Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 0:00
Dr. Kristen Holmes, I would consider you a secret weapon to many, beyond global head of human performance and principal scientist at Whoop. You are an extraordinary human. Not only, so I want to get you very embarrassed before we start, not only have I watched you work so hard for the things that you believed in supporting other humans, but your humility in doing this and the hard work and the sacrifice, I don’t think people will ever see. But what they will see is what you actually produce, and your new book, Aligned, is beautifully done, and it is not just data-driven, which everybody who listens to this podcast and everyone that knows you, they know you for the data, but there is an absolute other dimension to you, and that’s very soulful, which I think we just all need more of.

Kristen Holmes 1:10
Yeah, I I definitely wanted to write a book that, wasn’t about performance optimization, was but was actually about wholeness, and that’s what I I hope the book in the end achieves. But you made me emotional, so thanks. You and I have actually been

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:26
friends for a long time.

Kristen Holmes 1:27
I know. Folds of Folds of Honor, I think, was where we met, right? When we were helping the guys with their Triple 7, which was super fun. And I I remember I I got home and I was talking to my daughter. I’m like, I just met my soul sister. I I just I I could not believe how gracious and generous and, you know, I mean, you reached out to me. I I probably had like, you know, 2,500 followers on Instagram, and you reached out and you said, I believe in what you’re doing. How can I help you? Like, who does that, you know? I I, you know, and I and I and there, every woman I come across, you have impacted them, like, who’s in this field as a scientist, trying to kind of break through and, get their work out there, and, you know, you you support all of us in ways that I I It’s mind-blowing how you have the time, frankly, but I I’m so grateful.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 2:19
Well, you are just, like I said, extraordinary. You and I were just chatting a second ago about trauma, and you also mentioned something I’d I’d never heard before, but I suppose I’ve thought about, and that’s this idea that there are two kind of entities or two groups of people. And again, this is kind of simplifying it, but you were saying, those that manage their autonomic nervous system and those that don’t.

Kristen Holmes 2:45
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean the world is kind of divided into two, you know, individuals who have control over their autonomic nervous system and those who don’t. And the people who do just have a, not just a competitive advantage, but a survival advantage. And you know, I think what what is really interesting in just some of the literature that’s emerging, especially around aging and longevity, is that a lot of the hallmarks of aging are are actually symptoms of a deregulated autonomic nervous system. So when we think about cellular senescence and mitochondrial dysfunction, genomic instability, inflammation, you know, you can just kind of go down the line, proteostasis. Those are symptoms of a deregulated autonomic nervous system. And there’s this beautiful paper that was literally just published in December of 2025 by Erico and colleagues, and I hope I pronounce that right. And and basically that’s exactly what they what they show is that sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system deregulation and its role in aging. And and they posit exactly what I just said that that all of these hallmarks of aging are a symptom of this dysregulation. So, you know, the whole my book, Align, is is very much about kind of putting the autonomic nervous system at the center. And the idea of, you know, building behaviors, routines, strategies, kind of a way of being in the world that allows you to build a robust nervous system in ways that allow you to respond and adapt to your environment in in ways that can make you feel proud. You know. And I think one of the, you mentioned trauma, you know, and and that’s there’s been some really, you know, when you think when you back up and you think about, all right, well, we’ve got this paper by Erico, there’s lots and lots of other evidence, you know, that that an autonomic nervous system matters. There’s some work done by Dr. Eugene Lipov, and he’s he’s kind of a a bit of a maverick in in the field. He came up with basically a procedure that that blocks your nerve. It’s called the stellate ganglion block, and you’ve probably heard of it. And basically what it does, you know, you’ve got your autonomic nervous system has two branches, the parasympathetic and the sympathetic. The parasympathetic is kind of like the brake, the rest and digest. The sympathetic is the activation, right? Like that’s when you’re hard charging and you’re going. Folks who have trauma are stuck in this sympathetic overactivation, which again is, you know, a hallmark of aging and disease, right? So we we want to have we want to move fluidly between. But what happens with trauma is you end up stuck. You end up in this overactivated sympathetic state, and what the ganglion block does is basically relieve that brake and allow the parasympathetic branch to dominate. And what he’s seen, he did a study with 170 special operators who were treatment resistant, had post-traumatic stress disorder, and basically what he saw when he administered this block was immediate relief

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 6:00
that was sustained for, you know, weeks after that treatment. So that’s just another example of when we can gain control and create more of a balanced autonomic nervous system, we allow ourselves almost to just breathe, like literally and figuratively, you know? You know, and you do talk about circadian rhythm and sleep, and there’s a whole host of ways and behaviors, which is interesting because the autonomic nervous system, I wonder, are there individuals that are more defended against,

Kristen Holmes 6:44
like protected,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 6:45
as opposed, yeah, so are there individuals that are just born more robust? Mm,

Kristen Holmes 6:50
yeah, so heart rate variability, which is a measure of your autonomic nervous system, and I think that’s the other paper that’s worth highlighting, by Kim and his and colleagues, published in 2018. It’s it’s kind of like the meta-analysis and review of the literature that looks at stress stress and HRV, and what they found is that HRV is indeed a very good proxy for autonomic nervous system functioning. So when we take this measure of HRV, it and we we try to understand, well, what does HRV actually mean, right? If it’s this proxy for your autonomic nervous system health, well, if I have an HRV today, what does that actually mean? Well, we know somewhere around 47 to 65% is heritable, is genetic.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 7:36
That’s a lot.

Kristen Holmes 7:36
It There’s a range, right? There’s there’s quite a big range. With in it in it, in I think to your question, some people fall on the the the lower end, so maybe if if yours 47%, you’ve inherited HRV, suppose 40 so 47%, you will be potentially more susceptible. Or or yeah, or or accepting of these behaviors that help build that robustness. So, so yeah, I think there there is this range. But But But I think what’s really empowering about this literature is that, you know, the the there are a lot of interventions that you can deploy. There’s ways of being in the world that will help bolster your resilience, right? Your autonomic nervous system resilience. And I and I think that’s that’s really what I was trying to to to write about in Aligned, is that, you know, there’s these physiological dimensions and there’s these psychological dimensions, right? And if you can understand what the big levers are, you can then create or design a life that allows you this level of resilience, right? That that allows you to step out into the world with firmer persuasion, right? Like mentally, physically, emotionally, and I would argue spiritually.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 8:53
Take me through, which you know that this is the next obvious question, what that looks like,

Kristen Holmes 9:00
Yeah.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 9:00
and what that looks like for both parties, meaning you do deal with elite performers, the most elite of the elite, and then I I would say that there’s, you know, other people that we’re not getting on a racetrack or we’re not going to the Olympics, Right. but we still want to be able to manage our world.

Kristen Holmes 9:22
Yeah. I think at the bottom line, I think for whether, you know, you’re the the most elite performer in the world, or, you know, competing in the Tour de France or, you know, driving an F1 car for Ferrari, the same principles that apply to those individuals apply to the regular Janes and Joes of the world in terms of how do you reduce the risk of illness and injury, right? And because it all comes down to that, right? If we’re if we’re sick or we’re injured, we we give up time, you know, time with the people that we love. We we we, you know, halt momentum, you know, as as we work toward the thing the things that we care about. So I think when we look at the dimensions that reduce illness and injury burden, at a very basic level, it’s all the same stuff, right? And and I think to your point, it’s like, well, how hardcore do we actually want to be? And I and I think I think that’s what’s kind of exciting is that having a more balanced autonomic nervous system is not you know, it doesn’t require completely transforming your life. A lot of the most basic things are free and democratically available to to all folks, right? And and I and I think it’s just figuring out, all right, how how how much control do I want to have with how I show up in in the world? And and I think that hopefully is a motivating force, you know, if if you want to, you know, be available for the people and things that you love, if you want to have presence and be able to engage in the world and your work in a consistently in a way that feels good, you know, a lot of these things that that I outline are are kind of core to that.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 11:13
This book is beautifully done. The first part, again, you talk about rhythm and rest and resilience, the idea of trust and fear. Can you just walk me through that?

Kristen Holmes 11:28
Yeah. So, you know, there when you think about emotions, they’re kind of bucketed into two. You’ve got emotions of trust and you’ve got emotions of fear. And one of the the things I work through in the the book with the reader or the listener is is that emotions of fear are not bad. You know, we we all have them, you know, whether it’s insecurity or jealousy or shame, guilt, right? Like the the these pass through us all the time, right? But I think what I am trying to help folks recognize is that we don’t need to be stuck in those emotions. And, you know, simple techniques, like affect labeling, where we can label our emotion and just get curious about it, and it sounds really cheesy, but honestly, like that is one of the best ways to understand yourself, become more aware of what is keeping you stuck. People might not even recognize that the that certain emotions or fear are actually holding them back from being able to pursue the life that they want to pursue. So once you start to become aware of these emotions of trust versus fear and what is actually taking hold of you in the moment, you can then start to reframe how you’re approaching that moment, right? And you can even have like a little bit of a sense of humor about it. But I I think when we when we are operating from a place of fear, we are operating from the sympathetic branch of our nervous system, right? That’s when we, you know, that’s when we’re essentially accelerating the pace of our aging, you know, and it’s it sounds crazy, but but that’s the cost of living in fear. And so I really challenge the reader to take stock of of these emotions and evaluate them in real time. And and try to replace emotions of fear with emotions of trust as as much as you can.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 13:24
What would be an example

Kristen Holmes 13:26
of an

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 13:26
emotion of trust?

Kristen Holmes 13:27
Yeah. So, trust is you know, joy and and harmony and you know, kindness and kindred spirit and you know, and and I, you know, I think, you know, for moments when, for example, you know, peacefulness. You know, when you are in a situation where you’re feeling maybe insecure or maybe you don’t belong, you know, you can those can be really debilitating emotions. And when you shift them to more of a kind of a loving-kindness framework, especially towards yourself, so more self-compassion, you can shift that viewpoint. And there’s lots of like little techniques that you can do. You know, loving-kindness meditation, I think, is the one of the protocols or or techniques that I offer in the third part of the book. I have 22 kind of science-backed I don’t know

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 14:25
how you decided on what made it and what is on the cutting floor techniques. So, it’s literally the most

Kristen Holmes 14:29
from the literature, the most efficacious in improving kind of your autonomic nervous system resilience, right? And when you and I think what the important thing to note with with with trust and fear is that when you have a healthy, balanced autonomic nervous system, you have the ability to access feelings of trust easier. Right? When when you are What do you

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 14:49
mean by that? So, if you balance your sympathetic and parasympathetic, and I’m assuming that the way in which we understand that is through our heart rate variability, would that be the primary

Kristen Holmes 15:01
That’s a measure, yeah. primary measure. You can feel it, I would argue, but, you know, when you start to really sense the body. But, yeah.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 15:07
And if we have this marker where we know it’s out of balance, we then move to these emotions, or it’s these emotions that then move the needle for our autonomic nervous system.

Kristen Holmes 15:23
Yeah, I think just recognizing that if you are constantly operating from a place of fear, you are in a sympathetic state. And that comes at a cost, right? That’s going to deplete your energy, that’s going to impair your mitochondrial function, that is going to, you know, degenerate your your I mean, it would it will impair your sleep. There’s no question. Your sleep onset latency, your time in REM, your your gut biome, right? Like so I I don’t Yeah, I think I think awareness around these emotions become a very, very powerful lever. Because once you become aware, then you can take action to to to build toward a life of trust. And and and a lot of bad things happen to people, right? Like, you know, situations are not ideal. And and but I think if if you accept that bad things happen, but you ultimately have control and agency and over how you love yourself, then a lot of a lot of that power that you’ve given over to others starts to fall away. And again, you know, all of this will come back to the nervous system, which, you know, there’s there’s just a lot of evidence, you know, out there in in the literature, a lot of really good research that’s been done by folks. I mean, we see it in our data, too. We published a paper in Emotion, I guess a year ago, May, where we looked at emotions emotions of threat and emotions of challenge. So, threat and challenge appraisals, essentially. When you view your day as threatening versus challenging, what is actually happening to the cardiac profile? And interestingly, when you perceive your day as threatening and challenging, the day from a cardiac autonomic perspective actually doesn’t look that different. But where it manifests is in your resting physiology during sleep. You don’t drop in to those deeper, more restorative stages of sleep. Your heart rate variability stays suppressed, your resting heart rate stays elevated when you’re in a threat, when you’ve appraised your day as threatening. So, fear is threatening, right? So, I think the the takeaway from that paper is understanding that how you think about your life during the day manifests in your sleep and impairs your ability to restore and recover overnight, which is really the time during I mean, I would argue that there’s lots of moments during the day that we need to be building in parasympathetic nervous system, you know, kind of modalities, but but certainly sleep is the moment. And and if we are not reframing our day as challenging, that is, we are not getting ourselves into, you know, into that, into those feelings where you can access trust, you end up basically carrying that into your sleep, right? And you’re just giving up a lot of opportunity to recover.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 18:35
I think about my kids, right? So, Leonidas, we named him well, Aries Hunter, and when you watch children, they go through this head stability,

Kristen Holmes 18:47
then

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 18:47
they crawl, and then they sit, and these are inherent understandings. No one, you don’t have to teach the child how to manage their neck or how to sit and then walk. Evolutionarily, when I think about this autonomic nervous system, are there things that are that we should inherently have been able to manage? And yeah, I Does Does that question land in that way? I know where you’re going. Yeah, yeah.

Kristen Holmes 19:21
Yeah, I mean, I think I mean, this is a big premise of the book, you know, modern society has not set us up for success. I don’t know if that’s what you’re getting at, but, you know, a lot of the, you know, if you look at the the technological advancements over the course of the last, you know, 600 years or whatever, you know, and you and then you look at how our biology has has changed. The biology line’s flat, to be super clear. Like, you know, Isn’t

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 19:48
that weird, though? Don’t you think we should have an adaptation response? And

Kristen Holmes 19:52
We’re We haven’t like adapted to blue light at night, for example. We haven’t adapted, you know, these are things. Yeah, and and in all of these these lack of adaptation to modern life comes at a cost, right? That’s why folks are sick, right? Mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, you know, like that. That’s why we’re in the in the place that we’re at.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 20:13
Can autonomic nervous system regulation be self-taught without the verbiage? Meaning, crawl, walk, run are all innate human capacity like abilities. Do you think that, and I don’t know this answer, do you think that there’s a toggle between fear and joy that is, say, thousands of years ago, is that is was there a natural way that we were able to do that?

Kristen Holmes 20:42
To to create balance in the nervous system. Yeah. the

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 20:45
nervous system balance, like

Kristen Holmes 20:46
Yeah, I mean, I I it’s hard to say. Obviously, you know, we But But I would say that probably a lot of the same things that create nervous system stability today are the same things that created nervous system stability on the savanna. Having access to food, right? Having connection and community and feeling supported, so important. Having probably a sense of agency and self-efficacy, you have the skills and resources to contribute to your tribe, you know, in ways that are helpful and and valuable and you know, having purpose and meaning, you know, I I think that those are human needs, right? Those are core psychological needs that we have as humans that I I think probably date as far back as, you know, the the the cave people. So I I think a lot of those same dimensions of human flourishing have held true. And and I I think what I argue in the book is that, you know, modern society has kind of pulled us from those primal thresholds of nature, right, which have a a real cost to both our psychology and our physiology. So when you think about the lack of access to light, right, natural light, natural light’s really, really important, but we spend 93% of our time indoors. That That comes at a cost, right? We We have access to food, but our brain is wired, you know, is still wired for the savanna, right? So we have to enact huge amounts of discipline and willpower to fight the fridge, right? You know, we’ve got So, and we don’t have to work to get our food anymore, right? So it’s just it’s there in a package. It’s there in the fridge for us, right? So, you know, that comes at a cost, right? That That’s the easy access to food, and eating, you know, not just over the course of 12 hours, but for many Americans, 16, 17 hours, right? Which Which comes at a at a cost, right, when we think about our our metabolic health, and our sleep, and, you know, other other things that it impacts. We We have access to, you know, alcohol, and Yeah. So, I I think all of these, you know, we have the ability to be super active during the inactive phase of our circadian rhythm, you know, after the sun goes down, and That’s

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 22:56
me, pretty much. Yeah,

Kristen Holmes 22:57
no, I mean, it’s all, you know, it’s a lot of us, right? And and I think, you know, it’s we I don’t know that modern life is going to change, but I think we have to understand its impact on our on our health and and do our best to you know, mitigate some of those negative effects with other behaviors that can kind of, you know, put us into balance.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 23:21
I will never forget when I so we were at this in the middle of Arizona somewhere. I mean, let me just say, guys, they really needed to work on the the hotel. Yeah, that was just I mean, I actually got bedbugs for the first time in my life.

Kristen Holmes 23:39
Oh my god, that’s

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 23:39
I I didn’t even know what it was. Anyway, friends, and let’s not. That was terrible. But you were driving back up to-I don’t know if you remember this-but you actually were driving back up to Phoenix. I was like, Why are you not kind of staying down there? And you’re like, You know, because I have to get up at a certain time. And actually, you had arranged your travel so that you weren’t going to be sleep-deprived in the way that, you know, the rest of us weren’t weren’t thinking about it, but it was just so simple. Yeah. That I had wished that I had structured my day number one, I wouldn’t have gotten bedbugs, and number two, I would have gotten more sleep, which would have, you know, builds a more resilient human.

Kristen Holmes 24:24
Yeah.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 24:25
Do you think there’s the thinking aspect and then there’s the behavior aspect, and you talk a lot about aligning the food and the sleep-wake time. Yeah. Which do you think pushes one more?

Kristen Holmes 24:41
I’ll answer that. But I I think I think you need to the the thinking, the behaving, like I think you need to back out and figure out, all right, if I know all of these things to be true and they’re important, like maintaining my circadian rhythm while traveling so I can get up the next morning and take my son to ice hockey, which I think is what was happening. I just wanted to be safe, not sleep-deprived, and present for him. but but that gets to my point is that that’s my why. My why is to say, you know, I I my whole entire life my mom was really sick, you know? And and I you know, and and I just I want my kids to see a mother who is thriving, who is healthy, and I just frankly don’t want them to have to worry about me in the way that I I worried every single day about my my own mom. And you know, that that’s my why. That’s why I work out. That’s why I drive to Phoenix to maintain my circadian rhythm. That’s why I prioritize my sleep in the way that I do. That’s why I think about circadian alignment, which is a driver of autonomic nervous system resilience. You know, it’s why I think about these things, you know? And and that’s why I carve out time to be in nature every day, so I can show up for them, really. And that’s my why. And and that’s what motivates me to kind of what feels like or sounds like a sacrifice, it just isn’t a sacrifice to me anymore, you know? Because I would never trade my how I am with them, you know, being able to be patient and tolerant and and kind and available to engage with them in a way that, you know, makes me feel proud. In terms of like the levers that that move the most, I mean, I would say contrast is really important. One of the concepts that I think folks need to understand is this this concept of circadian amplitude. And the way and I, you know, I want a shirt that says, Got amplitude? The same way as Got Milk? Yeah, we need merch! We need some merch, Gabrielle! Got amplitude. So, you want a robust circadian amplitude. And and the way to do that is to create a lot of contrast that is aligned with the natural light-dark cycle. So, we have these patterns that are happening over the course of a 24-hour day, right? And you’ve had some amazing circadian scientists on this podcast as well. Satchin, your friend Satchin, Alexis, Yes. phenomenal, and Satchin, yeah. So, I would encourage you to watch and listen to those, yeah, because they’re so good. They’re so good. But if you want to understand more about circadian rhythms, but but this is an area that, you know, my PhD thesis was basically looking at circadian alignment and its relationship to both physiological and psychological resilience in humans, and indeed circadian alignment predicts both physiological and psychological resilience. And

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 27:23
that simply means that you are waking up at the time that the sun is coming up, you are going So, sleep

Kristen Holmes 27:30
consistency was really kind of the basis of is a proxy for circadian alignment. So, absolutely. So, sleep-wake consistency is is a a huge huge driver this of of of amplitude, right? And but in order to kind of have amplitude, we want to have a lot of contrast. So so back to the big levers, is you want you want dark nights and bright days, and you want to create as much of that amplitude as possible. I

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 27:54
see, visually or within the environment.

Kristen Holmes 27:57
Yeah. So in in when you have that contrast, you sleep better, you recover faster, your metabolism works more efficiently. When you are super active during the day and not active at night, again, contrast. You eat when you know you need when you’re most active, so you’re fueling for your activity requirements, which I talk about in the book, too. I’m very passionate about that, which is happening during the day and you’re not eating at night. So basically, you creating this contrast helps facilitate this amplitude that we know is correlated with health and longevity. And I have a paper in review right now that basically looks at this very thing. It’s 5,000 women, and a few different cohorts, but 5,000 women who are in perimenopause and menopause, 3,600 women who have a natural menstrual cycle, and basically, the thing that predicts symptom severity and frequency is amplitude, is heart rate amplitude. And you can imagine all of the physiological variables have that amplitude, have that kind of are following this 24-hour pattern. The more amplitude, the less pain, is the bottom line.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 29:13
For every domain?

Kristen Holmes 29:14
For for for all So, just heart rate. This paper’s just heart rate, but we’re looking at all these other physiological variables play ball in the same way. But I just wanted to get this paper out there, kind of put a stake in the ground because I thought it was interesting. The effects are small, but but but you can imagine if you were to look at someone who has cancer, for example, their amplitude, they’d have no amplitude. You look at someone old and unfit, okay, or even young and unfit, low amplitude. Amplitude is an incredible proxy or kind of marker of health. We want to try to preserve our amplitude, and we do that through these circadian levers. And you improve the circadian levers, you improve Your autonomic nervous system resilience.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 30:01
How long does that take? To improve?

Kristen Holmes 30:04
Not long. So, you know, there’s been some studies like just a couple weeks camping, no artificial light, you will You can cure a lot of ills. So, it doesn’t take that long.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 30:17
So, the amplitude, and what I’m hearing you say is that the amplitude in heart rate variability, it’s the is it’s the space between beats, right, that would determine If you could lay out the heart rate variability, exactly what it is, where amplitude fits in so that we can understand exactly what lever in terms of what order we need to pull? So

Kristen Holmes 30:44
we want lots of amplitude. So when we look at think about heart rate variability, just to define that for folks, it’s quite literally the time interval between heartbeats. And and that is, you know, your heart is not a metronome, like it’s it’s very highly variable between heartbeats. And and the more variable, the more robust and healthier your autonomic nervous system is. So we want a lot of variability, higher HRV between heartbeats.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 31:08
And would that equal higher amplitude?

Kristen Holmes 31:10
And that correlates with higher amplitude. Yeah. So, you know, more contrast between the day and the night. So you want so when you’re sleeping, you want lots of parasympathetic saturation. You want lots of, you know, amplitude for parasympathetic saturation. And and so you during the day you would expect to have because you’re engaged in life and you’re moving around, you’re going to be more sympathetically driven, right? But that’s normal, and and that contrast is really what the body craves and needs, right, to be healthy and thriving. That said, modern life is such where, you know, we’re not sitting under the tree after we hunt for an hour and a half. You know, we’re like basically onto the next thing, right? So we need to build in moments during the day to basically ensure that we’re giving ourselves an opportunity to rest and restore, right? So we can reengage our task with, you know, the same level of kind of focus and quality as we did previously. We don’t want to degrade across the day. And one of the ways to do that is to kind of build in these little mini moments of rest throughout the day. But but in terms of relationship between amplitude and HRV, I mean their HRV has a circadian rhythm, right? So it’s a little confounded, right? When we’re yeah.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 32:34
So when someone is they’re listening to this and they go, okay, I am a woman, I am in perimenopause, menopause. What do I need to do that’s going to improve my amplitude, the biggest levers that I can pull?

Kristen Holmes 32:50
I would say wake up at the same time every day. If you had short, disrupted sleep, if at all possible, you want to try to build in a nap. And I know that’s not possible for everyone, and some people listening to this will laugh, you know, but if you can, even 30 minutes before you know, 12:00, you know, even if it’s shutting your eyes. Is that important, the time? Yeah, you know, you just don’t want to interfere with biological sleep, right? There’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to sleep when you want to sleep. So, and a and a lot of setting yourself up for a restorative, beautiful night’s sleep actually starts during the day. And I think that’s what folks get wrong, I would say, as as someone who studies sleep and is inside this world a ton, I would say people think about sleep in the lead-up to sleep, but not actually how their their day their how their behavior during the day actually impacts sleep. We know that Even though

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 33:41
it says, but I’m a night person.

Kristen Holmes 33:43
Yeah, we can talk about that in a second. But but but I would say again, in order to facilitate in order to mitigate some of the symptoms that occur in perimenopause, menopause, and this isn’t the, you know, the Holy Grail by any means. I understand how complex you know, this phase of life is for so many women and and debilitating for so many women. So I don’t I don’t want to like I’m not dismissing that, but I’m but I do believe that circadian alignment is a really important path. Creating as much contrast, waking up at at a similar time every day, getting as much natural light as humanly possible, and you got to move. All

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 34:23
day long or just in the morning?

Kristen Holmes 34:25
As much as possible. Like I am getting as much light as I possibly can throughout the day.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 34:31
Contacts, no contacts, glasses, does it matter?

Kristen Holmes 34:35
I don’t sunglasses matter. You know, you want to be able to take in all of the the entire spectrum that exists in the sky of light is is good for our bodies. Obviously if you’re out for extended periods of time, you know, protect your skin and and maybe at that point if you’re on the water, you know, wear sunglasses if you’re if you’re out on the water for a long time. But

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 34:55
we’re deconditioned to be outside essentially, is what you’re saying. Yeah, for sure. I I I

Kristen Holmes 34:58
It’s like the same It’s It’s like working out. Like no one is really overtraining, right, for the most part? No. No, that’s why I was

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 35:03
listening to you say, Okay, we have to build in rest. And I’m thinking, that’s from the the sympathetic response, like the nervous system response, but we probably have to encourage people to push. And as you’re talking, I realize that I’m probably not even moving enough, creating enough contrast.

Kristen Holmes 35:19
Yeah, I know. And most folks aren’t, you know. And And we wonder We kind of wonder why, you know, why why do I get sick, or why am I getting injured? You know, a lot of it is this lack of contrast. And And we want to make that as stark as we can. And and and that’s I think that’s just a great like just a very simple way of of thinking about your day. You know, you’ve got the active phase of your circadian rhythm and the inactive phase of your circadian rhythm. During your active phase, you’re eating, you’re socializing, you’re freaking working out, you’re walking, you know, like you’re doing little exercise snacks, you know, like you’re you’re engaged in life. How

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 35:56
many hours? So, for example, as you are building out an ideal day, in an ideal day for a woman or a guy to create as much contrast as possible, you’re outside as much as you can.

Kristen Holmes 36:10
Yeah, I will always prioritize working outside if if I can. So, like, you know, today’s a good example. I lifted in the gym, you know, probably spent 45 minutes, and then went out on the little terrace and jump roped, you know, and and like, you know, did some abs, some weighted abs, and and some jump roping, and like was out there as much as possible. Last night, I got in, went for a walk, you know, as the sun was setting, and, you know, I I really make every effort I can. You know, before I left, so if I know I’m traveling and I won’t have access to light, I will I will make up for it. Like, before I traveled, like I went on a long run outside. I went for a walk. I worked outside in the morning. You know, I I brought my laptop out there outside. Even, you know, at Whoop, we have outdoor areas. I work outside as much as possible. I I’m really, really conscious of being outdoors. Is

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 37:02
there a light debt?

Kristen Holmes 37:04
I have absolutely no idea how to how to quantify that, but I mean, I think the minimum effective dose is something like 90 minutes, you know, in order to really, you know, keep your mental, physical, and emotional well-being online. I I think that’s what the the literature says, somewhere around 90 minutes. But the the fact is zero Americans are probably getting that. I mean, totally. I was just thinking

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 37:28
about Shane, who’s be, you know, if he’s operating or working 100 hours, and he maybe is outside a total of 40 minutes a day when he runs to work and back,

Kristen Holmes 37:39
I know.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 37:39
if that.

Kristen Holmes 37:40
I know. It’s crazy. And frontline healthcare workers, I mean, whenever when you are not working those hours, I think in terms of the same way you have to bank some sleep.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 37:50
You

Kristen Holmes 37:50
got to be outside. You need to be just make up for like you I think you can make up for it, but that has to be the priority.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 37:57
So you are outside as much as possible. What about this movement?

Kristen Holmes 38:00
Yeah, I mean, I you know, I have a I have a I’ve standing I have a treadmill at my desk. I have, you know, kettlebells, resistance bands. Like, I’m doing I write in my book. It’s one of the domains of intelligent training is exercise snacks. I I put it in there, because I I really believe in it. I’ve been experimenting. I’m probably like on a good four years of of exercise snacks, but I I I stopped thinking about my workout as the end-all, be-all. So, you know, that This

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 38:27
is a really good point.

Kristen Holmes 38:28
Yeah, I mean, a lot of us were 45 minutes, an hour in the gym and we’re then we’re sitting literally all day. And a lot of us are knowledge workers, right? Like I mean, I’m I’m writing manuscripts and reviewers comments, like I’m working with teams and athletes and, you know, I I’m on Zoom a lot, but but I stand generally. And I I have like a little bouncy ball, and I’ll I’ll literally just rip out like, you know, 100 kettlebell swings over the course of a day. You know, just just to kind of break up, even if I’ve worked out in the morning. So I I just think we’re not meant to be sitting, you know, and I and I think that’s really clear. And there’s lots of folks that talk about that, which I love. But it’s worth, I think, saying again that we need to make movement an all-day kind of thing. That’s what I mean, you think about, you know, folks who, and I don’t want to suggest that, you know, everything that was on the savanna was was was great. That that’s, you know, there there’s a lot of wonderful things that we are afforded by modern science and technology. But I think one of the real downsides is that every when we drive everywhere, you know, we just don’t have to walk and move like in ways that we that we used to. I mean, we used to on average walk about 10 miles a day. You know, I think women were seven, men were 10. So that’s like a that’s a lot of movement. So I I think figuring out how do I build in movement, and and we know people who move more on our in our dataset, which is absolutely massive. We’re talking hundreds and thousands of thousands of people when we look at what are the features, what the behaviors that people engage in that have the best sleep? I mean, the people who move more sleep better. There’s no question. The people who are fitter sleep better and actually sleep less. How many

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 40:18
hours by if someone is fitter, are they sleep is it statistically About about

Kristen Holmes 40:22
seven hours and 20 minutes is is kind of the average for the really fit person, and then if you’re unfit, you’re sleeping over eight hours, eight and a half, and what’s really interesting is a paper just came out looking at duration and all cause mortality, and indeed the long sleepers have far far worse outcomes than the short sleepers.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 40:42
Why do you think that is?

Kristen Holmes 40:44
Well, I think inflammation, probably. You know, like I think if you are dealing depression, if you’re if you’re dealing with mental or physical issues, you’re going to spend your body just feels like it needs to spend more time in bed to try to heal and and and right itself. So yeah, I mean, that’s another reason why to to think about your movement, because it does is very highly correlated with what’s happening at night, the depth of sleep as well,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 41:10
quality. And the intensity of training, because you do train pretty intensely. Yeah, I’ve seen you carry logs, and you’re throwing that. I mean, I don’t even want to come hang out with you, because then I’m going to have to be running down the the the trails, and then I have to jump into this this lake. No, I’ll I’ll come anytime there’s like ice frozen. You know, to create as much contrast, what I’m hearing in my mind is that you have to work really hard. It’s not just the overall movement, but there’s probably a level of intensity which is different than, say, if we look at the data, right? So training in in geriatrics, the data would suggest that it doesn’t matter if someone is lifting heavy weights or higher volume, just as long as they’re getting the stimulus.

Kristen Holmes 41:51
Yeah,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 41:51
but I didn’t take into account any of the contrast data or any of the amplitude data.

Kristen Holmes 41:57
Yeah.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 41:58
I am thinking about it in a very unidimensional way. Is this improving strength and/or hypertrophy? But maybe the better question is, is it improving strength and hypertrophy, and what is it doing to amplitude and contrast?

Kristen Holmes 42:14
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that’s a really good framework, you know, that that isn’t probably taken into consideration as as much, you know? I I think what we I think as it as it relates to training, there there is there is a sweet spot, and and like I said, or I think we both agree that most Americans need to move more, right? So, that’s just the bottom line, but there is a subset of folks who are overtraining for sure, and you see that manifest very clearly in in heart rate variability, and and I what’s interesting is, you know, I have access to the the literally the most elite athletes in the world who are programming, you know, down to the millisecond, right, across their day, they have to. But what they don’t do is overtrain. Like, they have this they because they can’t. Like, you you and but I think the the weekend warrior or like the recreational athlete, I think I think the default is like more is better, right? And and and that’s where I think the data become really powerful, especially around HRV, you will see in your HRV if you are overtraining, if you’re not getting this balance. And so, I I think as it relates to intensity, intensity matters, but it’s not intensity every day necessarily. You know, we want to have it’s a few days a week, right? And then and I and I I include this in the book because this is also very clear in our date in the data, zone one and zone two are really powerful drivers of recovery, and I don’t even label them as exercise because they are literally, they they activate the the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system, they improve vagal tone immensely. So, I think that when we think about our week and how we how we program our movement, it’s this combination of, you know, the long, slow walk or the long jog or, you know, again, ideally outside in nature, and then you’re sprinkling in some really high-intensity work, right, that might mimic, you know, when you’re chasing after, running from a lion or chasing after the deer, whatever it might be. You know, it’s just like thinking about like what were those movements that we used to do, right, that that are protective, right? And and trying to kind of program for that is is the way I think about it.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 44:34
And the other thing that potentially maybe we’ve gotten wrong, not you, but I I think in the literature, this idea of, you know, I’ve been very critical of cycle syncing and I don’t know if I it’s critical is the right word, but I I think that it’s almost before its time with our level of understanding, yeah, when it comes to do you need to train a certain way because you’re in the follicular phase versus another phase, where does all of that fit in?

Kristen Holmes 45:09
Yeah, I mean I’ve access to a lot of these data, so I I come at it from like an actual point of view from the data. And and there are definitely for women who are naturally cycling, there are differences between menses, follicular phase, and the luteal phase. In that there is more, you know, there there are declines, you know, in in resting physiology during the luteal phase, right? There’s there’s, you know, folks get less sleep in the in the lead up to menses on average. But I think in terms of, and I and I like this pushback that, you know, it doesn’t mean that you can’t PR during your luteal phase. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have your best performance, right, during that time frame. But but I do think

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 45:59
But there are differences. There are there are differences,

Kristen Holmes 46:01
you know, and and I think that and it’s more of just like when you know that, then you can prepare for it, right? You can be a little bit more strategic. And and but I I would say that you go on how you feel. You know, the other thing that we see in the data is women are highly, highly variable, you know, in terms of length of of cycle and, you know, there’s there’s just a lot of variability. One of the things that is very protective is a lower CV, so lower heart rate variability coefficient of variation. So, there’s What’s that? So, it’s just basically the day-to-day variation in HRV. So, when you have lots of changes day-to-day in HRV, that actually isn’t good. So, you want a lower CV, which I know is opposite to when we’re looking at HRV in an average HRV, like you want it kind of high. But when you’re looking at the CV, you want to actually limit day-to-day variability, and this is consistent across all the variables, so respiratory rate, resting heart rate, like we want low CV across all these. And if you look at the very top

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 47:04
Which makes sense. Which

Kristen Holmes 47:05
totally makes sense, right? You look at the top cyclists in the world who we work with on the Tour de France, they have very low CV. I mean, they’re like 6%. So if you look at a frontline healthcare clinician, they’re 30%.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 47:19
Meaning their heart rate variability from day to day Their CV. Their

Kristen Holmes 47:22
day-to-day It’s so expressed as a percentage, essentially. And I would say the average person on our platform is probably in the 20s, right? There’s And that’s just not being aware that this is a thing, right? Totally. So we have We don’t have a lot of stability in our physiology, because one night we’re we’re up until 2:00 a.m. trying to finish a paper, or you know, the the next the the next night we’re going out with our buddies, like, you know, drinking alcohol and like, you know, having late meals and getting short sleep, and you know, the next night we sleep for 13 hours. Like this creates enormous amount of instability in our physiology. And and the fact is, women are way more susceptible to that than men, because we are It’s just the way it is. Regardless of whether or not I want to have a baby, my body is set up for that to be to create safety. And a lot of this variable behavior creates variability in the physiology, which is is not protective.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 48:20
I I actually really like what you said, because you see probably both sides of the arguments all the time, right? So you’ve got one group, and it’s I do. Yeah. And it’s and it’s interesting because what I would say that we measure from a a muscle health perspective potentially doesn’t or isn’t that sensitive to these changes in the follicular phase or the ovulatory phase or perimenopause or the estrogen, progesterone Kind of single

Kristen Holmes 48:52
time points. We’re talking massive longitudinal data sets.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 48:55
Right. So this is This is I like being wrong, you know, I like I like learning, Yeah. and I can tell you that, say from a strength perspective or a training perspective And and again, you see this all the time. You’ve got one group that says it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female or where you are in your cycle, good training is good training, and I think that we could agree on that.

Kristen Holmes 49:18
Mm-hmm. True. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 49:20
But I’m also, as someone you as someone who studies and sees these time points over large data sets, which I don’t really think anyone has access to, it just doesn’t exist in the way that you have access to it, I’m also hearing you say that there’s something else going on, that maybe the outcomes that we’re looking at from a training perspective Mm-hmm. are not sensitive enough.

Kristen Holmes 49:45
Yeah, to to pick up on on some of these nuances, yeah. Whatever the changes. You

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 49:49
know, for example, we have a mutual friend who I think is actually very ahead of her time, Mm-hmm. and she gets criticized a lot. And I don’t know if it’s warranted criticism. It can It potentially, again, from a performance standpoint, maybe the science just hasn’t caught caught up with,

Kristen Holmes 50:10
yeah,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 50:10
the things that you are talking about now. Because it seems like there’s the performance aspect, and then there’s the medicine aspect. And the performance aspect seems exponentially more advanced than how this relates in a outcome for a healthcare provider.

Kristen Holmes 50:27
For sure. And obviously, I I can’t speak to the clinical side, but I I can speak to the performance side. And there are sensitivities, right? And and the more variable the physiology, the more unpredictable your menstrual cycle is going to be, right? So, there there’s an impact, you know? And so that does maybe change If you have performance goals, that might change how you train slightly, right? Which I know, you know, is is opposite of of the the narrative right now, but

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 50:57
no one’s talking but no one is talking about what you’re talking about. And it’s a huge there’s a a whole other sector of data that it’s essentially the autonomic nervous system data set

Kristen Holmes 51:11
Yeah.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 51:11
that is not necessarily being incorporated, and I think that that’s smart. I think that that’s we’re missing some of this.

Kristen Holmes 51:18
I think so, yeah. And, you know, it’s I think what is maybe hard for folks to hear because it’s hard to adopt is consistency in certain behaviors, sleep-wake time, meal timing, and and there’s a whole kind of subset of folks who believe that meal timing isn’t, you know, that doesn’t matter as much. And and I think calorie for calorie, it it might not, but I think there is enough data, I think, to support that we are more metabolically primed earlier in the day. Yeah, you know, we should, generally speaking, be I mean, you’re a nutrition scientist, so you I I would be curious your thoughts, but I think we should be generally eating the bulk of our calories, you know, between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., generally speaking. Yeah, I think that that’s

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 52:10
good advice.

Kristen Holmes 52:11
If you are have performance goals, if you are not getting the macronutrients you need distributed across the day, and you are hungry at 10:00 at night, yeah, have yogurt. Mike Ormsbee’s lab has shown that that’s fine, awesome. But but generally speaking, I think if we can give ourselves at least 12 hours where we’re not eating, that has massive health benefits. And again, I’m talking about a massive data set that, again, not many people have access to. And there is no question that late-night eating bubbles up almost on par with alcohol, almost on par as sleep-wake consistency, almost on par as with fever in terms of being having a deleterious effect on resting physiology. So again, content, quality very much matters, but I think timing matters, too.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 53:02
Mm. And do you do you think it’s fair to say that this is that you guys are ahead of the curve? I mean I think a lot of this is ahead of the curve and just like with science, when the two meet, right? You’ve got groups of scientists, but this is again cycle syncing is not even the right word for it. But timing your training, what I’m hearing you say is that yes, if you care I am not someone, you know, it’s interesting. I think that we’re very desensitized to how we feel. And if someone were I I think that there are two groups of people, the the groups of individuals that are robust, and maybe they were born that way or whatever it is, and they can ride out

Kristen Holmes 53:52
And have less physio- have less perturbations, hormonally, yeah.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 53:55
Right, and they’re they’re fine. Yeah. And then there’s another group that might feel like they need to pull back when actually what they really need is is to push forward because the mind doesn’t allow them to go there, whether it is whatever holds them back. But it it doesn’t allow them to make the decision that’s right for their physiology. It might be right for their mind.

Kristen Holmes 54:17
Yeah. And that’s okay, too. You know, like so It is. It is. It’s it’s it’s kind of a complicated situation. And and sometimes I feel like, you know, data has like a complicated even more maybe for some folks. But I I think if you zoom out and think about it, just basic principles, go with how you feel. Like that that’s the most important thing. And but I think a lot of elite athletes in particular get pretty disconnected actually from their body. Like we can push through almost anything. And

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 54:46
Yeah, it’s the athlete’s trap. That’s what get- what’s what killed Kyle Busch. I mean Shane was in the hospital with pneumonia, cuz he also did the same thing. I know. It is so dangerous and I think our heart goes out to the I mean the families and the fans. I know. You know, and people that are very fit are able to ignore and push through. Yeah.

Kristen Holmes 55:08
Yeah. And and I and that that’s part of what I I talk about in the book is is just this really like we have to come back to our body and have to come back to our our body signals. And and I’m saying this from as a person who is, you know, is is very much

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 55:25
A scientist. thinks about data. Yeah,

Kristen Holmes 55:27
I mean I I appreciate data, and it’s and it’s and the I appreciate the role data has in my life. I would never be, from a health perspective, where I am today without data. It has transformed the awareness that I have Mm. about my body and about how my behaviors impact my resting physiology, just at a very basic level, would never have been able to unpack that myself. Right. Like, it’s just accelerates my wisdom. I mean, sleep-wake consistency is the I

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 55:55
hate hearing that.

Kristen Holmes 55:55
I know. Everyone does. And when you look at our platform, the average sleep-wake consistency of everyone on the platform is 67%. It’s so bad, you know. And our frontline healthcare workers, I mean, they’re like 55%. So,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 56:08
this is why This is why I hate it, because there are people that don’t get to choose.

Kristen Holmes 56:11
Totally. And and and I my and that’s why a lot of the research that I am doing with frontline healthcare clinicians is to figure out how do we mitigate the the the inconsistent sleep-wake time, the deleterious effects of inconsistent sleep-wake time. What are other levers that can maybe offset protect us and offset, you know? And certainly exercise is one. I mean, we know when we age match physicians, operators, you know, the how they train really does matter. But they’re, you know, for frontline, they’re about 17 years older than their age match. Ah. Military operators, on average, are 12. So when we look at resting physiology, those two cohorts, you know, their pace of their, you know, their where they sit from just pure resting physiology is is decade, decade and a half, you know, relative to age match.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 57:02
What I am hearing you say, what I am trying to put together in my mind, is that the autonomic nervous system stability is its own beast.

Kristen Holmes 57:10
It It really it is.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 57:12
And we are completely ignoring that. Totally. And so, like think about the research that is done in, you know, I think about when I was at WashU in the metabolic lab, we never took into consideration. I mean, we did morning clamps, euglycemic clamps in the morning, but we weren’t thinking, Okay, so they haven’t been in outside in bright daylight. Like all of this stuff which

Kristen Holmes 57:35
I know. I know.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 57:35
probably affects the data over time. I can’t help but think about

Kristen Holmes 57:40
it. For sure. I mean, I to think that that is not a core driver of everything else is just I mean, we there’s just too much data at this point. So, we ignore

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 57:52
it. Sleep Sleep-wake

Kristen Holmes 57:54
Sleep-wake consistency is just massive. I mean, I would argue that time-restricted eating I know, like people also like I don’t I don’t want anyone coming hard at me on on time-restricted eating, but hopefully there’s enough evidence to There’s enough

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 58:09
evidence for that. Also, even from a medical standpoint, we It allows for bowel rest. Yeah. Time-restricted feeding is just It allows for a restriction, which is extremely valuable. Right. And I

Kristen Holmes 58:19
also think there’s a psychological component, too. A lot of folks are making so many decisions across the day. You have such decision fatigue. When it’s 9 o’clock at night, and you are you going to have the yogurt, or are you going to have the pint of ice cream, right? It’s just like, so I do think there’s a psychological component that also gets ignored. And and again, I think it’s different if you’re an elite athlete versus like a layperson who works out twice a week. Like, it’s just a different calculus. And and I think time-restricted eating for those folks becomes really, really important, because it does It just creates a boundary. It It It just If you’re just like, All right, I’m 12 on, 12 off, like you’re going to get 60% of the way to your metabolic goals, I think. Roughly.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 59:01
We have found We have found it very effective in clinic for exactly that reason. It It creates structure and less chaos.

Kristen Holmes 59:08
Okay. Okay. And we know you get a huge boost in parasympathetic activity during sleep when you are not having to digest, right? They’re They’re kind of opposing. Like, you can’t digest when you’re when you are sleeping and digesting a big meal, basically your REM, slow-wave sleep are impaired, right? Until you finish digesting, and then you kind of pop back into those more deeper, restorative stages of sleep. So we know that they’re in competition, and that’s another just reason to to just keep your feeding window.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 59:40
What about exercise timing? Does that matter?

Kristen Holmes 59:43
Yeah. Yeah. So our our team at Whoop published a paper in Nature Comms recently that looked specifically at exercise timing, and high intensity close to bed does impair markers of sleep, you know, at a clinically meaningful levels. So getting into deeper, so quality as well as duration. And low-level activity does not seem to have any impact at all. So if you’re a zone one, zone two kind of workout, or maybe a, you know, a a lighter lift or whatever, that doesn’t seem to have much of an impact. It’s really just the high-intensity stuff within four hours of bed will will will impact your sleep from what we’ve seen in the data.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:00:28
Postpartum, pregnancy?

Kristen Holmes 1:00:30
Yeah. Be gentle. You know, it it takes it takes time to rebound to your baseline physiology. There’s no question about it. But you know, one of We did a a study that we published with West Virginia University that was really interesting. It was one of the very first studies on exercise in pregnancy. Took us really a long time to get through IRB, but all 19 women who participated in, you know, different levels of activity, they all kind of had different starting points, but you know, all 19 had healthy pregnancies. All of them worked out, you know, at moderate to to vigorous levels throughout their pregnancy. So that was really cool to see. And I think what was cool with those 19 is that now that we I haven’t published these data yet, but when we look at when we look at those women in in in that cohort up against women in in albeit that was a very small sample size, but we look at it against women who are on our platform, not working out, having pregnancies, their rebound is not as good as the women who are working out. And these are unpublished data. I I need to I need to carve out some time to to write that up.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:01:41
After after your book launch and all of the other things. I

Kristen Holmes 1:01:44
know. We have such a like long queue right now. But but I thought that was really interesting. And and I think that is consistent with I think what we’re learning about exercise in pregnancy that is very protective, obviously under supervision, but it will help postpartum recovery a ton.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:02:02
How long did it take you to write this book?

Kristen Holmes 1:02:04
I mean, it’s kind of a it’s a lifetime of of work, but three years.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:02:10
There are a ton of takeaways. Was there something that surprised you?

Kristen Holmes 1:02:16
I mean, I don’t know why I was so naive, but writing a book is really, really hard.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:02:24
But No, but in in terms of like the

Speaker 1 1:02:26
the

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:02:26
content.

Kristen Holmes 1:02:27
I I would say I you know, it was like I found myself like quite emotional at different points writing the book.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:02:37
I love I I love that. Was it because it was cathartic?

Kristen Holmes 1:02:40
I think so, yeah. That totally surprised me. I had no idea that I needed to write this book, you know, that I I needed to put language, you know, to a lot of the the experiences, you know, that I’ve I’ve had across my life, you know, and and and and I I think the thing that really surprised me is how much how I’ve lived my life, the things that I’ve chosen and which sounds obvious, but when I think about my evolution as a as a scientist, so much of my early days, you know, were was spent looking at the rhythms of life, you know, and and you know, being in nature, it’s so wild.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:03:20
Isn’t that wild? What you’re talking about is this full-circle moment

Kristen Holmes 1:03:23
Yeah.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:03:24
that might you might think might be obvious, but it’s almost as if you were always meant to do exactly what you were doing, right? I mean

Kristen Holmes 1:03:33
Yeah.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:03:34
It’s not dissimilar, and you know, you know, my husband is, and you know Shane, obviously as a surgeon and as a former SEAL, he is convinced that time is not this linear experience. I mean, he yeah He’d be so embarrassed, but it’s a good thing he doesn’t have time to listen to this podcast. But really, that this, again, you know, we it’s like this full circle.

Kristen Holmes 1:04:00
Yeah, there there’s definitely forces that are well beyond our understanding and control operating, and and I think that’s that’s part of, I think, the the the the bigger project is is I think when we have have a healthy autonomic nervous system, a robust autonomic nervous system, we are in a position to receive from life and and from other people in ways that that we we can’t otherwise. You know, it it opens up your heart, I think, in in a really important and and special way. And and I think that’s the real, you know, if you were to kind of zoom all the way out, I mean, that’s that’s, I think, one of the bigger motivators of of getting your autonomic nervous system, you know, firing and online. And do you think the behavior precedes the thought? It does. Just just do the thing. Do the behavior, and and you’ll start to feel you’ll attract a new energy into your life. Like I really I really believe that. Like when you like when you are when you’re healthy from the inside in that way, Whole, really whole. Yeah. when you’re whole, you know, you just you bring the right things into your life. And and I I just have a lot of faith in that. But I think it does it starts with doing. You know, you have to take action, and I know that in all of your books, like this is really what you in in everything that you you put out online to your community, you’re always, I think, challenging folks to do, like just do the thing. They’re not

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:05:46
going to be ready. No. No amount of thinking about it or

Kristen Holmes 1:05:50
pontificating, and and that’s why, you know, the book starts with the physiology, because because I think that you you can’t talk yourself into a better future. Like you just have to start to If you understand the influences, the physiological influences that impact your your nervous system, then like that’s that’s like the place to start. It’s just to start doing those things, you know, the the exercise and the the right kind of training, and, you know, some of these hormetic practices that that can make you feel alive, and and and create that parasympathetic and sympathetic kind of push and pull, you know, that so many of us need, right? I mean, I

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:06:26
I just loved that conceptually. I think it’s it’s really missing It is. in a lot of the conversations. Yes. Right now, everything is very fragmented, and you, you know, people talk about contrast therapy, and then over here they’ll talk about training, but this creates a unified front, essentially aligned. Thank you. Dr. Kristen Holmes, you are just a dear friend and a sister, and I am so excited to share this book Thank you. with the world. I’m so grateful for the conversation today.