160 Petteri Lahtela: Chronotypes, Circadian Rhythm, & Oura

We try to communicate to the user that what are the factors affecting the restorativeness of sleep, what they can do in their life to recover better from daily mental and physical strain. It's by far the most advanced wearable in the world in the sense of how meaningful insights it can provide to the user based on their physiology and biology. It can really help self reflecting and to become more self aware and also at the same time how they could unleash their full potential that how important sleep is in the context of recovery from this daily mental and physical strain. I kind of started finding out that how even small choices, how big an effect all of them had to my sleep.

That was Petri Lautela, CEO and co founder of Aura and this is episode 160 of Wellness Force Radio. What's up my friend? It's your host, Josh Trent. And welcome back to another episode for your weekly access to global experts in all things wellness as we discover the physical and emotional intelligence we need to live life well. In this episode we're up leveling for our physical intelligence and partnership with Intelliskin and our Standtal series with the CEO and co founder of Aura, Pedri Lautela. Now I've been waiting to launch this powerhouse of an episode, this conversation with such an intelligent mind. I know you've probably seen over the past six months I've been beta testing the Generation one of the Oura ring during the summer at the Bulletproof conference, which has given me some incredible and at times humbling feedback, especially during the winter, about my sleep health and sleep timing. But as we know, the truth is undefeated. I'd rather know the truth so I can use it to my advantage, especially when it comes to my wellness journey. And speaking of the wellness journey, how are you doing, my friend? We're deep into January. A lot of people that you know and I know, maybe yourself in many circles, have already dropped off the wagon. The habits are not as sexy as they used to be and there wasn't necessarily the right framework or the external accountability to keep you on the wagon. Well, if you've dropped off, this is your reminder to give yourself some grace and take some deep breaths. Because if you watch the Wellness Force Wednesday, Facebook lives at 12pm Pacific with Ali Waddell and I, then you know, this journey is all about shorting the cycles of recommitment anyways and, and the best way to do that is to just track your progress. This is why I'm so pumped to bring you this show. Today we're talking not only just how to track your sleep quality and how you move, but what kind of a sleeper you are, what kind of a person you are at a deeper level. And we're doing that through discovering our chronotypes. Now, Last year, in 2017, the Nobel Prize was given to two scientists who unlocked new findings about chronotypes and circadian rhythm, where they studied fruit flies. And I think you're gonna be really, really surprised at at the results we uncover about this with Petri. On the podcast, we're gonna learn about circadian rhythm alignment, how it can uplift and improve your progress in getting more energy throughout your day or especially in letting go of old weight, which is the primary focus for so many people. And speaking of letting go, this is your reminder to take a deep breath because this is your breath break. If it's your first time taking a deep breath all day, go for it. And I wanna thank our show sponsor, Organifi, creators of Organifi gold, red and green juice powders. Let's be honest, we're more busy now than we've probably as a society. So we get to design our environment for us to win. Taking away that decision, fatigue and putting delivery systems for micronutrients in our environment at work and at home. And that's why for the past four months I've been using Organifi green juice. And at night I've actually been sleeping really well, contrasting this with the aura to see how turmeric does. When I take in my turmeric, it's been pretty fascinating. And we're talking about that this coming week with Ali on the Wellness Force Wednesday. So make sure you tune into that. We talk a little bit more about supplements and sleep and also adaptogens that are included in this organifi greens juice and the gold to help you sleep soundly. So if you're looking for energy to help you crush the day, go over to Organifishop.com, enter code Wellnessforce to get 20% off all the powders, the red, green and the gold, everything on the site, that's OrganicShop.com and enter code WellnessForce at checkout. All right, on to the show with Petri. Now, if you're a geek like me, and I raise my hand proud because I think that wellness and health and fitness geeks are, we're the change makers. We're the ones that actually care to find joy in this process of self discovery. And if you've fallen off the wagon, let's start tracking today. If you're ready to wear a simple ring instead of a wrist wearable. That in my opinion, I think this is the best wearable on the market. I'll just say it out loud. I haven't come across something as actionable or effective for tracking your wellness lifestyle and HRV and skin temperature and movement and sleep. This is the one. The team at Aura met me this past week at ces, the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. They gave us $100. Yeah, this exclusive for Wellness Force. $100 off the Generation 2 ring that monitors the physiological signals of your body, understands your lifestyle and can guide you to make the optimal choices that are based on your data. Head over to Oura Ring.com that's O U R-A-R-I N G.com, enter code WellnessForce at checkout to get a hundred bucks off of your ring, which is a phenomenal discount. Now let's get into this conversation to see when it comes to your chronotype, if you're a wolf, a lion, a dolphin or a bear like me, you'll see what I mean in this compelling conversation with Petri Lautela. Petri Lautela is a co founder and CEO of Aura Health. Aura is the world's first wellness ring and app. Based on how your body responds to your lifestyle, it guides you to improve sleep, health and readiness to perform. Petri, welcome to Wellness Force Radio.

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here with you today.

Man, I am so excited. Let's talk about this. Let's dig right in. I've been using Aura for almost a year now. We had Alex Fergus on the show a while ago. This is more than just a fitness tracker. Why did you actually found this company? What does this mean to you?

We wanted to first of all create something very meaningful for people. The kind of a solution that would help people understand that what they can do in their life to recover better from daily mental and physical strain and also at the same time how they could unleash their full potential. So whatever they are aspiring for in their life, that we voted to help people to have their full potential available.

When I look at sleep, how important it is, you know, the 2017 Nobel Prize was just awarded to two scientists. Geoffrey Hall, Michael Robash, Michael Young, actually three scientists. They discovered molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythm. So we look at chronobiology and the natural sleep wake cycles of our human experience. You know, we're here in this fast paced world. Petri and I feel like this ring Is an answer to all the things that we have to deal with. You know, stress and daily responsibilities, calendar appointments for all the parents that might be listening, you know, taking their kids to school. It's just I think we're all looking for a mirror of mindfulness, a way to experience this life in a more richer way. How does the ring help us do that?

Yeah, exactly. That's the point. And also taking into account that we all are unique, so our body responses to our lifestyles are completely unique. So there is no kind of way to generalize the guidance that you should live like this, that these choices take you here. So I think this kind of using the term mirror or reflection, it's really important to have kind of ability to do some self reflection and also to become kind of more self aware that how my daily choices and rhythms are affecting my body so that how I can serve my body so that my body can serve me on my way to whatever I want to reach or achieve in my life and also to kind of enjoy my life more and be present to my close people and everyone.

I love the way you mentioned reflection because I think there's a focus on technology and we've explored this on the show quite a bit. Where, you know, there's a device manufacturer, whether it involves sleep or fitness or you know, there's even devices to help people train in the gym. But when we look at our inner clock, all organisms, we're still an organism. Whether you believe in evolution or not, or you know, that we've been here for 2,000 years or whatever, we are an organism. And our organism, it needs and deserves and it gets to receive certain things. And most living organisms, we're adaptable, are an environment doesn't always have to depict our health. We can rise above certain circumstances. Have you ever gone down a health journey and did that in any way shape the oura ring and how it serves the wellness industry?

Yes, definitely. Myself and also our team members, all of us, we have our own journeys in the context of health as well. And I've had my own issues being an athlete from the young age and also then practicing martial arts for quite some time. Maybe the biggest effect has been that when I was building our house, I fell down from three and a half meters to concrete floor and broke my right hand wrist. So I had to learn using my left hand more drawing, writing and eating and everything. So I noticed that it had quite a big effect on how I use my brains, how my hemispheres are in sync. So I started using more let's say both sides of my brain. And it gave it completely one kind of a different aspect to my life and more holistic view. So that has been a big thing. And then after that accident, I've been practicing medical qigong FOR yeah, almost 14 years every day.

We've never heard that before. Medical qigong.

There are some kind of ways to use it for, for at least self healing. There are some specific kind of exercises to improve lymphatic circulation or blood circulation or energy circulation in your body. Kind of build up the balance between the internal organs. So very specific exercises for kind of each different kind of purposes.

Well, I'm glad you shared that with us. Thank you. Because I think, you know the fire below, why somebody does anything is just as important as the thing itself. And when I look at you kind of standing at this intersection of well being, physiology and high tech products, we also heard from you that there's a meaning behind all of this. If you were in an elevator petri and somebody was like, hey, why do you actually create the ring? Like what's that mean to you personally? What would you say to them?

Well, before we established the company, I was working in the context of chronic diseases. I was in the company where we developed IT systems for like diabetes, COPD prevention and management and majority of our customers were in UK and those days I had huge great opportunities to discuss and dig deeper into the kind of understanding that why people develop chronic diseases. So what is the reason behind for the onset of chronic disease? And also kind of started digging more into the research science done in that context. It's about 12, 13 years ago. And also at the same time I started measuring myself. Basically I have used heart rate monitors forever. So as long as they have been, I started using them in a different way and also other devices that I could dig deeper into the physiological reactions of my body in the context of normal daily life choices to understand how different choices and different rhythms and different exercises, how they are reflected by my body during the night. I wanted to understand that what are the actions for me that would help to build better balance between load and recovery.

You were doing quantified self before quantified self was even a thing. That's kind of what I'm hearing from you. It's like you were maybe doing it way before Tim Ferriss, way, way before any of the guys from Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly, Gary Wolf. I mean you were doing it 13 plus years ago. So what did you learn in the beginning about yourself and how has that changed when you look at tracking, you know, how you're showing up for yourself. Like you said, your decisions, your behaviors, how those affect your body. The man you were 13 years ago compared to the man you are now, what's changed the most as far as data and quantification?

Yeah, so first of all, I started to kind of be more aware of the fact that how important sleep is in the context of recovery from this daily mental and physical strain. I kind of started finding out that how even small choices, also in the context of diet and scheduling my meals, and also when I do my exercises, how big an effect all of them had to my sleep. And also not just sleep itself, but how restorative sleep can I get, how recovered I can wake up in the morning. I started kind of building different kind of aspects to that and learnings that, okay, one glass of champagne in the afternoon, so it destroys my sleep and kind of a balance for up to three days because I lose the next night. So one night lost it has kind of causal effect to the next couple of nights at least. So this kind of long term effects of even small choices. And also in relation to athletics. So like in martial arts, you know, you have to combine so many things. The power, speed and reaction times and kind of cognitive presence and cognitive reactions as well. So I kind of started learning that the more I appreciate the importance of sleep and find my own schedules, the better I can perform.

I loved how you put that too, how you appreciate. And I think when we look at wellness being this ecosystem, right, we have mind and body and spirit. It's the appreciation of our body, it's the respect of the temple, right? So we have one body. And 15 years ago, I was such a different person, petrified. You were such a different man. So the way that we can use technology now, you know, the technology that you have that you're producing with aura, that capability was not around over a decade ago. The technology just didn't exist. So we're at this unique spot right now in human evolution where we find ourselves being pushed to our limits as far as productivity and the fastness of the world. The pace of the world is just relentless for most people. But yet the very technology that's pushing that fast pace, we can turn the sword to the other side and we can actually use the technology to kind of answer the demand of the modern world. Let's talk about sleep, because the restorative sleep aspect, this is the part that I've been loving the most. When I look at aura, you know, there's three big sections we're talking about readiness, activity and sleep. But within the sleep category, the restoration. How does the technology actually help the user understand restoration? This is fascinating.

Yeah. So first of all, you know this sleep staging indicating that how much deep sleep, REM sleep, light sleep you get, and the amount of wakefulness in relation to efficiency of sleep. So we try to communicate to the user that what contributes to your sleep. So what are the factors affecting the restorativeness of sleep and also your cardiovascular behavior? So the simplest of the indicators is the resting heart rate curve during the night from that point when you reached the lowest resting heart rate during the night. The rest of the night is like sleeping in a charger. So you are charging your energy system, building more capacity. So if you always reach your lowest resting heart rate just before you wake up, you basically are not capable of building more capacity over the time. You know, it's quite complex. And especially visualizing these things in intuitive way, it's not an easy task. Yes, we take science very seriously. So we fortunately here in Finland, we have more than 30 years of experience on applying physiology into the context of understanding human body reactions in the context of sleep and recovery and athletic performance especially. So in our company, we have that heritage in the company.

I want to go back real quick too, because you mentioned something really interesting when you talked about the heart rate. So for someone listening, is it that we want to have a low heart rate kind of in the middle of our whole sleep period? And like you said, if we have our lowest heart rate right before we wake up, that's not giving us, as you had mentioned, the deep charge.

Exactly, yes. So even though you would get deep sleep kind of in relation to yourself, well enough, but still, if you reach the lowest resting heart rate very late during the night, early in the morning, then it means that you didn't have time to recharge your batteries.

How many hours once the sleep cycle has actually begun, that first phase where someone's winding down, you know, hopefully they've listened to the show Petri and they're not doing any kind of screens before they go to bed. They've done really good work on sleep hygiene, you know, creating a bedtime ritual. But then once they get into the actual phase of sleep, how many hours into that block of sleep will their heart rate be optimal? If it's the lowest? An example might be if I go to bed at 10 o' clock and, and I wake up at 6, do I want my lowest heart rate at 1 in the morning?

Yeah. It can be somewhere between 1 and 3, for example, that would be already quite nice. Sometimes you can get it right after midnight. But normally it doesn't appear in the deepest sleep phases, but during light sleep when we prepare for the next deep sleep phase. Got it. So somewhere between 12 and 3am would be quite optimal.

This is a real moment for me too. Last night I went out to dinner with some friends and I think I got home at 11 o'.

Clock.

So it was a little bit later of a meal time for me. And I noticed when I pulled up my data today, you know, I slept from about 12 until 7:30, 8 o' clock this morning. I didn't achieve my lowest heart rate which was 45 until about six in the morning. Which means I only had a two hour window of being that human charge. And I actually noticed it when I woke up today and I thought okay, well that's just an indicator for me to modify my behavior next time and set an earlier meal time. Yes, because I noticed last night just from my data, oh, I didn't get.

Enough human charge, especially the dinner or the meal time in the evening. It has huge effect, not to everyone, but let's say maturity of people. So it depends on your chronotype and your circadian alignment. What's your optimal bedtime in relation to your chronotype adherence and circadian alignment? So it's connected to that. For maturity of people it is good to have at least three hours before you go to sleep, not to eat.

And why is that? Is it because digestion takes energy and so our body's under some sort of a load?

Exactly. So the metabolism is still up and running. So digestion is taking the energy. So when you go to sleep and when you enter to the deepest sleep phases, there shouldn't be any that kind of functions ongoing in your body. So your body it should be able to kind of just concentrate on cleansing functions and kind of building up the energy sources and so on. So I don't know whether you've been researching this glymphatic circulation in our brain. In our brain we don't have lymphatic system like in the body, but it's glymphatic system activates during sleep phases. Your brain mass may shrink even 60% so that this cleansing mechanism can work and clean the toxins away from the brains.

It's almost like a car wash petri. It's like we're literally getting our brain scrubbed. Our brain has a self cleaning mechanism, but if we don't get enough sleep, then our Brain literally shows up the next day toxic.

And sleep deprivation generates huge problems due to this reason. Basically the same kind of a mechanism is everywhere in the body. So during the night many of our internal organs are in most active phase do their cleansing work and, and build up the energy for the next day.

And so I want to talk about the chronotype you'd mentioned that really intrigued me. The chronotyping, you know, understanding not just, you know, how important sleep is, but the timing of this. One of the things that this incredible technology is doing now, this is available through Aura, is it analyzes sleep but then automatically learns our optimal bedtime and then gives us messages for that optimal time. For example, if you have a chronotype where your bedtime, maybe 9 o' clock is your optimal bedtime, maybe it's 10, maybe it's 11. But just guessing I don't think is enough. With this higher demand of our life, we need more precise tools to be able to show up a little more powerfully. So can you explain this chronotyping?

Everyone have heard about morning and evening chronotypes. I would highly suggest reading Dr. Michael Breau's books the Power of When. So he, he even has defined more categories and given names for mammals like dolphins and lion and so on. So that's interesting analogy, but, but also like Benjamin Smarr in Berkeley has done lots of research on this area. But overall this chronotype and circadian alignment go hand in hand. And it's all about sleep, drive, daytime alertness, memory and learning, and especially hormonal balance. So for example, when we go to sleep, melatonin is necessary so that we can really prepare the body and brain to the deepest sleep phases. And also when we wake up in the morning, then stress hormones peak so that we really wake up and are in high alertness as early as possible. So there's few hours of difference between different chronotypes. So like myself, I'm early morning person, so my optimal bedtime is between 10:15 to 10:45. And also I always wake up without any clock, so automatically. And if I'm very enthusiastic about something, I may wake up about 4:35.

So are you a lion, Petri?

Yes. Yes.

This is really cool. So dolphin, lion, bear and wolf, those are the four chronotypes. I love that because anybody can understand animals, right? A dolphin is somebody who's like a light sleeper. The lion tends to wake up with boundless energy like yourself. And then there's a bear that you know, their internal Clock is more for the rise and the fall, the sun and then the wolf. Wolves have a hard time waking up early because, you know, they have a lot of energy at night. I think I'm between a lion and a bear. I think a bear is more of who I am. So for a bear, you know, maybe I don't need to wake up at 5am that's why I don't do my workouts so early in the morning. Have you found by learning your chronotype that it adjusted your workout times?

Yes, it depends on also the workout. So like this medical qigong, it is very good to do early in the morning because it wakes up the body. So Normally I do 25 minutes every morning when I wake up with my wife and sometimes even our daughter's joint. That kind of cardiovascular exercises or strength training, my optimal is somewhere between 4 to 7pm and 4 kind of a martial arts or that kind of exercises. That's better time for that.

I love that so much. And it just breaks down the myth of everyone should be going to bed at the same time. It's just not true. You know, Gretchen Rubin talked about this in her novel. We had her on the show. You're talking about it. The more people we learn from who are masters in their field like you are, it's just understanding that you guys were all unique. There is no template that fits everyone. And you know, there's dolphins, bears and wolves. Wolves. And we're all different people here. So the actual device, the device gives us coaching and this is what I love so much. I'm going to be on stage at CES this year. We're talking with the founder of levl, which is the acetone measurement device. We're talking with other people who are creating really powerful things that can help people understand how they're burning fat, how they're sleeping, how they're moving and how that affects the quality of their life. When we look at what you're creating in this new generation ring, I actually have been using, using the Gen1, this Gen2 ring just launched. Can you tell us about the Gen2, the differences, the upgrades between Gen1 and Gen2 and how this allows us to show up a little more powerfully in our lives.

So now with Gen1 Ring, we have customers in more than 50 countries and millions of days and nights of data in the cloud. So we can go even deeper into the personalization of the guidance that we provide in the app. So already in the very beginning we have had this so called message engine. In future it will be so called Insights engine. So that we can really based on your chronotype, your circadian alignment, your sleeping patterns, activity patterns, body reactions in relation to everything. We can give you better personalized and really individualized guidance. That kind of forward looking guidance. Kind of do small adjustments in your rhythm or when you have your meals or exercises, how you kind of wind up towards your sleep so that you get the best possible restorative sleep and also how quickly you recover from your exercises. What you can do during the day to contribute to your readiness to perform all kind of the balance between rest and load. That's where we are going to. And this Generation two ring, I could claim it's by far the most advanced wearable in the world in the sense of how meaningful insights it can provide to the user based on their physiology and biology and kind of in combination to their behavior so that it can really help self reflecting and to become more self aware that what choices are good for me and how I can help myself better in the physical product itself. Now it is in the size of a wedding band. It's made of titanium. Like the first generation one ring was made of zirconia. It's much lighter, full of latest pioneering and proprietary technology, 10 times more powerful processing one week battery time. So with one charge you can measure up to one week and the charging time is like it has been with Gen 1. It's very quick.

That is the biggest win I think I've heard of all year. You know, you guys are proving at Aura that Moore's Law is alive and well. The way that we can get so much powerful technology into half the size and it lasts so many days longer. I think the capacity with the old ring was you know, one to three days. You've literally tripled that battery life. I think this is what most people are excited about. We actually had a question from my friend Autumn and she wanted to ask you Petri about the emf. Let's talk about this. Because the Aura was designed to disable the Bluetooth and also to not constantly transmit this signal, which is really important if you're concerned about electrical pollution. Tell us about that. For people that are like I don't want to have anything on my body. Tell us why this is safe.

Because of this reason, we want to make the ring as a standalone product so that it doesn't need anything else to do the measurement continuously. So therefore, even in the Gen1 there's been powerful processor and enough memory to store the data for up to four weeks. And now we have tenfold processing power. And now the rearing can store the data at least for six weeks into the ring without syncing to the mobile. And we have optimized this Bluetooth communication so that the data is kind of refined and calculated in the ring. And then only the data that we want to visualize in the app is transferred to the app. And as you have experienced with Gen1 ring, it takes about half a minute, 45 seconds to transfer the data over the Bluetooth to your mobile sleep analysis data. And that's the longest period during the day that the Pluto is on, which.

Is totally different than our cell phones. I mean, the cell phone. I think people that are afraid of EMF from a ring, they'd be shocked to know how much is coming out of the cell phone. I mean, we're talking about hundreds of times more pollution from the cell phone. Dr. Mercola actually uses a cell phone on a selfie stick, Petri. He doesn't even put it close to his body because he's so afraid of the electrical noise and the pollution from it.

Yeah, it's thousand times more, something like that. So it's really, really big difference. And also that it is just couple of minutes, two to three minutes at maximum, that the data transfers on during the day. And if you put it in the airplane mode, then it doesn't transfer anything.

And I think why people get to know more about this for their own life is because most people are running in a reactive mode in life. I mean, let's get down to the bas. We have a way of living that's responsive and then we have a way of living that's reactive. Now, with us doing more and us constantly running around and having to satisfy all of our life's responsibilities, I think that's what technology is answering the call for, it's understanding. Well, when I'm looking at this device and I'm looking at my data, what behaviors am I willing to change tomorrow? So I look at my data today and I understand that my behaviors made my data show up in a certain way. What have you been hearing from users? Is it sleep improvement? That is the majority? Have there been any other things that have come up, Petri, that have surprised you and the team around? Behavior change in the ring?

Yeah, of course, sleep improvement has been, let's say, the biggest theme. We've learned so much through our users as well, that how people are able to improve their sleep at the amount of deep sleep and also building the efficiency of the sleep and also finding their optimal Times and so on. Then also another important factor is that we get the messages that this has really helped people to understand that sometimes less is more. Like top athletes, they understand really well that they need to concentrate on recovery. The winner is not the one that can, let's say, exercise most, but then in the competition, the one that recovers quickest and best, that's the winner. So this building the balance between the load and recovery, that's another aspect. And our product is, as you've noticed, it's unique in that sense that it gives you daily activity target also based on how you have recovered during the night. So it doesn't push the user to reach the 10,000 steps every day, but gives really the target based on how your body is responding to your previous day's mental and physical strain.

The heart rate variability aspect. We had Jason Moore on the show from Elite hrv and so we had kind of a masterclass petri about HRV and why this is so important. I guess what, what's really most fascinating to me about the aura is that I wear it on my middle finger on my left hand and the sensors are on the bottom. They touch my skin. They continuously touch the skin, which we know, we've heard reports about the Apple watch. When someone has tattoo or they have a lot of body hair, that signal from the lights can be interrupted. But with the ring you can get HRV whenever you want it. It's clean data, it's accurate. Why did you choose that location to to put the sensors on the bottom of the ring? Is that a very high profile spot to receive heart rate information and skin temperature? I'd love to dive into HRV and skin temperature. Why skin temp is actually quantified.

So first of all, why this is a ring is exactly the reason that with specific infrared wavelengths we can dig deeper. So not just measuring the, let's say skin tone or the color changes of your skin, but actually access the arteries directly. And on each of our finger we have two arteries on the palm side and that's why the infrared sensors are on the palm side, the bottom of the ring. So it's like everyone has seen pulse oximeters in hospitals. So we apply the same measurement method, but we have developed our proprietary measurement there. So we use specific infrared. We take 250 samples per second so we really can draw the whole waveform. So now we are not talking about just measuring your heart rate per minute. The ring actually measures every beat and the time between the heartbeats and the waveform and the variance of the. The pulse amplitude, Actually the pulse amplitude variation, it's modulated by breathing rate and also plug pressure. So that's really important. And that's what you can't get from your wrist or elsewhere. So for us to build really meaningful solution, it was necessary to access the bio signals in highly accurate and comfortable way at the same time. Yeah. So people have had rings for centuries and they get used to that. It feels comfortable to have the ring touching the skin all the time. When you kind of shake your hand, it doesn't kind of turn or something like that. So there are plenty of benefits of having it in a ring.

And like you said, it's comfortable too. I mean, it's not something where a lot of people don't want to wear a watch, let's be honest. Yes, but I think all of us are used to wearing rings, especially during the night.

So the ring is so comfortable that you just forget it completely. Especially this new one. It's so light, much smaller than generation one. You just don't notice it at all.

That's the whole point of passive data collection, isn't it? I mean, look, we're all wanting to be more mindful, but we have to make it easy for the end user. One of the things I think a lot of tech companies struggle with, Petri, is, you know, how do we get this passive data collection and make it truly seamless? We hear this term in the wellness tech space. Seamless integration, seamless behavior change. I mean, our life is full of seams. We don't want to add one more seam to somebody being more mindful through a device. So when we look at that pulse and the way that the oximetry is measured and the way that the technology is pulled in, I guess I'm just really curious about this skin temperature. Why is this included? What is the skin temperature aspect mean to us?

So it's again connected to this chronotype and circadian alignment. So in general, about 4:30am, when we reach the lowest body temperature, then skin temperature and body temperature are the same. So that's the basic kind of anatomy of sleep. That core body temperature is pushed away from the core so that we can sleep. And also our hands and legs, they are heated up because of this core body temperature is pressed to the periphery. That's about kind of how we get this body temperature from the ring. So that's an optimal position again on finger and especially in the palmar side.

This is what I'm hearing from you in regards to readiness. You know, we look at the trending over the course of time. So if somebody's getting a skin temperature reading for a month, they might start to see trends. They might start to see that, you know, the body temperature has a deviation of a half a degree, a full degree, maybe two degrees. What do we learn from that when we see the temperature actually changing?

Yeah. So this deviation is indicating about many things. One of them is recovery. And also your kind of diet. And also of course, if you had fever during the night, this is the only product that can tell you in the morning, indicate to you and communicate directly that okay, today, take it easy, that's huge already. There's no other product in this comfortable way would serve you as a thermometer every night. And also, of course from women's perspective, we get accurate reading of their menstrual cycles as well.

This is going to give our ladies listening more of an insight to their cycles.

Yes. And also there is lots of science around female athletes, especially strength training exercises in certain phase of their menstrual cycles, then they get more benefit and they can avoid kind of over training symptoms in another phase. It's beneficial to do different kind of exercises. So we are going to give this kind of guidance to our female users through the app as well. So I think it's a huge asset.

I would love to be a fly on the wall in your lab just to see what you guys do. I mean, it's utterly fascinating to me the way that you've built such powerful technology. It just blows me away into a ring. If you would have told somebody 30 years ago that this technology would exist and that you could give insights to a woman's menstrual cycle, their sleep quality, they would have looked at you and shook their head and said, you are crazy. But now crazy is reality. This is so exciting. And I think the way that people can jump on this wagon is obviously they can pick up the ring, but they also get to look at why the data is what it is. In other words, how does this ring relate to sustainable behavior change? Really? To know thyself, it's on the temple at Apollo. To know thyself. Isn't that really one of the core tenets of this ring?

Exactly. So even though the ring is smart, we want the user to become smart in the context of of his or her life, to become more aware and to be able to self reflect how I can build better balance, how I can be better present to my close people. And I can also focus what I'm aiming at to achieve in my life, have my full potential there. So that's exactly as you said.

And really, it's about quality, not quantity. You mentioned earlier that for athletes specifically, less can be more. It's like we're all trying to do the very best we can. We show up each day in our unique situation with family and friends and work, and we're all doing our best, yet just having a little guidance from an outside mirror, a mirror of really how we can be more mindful. It's so important. It's so powerful. You actually had a story about an elementary school teacher, and we'll link this in our show notes. Today she has three boys. It was around her journey, understanding sleep. You know, for some time she had had a hard issue with finding balance in the midst of taking care of her boys. And, you know, she was interested in the ring. And in your blog, you described that she actually used the data from the ring, she started a meal log, and she improved the quality of her sleep by using the ring as a buffer, by understanding. Okay, let's look at the truth here. This is actually how I'm sleeping now. I'm going to start logging my meals. I'm going to start logging the way that I'm showing up throughout my day. I'm going to take care of myself. It's really what I'm feeling from this blog and from the ring. It's permission to take better care of ourselves.

Yes. And also kind of taking the responsibility of our lives on hands. Yes, yes.

It is about responsibility. Right. And sometimes, Petri, like, you know, we don't want to look at that because, you know, our busy parents out there. I know. I have two nieces myself. I look at my brother's life. Gosh, he is so busy all the time. It's like maybe he's actually afraid or maybe a lot of us are afraid to take that inventory of. Oh, my gosh. This is actually the truth of how busy my life is and they're not willing to make the changes. Do you think the ring can nurture people to make those changes? The ones that might be kind of scary, but that are so necessary?

I think it is especially helpful for that kind of people living busy life. It's basically maturity of our team as well. We are living this kind of hectic life, but it's kind of a relief to understand your own body in the context of. Of course, everyone has to kind of stretch the limits every now and then. There are deadlines to meet and so on. But this ring kind of allows you to understand your capacity so that. Okay, I understand that now I have next few days I have to just stretch. I don't even have time to sleep. But then I know that when I just have few good nights after this push, then I can recover from this and I can get back to the balance and I can avoid all the symptoms of prolonged stress and that kind of stuff. So it's kind of a relief to understand your own body capacity in that sense.

The science behind this is big. There are many studies. But one of the cool things that you just announced, I believe it was a event in Finland. Correct? The slush event.

Yes, exactly.

Now this was validated by independent studies from Stanford. So, you know, Stanford Research Institute identified this as a optimal tool for improving sleep, improving recovery from really this mental and physical strain that we all face every day. How did this happen? I mean, you can't just go to Stanford and say, hey guys, can you write a nice article about our ring? It doesn't work like that. How did that actually happen?

Yeah, exactly. So it happened from their own will to kind of see and show also other researchers that how wearables have developed these days. So actually they bought two rings from our Kickstarter campaign and we didn't know they used some other name or something, but we didn't know that. But they bought only two rings. You know, we have eight different sizes, but they bought only two sizes and they had more than 40 young adult people there in their study. So the two rings were not the right size for all of them. So it had small effect on the results. But anyhow, the results were revolutional that from this kind of a wearable device you're wearing on your finger, you can really get accurate reading of your sleep stages and everything related to your sleep. So they were even themselves, they were so surprised to see that how accurately the sleep stages can be measured and also that all the kind of physiological parameters that we can measure through the autonomic nervous system, reactions from the finger, how? Well they kind of correlate with the sleep related physiological signals measured in polysomnography. So that's huge.

The polytesting. The polysomnography, yeah, polysomnography.

Yes, exactly.

This is really unique. We talked about this with Dr. Kirk Parsley in a previous episode. You know, that kind of study, it takes thousands and thousands of dollars. When someone has sleep apnea or a sleep condition that's chronic, they go into a ward, a testing ward, and we're talking about, you know, a two day event with thousands of dollars in staff. Yet this ring, the tech that has been shrunken down in this ring is comparable to these sleep wards.

Exactly. And also in addition to that, it gives your body temperature reading, measures your activities and gives your daily targets for your activities and tells about your long term readiness to perform based on your own capacity. And as I said previously, we take science seriously. We have long experience on developing like our chief scientist, he's been the principal scientist of polar before for 18 years he has been developing the algorithms the Polar, you know, the heart rate monitoring company which is pioneer in heart rate monitoring in everything related to even the raw signals to derived signals we validate against the condens standards, these sleep phases, it's kind of a derivative of all those raw signals measured. Now also that is independently validated. So basically there's no other wearable, commercial wearable product that would be independently validated for measuring your sleep stages.

Yeah, most wearables, let's be honest, they end up in a kitchen drawer after like three months. And you know, the reports that have come out say that. Yet when we look at the long term studies for the ring, we're talking about three times more users actually use this three times longer than Fitbits or anything else. And you know, two, three years ago I was coaching clients online, I was recommending Fitbit because I hadn't heard about Aura yet, I didn't know anything about it. But now if people ask me, hey Josh, what wearable do you use? Hands down, I use the aura because it's so easy for me. I don't always want to wear a watch. I work out with it. I can do anything I want with it because it's made in a very robust way. What kind of feedback have you been getting from users? Is there a case study or a story that really excites you?

Yeah, so we have even Olympic level athletes. For example, one of them is in rowing. He's in the team of four and he said that this has been absolutely game changer for him. He use it every day for adaptations of his training and nutrition and recovery protocols. So rowing is one of those, like cycling as well and swimming, where you need to, to recover quickly and have the strength and be able to combine strength and endurance at the same time. So we have in different athletic sports we have users, but also we have doctors, many doctors using this product, like Dr. Peter Attia in Silicon Valley, he's coaching his clients with the rings. We have personal trainers like, you know, Alex Ferkus has been using the product, coaching his clients Also lots of entrepreneurs, people who are really aspiring kind of professionals from different walks of life, artists, business people. And like now in Sluss we had a port there and also in October we were in Bulletproof conference and also in Biohacker Summit. So it's a constant flow of people, our existing users and those who are interested and we get all the time good feedback and they openly share us their findings that I learned with this, bring this and that. And I think this is something what we would like to enable later on as well to building this community of users because they are so willing to share their findings. Our idea is to even help similar chronotypes to find each other so that if you are morning person, you could learn from other morning persons.

You want to connect the bears to the bears. You want to have the dolphins play with the dolphins. This has been such a fun conversation, Petri. I had no idea that it was going to be this rich and I'm just so excited to publish this episode. You can go to the Wellness Force site. You guys have been so generous this year just getting to know you and the team. You're giving our audience a hundred dollars off of the ring, which is just fascinating to me. I don't know how you're going to do that and make money, but thank you for your generosity. So go to the Wellness Force site. We'll link everything at our show Notes page for this. This is the last section of the show. Petra. It's going to be really fast. Seven questions for people to get to know you even deeper. Can I ask you seven questions in a row?

Yes, definitely. Yeah.

What do you travel with? What kind of food do you take with you on an airplane?

Normally I don't eat anything in the airplane, so I prefer just fasting.

So just water.

Just water, Yeah. I really appreciate water.

How has your life changed since founding Aura? Have you adjusted anything about your personal health or what's been the biggest takeaway after co founding Aura?

First of all, I've learned so many things about sleep and everything related to health, but I've been able to dig deeper into my personal kind of body reactions and understanding about diet. And even I have kind of done a DNA kind of check and building the correlations between different things so that how this circadian alignment is affecting me and how I should adjust my diet in relation to my metabolism rate and that kind of thing. So I'm so enthusiastic about all these things that I dig deeper and deeper all the time and of course enjoy learning from other people. So I really enjoy talking to people about these things and. And learning from them as well.

What is one of the biggest differences that you recognize between the culture and the way that people treat each other and communicate with one another in Finland compared to the United States, what's one of the big differences in the way people interact?

That's interesting question. I've been traveling in more than 30 countries and doing business during the last 20 years of my career. What I've been telling to other people, what's my kind of deepest learning is to that even we are in different cultures, we individuals are quite much the same. So when you get to know each person, you go deeper into the personal level. We are quite much the same. The relationship that you can establish with another human being, that's the most giving thing. So you don't need to be that concerned about the culture, that kind of things.

I love that answer. When you look at what the world needs now in regards to health and wellness, what is one thing that you believe cumulatively the entire world needs most?

I think this appreciation of sleep and especially understanding the restorativeness of sleep. I can see. And we have been digging deeper into that. It has so huge effect on also this big trouble with all these chronic diseases. For example, because it's one of the biggest reasons behind the onset of many chronic diseases is this kind of prolonged imbalance caused by sleep deprivation and related kind of imbalance between internal organs.

When you are traveling the world and doing what you do. You know, running this company is not an easy feat, I'm sure. What inspires you? Where do you pull your energy from?

On the dark days, People inspire me. And also learning more all the time from other people and from our own findings. I enjoy speaking with people and I've been hiring people from the airplanes. Meeting so wonderful people in the airplanes. I like to kind of keep my eyes open and be present also when I'm traveling on this show.

We focus so much about our physical and emotional intelligence. What inspires you the most around your physical and emotional intelligence? In other words, do you have a person that you follow or a leader or even a show? What inspires you to continue to keep learning about your physical and emotional intelligence?

There are so many people who inspire me. You already mentioned several of them. And like Peter Diamandis for example, from Xpress, he gives nice insights. So many other people in this context of bihacking, but also in the context of kind of creating meaningful business and providing kind of meaningful benefits for the users. So even in our investors, there are inspiring people. That's important.

Yes. We would love to have Peter on the show if you can make that happen.

Yeah, of course I can.

No pressure, no pressure. Last question. Petri, I really enjoyed this conversation. I want to know for you personally, your wellness, the way you look at it, what does wellness mean to you? What's your personal definition of wellness?

This kind of holistic balance feel. And I can enjoy my life and I can be present to my loved ones. So my wife and our daughters. I really enjoy working with our team so I want to be present to them as well and kind of aspire towards achieving together. So that's really nice. So there are many things, not only the health and performance, but it's more holistic from. From several aspects. But let's say nature is very important part of that building the balance. So every now and then I have a need to go deep to the forest somewhere. Hiking and finding my my strength there.

Thank you for that answer. I think about the Japanese shen ren yoku which is the forest bathing the way that they heal themselves. And you've gone so deep with us today. I really appreciate the segments we've talked about in depth. Again, go to the Wellness Force site if you're interested in this. The hundred dollar off code is WellnessForce, so just enter that at checkout over@oura ring.com. petri, thank you so much for sharing your gifts with us and just for what you're doing this ripple you're creating man in the wellness industry.

Yeah, thank you very much.

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