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I develop tools to improve reproductive and metabolic health. I also help individuals learn to ask and answer questions using participatory research:
When am I going to ovulate?
Am I pregnant?
When will I go into labor?
What can I do to combat the impact of menopause on my health?
The key to developing these tools is that reproductive hormones and metabolic outputs leave unique traces on the autonomic nervous system.
Reports of synchronized body temperature and ovulatory cycles, a stereotyped pattern of body temperature during human pregnancies, and of the disappearance of the ovulatory temperature pattern in menopause were published about 100 years ago. Further, variation of blood glucose with reproductive status was reported about 50 years ago. Today's fertility and metabolism trackers are just scratching the surface.
These reports were made long before measurement of continuous of temperature, glucose, or reproductive hormones. They were released before the neural substrate governing either reproduction or metabolism was well described. Yet today, continuous body temperature, autonomic metrics (HR, HRV), and CGMs remain at the periphery of fertility and physiology monitoring. Despite wide adoption of wearable devices that can, with reasonable accuracy, capture timeseries of these metrics, an air of confusion and mistrust lingers when wearables & app-based tools are discussed as sources of reproductive & metabolic health information.
The ease of these metrics’ acquisition; their clear phenomenology when properly measured; and the intervening century of neural circuit mapping, neuroendocrinology, and network physiology research make a strong case for returning our focus to an essential question.
How much about female health can we infer from high-frequency timeseries of temperature, ANS, and metabolic output? More broadly, what does the phenomenological coupling among reproductive, metabolic, and autonomic outputs teach us about the interconnected regulation of physiological systems, when these systems have been largely interrogated independently? These questions drove me, since 2014, to learn how to detangle more subtle messages from familiar measurements. They can provide real-world tools for everyday individuals, researchers, clinicians and – I hope, further encourage the development of a network physiology mindset in our fields.
I hope that the proofs-of-concept here can encourage inclusion of diverse, real world populations in validating new tools. Most of all, I hope that participation in research can give agency to self-trackers of all ages, and help us see to see reproduction as broader than fertility: as a litmus test for overall health.
Why?
Why?
Today, the decline in population metabolic health and fertility is acknowledged and debated to a much greater extent than 10 or even 5 years ago. I develop and validate tools to combat this decline - from supporting pregnancy through early detection and labor prediction, to improving metabolic health through diabetes management and fasting mimetics.
These topics are of central importance in all our lives, but often only become salient in early adulthood. For me, that salience came across the college years. After a childhood in a part of Northern California still tied to the rhythms of agriculture, UC Berkeley was a jolt into a world in which people expected food, light, and performance at all hours. It was, confusingly, the time to find a life partner and delay motherhood. These combined demands brought hormones and metabolism into the spotlight.
I watched as friends tried to find forms of contraception that minimized side effects, as those who had delayed childbearing struggled to get and stay pregnant, as family members took menopausal hormone replacement therapy, and as diabetes and reproductive cancer crept into the circle of those I love. By my late teens, the interactions among metabolism and reproduction dominated life inside and outside the lab. I was shocked how few personalized tools existed to help plan daily life - from training and studying to family planning.
I was lucky to find wonderful mentors who taught me to read non-invasive signals of reproductive and metabolic health, and to transform those signals into actionable predictions. Through the labs of Lance Kriegsfeld, Linda Wilbrecht, work at Quantified Self, and collaboration with wearable companies, I learned the context through which I see the world today: rhythmic, networked, and therefore somewhat predictable. On a personal level, I've been able to use the tools I developed to improve how I eat and train, plan and achieve a healthy pregnancy, pinpoint my true due date and recover postpartum.
When not doing the things that occupy this site, I like to hang with my baby son, speak sloppy French and Finnish, and run.
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