Olympic Athlete Shares Strategies That Help Women Live Longer | Roma van der Walt

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My guest today is Roma van der Walt, a sports scientist and former member of the German national team for modern pentathlon. I had to look it up when I first heard it as well, but she will share more today. She's also fitness editor of Well Rounded and founder of Vitell. Which provides women with science-backed tools and technology to improve their health and longevity. Welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast, Roma. I'm so excited to have you on today.

Thank you, Claudia. I'm really happy to be here.

So we share a similar passion about helping others in their health and longevity to be the best versions of themselves every day. And so with you, I'd love to start, Roma, today with how did your journey in sports and becoming a member of the German national team for the Olympic sport modern pentathlon, which when you originally told me I had to look up, I was like, what is this? So you'll have to share. How did that bring you to your mission today in supporting women and longevity?

Yeah. So as you said, I was very lucky to represent Germany on a national team in an Olympic sport. Just to tell people what it is, it's actually one of the oldest Olympic sports. And it was founded by the same person that founded the Olympic Games. And at the time, he envisioned the ideal athlete, and that in his mind was a man, not surprising, around the turn of the century, from the 1800s to the 1900s. And he thought if a male soldier could ride a horse, shoot a gun, run, swim, and fence, he would have the ideal skill set, both in sport and in life. Um, and so it was originally only a men's sport. In the mid-1970s, women were admitted to compete at all, and then, and internationally. And then from 2000, right now, yes, to the 2000 Olympics is when women were actually allowed to participate in the Olympic Games.

Was it separate? Men and women would compete against each other? Was it separate for women?

It was separated. Okay. Yeah, it was separated and it still is. And the only thing they've changed since then is that now the running and shooting is combined, which is a little bit like what we know from the biathlon. So the biathletes cross-country ski and then shoot a rifle lying down. Modern pentathletes run 800 meters as fast as they can and then shoot a gun, which is now a laser gun, and shoot 5 targets standing up. And I came to the sport from— Germany has a really good little athletics program, which I think the UK may have, and then also Australia has. Um, so I was— that was very much community-driven. So I started in track and field. I rode horses as a girl. I did a sport called, um, it's like gymnastics on a horse. In German it's called Voltigieren, which is where you just learn to twirl on a horse and you do headstands. And like, if I thought of doing that now, it would be really tough. But I think I was able to build a lot of skills that when it mattered, my, my coach actually saw in me. And, um, so at the age of 9 I discovered fencing, fell in love with the sport, and at age 11, 12 is when I met my coach and he said You know, I've already have the foundation of all these sports. Let's just put them all together. Um, and he ended up coaching me in a way that I think at the time was quite novel. Like all of my training was data-driven. So, um, my trainings were hard, but they made, made sense. Like they were hard because my pulse required them to be at a certain level. We always knew what my aerobic threshold was, so we knew what intensity to do, um, for anything from a really, really easy jog to an all-out, um, time trial when it comes to running. Um, we did these threshold tests 2 to 3 times a year. And at the time we had access to a facility which now would be regarded, you know, world-renowned. Um, which was basically a lab with a treadmill. Now, um, let's put it this way. Now we see it on social media and it's really cool, like at Nike headquarters. And I had access to that then. So I had access to that at, you know, 14, 15, 16, all the way through to 20. Where we were hooked up to both the lactate testing from your earlobe, um, the oxygen mask to test your VO2, and then have the everything integrated to then make sure that we knew exactly what paces I was hitting and what my body was doing. And in hindsight, that's not how people were trained at the time. It was like train, recover, train, recover, train, recover. I would say twice a week or so, go to your limit. And then hope you adapt. Um, and how has that informed me now? Like, now I think a lot of people who are not professional athletes want to know more about their body. And so applying this is now possible through wearables and also because some of these tests have become a lot easier to access from a financial standpoint. So I think, you know, high performance sport is still doing it. A lot of high-performance sport is still predominantly male-focused when it comes to big financial resources being pumped into it, and it's really time that we sort of extracted it from sport and applied it to the general public and then specifically develop datasets around women.

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I wonder where your coach— I mean, first of all, what an incredible story, and then, you know, to have 5 different sport areas all rolled into one. So I mean, honestly, hats off. Where did your coach come up with this? What do you think his inspiration was? Assuming it was a man. I know he didn't say.

He was a man.

Okay.

Yeah, he was a, he was a young man. He was actually pursuing his PhD in exercise physiology. And my hometown happens to be one of the 3 main sports hubs when it comes to college-level science in Germany. So there's my hometown in Bavaria called Bayreuth. Which is nestled away and really small, um, but has a really good reputation as a university. There's Munich as a big hub, obviously there's the Olympic Stadium, and then Cologne is where I ended up going to study sports science, and that's in the west, it's a little closer to France, and that's the other big hub. And I feel like because he was attached to that faculty and because he knew he had access to those facilities, and then he ended up writing a book about training, training women as well, um, it just happened. I I just got very lucky.

I have an expression that the harder you work, the luckier you get. So I think it's a combination of things, right, that come together as well. What are some of the peak performance practices from your sports days, um, and some of the routines that you learned? Um, what are some of the ones that you continue to apply today and also help with what you are doing now and helping others, and particularly women?

Well, I think recovery is, is so undervalued. It's something that was, I would say, has always come easy to me. I'm a happy napper. I'm a, I really like to go to bed early. I don't have FOMO, you know, so sleep was never an issue for me. But I know that the general public, that's quite often not the case. So we look at people. Yeah. And sometimes it's because people cannot, and sometimes it's because people don't want to, to a degree, because you have to sacrifice something else for it. And I've just had this conversation with a high-performance coach about how when we look at founders now, entrepreneurs, business people, highly driven people, quite often they train at an incredibly high level. Like, they'll probably do half to three-quarters of what a professional athlete does, and they often choose tougher sports like long, long distance and endurance sports, but they lack the recovery that comes with being able to recover and having the tools, but also wanting to recover. You know, napping was non-negotiable, especially on training camps. So we had to nap for 90 minutes a day quite often, and also we often had to. So if you had a long 3-hour fencing session in the morning and a swim session of an hour, hour and a half, you napped for 90 minutes after lunch because then followed another hour to an hour and a half of running. Kept off by, you know, something else. Um, so recovery is a big one, and again, we have such amazing tools now. So for me now, if I'm working from home, um, I will still nap, but I nap no longer than 22 minutes. And that's, um, the 20-minute rule is this idea that we don't want to go into a deeper sleep state that is, that is harder to disrupt. So it's either 20 minutes or 90 minutes, and I just like having the 22. It's just seems like a lucky number, and it takes me about 2 minutes to fall asleep. So recovery is a big one. And then purely from a performance standpoint, I still really look at my heart rate. So I both— up until, you know, several years ago, before the wrist heart rate became more accessible, and then even the Oura Ring, I was still wearing the band. And I was wearing it in New York, which gets very hot and humid in the summer. So I would, yeah, I would suffer through the chafing and I would suffer through it not sitting quite right. It looked funny. Um, but I just found that until I would say about 5 years ago, it was probably more accurate. Now we've, again, we've come a long way. Um, so during training, really important, and that's a tangent, but it's what helped me get to the bottom of a disease, a chronic disease that I developed that I'm happy to touch on in a bit. Um,. And then I use resting heart rate as this holy grail of really getting to the bottom of things. And that is something I've started doing with women that I've worked with, and it's, it's an area they're completely unaware of. And it's so beautiful because once you know your range of where your heart rate is right when you're waking up, um, there's a lot that that can tell you. And I think it got a bit of its time in the sun when the pandemic hit and suddenly people were noticing if they were tracking their resting heart rate, they knew they had COVID long before the test was positive. And it was because their heart— resting heart rate just spiked. There was this inflection and it was often 2 days before they had any of the other major symptoms. And that's true for the common cold as well. So I think anytime women have to pay attention to staying healthy, I've worked with women in preparation for IVF, for example, just about keeping body and mind in equilibrium as they were going into the egg retrieval and then later into the embryo transfer. It's a very emotional time. It's a, it's, and, you know, anxiety and stress also affect our resting heart rate. And it's a time where you don't want to mess around, get an infection, have overly high inflammation. And those are all parameters that you can see with your resting heart rate.

I want to dig into a few things. First of all, a curiosity, nap. So I love naps, right? I have inherited from my mother and grandfather this, what they call in Ireland, 40 winks, right? So just that short lying down recharging, and it's just like you're good to go again. I'd love to understand, do you have a certain protocol nowadays, let's say? So not obviously training for Olympic sports, right? But in doing that, I was listening to Ben Greenfield speak at the weekend. So, you know, he gets up at 4:00, 4:30 a.m., and then he looks to have his nap about 6 to 8 hours after waking up, no longer than after 2 p.m. Do you have a particular nap protocol and also what do you do to help you fall asleep? Because I know, and also I know clients really struggle that I have with, you know, if you're so wired and you're doing so many things to actually like recenter, rezone. So what are some tools that you recommend?

Yeah, I think again, it comes down to there's a little bit of discipline involved in it and a little bit of regularity. I think you're training your body to do that like you train it to do other things. Some people just get so overwhelmingly tired in the afternoon they want to nap, but then there's that risk of napping for too long. I probably get around up around the same time as Ben Greenfield. I would say around 5 on average. Um, so if I think about what time my naps are, I fast. Um, another topic. So I'll usually have a— I, I break my fast with a relatively big meal, and I would say my nap is probably around 2, 1 or 2.

Okay, so late in the day.

Yeah, yeah. Um, and then I really know that I'm going into that. I don't really have a slump in the afternoon. My slump is more that I'm not really an evening person. So for me, after about 7 PM, I actually— I took a nap before this. I took a 20-minute nap. It's 9 PM and I asked him, what's he doing?

Roma's in Australia at the moment, everyone, so we've got different time zones going on here. So thank you for still coming on. Yeah.

Put the kids to bed, put myself to bed. And, and so around how to fall asleep, I find with naps, it's really for me about— it's almost like mindfulness. When I'm really wired, I either repeat a mantra, which then puts me to sleep, which is probably not great. My husband meditates a lot, and he would be horrified. But it's good for me to repeat a mantra in my head over and over.

Is this based on TM, Transcendental Meditation? Because that's the typical 20, 22 minutes. So is it TM meditation based?

Or, um, so I don't listen to anything, I just say it in my mind. I sort of repeat. And so for me, one mantra that I really like is a Ganesh mantra. My husband studied, um, sort of a Buddhist type of spirituality for 15 years, um, very devout. And so we, when we met, he had spent 15 years solo meditating and completely immersing himself on that path. And we met about 2 years after that finished. So he meditates about 90 minutes a day, but it's sitting, eyes open, sometimes, um, mantra or chanting. And for me, he's given me this mantra because he was like, you can— this is— you can learn this in Sanskrit. And I do that anyway, but it's sometimes it's easy for me to repeat that in my head, and I almost feel like I reap the benefits from it because I'm doing it more than the other times. So that's one. And the other thing is, I will often actively tell myself to sink. It's a really strange thing, but I keep repeating to myself to sink into the pillow. So it's almost like a somatic experience where you, your body and mind again have to work together to achieve the desired outcome. And I find even when I'm really wired, I can really feel myself getting heavy. And if I wanted to make that more like less abstract for people, um, progressive muscle relaxation— I'm sure you've heard about it, I'm sure you've tried it— is a really effective tool that you can do for a few minutes where you briefly engage and then disengage the big muscle groups in your body. And it's incredible what that releases. So you work your way up from your feet all the way to your forehead, and you just briefly engage with an inhale and exhale and it's very calming. So I've done— I've led people through progressive muscle relaxation, and sometimes I'll do that for myself. That's really good.

And also, for those who maybe have or haven't tried hypnosis before, which is also really good, you either can like visualize walking downstairs and you're getting heavier and heavier and heavier, so that really helps to like slow you down. And obviously, like a long, slow, deep breaths, right? You're calming the nervous system with that too. I want to dig into heart rate. So we touched on heart rate variability as one of the factors. So that's also a good measure of stress. And then the resting heart rate. Can you explain for my audience a little bit more why these two parameters are so important and they're really getting more and more renaissance as an important indicator nowadays?

I always get tripped up with heart rate variability, to be honest. I also am not sure if we can super accurately measure it. To the wearables that we have right now. Resting heart rate is how many times your heart beats within a minute, and the heart rate variability is the lag between heartbeats. Um, and so I don't work with the heart rate variability that much because not many wearables are accurately giving you those numbers. And I found— this is again just an observation of working with women— too much data is often overwhelming. Like, women have said to me, we want solutions, we don't actually want suggestions. And so give us systems and tell us what to do with that data. Um, with resting heart rate, there's a range that you have. And so now the beauty is that when I was training, we had to take it manually. So to— you had to wake up, you had to make sure you were in a relatively calm state when you put, you know, two fingers to, to your, to your pulse, to your neck. And then you would count how many, how many beats you count in a minute. But if you woke up and you were really anxious or wired, you know, it probably doesn't work as well. Now we have the beauty of either just wearing an Apple Watch or wearing a Garmin or wearing the Oura Ring. We talked about how setting the Oura Ring to airplane mode is helpful if you don't want to have it on overnight. And so it takes that lowest value, just as you're rising. And what that shows you is usually you sit in a range of a few beats. So I'm— because I've been an endurance athlete my entire life, I sit anywhere between 39 and 43. That's my normal range.

When mine goes—

yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, um, it's actually really It's something I— this is something I geek out on. I go, I don't want to go over 45. If I go over 44, I know something's wrong. And so then I can go through this mental checklist and I can go, what could be wrong? Did I have an excessive amount of stress yesterday? Did I consume more sugar over a certain period of time? So has this contributed to inflammation? Was it alcohol? So all of these things contribute to the resting heart rate. And in working with women, we've seen really interesting points related to the menstrual cycle as well. So for example, we've seen elevated resting heart rates during PMS, and I don't know why that surprised me, but it's because it makes sense. Like, during that time, we're— we have less resilience to stress because of our hormones. We often have pain, which contributes to inflammation, and our body is really working hard to getting to the menstruation stage. Um, and we crave sugar, so I'm sure there's some combination that, that relates to that. But we've seen women, you know, go up by a few beats per minute, and then the day that they start menstruating, it immediately falls off again. So I think there's still— and it correlated with symptoms of perimenopause. So we saw women with hot flushes in the UK and Australia and hot flashes in America that only occurred in that 3-night period, like night sweats.

Yeah, I wonder if progesterone actually interestingly plays a role in it. I've just got the new book from Dr. Jolene Brighton, who I'm sure you know as well, Beyond the Pill. I'm speaking with her later this year. And I want to get into that as well, because she was saying actually PMS, like you shouldn't have PMS symptoms, there's some sort of dysfunction going on there. But I haven't gotten to the bottom of that. And just to point on heart rate variability, I had on the podcast Dr. Jay Wiles, who's a specialist in this, and he's developed Hanu Health. And so when you optimize your heart rate variability, which is the ability to cope with different mechanisms, right? So you want to be able to— for your heart rate to be low when your children relax, but to bounce back, if you will, when you need it, right? And not to be at this constant high level or constant low level, which would cause a low heart rate variability. So also for people listening. Mine is naturally high, so I'm kind of lucky because I'm over 110. I was talking to some biohackers at a conference at the weekend, and some of them has heart rate variability down around 30 or 40. But one was saying that through meditation— so you were asking, talking about tools as well— that she found that hers could sometimes jump 20 to 30 points up. And so you want to have that resiliency to be able to bounce around, and that's what you want to ideally get to as well. Yeah, not everyone wants to wear that. I know the Oura Ring tracks it. The question is always the accuracy as well. But I think as an interesting measure also to keep a look at heart rate variability and what you can do to improve it. And there are cool tools as well. So that's really fun. Let's jump into fasting. And I asked specifically about this because I've gone through different phases of my all out, like, this is the solution, longevity and grow your telomeres, etc., to actually for women and for our hormones, too long periods of intermittent fasting can be detrimental as well. So I'd love to hear your view and how you find it. And obviously, appreciate everybody's a little bit different, so it's always like knowing yourself. But what protocol do you follow and how do you find that impact?

Fasting is an interesting one because I think the biggest thing I've observed in women, again, grossly exaggerating, but was that the breaking of the fast became something that required more discipline than the actual fasting. So I found that women got to 16 hours and then said, oh, you know, I can do this, I'll do 17, I'll do 18. And in an extreme case, someone told me that she was very easily doing 20, but in the remaining 4 hours wasn't replenishing what she needed. And that's— then you're sort of also losing— then you're just going into a state of scarcity. So I think that's a really tricky thing because then we're activating other things in our body physiologically that suggest stress, and we don't— what we don't— that's not what we want. Um, I personally think intermittent fasting needs to be intermittent within that 24-hour period but also over a longer period of time, like you said. So I will fast during the work week but then not fast on the weekends, and by doing that, I suggest to my body We're great, we're fine. You know, during the week we're more disciplined. On the weekend we do what we want. So my body goes— doesn't go, oh, what are we doing? Because our bodies adapt and they become lazy and they become super efficient. And I'm at an age now where my weight has certainly also crept up. And I, like you, was like, fasting is the solution for everything. But it looked different even 2 years ago than it does now. So I do the intermittent fasting 16:8 during the week. And then on the weekend I do no fasting. A few, like once or twice a month, I will do a 24-hour fast. And I've just read about how we should do that early in our cycle. I almost want to do it early and late in my cycle now to see what happens. Yeah, I love testing these things on myself. I want to see how I react. From just the standpoint of feeling hungry. Is it easier at the beginning of the month? Do I really have, you know, the— especially the, um, the last week before menstruation, will I just not be able to do it as well or crave things more or feel really stressed by it? I don't drink coffee, so I, I don't know if that makes it easier for me in a way. I know people often really want that coffee, and if they're not black coffee drinkers, that's a really difficult thing. Um, so that's my experience with fasting. The other thing that I find interesting is between men and women. I see a lot of male bodies just react to the fasting so well, right? Like, if my husband decides to do it for a week— my father-in-law just recently started doing a 24-hour fast once a week— it's just weight just falls off them, you know. I, I definitely feel more clear and able when I do it. But it's— it doesn't seem to have the exact same effect. But what I'll say, and again, this might be anecdotal, I'm half African and I have more fast-twitch muscle fibers. And I would suspect that I have a higher level of testosterone because there's been studies looking at that, you know, about how you build muscle and adapt. Like, I definitely build muscle faster. So in some ways, I sometimes wonder if my body functions more like a male body, like just a little bit. And so whether then fasting is easier for me.

That's really interesting because so I have fast-twitch muscles as well. So I did this recently in my newsletter also. I thought it was really interesting because I know somebody else who's an ultra-endurance athlete but couldn't gain weight and the muscle would come off straight away. And so I took a bit of a deep dive into that. But for me, but I think it's to do with my methylation process, etc., my testosterone levels are low. So I actually am doing a clinical trial with HRT supplementing with transdermal body-identical testosterone. So I don't know if there's a direct correlation with muscles. Obviously, the more muscle training we do, the better our testosterone levels. But that's actually really interesting. I'd love if some researcher is listening to this, please. Yeah, yeah.

Research this. If we're talking about datasets and talking between female and male bodies, we could really crack wide open some of the differences in, in different, um, uh, genetic backgrounds or backgrounds in race. Because, you know, we do see a dominance of certain, certain countries in certain sports. And, um, and then if some of these athletes break into sports that haven't been their usual sport, they suddenly dominated. I'm thinking of various sports, like if you look at, um, there's more and more, uh, former French colony islands athletes who are of Caribbean descent now competing in fencing, my sport, which is— was dominated by Europe and predominantly Caucasian athletes. And they come in with an explosivity and an athleticism within the sport that is different. Um, there was a fantastic movie about cricket, like, very different, but the West Indies in the 1960s and '90s, when they came into sport, um, not being under the rule of England anymore, Great Britain, and developed these athletes, there was this, again, this athleticism, the speed of which they threw. And there's a fantastic film called Fire in Babylon, especially about how that suddenly clashed with the former colonial power. So I've done a lot of thinking about anthropology from that standpoint and how, you know, in, in the US, for example, we should really look at datasets from African-American backgrounds, Hispanic backgrounds, Latin, and so on, because we'd probably be surprised. Yeah. Oh, and Tarahumara. Have you read, um, Scott Jurek's book?

I have not, no.

Yeah, that's a tribe in Mexico that runs— there's basically everything by foot running.

Yeah, no, I'm watching with my kids at the moment, uh, Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, and actually they were just showing the Tarahumara, um, yeah, yeah. And these— well, I don't know, was it just for the documentary they were wearing these beautiful clothing, or do they always run in these beautiful clothing? But I mean, they're—

I think they do quite often. Yeah.

And they were saying that the HRV of the grandparent is the same as the grandchild and the child. We should look into that. Yeah, they're just into this. So that was like a real, like, wow, takeaway. So that was the term. That's why it rings a bell. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, it's, it's so fascinating. Obviously, you know, they're doing this every day and from birth. So somebody who's been like having an office job decides to become a Tarahumara tribe and running all the time, it will obviously take a while. But I think that's the beauty of it, that there's so much that we can do. Well, I'd love to switch over to fertility and motherhood. And in a previous conversation we had offline a couple of weeks ago, we were discussing the gap in care for women sort of late 30s into their 40s for around fertility and postpartum, and really, you know, helping them. And as we live longer, right, so when these goals of living well for longer, women also are taking choices to pursue career first and have children then later. So let's talk about this gap. And what, in your view, are some of the biggest challenges? Like, what's happening there? Can you share with my audience?

Well, I very much enjoyed your recent interview with Jennifer Garrison, who we both know, who works on, reproductive aging and ovarian health. And so I think what I've observed and what I've discussed with her as well is I came from a maternal health background and I worked with women, and it was mostly around changing some of the paradigms of how women exercised in pregnancy, because again, 10 years ago that was not something that was looked at. I think some professional athletes did it. You know, we— Paula Radcliffe ran when she was pregnant, Kara Goucher ran when she was pregnant. They also returned back to marathoning very quickly, but it was sort of reserved for these super athletes for whom that should be okay. But, you know, it's not necessary to tell a woman to stop running when she's pregnant. And now there's more and more, um, there are more studies out that actually talk about the incredible benefits for the child when you change the environment in which they are growing up. I think the encouraging thing I've seen in the last few years is that women go into the fertility process, whether it's natural or supported, with their eyes wide open. They don't just say we're going to try and then get pregnant. They actually start thinking about this a year before from how they can show up. How do I prepare to be the best version of myself through pregnancy? So that when, when I get pregnant, I am this vessel for my baby. That is really great. I think what we're not talking about enough is what an inherently brutal event delivery is. I still physically, you know, we, we, we spend a lot of time talking about the wonder of it. And it is wonder in whichever way you develop. It's incredible that we can do this. But your body and mind are basically ripped to shreds after you've spent 10 months incubating this wonderful being, and then you walk out. And if you don't go into this event strong, I feel like you come out a shell of yourself, because it's even hard when you go in strong. So a lot of my work was really focused on getting women to this marathon, especially with the first delivery. Often it's like hours and hours and hours. For me it was 25, um, and coming out of that and actually having a foundation to then build on again. What I'm missing and not seeing enough is— so now a lot of women having their children over 35 were classified as geriatric mothers. I hate that term, but it's so horrible. It made my obstetrician giggle every single time I walked through the door. Um, so, you know, geriatric while I was running— I was running 4 days a week and I was lifting and doing not crazy resistance training, but I was fit. And so, um, these mothers are now sort of told off quite often to just not do too much. There's still the old adage that the women to this day are being told, which is to not raise their heart rate over 140 when they're exercising. That to me is, well, A, it's been long debunked. Women should actually work off of a perceived exertion rate. But also, um, it's, uh, I wouldn't be able to do that. When I exercise, I don't stay under 140 all the time. Like, I, I can, but I also have asthma, and I feel like my heart rate went up when I was pregnant.

So, you know, in pregnancy— quick question, just a quick question, remember, just to clarify. So Above 140 while pregnant or in general, are you saying? While pregnant. While pregnant.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, many doctors also, there's a liability issue. They will defer to just keep it easy, eat for two, another favorite, and just kick your legs up and don't do much. And the older you are, the more there's a risk associated with you as the person. What I'm missing is that now when women emerge at 35, we're also saying that perimenopause symptoms can start as early as 35. So we're going from this one storm into the next storm. And we— postpartum is not 6 weeks that, you know, the whole focus after a child is born switches to the baby. And women get one checkup at 6 weeks. In, in many European countries, they get more hands-on support at home and midwifery support. But still, But pretty often after 6 weeks is when people go, you're good. You know, you're good, your C-section scar is healed. You have no other issues. And then anything that happens after that, you have to fix yourself. That could be pelvic health. It could be diastasis recti, where your abdomen, the muscles in your center line, they have to split to allow for the baby to grow. They have to come back together. Women don't know that they need help with that. And there's, again, an emotional and mental component too. Now, if you're 40 and 18 months later you're 41 and you're starting to have perimenopause symptoms, you're just not prepared and you don't know what of that is still postpartum, what of that is this new phase. And the person I worked with who was the oldest at delivery was over 50. So, you know, our uterus is still work. And if you get pregnant, it's great, but We, you know, we, we owe, if not Jennifer fixing, and people should listen to that, fixing this whole thing for us, that all of it gets pushed back so that we can actually have babies healthy and without all that anxiety in our 40s and 50s, then we at least owe women more education, more resources to take care of themselves when that happens.

Yeah, it's super important. I mean, I just know from my own journey, first of all, I was like overinduced for the first time around. So I was told, you know, take another 12 hours and all this. And it was just everything happened super, super fast and it was almost a joke. And the midwife was saying, you know, just don't push, don't do this, because if the obstetrician is not in the room, he doesn't get paid. So I had the privilege of doing this privately. But if he's not in the room, he doesn't get paid. I'm like, are you kidding me? It's like, do you think I can control what's going on here right now?

Yeah.

And from start to finish, it was 2 hours and 15 minutes.

So it sounds like a lot for someone unfamiliar, but it's super fast. That's considered precipitous labor. And that's really—

that can cause a lot of problems. Yeah. And also emotionally and things as well. And so of course, the midwife is like, oh, isn't that great? And next time will be faster. And this is— I'm like, I don't really feel like that was great. It's like, don't try and like sell this off to me like this is a great thing. And then what I think is. And I had my, my startup at the time, and, you know, we'd venture capital funding, and I was working all these long hours. So I didn't stupidly, honestly, frankly, at the time, myself, take it to do a proper time and like reconnect and things. So I was just not in the best place going into the whole thing. And then that shift in hormones. So it's like I tell also some pregnant friends that are, you know, first time around, it's like having major surgery, but not having time to recover. Because as you said, the shift goes to the baby, and it's like, oh, okay, are you okay? And I lost a lot of blood personally, and I'm anyway like tendency to be anemic and things like that as well. I don't sleep well at the best of times in terms of, you know, if I'm woken in the night and things like that, falling asleep. And if you have a newborn baby. So it was just this morass and like spiral of events like the first 3 months. And I went from being a super efficient person to not managing to cut the flowers for like 3 days. I'm like, how? How did I get so inefficient? And just beating yourself up, etc. So there's such a mental game around it, coupled with lack of sleep, uncertainty. You go from being super confident and certain and you know what you're doing to actually being like, am I— is the baby still going to be okay? Is it fit enough? I don't know what I'm doing. So it is so overwhelming. And some people are able to have more support or, you know, they say it takes a village to raise a child. And if you have the possibility to have a village, go for it, because you can't get enough support. But I think there needs to be much more compassion for the actual mother and that realization. And it's not about the self-sacrifice, because as I love to share with my clients, male and female, you know, you have to put the oxygen mask on first, like they say on the plane. If you are completely depleted, which I had been, you know, how are you showing up for your child, for yourself, etc.? And it just gets worse and worse and worse. And so I've gone through a few postpartum holes, dark holes in the process as well, without knowing and realizing because of my wiring of thinking like, oh, as long as everyone else is okay, clearly they weren't. Neither was I. But then it's okay. So I've really learned the hard way. And that's something if someone takes even one thing away today, it's just that self-care piece. Give from your overflow and not from an empty cup. Right.

Put that oxygen mask on Yeah, and, um, because you said that earlier also, uh, there are a lot of things that you just don't know. Um, I'm just trying to remember what you said. See, this is brain fog with, um, having a 2— almost 2-year-old, so maybe still postpartum. Um, there's the compassion piece. Oh, I think paying— still paying attention to certain parameters it can help too, right? So we're seeing more celebrities now embracing wearable technology postpartum. I think there's going to be really interesting data once we, once we embrace that and get more from that and see what, what's happening to women. Because what you discovered— described, the, the mental and emotional piece is so huge. And for me, everything was ticking on nicely postpartum, and then 5 months after, I suddenly fell into a hole and that was like almost on the verge of depression, definitely really high anxiety. And for me, that was physical. And I kept beating myself up because I thought I wasn't being strong enough or resilient enough or— So yeah, it's a, it's a tough phase. And yeah, I don't know that we'll ever figure this out entirely. The only thing I'll say is I've, I finally now with the second child at almost 2 years postpartum, have stopped hearing phantom crying.

Wow. Oh my God. I don't think I can remember. Maybe I did.

I don't even remember. Yeah. But you know, I would step into the shower and the whoosh of the water would convince me that I heard them, him or her, cry. And then I would wake up at night convinced that I heard them cry and That for me, who's normally a good sleeper, was very disruptive too. Man, there's a lot, there's a lot to unpack just there.

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And now back to the show. Let's talk about some practicalities. Let's say someone's listening, they're 40, and they're like, you know, I've— maybe they've frozen their eggs or they haven't, but they're like, you know, I still want to go through this whole how do I become the most time possible, what tools and strategies do you recommend?

So what are some things that you have in your toolbox that you recommend with, for clients? Yeah, I think if you're going, if you're not somebody that has exercised regularly, starting to exercise before you get pregnant sets you up in a really good way to exercise when you're pregnant. Because even with the best intentions, most doctors will, will discourage you. And it's even hard for a coach to take you on when you're already pregnant. And then say, now we're going to start at zero. So if you can start with anything that you enjoy, that is walking, endurance, you know, it could be walking. I often tell people if they don't like to run, they want to walk, to add ankle weights or weights to your wrists because it just increases the resistance. Um, swim if you have access to it. Definitely do resistance training, especially if you're an older mom, because it's something that when your center of gravity shifts during the pregnancy, and we're all prone more to that curve in our lower back, which just puts a lot of pressure on our lower back and causes a lot of the back pain.

Just one point to that as well, just for people regarding that for women, you have to imagine that afterwards you were carrying a baby or some sort of bag around for such a long period of time that if you don't have a strong back going into it, it's horrendous. So also just really, really try to do some strength training for shoulders, arms, and back. It's the number one issue that physiotherapists see from mothers coming in, like totally distorted, because of course they've been carrying the baby and burping for hours at a time each day. So yeah, just to make a point about that.

And I think Pilates is great. Yeah. Your back is part of your core, I like to say. So if you're working your core, it doesn't just mean working your front. And there are really gentle exercises you can do for your back at home, which include things like bird dogs, where you're on all fours, you extend one arm and the opposite leg. You'd be surprised how many people struggle with that who are not currently pregnant or haven't been. And, and add some weights to it, or add movement bringing the elbow to knee to it, and, and people find it really hard. But that's like one, one exercise that I would say, bird dog, you can do before pregnancy, during, and postpartum, and it's safe for even if your abs have split. Um, so I'd say start an exercise program. Um, get your bloods checked. You know, it's a simple thing, but as women, we don't necessarily run to the doctor when we don't have to. And then you have to suddenly, you have to go quite often. Um, but it's probably good to just have an overview of what's missing before, and that then includes your prenatals. Um, I sadly worked with someone who, who didn't know about folic acid or folate, and that caused huge problems for her child. Um, so get on whatever regimen of supplements or prescription you need to be healthy. Um, mindfulness is a big one for me, but I can't say that I was as good at it 5 or 6 years ago as I am now. And it's definitely something with people who are more aware, is something to incorporate before. And I think in the US there's a company called Expectful that did a lot of free meditations for moms in particular. And some people have high anxiety around, you know, pregnancy, so it might be— or birth. And then start building your village, you know, So it's— we lived in New York with no family present, and one of the reasons why I started working with moms there was to connect them to each other, because there wasn't something like moms groups that you have here and that you have in Germany, where you're sort of forced by your council to meet other moms. Um, but you— because you're not necessarily going to be pregnant with your best friends at the same time, so you want to create a little bit of that company you can have that then will understand why you're up at 2 AM and texting people, and maybe someone you can actually also text while you're breastfeeding at night. Um, so building that, I'm trying to think of what people are asking me right now who are currently pregnant. Um, like you said, if somebody can have a night nurse, I've just— I wish we could have. And it's not so much because you don't want to get up at night, but it's about recovering from the birth It's about having a helping set of hands there that can just explain in the beginning when everything is heightened and the stress of doing it all wrong. And so if it's even if it's for a week in the beginning, just to have someone there who can help.

Just anecdotally on that. So I didn't have that the first time around because I thought, of course I can do this and like, I got it. I can figure this out, of course.

Right.

And like, I'm literally there with the newborn baby and didn't know why I was crying still and still hungry and all the rest of it and went to the doctor. They're like, oh, maybe it's colic. And it wasn't— I mean, I wasn't producing enough breast milk, she was hungry, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway. So that was interesting times for 3 months. But the second time around, I was like, you know what, just intermittently, I'm going to have this beautiful saint of a person to come. This became my best friend for the time. She would arrive at 9 o'clock at night. And I was like, finally, someone understands me. And I was like, what am I doing this and that and the other. And so just for new mothers thinking that they can do everything themselves, just even book 5 nights, doesn't even need to be in a row, of just having this person come, obviously meet them in advance, know, like, and trust them, check references, do all you need to do, but know that they have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of newborn babies. And they'll also be there in the interest of you and making sure that you're okay and pointing things out that you might not even realize yourself. Sleep deprivation is real. Postpartum is real. I mean, again, think of it like having major surgery, but without having anyone checking in on you. And especially if you've lost blood or you are off balance anyway, your hormones start going all over the place also. So do invest in this. It's really investing in your health and especially your mental health, which in essence you're also investing in your child.

So I just really want to make a point about that. Absolutely. Yeah. And as you said, it doesn't have to be consecutive days. It's nice to even just get a break, I think. Yeah. Every, you know, 4 days, every week. We were lucky that we had a meal train set up by friends.. So, you know, for the first 2 weeks or so, we didn't have to worry about meals, about cooking meals, but also eating like really nice meals. So there were all people in the community who ended up each making a meal that we could just pop in the freezer or have in the fridge. I think, you know, we underestimate that people do that out of the goodness of their heart. Sometimes they actually prefer doing that than giving you money or so. And that's a big one because the last thing you want to do is cook and you end up So hungry and you end up eating crap if you don't, you know, if you don't have that.

Prune juice.

Lots of prune juice. For digestion. During and after the pregnancy. I don't think— yeah, that was a different level. But hydration again, there are these very simple things that we again forget in our day-to-day life to show up as our best selves. And it becomes extra important when we're postpartum. And that includes things like hydration. I love electrolytes, so I often tell people to get something like Nuun.

I'm throwing around brand names, but yes, see the brand names because I love specifics.

So which ones do you like? Nuun. N-U-U-N. Okay. And they have no sugar in them. They're a US-based company and they're just— they're also just a lovely company from from a marketing standpoint. And, you know, when you give them a shout out, and I think for moms, that's really like having that little bit of extra oomph and not just plain water is really important. I know people right now are obsessed with LMNT. That's more salt. But I think again, I'm probably prone more towards magnesium. I do salt, but it's because I also train a lot. I don't know if everybody needs that extra salt, But magnesium is a big supplement where I feel, you know, you can't really go wrong and falls within that electrolyte group. This is a controversial one for first-time parents, but we had to do it out of necessity because my partner didn't get paternity leave or not a lot. If you can let them sleep at night, you know, let them do maybe a shift, like you said, from 9 PM until 12:01. And then let them sleep, because then they can show up for you during the day. There's— nobody's gaining anything if you're both getting up so that the mom breastfeeds and the partner is there for moral support, by the way. I found that it's a bit lonelier, but the way you can then during the day cash in on that, you know, if they're working from home or if, if, um, on the weekends, and they're not completely sleep deprived as well it just means it's not an entire household of zombies. So the second time around, we definitely made a few— I mean, we made fewer mistakes. And, um, my husband would wake up and he'd be like, you okay? Do you need anything? But then I wouldn't make him sit up so that he could watch me breastfeed. Um, he would go back to sleep and I would be jealous. But then, you know, he would get up extra early and help me out if, if that was possible, and I could sleep quote unquote. Um, yeah, I think those are the first things I can think of. Um, and, and don't make your coming back journey about weight loss. Don't. It's, um, it's the last of your problems. It's, uh, it's not every woman loses weight when she breastfeeds. I didn't. Um, I lost weight because my thyroid started overacting, which people thought was so cool. It was the exact opposite. It almost turned me into, like, a crazy person. But the coming back from pregnancy is really about, again, rebuild that foundation, rebuild your core, rebuild your leg strength, and create the foundation for the things you love to do. Because when that's back, then you go back to all the sports you love to do, and you'll do it without injuring yourself, without relapsing, without, you know, getting a stress fracture because you're undernourished, and then you're in a boot for 6 weeks and really frustrated. So yeah, just I'm not saying take it easy and slow because there are certain little exercises you can do even at 6 weeks that are going to create a really strong core. But just don't jump back into SoulCycle classes or back onto your Peloton for like an hour a day because you think you need to be back in that specific size of clothing.

And one other point I would just add to that. So I love that list is to plan from like like pre-birth. So when your mind is still able to focus, even just twice a week where you have 3 hours for yourself, where you know the baby's taken care of, be it a relative or whoever, ideally during the day, because by evening time you're exhausted. So during the day to go for a walk in the park, meet a friend for a tea or whatever you're drinking. I don't even have a massage, you know, do some some sort of thing that's just for you, where you got to put yourself first. Because when you have a baby there, it's— you just like this complete motherhood thing takes over and you forget about yourself. And so if you have those in the calendar that every Tuesday and Thursday from, I don't know, 11 to whatever time it is, right? Maybe it's even a time when the baby's sleeping anyway. So you feel less guilty of not being there. This whole guilt thing is also a big thing. I don't know how it was for you, like constantly anyway. But just to plan that time in advance in the calendar and just be really strict with yourself. No guilt. It's for you. And this is part of the oxygen strategy. It's super important just to have it in the calendar and fix things.

I think as a practice, I would, I would highly recommend acupuncture both before, during, and after because it just covers all of it. The preparation— I was induced by my acupuncturist, which was wonderful, was very gentle. And then the recovery, like just finding that pocket of napping that is so restorative. And that was my self-care, was that once a week I would go to acupuncture and just drift off for 30 minutes, 40 minutes. It's a different nap. This one is allowed to be longer and come out and know that, you know, my lower back didn't hurt and I felt more centered and, and had slept.

So that was really good. Beautiful. So what are some key factors— switching gears here—

that you recommend for women for longevity? The way I talk about it a lot is getting ahead of what could cause us trouble. You know, longevity, the way we see it portrayed a lot right now, and I'm— that's one of the reasons why I wanted to speak to you is is we still have too few women talking about this topic, and we see this incredible whole big group of men who come from a fantastic background, and they are so smart, and I love all of their content. Honestly, I just eat it up. I think some of it applies more or less to us, sometimes a little less, um, and so— and sometimes women just don't necessarily gravitate to somebody that is not in their body to give them that advice. So it feels more like the longevity has become about these buzzwords. It's biohacking. Longevity itself is a word that some people feel a bit icky about. When we say healthy aging, suddenly it sounds really old. So, um, but there's, there's so much, um, wisdom obviously in this content, and so The first is to, to know that none of this has to take a lot of time. So every little thing that you can change in your daily habits will pay huge dividends. So if I look at concrete examples of what people struggle with, there are people who don't drink water, and it's not something that I can relate to, but that's an easy fix. And it's some— it's about reminding them Yep. And whether it's water or tea, you know, not necessarily coffee and maybe not energy drinks, although there was a study recently about energy drinks and something about longevity. I need to remember who talked about it, but the sugar content way outweighed some of the positives.

Energy drinks, I'm like, sugar.

Yeah, we know that's highly inflammatory. So yeah. Yeah. So hydration was a big one. Another big topic I talked to women about and I've heard about that becomes more relevant and women start grappling with is alcohol, alcohol management. Nobody's asking you to get sober, but I think we get to a certain age where we have to reevaluate our relationship to it and what it represents for us. And that means the old adage of mom clubs and book clubs being all about just, you know, swigging wine, and that was the reward from, you know, making it through the day with your children. I We've evolved from that, um, and it's necessary too because it's not good for us. And I'm not saying I'm not sober, but I think just knowing your limits and knowing what triggers it in you. I spoke to a neuropsychologist about this and she said, you know, it's about unlocking for each person why it's become a habit and then undoing that habit and replacing it with something nice. So alcohol is a big one. We now know that exercise is the single most important key to our longevity. And it's, again, it's so simple. But I think when it's simple, it's boring because we want to biohack, you know, we want it to be complicated. We want to use gadgets and we want to use protocols and we want to take a lot of supplements. But, you know, the 150 minutes of cardiovascular exercise Women, uh, cardiovascular disease is the number one killer among women, which is something that we're not talking about enough. We're not looking at enough. Women only wake up to that when it's too late, when, you know, exercise almost takes that step back again because we're, we're doing so much for other people. And that can really powerfully contribute to a good mindset. It can contribute to us being healthier overall. Um, there are more emerging risk factors for us now that people are at, which are tied to pregnancy, chronic diseases, and menopause. So we don't want to get to the point where it's irreversible. Mindfulness— when I surveyed women, 70% said they had no mindfulness practice, and we have it at our fingertips. And sometimes when I get really lazy, I just listen to a track, and it's better than nothing. But when I'm being really good, I will set my alarm for 10 minutes earlier, 20 minutes earlier and I'll wake up and I won't look at emails and I won't look at social media. I light a candle and I take that first moment just to set my day. And that's— wow, those days are different. And I can do that and I could still exercise. Sometimes, you know, you feel like you have to make a trade-off, but, you know, you could start with exercise, you could start the day with exercise, you started with mindfulness. Sometimes I end the day with mindfulness. Illness. Um, so that's a big one. And then I would really wish women would, um, and I think it's happening, like, that we get more excited about data, you know, like, to look at data, um, to, to have more access to data that goes beyond the fertility data. That's the other thing right now, like, we're finally seeing partnerships like Natural Cycles and Let's look beyond that. Let's look at what happens in women's bodies that is not related to them getting pregnant. Like, we are way more than that. Um, and oh, and mushrooms. Apparently mushrooms are the future. Yeah, I really— I take cordyceps. I used to take lion's mane. Um, it's incredible. And when I was pregnant, I took reishi. Like twice a week, twice, twice a week. Because in China, apparently it's believed that you will have a Reishi baby if you take Reishi during your pregnancy, which means— what does that mean? Yeah, what does that mean? Chill, relaxed baby. And my child is nothing, none of that. So I had this really beautiful Reishi cacao that I would make at night and sip as like my little dessert. And my daughter came out and she's wild. So that didn't work. But, you know, I was a happy pregnant lady. But I think mushrooms are really powerful and we're just starting to realize what they can do. And that for me is just regular mushrooms. Like, I'm not even talking anything beyond that. But there is a lot of exciting stuff happening. But like, like I said, the basics are really easy. They're nutrition, mindfulness, exercise, and sleep. And then making sure that you can tailor those for each day in a way that their composition works for you.

Yeah, I agree as well. And I've recently been adding lion's mane and reishi to my morning smoothie as well. Yeah, I was struggling a bit with the reishi taste, and my hack for anyone interested in it who struggles also is to add avocado to the smoothie. And it just neutralizes the reishi taste, but it makes it really creamy. So if anyone's doing that to your kids, my 7-year-old will pretty much have anything I have. My 9-year-old is like, I've seen that. Like, no. So anyway, and clearly I need to do more with her. Yeah, but yeah, I still need to find ways to do them. But I think my new thing that I'm going to try with them is doing ice cream. Cream. So coconut milk, fruits, and then throwing a few things in there and then freezing it. And then as a special treat, having some ice cream that's like, uh, totally biohacked, probiotics and all the rest of it in there.

Well, there's a really good brand if you want something that tastes like nothing called CYKEL. CYKEL. Okay. And CYKEL spelled C-Y-K-E-L. That's an Australian company and they're actually droppers. Juice. So the tinctures have high potency, but you can't taste them. Like, you don't taste them in coffee or smoothies. So those are awesome.

I use them during pregnancy as well. Perfect. We'll check those out. I know whatever we can do to help our kids. But I have got my kids doing the BrainTap, which is so cool because they have— I was talking to the founder at the weekend. He's going to be coming on the podcast as well, Michael Porter. But that's all around gene therapy.

Are you familiar with BrainTap? Do you know it?

I'm just familiar with tapping, but not sure. BrainTap is the device. It's a neurofeedback neural rewiring device, if you will. And I just thought it was for adults. I never spent time going through all the details. And it's phenomenal, the work they're doing.

Huge fan.

And it also has a little visor that comes down because our eyes are the extension of our brain on the outside, right? And so there's this little light, and also on the ear as well, because the ears go directly into the brain. And they have programs for kids, and it's just 10 minutes, and it's more like a story that they listen to. To. And while they won't take the mushroom and do different things that I'm trying to get them to do in certain things, again, my 7-year-old's good. Both of them are like, can we do the brain tap, please?

Please? So I was like, sure. So cool.

My son would love that. Yeah. And also for focus, for energy. My younger was having some struggles at school with some of her friends. She listened to one about making friends be more positive. She's like, Mom, I'm going to go and I'm going to smile at everybody and say hi, and I'm going to be really positive. So this was all from the thing. So highly recommend that too. Oh, that's great.

Any other favorite biohacks that you have, Roma, to share with my audience before we finish up today? I'm still a very loyal lemon water drinker. I know it may or may not do anything. I actually find it does get my digestion going, if nothing else, in the absence of coffee. But it's also just warming and beautiful in the morning. Sometimes I add a bit of apple cider vinegar. Vinegar. I'm not too sure about the whole blood glucose thing. I want to believe it. I think it works for me to have apple cider vinegar before having a starchy breakfast. Yeah, because I will not give up my oats.

I really love my oats. If they work for you, go for it.

But have you ever tried a continuous glucose monitor? No. So actually, this is something that I wouldn't mind just talking about, like, no, hear your opinion on. I would be worried that this monitor would give me disordered eating. I'm serious. I've talked to a few women who had issues in their past and they said that that level of just focusing on their nutrition would make them spiral. And for me, I also had issues as an adolescent, trauma-related, and for me, I think it's a very, very slippery slope. As long as I don't, I don't have sugar crashes because I think my consumption of sugars is either responsible or, or not, and then I deal with the consequences, but it's rare. So for now, I'm not too worried about that side. I think there's other data that I'm more interested in.

So for me, I thought it was interesting just to see, right? But yeah, I also had eating disorders as a teenager and know, and a lot of people I know and women particularly, I should say. And it can be a very slippery slope just being obsessed with food. And so I took it from the standpoint of I'm testing this out. I want to try different foods that I think are healthy, right? So it came from a healthy food mindset.

I—

and as a disclaimer, I'm an investor in Levels Health, right? So crowdfunding investor, very small, but I really love their interface and I've had them on the podcast as well because of the insights. You just take a photo, you just leave a quick comment and you can just understand what's happening. And so my big aha with that was sweet potatoes. And I used to make these sweet potato soups with lots of vegetables and I thought it was really great. And I was just watching this blood glucose level going into the red and darker red and I was just like, okay, this is just for me. And this is the beauty of personalized medicine.

Toxin.

For me, it just doesn't work. I can eat it. It's not that I never eat it, but I'm just much more aware, and I would make sure that it's a smaller quantity and I have other vegetables with it as well. Funnily enough, the person from Levels Health that I had on, Maz, he was saying that he used to eat oats all the time. Like, his extended family would always joke he was like a horse. He was always eating oats, and he thought it was so healthy. And then he put it on the Levels Health monitor and watched his, like, blood glucose spiking. He's like, okay, maybe I need to cut that down. So totally get that. And everyone or anyone who suffers from former sort of eating disorders and struggles, you know, do beware of that. Maybe, you know, set it as a pilot, as a test if you want to try it out just to be more familiar how your own body is reacting to something that maybe you perceive as healthy. So that's just sharing a little bit my experience with it as well. But personally, I don't keep it on all the time. And that if I did, I think that would drive me to becoming too obsessed and too focused on that.

So yeah, I I definitely understand where that comes from. And the other thing, I'm a big goal setter. I think that's another thing I find, that setting yourself a goal— not always the same goal, just sort of forever— but like setting yourself a sporting goal, setting yourself a mindfulness goal. I did a 40-day meditation goal for myself that was a specific mantra, a specific number of times, and it was non-negotiable. I ran a 50-kilometer race 6 months postpartum, which was partly also to see how my body would But it was this like, can I get back to being able to physically withstand that at that point? And this is extreme. I don't recommend anybody do that. But I find that even in small quantities, like that's why people do Dry January, that's why people do Whole30. I think goal setting is really important. And that again is just a really simple biohack. You and I talked about cold showers. I personally love them. I don't do them all the time. I claim— have you read the study that the testosterone levels going up was related to the temperature of the scrotum?

Yeah, so if it's too hot, electricity in the car. And interesting, the weekend I heard that the seat heaters in the car are for male and female alike. EMF radiation that comes off of that is apparently horrendous.

So yeah, but then I'm sort of—

if it's scrotum related, How does it apply to women?

But EMF, the heaters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so with cold showers, I think they are great because they build resilience. And I do think that they do wondrous things to our body. When I have to wash my hair, I don't do it. It takes too long. I don't have that ability to be resilient. But when it's a quick shower, many days of the week, I'll do that.

So that's my biohacking. Yeah. And just for some listening as well, the dopamine response. So you can have up to— research shows up to 500% prolonged dopamine response, which is beautiful. So having that brain function and awareness and things, plus in the morning it will wake you up like a foghorn.

So it's a good way to wake up as well. It will. So yeah, I think those are my simple biohacking goals. Biohacking. Ways. I joke that I biohacked my sleep when my children started sleeping through the night.

It's like it was a group collective thing, kids and mother, we're all biohacking our sleep here. Love it. And one new thing I'm looking into also is Synalytix. And so Neurohacker Collective, um, Claudia, they have, um, the supplements and looking how to supports and removes senescent cells so that they don't become these zombie cells in the body. And I was trying them and like, it's all natural supplementation, right? But just the focus and the— like, I— and it turns out I was talking to one of the founders, but it turns out that I wasn't even doing the right doses. I wasn't doing it high enough. But alone, just taking 2 of the tablets each day, I noticed like this beautiful focus and concentration. So This is what I love about it. There's so many things we can do in a natural way to support our bodies too, so we can show up as the best versions of ourselves.

Yeah.

Roma, if you could live to 150 years old with excellent health, how would you spend that time?

I think I would probably reinvent myself in my career another 2 or 3 times. I feel like I've gone fairly well so far in a shorter period of time because my background was so much sports related. I would probably find one other big sporting goal. Like, I don't know if it would be an ultra event in something, um, that would go beyond the marathon or ultra marathon distance, but that would require really spending not just a few months preparing for, but like a year or a few years. That would be really exciting. I still want to do a PhD. My dad was a PhD and my grandfather was a PhD. So that's something that I can, I can hopefully achieve long before 150. And probably in this field, you know, I really think I'm just now cracking into research with a university that's sort of just very early budding partnership where we're going to be doing some research on perimenopause. And I'll tell you about it when we know more. But it's, again, it goes back to data, it goes back to data science, it goes back to correlating information that we can really only derive from the female body and how that affects us as we age. So that's a field that I would love to look into research and, and really like, um, apply myself. Um, I wouldn't have more children. I'm happy. I'm really happy with this. So there's almost this feeling of switching back to focusing more on myself again after focusing using my body predominantly on bringing them Earthside and then caring for them very, very deeply, and now just letting them sort of find their way. Um, I would travel more, and I hope we'll have a planet where that's possible. Yeah, I think that's— that covers it pretty well. We'll see if we can fly supersonic speed from Tokyo to LA in the next few years.

There's, there's some startups tackling that, and that would make travel really exciting Yeah, and so much easier as well. You could do a long weekend, a few very cool places, right? Yeah. What excites you most about the future of health, well-being, and longevity over the coming years and beyond?

The thing that excites me most that I'm seeing emerge now is collaboration. I really think that we're seeing people in the private sector, we're seeing researchers, we're seeing, um, foundations, we're seeing people really finally put with their thinking hats on together. Like, you know, the last few years have taught us that being on Zoom with someone at a different time zone is not a big deal. Like, we always thought that had to happen in person. I think seeing hybrid events, seeing virtual events, being able to absorb all of that information— I have days where I just go, oh man, there's not enough brain space for me to take that all in. Like, I want to— I don't just want to take it in, I actually want to then apply it. So then I record audio messages for people that I get really excited to tell that So that excites me the most, is really seeing how that happens. And for me then, how we can apply that collaborative knowledge to personalized medicine. As you said, I think we really need to move away from just the one-size-fits-all, and I think we're starting, starting to see the beginning of that. Yeah, very cool.

Where can people learn more about what you're up to, and what would you like to share with people? And we can link everything in the show notes as as well.

Right now I'm very active on LinkedIn and I really love meeting people there because again it's that community of like-minded people. Um, so I'm on LinkedIn, it's just my, my first and last name. Um, I have created a company called Vitel and we are at www.vitel.co and that's where we specifically now look at helping women both in their daily life and with a lens for long term to understand the data of their body better and act on that and less with a focus on but more with a focus on metabolic health. So people can find us there and our newsletter. Yeah, I think those are the two best channels.

Perfect.

Do you have a final ask, recommendation, or any parting thoughts or message for my audience today? If anybody in the audience is organizing talks around what we discussed, that one's a female voice, sometimes a multicultural voice, to contribute to that. I, I love to speak about this topic, and I've, you know, I've spoken on panels both more sports science related and then more women's health related. But that's definitely an area now where I'm, I'm always curious to see what's out there. And no, otherwise I'm just like, please keep interviewing fantastic people as you do. Like, I really love it. Um, and I hope that we'll meet— we— I do hope that we'll meet in, in real life at some Yes, exactly. You guys are moving stateside, right? Yeah, so we'll be in California in about—

well, I don't know when this is coming out, but by the end of August, early September. Okay, so pretty soon as well.

Very exciting.

Well, it was such a pleasure to have you on today. Thank you so much for your time and running through, and I, um, love what you're doing. We share so many similar passions, um, and empowering women, I totally agree. Women need to support each other in this space and help with the understanding that it's not just this male community of biohackers, but biohackers can be female and we can do really cool things and be big fans of longevity too.

So thank you so much for your time. Oh, thank you so much for having me and chatting through motherhood and, and biohacking and longevity with me.