really deep dive into what could be triggering the migraines, when did the migraines start? Was it yesterday? or was it 10 years ago? And then in functional medicine, we want to know, well, what happened 10 years ago?

Did you lose your job? Did you get a divorce? Were you in a car accident? Did you have a surgery? Did something change around your lifestyle? Did you have an infection? We really go back in time because what came before is often the clue to the story of what's happening today.

And then we seek to unravel dairy, actually. I know everyone's talking this week about dairy is healthy for you. And I'm like, dairy's high quality dairy can be healthy for you. If you have an immune response or a sensitivity to dairy where it gives you migraine headaches or acne or asthma or psoriasis or eczema or chronic sinusitis, which I see all the time, then even though dairy can be a healthy food, it's not for you. So back to our migraine example, what we do is we figure out what's causing the migraine so that hopefully you don't have the migraines anymore or you have them far less frequently.

And then we don't need that painkiller so much. And when I learned about this form of medicine, it was just like this, I don't know, lightning bolt for me. Like, you can't unsee something you've seen. And I was like, I understand in my medical training why I was trained the way I was because that's how the system works. But this is the right medicine. And so when we do that, we just fundamentally change the trajectory of somebody's life. Yeah. There must be a lot of other examples like that, you know, where people are suffering needlessly.

You know, I mean, the migrant example. Like, you know, this kid went two years with just really severe migraines and all of a sudden she just drinks water and she's fine, you know? I mean, my own story, I had, I developed cystic acne in my 20s and I went to every dermatologist and esthetician. Your skin is beautiful, by the way. I can't even imagine that. Thank you. Well, I've become a bit obsessed with it. But after this experience, you know, I had all the creams and the pills and they were injecting my zits with cortisone, which left scarring.

Terrible thing to do, by the way, everyone, don't do that. It fundamentally changes the nature of the skin in a somewhat irrevocable way. Antibiotics, birth control pill, you name it. And I then later train in functional medicine and I learn about food sensitivities, which has a topic that literally never came up in all of my medical training. Like, this is just not possible. And so being me, I run the experimental myself and I eliminate wheat and dairy for my diet. and a month in my skin's clearing up and by six weeks my skin is totally clear and I was just

pissed because I hadn't done this yet when I got married and I ate a slice of pizza the night before my wedding and I had totally had a zip the day of my wedding. I'm still pissed about everyone it's a long time ago and so I really saw how I had thrown the book at my skin and nothing had worked and it had really been an inside out job and so back to root cause medicine when we look at the body as an ecosystem and we understand what's happening in the gut can be causing what's happening in the brain or what's showing up in your skin could be starting in the immune system. And we think about the body as ecosystem rather than body as set of organs. We suddenly uncover new solutions that are evidence-based. They're there. They're not, you know,

whack-a-do or crazy. They're just not the way we were looking at things. And it's just such a powerful unlock for people from skin issues to migraines, autoimmune disease, fertility. We have so many what I call parsley babies. One of my patients was told she'd never get pregnant without IVF, and she's three kids in without assistance. And Ives amazing, don't get me wrong. But when someone's told that, right, it's being told there's something wrong with you that's irrevocable, and that's just not always true. Yeah. I love that. And I think there's a really interesting point there, too, that, you know, the health system has certain objectives, and those are sort of societally or at a market level important, right? So don't get me wrong. It's important that people get their cancer screenings

and don't have heart attacks and stuff, right? Of course. Yeah. But so often people go into the exam room and there's something that actually matters so much more to them. I think acne is a great example because if you go to the dermatologist with acne, sometimes, and I'm not trying to knock dermatologist, but sometimes I hear from my patients and friends who the germ said, it's not that bad. And they're sitting there suffering, thinking, you know, I'm 35 or 40 or 45. Why do I still have acne? This is supposed to be a teenager's problem. And especially for things like your wedding, it really matters, but it bothers people so much every day. I think that there are a lot of these things, you know, sex and people's reproductive function in so many different dimensions is another thing that

people don't get to talk about enough usually. And for many people, it's a huge part of how they feel well. And, you know, we're not going to necessarily solve every problem with the, you know, data that we get from from wearables and from biomarkers. But I think that this idea that people should be given more of this so that they can have these, you know, safe experiments like you did, which I'm sure that's probably one of the most important things you'd say. you've done for your health in sort of the period you've been in. And, you know, imagine if somebody told you you couldn't do that because they weren't going to write a prescription for that test or something. The idea of self-experimentation and living the experiment that you just

brought up, I love. And I talk to my patients about that all the time. There's a lot of, especially when it comes to health and wellness, and I think for women, but also for men, this, like, should thing. I should eat better. I should work. out. And the second, like, there's a should anything. It just loses its luster. And in fact, like a lot of internal resistance comes up for any of us. And I always tell my patients, live the experiment. You know, cut out wheat and dairy for four to six weeks and see what happens to your body. And if your allergies and asthma clear up, you might decide that it's worth continuing to eliminate those foods. And also we can do what we call some gut healing

and help you potentially get to a state where you can reintroduce them and not have so many of those symptoms, at least a little bit. Or you might decide, you know, F it. I would rather have allergies and asthma and acne and still eat these foods. But then you're in the driver's seat and your control. And I think there's a lot of examples of that where we have a lot more impact on our bodies, on our health than we think. And we've kind of given up that agency in various ways to various people. And now I think we're in an era where people are starting to take it back. I love that. I feel that too. I think there still are a lot of folks who are relying on the medical system to do what it's structurally just not set up to do, you know, which is to give

agency to the patient. So what do you think from just a structural kind of policy standpoint? can the health care system in the U.S. kind of get to where it needs to be to provide the kind of personalized care that we're talking about here? I think it can and I think it has to. I think that the costs of health care, we're seeing, you know, premiums are going up this year more than any other year and that's hitting employers really hard. It's hitting all of us as individuals really hard. And that's just because we're so damn unhealthy as a population. We're just costing so much. So much. And we will spend a few hundred thousand dollars on a heart surgery, but we will not

spend a dime on meaningful preventive care. Or we'll say it takes too long or, and I think technology and AI and empowering people around their data is a piece of that. Like I don't think it all can be done by our health care system. I think it's like a and not an or. And I think we have a financial imperative and really a social imperative to invest a lot more upstream in public health. And that's everything from, you know, affordable housing and nutrition education and sleep health equity. A friend of mine has a really cool nonprofit called Eat Real, start in California that's changing what's served in schools. Like it's awesome to see this stuff. We need more of that. And I think we need to think about reimbursement and what we reimburse in terms

of, hey, we're going to do these tests. We're going to look upstream. We're going to figure out what's going on with you before it's too late. And I think it'll come, actually. I've always said that the wave of change will come driven by the consumer. Because I think as all of our collective expectations change around what we want our interactions with the medical system to look and feel like, what we expect our health look and feel like that creates this push and this wave along with the financials that together, I think, will inevitably force our health care system to change. And parts of our health care system, by the way, don't need to change. I mean, we have an amazing advanced medical treatments and research facilities that should like

keep doing what they're doing. Yes. But in this aspect, we need to change. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've worked as a complex care doctor and a geriatrician. And I think about the, you know, 78-year-old woman in Quincy, Massachusetts, who I'm talking her for 20 minutes and I say, all right, hop up on the exam table and they hate it when I say it like

that. And she, you know, grabs on for dear life to make that treacherous three-foot journey. You know, that's a person who right now, her insurance company is spending $50,000 a year on, you know, everything. And she's not getting a lot that she wants. She's not, oh, please, can I have more medicine? Ooh, please, I would love to spend six and a half days in a hospital this year. Could you arrange that?

You know, she wants to be able to, you know, pet her dog and see her family members. And I think about that woman, you know, right now, I'm in that exam room and I'm thinking, what can I do to keep her from falling this year? And if you go back 30 years, it's very easy. If you go back 10, it's even easy. But so most of where the money in the health care system is going is going into people that cost $50,000 a year and have so much going on, and it's mostly acute care spending. And then I think the next thing is, you know, expensive medicines that expensive as they are,

a lot of them are really good. And if you have the difference between living or dying or living okay or living terribly, or when we think about what GLP1 medications and others are doing for people, I do think that's money that's pretty well spent, but we do need to decide it. But I think that to the extent that we can incentivize and enable people to do these experiments that make sense for them, that work for them, that help get them, you know, metabolically healthy, lower risk for heart attacks and strokes, and strong way later into life. And I'm not talking, you know, squatting 415. I'm talking, walk from that chair to the table. That's how we save that $50,000, a person.

and much later in life. And, you know, the demographics are really striking how much the population is aging. So we really do have to figure that out. But I don't think that the answer is robotic exoskeletons for that lady. I think that it's what we're doing right now to help people get a handle on this before disease is so obvious and harder to reverse. Yeah. And I love that example you just gave of the 70-year-old lady. My dad is turning 80 this year. And he started weight training this year, and I finally cracked through, and he started a low-dose GLP-1. Dad, if you're listening to this, don't kill me. And he's currently a healthy 80.

And I'm like, dad, I need you around for 20-plus years, you know, in my mind forever. But the point I want to make is, is never too late. And we can start in longevity really at any age. You can build lean muscle mass. It's harder. You have to eat the protein, and you have to do the work. But you can do it. You can start to have some of the...

the metabolic effects, not just the weight loss, but the insulin sensitivity, all of the effects of a GLP1. I'm less worried about my dad at 80 starting to GLP1 at a low dose where he's seen tremendous effects from it at a low dose. People call it a microdose. It's just a low dose. But, you know, already then a 40-year-old starting a GLP1 because I'm like, where are we going with this? Yeah, yeah. You're going to be on it for 40 years. Right. Which is, I mean, well, just only, I only say that not because I think there's a problem with the drug. today. It's just that you don't, we haven't seen these types of drugs in action at that length of time. But for someone like my dad, I'm like, these interventions can start to have

real meaningful impact now. And I think back to our earlier conversation, the healthcare system would do better to recognize that, that these interventions aren't all a young person's game. They really matter in older ages as well. Yeah. You're invited to join the waitlist for WOOP Advanced Labs. Advanced Labs delivers clinician-reviewed lab results right into your Woop app for the most complete view of your biomarkers and biometrics and the most comprehensive understanding of your health.

Unlike other tests, Woop integrates your lab results with your Woop data. See how your habits and behaviors influence your biomarkers and get clear guidance on what to change to improve your results. To join the wait list, visit our website or the health tab in the Woop app. How do we get people to care about their health?

You must be one of those Washington policy people. I mean, that is such an important question that I think so many people are thinking about. And, you know, I don't think any of the usual answers, you know, make them pay for the cost of their bad choices. I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, there's not any choice in this, but that has never really worked. You know, I think a lot of what we're seeing in the excitement around wearables. And I think we alluded to CGMs before. You know, I don't think everyone needs to wear a CGM all the time, but I really love playing with them because of what you learn.

Yeah. And, you know, when you think about what, you know, functional medicine teaches us about how your body turns calories into a blood sugar number, it is so complicated. And there's so much to explore and do there. And I think that, you know, the more, again, not every wearables for everyone, but I really do like to wire patients up with a lot of stuff. And I purposely don't set it up all the way for them because they need to get their hands

on the technology too. So I think, you know, there's so much to figure out and there's so much challenging in the health care system right now. But a lot of it is figuring out the right mix of incentives and tools and systems for people to be able to tinker and play. And I do think that the hardest patient to convince to do something that is like very preventive, in my experience, is a 50-year-old man, okay, give or take. So when I have that person in the exam room, the thing I'm always struggling with is it's usually a flu shot. And so I've said

this a million times, and it always works. I've showed them the paper that shows that flu shots prevent heart attacks about as well as a statin medication. And they always say, really? All right, I want that. So, you know, it is a lot about focusing people in. And also, So they shouldn't, but numbers and pictures really do focus people in and convince them. So I would love it if everyone would just see a sign that says get enough sleep, enough exercise, not too many refined carbs and processed foods, and, like, be kind to one another. And they would just do it.

You know, I just did like a sort of expensive epigenomic test, and it basically said that at the end. But when you see the numbers, it does focus you a lot in ways that don't make sense unless you realize that people are irrational and that's how they are. I actually think that everyone does care about their health. This is actually something that I maybe go against the grain on, but in my medical training, I remember kind of being told that people don't care about their health. And after a few years, I was like, no, they don't care about medicine. They don't care about like the medical system, but they do care about their health. And I think it's how we define health, but I don't know anyone who doesn't want to feel good, look good, be able to

do their things that they want to do. And I think that as we increasingly get this concept of health outside of medicine and into life, suddenly those dots connect for everybody and people see what's happening on social media and they see the products that are in the stores and maybe they have a product like a whoop and they're tracking something, but maybe they don't. I think though that the conversation in the past five to 10 years has really expanded past medicine to health. And then I think that everyone fundamentally wants to be healthy and that a lot of people don't know how in their daily life. And that as they start to experiment for themselves, back to the experiment of like, what does that mean? Does it feel good? People do start to make change.

and I see it all the time. Yeah, and I think it really comes down to, I mean, a lot of folks just don't understand. I mean, to your point, as trained as you were, you know, just linking your food sensitivity to your acne. You know, like, I mean, that's kind of like this really, like, insane aha moment, you know? And I think people understanding, wow, my short, inconsistent fragmented sleep is actually contributing to my inability to lose weight and, you know, my ability to move. So a lot of, I think, this project really at the end of the day is being able to kind of help people understand the opportunities that exist for them to advance their health in meaningful ways, you know, and a lot of that comes down to having the right kind of data, you know, to know how to apply your effort. And you talked about the 50-year-old guy or the proverbial 50-year-old guy. You know, I think we always talk about how women bring their partners and bring the men to the doctor.

And statistically, that's true. I think sometimes we forget that women go through fertility and childbearing and that brings them into health and medicine, whether they want to or not, meaning wanting to engage in the health or the medicine piece kind of earlier in their lives. And, you know, 86% of women will have a baby by the end of her childbearing years, at least in the United States at present. And so it's the vast majority. And that to me represents a huge opportunity. I do a ton of work with women around health as relates to fertility, either pre-conception or during pregnancy or postpartum. And it's almost like a lost opportunity in our culture because we focus so much

on the pregnancy and the baby. But a lot of the things that make that pregnancy riskier are the health status of mom. And it's like this amazing opportunity. And I'm seeing more and more women at this phase of life, whether they're in their 20s or 30s, their 40s, right? It's a pretty big range, but kind of see that as this moment to really tap into their health. So that those types of experiences can be a Y as well. I really hope that that is an area that Woop can lean into in the future. Like before I go down this path of like wanting to have a child, like how can I position myself, put myself in the best possible scenario for my own health to have a healthy pregnancy, but also the future health of my baby. Because I think we're seeing that how healthy

the mom is going to have not just an impact on the health of the pregnancy, but actually the future health of the child. So they're like, I think the implications are a lot graver in some ways. You know, they're big. So we're going to do some quick hit questions for a wrap up. All right. True or false, data from Woop Advanced Labs will be more predictive of future health than your annual physical. Definitely true. I do a lot of annual physicals. Dan coming in hot. I love it. I don't think they accomplish very much. And when they do, it's usually because the patient brought in some additional point.

Additional data. I know seatbelts are important. I don't think asking people about seatbelts in 2025, certainly in Boston, Massachusetts confers that much benefit. Definitely true, unless your annual physical is with a functional medicine doctor. And then it's a wash. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it is a absolute game changer working with functional medicine. But then you'll bring your whoop labs to your functional medicine doctor and you'll be one step ahead so it all works people i love it cannot wait to see how you answer this okay if you could only track one metric for the rest of your life what would it be and why i'm going to go with total body composition including bone density lean muscle mass and fat mass okay yeah all right yeah keep going keep going okay you know what no metric gives us everything but if you want to think about i talk to women especially a lot about the brains bones and booty era and And how if you're going to get to longevity, you've got to take care of those three things.

By booty, I mean metabolic health and building lean muscle mass. But also the glutes. And also the glutes. Which, you know, we all, I have a lot of work to do them. But we are sort of wasting away as a society, right? And a lot of people are doing a lot to counteract that. But if those things are in good stead, then most likely you are not going to fall over and break a hip because you don't have osteoporosis. You're going to have the strength to get up and do the things you want to.

do. Metabolically, you're most likely healthy if those numbers are in check. So I think in that one test, you actually learn a lot about other body systems. And we know that there's a lot of implications for state of bones and state of lean muscle mass and certainly fat mass for brain health and dementia. So trying to get an all in one. It doesn't totally exist. That was really convincing. I think that's a great answer. Whether we're calling that appendicular lean mass index or grip strength. You know, they say muscle is the organ of longevity. Yeah. The more we learn about longevity, the truer that is. Yeah. You know, I like to say the best medicine known to man is sleep. The second best is exercise. The third best is estrogen.

And the fourth best is Crestor, at least at current state. And so, you know, I do think that that's pretty true. It's a close fight between sleep and exercise. But I do think that sleep is more important because it really does more to preserve and repair. And I think especially when we think about dementia, which is one of the scarier sort of pathways of aging about which we feel we have so little control. Especially too, like when we think about melatonin, human growth hormone, and if we're not getting consistent or insufficient sleep, like those are not consistent and those are not sufficient. It's true. Yeah, the downstream effect of that I think is underappreciated in terms of just our capacity to train and everything that happens during the day. Right. And you would know

this better than me, but certainly when I exercise after a bad night's sleep, it doesn't go that well. Yeah. Well, you just see your intensity levels, the volume, and we see those data. When you are under slept relative to your baseline, you move less. So I would probably say, you know, the sleep quality measure, whether we're talking about sort of hours and consistency, that I think is the one thing that I would measure. And I think that, you know, when I ask people in the office, how much do they sleep? It's sort of like how much you drink or, you know, all these things that people kind of lie about a little bit. So I do think that even though sleep routines do get pretty stable, at least sort of pre-kids, young kids, older kids, after kids, not a ton of fluctuation.

I do think that's the thing I would measure. Okay. You said exercise. And so I really want to be specific here because I think not all types of exercise are created equal. And there's absolutely a taxonomy in terms of what is, I think, going to move the needle the most. So for both of you, what would be your taxonomy? So if we're thinking about, you know, raw strength, functional strength, anaerobic, aerobic, you know, just give me your kind of ranking. It's kind of like what goes on your plate at a meal. You know, there's a bunch of different groups and you can't get by without, you know,

a little bit of everything. Sure. I mean, I do really like. You had to choose. I do really like V-O-2 Max, and it's something that I check on. all my patients. And I think that... So your upper threshold, zone 5 is your number one thing that you should do. Yeah. I mean, I think about longevity and planning for it is sort of like planning for retirement. And the medical practice that I have around that is called portfolio for exactly that reason. Cool. And the idea being that if you know your VO2 max is 50 today, I'm working up to

that right now, by the way, you know that if things go well when you're 80, it'll be, you know, sort of in this range. But if it's 35 today, when you're 80, it may not be good at all. And then you may not be able to go up the stairs or something like that. So I do really like VO2 Max, you know, as a measure. Yeah. Horspower measure. But if you just have that and don't have certain other things, you still may not feel great. Right. Best exercise? I guess if you were to say, you know, strength training, I kind of, I think for me, I have this debate in my head all the time. You know, I probably put strength training first, just understanding the rule. relationship between, you know, just muscle being a sponge with insulin and, you know,

just understanding that's just the basis of a lot of problems. I guess I'd probably put strength training first if I had to like only pick one thing I could do. I was going to cheat though and say hit training with weights. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And try to combine a bunch of them. I know. I know. I did one of those the other day. Like I follow this fitness influencer and she had a workout and I did and I just about fell over. I was like, I don't even know. But yeah, it's really. Really tough. I mean, it would just have to be a balance of strength training and something like hit that gives you intervals so that you give yourself that cardiovascular push and then, you know, take care of all of it on the other end with a sauna to like round it out. I love that. I know. To fake your cardiovascular workout, which is how I think about it. I know. I definitely am not shy about bolting on a 30 minute sauna session after my cardiovascular work. Nor am I. Yeah. And I do. It's such a great little.

a hack. I don't know. It's, plus my whoop thinks I'm exercising sometimes because of what it does to my heart rate. I do think it depends so much on where you're at. You know, I talk to a lot of my patients who have excess visceral fat and want to change their body composition about, you know, zone two exercise, which people, it's really like the spinach of exercise. Like, you know, people don't really appreciate how good it is for you because it's so simple. Yeah. Because you don't really have to do that much. You don't have to drive anywhere. You don't have to have special gear. And in many cases, in a hybrid work world, people can even, like, there's a woman in my neighborhood who is sort of like, I don't know if she thinks of it this way, but she's always walking fast on the phone.

Yeah. This lady's got six hours of Zone 2 every week. Yeah. Yeah, Zone 2 is really powerful. We haven't published these data yet, but there's no question. When we look at Zone 2, it is actually less exercise and more of a recovery modality. There's something like really positive happening from an autonomic perspective that I think is special. And I think, you know, folks aren't probably tapping into as much as they need to.

We know the, you know, the improvements in mitochondria and facts out as oxidization, more so for men, I think, than women. I think men get better benefits because women are probably already good. We're already pretty good at those things. So we don't need Zone 2 to push us there. But I really think about Zone 2 based on our data as more of a recovery modality than an extra Yeah. I'll be curious to see if you all get zone to data as relates to mental health, if what you just said is true. Yes, yes. Like some sort of like autonomic, sympathetic, parasympathetic reset. Yeah. Yeah. More to come. Yeah. It would be really cool to, yeah, see if we can triangulate that data. We probably have the data actually. Probably do. Actually, yeah. All right. Robin, your longevity is more influenced by your habits than your genetics. Agree or disagree? Heart agree. heart agree yeah we have everything right is g plus e genetics plus environment but so much of what's happening in our health is actually abigenetic which is the turning on and off of genes in real

time by the foods you eat the pollution you're exposed to the stress you're under some degree what happened in utero which that part you can't control but there's so much you can control and I'm actually going to push back against the word habits I call them core actions because I don't believe that what you eat every day, how you move, how you sleep. Any of these things are like a habit. Like, to me, a habit is like biting your nails. They're necessities, absolute vital necessities. Yeah. Exercise or movement. These are core actions and they're deeply defining to your health. I 100% agree. I won't say it as eloquently. But I will say that when we talk about the

contribution to health, usually people say that on average genetics is 10%, which is by the way approximately the same percentage as the entire $5 trillion a year health care system. Oh. So, you know, these things do matter. And certainly there are genetic conditions with profound effects on health that are, you know, close to 100%. But for the average person, I would say it's 10%. And, you know, genes aren't destiny.

But when we have very little control or engagement with our health, they have a lot more force because if you're not thinking about your health, if you're not given the tools to take action, if it's not something that's top of mind to you because you feel okay or you feel meh, but you think meh is normal for age X. Genes do play a much bigger role. You know, diabetes is something like 80% heritable, but a lot of that is because people don't have the opportunity to engage with that problem early enough that they could make it less so. Yeah, well said. Well, this has been such an honor. We at WOOP, if I could just speak for WOOP for a second, we are so thrilled to have both of you working with us to make sure that our Advanced Labs insight are

as dialed and as good as they can be. And we just feel really honored to be able to work with you and call you partners. So thank you. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, please leave a rating or review. Check us out on social at Woop at Will Ahmed. If you've question was he answered on the podcast email us podcast at whoop.com call us 508 443 4952. If you think about joining whoop you can visit woup.com sign up for a free 30-day trial membership. New members to use the code will W ILL to get a $60 credit on Woop accessories when you enter the code at checkup. That's a wrap folks. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the

green. Thank you.