171. Dr. Kristen Holmes: The Sleep Debt Problem Affecting Your Brain, Mood, and Relationships

[gentle music] Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span.

Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert.

Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span.

We are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality.

Join me as I interview world-renowned experts offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

So you're tracking your workouts, you're checking your recovery score on your WHOOP band, but those numbers aren't talking to each other, and you're working with an incomplete picture probably.

The problem here is that recovery is not just a single metric.

It's the product of how much strain you put on your body, when you slept relative to your internal clock, and how consistently you're giving your nervous system space to adapt.

Get any one of those wrong, and the others stop working the way you expect.

Dr. Kristen Holmes is a psychophysiologist and global head of human performance at WHOOP, where she leads research on sleep, circadian biology, and recovery across professional sports teams, military units, and elite performers.

She holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Queensland and has spent over a decade coaching at Princeton University, where she built one of the most successful programs in Ivy League history.

She's truly a unique individual, and I'm so excited to have her on this podcast.

In this conversation, we're gonna get into what recovery actually measures, what circadian timing is the most underused lever most people have and don't use, and how to translate your body's signals into better decisions.

So if you've ever looked at your recovery score and wondered why the number doesn't match how you feel, or pushed through anyway and paid for it later, this conversation with Kristen will change how you read your own body and potentially even change your life.

She's the author of a book that is now on presale.

It's called Align, and it's gonna be a game-changer.

It comes out on August 25th, so you have to order now.

Kristen, thank you so much for joining me on this podcast.