WHOOP Podcast - Listener Q&A: From Shift Work to Creatine—Unpack the Latest

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

On this week’s episode, WHOOP SVP of Data Science and Research Emily Capodilupo is here to answer YOUR questions. We have seen several questions in our inbox about sleep, recovery, and creatine. Emily will discuss sleep supplements and interruptions (1:45), dealing with shift work and reverse schedules (5:55), the correlation between sleep and HRV (13:27), getting the most out of your creatine program (19:42), creatine impacting recovery (21:35), and taking creatine at night (24:27). Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the Whoop podcast, where we sit down with top performers, really figure out what the best in the world are doing to perform at their peak. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop. We're on a mission to unlock human performance. Okay, this week's episode, Woop, SVP of data science and research, Emily Capitalupo, is here to answer your questions. That's right. We have another listener question episode for you. We've seen several questions in our inbox about sleep, recovery, creatine, many other things.

So Emily is here to answer your questions. She gets into supplements and the impact on sleep, how to maximize your sleep as a shift worker, the correlation between sleep and HRV, how late night meals impact sleep. Spoiler alert, at least for me, not good. And a few questions around creatine as a follow-up to a recent episode with Dr. Darren Kandau. A reminder, if you have questions you want to see answered on a future podcast. Email us, podcast www.com. Call us 508-443-4952. And without further ado, here is the talented Emily Capital Lupo. Hi, everybody. Emily Capital Lupo here, SVP of data science and research at Woop and I am here for a very fun podcast answering questions that you are amazing listeners provided. So we're just going to cover a wide variety of topics

and I'm just going to jump in. Our first question comes from Jose. He's looking to learn more about sleep supplements and sleep disruptions. So he wrote what melatonin dose is recommended and what's the best timing. This is a really common question. We get it a lot. I think first off, before I answer the question, it's important to note that I am not a medical doctor. I'm certainly not your medical doctor. You should talk to your doctor before taking any supplements. Generally, people take anywhere from two to five milligrams of melatonin and they find that they get the effect that they're looking from in there. And taking lots more than that can make you feel groggy or just make your pee more expensive because it doesn't do anything.

If you've never taken melatonin, generally it's a good idea to start on the lower end, see how that does, and then increase the dose from there. Melatonin is considered to be a safe supplement. There are very few side effects. So if it's something that you're interested in trying, like I said, talk to your doctor first, but a pretty safe thing to give a try. In order to get the most benefits, generally you want to take it anywhere from about 30 to 60 minutes, before bedtime to give it a chance to kick in. But you're also going to want to make sure that during that time where melatonin concentration is building up in your blood and in your brain,

that you're not doing anything to undermine your melatonin production. So things like bright light exposure or getting yourself really amped up can inhibit melatonin production, inhibit melatonin from doing its thing and be counterproductive. And so once you take that supplement, be nice to yourself, practice sleep hygiene, start to get into that wine down mode and you're going to get the most sleep promoting effect possible. Jose has a second part of his question. So he asks about sleep interruptions, specifically because of noctuary, which is getting up in the middle of the night to pee or nighttime urinating. He asks about it in men. I'm going to talk about it generally. The main cause in healthy people is actually just drinking a lot of fluids in the evening.

So your body processes it and you haven't had a chance to urinate. So the kind of classic advice is, you know, one, just, you know, make sure to empty out before you get in bed, even if you don't feel like you need to. And then if you find that this is something that you are struggling with, you know, again, this is, I'm not your doctor. Talk to your doctor before doing anything like restricting fluids because we obviously don't want anybody to become dehydrated in the interest of reducing nighttime urination. but limiting fluids, especially in the evening, and that includes high fluid foods. You know, think like the fruits and the berries and things like that that have high water content. Watermelon is basically a glass of water in this context. And so limiting fluids in all of its many forms in the evening so that you just don't have that fluid to urinate out.

If you've already kind of tackled that piece, you know, you're limiting fluids in the evening and you don't think that that's sort of the cause. Other things to look into are having your vitamin D levels checked. Low levels of vitamin D can actually cause an increase in nighttime urination. Again, something to talk to your doctor about. Please don't self-diagnose yourself. But many of us, especially in the winter when we get less sunlight, we're kind of like plants and that we can get our vitamin D straight from the sun. And so if you're not getting a lot of sun exposure because you're inside a lot, if you're like

me and you're in Boston, it's cold, it's a good idea to get this checked at your annual physical because this can be a symptom, and it's a pretty easy thing to reverse, but something that goes undiagnosed in many people. Lastly, if you are still struggling with this, one thing to look into is strengthening your pelvic floor. So they're a pelvic floor physical therapists. There are also all kinds of apps and things you can use pelvic floor training, and that might also help you make it through the night. So a couple of fairly straightforward and inexpensive low effort things to try. Give it a try. I hope it helps. Our next question comes from Haley. Haley is a Woot member. Thank you, Haley. And she's also a bartender. And she writes in asking about

how shift work can affect your sleep. Specifically, she's looking at how to handle her very difficult sleep schedule in order to maximize sleep. She's tried a couple things. She isn't getting the results that she wants. So Haley writes in specifically saying that she has an aggressive weekly fluctuation. She spends five to six nights out of the week, going to bed between 1 and 4 a.m. And then having a, she calls it a regular day or two where she lives a, in quote, regular life, which she defines is wanting to go to bed around 11, which she obviously is describing as a challenge. So she asks, how can I get better quality sleep given the schedule and the constant change. So my heart goes out to people like Haley. Shift work is one of the biggest

challenges for our sleep, but she's totally not alone. Sixteen percent of Americans meet the Bureau of Labor Statistics definition of shift work. So this is a really, really common problem. Socially, there is tremendous pressure to try and get onto what Haley calls this like regular or normal schedule on your days off where she wants to do what her friends and family are doing. She probably wants to be awake when stores are open and different things like that so she can live life. But physiologically, it's going to be a lot easier to handle these challenging schedules if on your off days you stay on as close to that shift schedule as possible. We have done a lot of research on this. And we've seen things. We published studies using

like D1 collegiate athletes who are traveling across time zones, which is a little bit different than typical shift work. But what Haley is essentially experiencing is. jet lag. Physologically, it's indistinguishable. And when these athletes stay on their home time zone, when they travel for competition, they just do a lot better. And so we know that people are going to perform better and feel better if even when their schedule has to shift, they stay on a single schedule. If you have no choice and, you know, you have appointments or you have family commitments or whatever and you need to get, be switching between schedules, this could also happen for people who don't consistently work one shift, maybe work like overnights, you know,

one day and then, you know, regular hours, another day. There are things you can do to try and make those transitions easier. So I'd say like the best possible option, even though I totally recognize that socially this is hard, is to stay on one schedule, even if it's a weird and difficult schedule. Option B is let's talk about the ways to make those transitions easier. So I'd say the first thing is not to get tricked by cheap tricks. So this is like using alcohol so that you can like fall asleep at 11 o'clock, which is, you know, when Haley's saying she wants to go to sleep on our normal days, which is, you know, from her question, that's five hours earlier than she's often going to bed. So that's a huge shift, right? Your body is not ready for sleep

five hours before you typically go to sleep and your hormones are just not starting to promote sleep then. So a lot of people are tempted and we see this with travel too to like make it, quote unquote, easier to fall asleep by, you know, smoking weed or drinking alcohol or insert whatever sleep supplement. This is a sort of dangerous trick because while it will work to get you asleep, that sleep isn't going to be as good. You're not going to get as rested and you're not going to feel great. So I think you're just sort of tricking yourself into falling asleep faster, but you're not going to get that restorative sleep that you're looking for. You're not going to feel great. I think that's what Haley's saying when she's complaining about not getting, you know,

the REM sleep and the deep sleep that she's looking for with the various tricks she's been trying, not saying that she's trying alcohol, but just when you try and, you know, sleep when your body's not anticipating it, you don't sleep as well. So the trick is, how do we get our bodies to want to anticipate sleep five hours early? And so on the day that you're going to want to sleep early, you're going to want to make sure that that morning as early as you can, you're getting lots and lots of daylight exposure. That helps tell your circadian rhythm, this is morning. and helps to kind of shift it in your favor. So you're going to want to get lots of light exposure in the morning.

You're going to want to try and eat on that earlier schedule too. So everything that you shift earlier is hints to your body and specifically to your circadian rhythm, your biological clock, that we're on an earlier schedule so that you don't get to 11 p.m. And now you're trying to say, oh, by the way, like we're on a five-hour earlier schedule today. You've been kind of hinting to your body all day long that we're on an earlier schedule.

Then you also, when you get close to bedtime, want to make sure that you're getting really, really buttoned up about sleep hygiene. So probably if you can at least like two hours before bed, you're getting rid of those screens, you're dimming the lights, you're not eating, you know, you're doing things that relax you. Maybe you're taking a hot bath. You know, we talked a couple minutes ago about melatonin. You might be a great candidate for melatonin.

Again, talk to your doctor before adding any supplements to your routine. but giving your body signals that this is bedtime. And the more you have a bedtime ritual that you're using throughout the week, the more your body starts to learn. When I start my bedtime ritual, I want to start my internal production of melatonin so that, you know, when it gets the end of that two-hour period, it's anticipating sleep. And so ritualize it like crazy rigorously. This is hard.

This is not natural for your body. It doesn't want to go to bed. five hours early. And so you're going to have to put in this work in order to get yourself into a state where your melatonin production internally is high enough that it can trigger sleep. Otherwise, what you're going to find is that the first trigger of sleep it gets is I'm horizontal and the lights are out, but it takes two hours to internally, from when you like start producing melatonin, to have a critical threshold reach that converts you from wake to sleep. And so what you really don't want to do is like get into bed at 11 and then just roll around frustrated

until one. And so make sure you're giving your body those cues as much as possible and as early as possible throughout the day. So it has that hint that this is an earlier schedule. And while we're talking about all of this in the context of shift work, and like I said, so many Americans are struggling with the effects of sleep. shift work on sleep. All of this same advice totally applies to a situation of travel and jet lag. So if you're just trying to go to bed earlier because of shift work, which would be a common case or maybe a less common case of traveling across time zones, it's the same advice. When you land in that new time zone and you're going to have to be going to bed at a time that

is earlier than what your home bed time would have been, you want to make sure you're getting that light early, you're eating on your new time schedule, and that you're kind of winding down and giving your body as many, like, I'm going to sleep cues in those two hours before bed, not getting light exposure, et cetera, and you're going to have the easiest transition to that new time zone or to that new schedule as possible. Okay, shifting topics a little bit. Our next question comes from Sam, who is asking about the correlation between sleep and HRV, wanting to know more about how sleep quality impacts somebody's HRV. So they say, can you give some more insight into how sleep impacts HRV, whether it pertains to time and bed, quality of sleep, amount of restorative

sleep, et cetera. Great question. I think a lot of people, especially people who use who use who get confused sometimes about what's the difference between HRV slash recovery and sleep. And why do we have two scores? What are these different numbers? And what I always tell people is you have to think about sleep as the thing that creates the opportunity for you to be restored. You cannot be restored without sleeping well. So therefore, you're not going to have improved or good high HRV without getting a good night's sleep. However, and this is important, sleep definitely doesn't guarantee anything because not all sleep is created equally. And the most sort of extreme, and I think easy to understand example of all of this is, unfortunately,

we've all experienced that thing where you get really sick or you're not feeling great. you go to bed early, you sleep late, right? You get 12, 14 hours of sleep and you're still kind of exhausted and you feel like crap. So, you know, you definitely can get loads of sleep. And in that case, you know, you really truly were asleep and maybe even having good sleep, but you're still not fully recovered. And so sleep creates the opportunity for recovery. It puts your body in a physiological state in which those important recovery processes can happen. but other things need to happen for them to actually happen, for you to get the most out of that sleep. So we talk a lot about how sleep is multiple things, right?

You have REM sleep, which is the mentally restorative part of sleep. You've got slow wave sleep, which is the physically restorative part of sleep. Sleep can be nicely consolidated, right? You can go long periods of time without waking up, or sleep can be highly distrally. disrupted. You could wake up a lot. And so even though you might get a lot of sleep, it's very shallow. You're not getting into those deeper stages where the kind of the meaty good stuff happens. And so if you want to boost recovery, you not only need to like make sure that you're getting enough sleep, you need to do the things that are going to help you get good quality sleep. So what are those? So first off, you're going to have the best quality sleep and therefore the most restorative sleep when your body is able to hormonally prepare for sleep. So we talk. about this just a couple minutes ago in the context of shift work. But when your circadian rhythm is aligned, your body goes into the sleep period, expecting sleep, ready for sleep, and kind of just ready to get going, right? It's sort of the difference between, you know, having like,

you know, you show up to a meeting and there's a clear agenda and everybody knows what you're talking about. You just get into it versus if you're just like, hey, so what should we talk about and you spend like a whole bunch of time just trying to figure out why we're all gathered together. If your body knows what's coming, you're going to have the get to the good stuff faster. So, you know, having a very consistent bedtime and wake time, so your body knows this is sleep time. I need to be ready and is ready. You also want to think about things that are counterproductive to sleep and making sure you're not doing those things, right? That would be like stimulants before bed, whether we're talking about stimulants in the form of like caffeine or

sort of things that are stimulating like watching a action, you know, TV show or, you know, even just having like a really fun conversation with a friend that like amps you up and makes you excited about something. You don't want to do that immediately before bed. It can be counterproductive. So thinking about what are you doing, especially in like the, I would say especially, especially, especially in the half hour before bed, especially in the hour before bed and start to get choosy about what you're doing in the 90 minutes, you know, two hours. before bed because if you're getting too stimulated, too much light exposure, too much cortisol, right, too much activation, exercising, right, all of those things are counterproductive to sleep

and you're going to get less out of that sleep. So you might get a lot of sleep, which could show up as a good sleep score, but you're not going to get as restorative of sleep and therefore like the HRV value that you're going to see for those, say, eight hours of sleep is going to be lower than if you got these like really, really high quality of sleep. And then the other piece, that's more out of your control is just what's your body experiencing and what do you need right now? So we talked a little bit about how if you're sick, even if you get lots of sleep, you just need extra sleep. And so it's not going to necessarily show up as a high HIV or if you're really stressed, even if you do everything right and put yourself in a situation where you could get really

good sleep because you're stressed. You're not going into some of those deeper stages. You're not completing all of those recovery, like physiological processes, and it's going to show up in a lower HRV. And then certainly less extreme things, like even if you're just a little bit dehydrated, that's going to show up in a lower HRV, things like that. If you're super cold, if you're at altitude, that puts physiological stress on your body, especially if you're not used to it. So there's a number of things that even if you're sleeping well can harm your You know, the flip side is, is even if you're sleeping a little bit less well, you can boost your HRV by doing things like being well hydrated and staying healthy and all those things.

But these things are very correlated. We definitely see that the people who are getting higher HRVs, the people who's HRVs are improving tend to have good sleep. And so this is a massive part of it, but they're not even close to perfectly correlated. And there's a lot beyond the sleep that's going to determine what you're eating. HRV is. And that's why, you know, WOOP measures and tracks those things separately and why we think it's important to pay attention to both of those metrics. We had a number of questions come in from a couple different people about creatine. And, you know, it's really interesting to see that theme

show up when Will and I did the Year in Review podcast a couple of weeks ago. We saw that it was one of the number one increased behaviors on WOOB. So WOOP members are really interested in creatine right now. We had an amazing podcast with Dr. Darren Kandau a couple weeks ago who also talked about creatine. So no surprise that it's on everybody's mind. Let's jump into what is creatine. How do you use it? How is it going to affect your HRV, sleep, things like that? So creatine is a totally natural substance. Our bodies produce it in the kidneys, liver, and pancreas. You find it in the brain and all different tissues. It's a type of amino acid, which is a compound that's used to make proteins.

So it helps with building bones, muscles, repairing damaged tissues. It has been extremely well studied for a long time. It is well understood to be safe. It is well understood to be effective. It really does work. In addition to creating your own creatine, we also can get it from certain foods. Salmon is a great source. Red meat is a great source.

And then, of course, you know, we've all seen it available as a supplement. It's one of the most widely used supplements, you know, for strength training and things like that. And it's generally used to support muscle building and recovery. But it has all kinds of implications, and it's useful for people who are doing a lot more than just strength training. I'm not going to get into too much more because I think Dr. Candow and Kristen did such a great job in their podcast. But I want to talk about some of the stuff that they didn't hit on as much, things like, you know, how is it going to affect my sleep? How is it going to affect my recovery? So one of our listeners, Donald, reported that when he started taking creatine, his recovery actually tanked.

And I thought that that was super interesting. And he wanted to know what that was about. So we did a little digging, and that is not at all uncommon. It doesn't mean that creatine is necessarily bad for you. we have seen a lot of your research and different things suggest that you do need to help your body adjust to creatine. And Kristen talked a bit about this in her podcast. But if you're new to taking creatine, you might not want to take it all at once. So generally, you know, once you're kind of used to it, you want to be taking anywhere from about like two to five grams and it depends on your body weight and what you're using it for, et cetera. But you might not want to take that all at once.

it can cause some GI upset. And so, you know, if it's upsetting your stomach, then it could disrupt your sleep because you're getting things like reflux or bloating or gas and that's all uncomfortable. And so it's just impacting your sleep by making you uncomfortable. And so if that's the case, you know, think about taking it further away from bedtime. It also works by pulling water into your tissues. And so it can make you a little bit dehydrated. So you want to make sure that it's not reducing your recoveries because it's dehydrating you and make sure that when you're taking it, you're taking it with a full glass of water. And, you know, think about things like, you know, if you're trying to take two grams, let's say, break that up and do a third of that in the

morning with breakfast, a third of it, you know, in the middle of the day with lunch, and then a third at dinner. And so you're not going to get as much at any one time in your stomach. And so you're not going to get that kind of GI upset. And then the other thing that's worth keeping in mind is, it does take anywhere from like two to four weeks to get used to it. And so, you know, if you're, you know, one of those people, you're like, oh, I read about this. This is amazing. I want to try it. And you just gave it like two or three days. And then, you know, it was tanking your recovery. So you stopped. Like, you didn't really give it a chance to work or give yourself a chance to adapt. So I'd say, like, started a really low dose, breaking that dose up into two or

three chunks for the day, giving yourself time to adjust, which is a month, right? Like, give yourself that month, assuming that you're not, you know, so uncomfortable and it's disrupting your sleep in such a horrible way. But, and then slowly, slowly ramp to whatever dose, you know, you and your doctor decide is the right dose for you. But, but really go slower than you think. This isn't something where it's like, oh, my buddy's been taking five grams for years, so I just jumped in at five with him. I wouldn't recommend doing that, especially if you're seeing any kind of stomach or GI issues or if you're feeling like you're not sleeping great. I don't want to scare anybody. Most people don't report that, but it's not at all surprising that Donald did, and there's

probably a lot of other people like that who are experiencing that. Along these lines, Ashley had specifically asked about taking creatine at night, and I think it's just worth calling out that creatine is itself not a stimulant, right? It's not going to prevent you from sleeping. The main concerns in terms of like how it might be acting to harm your sleep is like I said because it's pulling water into your muscles it could dehydrate you so make sure you're drinking it with plenty of water you don't want to be dehydrated when you sleep and then you know if it's causing any kind of GI upset right like when you get horizontal that can cause things like acid reflux and whatnot so that might bother your sleep but it doesn't directly act on sleep and so if you don't

notice those things. You don't have the GI symptoms. You don't have anything like that. There's no concern with taking it at night if that's when you like to take it. To Ashley, Donald, Sam, Natalie, and Haley and Jose, who all wrote in with just really fun questions, thank you so much for taking the time to share those with us. I hope you found these answers helpful. If you have a question that you would like us to answer on a future questions podcast, please send them in. We'd love to answer your questions and talk about the things that interest you most. Once again, I am Emily Capital Lupo, SvP of Data Science and Research at WOOP. Thank you for listening. Thank you to Emily for coming on the pod as always. And thank you to you, the listener, for sending in all those

questions. A reminder, you can do that podcast at WOOP.com or calling us 508-443-4952. If you enjoyed the podcast, check us out on social at Woop, at Will Ahmed. If you are thinking about joining WOOP, this is a great time to do so. You can literally sign up for a free 30-day trial. That's right. It's the full WOOP experience. You can try the product. If you don't like it, you just send it back.

New members can also use the code. We'll get a $60 credit on Woop accessories when they check out. Okay, folks, that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green. Thank you.