As a health professional, leveraging data-driven longevity & biohacking strategies can transform how we track and optimize patient health. Dr. Brad Jacobs, a leader in integrative medicine and the founder of BlueWave Medicine, emphasizes three core biohacks that can significantly impact patient wellness. This blog post will explore these biohacks and demonstrate how Heads Up Health provides clinicians with a powerful platform to monitor, analyze, and improve patient outcomes.
Who is Dr. Brad Jacobs?
Dr. Brad Jacobs is an expert in integrative and functional medicine, focusing on personalized, data-driven healthcare. His work with BlueWave Medicine aims to optimize patient performance, resilience, and longevity through evidence-based interventions. By combining advanced diagnostics, wearable technology, and precision medicine, Dr. Jacobs helps patients achieve optimal health with measurable outcomes.
Three Biohacks for Patient Health Optimization
Dr. Jacobs outlines three primary biohacks that healthcare professionals can incorporate into patient wellness programs:
1. Heart Rate Variability (HRV): A Key Marker for Autonomic Function
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a powerful biomarker for stress resilience, cardiovascular health, and nervous system balance. Tracking HRV can provide critical insights into a patient’s recovery capacity and stress adaptation.
Tools to Track HRV with Heads Up Health
With Heads Up Health, practitioners can integrate HRV data from:
Mindfulness & Breathwork: Encourage patients to use guided breathing apps and HRV biofeedback.
Therapeutic Sound Healing: HRV benefits from sound baths and Kirtan singing can be measured through tracking tools.
Lifestyle Adjustments: Monitor patient HRV trends alongside sleep, alcohol intake, and stress levels within Heads Up Health.
How Heads Up Health Helps Clinicians Track HRV
Heads Up Health consolidates HRV data into a centralized patient dashboard, allowing clinicians to track trends, correlate HRV with lifestyle interventions, and adjust treatments accordingly.
2. Contrast Therapy: Optimizing Recovery and Immune Function
Contrast therapy (hot/cold exposure) is a powerful biohack for patients seeking improved circulation, recovery, and immune function.
Benefits of Contrast Therapy
Cold Plunges & Ice Baths: Reduce inflammation and improve autonomic nervous system balance.
Sauna Therapy: Heat shock proteins stimulate detoxification and cellular repair.
Hormesis: Controlled stress exposure trains the body’s adaptive response for resilience.
Tracking Contrast Therapy in Heads Up Health
Monitor HRV and temperature response pre/post therapy.
Track patient adherence to sauna and cold immersion routines.
Analyze inflammation and immune markers over time using integrated lab test data within Heads Up Health.
3. Mitochondrial Optimization: Boosting Energy and Longevity
Mitochondrial health is critical for energy production, metabolic function, and longevity. Clinicians can help patients optimize mitochondrial function through targeted lifestyle interventions.
Evidence-Based Strategies for Mitochondrial Health
Intermittent Fasting & Time-Restricted Eating: Improves autophagy and metabolic flexibility.
Zone 2 Cardio Training: Enhances mitochondrial efficiency.
Ketosis & Metabolic Adaptation: Helps shift energy reliance from glucose to fat.
Supplementation:
Urolithin A – Supports mitophagy (mitochondrial cleanup).
NAD+ and NMN – Essential for cellular energy and aging
CoQ10 and PQQ – Enhance ATP production.
Tracking Mitochondrial Health with Heads Up Health
Integrate fasting and ketone tracking with Heads Up Health.
Monitor glucose-ketone index (GKI) to assess metabolic efficiency.
Analyze patient biomarkers (lactate, inflammation, oxygen utilization) over time.
Using Heads Up Health for Patient Biohacking
Heads Up Health provides an advanced platform for clinicians, functional medicine doctors, and health coaches to track and analyze patient health data across multiple interventions. The platform allows practitioners to:
Integrate wearable device data (HRV, sleep, stress levels, activity).
Monitor biometrics including ketones, glucose, HRV, and inflammation markers.
Analyze patient adherence to lifestyle interventions.
Correlate patient data across multiple health variables for personalized treatment adjustments.
Conclusion: Enhancing Patient Care with Data-Driven Biohacking
For health professionals like Dr. Brad Jacobs, personalized, data-driven interventions are the future of medicine. By tracking HRV, leveraging contrast therapy, and optimizing mitochondrial function, clinicians can design precise, individualized health strategies.
With Heads Up Health, practitioners can monitor real-time patient data, customize dashboards, and implement biohacking protocols that drive measurable improvements in health and longevity.
Get started with Heads Up Health today and transform the way you track, analyze, and optimize patient health! 🚀
Tracking Patient Health Data Has Never Been Easier!
Leverage The Power Of Heads Up in your Health Practice
Introduction To Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy & Heart Rate Variability.
This is a case report looking at the effect of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) on heart rate variability (HRV) as measured by the Oura ring. While HBOT is well known for its ability to treat certain medical conditions, less is known about the impact on daily heart rate variability for those interested in improving physical recovery, sleep and longevity.
HRV is one of the best predictors of overall system health, nervous system balance, coherence
Consumer-grade wearables such as Oura ring provide a very precise way to measure HRV under the effects of different biohacks such as HBOT
This report looks at the effects of HBOT therapy on HRV from two individuals
About Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT)
Hyperbaric therapy (HBOT) is a treatment that involves breathing pure oxygen in a pressurized chamber.
Normally, we breathe air that contains about 21% oxygen. In hyperbaric therapy (HBOT), the air pressure is increased, allowing your lungs to take in more oxygen than usual. This extra oxygen gets absorbed into your bloodstream and helps your body heal more effectively.
Hyperbaric therapy (HBOT) is used for a variety of conditions, like helping wounds heal faster, reducing inflammation, or treating certain infections. It works by boosting oxygen levels in your blood, which can improve tissue repair and reduce swelling. People often undergo this therapy to speed up recovery after surgery, for chronic conditions, or even for brain health.
A research study administered daily treatments to 35 healthy adults aged 64 and older and found HBOT may be beneficial for longevity in two ways.
1. Increasing telomere length
Telomeres are located at the ends of chromosomes and are responsible for maintaining genomic stability. As we age, telomeres naturally shorten during cell replication.
Shortened telomeres are associated with various diseases, decreased physical performance, and brain atrophy. When telomeres reach a critical length, cells can no longer replicate and either enter cellular senescence or undergo programmed cell death.
2. Decreasing senescent cells
Cellular senescence is a process where cells stop dividing but remain alive and active, releasing chemicals that can cause inflammation and damage nearby cells. This state of cell cycle arrest is often triggered by telomere shortening. Senescent cells accumulate with age and contribute to tissue damage, further accelerating the aging process.
About Heart Rate Variability
Heart rate variability (HRV) is the natural variation in time between your heartbeats, and it’s a measure of how well your body responds to stress and recovers. Greater variability signals better health/recovery.
Heart rate variability (HRV) can be used as a predictor of general health, risk of disease, and mortality. Many wearables, such as the Oura ring, provide the ability to measure heart rate variability (HRV).
Hyperbaric oxygen, heart rate variability & Vagal Tone
Vagal tone refers to how well your vagus nerve is functioning. The vagus nerve helps regulate functions like heart rate and digestion.
Higher vagal tone means your body is better at calming down after stress, which is important for overall health. Research indicates that hyperbaric therapy (HBOT) can lead to significant increases in HRV which reflects good vagal tone.
One study investigated the effects of age and repeated hyperbaric treatments on vagal tone. The researchers found that vagal activity, as measured by heart rate variability (HRV), increased in both younger and older participants during hyperbaric exposures, with no significant difference in response between the groups.
This case study investigated the effects of hyperbaric therapy (HBOT) on heart rate variability (HRV) using the Heads Up platform to collect data and track changes.
Method
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) chamber
The chamber used in this case report was an Oxyhelp dual-plan hard shell chamber.
Protocol
Participant A completed a total of 44 HBOT sessions for a total of 61 hours over a period of 6 months. Participant B completed 97 HBOT sessions for a total of 130 hours over 6 months.
HRV was measured using an Oura ring (generation 3).
Heart Rate Variability – H.R.V.
Oura is a wearable ring designed to track your health and wellness. It continually collects data on over 20 biometrics that directly impact wellbeing (ex: sleep quality, heart rate, HRV, body temperature, and activity levels).
The ring uses sensors to gather data while you’re sleeping or during the day, providing insights into your overall recovery, readiness for activity, and sleep patterns. It is lightweight, comfortable to wear, and water-resistant, making it convenient for daily use without interrupting daily routines.
Data tracking
Heads Up is web and mobile platform designed for analyzing health outcomes. The platform can integrate data from medical devices (e.g. Dexcom, Libre), wearables (e.g. Oura, Dexcom), conventional lab testing (e.g. Quest, Labcorp), functional diagnostics (e.g. Dutch, Genova, Great Plains), advanced modalities (e.g. hyperbaric oxygen chambers, cryotherapy, infrared sauna) and other sources of health information.
Analysis tools are provided for both individuals and healthcare professionals to study the effects of health interventions.
For this case study, both participants linked their Oura ring to Heads Up and logged all their hyperbaric sessions on their dashboards (Figure 1).
Two participants using HBOT therapy
Participant A
Male
Sex
48
y/o
Participant B
Male
Sex
74
y/o
Hyperbaric chamber
Oxyhelp dual-place hard shell chamber
The OxyHelp OxyLife C Multiplace chamber is ideal for multiple users at the same time. This multiplace hyperbaric oxygen chamber allows either an assistant or an observer inside to monitor the user and assist with the session, electronic functions or emergencies. The different sizes of Multiplace HBOT chambers (2, 4 or 5-seater) can also fit cardio equipment like a stationary bike / water rower or can be fitted with 2 to 5 seats for users to enjoy collective sessions.
Measurement devices
Oura Ring
The Oura Ring has consistently been an industry-leading wearable to track sleep, nighttime biosignals, and daily activity. We continue to improve upon each generation of the Oura Ring with new hardware sensors and software features.
Measurement devices
Heads Up
Leverage our simple and powerful health platform customizable for concierge doctors, integrative and functional medicine, longevity programs, research, and digital health solutions.
Results
Participant A (Fig.1)
Participant A completed a total of 44 HBOT sessions for a total of 61 hours over a period of 6 months.
Oura HRV improvements were see as follows:
Participant B (Fig.2)
Participant B completed 97 HBOT sessions for a total of 130 hours over 6 months.
Oura HRV improvements were see as follows:
Summary
HBOT is becoming an increasingly popular treatment for general health and wellness. This case study demonstrated how HBOT had positive effects on HRV in two males, ages 48 and 74.
HRV is a metric commonly measured and tracked by health enthusiasts. The Oura ring is a useful tool to capture the effects of HBOT on HRV. The Heads Up platform makes it easy to visualize trends collected by wearables like the Oura ring and track changes in HRV.
Using wearables to measure health benefits can be very motivating for clients undergoing HBOT. Clinics should consider encouraging their HBOT clients to monitor their HRV as a helpful tool for assessing long-term health and longevity.
Learn More
Schedule a demo and discovery call with one of our specialist to see how Heads Up can help you improve patient outcomes and validate them with ease. Schedule here.
References
Coutts, L. V., Plans, D., Brown, A. W., & Collomosse, J. (2020). Deep learning with wearable based heart rate variability for prediction of mental and general health. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 112, 103610.
Gupta, M., & Somasundaram, I. (2024). HBOT in Aging and Regeneration. In Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: Principles and Applications (pp. 129-133). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.
Gupta, M., & Rathored, J. (2024). Hyperbaric oxygen therapy: future prospects in regenerative therapy and anti-aging. Frontiers in Aging, 5, 1368982.
Hachmo, Y., Hadanny, A., Hamed, R. A., Daniel-Kotovsky, M., Catalogna, M., Fishlev, G., … & Efrati, S. (2020). Hyperbaric oxygen therapy increases telomere length and decreases immunosenescence in isolated blood cells: a prospective trial. Aging (Albany NY), 12(22), 22445.
Jarczok, M. N., Weimer, K., Braun, C., Williams, D. P., Thayer, J. F., Gündel, H. O., & Balint, E. M. (2022). Heart rate variability in the prediction of mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis of healthy and patient populations. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 143, 104907.
Lund, V. E., Kentala, E., Scheinin, H., Lertola, K., Klossner, J., Aitasalo, K., … & Jalonen, J. (2004). Effect of age and repeated hyperbaric oxygen treatments on vagal tone. Statistics, 4(7), 0.
Lund, V., Laine, J., Laitio, T., & Kentala, E. (2003). Instantaneous beat-to-beat variability reflects vagal tone during hyperbaric hyperoxia. Undersea & hyperbaric medicine, 30(1), 29.
Sari, N. F., & Fawzy, A. (2024). A Deep Dive into the Role of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in Enhancing Burn Wound Healing. International Journal of Medical Science and Clinical Research Studies, 4(05), 960-973.
Wu, B. Q., Liu, D. Y., Shen, T. C., Lai, Y. R., Yu, T. L., Hsu, H. L., … & Hsia, T. C. (2024). Effects of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy on Long COVID: A Systematic Review. Life, 14(4), 438.
Supplement Brand Validates New HRV+ Supplement Using Decentralized Digital Health Monitoring Technology That Automatically Collects Sleep & Behavioral Data Through Wearables & Assessments.
Decentralized Health Research Platform
Introduction:
Mode+Method is looking to validate a new product in the supplement space aimed at increasing a customer’s HRV with a goal of rapidly scaling sales this calendar year.
Business Challenges
Mode+Method primary challenges were finding users to test the product, the cost of collecting, managing, and analyzing health data, finding the right partner(s), with a flexible platform. Lastly, Mode+Method did not want to be limited into taking a rigid data collection and development environment.
The end result Mode+Method aimed for:
Mode+Method needed a device-agnostic flexible software solution that could automatically capture the health data they needed while also being able to analyze it in near real-time with ease. The goal was to produce health data that can be used to build trust by making objective claims in their sales and marketing materials.
In the future, Mode+Method wanted a model that could be replicated for discovering product opportunities and validating new products that they develop.
“We used the Heads Up platform to validate our new product targeting nocturnal Heart Rate…to aggregate the study data from multiple wearable systems. The platform seamlessly ingested HRV and sleep data from Oura ring & other wearables, and the reporting tools made outcomes analysis a breeze.”
The supplement industry is one of the most competitive and fastest growing industries in the United States. There are over 29,000 dietary supplements available in the U.S. market, with approximately 1,000 new supplement products being introduced to the market every year.
Despite being such a large market, with an estimated 77% of Americans taking at least one supplement, 59% of global consumers want to see scientific evidence supporting supplement efficacy. Many factors play into this, such as legislation that limits the regulation of most dietary supplements, the presence of “snake oil” supplement brands that devalue the reputation of other brands, and limited research on the effectiveness of supplements.
The scientific awareness of the consumer has evolved post-COVID, partially thanks to new interest in longevity and immunity enhancement. Consumers are no longer only swayed by marketing techniques and older research on individual ingredients, consumers want evidence that the “specialty blends’ developed by supplement manufacturers work as advertised.
For companies to succeed in this evolving market, validating their products and services with decentralized trials will be necessary to build trust with consumers’ purchasing decisions, answering the consumer’s authentic question of, “will this work for me?”
About HRV+
Longevity Labs, Inc, the parent company for Mode+Method, is a health and wellness research company specializing in longevity and human aging. They developed the supplement product HRV+ and designed it to optimize performance and boost Heart Rate Variability (HRV), a health marker associated with reduced morbidity and mortality.
HRV+’s active ingredients include cannabinoids extracted from a proprietary hemp oil, curcumin, magnesium, and omega-3 oil.
Business Challenges:
Since Mode+Method is a new supplement company, and they have aspirations to rapidly grow their new product (HRV+) in 2023. They needed a flexible research solution that is cost effective and quick to set up so that they could receive results back quickly.
Mode+Method is focused on producing high quality supplements, and does not have the infrastructure to validate the product with an in-house technology solution. The complexity of organizing the study, obtaining participants, onboarding them, collecting the data and analyzing it needed to be achieved quickly, with help from a partner.
Therefore, Mode+Method searched for a:
Trusted partner who was well-connected to the wellness and supplement industry, and had experience in consumer health data analysis, all while providing top notch user service.
Research process that was simplistic both internally and for the participants.
Flexibility to try new ideas and possibly test new products easily.
Support with participant recruitment and onboarding.
Single platform that could accurately track biometric data from various inputs that could be easily analyzed at both an individual and cohort level.
Solution:
Heads Up Health worked with Mode+Method to create a solution that supported their research goals to validate their product (HRV+) and differentiate themselves in the supplement industry.
Collaboration & Support
Process Driven:Together, Mode+Method and Heads Up created a highly collaborative and process-driven study startup based on Heads Up’s experience.
Accessible: Heads Up works closely with clients to provide an optimal research study experience. For this project, the Mode+Method team and HeadsUp met weekly during the first 4 weeks of their collaboration,
Top-Notch Customer Support: Heads Up provided consistent customer support, not just through study start, but throughout the duration of the collaboration to ensure a smooth user experience.
Speed: Up and running in weeks
The traditional research recruitment process can be tedious and it can take months for companies to get meaningful sample sizes of participants to validate supplement claims.
Heads Up’s team simplified the process for Mode+Method by developing a recruitment plan, creating a participant onboarding experience, streamlining the consent process, and creating a customized dashboard experience for data input and collection. Together, these solutions reduced the recruitment time so that the study could be up and running in weeks.
Turnkey experience for study subjects
Built into Heads Up’s system are safeguards against participant attrition, which can slow the speed of effective data collection. Heads Up is an easy to use platform, with both customizable and intuitive-to-use desktop/mobile interfaces for participants.
The system allows for low-burden data collection in the form of automated data collection. Heads Up also provides participants with a step-by-step guide concerning expectations and tasks required to be a part of the study.
Automation & Data Visibility
Heads Up’s platform is an integrative technology built around continuous remote monitoring, and supports passive data collection from multiple wearable devices and apps all in one place. In addition to other collected biometric data, Oura Ring wearables were used in the study to accurately measure HRV and other health metrics.
Our platform can easily generate individual reports to hone in on the effects of the supplement on a person-to-person basis, but that’s not all.
Heads Up supports automated cohort analysis to ensure adherence to the protocol, help companies review macro trends across the subject population, and get real-time readings on how performance is trending – all at the click of a button.
Tools In Action:
White-labeled web and mobile app to have unified branding.
Participant Signup
Custom signup page to promote customer trust.
Custom Video Introduction
Welcome video introduction to build a rapport with the participant and educate them on what to expect.
Participant Walkthrough
Click-by-click platform walkthrough for each participant to ensure they understand the expectations and how to use the platform.
User Consent
Easy click-button consent process to simplify the onboarding experience.
Automated Data Collection
Automatically collected data from wearable devices like Oura that can be set up in seconds.
Assessment Feature
Collect pre and post-subjective data from participants.
Customized Dashboards
Only show relevant metrics to participants.
Signals reports
Automated cohort analysis for quick decision-making and visibility (ex: out of range tracker, performance snapshots)
Results
18 individuals were included in the initial cohort of the study.13 men, 5 women. The age range is from 28 to 70, average age=58.
Average baseline HRV score= 37.3ms RMSSD. Average score following protocol = 41msRMSSD. With average improvement of 13.24%. Results included individual improvement of 27.8%, 21.9%,17.4%, and 12.8%.
Average baseline AM readiness score= 78.7. Average AM readiness following protocol= 79.62 for an improvement of 1.1%. Individual improvements included 12.1% and 5.1%.
Average baseline sleep score 80.98. Average sleep score after protocol=82.81 for an increase of 2.3%. Individual improvements included improvements of 11.0 and 6.3%.
Average baseline for WHO (World Health Organization) well being survey prior to protocol=15.84. Average WHO Wellbeing score following protocol = 18.75 for an improvement of 18.4%.
All participants reported an improvement with individual improvements of 43%, 60% and 88%
Takeaways
The Heads Up platform is the perfect solution for data-driven supplement companies who want to validate their supplement’s outcomes using near real-time tracking tools that quickly and easily quantify changes to users’ health data from an individual to the cohort level. If you are looking for software and support validating your supplement or health solution, schedule a discovery call with our support team and we’ll be happy to help you.
Are you looking to validate your health product?
Schedule a call with our Trials Specialist to find out how our program can work for you.
The Oura Ring is one of the most accurate wearable devices for tracking biometrics related to sleep, recovery, movement, and overall wellness. To follow are the various steps you and the patient will need to take to add the Oura Ring to your patient’s portal.
Connecting the Oura Ring to the Oura Application
The first thing the patient will need to do once they receive their Oura Ring is download and connect the ring to the Oura application (IOS or Android). Please see Get Started with Oura for step-by-step instructions.
Connecting Oura Rings to Heads Up Platform
Heads Up pulls the patient’s Oura data from the Oura cloud. The patient’s data is sent to the Oura cloud after the patient first opens the Oura application after awakening. The Oura ring will sync to the Oura cloud each time it is opened during the day.
Next, you will need to make sure your patient’s Oura ring is connected to Heads Up. The patient can connect Oura via the Heads Up mobile or web application.
Once connected, you should see the patient’s Oura ring data on Heads Up. If the Oura ring data is not up to date for any reason, then you should ask the patient to force a manual backup of their Oura ring data to the Oura cloud using the below instructions:
1. Ensure WiFi or cellular data is enabled.
2. Go to the menu on the Home tab.
3. Tap Settings .
4. Below Account, tap ‘Back up all data.’
Interpreting the Oura Ring data
Oura rings collect and shares a lot of data. Below are a few of the metrics you should focus on.
There is a modern-day misconception about the importance of sleep. We’ve convinced ourselves that anything else is more productive and frequently hear the expression “you can sleep when you’re dead.”
Recently though, sleep science has been gathering steam and proving what should have been intuitive all along: that our bodies didn’t evolve to waste time. Sleep is central to health and performance. Although we remember little from our time asleep, our brains are firing and our bodies are actively repairing. During sleep, the brain consolidates memories and removes toxins, while the body stokes the immune system and regulates metabolism.
The sleep hygiene movement is starting to have a social impact and people are waking up to the importance of investing in sleep. If you want to take better care of yourself, start by making your sleep a priority.
The research is clear that adults should get 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. This range of sleep hours is based on years of research and is the standard set by the National Sleep Foundation. It’s been determined that chronic sleep deprivation can lead to a dramatic increase in the risk of cardiovascular disease and lead to weight gain, in addition to other health issues.
Another important aspect of sleep that can help maintain optimal health and performance is sleep consistency. Ensuring consistency in your bedtime and waking time can make a world of difference. For example, going to bed early and waking up early during workdays can help improve productivity throughout the week.
Some individuals will wake up tired despite sleeping the appropriate number of hours due to restless sleep. Sleep Disturbances caused by wake-ups, get-ups, and restless time during your sleep can have a big impact on sleep quality and daytime cognitive performance. Restless sleep is less restorative than uninterrupted sleep and it is usually the cause of daytime sleepiness.
Disturbances can be caused by various factors, such as stress, noise, partners, pets, or different foods. Here are a few tips to improve your chances of getting restful sleep:
Optimize your sleep environment by making sure your mattress is comfortable and your bedroom is cool (~ 65℉/18℃), quiet, and dark.
Avoid spicy, heavy meals, and alcohol close to bedtime.
Avoid caffeine prior to bedtime and late in the afternoons.
While regular physical activity can make your sleep more restful, try to avoid exercising at least 1-2 hrs before your normal bedtime.
Help your brain and body to wind down by disconnecting from bright screens and dimming bright lights 1-2 hrs before going to sleep.
From a circadian biology perspective, your day begins when you go to sleep each evening. Sleep allows the human body to recover from the physical and mental demands of the day. There are a number of metrics related to recovery, such as Resting Heart Rate (RHR) and Heart Rate Variability (HRV).
Resting Heart Rate captures the number of times your heart beats per minute while at rest. An abnormally high or low resting heart rate may mean you’re overly stressed and not getting enough rest, or perhaps your immune system is fighting something.
Heart Rate Variability refers to the constant variation in milliseconds between your heartbeats. As popular as the metaphor may be, a healthy heart doesn’t beat as regularly as a metronome—it changes its rhythm with each beat. Some situations increase variation (high HRV), while others cause the intervals between beats to remain constant (low HRV).
You may be unaware of these subtle variations, but they reflect your heart’s ability to respond to different situations. HRV can react to stress and/or illness before resting heart rate (RHR), which makes it one of your body’s most powerful signals—providing useful insights into your stress levels, recovery status, and general well-being. As a rule of thumb, high HRV is associated with rest-and-digest, general fitness, and good recovery, while low HRV is associated with fight-or-flight, stress, illness, or overtraining.
While individual days may be lower after high-intensity exercise, a night out, or a stressful day, if your recent HRV is on par with or better than your average, it’s a sign of good recovery. Monitoring HRV trends with an Oura Ring shows whether you are adapting or not to the “load” you are exposed to. This load could be new medications or treatment plans, or an increase in training load.
Body temperature is a key signal, as your body constantly generates and sheds heat to hover around your ideal temperature. This metric can act as a warning, signaling cold or broader health development like hormonal fluctuations. Very few wearables track this metric. One exception is the Oura Ring, which monitors your skin temperature while you sleep. This form of measurement is very close to your core temperature only while you are sleeping. You can also use one of the many digital thermometers to check your temperature right after you get out of bed.
Sitting is considered by many to be the new smoking due to the rising evidence that prolonged sitting can contribute to a range of diseases and conditions including:
Cardiovascular disease
Type 2 Diabetes
Anxiety and depression
Obesity
Elevated blood pressure
Higher cholesterol
The human body performs better with regular movement throughout the day. Even standing up once every hour and stretching or doing a few jumping jacks can bring enormous health benefits.
Dr Jessica Drummond, MPT, CCN, CHC, is the founder and CEO of Integrative Women’s Health Institute (IWHI). An expert on chronic pelvic pain and endometriosis, Dr Jessica Drummond is also an evidenced based practitioner who understands heart rate variability (HRV), lifestyle parameters, and how to apply this information with her patients for better health outcomes.
If you’re a practitioner listening to this, you’ll learn how Dr Jessica Drummond transitioned her practice from in-person to, now with Covid, 100% virtual. She is one of the rare practitioners utilizing HRV and wearables such as Oura and Garmin in a clinical setting to measure her patients’ baselines to watch it improve over time. With her team of health coaches, she uses a “nervous system out approach” to help her patients calm their nervous systems and balance stress, while optimizing their functional nutrition, deep sleep, exercise, and more. Learn how Dr. Drummond and her team are using Heads Up’s practitioner’s portal to track their clients’ lifestyle and health metrics.
If you’re struggling with chronic pelvic pain or other issues related to women’s health, you’ll be inspired and motivated to reduce your stress, and learn why tracking any progress to celebrate may help your own health.
And if you’re considering becoming a board certified health coach, especially for women’s health, you’ll learn how Dr. Jessica Drummond’s unique program is the first of its kind, the only Women’s Health Coach Certification in the world with over 1500 people enrolled from over 60 countries!
Join Heads Up Founder, Dave Korsunsky, as he talks to Dr. Jessica Drummond about her unique approach to women’s health, her health coaching program, and even advice for those health practitioners new to transitioning into a virtual model.
This podcast is brought to you by Heads Up, a web app designed to help both individuals and health practitioners centrally track the vital health data that matters. Instantly synchronize your (or your clients’) medical records, connect favorite health devices and apps, and use the data to optimize your health (and that of your clients).
Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial. Or, read on for more information about our latest podcast episode!
“Calming the nervous system is so important to optimizing digestion function. Because you certainly can’t absorb nutrients and calm digestion and inflammation if someone is in chronic fight or flight, which is why I’ve gotten so interested in heart rate variability [HRV] over the years. Because it’s the only way we can objectively measure that.”
– Dr. Jessica Drummond
In this podcast you’ll learn:
How Dr. Jessica Drummond, Founder and CEO of Integrative Women’s Health Institute, first connected with Dave via their mutual friend, Aypril Porter, which led to a partnership between Dr Jessica using Heads Up with her own patients and program.[1:06]
About Dr. Jessica Drummond’s body of work, how she started the Integrative Women’s Health Institute over 11 years ago, and how from the very beginning, it was about training her colleagues in functional nutrition, lifestyle medicine, and the communication skillset of health coaching. [1:36]
How Dr. Jessica Drummond started her career, more than 20 years ago. First as a physical therapist, originally intending to focus on sports medicine in orthopedics because of her background as an athletic kid, but really quickly began to specialize in women’s health. [2:20]
How her focus on women’s health is from a physical standpoint. Basically, the muscular skeletal joints, muscles and nerves related to women’s health conditions. For example, shoulder injuries that happen after breast cancer surgery or rib pain, back pain, and pelvic pain associated with pregnancy, urinary incontinence, prolapse, etc. [2:40]
She did this for many years in a hospital based clinical setting, as well as outpatient practice [3:15]
How Dr Jessica Drummond discovered that the one population in women’s health that was particularly challenging was complex pelvic pain, sexual pain, or pelvic floor pain, pain in hips, back, radiation down the legs, organ structures, etc. [3:30]
Why anytime there is pain signaling, the nervous system is involved [4:00]
How she got sick in her early 30s and used the tools of functional nutrition to regain her own hormonal health. How pelvic pain can sometimes have a cyclical expression, and how to apply some things from a nutritional perspective to help her most challenging pelvic pain clients, using her own research around this [4:06]
What motivated Dr. Jessica Drummond to start building her own school. While working at a women’s specialty hospital in Houston, she began to teach her colleagues, offer courses, from the moment she began learning this information. [4:54]
That the Integrative Women’s Health Institute now has about 17 different courses and offers health coach certification that’s board-approved, with many certified health coaches come out of the program, focusing on women’s health. Not just in Dr. Drummond’s specialty, pelvic pain, but also fertility, perimenopause, period pain, and all kinds of women’s health issues. [5:14]
How Dr. Jessica Drummond has successfully shifted from a more in-person to 100% virtual now. [6:34]
Why she was ahead of her time, way before Zoom even existed, focusing on virtual appointments, telehealth, out of necessity. How she initially built a huge place in Houston, but switched to phone appointments, completely client-driven, eliminating unnecessary commutes to the doctor’s office. This also allowed her to fit in life as a parent raising young kids, as well as multiple moves (11 times in 13 years!). [7:00]
Advice for practitioners from Dr. Drummond if new to moving towards a digital model: why you should maintain your own office, even if it’s just a separate room in your home. [8:54]
Why is nutritional therapy so vital to health issues? How blood sugar dysregulation can be inflammatory? What does a functional nutrition template look like and how can it start the healing process? [9:28]
Dr. Jessica Drummond’s approach to functional nutrition: “It’s about optimizing systems. Instead of chasing the symptoms, we always say, optimize physiological systems.” [10:19]
Why Dr. Jessica Drummond is so interested in her patients’ heart rate variability (HRV). And why she takes a “nervous system out approach” instead of what she used to do, which is to start with digestion. That although digestion is used early in the process, she is realizing more and more that “calming the nervous system is so important to optimizing digestion function. Because you can’t absorb nutrients, calm digestion and general inflammation if someone is in chronic fight or flight.” HRV is the only way she “can objectively measure that.” [11:11]
On endometriosis, and how symptoms often begin for girls as young as 8 and 12 years old. How girls and women begin to learn to push that pain down and show up anyway.[11:27]
Why the number one reason girls miss school is due to period pain [12:09]
How many people learn how to push through the pain, to suppress it, and no longer can even recognize when they are physiologically stressed, which is again why HRV can be so valuable, whether looking at a Garmin, Biostrap, or Oura. “Now you’ve got an objective measurement that you can then start to make changes, which will allow you to use the nutrition therapy to calm the nervous system.” [12:16]
How using HRV can help you as a practitioner to spot those who have a sympathetic overload, then begin to use other strategies such as mindful eating, chewing. [13:40]
Why an anti-inflammatory diet is important, yet how to create flexibility in that plan as there is no one-size-fits-all endometriosis diet. Or pain diet. [14:00]
What she does with the majority of clients who have bloating digestive issues, starting with blended soups, cooked vegetables, etc. [14:42]
Why a lot of times, women are lacking absorbable protein, and struggle with low neurotransmitters. Not only do they have pain signaling because of inflammation, but they may have low serotonin, low tryptophan, L-theanine, and GABA support, not actually absorbing the protein they are eating. Why healthy beneficial fats are important, etc. [14:53]
Using the urinary organic acids testing to make sure that people are absorbing nutrients. [15:44]
Why Dr. Jessica Drummond starts with what people CAN eat, because if you have a lot of digestive issues, and you’ve been afraid of food since you were a ten-year-old girl (there are a lot of eating disorders), this is important. Eventually we’ll move away from inflammatory foods like sugar and dairy. But we focus on EXPANDING what they can eat, so they don’t feel like it’s a restrictive diet.[15:53]
On how the auto-immune paleo diet is kind of a backbone for most people, but it varies: some plant-based, some leaning towards keto. [16:53]
Why endometriosis has auto-immune properties, often co-morbid with lots of other auto-immune diseases. After endometriosis surgery, auto-immune markers tend to drop, which is important for fertility and overall health, and how Dr. Jessica Drummond tries to support that both pre-op and post-op to improve the immune system.
On Dr. Jessica Drummond’s published research around vulvodynia, her focus on gut healing, immune healing, restoring the small intestinal barriers, taking out those inflammatory and processed foods, how the vulvodynia never came back.
What auto-immune markers she looks for. And why you usually see co-morbid things like Hashimotos, thyroiditis, celiac disease, or elevated ANA. Sometimes associated with psoriasis or lupus. Or elevated thyroid antibodies. [18:50]
How with her virtual clinic, she does a personalized nutrition plan, potentially looking at the gut microbiome, using urinary organic acids testing, sometimes hormone tests, depending on the client’s needs. Why clients have twelve sessions of health coaching to help them implement behavior changes that can be challenging, disordered eating issues, anxiety. [20:22]
Another reason why tracking can be so helpful: “Because not only is it motivating, but for most women in our programs, they never feel like they’ve done it well enough. So being able to see good progress, to kind of look back and celebrate ANY progress, makes a difference.” [21:18]
When you’re someone who has had chronic pain for a long time, there’s always a focus on pain (i.e., when, how much, how often, what’s causing it). Instead she has her clients journal and track those times when they feel better. “That’s how we shift it by using the tracking to demonstrate more objectively how things are starting to improve.” [21:53]
How Dr. Jessica Drummond personally uses HRV and interprets it in a clinical setting with her clients, a basic explanation of HRV for those practitioners listening, and how some clients are already using wearables such as the Oura ring, Biostrap, Garmin, and already have access to their data. [22:25]
How she’s looking for that number (HRV) to increase over time. Why the Oura ring is a great option for those wanting to track their raw data. What during the day happened for that person to have a higher HRV during the night? And over time, from Day 1 of their program to Week 12, is that raising the baseline. Why they use in their clinic the Garmin, which gives biofeedback during the day, looking at the “Body Battery.” (But it doesn’t give the raw HRV data, unfortunately, right now.). [24:15]
How looking at HRV helps people to build associations themselves, which may not have been there before, a huge part of the process, empowering people to reconnecting to signals in their own bodies that they may otherwise not notice. [25:42]
Why it’s also important to teach people to get comfortable with being in some stress, knowing they’re going to recover. How she looks at HRV, exercise, but also Deep Sleep. [25:54]
The biggest things Dr. Jessica Drummond looks for. Over time, is that baseline HRV increasing? And if there’s a great night of sleep, what contributed to that so we can replicate it more? How much time in Deep Sleep, especially between 10pm and 2am, when your brain is recovering. During the day, is someone recovering from exercise? What may they be stressing them out that they’re surprised about? And what can we dial-in when it comes to nutrition, personalized to that particular client (example about client who thought she was eating healthy by choosing organic sugar but was still pushing her “into the orange,” which prompted them to look more into that). [26:40]
Alcohol and its impact on HRV (hint: it can be disastrous). And how it can be an important KPI to notice. [28:37]
About how work and general life stress impacts many of their clients who are women, especially right now with many simultaneously working from home and home-schooling their kids, how that is all being reflected in their numbers while in quasi-lockdown related to the Covid pandemic. [28:37]
Why tracking can be helpful during stressful times. “The good news is that when you start to track, people are motivated to do the recovery.” Example of her assistant who wasn’t able to change everything about her busy week, but found her own outlet to recover, restore and rejuvenate. For her, taking a hike helped her, in less than 3 days, go from a ‘8’ to a ‘100’ (body battery from her Garmin). How Dr. Jessica’s mode of recovery is clocking out at 5pm every day and meditating with her paddle board. How important it is for people to find what recovery looks like for them. [29:09]
Use cases of HRV in the clinical setting, how it’s mostly used in health and wellness high performance, yet how Dr. Jessica Drummond is using HRV in her clinical practice related to inflammatory issues is important, helping to encourage clients and reinforce positive behaviors, watching the baseline increase, a win for everybody. [30:30]
How a lot of her women clients are high achieving. And when they see their numbers not looking so great, they don’t like to accept it. So she and her team of health coaches will coach them through that. It’s also validating. We remind them that they are doing great, are talented and smart, yet whether it’s postpartum, post-op surgery, that their bodies need recovery for longevity. “Using these numbers are helpful for showing us what our body has to go through to really recover.” [31:45]
How Dr Jessica Drummond is starting to use Heads Up to get some data on her clients remotely. Dave and his team at Heads Up have started building customized dashboards for her and team of health coaches to collect those peripheral metrics. [33:17]
Why when it comes to chronic pelvic pain, it’s really important to collaborate with a skilled pelvic physical therapist as well. How important it is for people to really tune into the messages of their own bodies, to know when they’re physically relaxed, activated and strong, taking a holistic team approach, both conventional and integrative. [33:45]
How the Integrative Women’s Health Institute offers the only board certified health coaching program focused on women’s health. The program starts with the skillset of health coaching, helping people to have immediate buy-in, become excited about their plan to get healthy. Why this communication skill is new to most clinical professionals who are taught in their training to fix people as though they are mechanics. [34:27]
Why behavioral change is important; Dave mentioned other past podcast guests utilizing similar services in their clinics or programs, such as Brandy Wiltermuth of Three Health with medically supervised weight-loss and Dr. Sandi Scheinbaum who trains her health coaches to operate in that support role when it comes to lifestyle changes. [36:06]
How important it is for someone to want to take ownership of behavioral lifestyle changes and ask for help. While the nutrition and sleep plan is important, it won’t be executed without lot of support to making those lifestyle changes. Such as taking things off their plate and off their calendar. [38:05]
Ways to get in touch with Dr. Jessica Drummond and the Integrative Women’s Health Institute [40:30]
Where to contact Dr. Jessica Drummond on Instagram
Outsmartendo.com (If you struggle, or have patients who struggle, with endometriosis or other pelvic pain issues, this is a great place to get information)
Heads Up is a website designed to empower individuals who want to take a self-directed approach to managing their health AND we offer health professionals a way to centralize their clients’ health data and optimize their outcomes.
Want sustainable weight loss and better metabolic health for your clients? Take a page out of ThreeHealth’s playbook and learn how to start optimizing health outcomes now. Join the data-driven health movement and see why functional doctors, nutritionists and health coaches love to use our health data analytics and remote-monitoring platform to save time, attract more clients, and optimize their outcomes with ease.
Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial now!
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.I consentView Privacy & Cookie Policy
on the Home 
tab.
.
