After a transformative weight-loss journey, Sameer Sontakey became obsessed with health and how one can take better control of their well-being. Now Sameer is the Co-Founder and CEO of Biostrap -- a health-tracking wearable device and platform offering the world's most advanced science-based technology to improve global health. Through a clinically validated wrist-worn device, Biostrap utilizes machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide comprehensively individualized and population-level insights into one's physiology and overall health, help users to manage stress, monitor sleep, activity, meditation, brain health, and heart health. Sameer shares the science behind Biostrap, his stance on training your body for optimizing sleep, and where the future of wearable sleep technology is heading.
BIO:
Sameer Sontakey, co-founder and CEO of Biostrap has 10+ years of experience in software and product development. After a transformative weight-loss journey, he has become obsessed with health and how to take control of their well-being. Sameer realized that his passion for wearables and health could be interlinked and that he could create something convenient, that provides clinical data, and is more meaningful to the consumer than other wearable technology.
SHOW NOTES:
⌚ A Cloud-Based Wearable That is Easy to Use
⌚ What PPG Systems Are and Why Biostrap Is One of the Best Wearables On the Market
⌚ Not Just One Marker - Biostrap Targets ALL the Biomarkers
⌚ Biostrap Labs Looks to Prioritizing Experimentation
⌚ How Rigid or Elastic Your Arteries Are Affects Your Sleep
⌚ The Technology Behind the Biostrap Wearable
⌚ Surviving COVID and Sleep Disturbances - The Key to Healing Faster
⌚ Iron Cowboy Collaboration and How the Biostrap Also Monitors Fitness
⌚ Measuring Your Zones of Risk for Respiratory Rates
⌚ Can Biostrap Help Identify COVID or Other Illnesses?
⌚ Sleep Gadgets Are A Tool but Just One of These Many Ways to Improve Your Sleep
⌚ Sleep Disturbances and What You Can Do To Work Through Them
⌚ Checking Arterial Pressure As A Sign of Aging
⌚ Sameer’s Stance on Sleep and Supplements
⌚ How to Train Your Body To Get the Best Night’s Sleep
⌚ Sameer’s Humbling Moment With His Own Sleep Struggles
⌚ Sameer’s Biggest Change to His Sleep Game
⌚ The Future of Sleep Tracking
⌚ Can Clinical Level Lab Research Be Achieved From Right At Home?
QUOTES:
“Having a cloud-based wearable is the future for us. And the idea of just having a PPG cloud-based computing system is also something that we thought was extremely unique.”
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
wearables, sleep, people, hrv, data, strap, day, bio, gadgets, health, hear, big, baseline, absolutely, company, questions, therapist, deep sleep, learn, ppg
SPEAKERS
Mollie McGlocklin
Mollie McGlocklin 00:04
Welcome to the sleep as a skilled podcast. My name is Mollie McGlocklin. And I own a company that optimizes sleep through technology accountability and behavioral change. Each week, I'll be interviewing world class experts ranging from doctors, innovators and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Let's jump into your dose of practical sleep training. Welcome to the sleep is a skill podcast. My guest today is the co founder and CEO of bio strap, if you're not familiar with bio strap, they are a popular sleep wearable. And what's really exciting about them is that they are doing a number to help make the data that they're pulling accessible in a way that a lot of other wearables are kind of keeping behind, you know, lock and key. And there's a lot of implications that that can help in the industry to ensure that we're not just getting some of these readouts from some of these wearables and having a lot of questions as to how did they get to where they got to, we can actually go on the back end with their data in a way that a lot of them don't allow us to. So that's pretty exciting. And there's some of the other things that they are up to is really building a whole health wearable platform in which they are. So some of these things I had no idea they're up to. So we learn about it together on this podcast. So one, they discuss their bio strap labs, which is really cool. And they to discuss kind of some experiments that they're running. First one that they just did was with Thera gun should be haven't tried their gun, oh, my goodness, I use that thing. So often, again, no affiliation with any of these things. But just pretty cool seeing testing certain products, and then their impact on sleep, health and well being metrics. So we'll get into that. Then they also make a couple cool announcements. One, looking at the iron cowboy. I'm not sure if any of you I wasn't as familiar with the iron cowboy. But they had linked up with him. He is just a beast, and he is committing to running 100 triathlons in 100 days, I don't even know what that could possibly look like, particularly for imagine just your HRV alone, what would that look like? Well, he's going to be hooked up, he chose that of all the wearables bio strap to partner with to display his tracking data throughout the whole course of this. So that's launching very soon in March. So anyway, you can listen in, get all the details, but that was just some unexpected gems that I got out of the conversation, even just beyond the many, many questions I had around their product in general. So I think you're gonna really love it. I know I had a blast. And I was just really surprised and delighted by the company and how just awesome they've been. They're actually sending me bio strap, one of the latest models to test out. So To be continued. I'll share that with you guys on the newsletter. And if you guys were one, please don't hesitate to respond to the weekly newsletter and share some of your experiences, questions, call outs, any any of that good stuff, because they're they've been great and sharing their insights. And what happy be happy to hear some of that feedback. So without further ado, let's hear a little bit about Samir. So Samir is that co founder and CEO of bio strap last name, son, techie, and I'm hopefully pronouncing that correctly. And he was just a pleasure, you're gonna really enjoy his energy. But Samir has 10 plus years of experience in software and product development. Previously, he co founded a fast growing marketing software company where he architect and builds enterprise applications backends services and set up data pipelines for big data ingestion to deliver meaningful insights from different data systems. Currently, Samir is the co founder and CEO of bio strap a health wearable platform offering the world's most advanced science based technology to improve global health facilitating data collection through a clinically validated wrist worn device. Bio strap utilizes machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide comprehensive individualized and population level insights into one's physiology and overall health help users to manage stress, monitor sleep activity, meditation, brain health and heart health. After a transformative weight loss journey, Samir became obsessed with health and how one can take better control of your well being. Having been in the software engineering industry for 10 years, he's realized that his passion for wearables and health could be interlinked and that he could create something that's convenient, actionable, provides clinical data and is more meaningful to the consumer than other wearable technologies. bio strap launched in June 2016. And now has users across the world and has been involved in various studies in the clinical space, whether it's identifying early signs of respiratory illness, or the efficacy of multiple interventions on sleep, recovery, and overall well being. So without further ado, let's jump in to the podcast. Now, before we get into the podcast, I do want to take a quick minute to give a shout out to our sponsor better help or as I like to call it, a therapist in your pocket. It's the exact app that I use when I was going through my really challenging period of insomnia while traveling overseas. And the ability to maintain a consistent therapist in real life was just really not an option for me since we were jumping around from country to country. So the ability to with using my phone have video calls weekly with my therapist that was paired with it. For me, actually, I connected with a great therapist right off the bat. But I do know other people who have been able to kind of shop around with some of the therapists on that app until they find a great fit for them. And in between those calls, one of the things that I found was really helpful is that you can also send voice notes, text messages, images in between that you no longer weekly video call, so that you do have this really very real ongoing connection and support that I certainly, at least in my experience hadn't felt with real life therapists that I've used in the past. And also the pricing structure is much more competitive than a lot of the real life therapists that you can come into contact with. So I found it to be a lot of benefits. I recommend it to a lot of people that are just kind of going through struggles in their life or just simply want to be able to uplevel and get bringing that level of reflection and awareness into their life, about what's both working and not worth getting. And you can certainly cancel at any time and for our sleepy community. The better help company has hooked us up with 10% off if you go to better help calm forward slash sleep is a skill again, better help calm forward slash sleep is a skill. And welcome to the sleep as a skilled podcast. I cannot wait to get into talking more on this topic with Samir, we are going to go deep on the topic of certainly bio strap and their presence in the sleep wearable industry. But you know, I actually had the privilege of getting to speak beforehand before hitting record. And now I even have more questions than I originally had. Because they've got some really cool things happening in the world of understanding kind of personal health and awareness through wearables and kind of the quantified self movement. So I can't wait to dive in deeper. But without further ado, I'd like to put this spotlight on to you and just hear a bit more about how is it that you found yourself in the sleep wearables industry? And a little bit more about your background?
07:55
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Molly. It's really a pleasure. I've heard so much about you, I just had to, I had to come and talk to you.
Mollie McGlocklin 08:01
Awesome. So happy to have you,
08:03
horse. You know, so how I got here, you know, honestly, like, you know, I spent a good chunk of my early days actually being overweight, kind of not even really concerned about health, but quite frankly, was my fifth thing on the list. You know, it's always like, you know, it's not that important, you know, so honestly, it was, you know, up until after college where I had kind of a revelation like, or, like, you know, what I gotta, you know, I just don't feel good about who I am. And that kind of thing, you know, just really reconsidered my entire life, let's say, Sure. And, you know, just one Yeah, and I think that was the changing point. For me, I wanted to you know, really make a difference. I just kind of stuck with it. And I think try forming a habit is so hard, of course. But you know, I did it, you know, after a month, I saw some progress with a consistent exercise, eating, eating, right. And then I kept doing it. And then after, you know, after two years, I lost by 80 pounds, I was in the best shape of my life, I was extremely happy. And I think my I think my my, the neurons in my brain have a remap to some way where now I was obsessed with with kind of health now. And that was back after after college. So you know, back in 2008 you know, I always knew you know what, after that I want to be something health. I didn't know what it was. My background actually is nothing in health. I have a computer science background. So you know, I look at kind of health as a problem statement. And I see how can machines and computing help to solve some of these problems. That's that's the way I approach things in algorithmic fashion. Maybe not so much as a, you know, a clinical physiologist or a doctor would right so it's really like, you know, enough data sets, drawing lines and try to build machines, machine learning concepts. That's, that's where I kind of enjoy. That's my background.
Mollie McGlocklin 09:44
Wow. Well, number one, thank you so much for sharing a bit of you know, that vulnerable fashion of like, Listen, it's not as if I've always been in perfect health and that's why I'm in this industry. I think for many of us that certainly that applies for me and a lot of people I've met in this in this realm. It has come from You know, often doing all the things not to do or how, how it took a lot of self discovery or journey. And that added that level of motivation to make some of the changes necessary. So I think there can be some real gold in coming from a place of things not working. So if we, if you're coming and listening to this, and you're asleep is not where you would like it to be. I know this might sound at the time when you're exhausted, like, Oh, come on, there's no silver lining here. But really, certainly, in my experience, or at least in my life, it ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to me, because I was so stubborn, I probably would have been doing all the things that I should not have been doing for my sleep. And it really finally woke me up, so to speak, no pun intended. And it sounds like you know, you now having gone through that and seeing both sides of it, it's fantastic. So really very cool. So if you can help kind of fill in the gaps for us. So how did you go from that place to then really being a leader in this wearables industry? What does that journey look like for you? And what can we learn about that? What was the gap in the in the market that you wanted to do and help with sleep optimization and health optimization,
11:08
right, and we all know that sleep is kind of the core pillars to health, I didn't understand that. Yes, I'm a night owl. by trade. Now, I'm forced not to have kids and all that. So I sleep at 10pm. Now, I would have never thought that former former lion would have slept at 3am. And waking up in the afternoon, it's horrible. I mean, absolutely horrible. That's why that's why I probably gained the weight in the first place, right, just having that horrible circadian rhythm. But you know, I know better. Now, fast forward to kind of 2015 there, you know, I basically stumbled upon kind of an area where I think had a really big interest is really the wearables space I knew was gonna boom, I knew that there was some, there's a lot of innovations to be had there. And I want to do it in a different way, nearly, I wanted to create kind of a clinical grade, wearable where everyone, you know, basically want to democratize clinical grade data for everybody, let's just say, and I didn't want to compromise on data, that's kind of the idea. When you look at kind of wearables in the market, back then. And even now, it's all about user experience, and maybe not the data they have is secondary to that. I was like, how do you build a architected, like wearable that doesn't compromise on data, and you get to use the kind of computation power of Amazon's you know, easy to, you know, as far as you know, the server farms. So that's kind of, you know, we architect from the day one, like, how do we have 1000 computers crunching data with, you know, coming, you know, data streaming from a device like ours. So that's, you know, where that kind of data that the mindset came from. And that's where we are now it's really like a cloud based wearable we, we don't compromise on the data. And you know, there's so much data embedded in what we call the PPG signal, you know, there's the sleep, sleep time is the best time to even measure it. So sleep and, and biometric data kind of go hand in hand here. But really, you know, that that was kind of the Genesis that thought the hypothesis that, you know, one having a cloud based wearable is the future for us. And, and kind of that idea of just having a PPG cloud based computing system is is also kind of something that we thought was extremely unique. And still now we're still defined there. We're finding newer biomarkers every, every year, you know, new things are being discovered on there, you know, blood pressure is just one of the few things that people know about, but there's more more to be discovered every year. And so basically, where we kind of think of those selves as a clinical grade wearable.
Mollie McGlocklin 13:26
Wow. Okay. So from that place, then what would you say the science behind the bio strap tools are kind of speak to that some of that science, and then how it is measuring some of these elements that you're to your point that we're even discovering more and more regularly as we're getting deeper? And how is it able to then analyze that all comprehensively?
13:47
Yeah, so really, you know, we try to be not even optimizing for one biomarker at all, we're not saying, you know, we're basically trying to get the best PPG signal, and it's always comes down to that, that thing, what is that waveform that'll kind of like, you know, ECG, you know, we have the battlelog, which is the ppg, the photoplethysmography signal, we optimize to get the best signal no matter what, because that's where, if, you know, basically, that's where we're mining information from very extracting, or taking this computation, power and district data taking out HRV from their heart rate, co2, blood, oxygen, respiratory rate, those are all coming from PPG. You know, so it's not really we're not saying trying to just get one marker, we're getting all of it, and storing all that. And it's not, you know, that's what we work with researchers today. And we're working with some that are inventing new biomarkers now, like children's hospital or they've inventing their own one for determining pain for sickle cell anemia. Use Case so so that Yeah, so Wow. It's it's fascinating. I think people are just kind of understanding the power pbg now at least the researchers are, what we're trying to bring that and democratize that like and having an easy way to access that kind of data which wouldn't traditionally cost 1000s of dollars to do on us that it So really, we're all about kind of getting the best data first. So that's why we call it you know, the data first company in that way.
Mollie McGlocklin 15:06
Wow, very cool. And I like that you're looking at how to collaborate so that we can, because so many of these, many companies are habit where it's hidden, and we're not able to access so much of that data. And then that can make for problems, especially when trying to validate working with other sleep researchers and sleep scientists. So and I think that actually could lead us into one thing that we're speaking of before, your bio strap labs that you mentioned, I was wondering if you could share a little bit about what that looks like and how, and why you're excited about that one?
15:38
Oh, absolutely. This this is a, you know, being a biohacker. You know, it's always n equals one experimentation, right? you kind of see the latest and greatest, you want to try that thing. Yeah. And then you're like, Oh, crap, that was a waste of money, or, hey, this is awesome. It's gonna, I'm going to incorporate that into my life, right? It's all about doing that concept, but doing it for a company now. And, you know, there's a lot of, you know, we know that the wellness industry is like a trillion dollar, multi trillion dollar industry, largely unregulated. Now, you can basically say, Hey, this is the magic thing, you do this thing? $300 you'll sleep the best, you overslept. Yes, you know, you can do that. And it is done. So are kind of, you know, we, we thought, you know, what, how do we have these companies that truly have awesome products? How do they kind of, you know, rise above everybody without having to spend $100,000 in a clinical research study, and, you know, having that whole thing that's very expensive, we wanted to kind of have an easy way to kind of do our own product validation for any company. So really, what that looks like is, you know, we define protocols, we help with compliance. And then at the end of it, we come up with a report saying, Hey, this is the results of this. And, and we help, you know, identify people, we even take, you know, we have a large bio stripe user base, we recruit people that want to share their data, and they get free products, right, and hey, here's try, you know, we did something with Paragon, those are our first pilot of this program, we had 60 people testing that other device and a $500 device for 60 people, that's not too bad, you know, so they get to use it for six weeks, after six weeks, the, we found out that this thing actually helps sleep in a big way. And heart rate variability, you know, now, you know, they're using the advertising and, and kind of, you know, now they learned they didn't even I don't think they even hypothesize that it would help this help sleep. But, but now, they have that kind of piece of evidence now. But we want to basically democratize that we want anyone to do a quick validation to six weeks, all you need, we help you through the entire process, we can, you know, do the IRB approval if you need it, as well. So we try to try to make that whole complicated thing, and kind of make it simple for any company in the wellness industry.
17:43
Wow, that's
Mollie McGlocklin 17:43
a very cool and very exciting about all the implications. Because as we know, there's so many people that are getting into the conversation around wearables, and then sleep specific wearables, but then making use of all that data, and then applying it kind of out of the box ways like this can just be really eye opening for so many people. So I love what you're doing there. Have there been any I know, this is a big question. So you know, let me know if it's just too big. But Have there been particular trends or eye opening insights that you guys have been able to make so far out of the sleep data that's coming from so many people certain things that you were surprised by the data, you know, of course, an obvious being as it relates to possible changes around COVID. But any, any particular aha moments that you've seen from all these users that you have?
18:32
I would say, I don't have such a thing at this moment. I think but but what it is, is, I think, the day that we stopped to go through that data, to be completely honest. And one thing that we have one thing that we that I'd like to do, and I know that this is happening, and we just have to look at the data to prove it, is just comparing 2019 to 2020. And seeing sleep trends, I hypothesize that people are probably even worse at sleeping now. And you know, I also hypothesize that a lot of you know, a lot of people are having a mental problems just being at home. You know, it's it's a, it's a difficult thing for people a huge shift, and activity levels drop, you know, all these kind of things. And it's in the data, you know, it is something that we could explore, just to produce a report for because I even I'm interested in that and haven't had a time being a small company. I'm sure it
Mollie McGlocklin 19:24
absolutely will To be continued on that, then that sounds awesome. And then kind of backing up a little bit. So I was wonder if you could walk us through some of the features of bio strap that have it stand out from the competition of all these different sleep devices. I know you mentioned blood oxygen level, and which, you know, certainly not all of those trackers have just kind of parse out some of the ways that it's kind of unique.
19:47
Yeah, that's awesome. I in fact, I think is relevant. I mean, we were recently launching through a partnership with the iron cowboy, a heart health module and what that is essentially is much more insight into PPG data. So, you know, you mentioned the ones that are like the most basic, the basic biometrics, you know, and then there's something called the arterial kind of biometrics that we're looking at. So that what that is looking at second wave forms, if you remember from calculus, you know, the second derivative. And what that is, is, we're looking at our two measurements. So the archer lasticity, peripheral loss, the city, arterial aging, so we can look at things that are kind of, you know, more in line with, with how rigid or elastic your arteries are. And that's really keys into lifestyle, you know, of course, sleep helps with that, you know, it's really like an aging away to kind of meet age or arteries, that is a moving thing, it happens, you know, in bug move everyday, not drastically, but just like HRV, you know, some days you have worse than others. But that's, that's an innovative one that we've launched when I had COVID. And I clearly saw huge changes in those metrics as well. So it's pretty, pretty interesting to see in a real life basis, actually, because because we were we basically created this, you know, in our, in the company, you know, with the research team, and, you know, kind of seeing it with real people and seeing how it fluctuates with just behaviors. And even with a virus like that. It's very interesting.
Mollie McGlocklin 21:15
Yeah, let's even focus on that for a minute. Because I think we can learn so much from other people's stories. And, and I know you recently had COVID, and with all this wealth of information that you had now in your back pocket around how your health and sleep normally functions, I wonder if you could share with us your experience with COVID how having the wearable information was helpful or eye opening? And, you know, any kind of lessons that we can learn from that?
21:44
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was a great little science experiment, let's call it you know, I mean, it was just, it was absolutely horrible. But, you know, I knew my body could fight it off. So, you know, it was it was a two week ordeal. And that hadn't been mid January or so I think, yeah, early to mid January, we actually have a module that that basically kind of scores your risk for respiratory illness, aka to look like COVID. So you know, all that was read sound like, Oh, that's not good. And I feel like, right, so, day one, I'm like, I need to probably quarantine myself. And then I took a tack test the next day. And, and lo and behold, I'm like, oh, okay, well, I got a, you know, I have COVID now, so let's see, you know, how to deal with this. And, and, you know, put on my, you know, kind of biohacking hat and kind of hack this thing. Right. So, you know, supplementation like crazy, right, you got the whole, you know, the, you know, I just looked up the protocols that most people follow. Good thing, my vitamin D levels were pretty good. So I think that was that's a key thing, actually, you know, so sort of supplemented really well. And sleep. I mean, it's just the irony of this thing. It's so incredibly hard to sleep when you have COVID. But that's the thing that you need. Yeah, so I was laying in bed for 14 hours. I'm sitting in bed for 14 hours, and maybe five of them were actually the worst efficiency you'll ever get. But it's just a cruel, cruel irony of it, you know, I want to sleep so badly. And I'm moving. I mean, even if you'd look at like the accurate graph, you get a graph on my sleep. I'm like, moving like constantly and consistently getting just horrible, horrible sleep for at least a week. And then after I started being sleep, well, then I started recovering really quickly. It was just a cruel irony. You're trying to sleep, but you can't. And I'm giving myself time to sleep. You know, it was basically when I was I couldn't even work and I was just in such bad shape. So I was like, asleep, and hope it goes away. Well, I'm
Mollie McGlocklin 23:37
glad you of course you prioritize sleep. That makes a ton of sense. So but I hear you and I've heard that from many, many people, it's just so frustrating, when you know, that's exactly what you need. And that actually will happen for so many people just in general with sleep disturbances, you know, they're going through periods of insomnia or what have you. And they know that they're stressed to the max. And actually what they're what could really help support that is added sleep. And yet that's exactly the time when they're not seeming to be able to come upon it easily. So I definitely hear that frustration. And it sounds like you've been able to provide some insights for the rest of us of some of you know what can make a difference, even supplementation, obviously, rest in restoration, where possible, I hadn't so so you know, further, just even going into this topic of what we can learn as it relates to these wearables and kind of personal development or awareness through these. I know you also mentioned the iron cowboy, and I was wondering if you could just share a bit more about the iron cowboy and bio strap and what we can learn about that?
24:43
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that that is something that we just I think we just pushed earlier this week, we're announcing that you know, the iron cowboy. You know, who's His name's James Lawrence. Yes, in 2015. I believe he did a what's called the 50 consecutive Ironman triathlon. blondes in 50 states in 50 days consecutively, and that itself is like, like, I don't even know if I can complete half of one. But it's got to be kind of like, like consecutively that's swimming, biking, running every single day for 50 days. Now, you know, here he is in 2021. Now he wants to double that. So he's doing 100 now. So he's going to be on 100 100 Ironman triathlons in 100 days consecutively. So he's chosen bio strap as the official health monitoring platform for him, because, quite frankly, this is not healthy. or not, this is not healthy. So what we've done is assemble the team that's remotely monitoring him, you know, well, we've been collecting his baseline, since I think January just to kind of get some baseline data know where he's at his body's at before he kind of just like, throws a whole bunch of stress on his body consecutively for 400 days. So, you know, we have our Chief Science Officer, Chief Medical Officer, we have nutritionists, we have all these cardiologist, physical physiologist, and even like a team from UCLA monitoring him. So it's pretty, pretty awesome. You know, he's basically has a team of all these, you know, health coaches and doctors that are watching him, and he's going about doing his thing. And so you know, we're part of that really, really excited about it.
Mollie McGlocklin 26:18
That is amazing. And yeah, it makes me just wonder, especially now that he's going to be doubling this, what in the world has HRV will look like, among other things. So
26:28
the important thing, the point, the thing about that is that recovery is kind of where we kind of come into, so we're going to be helping him with that recovery state. Because you can imagine, you know, I think, I don't know, eight hours a day of how long it's spending doing this entire craziness, if not longer. So really, that's where we come in, we help him with the protocols, making sure he's recovering well checking his HRV heart resting heart rate, arterial properties, heart health, it's we're looking at all of that remotely, so that we can guide him like you know what you need to do this. Now the other, obviously, we can't tell not to do the Iron Man, let's just support him in any way we can, from what I what I know, or learned he's going to be sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber every night, just to recover. Yeah, so I think, yeah, so he's trying to like, you know, really force force that and, and, you know, over the course of even three weeks of working with our team, we've already helped his baseline by at least 23% or so. So you know, he's already seeing kind of benefits earlier on. Now, as he goes through this kind of challenge. Now, we're gonna keep on kind of putting in more and more, you know, nutrition is huge for him to I mean, this is very important that your body is fueled correctly. So the whole whole ordeal is we're all we're coming with a whole team helping him with this.
Mollie McGlocklin 27:39
Wow. Okay. And so out of all the wearables on the market, was there kind of a background reason as to why he ultimately went with you guys, and why you guys decided to partner? Well, I
27:50
think, given you know, all our clinical data and kind of our backing and just having the team that we have, I think he was just really excited to to work with us. And, and we're really hands on in a project like this. So I think, yeah, I'm having dinner with him tonight. Oh, my God. Yeah.
Mollie McGlocklin 28:06
Very cool. Are you gonna be monitoring what he eats in his show? Oh, well, we've stats riding on, you know, alcohol for you. Wow, very cool. And I love that that's especially hands on and creating a relationship like that, yes, goes a long way. and can't wait to hear more. So you guys will be doing kind of a whole rundown and right up on what that all looks like, I'm assuming throughout the process. And at the end, I can't wait to hear some of the things that he implemented, you know, levels to that, you know, degree because, you know, we'll be working with certain clients that even just a couple extra, whatever, CrossFit sessions or something are stressing their body. So I can't even imagine what that could look like, in ways that you'll help support that. So very cool. And then so in alignment with all that, are there particular things that you guys are doing not to jump jump around on so many topics, but back to the COVID concept that you guys are doing to help support people that are concerned about getting COVID? Or ways to recover? Do you have you been able to find any sort of, to create research around why this would make all the sense in the world to be wearing particular wearables and how this can help support you in the spotting of kind of going off of your normal baseline and preemptively making a difference there?
29:28
Yeah, I mean, so we do have a kind of module that we've not launched to any not consumers, it's more like an enterprise thing, but it is a, like a respiratory risk scoring mechanism that we've constantly are iterating on as we get more data. So that essentially is it like it says, it's a scoring mechanism to kind of bucket you into the green, yellow or red zones to know, you know, in terms of how you know, risk. And we've looked at about six or seven different inputs there and compared to baseline baseline, so important because really, every When it's so unique and knowing, you know, you want to know perturbation against a plan and how, you know, standard deviations above or below, depending on the metric, you know, so So really, we have different thresholds. And we did a COVID study last year, with 1000s of people that opted in to share their data. And you know, it's built off of that data set as well. And then we keep on having new instances. So really, we wanted to provide a tool that helps people understand, hey, this looks like COVID and being able to isolate yourself quickly. And then that way, you don't spread it, right. So the whole point is kind of knowing as soon as possible, so you can quarantine that. And that, that makes the biggest difference. And, and as soon as I came read, I was like, Alright, I'm already kind of, you know, always at home, and, and, you know, kind of isolate myself anyway. Yeah, I'm always working anyway. So. Yeah, exactly. That's what we do. And, you know, so, yeah, two weeks of this and test again, at the end of two weeks. And, you know, it's just a tool to do this be smart. You know, I mean, at the end of the day, though, you know, you don't need, you know, a tool that you kind of have common sense, and I ended the, this is not replacing common sense. I know, I had a fever, I felt that, you know, it doesn't have to be COVID it just you don't you still go out. But the tool is kind of there to, like, support your hypothesis, like, okay, cool, this looks, looks like it's pretty bad. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna stay put, you know, so So really, you know, it's just a tool to augment and not replace, you know, or, you know, the common sense.
Mollie McGlocklin 31:25
wallet On that note, great point, because I've had a lot of some pushback for people around bringing wearables into the sleep conversation, they'll say, Okay, great, well, I'm going to get all this information, but I'm not going to know what to do with it. And it's going to be another wasted gadget and money, you know, just throwing down the window or out the window or whatever. And so my question for that is, have you guys been playing with different ways to make recommendations to make sense to help people make sense out of the data that is coming their way, because as you said, there's, there's acronyms, there's tons of information, it's in the cloud, it's all over. And so for the average person, and for, you know, I've got some clients that are 72 years old, and I'm putting wearables on them. So are they going to be able to make sense of all that information in a user friendly way?
32:08
So yes, I think in most cases, yes. But what we have learned is that having somebody actually coaching them is the most knowledge is only how you can only take you so far right, you can only lead a horse to the water. And the day the horse has to drink. So not to call all of our users horses, but I'm just saying that we you essentially have to kind of, if you see something wrong, you have to try to find ways to fix it. And sometimes you don't know, right? So you know, we try to do the best, what we recommend is just having a good consistent circadian rhythm, right. So you know that we try to recommend best practices to the end user, just to kind of like just do the basic minimum bare minimum that'll help you you know, sleep at this time, wake up at that time, based on kind of trailing data, it looks like you should sleep at this time and plan to wake up that time. And and we try to guide them in that way. But you know, health coaches, you know, that that's, that's also important role here, because accountability is important as well, for someone maybe in a specific example, in the 70s, you know, or getting a 70 year old, that you're probably going to have somebody monitoring them on telemedicine, I know rpm and remote population monitoring comes in. The accountability is huge, right? So just having the tool itself sometimes isn't enough, and depends on the individual. And they're kind of neat. biohackers, you give it to them, they're gonna do something with that data. Right. But not everyone's like that.
Mollie McGlocklin 33:24
Got it. Okay. And, to your point, I mean, as soon as you've said, You're quite the biohacker, you've been in this conversation for quite some time. And I'm wondering, and as an entrepreneur, I'd imagine quite the visionary, where do you see sleep tracking going in the future the next year? And then certainly even beyond? What do you envision as possible with this?
33:46
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we're gonna get better at sleep tracking, you know, I think the gold standard is still going into a lab getting hooked up with ecgs, ECG, EMG, is all that, and that is the gold standard, you know, and still will be, I think, you know, in the next five to 10 years, I don't know that everyone will go to a lab anymore, it'll all just be done at home. And that's it, you know, end of the day, and that's because it's going to be accurate enough, I would say, you know, over time, people are getting better at at, you know, still relatively new, you know, as a kind of research topic, we're learning things all the time. And, you know, as we learn more people are going to implement those things into the recommendation engines, and, and measurements of these wearables and wearables are only going to get more popular, they're going to be more innovative in form factor, that kind of thing. You're seeing a bunch of stuff that actually stimulate your brain to help you get in deep sleep more with your music or some sort of other kind of modalities. Those are the kind of things you're gonna see PC, you know, strictly just reading and then there's also like, maybe writing which writing is more like, like, helping them stay in deep sleep, you know, like thinking like a, like a computer scientist here. But yeah, like reading data and also like helping them sleep more, you know, so you see kind of the feedback loop. You see a bunch of those nowadays, you know, The Dream band and a bunch of other technologies coming out. So, you know, I had to think that, you know, kind of interesting, the whole digital therapeutics is gonna blow up even more for the sleep, people realize the problem. they now know that, you know, lack of deep sleep causes, you know, what is Alzheimer's, more likely to get Alzheimer's? And it's, you know, so we all know sleep is so, so important. But not everyone can get good, good sleep. And that's why sleep is a skill.
Mollie McGlocklin 35:27
Absolutely. So cool. So I love your kind of what you're sharing that vision because I think there is. So it's so exciting. And particularly for companies like you that are making it easier for you know, people who have devoted decades of research and time in those labs, to be able to then sift through that data without it being kind of locked to them is a big deal. So that's an exciting, you know, role that you have as an opportunity to play. So very cool. And then from that place, one thing that we started to add in because people would say, Okay, so we're talking, we're listening to these people that are really living and breathing, sleep and optimization, and in this world all the time seeing all this data. So people want to know, what are you doing as it relates to your sleep? So a couple questions there that I'd love to just run down with you. So you know, I'm sure this evolves all the time. And it looks all very different points. But as of right now, current nighttime routine, what does that look like? For you?
36:27
Sure.
36:28
I'll just put myself on the spot. I'm not doing a great job.
Mollie McGlocklin 36:33
Sure,
36:34
but I know what's right. And can I opt in sometimes at nighttime, is when I get time with my wife, right? So you know, what we do things that maybe we'll watch, watch the show, right now, we're watching the show that we're watching and try to finish it so I can get back to getting good sleep. And normally, I would not, I don't Netflix and chill. But right now I am.
Mollie McGlocklin 36:55
The CEO of Netflix had famously said something to the effect. Oh,
36:58
yes. The enemy
37:02
competitor?
37:03
Yeah, I was livid. That's something I don't even I don't do TV. But you know, it's not the bonding times. But But temporarily. I've been I've been doing that. It's it's definitely if I weren't wasn't doing that, essentially, you know, I would definitely, you know, stretch, try to stay away from screens, you know, before bedtime. But I still try to even even with that, try to get to bed before 10 or before 11. You know, sure when it's midnight, midnight, I know that you know, it's not going to be good night. Yes. And I do have two kids and another on the way. So that's also you know, and they're all we're all in the same bed. So sometimes, you know, I do get some disturbances along the way. But you know, I've learned to kind of manage that. But to me, the thing I can recommend anybody just just sleep at a consistent time and wake up at a consistent time. You don't need any fancy $1,000. gadget. You know, honestly, this
Mollie McGlocklin 37:51
really? Yeah, absolutely. Well, congratulations on the new adult, family exciting. And, and it sounds like you've even touched on the next question, which was what was the single biggest change you made positively influencing your sleep? Would you say it is that consistency of the bedtime wake time?
38:09
Absolutely. And, and I think for most part, people that have issues, you know, just cleaning that up, you'll see a lot of other parts of your life flourish. It's interesting, you're what you do in nighttime influence that you have in daytime, and people may or may not make that connection sometimes, yeah, but sleep down affects you for days after. And if you don't kind of kind of get through that then then really, you know, if you're high performer, and we're being a startup founder, you have your high performer by default, where the athletes have come, you know, of our world, right? So we got to be performing, you know, there's no off day so I got a quick one sleep is the only way I can get you know, fully recovered and before Monday, every day.
Mollie McGlocklin 38:48
That is awesome. I love that. And so to that end, and one of the next questions is what apps or gadgets do you use to improve your sleep or other aspects of your life? So I'm sure we know the the top one and so if you can just kind of parse out that yeah.
39:05
Yeah, sure. Yeah. glued to my arm. Take it off. Obviously, for obvious reasons. I don't really use gadgets if you consider the air conditioning a gadget like cool 717 68 It's too cold for my wife. So you know, I have to compromise this the 70s kind of where we set it up. And you know, sorry for East Coast listeners. You know, I still have AC on that night here now. Yes, I'm
Mollie McGlocklin 39:28
in Vegas. So I totally get it. Yes. Summer I totally hear that.
39:33
Yep. So I saw the AC on and honestly the temperature is a big one. For me. It's second to circadian rhythm. Those are the big ones. That is the only thing that really use I pitch black and honestly like, if you have any any shape like lights that are just not allowed in our in our bed, bedroom. Those are really those those three things are so huge, and I would recommend that for anybody.
Mollie McGlocklin 39:54
That is awesome. And how about just as a quick tangent for HRV we just get so many people want To know all the things around improving RV, so curious for you anything in addition, that's made some of the biggest difference in your HRV numbers? Typically, yeah, if you could share that.
40:11
It's so dependent on the individual I already have naturally high HRV it's definitely fitness fitness is about what kind of fuels that Yeah, you know, do deep breathing, that for sure helps. Medic breathing helps helps, you know, so it's all, you know, everyone has a different starting point. It doesn't mean just because it's low, quote, unquote, doesn't mean you're, it's the death sentence, you know, you can improve it with time with fitness. And, you know, for me, I found this out, I get a couple months ago, I didn't like an ad drip, and that helps my HRV by you know, 40% for good, good couple, like a whole week, and actually, my baseline improved. So that was interesting. I didn't expect much from that. But that was fun to see
Mollie McGlocklin 40:48
my 40% look bad. Yeah, it's gonna be a lot of people whose sales reps will go nuts. Hey, there's so many people that are just desperate to move this HRV
41:00
Well, yeah, who doesn't want to be more resilient in their life? Right. I mean, that's no, the end of the day, what you're getting and, and your body's designed to, you know, have stressors, nothing wrong with that stress is good. You stress, distress, all stress that you need. And your body is a machine that's meant to that kind of fight them and was really HRV is just a tool to kind of know, you know, it's like a like a gauge, you know, where am I on on the day, you know, and just plan for the for the day based on that. And hopefully, you can get better recovery the next day?
Mollie McGlocklin 41:25
Absolutely, yes. And again, I can't wait to see for the iron cowboy what his HRV levels look like with all that
41:31
will be you can see it you know, I think on our website, you know, lastra.com slash our cowboy. We'll be posting updates on weekly, I think we're probably show even his like heart rate variability, which you know, I don't know how good it's gonna be. Oh, yeah, we'll be we'll be splitted posting some information on that. That'd be fun. Yeah, on a regular basis. I don't know what the cadence I think weekly, because daily would be a lot. But I don't know, you can check out that website when it's when it's up and he starts March 1 would be really cool to see that. Oh, my God, I'm personally excited. Do you
Mollie McGlocklin 42:01
as you said, you have a newsletter? Will that be in then? Or no? How will you be?
42:06
I don't know.
42:07
Yeah, so you can you can just
Mollie McGlocklin 42:09
the website is probably the site is probably the best right
42:11
now. Yeah.
42:14
But follow us on social media, on all the things LinkedIn, Instagram are kind of the big ones for us. So just follow us there. You'll get you'll you'll you'll be fed all this information.
Mollie McGlocklin 42:25
I can't wait to see that. Okay. Very cool. And then. So I like to hear that as far as the apps and gadgets question, despite, you know, being in the conversation, you're not one of these people that's littered and covered in gadgets that I
42:39
want to keep it simple live, because I don't want to depend on a single gadget. Yeah, altering my sleep in any fashion, even supplements. I don't do melatonin. I don't do much. I might do magnesium, honestly, that's fine. That's what I don't want anything that Yeah, I don't do anything. That's because quite frankly, our body's meant to have the sleep it needs. And I don't want to alter that unless I need it. Like, again, jet lag or, or just like I'm feeling like garbage. And I took melatonin when I had COVID and other normal circumstances, I don't want to depend on anything. And sometimes as biohackers we're kind of like, kind of itching to try the next latest thing. Your body is designed to recover and sleep, you know, it needs to sleep that it needs. So I kind of stay away from things actually,
Mollie McGlocklin 43:20
that is really cool. It's sage advice, I think. And on that note, then what is so this is the last question is What was your personal kind of sleep aha moment? Or what has been the biggest change to your sleep game? I know you mentioned the consistency, have there been things that have come along the pike from changing from, you know, Night Owl and with your weight loss? And all of these different things? What have you seen kind of making the parados principle shift in your sleep?
43:46
Sure. I mean, I think, you know, I used to snore a lot, I think back when I was you know, overweight, sure losing weight actually makes you sleep better, like actually, right and, and of course, you can use a little gadgets to help open up your airways. But the fact is, you know, if you aren't breathing, right, you're sleeping poorly. And that's the end of it. Because you're waking up your micro like little arousals throughout your sleep that's not causing you to get deep sleep or enough of it. Even though you know a really simple trick is just do like a nasal cleaning right before you sleep like a neti pot or something. I've heard that helps some people that that might already have natural congestion in the nose, before you'll get a good sleep the next day, you know and that, you know this know that that oxygen, they're getting good, like breathing, and nasal breathing. Of course, you can mount cake or whatever you need to do. Make sure it's through the nose. That's gonna be extremely impactful and get to get good sleep. But if you if you can't breathe at night that needs to be addressed first right before doing any like you know, dark room and all that just try to breathe through your nose. That's that's a big one.
Mollie McGlocklin 44:44
That's a big one as well. So much great information. And I know we've kind of already touched on this but to formally share what are all the best ways for people to follow you guys learn more about what you've got going on and then certainly you know all these cool The labs, the iron, cowboy COVID, all of this stuff,
45:04
best way bio strap calm. You can, you can go there. And of course social media we post constantly and always love to hear from anybody, you know, through through DMS and whatnot. So Instagram at bio strap LinkedIn, just look for us bio strap as well.
Mollie McGlocklin 45:20
Well, this has been such a pleasure, it's so much fun with you guys and just, you know, hearing more about what you're what you're creating, and I can see the passion just you know, jumping from you based around, you know, you're living this and you're really getting to experience a difference in particularly just even recently with COVID just the the aid that's something like this, of having your own personal baseline and seeing when you're deviating and how to help support yourself, you know, coming back out back out of that, for all y'all listening, I guess people probably run ticket, the NA de drips, and all all the things but I can really get how much you're in the game on this and then looking to further expand. So it's really exciting. So thank you so much for taking the time to share this information.
46:01
Thank you so much for having me, Molly. It was a real pleasure.
Mollie McGlocklin 46:04
So awesome. Thank you. You've been listening to the sleep is a skill podcast, the number one podcast for people who want to take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday I send out something that I call Molly's Monday obsessions containing everything that I'm obsessing over in the world of sleep, head on over to sleep as is gil.com to sign up