We all know how it goes. You spend the night in bed sleeping, maybe nothing too deep, maybe you wake up once or twice nothing too unusual, but you aren’t any more rested in the morning, so you end up in an energy chase throughout the day only to wash, rinse, repeat the same cycle again. Well, just because you slept, doesn’t mean you’ve rested or even restored your brain. How could you possibly know if you’ve slept well, even slept efficiently on a daily basis? Enter the WHOOP.
WHOOP is a wearable, taking the form of a screen-less bracelet. WHOOP primarily monitors three things: recovery, strain and sleep. It does this by using 5 LED and 4 photodiodes on its primary sensor. This sensor is able to asess things such as, blood oxygen levels (SpO2), skin temperature and heart rate.
Recovery status determines your ability to tackle the day, both in normal everyday tasks and strenuous ones such as a heavy workout. WHOOP uses 4 physiological metrics to calculate your recovery status: heart-rate variability (HRV), resting heart rate (RHR), sleep and respiratory rate. Using this data, WHOOP will give you a percentage of how recovered you are – the higher the number, the more ready you are to take tasks!
Using the same variables, WHOOP can also calculate your strain level. The strain score is on a scale of 0 to 21 where 0 is minimal strain and 21 is maximum. Your strain score gives a daily target exertion range based on how you recovered from the previous day and the amount of activity done on the current day. Useful right?
Lastly (and perhaps most importantly), WHOOP is very good at monitoring your sleep duration and quality. Taking account of such things as efficiency, disturbances and respiratory rate. So why is this important? Well, sleep is paramount your physical and cognitive health; Cognitively sleep is crucial for the storage of memories and emotional health. Physically, sleep is important for the regulation of our stress system and their associated hormones.
So what does this all mean? In short, WHOOP can help optimize your sleep, and supercharge your productivity!
What are you waiting for? Take your health into your owns hands (or wrists) and try one!
References:
https://nyaspubs-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.proxy.queensu.ca/doi/full/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04416.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4961463/
