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

The DNA of Things with Dr. Jeremy Koenig · Apr 26, 2026 · 53m

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…