Rachele Pojednic - She Leads Science

In this episode of She Leads Science, Dr. Rachele Pojednic joins Dr. Liz Joy for a compelling conversation on the evolving role of scientists across academia, industry, and public communication. Trained as an exercise physiologist, Dr. Pojednic grounds her work in the powerful idea that exercise—particularly strength training—is one of the most important levers we have for longevity, shaping muscle health, metabolism, and aging. A central theme is the importance of clear, credible scientific communication, using platforms like podcasts and social media to translate evidence without losing rigor. She also highlights her work at Restore Hyper Wellness, reflecting growing demand for accessible, science-informed health strategies. The discussion emphasizes that careers in industry are not only viable but essential for scientists seeking real-world impact. Ultimately, the episode challenges traditional career paths and underscores the importance of bridging science, communication, and innovation to improve health at scale.

Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome back to She Leads Science. I'm your host, Dr. Liz Joy. Today I am thrilled to be joined by Dr. Rachel Pajetnik, someone who is not only shaping the science of muscle health, nutrition, and aging, but also redefining what it means to bridge academia, industry, and real-world wellness. Rachel holds faculty appointments at Stanford and has worked across multiple institutions. But what makes her path especially unique is how seamlessly she moves between traditional academic research and industry leadership. She currently serves as Chief Science Officer at Restore Hyper Wellness, where she's helping to translate emerging science into scalable consumer-facing health strategies. Her work focuses on muscle physiology, nutrition and supplementation, aging and performance. But she's also been an important voice in conversations around recovery, longevity, and what we sometimes call wellness or alternative interventions, and how do we study them rigorously? And recently, two very exciting updates. Rachel was elected to the Board of Trustees at the American College of Sports Medicine, and she has been invited to deliver a president's lecture at the upcoming ACSM annual meeting in Salt Lake City titled Bridging the Gap or Falling Behind: How academia industry partnerships are no longer optional for exercise science. Rachel, welcome to She Leads Science. We are so glad you're here.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

You know that you have been a mentor, a friend, and a colleague for so many years. And I was just thrilled to get the call to come talk on your new podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Awesome. Well, it's gonna be so much fun. And we have a lot to cover. So let's jump in. As you know, I've got about like an hour worth of questions, but only 30 minutes worth of time. So one of my favorite questions to start with is for so especially for someone like you who wears so many hats. So when somebody asks you at a dinner party, what do you do? What's your answer today?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Well, it's funny, I've been able to start making the joke because longevity has become a word that everybody uses in the wellness space, in you know, everyday life, as I always get to make the joke. I'm a scientist, I'm a researcher, and I've been studying longevity way before it was cool. And I talked to them a little bit about how, you know, we've been looking at muscle and supplementation for healthy aging. I started my career looking at sarcopenia and these diseases. And until very recently, people were kind of like, yeah, that's cool. You studied old people. And now that the conversation is around healthy aging and longevity everywhere you look, people are very excited to have a conversation with me at the dinner table.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Yeah, especially since the New York Times says the glute, you know, is the longevity muscle of the human body.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

But only if you look a little bit further and make sure that you don't have deadbutt syndrome, which was the study that or the research that was just before that that they were writing out. So yes, it's always twisting and turning in my world.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Okay, so tell us a little bit more about restore hyperwellness. Um, you know, what are the services that people are coming in for? And, you know, I'm curious about whether or not that surprised you at all.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Yeah, so I'll take a little step back and just give a little backdrop into how I kind of landed in this space. So I'm the chief science officer. I run all of our clinical trials and our research and development division. We call it Restore Labs. And I was a very classically trained scientist. So I was an East Coast, you know, Ivy League postdoc kind of girl. Um, it was one of those places where the conversation was always about if you leave academia, you can't ever come back. And so post-COVID, I was asked to come and spin up this industry lab, mostly because I had been studying things that were fairly challenging to study. So I started my career in vitamin D supplementation and then I was working on CBD, and that triggered a lot of really interesting regulatory questions as I was doing my research. And so this opportunity came up to pivot into industry to look at these therapies that this company called Restore were delivering to people. So some sort of generic wellness things, compression, cryotherapy or cold therapies, sauna therapies, red lights, which I was kind of like, yeah, I don't know, is there data around there? Um, but the one that was kind of controversial and still is is delivering IV micronutrients to people. And at first I said, hell no, like I'm not doing this. That's you know, uh one step too far. And then funny enough, I was actually listening to a podcast and the host said something to the effect of if the wellness industry wants people to actually believe what they they do works, they need to start funding the research. And I had just received a contract to spin up this lab with a really engaged C-suite that was willing to let me do really good research without rubber stamping all of their products. They were willing to go where the research led them. And I said, universe universe? Are you speaking to me? Um, and so I said yes. And so what I'm finding to answer your question is that people are coming to these studios for way more than just the kind of wearied well therapies that I think most people believe they're coming to these longevity clinics or these wellness studios for. I will tell you, probably about a third of our clients are that person, fairly affluent. They're looking for the gadgets that can help their day-to-day because they've got the foundations kind of set into place. They're good exercisers, they're they eat well, they're just looking for that icing on the cake. But I would say probably two-thirds of them are somewhat, I would call disaffected patients. So these are people that have chronic pain, they have a medical condition that they can't get good answers for, something perhaps like rheumatoid arthritis, PCOS, migraines, long COVID. And so they're coming to seek these therapies because they're just not A, getting the answers, but B, getting better where they're seeking care. And so, in order to address those populations, we are actually partnered with large research institutions. We have two grants with Harvard looking at mental health, looking at long COVID, because we started to recognize that people were really coming into these studios to address real issues, not just the icing on the cake stuff that everybody thinks these studios are catering to.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Wow, you know, it it makes me think that um kind of traditional allopathic medicine, you know, which has really been the foundation of healthcare in the United States, um, you know, isn't enough. And we know that's true when you consider that, you know, more than, you know, I think it's 70% of US adults are taking some form of dietary supplement, you know, not prescribed, and for that matter, not even shared with their physician. So people are definitely seeking, you know, other ways to make them feel better, to manage chronic conditions, and to, you know, prevent things from occurring, prevent conditions from occurring.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

I think that's right. And I that's that's the sort of frustration that we feel from people, from our clients that are coming in. And I will say, you know, in our studios at least, we're really honest with people. That was one of the things that I really made sure when I came on board was that we're not gonna bring you into our studios and start selling you a whole bunch of things that aren't gonna work or that you don't need. We're gonna talk to you about this is what could be helpful, this is what might happen in a very traditional healthcare kind of sense. But what we're finding is that people are seeing relief. So when we look at our long COVID clients, what we actually are seeing is, and we just did a study on this, we're writing it up right now, is that they first of all were really frustrated with the healthcare that they were getting because they were not getting better. And I don't put that on the healthcare industry and physicians and doctors, they don't know what to do with this long COVID diagnosis either. It's brand new to everything that we're up to. But in the therapies that they're participating in, the IVs, the hyperbaric oxygen, the red light therapies, they are seeing relief and they keep coming back because at even if at the end of the day it's placebo, it's agency over their own health and health care. And I think that's really powerful for people. And I think that's why we see people taking all these supplements and doing all these therapies. Because I mean, the reality is you're probably seeing your doctor once, maybe twice a year, fingers crossed, right? If you're healthy. And it's just not enough time to get good information. And so people are looking for that continuous touch. They're looking for something that they can do for a long period of time, and they're looking for something that they can do in their day-to-day to help with their long-term health.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Yeah, I think the point you make about agency is really important, and it's something that um is oftentimes missing in healthcare, even when we try to engage in things like shared decision making. You know, it's still the physician is the expert, right? But the patient is the expert in themselves. I say that all the time. That we don't take that into account well enough in those exchanges that happen in the 18 minutes of FaceTime that most clinicians have with their patient.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

It's true. And and empathy for the physicians, they don't have the time to get into those kinds of questions or conversations with their patients either. And I know plenty, and I know that you know even more physicians, that that's very frustrating too. That's not why they got into medicine to be, you know, tapping away the computer and answering questions that are fed to them through an EHR. They want to practice medicine. And so I think everybody's really frustrated with the entire system.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yeah, I agree. Well, speaking of why people kind of go into their careers, um I'm curious about what first drew you into exercise science and nutrition science.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, so I started way back in the day as an exercise physiology student. And I think probably like many of us, it was just because I was an athlete, I liked to exercise, it seemed really interesting. And it was also a path to medical school, which at the time I thought was where I was going to land. Um, I did eventually become a doctor, but not that kind. And it was just something that was super interesting to me. It was a lived experience kind of academic path that I could could go on. And, you know, it was just, it was really exciting. You got to play in the lab and you got to, you know, there's a treadmill in the lab. That was really cool. And so that's why I started. And then it just kind of kept evolving. So when I was in my early career, I was looking at athletes and and human performance. And then as I started to go through my training, started to shift into aging. And I was when I was at Tufts and then at Harvard, we were looking at people that were 80, 90, 100 years old. And Liz, I'm gonna shock you not at all. Um, as it turns out, exercise is really important across the gosh, you would know. And so it just kind of started to create this beautiful arc of both research and curiosity is if we can understand what helps people perform in their younger years, can we also use those same tools to keep them healthy as they age? And it turns out the answer is yes. And so that has always been super exciting for me is to think about how we can pull this big lever of exercise and then nutrition on top of it in order to keep people healthy, study why things break along that arc of aging, and then go in and do these interventions to make sure that people can get back on track. And so I will I will just say throughout my years of researching both exercise and nutrition, one of the things that's always been super interesting to me, and I'm sure that your podcast audience will be really excited to hear, is that we kind of find that exercise is the biggest lever that we have to pull. I've done a bunch of studies where we've done both an exercise and a nutrition arm and combined them, did this big meta analysis a couple of years ago, looking at nutrition for older women, and we couldn't find any nutrition strategies that were stronger than exercise. And in fact, when exercise was included, it basically obliterated nutrition every single time. So that's been also kind of an exciting affirmation in my career is that thank goodness I picked the right medium of exercise because it's so potent and powerful throughout the lifespan.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yes, indeed. Well, as you know, I'm fond of saying exercise is medicine. Indeed. So we talk a lot about mentoring on this podcast. Um, but I'm curious before we talk about you as a mentor, who were the early mentors that shaped how you think and not just about science, but about impact, because you are an impactful gal.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Well, I appreciate that very much. And I have to say, one of the most impactful mentors that I have ever had was Dr. Eddie Phillips. You know Dr. Phillips well. Of course. He is the director of the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Harvard. And I've had many mentors that were incredible in my career. But when I think about the question that you just asked, which is impact, that was something that he taught me that I thought was so critically important, especially at the time that I met him, was you can be in the lab, you can collect all of this data, you can learn how these therapies, how these supplements, how these exercises work for people. But if you don't take it out into the world and communicate this science and bring it to the people that need to learn and know the most about it, then what good are you doing writing these papers so that they get shelved somewhere and only other researchers use them? And so the first iteration of that was when I did my postdoc with him. And you know that his whole mission in life is to educate physicians on the pillars of lifestyle medicine. So nutrition and exercise and stress reduction and sleep, social connection, and watching how it helped change the practice of these clinicians, essentially a train the trainer kind of model, right? It then got me thinking about we have to get this message out there to everybody. And again, kind of serendipitously, we are talking about this. Like, you know, we were kind of like tip of the spear back in the day, talking about exercises, medicine, and talking about how powerful nutrition and sleep, and who knew how powerful and potent social connection was, right? Until COVID hit, and then everything that we've been preaching for years and years came to a head. But that idea of you have to share what you know has been so influential in the arc of my career because I do all of this research in the lab, but the most important thing that I think about doing the research is sharing it. And so science communication and then moving to industry has been uh kind of the iteration of that next piece in my career.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yeah, I think um that you know, our historically poor job of science communication actually contributes to the current mistrust of science that we are facing. Um, and that has such an impactful um effect, you know, on the health of populations. Um it's contributing to, you know, the vaccine hesitancy and skepticism that we're currently dealing with, and um now are outbreaks of previously you know absent uh infectious disease. So um I agree with you 100%. Um science communication uh needs to be done and it needs to be done well. And it needs to be done using um using that those communication strategies, you know, that um the public actually can can listen to, right? Like publishing an article in a journal may be good for our colleagues and may spark deeper science. But when we're trying to educate the public, I think we have to use mediums like you're doing, like with Substack, YouTube, podcasts, you know, all of those things.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

And that's why I was so excited when you, who by the way, has also been such an influential mentor and aspirational professional in my in my career. Um, you were president of ACSM when I was just a We One back in the day, you know, coming early days into this space. And I have to say, it has been incredible watching all of the women presidents of ACSM. What an amazing platform that they have given into the women of this field. Um, I guess we have because we elect you, we elect you in, but like thank you so much for taking the mantle up. Um, and so I think that it's it's critically important what you're saying is that not only do we need to be communicating the science, but it needs to be coming from really impactful voices. So thank you so much for this podcast and for doing what you do and using your network in order to share this communication. It's critically important. And I'll double tap on something that you just said that I think is really essential. I say this all the time and I mean it a little tongue in cheek, but I'm pretty serious about it. Scientists suck at social media. Like we're terrible at it. We're really, really bad at it because we want to talk about the nuance and we want to talk about the, you know, tiny generalizations and whether or not we can generalize to this population or or this or that. What people want to know is what should I do and why should I do it? Right. And sometimes the answer is don't do that. It's not gonna work. And people are like, oh, okay, that doesn't work, no, no problem, right? And sometimes it's go get your vaccine because this is really important. And we did such a bad job of that communication. We essentially abdicated that space that we created our own vacuum here that's been filled by a bunch of voices that either don't know what they're talking about or have an agenda that is completely anti-science and completely anti-data. And as a result, we're clawing back. And I don't, I don't know. I'm hoping, I'm hopeful that we can be a part of this wider narrative again. But right now, as we are seeing, scientists are really distrusted. And science is kind of like a pariah right now in the popular conversation because we did such a poor job of capturing people's minds and hearts and brains for so long that it's it's a real challenge to undo that misinformation. You know, they say it all the time that misinformation, disinformation spreads so quickly, and the truth is really, really hard to get out there, especially if that mis and disinformation has already entered that vacuum. Um, it's almost impossible to walk it back. So we need to get better at this and we need to be more proactive.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah, I agree completely. I think one of those areas and exercise that we're struggling, you know, to really get a message across is the importance of resistance training or muscle strength training. I mean, so many of us, you know, grew up seeing the picture of Jim Fix's legs on the book running, right? So that meant running was the exercise. And if you didn't like to run, well, you know, then why bother? Um, so I know you know a lot about this. So um I'm gonna talk, give you two kind of related questions. You know, one is talk a little bit about the role that muscle plays in both long-term metabolic health and aging. And, you know, when we think about sarcopenia, and for people who are listening and don't know what that is, that's kind of a muscle, small muscles or or or less muscle in the body that typically happens with aging, but it leads to frailty and also increases the likelihood of metabolic disease. So again, uh, what role does muscle play in kind of long-term metabolic health and aging? And when we think about that muscle loss or sarcopenia and frailty, you know, how early does that story actually begin? Because I don't think it starts at age 65. I think the stage is set far earlier than that.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Indeed. I'll start with the first question, then I'll move on to the second. So again, this is very exciting that I get to say this now and it lands so well. Um, I get to say, and I'm right, um, I'm biased because I'm a muscle researcher, but I'm right. The muscle in your body is the organ of longevity. I'll I'll take, I'll take a little bit of um slack from the brain people because I think that we could probably have a similar argument. But at the end of the day, moving your body, your muscle is so critically important for healthy aging for a variety of reasons. So the first is it serves as your metabolic sink, meaning that when you contract your muscles, you're burning that excess fuel that's circulating around in your blood in real time so that it doesn't get deposited. It doesn't start to cause inflammation and eventually diseases like type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease, or even as we're discovering, some cancers are preventable with an active lifestyle. And so having that muscle, that metabolic engine in your body, revving at all times, is the foundation of making sure that we don't develop the diseases of our time. The other that's so important as we age is you're able to continue to do all of the activities that you love to do at a high level, you're out hiking, you're skiing, you're doing, you know, biking and all of the things. And if you let your muscles start to degrade, you're not going to be able to do all of these things that bring you joy. And then it becomes a virtuous cycle, right? So you go out and you do all these really wonderful things, and that is giving you health and longevity, and then it's bringing you joy, and then you go out and want to do it again, right? And so all of these things are intertwined. And when we start to look at what happens when you become sedentary as we age, which it's frustrates me so much that the narrative for older people has been be careful, don't move. We're going to retire you to the rocking chair on the porch. That could not have been worse information to give to people as they get older, as they retire. Because what we actually see happen is that if you can keep those muscles strong, you also keep your bones strong. And if something happens and you're out walking around and you trip over a curb or you have an icy day, if you're in a place where it gets you know snowy and you get winter weather and you trip and fall, you can reach out and catch yourself when you fall down to the ground, hopefully preventing something like a broken hip or a broken shoulder. And so it becomes all of these really important elements where it's keeping you healthy, it's bringing you joy, and it's also keeping you safe.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Man, you are talking my language right now because you may not know this, but I'm actually writing a book right now called Musculoskeletal Failure, um, prevention and management across the lifespan. And it really is, you know, just this recognition that osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, and sarcopenia, you know, set people up for falls and fractures. And that, you know, avoiding osteoarthritis, you know, is well, first off, osteoarthritis is not just the aging and grain of the joints. I mean, it is preventable, right? Strong muscles, regular physical activity, maintaining healthy body weight, you know, help to protect the joints. Um, osteoporosis is affects what, you know, um close to 50% of women, you know, by the time they are in their seventh or eighth decade of life. Um, and sarcopenia ends up resulting from, you know, people not moving and not eating well, right? It's the tea and toasters. You know, if you sit on the couch and all you have is tea and toast, it turns out you're gonna get sarcopenia. Right. And then falls and fractures end up being the number one reason why people cannot continue to live independently in their own homes, which is where people want to age in place. So I can't tell you, this is like music to my ears when you're talking about, you know, the importance of getting sufficient muscle, maintaining that muscle, preventing the muscle loss that is to some degree an inevitable consequence of aging. I mean, it's, you know, which one of those curves do you want to be on before you cross that disability threshold? Do you want to cross it in your 60s? Do you want to cross it in your 80s? Or maybe, you know, if you're really tough, no, you may not cross it at all, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Well, we just watched the Boston Marathon right before we um we recorded here. And I think that they said that the oldest runner was 102 this year. So you can keep it going, which brings me to the second part of your question, which is um the timing with which all of these degradations start to happen. And I think this will be very surprising to most people. Um, when we look at muscle, specifically in um women, particularly, we see that muscle starts to degrade around the age of 30. And we see that degradation happen somewhere between 3 and 5% every decade. So it starts a lot earlier than people think it does, and it goes a lot faster than people think it does. But that's not even the worst part of the story. We talked just a second about how muscles and bones interact. If you look at bones, particularly in women, we see that peak bone mass occurs somewhere between the ages of about 18 to 23, depending on the woman. And from then on in, for the rest of your life, it is a preservation game. So being able to increase bone density in any kind of a scalable or really a measurable way over the lifespan is almost impossible. So, what you need to be doing is making sure that our girls are playing sports, they're jumping, they're moving, they're in the weight rooms, they're doing activities that they're loving, outside, playing soccer, all of these things, because that's the moment when they are setting their future 60, 70, 80-year-old self up for success. I talk to moms and teenagers a lot. And this, you can just watch the sort of exploding head emoji go around the room, right? Where they're just like, now, now is the time. And I think it it's it's scary, especially if you hear that, if you're 40 or 50 or 60. Um, but you're always going to be on that preservation tightrope, right? And so now is just as good a time as any to start moving, start doing a little bit of impact, start, you know, making sure that your nutrition is aligned with your training. And that curve can flatten out, but we do need to make sure that our girls, our moms know, and then we set our entire network and community up for success there.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. I think that the the steepest slope of the bone acquisition curve, you know, happens when, you know, a female goes through menarchy until she's, you know, 18, 19, 20, right? And that's a time when, you know, um girls should be getting sufficient calcium intake um nutritionally, you know, sufficient uh vitamin D from whatever source. Um, but it's also a time, you know, when they're told they need to look a certain way, right? You know, and they may be, you know, restricting their dietary intake, and that has so many adverse uh consequences, you know, for bone health and for muscle health and, you know, mental health, what have you. But boy, that's it's tricky, right? Because the groundwork is laid much earlier than we think. And yet we don't really start to pay attention to osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, sarcopenia, falls, and fractures until somebody magically turns 65. It's insanity. We need to do better, which is why you know we've been talking about this new term, musculoskeletal failure, right? As a way to comprehensively both um prevent, recognize, and manage so people can have a quality of life that they want into their older years.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

I couldn't agree more. I'm really glad that we're using this new terminology because I think it brings it the word failure, it kind of like it's it gets the flag waving, right? And people start really thinking about it. And just this idea that we need to start talking about this at an earlier stage of life, to your point. You turn 65 and you maybe get your first DEXA or something like that. Like it's too late at that point, right? So, how can we start to use social media? Where, like, where are the kids? Where are the moms? Um, to start to show them and give them some information way earlier in life. And again, I think you know, we're at a really interesting, sort of serendipitous moment in time where we do have a medium that we can reach kids, we can reach their parents, we can think about creating this narrative through the lifespan where they learn it early and they live it for their entire life. Whereas before, I think honestly, communicating with kids was sort of challenging, right? Like you maybe had a couple of like, you know, PBS commercials that were from the public broadcasting company that were, you know, kind of like, you know, the safety commercials. I remember way back in the day it was uh, this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs, right? Like those were the kind of narratives that we heard about. But now we can get in people's face every day, right? Like every day, get out and move. This is fun, this is exciting, this is a part of your life. And we know also with exercise, if kids create these habits earlier in life, they're much more likely to stick with them later on. It's really hard to get adults to exercise if they're not exercisers. So critically important that this science communication message starts through the place where the people are and starts early enough that it really makes an imprint on their brain.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Yeah, I think this is also a nice, a nice kind of tie-in and maybe a segue, you know, to talk a little bit about your ACSM president's lecture. Um, you know, bridging the gap or falling behind how academia industry partnerships are no longer optional for exercise science. And and, you know, what that says to me is, you know, that um, you know, there's opportunities for collaboration. But as part of this, you know, science communication, I mean, you know, I gotta tell you, you know, my kids uh are both kind of science-y and uh they're not reading JAMA, right? You know they're they're getting information, you know, from from certainly from social media, um, but you know, they're also um exposed to a lot of industry advertising and information. Um so I think that the science industry connection also, you know, speaks to science communication. But but tell us a little bit about what you're gonna talk about at ACSM in front of, I don't know, a couple thousand people.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah, no pressure. Um first I was very honored to be asked. And also um Terry Jawarski, who is our new our current president, asked me. And we had a really good conversation about this because the theme for this year's ACSM is industry and tech. And so it seemed um like a really fitting year to be in this place. Um, so I think about this in two different ways. The first is exactly what you were just discussing, which is the messaging that the general population is getting from companies. And so, in that space, I think about how can we get more scientists into industry so that we are changing the way that they're communicating, that we are changing the way that they're thinking about product development. So I'll use my ex my role as an example. Um, some of the stuff that we do, I will be really blunt about is it's fairly controversial, right? Like putting IVs into people's arms. You're either a believer or you're a hater. And what I think we need to be is more curious about this. You know, when I was telling you about our long COVID study, people are saying that it helps them. Could it be a placebo effect? Sure. 100% could be, but we as scientists should be curious about that, right? Like we should want to know why this is helping somebody? Is it actually the high dose nutrients that are in the drip? Is it just simply the hydration? Is it the touch of the nurse as they come in? Is it the fact that they get to walk in the door and somebody says, Oh, hey, Susie, we're so glad you're here when they've been suffering with this long COVID disease for so long? We don't know, right? We don't know the answer to that. But they're telling us that it makes them feel better. And we should be curious and try to understand why these therapies work. There's a narrative that kind of is driving me crazy right now within the academic circles is that the wellness industry is this six trillion dollar industry, and it's all a bunch of snake oil salesmen. I disagree entirely. Um, I think there's a lot of amazing things that are happening in the wellness industry. And I will also say there's a lot of amazing business people in this space that we could learn a lot from, right to the idea of science communication, of translating our science into products that will work for people. And so I think we need to be there. The other piece about this is this is where the data is right now, right? We are in an environment where I think at last count, I think this was in the New York Times the other day, the NIH has funded about half of the studies that they did in the previous administration at this time of the year. We don't have funding to do these randomized control trials anymore. And even if we did, they are limited in the sense that, yes, of course, they're gold standard, but we're especially with exercise, we're looking at cohorts of 15, 20, 30, if we're lucky, a hundred people at six weeks, 12 weeks, 18 weeks. I have seven years worth of data on my population because they didn't even think about the fact that they were collecting this amazing real-world data set that now I can go and investigate and ask questions of. It's an electronic health record. It's basically like me going to Intermountain Health and saying, hey, I'm gonna do an abstraction of your EHR to answer this particular question. I have that data. I have access to it. It's real world data, it's tricky, it's you know, it's not easy. And as you know better than anybody, getting data out of an electronic health record is its own beast of a project, but there's a ton of data. Think, for example, about how much data the wearables companies are collecting on you. Aura, Whoop, Garmin have 24-hour data on you for years. Think about these blood work companies that are popping up. You get go and give your, like you're donating your blood to figure out, you know, your 6,422 biomarkers that they're gonna test you on that you don't really know what to do with, but you know what they're doing? They're collecting that data. What about these companies that are doing their full body MRI? Are we there yet where we can start diagnosing things from a full body MRI? Probably not, but you are altruistically donating your data to an ever-growing data set where hopefully we are able to eventually think about separating signal from noise in this space. And I just feel so strongly that we have to be a part of this conversation in industry. We need to be in the room. And if we're in the room, we can help these folks that are not researchers really make sense of their data. So it's not just a business dashboard, it's not just about revenue, it's not just about churn and stickiness and getting new people into their system, but it's really understanding are your therapies actually helping? And here's one thing that I think is really exciting. Pretty much everybody in industry that I talk to about this is really open to that conversation. They want to understand their data, they want to have these trials done. And here's the thing that's kind of um frustrating. Most people in academia, when I talk to about this, they're kind of like, oh God, like that's just garbage data. You're not gonna be able to do anything with it. It's outside of our traditional wheelhouse, it's outside of the academy. And I'm just like, get with the times. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people's data in a 24-hour cycle. We don't want to have access to that. I don't understand this disconnect. And so that's what I'm gonna talk about is hopefully trying to change some ideas, uh, change some change some preconceived notions about what is going on in the industry side of the house and hopefully start to connect some synapses there.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Yeah, I think a big part of it is, you know, going back to kind of that skepticism, you know, question, right? Um, you know, you and Katie Starr and I, you know, presented at the ECSM meeting a year ago and to a packed room, people sitting on the floor in the aisles, because you know, we were talking about um, you know, the importance of having industry partnerships to actually translate science into practice and make it accessible and available to people. And um, and we can't do that alone, you know, in academic settings. So industry partners are incredibly important. And um, to have someone like you who is studying the impact of some of these innovations um or effectiveness, you know, in real world settings um with rigor is so incredibly important.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

So um I talked into the what one well, my pleasure, although I feel like some days I'm like, what am I doing with my life? But um one thing I will say is to the the talk that we gave that if you looked around the room, there were so many students in that room that were so excited about potentially pivoting their career to industry for a variety of reasons. Um, it could be the data that I had a bunch of people coming and talking about wearables and you know, how do you do this in industry? I had a whole bunch of people that were interested in the salary at in an industry, right? It's pay so much better. But I think one of the things is if we want to be good mentors, we have to actually also be in that space so that we can help to mentor our students into these industry roles that they're really excited about. And so I even think about it as how can we start to blaze a path to make sure that those that come behind us have a place to go and potentially can start doing much more rigorous work in this space because we kind of laid the foundation for the early data collection and sort of like tech foundations that need to happen, partnerships that need to happen so that future work can be even better than what we're doing right now.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

Yeah, I love that. Okay, so we're coming to the end of our time together. Um, I kind of start this podcast with uh the same question and I end it with the same question. And that is who's a woman in science you'd love to have coffee with?

SPEAKER_00 41:18

Oh, if you're already taken. I'm gonna have a lot of coffee dates. No, I'm just kidding. Um, okay, so I'll tell you one that I just find super fascinating right now is a woman named Susan Davis. She is a researcher in women's health right now. And for anybody that's following this narrative, she is um talking about the menopause transition and hormones through peri and post-menopausal life. And she got into social media kind of like later on in her career. So I think she's you know very senior at this point, and she's just captivating on social media. And I've kind of been like circling around her world, and I'm like, I would love to get some time, some FaceTime with her. She's just fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 42:06

Awesome. I I love that space. Um, we're all learning so much. Um, and and I think it's going to help women um a great deal. And we didn't even get to talking about you know the effect of estrogen on muscle, which is you know just a topic in and of itself and so fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 42:25

And there's some really good research that happened that's happening in this space too, that I just think is so important to pay attention to because again, this is a place where there's just a huge vacuum where influencers and charlatans are in most cases kind of well-intentioned trying to answer these questions on their own. But keep an eye on the space. There's going to be a lot of good work happening. And I know a lot of women scientists, young and mid-career scientists that are doing incredible work to advance this knowledge. So it's an exciting place to be. Um, but yeah, the exercise element of it is really fascinating as well. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

Well, Rachel, thank you so much for joining us. Um, and for you know, the way you push the field forward in such a thoughtful and necessary way, and especially in bridging worlds that that don't actually always talk to each other. Um, and to our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode of She Leads Science, please follow, rate, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Thanks very much, Rachel.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

My absolute pleasure.