Claudia von Boeselager (00:00)
Hey there, I'm Claudia von Boeselager a former investment banker turned entrepreneur, longevity coach, biohacker and mother of two. Once burnt out and overwhelmed with chronic health issues, I've transformed my life and helped thousands of people do the same. I've even reduced my biological age by 17 years. Yes, I'm 26 again. Now I'm here to share the tools, strategies and inspiration to help you live healthier, happier and longer.
On this podcast, I interview world-leading experts in health, biohacking, mindset and performance and share personal stories and learnings to bring you the latest insights and tips. Think of this as your go-to space for real talk about all things health and optimizing your life. Ready to unlock your best self? Let's dive in. This is the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast.
today we are diving into one of my favorite topics, how to get maximum health and longevity benefits in minimum time. My guest today is Ulrich Dempfler, co-founder and CEO of Carol, the world's first exercise bike designed to deliver reduced exertion hits or re-hit outside of a lab setting.
Ulrich started his career as a mechanical engineer working with Europe's top automobile manufacturers before moving to London where he pioneered AI in the UK Health Service. A BBC documentary on ReHIT inspired him to co-found Carol. After 40 prototypes, and we're going to dig into this, they created the world's only ReHIT bike, which delivers the benefits of a 45-minute run in under 10 minutes. So I'm very excited to share this with you today.
The results have been life-changing Ulrich will share about this, he personally improved his cardio health by 50%, lost 10 kilos or 22 pounds and normalized his blood pressure, which is so important for so many of us. Today, Carol is helping people everywhere optimize their health and longevity. So Ulrich, welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle podcast. I'm so excited to be in person with you today.

Ulrich Dempfle (01:56)
Thank you, thank you so much.

Claudia von Boeselager (03:47)
So I'd love to dig into your beginning in mechanical engineering and the automotive worlds. What drew you from cars to cardio?

Ulrich Dempfle (03:55)
So life is a winding river, and the times it takes you to places also by chance. What I always wanted to do is design a product, design ideally something you can sit on. at first that was cars, and as a mechanical engineer from Germany, that's the obvious choice. And I worked for a few years in the automotive industry. And then actually personal reasons.
really meant I wanted to relocate to London and there's not any automotive makers, car makers here. And so I transitioned into healthcare and worked a lot with hospitals, which are in some ways factories with humans inside. And our mission there was to make patient care better and more cost effective.
prevention and preventing disease is really the key. That's the thing where the big bugs are and where you get the big gains. And so we worked with all the big hospitals in London, actually, I know them all, and did some pretty cool stuff around using AI and machine learning to identify which patients would benefit from specific interventions and then designed
disease management programs for people with heart conditions or metabolic conditions. And that's all good. And it's cool to do cool stuff to identify who benefits. But there is a quite basic fundamental truth, which is that exercise is really one of the, maybe the most powerful intervention for most of us, including our patients at the time.
The problem is just people don't do it. In the Western world, if you look, you find that maybe 5 % of the population does the recommended amount of cardio exercise each week. So it's incredibly low. And people leave massive benefits, massive health benefits, fitness benefits, quality of life benefits, untapped, they leave them on the table. When you ask them, so, and that's survey after survey,
Why the top answer is always lack of time. There's a debate whether that's the real reason or whether there's a bit of laziness, whether it's an excuse. But then on the other hand, there's trillion dollar companies competing for your time, the attention economy. So we've chosen to believe people when they say that it's time and lack of time that holds them back from exercising.
Andwhen we came across the science of ReHIT, we thought that is really a game changer and can shift the needle because it takes away the time constraint and that hurdle because it's incredibly short, incredibly efficient. need, I mean, you can do it in as little as five minutes and you only have to do it two to three times a week to get fantastic cardiovascular metabolic health benefits.
And yeah, it almost sounds too good to be true.

Claudia von Boeselager (06:41)
We're going to dig into

Ulrich Dempfle (06:42)
my initial reaction was just, I want to do this. And yeah, then things grew from there.

Claudia von Boeselager (06:47)
So exciting and I'm going to dig into a bunch of it, but I understand that you saw the BBC documentary on Rehit, right? So what made you think it was that? it that you're like, this is the solution, people don't have time, I want to make this my passion? Is that, was that an aha moment?

Ulrich Dempfle (07:04)
So that was in 2012. it's a while ago, the late Dr. Michael Moseley presented the science of ReHIT. He had Dr. Niels Vollard, Professor Jamie Timmons on the show and showcased what fantastic health benefits you can obtain with really minimal amount of time. And now ReHIT stands for reduced exertion.
high intensity interval training. Many people will be familiar with HIIT. And HIIT is, no question, it's very effective. It's a very effective training method. But most HIIT classes, first take 20 or 30 minutes or 35, by the time you're done, they're very strenuous. You're definitely sweat drenched afterwards. And now the promise of REHIIT was, and this is specifically scientists,

Claudia von Boeselager (07:38)
Yeah, exactly.

Ulrich Dempfle (07:50)
titrating down how much sprinting, how much vigorous activity do you have to do to get the benefits of hit? And they found that two 20 second sprints are enough to get the benefits of a much longer hit session or the benefits and greater benefits than a 45 minute run. And I remember very well, Michael Mosley,
did the workout in his suit because most people, most people don't even sweat. We don't overemphasize that too much because we anyway have to grab

Claudia von Boeselager (08:24)
sweat

easily so yeah I didn't but yeah.

Ulrich Dempfle (08:27)
And
people at some point, people don't believe it anymore because they say that is too good to be true. If you don't even sweat five minutes and you don't even sweat, come on. And it is, you know, some people are really prone to sweat sweating. So everybody's maybe one in 10. Yeah, they will break a sweat. But most people will sweat very little or not at all. No, when I saw that it was just love at first sight. And I thought I want to do this. And at first, I really thought of it just for myself.
And I went the very next day. So kind of impulsive.

Claudia von Boeselager (08:57)
So mission driven, even like I want to.

Ulrich Dempfle (09:00)
to an equipment store, fitness equipment store, and got myself an exercise bike. And I had paid close attention to what they've sent and thought, okay, I need this and that and it needs to be good for sprinting. And got it, tried it at home and it was nothing like what they had described on television.

Claudia von Boeselager (09:16)
Can you explain for people what the difference is? Because some people might be listening or watching and they might be like, but I've got an exercise bike or, I even own a Peloton as well and it's different. So explain.

Ulrich Dempfle (09:28)
The difference, my experience was first, the whole thing wasn't easy. The warm up, recovery and cool down, I went hard. And then the sprints, I tried to go very hard, but it was also difficult to find the right resistance, apply it at the right time. I sweated a lot. It was just an unpleasant experience.

Claudia von Boeselager (09:46)
You were more stressed trying to figure out, I

Ulrich Dempfle (09:49)
And so that was really a big disappointment. But instead of just putting it in the corner and giving up, we called Professor Timmons, Dr. Vollard, and said, like, what's up? TV? Yes, it does work. And literally the very first thing they said is, well, you need a special bike. ⁓

Claudia von Boeselager (10:01)
I saw you on TV! Yes!

Okay. It's like, now you tell me.

Ulrich Dempfle (10:10)
Yeah,
Isaki, why didn't you say that on the program? Exactly. Could have saved, yeah, finding a very, very expensive clothes hanger. And so they invited us to their lab and let us do the workout on their equipment. And that was really a completely different experience. It was, I don't want to say completely easy, but a fairly, a much easier experience. I did not sweat.
And it was something that I thought, yes, that I can actually do two to three times per week. now the issue was the equipment they used was research equipment. The bikes were around $10,000 a piece. And then the real sticking point was, even if you could afford that, you needed a second person to operate the bike for you. So you needed a lab technician or kind of a very well experienced trainer or so.
to operate the bike for you. And that's just not a solution. That's okay for a lab study in an academic environment. It's not okay for consumers. And that's where we thought, hang on, why can't we just build an automated bike that just truthfully replicates the workouts as they're done in the lab and make that a product with like a mass market application.
Yeah, and that's that we resolved to do that. We were very passionate about it. And yes, that was a long journey. ⁓

Claudia von Boeselager (11:32)
Yeah,

there was 40 prototypes. maybe tell us about that. What was, because especially you coming from being a mechanical engineer, so probably no better person to try to figure it out. But what was that journey? What were those 40 iterations?

Ulrich Dempfle (11:44)
Yeah, put very simply, having a concept idea to having actually something that reliably works and is a pleasant, good experience just takes a lot of time. I mean, the very early prototypes were actually functioning quite well, but then looked clunky, didn't stay consistent over time. we did trials with real people,
They had trouble with them. there was just a lot of iterating until we got to the first package that we launched in late 2018. And then our second bike that we launched, Summer 22, which then also looked beautiful and had all the learnings from thousands of riders built into it. So it's just, even if you know quite well what you want to do,
To make a nice product, it takes a while.

Claudia von Boeselager (12:37)
Exactly. Yeah, wasn't built in a day, as they say as well. And I'll share my journey with the cow bike this morning. I finally had a chance, it was installed yesterday. I finally had a chance to try it myself. And it's so almost counterintuitive because I'm the type that is always like, have to push as hard as possible. was like, slow down at the beginning, like any of nice music. I did the Tiger program, which was the very first one. So it was all, I was like, why are they calling it Tiger?
tell you in a minute and listening to this soft forest and going very slow and pedaling and then it's like, but then all of a sudden, it's like voice that talks to you at the same time, there's cyber two tigers there go as fast as you can. So I'm like pedaling like a crazy person as well, but it's for a short sprint. And as you said as well, it almost feels too easy. I'm like, this is really improving my via two max. And I want to dig a little bit more into that as well, but
It's wonderful because as someone with two kids and multiple businesses and so many different things going on, that time factor is like, do I really have time to get to the gym, to do the class, to do this or that, or should I do something else today? ⁓ And what I really love as well is that I have also, as I mentioned, the Peloton during COVID, you don't need to control figuring out, I doing the right one or not, et cetera. There's just no choice. You just push as hard as you can and you go. So it takes the...
effort out of it. we know, decision fatigue is real. you say that too.

Ulrich Dempfle (13:59)
It takes the mental effort ⁓ out of it and it makes it very easy to get it right. the ReHIT works because you momentarily push to your maximum intensity, to your maximum power. And to achieve that, a few things have to come together. So you need to have your optimal resistance. It needs to be applied at the right time. And that is
after you've accelerated at a low resistance to a very high pedal speed, and then it needs to be applied very quickly, very rapidly. That's what in the lab a coach did, a lab technician did, and which now our bike does in a fully automated way. And that just makes it very easy to get the exercise right. And I think one thing where we have a real edge compared to that old lab equipment, and this is by the way why
the leading labs in that field do their research on car or bikes. Yeah, no, we're very proud of that. Which also means that all the latest research, well, I shouldn't say all, but the leading labs work with our bikes and some of the latest research on ReHIT is really done on our machines. So you have that additional great validation and reassurance. And that's to get that right on a normal
exercise bike would just be very difficult and probably unsatisfying. there's so we have a product that can actually do many things, but that's really optimized for rehab. And if you want to do rehab, if you want to get like the most efficient cardio, then that is a great way to do it. There are some alternatives. So hill sprints, for example, that's I think a legitimate way to
Try to achieve the same thing and a very low cost alternative. you have a hill and you can sprint, by all means try it.

Claudia von Boeselager (15:47)
Yeah, and there's no traffic in the way or other dangers.

Ulrich Dempfle (15:50)
And
most people just like after 30 don't sprint anymore. That just doesn't, no, literally that doesn't happen. People are over the age of 30. If you don't compete in a sport anymore, usually don't sprint. But that is exactly where the magic happens and where you get the greatest benefit in the shortest amount of time. So it's actually a shame that that has fallen away. And that's where, yeah, our product comes in.
and Carol Biken Rehit comes in to basically bring that back.

Claudia von Boeselager (16:19)
I'm really excited now to dig into VO2max and Longevity because perhaps some people will obviously know this, but it's one of the key indicators and predictors of lifespan and partly healthspan as well. It's actually stronger than cholesterol, blood sugar or BMI.
Why VO2 max, which is often called the number one predictor of longevity. Why is that? Why, why is it so important? Why should people really be focusing on VO2 max?

Ulrich Dempfle (16:44)
Yeah, sure. So first, it's an observation. There's a little bit of black box in the middle, but we're very clear, and my understanding is the strongest correlate for life expectancy. So there's nothing, no other physiological marker that predicts life expectancy more strongly than VO2 max.

Claudia von Boeselager (17:05)
So I just want to reiterate that for people listening, there's no stronger predictor of longevity than VO2 max. Correct. We have to listen to this.

Ulrich Dempfle (17:12)
And now what is VO2max? VO2max is your ability to metabolize, to burn oxygen while exercising. And it's your maximum ability to burn oxygen. And to achieve that, many things have to happen and be right. So there's two sides to it. There's oxygen consumption on the one side, and that is about mitochondrial function, mitochondrial health.
Mitochondria are the parts in your cells that help you burn oxygen. So that's how many, how big, how functional mitochondria do you have to help you metabolize oxygen? And then the other side is around oxygen delivery. That's your lungs, your heart, what's your peak flow, your stroke capacity, what's your capillary of your muscl
your plasma levels. So there's really very many things that have to come together to have a high VO2 max. And altogether, that's just the observation and what we see. It means if you have a high VO2 max, have, yeah, if you increase your VO2 max, you really do something great for life expectancy for longevity.
There's some shocking statistics around that. there are big studies, so very, very highly powered studies with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of participants. So the science of that is absolutely clear. That tracked people over many years and looked at real end points, like avoidable deaths. And you've mentioned some statistics. One I really...
like and even though it sounds a bit macabre, but so low cardio respiratory fitness, low VO2 max leads to more avoidable deaths than smoking, diabetes and obesity combined. Wow. And those are big things when we think about a health, when we think about longevity, those are things that we would think of and try to improve.
but low-cardio respiratory fitness leads to more avoidable deaths than those three combined. And yeah, that sounds a bit like macabre, but there's a really positive side to it because VO2max is a marker that you can work on, that you can improve, and that you can improve dramatically in even a relatively short period of time.

Claudia von Boeselager (19:33)
And that's the good news exactly, because some people might as well, I've missed the boat or maybe I'm sort of late 40s, 50s. I haven't gotten started on time. it's applicable across the board any age.

Ulrich Dempfle (19:42)
would
you say? No, there's... First, Vio2Max declines with age. very clearly. So we see, all of us, on average, a 10 % decline in Vio2Max per decade.

Claudia von Boeselager (19:54)
Okay, I was like, per year would be dreadful. No, per decade, okay, per decade.

Ulrich Dempfle (19:59)
But the good news is you can, with tools like the Carol Bike and with workouts like ReHit, with very little time investment, offset a lot of that. So research has shown, and we see this in our data, that over an eight-week period, doing three very short workouts per week, so eight minutes, five to eight minutes.
spending 15 to 25 minutes per week, you can improve your VO2 max, and you can expect to improve your VO2 max by around 12%. Wow. That's very substantial. So there's more than a decade of aging that you'd offset. And for the average person, that would translate into two years additional life expectancy. That's a phenomenal power eye in terms of what you put into it and what you get out of it.
It also doesn't stop there. So if you continue the improvements, most people see that further, further improvements. In my first year, I improved my VO2 max by 50%.

Claudia von Boeselager (20:59)
So one year. Yes. And obviously the baseline was maybe not so great, but still that's a huge jump. Exactly.

Ulrich Dempfle (21:03)
But that's yeah.
Exactly. that's not everybody, but seeing 20%, 30 % improvement is entirely plausible and that's common. And so it does, yeah, it offers really fantastic benefits in very, little time. In terms of why this is so effective, there's,

Claudia von Boeselager (21:25)
How? How good to be true? what's such a short space of time? How is it possible? So, can you explain a bit the science and also what the research is saying? That would be really helpful.

Ulrich Dempfle (21:32)
So one thing that we emphasize is, and this is true for any workout, you don't really get fitter while working out. You get fitter in the recovery between your workouts. So what the workout has to do, it has to provide a training stimulus, an adaptation stimulus. And with ReHIT, with those two 20-second sprints, you can trigger
a very powerful training stimulus in exceptionally little time. And the secret there is intensity. So you push to your max intensity. then if we want, can go a little bit deeper into this. So you simulate an emergency situation, like the tiger coming after you. And that's so very thoughtfully epic as like some motivation while you're doing the workout.

Claudia von Boeselager (22:13)
Last time we're toothed.

Ulrich Dempfle (22:22)
And the energy demand in your muscles increases by a factor of 100 compared to rest. So you cause momentarily a really severe energy crisis in your muscles. They respond. They try to mobilize lots of energy, get you ready for a situation where you have to survive for your life.
And there your body has to tap into the fastest acting energy systems. And so that's first phosphocreatine. And then after about 10 seconds, it's glycogen, which is a storage form of sugar that's locally stored in your muscle. And your body mobilizes lots of glycogen. So it mobilizes about 25 to 30 % of the glycogen stored in your thighs.

Claudia von Boeselager (23:10)
Within seconds was and.

Ulrich Dempfle (23:11)
within seconds.
From an energy perspective, that would sustain you for a much longer period and for much longer workout. So you don't burn through all of this, but your body mobilizes it. It takes it out of the stores and bound to the glycogen are important signaling molecules, AMP, that get activated and that get activated to AMPK.
and then trigger a whole cascade of biological signaling, activating what's called PGC1 alpha, which is your body's master regulator for mitochondrial biogenesis. And so through those very, short sprints, you can send a very powerful signal to your body that it has to get fitter and stronger. And that's something you achieve, yeah, just if you go to maximum intensity.
⁓ And that you achieve in so little time only with maximum intensity. With long exercise, you actually end up with the same end point. So you also activate PGC 1 alpha, but through a different adaptation pathway. And that requires 45 to 60 minutes of steady state or steady contractions. Then you activate what's called the calcium channel pathway.
So CAMK, but we, and with Carobike, with ReHit, you activate the AMPK pathway in seconds. And so we get the same and better results in, yeah, a fraction of the time. And you know what's really very curious and really very much unlike any other workout, unlike any exercise is ReHit is one of the...
To my knowledge, it's the only workout where more doesn't give more benefits.

Claudia von Boeselager (24:55)
It's like the minimum effective dose.

Ulrich Dempfle (24:57)
Yeah, but not only that. the data is quite clear that if you do more sprints, you don't get more benefits. And the data suggests even that if you do more sprints or longer sprints, you get less benefits. So if you did, I do six sprints and they're 40 seconds, much more, much better. No, it's not true. You seem to get less benefits. And that...

Our academic partners, there's complex biological processes. But the presumption is that if you do more and longer sprints, that psychology, your mind kicks in and you pace yourself. You try to get through the workout. You try not to collapse before. You're not operating at your max, but you're at 80%, 90%. And then you just...

Claudia von Boeselager (25:38)
The end of- You're at your best. And you-

Ulrich Dempfle (25:46)
don't trigger that cascade, that signaling pathway. Whereas ReHIT, it's just long enough so the pathway does get activated and triggered. And it's short enough so that you can actually go all out. In those 20 seconds, true 20 seconds, you can actually push to your limits. It's short enough. I like to compare it to, it's a very short tunnel.
almost as soon as you enter it.

Claudia von Boeselager (26:12)
You can see the ends. And they have a countdown time on the screen of everyone. So I was like, okay, this is great. I can tell.

Ulrich Dempfle (26:18)
You can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And also the machine counts you down when to start. And so it takes a lot of the mental load.
And so that's how we can kind of that really, yeah, like hack of rapid glycogen depletion. That is the secret of, or not the secret, that's why it is so efficient and how you can get, yeah, really quite fantastic benefits, not just VO2 max, it's much, much wider. So there's really many things happening in your body.
So cardio respiratory fitness, VO2 max, but also metabolic health, muscle gain. The forces are so high that it's meaningful for muscular strength. Wow. Okay. There's a great deal of brain benefits and mental and cognitive. Exactly that, yes. So there's this ⁓ relatively recent studies that have shown that you get a much greater BDNF release from shorts.

Claudia von Boeselager (27:03)
PDNS production.

Ulrich Dempfle (27:14)
vigorous sprints compared to a longer steady state exercise of five, six times higher. And BDNF is really important for brain health, for neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, memory formation, has lots of things. It does lots of things for your neurotransmitters, for serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine. So there's a raft of benefits. Some of it is reflective, that exercise is just so important and so powerful.
And that we had just takes all these benefits from exercise and compresses them in a really short period of time.

Claudia von Boeselager (27:48)
I know, it's like magic, honestly, it's too good to be true. And I'm curious, I want to pick up on the mitochondrial health. So is it triggering mitophagy, so the clearing out of all mitochondria and ⁓ creating new mitochondria? What exactly is happening at the mitochondrial level? Because we know it's like the energy packs of the cells for people maybe unfamiliar. What is happening there during these short sessions?

Ulrich Dempfle (28:08)
Yes. So I'm actually, I haven't heard the by autophagy and the renewal. I attributed motor fasting, which is a great thing and people should fast. There's many good things we should do. What we do know for ReHIT is the so mitochondrial biogenesis leading to more larger
and more efficient mitochondria. And that is triggered through, because you have a very robust PGC1 alpha release and activation from the sprints. And so in our view and the academics that we worked with, this is first very effective and definitely the most efficient way to improve mitochondrial health.
A little bit of arguments to other people who claim that for mitochondrial health, you should be ⁓ doing zone two training and the bike is wonderful for zone two training if you wanted to do longer sessions.

Claudia von Boeselager (29:03)
Which apparently is better for men than women, by the way, so yeah.

Ulrich Dempfle (29:06)
That's

what I've heard too, yes, exactly. But there's very clearly some of the very leading researchers in this field tell us, and there's also new papers written about that, that that seems to be really not the case. So at least there's no evidence for that. And then when it comes to efficiency, if you compare three times five to eight minutes for reheat per week,
versus four to five times 90 minutes on lower intensity Zone 2 training. There's just no question about it. So Zone 2 training, we don't want to poo poo it at all. It's a great addition if you have lots of time or you're really ambitious. And professionals, great daily, like pro cyclists do lots of Zone 2 training as well. But for most people,
If they have to think about what do I do with my limited time, the highest ROI clearly on ReHit. And this would be kind of the foundation, or we would recommend to make that the foundation in your stack. Because there's lots of good things that you can do for your health. And if you want to be a health optimizer, if you want to be a biohacker, you could do this all day, every day and see results, but you wouldn't be doing much else.
And so life is, you know.

Claudia von Boeselager (30:15)
people want to live a variety in life and not just focusing on optimizing.

Ulrich Dempfle (30:20)
then yeah do the things you love and if you love Zone 2, fine also great but if you want results then we had this really would be our go-to recommendation.

Claudia von Boeselager (30:31)
And I'd love if we could link the research and the show notes then as well. Absolutely. If people want to go down those rabbit holes, that would be brilliant. So I'd like to touch on metabolic health in particular, right? So we know that this is a huge issue. 93 % of US adults, 93 % have at least one marker of poor metabolic health. So it could be blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol, waist circumference. And as we know,

poor metabolic health accelerates aging and disease. So how does ReHIT impact insulin sensitivity and metabolic flexibility to key factors in healthy aging?

Ulrich Dempfle (31:07)
Yeah. first, a bit like VO2 max, there's, we know the input and the output. We know that metabolic health is incredibly important for longevity, life expectancy, quality of life is a risk factor for many other diseases. So clearly something people should take seriously. sadly is in a very, very poor state in the Western.

almost around.

Claudia von Boeselager (31:30)
in the US, but it's getting in more more countries.

Ulrich Dempfle (31:33)
And the other thing we know is that exercise is an incredibly powerful way to improve your metabolic health. there, so again, those are proper scientific studies that have shown that in eight weeks doing ReHIT workouts three times a week, you could reduce or you can expect to reduce your risk.

of developing metabolic diseases by 62%. Wow. 62%. Yes. there was a control group that did 150 minutes of moderate intensity. Now, they also saw a significant risk reduction. They saw a risk reduction of 26%. Still is meaningful. Yes. So that shows exercise is really powerful, more broadly. But with much less time.

Claudia von Boeselager (31:59)
62,

Ulrich Dempfle (32:20)
you got more than twice the risk reduction with ReHIT. that was exactly as you described. So that was measured by a score. It's called the Metz score. That is a clinical compound score of things like cholesterol, blood pressure, triglycerides, waist circumference, and then a fifth one, think, blood pressure. And the reduction that was observed

was the same as you'd expect from taking prescription medication like metformin. So it's a very, very meaningful risk reduction with minimal time involved. You get all the other benefits. So given how like what a massive public health, like both on a population and on a personal level, what a big problem this is. Here's a solution.

that can dramatically improve your metabolic health in very, little time. Now, why is that so effective? So as I said, complex biological processes, but insulin, one of its functions is to regulate how we access energy, how we store energy, how we access energy in our fat stores, how we access energy in our ⁓ blood, in our muscles.

And once we, if you empty out your glycogen stores and deplete your emergency energy reserve.

You send, like your body wants to replenish that as quickly as possible because it wants to be ready for the next. It needs a buff. Emergency. Yes, exactly. It wants to be ready for, for whatever, you know, that. Yeah, exactly. There might be another tiger. And, and so that process of accessing and forcing your body to access sugar, glycogen very rapidly and then replenishing them.

Claudia von Boeselager (33:54)
as an

Ulrich Dempfle (34:07)
That's ⁓ thought to improve your insulin sensitivity and help with the other metabolic health markers. And so that's one thing. And the other thing is also if you deplete your glycogen stores and you then consume sugar, you actually have somewhere to put it. don't have to, your body's not in a position where it doesn't know where to put that stuff and then it gets turned into fat and goes onto your...

onto your hip, but you actually have somewhere to put it. that's part of the reason. yeah, the human body is a complex machine. And there's many things happening. And ⁓ yeah, indeed. And it's actually quite exciting. Every couple of months, I get emailed by our academic partners and they say, look, we've found this and that improves as well.

Claudia von Boeselager (34:41)
learning new things.

Ulrich Dempfle (34:54)
Wow, the list gets longer and longer. Just a very new thing was that some, so IL-6, interlucent 6, a compound that's really important for fighting and preventing cancer gets a very robust release from that. So this is a very powerful way and the benefits are wide and offer many things for many people.

Claudia von Boeselager (35:19)
And not that time consuming as well, which is so valuable. So yeah, I think it's so exciting. And I'm thinking also for like all the diabetics and people with pre-diabetes as well, investing those few minutes each week to do this ⁓ is amazing. And as my audience will know, I'm a huge advocate around brain health and just maintaining at a peak performance. have so much mitochondria that...

all the benefits as well. So it's really phenomenal. it's so, you really hit the golden ticket with Carol here. Maybe you can explain also why metabolic flexibility. So the ability to switch between burning carbs and fans is so important for longevity as well. So people hear a lot metabolic health, people have poor metabolic health, but the key is to have good metabolic flexibility. So can you explain that a bit?

Ulrich Dempfle (36:04)
Not everything in the depth that some others might be, but as I understand it, one key benefit of being metabolically flexible is, like, first, the ability to switch between energy sources and to also being able to access energy stored in your adipose, in your fat tissue. So...

One thing I attribute to doing Rehead Rides is I find it easier to get through fasting periods without feeling so hungry. I can go, so I don't do water fasts or so, sometimes I do like five day fasts with very low calorie consumption. And I feel that this

Personal opinion, yeah. But that I actually, I'm not starving myself because I have energy. My brain can access energy that I'm carrying around with me and therefore find it easier to get through that times. If you're insulin resistant and metabolically inflexible, you would find that much harder and then your brain is really screaming.

Claudia von Boeselager (36:53)
Exactly. End of one.

Ulrich Dempfle (37:17)
that it's stopping and that you need to feed the bee. Yeah, exactly. And so that makes it much, much harder. Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager (37:21)
You're good.

I'm curious because when you switch into ketosis and you produce the ketones, which your brain absolutely loves and people with dementia, really recommend to be on a ketogenic diet. I wonder, it help to flip that switch into ketosis quicker? So has there research been done on this?

Ulrich Dempfle (37:41)
I'm not aware of specific research on that point. But the key to getting into ketosis is to basically deplete your sugar levels, your sugar stores. that's partly, that's a big part of why carol and rehyd is so effective because it's so effective at depleting glycogen stores.

Claudia von Boeselager (37:43)
Wind up there.

Ulrich Dempfle (38:03)
My understanding is that the people who advocate fasting don't necessarily advocate a very vigorous ⁓ exercise at the same time. So this is not a recommendation. Don't try that at home, I am going to do

Claudia von Boeselager (38:15)
on

pesto now out of curiosity.

Ulrich Dempfle (38:18)
I still, so when I do a fast, I still do reheat those like in a five day fast, two or three times. And also to kick it off, because it seems plausible to me that that would be a like a complimentary approach. If you want to get quicker into ketosis, that basically emptying out your sugar stores through

such a short and vigorous exercise is actually a good thing. this is personal opinion. ⁓

Claudia von Boeselager (38:50)
I've been

in here everybody, but I do think it's really interesting. Have you ever tested your Mollemares? the tester? No. I've tested it home from previously when I used to do the keto diet bit more often. Yes. I will try it and I'll let you know as well. curious if it goes quicker and deeper.

Ulrich Dempfle (38:56)
I have no...

Some

of our users is a very broad range. We have completely normal people. Everyday people. Everyday people who just want... Usually, you ask about ages. Our users are generally more 45 to 65. That's the people who...

Claudia von Boeselager (39:25)
who realize change is happening.

Ulrich Dempfle (39:26)
Yeah, who approach exercise and working out with some more intent. So they have clear health improvement goals. They have clear fitness goals that are not a six pack, but it's really about health. It's about longevity. It's about health spam. Yeah, exactly.

And, but we also have biohackers who do all sorts of things and who very closely watch their blood sugar levels when they do the exercise. so we've got various reports, but the exercise can induce a spike because you're ⁓ releasing so much glycogen from your muscles that you actually see a transient spike in blood sugar levels after the exercise. But obviously that normalizes them very quickly.

I think should help with metabolic flexibility and help with fasting and with helping with getting into ptosis if that's your objective.

Claudia von Boeselager (40:15)
Amazing. So another benefits and Steve to keep us posted on the research coming out as well. So we discussed this a little bit before, but just so people understand the statistics that the WHO recommends 150 minutes of cardio per week, yet fewer than one in four adults. I think you said 5 % actually achieved this. And obviously Carol condenses those benefits into five minutes, three times a week. And as we were discussing at the beginning, know, time is a real barrier, but

Do you think for people that are trying to combine, let's say different types of workouts, and I know speaking to also people with my audience as well, that some are like, well, they tell me to do the weight training and then I need to focus on my grip strength. How is the ideal protocol in a week, would you say, combining Carol, but what else would you combine in terms of exercise to really help people who are hearing different messaging and want to get it right?

Ulrich Dempfle (41:10)
So our recommendation would be, yes, you have to cover more than just cardio. So there's several pillars to physical, good physical health and getting most of exercise. So it's cardio strength and to some extent also mobility, flexibility. In terms, because DO2 max is this most important marker.

I think if I just had to prioritize my stack, I would say yes. That's the bottom. one, yeah, exactly. That's where I would start. So if I have so much time per week, that's a really high ROI activity, three times a week, three carrel re-hit sessions. Or if you want to do hill sprints, do hill sprints, but to sprint three times a week.

Then before doing any zone two or other forms of cardio, I would very clearly lift some weights. And it depends a bit what you have available, but you can also do weightlifting with actually quite reasonable time investment. my recommendation and understanding would be to do like big compound movements.

that involve multiple joints, like squats, deadlifts, press ups, push ups, pull ups, overhead press. three push, three pull. That's what I do. And if you have little time, I would do single set to failure, just ⁓ relatively heavy weight.

Claudia von Boeselager (42:15)
For example, maybe.

way to remember.

Ulrich Dempfle (42:34)
do one set of each exercise, but with intent and really as much as you can. So again, like rather prioritize intensity than volume. some, like if you have training, there are machines out there that can deliver fantastically effective workouts where really one time a week is enough. If you...

don't have that, if you have weights, then I would do that also two to three times a week and I would just alternate it with the cardio. And then the third pillar is like some form of yoga pilates stretching for mobility, stability. By first it's just part of a well-rounded routine.

One thing that like accidents, falls, things like that, they can really put a spanner in the works. I broke my collarbone last winter skiing and it really,

Claudia von Boeselager (43:24)
set you back. Yes, of course.

Ulrich Dempfle (43:26)
even if you have the best intentions and that unfortunately with, I saw that with my mother as well, a fall can really,

leads to a step change. And in a certain age, it's really hard to recover from it fully. And so anything that avoids that risk is very helpful. And so I think that has to be also part of a well-rounded package. that, cardio strength, mobility, stability, that rounds off exercise, and then of course, many other things, nutrition, sleep.

maybe some mindfulness meditation or so. so there's a lot you would. And friendship. And there's a lot you'd want to do. And because you want to cover all of those bases and have a life and do stuff you enjoy. Yeah, exactly. We think it's important.

Claudia von Boeselager (44:01)
Social connection, very important. Yeah, of course.

to the same time read a book.

Ulrich Dempfle (44:16)
to do it all in a fairly time efficient way. Otherwise it's really hard to get it all together.

Claudia von Boeselager (44:22)
Yeah, you were mentioning before the attention economy, right? And there's so many things pulling at us. And with some of my private one-on-one coaching clients, what we always do is to look, how do you, coming from the sort of tech world, like how do you set it up to win? You put it in your schedule and it's automated. You don't even need to think about it. So one less decision to make. And if it's in the calendar and you pick your days of the week, when you do your Re-hit session, your Cal session, you do your weight training, you just...

It's like brushing your teeth, you don't think about it. And it gets done, and you know you're taking care of your health as well. So yeah, really powerful.

Ulrich Dempfle (44:53)
And yeah, super important. So we strongly believe that habit formation and just reducing the barriers and make it as easy as possible to actually do it is the key. Because one thing that is unfortunate, exercise is not a one-off hit. you can't just expect to...

you know, workout for six weeks and then that lasts for the next six years. No, that's just not how exercise works. Exercise, like nutrition, like sleep is something you have to do right all the time. And therefore you have to find something that fits into your life, not just in moments when you're like super motivated or so, but that always fits into your life, whether you're busy, you're relaxed on holidays or not.

something that fits into your life and that you can stick to. that is, so adherence is in fact more important than anything else when it comes to exercise. So, and we believe that, and we see this with our users because we get really high adherence rates, but taking that time constraint away is a powerful way to achieve adherence.

And then if you lower the barriers, if you have a carrel bike at home and you can do it in a semi-automated, I mean, yeah, in a very like...

Claudia von Boeselager (46:14)
Roll out of bed, put the shoes on, sit on the bike.

Ulrich Dempfle (46:17)
I like

your winning morning routine and have Carol part of that, have Rehab being part of your winning morning routine. Then that's really a big, big ⁓ win and something that helps people stick to it.

Claudia von Boeselager (46:30)
I'm really excited now that I have it up and running to do it. I also wonder for my kids, so I'm someone with ADHD. And so I'm all about, you know, how do you optimize brain health to set you up to win? How do you get that median F? I have the trampoline, had the pellets and now I've got the cow by. So I'm really excited about this as well because of that time constraint. And I have an 11 year old as well. When she was going for exams, she's like, you know, what can we do? So is this also okay for children? Has this been tested on kids as well?

Ulrich Dempfle (46:54)
So there's no lower age limit. The only constraint is they need to be tall enough to fit on the bike. But yes, children can and do use the carobike. The only thing that we say, and we have to also, please, so for children with adult supervision, that's kind of part of our terms, it's a common sense thing.

But yes, if they're tall enough, they can use the bike, absolutely.

Claudia von Boeselager (47:15)
amazing because I feel I'm very passionate about like, how do we get that generation to already be doing these things? Can you imagine we like wipe out the whole pandemic and issues and all these different challenges that come later by teaching them a bit younger? So I wanted to check that with you as well. Now, biohacking data and integration, I'd like to dig into a little bit. Carol is AI driven. Now, some people might be like, well, it's a bike. How is it AI driven? How does it work? So how does the bike personalize, resistance and adapt to each user?

Ulrich Dempfle (47:44)
So, and that's exactly one thing where we've, yeah, I would say like really meaningfully improved what our academic partners had in place before. So our first objective was just to truthfully replicate a lab grade workout in the real world. But then what our algorithms, what our AI does, it... ⁓

So when you first start, just looks at, we ask you a few things, you tell us a few things, your age, your height, your weight, your gender, your activity levels and so on. And based on that, we can set an initial estimate of what your optimal resistance would be. But then as you do the workouts, we can look at your performance. And the key thing is how quickly you fatigue through

out the sprints. And because we have a lot more data than anybody else on that. So the typical academic trial would have 20, 30, 50 participants for eight weeks, 10 weeks. So you get like hundreds of rides. We have millions of rides from tens of thousands of users. So we can just run

Claudia von Boeselager (48:51)
Reading, yeah.

Ulrich Dempfle (48:57)
more sophisticated algorithms over this to identify what the optimal resistance level is for somebody just like you, literally just like you. And then not just now, but as you get fitter and stronger, we can adjust the workout to make it as challenging as it has to be, to make it optimally challenging, not too hard, not too ⁓ easy.

to get you reliably achieve your maximum intensity. And that's a very core benefit or feature of our bike. And that helps us create an optimal workout every time for a very, very wide variety of users. So we can then optimize and personalize a workout that's suitable for my mom, who's now

She's 82 and she does it every other week. And that's one thing. And to top athletes who are really at the peak of their fitness and who get amazing scores. I think that's not human. And we can create a personalized, optimized workout for each of those and keep adapting it and adjusting it as you get fitter and stronger. Or, and I experienced that earlier in the year.

If you had to take a break because you had an injury or you were traveling or something, it happens. People do fall off

Life happens. The bike will then very, very rapidly also adjust to you again, to your new fitness level and make it easier and help you to perform an optimal re-hit level even if you had to deal with some setback.

Claudia von Boeselager (50:32)
which is amazing. And again, it takes away that bandwidth of trying to figure out, okay, now I need to calculate and figure it out. So, Ovid, can you explain what users will actually see in terms of metrics? So some people love data, myself included. What will they see? What does it mean? Can you walk us through that?

Ulrich Dempfle (50:48)
Yeah,

sure. So when you do a Rehead ride, you will get a handful of basket of metrics that show you your current fitness levels and that are really useful to track your progress. So you get your peak power. You get, and that is just what it is, like what's the maximum force that you exerted during the sprints.

That's a good measure for strength. You get your fitness score. Now fitness score is very good to track your VO2 max. It's not your VO2 max, but it's been designed to track your VO2 max.

Claudia von Boeselager (51:23)
So you look at the trend over time. Exactly

Ulrich Dempfle (51:26)
You get ⁓ calories burned both directly while you're on the bike, but also with the afterburn with the what's called EPOC, Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption. Because even if you don't sweat and even if it's so short, you get actually a very meaningful calorie burn out of it because you have for like 90, 120 minutes after the exercise, elevated metabolism.

and just burn more calories afterwards.

Claudia von Boeselager (51:54)
So

just to ask a question about is it estimating what you will burn just during the few minutes of the ride or within the next sort of 90, 120 minutes?

Ulrich Dempfle (52:03)
depends

on the ride you're doing. because for the Rehead rides and there's another type we call Fat Burn rides, we have actually worked with academic partners where we, yeah, proper scientific studies to quantify what the level of afterburn is depending on what your workout looked like. So for the 20 second Rehead rides, we measure how much

⁓ energy you burned on the bike and that's literally kind of the power and the time that gives us the energy you burned on the bike and estimate the afterburn based on solid scientific data. And yeah, it is meaningful. when I do like even five to eight minute ride, the total calorie consumption is something like 200, 220 calories.

Claudia von Boeselager (52:51)
That is pretty amazing.

Ulrich Dempfle (52:52)
Yeah, for somebody like me, that's 10 % of my, more than 10 % of my baseline calorie consumption. And so if weight management is one of your objectives, it's a meaningful contribution. Now for weight management, nutrition. Nutrition is the number one, but it's a meaningful contribution. calorie consumption, energy output, peak heart rate.

Claudia von Boeselager (53:10)
It contributes, it supports.

Ulrich Dempfle (53:16)
You get it all nicely graphed out. We also give you something we call the habit score. You try to reach 100, but that shows you how well you adhere to the program. And you can track all those metrics nicely over time and see your progression. Now, which is this quantification, gamification is an important motivator for some. For others, it's enough to feel fitter and you will feel fitter because it's so meaningful.

So those are the metrics you get after each Rehead ride. And because it's almost like a controlled experiment, it's a very nice way of tracking. The bike can do many things. It also has Biotomax testing protocols that you can do either with like a gas exchange analyzer that's like in commercial studios. They, some of our...

commercial gyms have that and you can do that periodically. I have one of those, it's not, most people wouldn't have that at home to precisely measure your VO2 max. But we also have programs that just follow the gold standards for estimating your VO2 max. A bit similar, if you have an Apple watch or Garmin or so, it will give you an estimate

after some workouts. If you've worked long enough, then it sees, the watch sees how your heart rate responded to the exercise. And it can then basically estimate what your energy consumption was during the workout. And it sees the heart rate response and from that estimates VO2 max. We're one level more precise because we don't have to estimate what the

power and the energy was, we measured that on the bike, we see your heart rate response and can therefore estimate more directly your B02 max. So this is something you could do. That's not the part that gets you fit, but that you could do every few weeks to check and see where you stand, to see where you stand compared to your peer group and is

Claudia von Boeselager (55:05)
I've reached a month.

Ulrich Dempfle (55:14)
Yeah, because it's so fundamental, it's actually a nice thing that many people would like to know. And so that's another thing you can measure and quantify and track.

Claudia von Boeselager (55:23)
And for people probably wondering how do you figure out the heart rate? So just to clarify, there is the heart rate monitor that is put on. So otherwise, that's like how you're going to figure that out as well. And just you were discussing fitness level and VO2 max. So it's correlated, it's estimated to be, it's not your VO2 max score, but just you measure it over time and it's a good indicator. people should. That's correct.

Ulrich Dempfle (55:43)
So VO2Max measures your aerobic capacity. So you do aerobic exercise to higher and higher intensity levels until you reach your aerobic limits. The reheat sprints are anaerobic sprints. So it's really like almost different category. And we look at your heart rate response to those anaerobic sprints and then calculate the fitness score.

based on that. it's really, it's different, but we've designed one to track the other closely. And if you have a 10 % improvement in fitness score, you can be very confident that you also had a 10 % improvement in VO2.

Claudia von Boeselager (56:21)
So it's a one to one correlation, okay?

Ulrich Dempfle (56:23)
Not the absolute numbers, but the improvement. And of course, there's like, at least over a group of people, yes, very much, they track each other very well. Then for individuals, I'm sure there's some variation. But it's a very good indicator that you get every single time you use the bike. And so it's great way of tracking.

Claudia von Boeselager (56:42)
And I just want to make a point because we were laughing about this before. So I did my first session today and you know, I'm not a big runner, but I have done like a half marathon and 10k, whatever it is. And it told me that I was in the below the lowest 30 % for my age range and for my fitness level. And I was like, oh no. And I've done other VO2 maxings and I was like telling me I was in the top range, but you reassured me that the first one is not the baseline.

Ulrich Dempfle (57:09)
So there's two things that play into that. One, the first few rides, like our bike and our AI lets to know you and will then calibrate to get the optimal workout for you. So that's one thing. The other thing is you will get like the first ride is

Claudia von Boeselager (57:28)
You're figuring things out. I didn't expect the tiger was coming so I was like, what's this?

Ulrich Dempfle (57:32)
So

you'll get better at it. there's both sides come to it. so yeah, the first ride wouldn't be our baseline. Our baseline would be once you've completed, so you do three, what we call ramp up rides. You start with 10 second sprints to just first see, you know, what it feels like. And they're a lot gentler. Then go to 15 and to 20 seconds. And once you've been at your fourth ride, the algorithms have found your

or very close to your optimal resistance, you will have gotten used to it, you know what to do. ⁓ And then that's what we would take as your baseline. And from there, you would see an improvement and you can expect to see an improvement.

Claudia von Boeselager (58:02)
Okay. ⁓

I will report what the actual baseline is and not the... Like I can't go to our conversation now and let you know I'm in the bottom 30 % ahead of that happened. For biohackers tracking their health, I'd like to hear if you have statistics around broader wearable protocols like for HRV or people... We talked about insulin sensitivity before, but even around biological age testing. So is this improving HRV? Is it decreasing resting heart rates?

Is it helping with biological age reversal?

Ulrich Dempfle (58:44)
We know obviously very much about the things that where we have data that we collect. So that's our data and that have been scientifically validated and established through proper trials, randomized control trials. And that is these very fundamental things like VO2 max. And we see our fitness scores following that very closely.

Claudia von Boeselager (58:50)
Yes, I'm a.

Ulrich Dempfle (59:12)
⁓ metabolic health with those markers we've discussed. The impact on things like HRV, I'm just not familiar. I don't think there has been research on this. So I can't go and say, so this and that happens. There's many things that we're still learning and that we're expanding and that people try with N equals one and see what happens. And you can.

There are very big and very meaningful improvements in markers that we know are important. There's anecdotal things around things that, like other things, but HIV, I've not seen a study on it that says, yes, this improves your HIV. I just don't think that exists. And we sponsor some research. We provide bikes to universities and it gets broader and broader.

Claudia von Boeselager (59:43)
Yeah, very important ones, exactly.

yet.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:00:04)
what we know and the impact is really I mean yeah quite almost too good to be true but no HIV I'm sorry.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:00:12)
Not yet. Have you or is that maybe in the pipeline? I'm going to ask you also about some of the pipeline things, but incorporating things like the Apple Watch to have more data or the O-Rings or what garments, cetera.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:00:23)
Yes,

so that's a development priority for us. the moment, we suggest that you can sync your workouts to like Apple Health and fitness and Android Health and fitness. And yeah, we'd love to bring out a or have appropriate integrations to

take that personalization to the next level. These are things we're working

exactly. it's also, yeah, we're competing with some very formidable competitors if we want to launch an own wearable. integrating with Apple is also not always super easy. So yes, this is a high priority for us, but that's also things we're still working on. ⁓

Claudia von Boeselager (1:01:03)
Okay,

amazing. I'm just curious because I'm like, okay, if we can figure out the HRVs going out the things and obviously, as you can see, they're all wearables.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:01:10)
So one thing, we've covered zone two a little bit earlier. One thing that we're quite close to is using HRV to optimize zone two training. apart from any other controversy about zone two, getting the right level of intensity for that is actually also very difficult.

And there's like five different ways how you can kind of try to figure out whether you're in zone two and they all, all, have their weaknesses. And one very promising new approach is to use HRB as a indicator whether you're at the right intensity for zone two training. And they're very close to launching a workout that will guide you exactly to the right level of intensity.

for zone two workout. So if that's what you choose to do because you have the time and you want that additional kind of come to mitochondrial health and mitochondrial function from another angle, then we will have, I'm pretty certain the most advanced way to help you optimize that.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:02:14)
Very exciting. know with the science and AI and everything that's coming exponentially, it's a really exciting time in this space as well. Ulrik, I want to touch a little bit on your personal journey. So you improved your cardio health by 50%, five zero, lost 10 kilos, 22 pounds, and normalized your blood pressure. What was your biggest surprise during this transformation?

Ulrich Dempfle (1:02:35)
Yeah. just how meaningfully the fitness improvement felt in everyday life. So how you really feel like, I'm flying up the stairs now.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:02:48)
A

mood or ability to be more agile or energy.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:02:52)
So physical function, being able to play soccer at a different level with my kids.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:02:58)
That's

why come back.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:02:59)
Yeah, they're almost there, no, just to have enough energy to enjoy life. that's, it's really, it's it's not subtle. It's something you will feel very clearly that all the things that require physical energy. I love hiking. That's one of the

things I could do for days. And that is just so clear that if you're in better, if you have greater cardiovascular, respiratory fitness, it's just so easy and you're so much more able to do that. So, kind of. My kids are still like slightly ahead, but absolutely. Yes, it does make a very, very appreciable difference.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:03:35)
dancing up the mountains.

You get to enjoy the things a lot more as well. Beautiful. Outside of Carol, what are some of the other health or longevity practices you personally swear by?

Ulrich Dempfle (1:03:53)
Yeah. So I think number one, I would say this is maybe even, mean, exercise is super important. Sleep is just so fundamental, so immediately important to your cognitive performance, to your mood. So sleep is ultra important.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:04:08)
Recovery, everything. Everything.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:04:12)
I wish I was a little bit better still, so this is work in progress.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:04:15)
I have my phases, know. But I how important it is.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:04:18)
And I mean, talk about something where people don't have enough time. that's literally people don't have enough time to sleep. And I think the Netflix, one of the Netflix CEOs over the years once said that our main competitor is sleep. And that's really, really terrible. And not having time for exercise.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:04:24)
sleep properly.

Yes, I heard this. It's terrible. I know.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:04:39)
you get a creeping disbenefit. things are worse if you don't exercise and it deteriorates over time. With sleep, you get immediate feedback. You feel horribly the next

Still, people don't seem to have the time to sleep.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:04:52)
And

or prioritize, yeah. Yeah.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:04:59)
I mean, just don't take the time to sleep. So I do think that the time component is super important and there's this attention economy and having all these distractions is a real thing. It's not just something that you can say, people are lazy. No, it's like, there's like crack cocaine, potency type distractions that prevent us from doing that. And so...

Claudia von Boeselager (1:05:15)
pulled in our direction.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:05:22)
Yeah, with exercise we say, okay, let's at least make it as easy as possible for people to still do it. With sleep, that's less possible. You just need those eight hours. It's hard to compress sleep into a pill.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:05:36)
Yeah. And they say actually you need one hour more in bed to get the full amount of sleep. But what have you done to improve your sleep Ulrich? I'm curious. What's your secret?

Ulrich Dempfle (1:05:44)
Okay.

Well, first I'm not perfect at it. I'm actually quite good at sleeping. The key is being disciplined about going to sleep and actually switching off the light. And that is a work in progress, but that's the key thing. You see me without my aura ring today. I do have one.

And it's certainly, I found it a useful thing to understand sleep better. But after a while of wearing it, I think I can read my body well enough to just know, yeah. I don't need an app. In that, even though I really appreciate it, I think it's a great product. I give it to other people as a present. So it's a good thing. I recommend it. But that's something I used to...

understand and basically kickstart that effort. And I think it's really helpful.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:06:35)
Yeah, amazing. And I think it's having the routine in place. I know some people who are religious, like no matter what you get up at the same time every day. there's like different hacks around that. They do, my girls actually sleep. So I have to wake them up. I have other friends whose kids wake them up and they don't have a choice. So I have a bit of a choice there, but yeah, it's been consistent. Just coming over from the US now here again, jet lag and stuff like that too. That was a bit tricky, but just...

whatever we can do, right, to do it. obviously exercise during the day actually helps to get better.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:07:03)
Yeah, exactly. that, in fact, exercise has been shown to have also really positive effects on sleep quality. So how much deep sleep you get on sleep routines to regularize sleep patterns. It helps to exercise at the same time.

You don't have to do it each day, but if you then do like strength and cardio and alternating days, then you can actually do it each day and just have that quite regular pattern. I exercise in the morning. That makes it easier. You should leave about two, three hours before bedtime. Otherwise, because you pump up your metabolism. otherwise, no, exercise does have

qualities or ⁓ a positive effect on sleep.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:07:44)
as

well. Yeah, so I know so many people struggle with sleep as well. So it's amazing. So Ulrik, if you could put a carob bike in every household, what impact do you think it would have on global health?

Ulrich Dempfle (1:07:54)
That's our ambition, really. It is our ambition. And then that's what we started with. I recognize this as, or I recognize now, it's not so easy to get a caravike into every house. But no, I think it would make a very, very meaningful dent in our...

inactivity epidemic, because it is really, it's, yeah, the couch is the biggest killer. And our sedentary lifestyles have a very, very negative effect on our health, physical health, mental health. And yeah, our ambition would be, and we have tried to make the caro bike and that's really our ambition that it's a mass market.

We recognize the biohackers are the first to adopt it. But our intention is really we want this to be very much a mass market application. And I wouldn't actually mind if they're... So at the moment, we're still, as far as I can see it, the only ones who do this. And we have some patents that have protected this and that. But to some extent, I wouldn't mind if...

some big names came into the game and we had some healthy competition. First to get the message out and yes, it's just to make it then.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:09:13)
Yeah, I like your collaborative approach as they say, all boats rise with the tide. Exactly that. Spreading the word, getting it out in whatever form as well. Yeah, amazing. Do we have time for some rapid fire longevity biohacking questions?

Ulrich Dempfle (1:09:27)
You can try.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:09:28)
⁓

Let's see him. what's a surprising biohack or tool that's had the biggest impact on your health? I think you're going to say the carol bike.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:09:37)
to. exactly. that will be the one big... The other thing comes back to what we discussed earlier, just recognizing and realizing that no, you can't sleep when you're dead. You have to sleep now. And that sleep is important. like this mind shift that sleep is somewhat a necessary evil that you can optimize away. Like Matthew Walker's book, Why We Sleep.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:09:40)
stick around.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:10:01)
I don't know whether that's a biohack or not, if you have any doubt, read it. It's a great book, I think, that has changed my mindset around sleep and really opened my eyes there.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:10:12)
Yeah, super helpful. If you could only keep one longevity habit for life, and I'm going to say besides the carrel bike and maybe besides sleep, what would it be?

Ulrich Dempfle (1:10:22)
I think that nutrition is the next one, not eating things in shiny wrappers, eating whole foods. I mean, I tried over the years, different types of diets, intermittent fasting, five-day fasts. I think the key thing is eating real foods and not processed foods.

super important. And then, yeah, if you want it just a general behavior change, I do like ⁓ these fasting mimicking diets.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:10:53)
Cron has for example.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:10:54)
Yeah, that's the only one I know actually. That's the one I use every now and then. Not like every three months, but once a year or so. I think it's a really powerful tool to get, ⁓ but first to lose weight if that's what you want and to also improve things like metabolic flexibility and metabolic health. that's, yeah, I think it's a very solid ⁓ and good thing that I would recommend.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:11:17)
Yeah, I mean, it's the medicine we feed our body every day. finally, think nutrition is going to be introduced into medical school, which sounds like totally obvious, but it hasn't been done. exciting times ahead. What's been your most exciting purchase in say the last six months that's under $200 or so?

Ulrich Dempfle (1:11:34)
⁓

Claudia von Boeselager (1:11:35)
Could be anything. Doesn't need to be health related. But I love specifics.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:11:38)
I actually don't know in the last six months whether I bought anything that's... If I had like a... Another thing, this is slightly longer ago, but the Muse Band, have you tried the Muse Band? I think that's around that price tag. If you want to meditate and you're not quite sure how to go about it, I find it's a very nice tool that makes meditation.

a lot easier and to practice mindfulness. Yes, exactly. And so I got that for myself. I gave a couple of them to friends because I think it's a great, yeah, more than gadget. That's actually really helpful and opened the world of meditation to me that I didn't knew existed or kind of how to approach it. So I think it's very clever.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:12:03)
And it has around the head, right?

Yeah, brilliant. And especially a lot of people who have the monkey mind, they really struggle. So that's great. What's a book that you recommend over and over again? Is it Why We Sleep?

Ulrich Dempfle (1:12:31)
So that's a really great book and transformational in terms of how I view sleep. Yes, read it. Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep. Fantastic. Another one that I recommend that I give away to friends is The Better Angels of Our Nature from Steven

That's, yeah, it's about the history of violence.

in the world and how it's actually been reducing. And I think in terms of, it has really a positive outlook on human history and how we've developed and helps just shape a more optimistic mindset. It's quite easy to get all riled up and negative and pessimistic and how everything gets worse because it's so in your face. And I spent a lot, like,

If I need to decompress, I find X, a very nice app. I spend too much time on it, but obviously it serves all the negative stuff.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:13:24)
If it bleeds, it leads, is what they say in the media.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:13:27)
It's actually that and kind of anything that ⁓ kind of increases engagement like that's a book that puts that into perspective and shows actually, you know, in what a good world we're living right now. I thought, I've read that two or three times myself gave it to friends because I think it's such a great book.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:13:32)
Shock valley and exactusian.

Brilliant.

And if you could wave a magic wand and solve one aging related challenge instantly, what would it be?

Ulrich Dempfle (1:13:54)
Yeah, think I would say that overcoming the inactivity crisis, and that's what we're working on, it's not a magic wand.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:14:03)
You have to be consistent, but you've reduced the time dramatically to few minutes a week, which everybody has, I'm sorry. But even if you've got 10 kids, you've got 10 minutes a week. yeah, really exciting. Where can people find you and find out more about Carol? Where would you like to send them to? And we'll link everything in the show notes.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:14:20)
Sure. So we sell our bikes online, carolbike.com or the Carol Bike on all the socials. Our website is very comprehensive. There's a lot of information. If you have further questions, you can drill into all the papers and the research. So that's where to learn.

more about us. You can also schedule a call with our with our team, with our fitness advisors. They're qualified, they have MSCs in exercise physiology and can have a meaningful conversation and discussion whether it's right for you.

And we try to make it as easy as possible for people to actually purchase a Carol bike. So we do offer, and I think that's an industry leading, but returns policy, if you want to call it that, we call it risk free trial. So if you purchase a Carol bike, have a hundred days to see whether it is right for you. that's whether you,

like it, whether you can stick to it, whether you can actually see and feel the benefits, whether it's working for you. So it's more than enough. It's longer than all the scientific trials that have been done with it. And if it's not, then you can also just return it. like we have a no questions asked return policy. And so if it's not for you, it's not for you. That's okay. To most people, unfortunately, it is for them.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:15:35)
And can you just indicate for people the price points so they have an idea and the financing is available?

Ulrich Dempfle (1:15:40)
Yeah. Yeah. So we sell our bikes globally and the different prices in different countries, but our main market is the U S and it's $2,795. We have free delivery with that. We offer 0 % financing for if you, if you want that to make it a little bit easier.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:15:57)
There's a hundred dollars off code Claudia. So C-L-A-U-D-I-A as well to make it even more irresistible.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:16:04)
And he decided to do that, And that's how you can see it and try it. You will find us also in some of the leading biohacking studios, coaching facilities, and so on. But generally, it's a bike that's designed for commercial use. many people have it in their own home just to lower the barrier and make it as easy as possible to do it.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:16:24)
Yeah, for those few minutes a week, mean, really, it's definitely, I'm very, very excited about this. Before we wrap up, could you leave listeners and people watching with a parting message or piece of advice, or maybe you have an ask for them?

Ulrich Dempfle (1:16:37)
⁓ Stay active. something like prioritize activity. View2Max is super important. It'll have profound benefits and impact on all aspects of life. So yeah, that's one message.

Claudia von Boeselager (1:16:52)
For sure. Ulrich, thank you so much again for coming on today. Thank you to your audience for listening, for tuning in, and please share it with friends, family. So many people need to know about this. It's hit on so many different important areas of health span, longevity, metabolic disease, et cetera. So yeah, just let's all keep living a longer, vibrant, and more active life. So thank you. Such a pleasure.

Ulrich Dempfle (1:17:14)
Thank you so much. was really great. Thank you.



Thank you, Claudia.