Episode 107: The 90% Problem: Why Women's Health Has Been Running on Male Data — and How Roma Van der Walt Is Changing That

Roma Van der Walt didn't stumble into women's health — she was forged into it. Raised by a Kenyan father who never owned a car, Roma was logging long-distance walks by age four, quietly building a resting heart rate that would later make elite coaches take notice. By 12 she had found the coach who would shape everything; by 17 she was writing a university-level thesis on anaerobic threshold training using herself as the test subject; and by her mid-twenties she had retired from Germany's national modern pentathlon team, carrying with her a master's in sports science and a lifetime of data-driven training most athletes never get to experience. But the chapter nobody talks about — the UN desk job, the 40-plus pounds gained post-retirement, the sciatica, a pregnancy complicated by thyroiditis, then a hernia — turned out to be the real research. When the medical system couldn't give her the coordinated, personalized support she knew was possible from her athletic career, she stopped waiting and built it herself. Now, as CEO of Vitelle, Roma is building the health operating system for women — confronting a reality the longevity world has quietly accepted: that 90% of the data driving our health algorithms was collected from male bodies, costing women an estimated 75 million life-years every single year.🧬 How Roma's Kenyan roots and data-driven coach shaped her elite athletic foundation📊 Threshold training vs. VO2 max — and why one is trainable and the other isn't🏅 What modern pentathlon actually demands across five disciplines in a single day🧠 The psychology behind elite performance and knowing when to ditch the data💔 The post-athlete identity crisis — weight gain, sciatica, and losing yourself after retirement🤰 Pregnancy, thyroiditis, hernia — and how Roma rebuilt herself back to marathon PR shape🏃‍♀️ Running an ultra marathon four months postpartum to study her own physiology🤖 Why AI health tools are hallucinating women's health with male benchmarks🚨 The 90% male data gap that is structurally failing every woman in the healthcare system📉 75 million life-years lost annually to poor female care pathways💡 Healthspan over lifespan — why quality of life matters more than the number🏗️ What Vitelle is building and why the world needs a female health operating system LINKS:https://www.drjeremykoenig.com/https://www.instagram.com/drjeremykoenig/https://www.youtube.com/@drjeremykoenigHere's the link for this week's episode: https://drjeremykoenig.substack.com/.