Whoopin’ it up
HRV as a key indicator of nervous system health
Good morning, beautiful New Day! I hope you had a lovely weekend.
I am excited to report that I have a new toy! A new toy that has already, even just after a few days, changed my health behavior and is generating new and exciting insights.
That toy is called Whoop.
I first heard of Whoop a few months ago, and was intrigued. There were many benefits touted in its ads, including a 70 percent reduction in alcohol consumption by users of the device (presumably by seeing the affect of alcohol on their bodies!) but for whatever reason didn’t move forward with the purchase.
Then, a couple weeks ago when I was doing Tony Robbins virtual Business Mastery program, I noticed that Tony was wearing one. Tony is ALWAYS ahead of the curve on health and fitness (recall that he is a Network Spinal care early adopter!).
And so me and my friend, also a chiropractor here in Chicago, decided to start with Whoop. We received our devices last week and have been wearing them for 4 days.
Whoop is a little device you wear on your wrist that constantly monitors a few key aspects of your health– Strain, recovery, and sleep.
Strain relates to how much time you spend daily in cardiovascular activity. Sleep is how much sleep you get and what the quality of that sleep is. And recovery is how good of a job your sleep and lifestyle do in having you recover from the strain (ie workouts) you’ve undertaken.
Because of its focus on optimizing your health and body for workout, Whoop has become very popular with the uber healthy and with elite athletes.
Another reason for its popularity with athletes and the super healthy is that the data and the recommendations you receive are EXTREMELY personalized.
So many of the numbers people use when they consider health (resting heart rate, BMI, blood pressure, etc) are targets based on averages of the population. Their purpose, in the case of many medical indicators, is to have a ceiling above which medication/medical intervention are recommended.
Those types of targets are not personalized to the needs of your body related to the stresses and strain that it takes on and subsequent recovery it does. And so these indicators are taken out of the context of your body and your life and taken to mean something that they might not actually mean.
In contrast, with Whoop, it gets to know you and your unique system and unique needs over time, comparing you to your best you, NOT a target based on averages of our (unhealthy) American population.
It takes 4 days for the Whoop strap to gather enough data to begin making recommendations. After that, the device continues monitoring your changes, using up to 30 days information at a time as it does that.
Over time, as it tracks your indicators it makes recommendations for your sleep (ie how long you need to sleep and what time you should be in bed), as well as how much you should and shouldn’t train to give your body optimal recovery.
This has all been VERY exciting for me, as I am just now getting past the first 4 days and getting some interesting info.
Here are my key initial takeaways that I’d like to share on this process, to help you whether or not you ever decide to purchase a Whoop.
Key takeaway #1: RECOVERY, RECOVERY, RECOVERY
As a society, we are obsessed with more, more, more. Want to be more fit? Just work out more! Right??
But when we focus disproportionately on workouts and working out harder, and forget about the other side of the equation, our efforts won’t compute.
You have to have proper recovery so that you can have good workouts.
And recovery isn’t just the empty time between workouts when you’re not exercising.
Recovery is the result of a process. It is an interplay of the relationship between your nervous system, your internal organs, your lifestyle choices, your sleep, and all the variables that impact those variables (sooo many ripple effects 🌊).
Subconsciously I guess I’ve always liked the way that being very active seems to put me in right relationship with what my body needs and doesn’t need for recovery. Still, I guess I’m surprised how little I’ve really thought about it, compared to the time I spend considering my workouts.
Now that I have a way to quantify my recovery, I can really get serious about studying what most contributes to my full recovery, and optimize the frequency and timing of those factors. As always, I am a guinea pig for health, and I look forward to sharing my continued observations 🐹
After your first night of sleep wearing the Whoop strap, the app asks you a litany of questions about factors that may have contributed to your sleep and recovery, on such topics as caffeine, alcohol, stress, etc.
The app even asks you if you had chiropractic care that day, allowing you to potentially look at the impact of care over time as a contributor to your health ✨✨✨
Even if you never choose to use Whoop, what I want you to take away from this discussion of recovery is that you need your body working really well to get the most out of recovery.
For your average person, flopping down on the couch is probably what passes as recovery (not that we don’t also need that sometimes!) By getting care for your spine and nervous system at New Day, you are optimizing your recovery so that you can be at your best.
Key takeaway #2: Heart Rate Variability is SO COOL
Next time you get adjusted at New Day, you can
be glad that you are increasing your HRV ✨✨✨
Even though I have studied Heart Rate Variability (HRV), I was somehow not quite fully aware of what an amazing metric this.
According to an incredibly helpful article on the Whoop blog:
“Heart rate variability, or HRV for short, is a measure of your autonomic nervous system that is widely considered one of the best objective metrics for physical fitness and determining your body’s readiness to perform. . .
Although HRV manifests as a function of your heart rate, it actually originates from your nervous system.”
HRV is a number the signifies the relationship between your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system– the part the activates you for stress or activity, and the part that relaxes you for resting and digesting.
Higher HRV is generally better and means that you are healthier. The article goes on to explain:
“When you have high heart rate variability, it means that your body is responsive to both sets of inputs (parasympathetic and sympathetic). This is a sign that your nervous system is balanced, and that your body is very capable of adapting to its environment and performing at its best.
On the other hand, if you have low heart rate variability, one branch is dominating (usually the sympathetic) and sending stronger signals to your heart than the other. There are times when this is a good thing–like if you’re running a race you want your body to focus on allocating resources to your legs (sympathetic) as opposed to digesting food (parasympathetic).
However, if you’re not doing something active, low HRV indicates your body is working hard for some other reason (maybe you’re fatigued, dehydrated, stressed, or sick and need to recover) which leaves fewer resources available to dedicate towards exercising, competing, giving a presentation at work, etc.”
HRV varies between and within individuals according to the demands on their body and the stressors they are encountering, and how good of a job their nervous system is doing in responding to those demands. Get this: For consistency of comparison, Whoop measures your HRV every night for the last 5 minutes of your last slow wave sleep stage, which is the time when you’re in your deepest period of sleep. How cool is that?!
Even if you never choose to buy a Whoop or learn anything additional about your HRV, I want you to stop and appreciate just how delicate, finely tuned, and centrally important the health of your nervous system really is.
Network Spinal care has been shown in research to increase HRV (CLICK HERE FOR THE ABSTRACT!).
And I hope you’re getting how important it is to go deeper. To not just look not just at a number on a chart or a scale, but to go deeper to the level of the relationships (I’ve blogged about this in the past!) Your body is a dynamic system and the relationships are everything. Your nervous system IS the relationship between your brain and body.
I hope this blog has piqued your interest, and I look forward to seeing you at your adjustments this week ☀️☀️☀️
