Whoop - the ultimate measure of your nervous system function?

What’s the first thing you think of when you wake up?

Maybe it’s breakfast, or the list of things you’ve got to do for the day, or maybe you try to recall your dreams from the night’s sleep? I used to think about all of these things when I first woke up.

But not anymore.

Now, there’s just one thing on my mind…

“How well recovered am I and what’s my recovery score?”

Let me explain. A little over a year ago I bought a WHOOP - one of the newest and most advanced wearables on the market. It’s a nondescript strap you wear on your wrist or your bicep that tracks your daily strain, sleep and recovery. According to WHOOP’s website, it’s “a full physiological profile of each day so you can assess your body’s needs.”

As a healthcare professional, keen sportsman and someone who has always been interested in finding new ways to optimise performance, trying it out was a no-brainer for me.

And I’ve been fascinated by what I’ve learnt. From seeing the impact alcohol has on my sleep and recovery (not always as obvious as you might think) to discovering what exercises create the highest amount of strain in a specific time, WHOOP paints a vivid picture of how my body is performing and how it responds to different stimuli.

As part of WHOOP’s promise to unlock human potential, members get a breakdown of how different factors influence their recovery and performance. The granularity of the data is astounding. Users will get information in their weekly and monthly reports that will show things like recovery is 10% less when you eat a meal after 8pm or caffeine intake after 5pm reduces your time spent in deep sleep by 25%.

When users are given this level of data - and the recommendations that come with them - they are able to change their actions and behaviours accordingly.

One of the key metrics WHOOP uses to determine recovery is heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is the variability (in milliseconds) of the time between the beats of your heart. But what’s really interesting for me, as a chiropractor, is HRV originates from your nervous system.

WHOOP explain it here:

“Although HRV manifests as a function of your heart rate, it actually originates from your nervous system. Your autonomic nervous system, which controls the involuntary aspects of your physiology, has two branches, parasympathetic (deactivating) and sympathetic (activating).

The parasympathetic branch (often referred to as ‘rest and digest’) handles inputs from internal organs, like digestion or your fingernails and hair growing. It causes a decrease in heart rate.

The sympathetic branch (often called ‘fight or flight’) reflects responses to things like stress and exercise, and increases your heart rate.

Heart rate variability comes from these two competing branches simultaneously sending signals to your heart. If your nervous system is balanced, your heart is constantly being told to beat slower by your parasympathetic system, and beat faster by your sympathetic system. This causes a fluctuation in your heart rate: HRV.”

Now, the question that’s been on my lips since I first started wearing a WHOOP: “How does a chiropractic adjustment affect HRV?”

Apart from anecdotal evidence and a lot of manual work, it’s been tough to answer this question accurately… until now.

WHOOP users are given a simple questionnaire (in journal-form) each morning, which they access through the app. The journal goes like this:

Yesterday did you…

Have any alcoholic drinks?

Have any caffeine?

Share your bed?

Have a meat-free diet?

Eat a late meal?

Engage in sexual activity?

Read in bed?

Have a massage?

(And many more!)

Thanks to a recent update, WHOOP have now added “Visit the chiropractor?” to the daily journal.

I can’t wait to have a look at some of their data to see if WHOOP can confirm what we’ve been saying all along - that a chiropractic adjustment can indeed improve your HRV and recovery, and overall nervous system function.

I’m going to be monitoring the impact chiropractic adjustments have on my own WHOOP health for the next month and will let you know what results I see. If you have any questions about WHOOP, feel free to drop me a line and I’ll do my best to answer them.

*This post was not sponsored by WHOOP and is merely the observations of someone who loves their product.