WHOOP Podcast - Sober October: An Exercise in Unlocking Yourself

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

On this week’s episode, WHOOP Global Head of Human Performance - Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes, and Senior Vice President of Research, Algorithms, and Data, Emily Capodilupo discuss Sober October. Kristen and Emily discuss the breakdown of alcohol (1:50), the immediate downstream effects of alcohol (3:56), what happens to sleep when alcohol is in the system (6:47), how to aid recovery during and after drinking (11:51), how alcohol affects tomorrow (16:58), and alcohol’s effects on your serotonin levels (24:00). Kristen and Emily also provide insights on the Whoop Sober October Challenge (30:06) and how to implement this behavior change (34:20).Resources:Episode 43: Alcohol and PerformanceEpisode 29: What is Heart Rate VariabilityFollow WHOOPwww.whoop.comTrial WHOOP for FreeInstagramTikTokXFacebookLinkedInFollow Will AhmedInstagramXLinkedInFollow Kristen HolmesInstagramLinkedInSupport 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

I get to be really productive on Sundays. You know, I get to avoid all those calories. I know a lot of people who don't drink and, you know, they kind of say things. Like, I'd rather have a piece of cake than a cocktail. And it's like, well, if you frame it that way, like chocolate tastes a whole bunch better than alcohol. You're not just giving it up. This isn't some like exercise and self-denial. It's an exercise in unlocking yourself.

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the Whoop podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop. We're still on a mission to unlock. human performance. That's right. If you're thinking about joining WOOP, check out WOOP.com. You can literally sign up for a free 30-day trial to use the WOOP strap and membership. All right, today's guests. Well, not really guests. There are leaders at Woop. Today's episode, Woop SPP, research of algorithms, data, Emily Capulupo, and Woop Global Head of Human Performance, Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes. These are the

heavy hitters, they are here to talk all things alcohol. That's right. We're talking about sober October. If you're a Woop member, be sure to sign up for the Sober October challenge in the Woop app and see how a month without alcohol can positively impact your health. Kristen and Emily discuss the chemistry of alcohol and how it is broken down in the body, alcohol impacting your sleep, how alcohol affects the heart and your HRV, the connection between between alcohol and mood, the positive impacts of a sober October, and ways to smet new behavior changes. Reminders, if you have a question was answered on the podcast. Email us, podcast whoop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. I'll answer your questions on a future episode.

Here are the fearless Kristen Holmes and Emily Capitlupo. Hi, Emily. Hey, Kristen. I love talking about alcohol with you. Same. It's just a behavior that has the most profound impact on our hero metric, HRV. So we're going to dig into that today. But I really want to start off with just kind of broad overview of alcohol's impact on our body. So I thought before I kind of hand the floor over to you to talk about some of those downstream effects, I thought it might be useful for our members just for us to do like a quick chemistry lesson.

Love it. Okay. So, and I think this will kind of ground us in that. I think once we understand the structure of alcohol, it actually explains a lot of the damaging effects. So I think one of the things that when I was just kind of preparing for the podcast that it really stuck out to me is that alcohol is both water and fat soluble. So instead of just attaching to the receptors of the cell, alcohol actually permeates the cell tissues and organs. So this is like a fundamentally different thing, different types. of toxin in the body. And that really does explain, you know, a lot of the damage. I think the other thing that was really interesting is that, you know, there's three types of alcohol. The one that we ingest is, of course, ethanol. And NAD, which gets a lot of airtime in the longevity discussion, it's, you know, a molecule basically. And what happens is ethanol, the molecule that's present in NAD actually converts ethanol into acetyalahide. And acetyalahide is actually what is toxic.

And that whole conversion process is taking place in the liver, which is creating this toxic environment. You know, so once the liver is kind of in a position where it's having to process this toxin, right? We've kind of established in previous podcasts that alcohol is indeed a poison. You know, you say that very clearly. And I think, you know, just this short kind of lesson in chemistry, I think reinforces the fact that it is indeed, you know, a poison. So what are the kind of the immediate downstream effects from just having this toxin in your liver? Sure. So there's a couple of different things that are going on there. One is just by virtue of, you know, the liver being your, like, detoxifier, the fact that alcohol is a poison means that resource.

are going to the removal of alcohol. And those physiological resources, that response that we mount in response to the presence of alcohol is at the simplest level, it's a physiological distraction because we now have to go and deal with this problem instead of optimizing business as usual. Then on top of that, you know, alcohol isn't just this neutral thing that we need to get rid of. It's this damaging thing. And so, you know, you talked a little bit about how you know, alcohol gets into your cells and it interferes with NAD and different enzymes. So alcohol can obstruct the way or does obstruct the way that like certain enzyme processes occur. And so while alcohol is there, it's actually blocking key physiological processes. And so, you know,

it's not just that we have to get rid of this like, you know, pile of bricks that's in the way, but these pile of bricks are actually termites that are until you get rid of them are making the problem worse and worse. And then, you know, the other piece is that as alcohol breaks down, it turns into a sugar. And so it's also, you know, messing with your metabolic processes on this kind of large scale way where, you know, your body's getting all of this sugar that it likely doesn't want or need in that moment, especially, you know, if you kind of do the common thing where you drink on an empty stomach late at night when your body's not otherwise anticipating a meal. And that's very disruptive to metabolic health. And it's actually, we have a theory

that it's one of the reasons why your sleep data looks so junky when you go to bed with alcohol in your system. And on a smaller scale, you see a less bad version of that when you binge eat high carb food late at night, we believe that the sugar response when your body is responding to elevated blood sugar at a time when it wasn't ready for that with insulin at the ready to go and absorb that, that that's, you know, disruptive. And so you have the disruption of too much sugar, the disruption of alcohol blocking certain enzymatic processes. And then the disruption of this physiological distraction that we now need to go and put a bunch of resources into getting rid of this thing that then don't go to, you know, the ordinary repair and function of our physiological system.

And you mentioned sleep and that we see really junky sleep when when folks report drinking alcohol. Talk a little bit about some of the nuances there. What is really happening inside sleep and what do we see from a data perspective? Yeah. So a couple things that are worth mentioning. The vast majority of people who drink in general and then also on whoop are drinking in the evening. And so when we talk about how alcohol affects sleep, most of our data, people are in fact going to bed with elevated blood alcohol levels. We actually see the disruption to sleep is much, much less, if not like close to negligible, if you, for example, like day drank at a barbecue, but then it gave your body enough time to clear the alcohol prior to going to

sleep. So you should generally, as a rule of thumb, this depends a lot on prior experience with alcohol and your own metabolism and weight and stuff like that. But generally, it takes about an hour to clear one standard drink worth of alcohol. And so if you have, you know, an afternoon barbecue or like a beer at lunch or something like that and you're not going to bed for an hour and you don't continue to drink, then you're not going to see these same effects. But high level when we say it affects your sleep, I just want to give people a mental model. of how much it affects your sleep. So we actually see it decreases recovery scores by as much as 13% on average. We see that restorative sleep decreases. We see that it also tends to be a

circadian disruptor. So on nights when you're drinking, you know, if you don't have a drinking problem such that you're drinking every night, those also tend to be nights where you're going to bed later. There's all kinds of social reasons. You know, we tend to drink with friends, which probably means we're out, which probably means we're not like doing our normal bedtime. But, you know, we do need to in order to understand what is alcohol doing versus what do all the social things around alcohol do and deconfound those things because alcohol, you know, it's sort of, as we just talked about, it's its own poison. But then it also tends to lead us to make bad decisions. I want to be as non-judgmental as possible. Like most adults can go and have two glasses of champagne

at a wedding. And that's not a bad decision, right? Their body is totally fine. That you always heard And like the cereal commercials, like part of a balanced breakfast. Like I'm part of a healthy life when it's done in moderation. So I don't want to use the word bad. But, you know, it is associated with less sleep, later bedtimes, less consistent circadian behaviors, all of which is counterproductive to next day recovery and next day performance, but something that, you know, in a consenting result should feel free to do when social factors are more important than next day recovery.

Why does it impact sleep so much? Beyond its association with other behaviors, the direct effect of alcohol and sleep is mostly due to the fact that alcohol is a sedative. So we've talked about this a lot on the pod. Hopefully you've all heard this for me already because that means you've been listening. But sleep is an incredibly active process. And we sort of experience sleep as like, I'm awake and then I'm doing nothing and I'm sleeping. And we so thoroughly, the scientific community, so thoroughly understands at this point that sleep is, incredibly active. Some of the most important physiological processes are happening during sleep. And one of the reasons why sleep is so ubiquitous across species and all living organisms is that you have to quiet, you know, the big macro things of wakeness in order to divert resources to the very intense, very important things that happen and can only happen during sleep when it's not competing with all of the stuff that happens when we're awake. If you're sedated, like under anesthesia or drugs, which basically what alcohol is, right? Those super active, important things don't

happen. So while you might perceive like I was passed out, I was totally asleep for, you know, 12 hours or whatever, if you actually look at a polysemnography, which is, you know, the laboratory sleep test, it does not look like sleep. It looks like sedation. So you're just still and quiet and your eyes are closed and all that stuff. But those important physiological processes don't happen. So you wake up feeling super unrested. And physiologically, it's kind of akin to like an all-nighter. So even if you might say, like, I passed out at midnight and then I slept to nine, but it took you until 3, 4 a.m. to clear the alcohol. You will look like somebody who slept from like 4 to 9, not somebody who slept from midnight to 9. So it's the fact that alcohol sedates you that makes it so that you don't get the recovery

benefits of sleep. You don't get really any of that restorative sleep. You don't wake up feeling rested. And then because it's as if you stayed up or didn't sleep until much later, your circadian rhythm is super thrown off. Your body doesn't know what time to expect food. And so you're not able to hormonally anticipate what's going to happen for the rest of the day. So you get this kind of weird effect, almost like jet lag or something. I wanted to run this idea by you. And it's kind of a potential hack. So given how disruptive alcohol is to our sleep, would you suggest that we wait for alcohol to kind of clear the system before even attempting to sleep? Now, let me tell you why this could be interesting. So when I look at stress score, I don't really drink a

whole lot, but, you know, some of my friends do. And we were kind of comparing, you know, the nights that they did a heavy drinking session, you know, within a few hours of bed. And And then the nights that they didn't, their stress score is much flatter. Yeah. When they're drinking, their stress is, you know, almost at the very top of the scale, which is 3.0. So it's a scale of zero to three our stress monitor. It's looking at continuous heart rate and heart rate for our listeners.

And what we see when folks are ingesting alcohol is that they have these really high stress scores during sleep. We're not adjusting alcohol. Sleep is very flat, which is more desirable, right? Would you recommend delaying sleep? So we kind of avoid that junk sleep and really allowing. that alcohol to clear our system before even attempting to sleep. I think another way to broaden the question is, okay, like, it's my best friend's wedding. I'm going to have a glass of champagne

or three with her, you know, whatever. What can I do to make that as the least possible disruption on my sleep? Right. I can't change the time of the wedding. You know, I have to give the maid of honor speech, whatever it is. Sorry, I had a wedding every weekend this month. That's very much top of mind. But there are a couple things you can do. So one is the nice thing about anything we take orally is that everything else going on in our digestive system does change the timing between when that thing that ingested orally enters your mouth to like when it hits your bloodstream. And specifically if you have some fat in your digestive system, right, that is going to slow down the absorption. And people who drink have probably experienced this, right? But like, if you have a shot on an empty stomach, you're going to feel the effects of that much faster than if you sip a beer while eating, you know, two slices of pizza, even if it's the exact same amount of alcohol, right?

And it's because the fat slows down that absorption. Obviously, there's also a lot of carbs in beer, right? And so you get that same dose of alcohol much more slowly. And that allows your body to get like, ooh, alcohol is coming. Let me start to like prepare to respond to this. And so by the time the like peak concentration of alcohol is in your blood, your body's like, all right, we're drinking. I'm ready for this. We've kind of like teased your system into like this is coming and it can prepare and you'll clear it out faster.

The other thing, of course, is giving your body all the resources it needs to be in a position to go and, you know, mount that response to the alcohol. And so like hydrating with water in between for every alcoholic drink that you have. If you also have a glass of water, it's going to be easier. Alcohol can also be really dehydrating. It's a diuretic. You know, the diuretic effect will leak water out of your body. And so you should think of it as negative hydration. So however much you normally need to drink, you need an extra glass per unit of alcohol that you're having. And so that's just going to put your body in a situation where when it tries to divert resources to clearing the alcohol, it has an abundance of them. So like if you're otherwise eating generally pretty healthy, especially some good quality fats, which will slow down your digestive system and then also getting water in between. That's going to help a ton. The other piece is, and this is sort of when you're like, oh, should I stay up after drinking? What you do in that stay up time matters a lot because we talked about how alcohol breaks down into sugar and that that sugar, in addition to the alcohol, is disruptive to the depth and quality of your sleep. But we know that there are really simple things

you can do movement that'll help your body clear the sugar. So not just giving it the resources to like mount the insulin response to deal with the sugar on its own, but actually help your body consume the sugar because one of the best ways to deal with excess blood sugar is actually just to burn the sugar. So there's a really interesting series of studies that have been done where they look at people who fidget and like kind of bounce their knees or like any of those things. And even just like bouncing your knees in like a fidgety way for 20 minutes after eating, you tend to have to the same food, like a much flatter glucose response. Yeah. And so, you know, going back to my analogy of like you're at your best friend's wedding and you have to drink,

like if after dinner you go to like dance, you're actually going to have a way better time because all of that activity after eating is going to consume the sugar that the alcohol is breaking down into. And so then when you go to bed, at least like there might be some lingering things around. the alcohol, depending on how much you drank and depending on how late relative to bedtime you were drinking. But if you've at least handled some of like that excess sugar burn off, that's going to help too. And be one less distraction that your body's diverting resources to. Which might help you sleep. Which will help you sleep. Yeah. For sure. So, you know, we talked about, you know, today's drinking is going to impact tonight's sleep. How does it

impact tomorrow? You know, we know that obviously the time frame when we measure heart rate variability is during sleep, which is, you know, predictive in some ways of how we're going to adapt and respond to stress the next day. So knowing that HRV is diminished, you know, resting heart rate is also suboptimal. How do we expect our performance to be impacted? And obviously, this depends on how much we drank. Yeah. I mean, alcohol is very dose-dependent. And I think, you know, we're talking about drinking a little bit sloppily right now. most people who have, you know, one drink, especially with food, especially not immediately before bed, are going to handle it just fine. And this isn't meant to scare anybody. We do see that typical levels of drinking do result in recovery scores that are suppressed by an average 13%. So that is quite a lot. And that's isolating the effect of drinking. It's actually in practice tends to be a lot higher because, Like we said earlier, you probably also didn't get as much sleep.

You probably also stayed up late, so had poor sleep consistency. To the extent that your sleep is disrupted as an effective alcohol, you're going to see all of that the next day. You did not get as good quality sleep as, you know, just your time with your eyes closed might otherwise lead you to think you did. And so you will perform like somebody who's underrested and under recovered as reflected in those scores. And so you're at, you know, increased risk of injury. If you choose to work out, you're likely experiencing a certain amount of, like, GI distress because, again, like alcohol is a diuretic. So there's a good chance that you're dehydrated.

Obviously, that's something that you can pretty readily treat, not just with water, but also electrolytes. Because of the circadian disruptive effect of common drinking patterns, you know, if you go to have a meal at your normal time, your body. your circadian rhythm is misaligned with that. And so that causes some of that, like, GI upset. So you're going to feel like junk. Yeah.

I don't know. We've all been there. So performance levels are going to be diminished a bit. I want to talk in a second, you know, what people can do to kind of get themselves back on track as quickly as possible. Maybe in scenarios where in the lead up to drinking didn't do all the things that you kind of mentioned in terms of the hydration, you know, kind of went into bed at like a of, you know, at their, at their kind of worst possible self. And then how do we, you know,

get back on track the next day? What's the fastest route? So we'll just put a pin in that question. But before we answer that, I'm wondering, you know, a lot of folks are like, you know, they wake up from a heavy night to drink and they feel hungry. So hormones, ghrelin, and leptin are impacted. Now, is this more to do with the short and kind of insufficient low quality sleep? Is it to do that? Or is it the alcohol or is it a combination? It's a combination. And I think that this is where answering this question kind of broadly gets confusing because you can't separate alcohol from like all the behaviors around alcohol. Scientifically you can. But generally, these things tend to go hand in hand. And so there are people who don't drink a lot but love those social situations in which like drinking happens. They might have had one drink, but like stayed up really in which case it'll look like alcohol has like totally destroyed them. But it's all the other things. Then you have people. who, you know, just drink a lot at normal dinner. And so then they don't have those other effects.

Like, they're still going to bed on time and all those kinds of things. They're sleeping in their own bed, their home, like all of those effects. So it's important to kind of tease those things apart in answering the question. But, you know, alcohol is a hormone disruptor, for sure. The blood sugar spikes that we've been talking about that go hand in hand with alcohol consumption, but then are exacerbated by the types of food choices that drunk people tend to make, you know, that crash that you get post the spike is going to make you hungrier. The sort of circadian disruption is going to make your body confused about when food is coming, which could make you hungry or not hungry at inappropriate times.

But you also get things like if you really drink a lot of alcohol and you're experiencing a ton of GI stress, you know, sort of secondary to that, you might not be hungry at all for maybe a day or two. And so there definitely isn't like a universal experience here. But a lot of that hunger, that like mild drinking, especially when associated with snacking and late at nightness and all of that kind of stuff that you experience in the morning is blood sugar mediated. And so it is okay to eat if you're hungry, but knowing that like it's a more of a blood sugar response than a like under, like a caloric deficit kind of response, hopefully can help you make better food choices. It's kind of good time to go slow, you know, something high fiber, high quality food, not just like shove is made. any carbs in your face as you can. That's going to lead to the overeating that tends to go hand in

hand with an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Some of the other things that you're going to feel the next day, some are directly related to the alcohol. You're going to need to replace the electrolytes and the water to the extent that you did disrupt your circadian rhythm, morning sunlight, which is always a good idea, is probably a particularly good idea. I'll help you get back on track for your evening sleep. Yeah. And a little bit of, you know, morning movement. You might not be up for exercise, again, depending on, like, how much you had to drink. But, you know, can you go outside in the sunlight and just stretch a little bit and move? I think it's definitely going to help of it. I will say, too, like, you know,

in terms of getting recovery back online for the next day, the day that you're recovering from a big night out, we see in the data very clearly that if you listen to strain coach, you will absolutely improve your chances of having a positive upward tick in your recovery. next day. So any way we slice the data, controlling for all the things that we're talking about, alcohol being one of those things, there is no question that, you know, Strain Coach is giving you really good advice. And so on these days where you are going to be underrecovered, I think probably one of the number one things that you can do is pay attention to String Coach. I'm anxious to get those data out. They're really fascinating and validate this coaching mechanism

that we have in the app that I think is really powerful. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health, performance, fitness, you may really enjoy getting a whoop. That's right. You can check out whoop at whoop.com. It measures everything around sleep, recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free. You get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. And that is just at whoop.com. Back to the guests. I wanted to talk a little bit about alcohol and serotonin before we get into October. There's no question that alcohol impacts our mood circuitry. And so I kind of

wanted to just talk through making a case for maybe stopping our consumption after one to two drinks. You know, that first drink, we're going to feel actually heightened mood. We're going to talk a little bit more. We're going to have a bit more energy. We're going to feel a little looser and you know all those things potentially aren't bad but we see basically a quite a big crash in serotonin after that first drink and that's actually what i think can often motivate us to go after that second drink we're trying to get back to that first drink feeling which we're never going to recapture right so just kind of putting it out there that like we're not going to be able to get back to that first drink feeling or that second drink feeling so as we kind of unpack that

a little bit what is your take on the folks that are kind of three four or five drinks in the that that has on the system versus stopping it too, not just, you know, from the perspective of sleep and recovery, but from the perspective of serotonin and kind of the type of effect that can have, you know, in the short term, but also as we look at more long-term impact. This is where alcohol doesn't always have like a linear dose dependent response. Like in some aspects, it does, right? Like the amount of blood sugar increase, you're going to get somewhat linear with number of drinks, the extent to which it's dehydrating, some more closer to linear, right?

Like, then you start to get into these places where, like, we can take a lot of crap. And, like, there are these thresholds, and most of us aren't great at always knowing where they are, where it's like, until this amount, you know, our serotonin system can just, like, absorb the hit, that system will not degrade in performance. And so you get like the happy kind of fun part. And this is like how things become addicting, right? It's like you kind of, you get all the good and none of the bad yet because we can handle assuming you're healthy and all that stuff that we shouldn't take for granted. But I will for the purpose of this answer, right? Like a little bit of dehydrating, a little bit of

blood sugar. Like we're great at that, right? Like, you know, the amount of blood sugar increase you get isn't atypical compared to like eating a croissant. You know, the amount of dehydration is atypical compared to a workout, right? These are all normal amounts of stressors that the system gets hit with in different forms all the time. And so we just take it like a champ and we move on. And so it's like, yeah, it's great to know that, you know, we did add this dehydrating stressor and we can compensate for that with a glass of water. It's great to know we did have this blood sugar stressor and we could compensate with that with some movement and some fiber. But like if you keep stressing the system, you start to cross over from the amount that I can just absorb and be like,

ouch, but I got this to the amount that like I literally can't keep up with. And then you start to see these systems falling over. You know, you can almost create a mental model of this like buildings in a hurricane, right? Like your storm shutters and all those things can get you through storms up to a certain size. But then all of a sudden, like the storm gets just a little bit bigger. you know, the trees on your roof and, you know, the building's ripped up and everything's flooded and all of a sudden. Your house goes from like, you know, it rained, but it was fine the next day to like, we're not going to curse, but like, holy. Yeah. You know, this thing is never going to be inhabitable again. And like, thankfully, our bodies tend to not from one drinking experience to be never inhabitable again. But you do get like, you can cross over a threshold. And we're bad at knowing where that threshold is. But where eventually it's like, I can't absorb this. And so something. falls over and it's helpful to understand that like just because we absorbed it well doesn't mean that it was totally harmless but we handled it to just be mindful that like is impossible to just scale the good and no amount of the like hey hydrate and wiggle your knees a little bit that

I was talking about like applies when we're talking about eight nine you know double digits drinks in one day there's a reason why that's you know never recommended and I really don't believe that there is any safe way to do that. Altering the circuitry in our brain comes at a cost, right? We just have to recognize that. And unfortunately, what we see with substance abuse and why this is such a sort of scary place is that like you alter that circuitry and then you can fall into addiction where like that circuitry, like you're saying, like you're constantly chasing that first drink

feeling and you don't know how to modulate around that. And so you can get to a point where like you actually can't just have one drink. safely because one drink turns into 10, which is fully but lethal. So you just, you don't want to get anywhere close to that threshold. And so, you know, we talk a lot about alcohol because the majority of whoop users consume alcohol, we do see this kind of incredible effect where it's one of the biggest things we get early member feedback on where they're like, I saw what it did to my data and I immediately quit drinking.

And I think outside of WOOP nationally, there's a really interesting trend away from drinking. There's really interesting data. I've seen that like Gen Z doesn't drink. They drink way less than millennials. Alcohol producers are concerned about this. There's a huge surge in like all the non-alcoholic cocktails and stuff like that. Locktails. Yeah, but like specifically like the fake alcohol, you know, where they're trying to make gin that's alcohol free and all that kind of stuff.

Not just like mocktails used to just be fancy juice. And now they have like zero-proof gin in them. Oh, interesting. Okay. So it would be very tasty. I think that people are seeing this data and moving away from it, which is great. Great for our health. Great for longevity.

You know, I think unfortunately, like, you don't know what your own limit is. And I think too many people discover it because they went too far and like have really damaging effects as a result. So every October we run this really cool experiment where we invite our members to experiment with a dry October. So we have some really interesting data that show some pretty serious positive health effects, what folks are taking the month off from drinking. Do you want to run through those data for us real quick? Absolutely. Excited to go through this data. But before I do, I just want to caveat that the results you should expect to see are going to very much

be a function of how much drinking you're giving up. Yeah, this is group level data. This is group level day and it so it assumes like average alcohol consumption. If you're drinking once a month and you skip that one drink, you probably won't see too much of an effect. If you're drinking a couple times a week or daily, you'll definitely see a larger effect. But that said, we saw this is actually incredible, a almost 10% decrease in resting heart rate after the month. Just wild. And what is fascinating about some of these stats is like when you quit drinking for a month, we see a big improvement in sleep. And that improvement in sleep will immediately go away if in November you resume normal drinking habits. When we see these increases in HRV and decreases in resting heart rate,

some of that is because it's like the acute removal of alcohol, but some of it is the healing that your body is able to do when you remove alcohol. And so we see that if you go back to like baseline or what was your typical drinking patterns, some of that benefit actually sustains even when drinking resumes. And so you get that benefit starting November from a better baseline. It's not just an artifact of removing the stressor, but a true change in your physiological baseline. And so even if you're not committed to fully embracing the dry lifestyle in perpetuity, there are huge benefits to taking a month off. So I'm going to do this. Please join me. And I'm curious to see what you see. But let me keep going

through the data. So we saw 4% increase in recovery. Like I said, the 10% decrease in resting heart rate. And this should translate to just more capacity, right? You'll be able to work out harder, likely. You'll have just more energy to exert throughout your day. You should see improvements in mood, cognitive functionings. Should have a really powerful downstream effect for people who are consuming a fair amount and then all of a sudden stop. Definitely. Yeah. I think, you know, you talked about like, well, when you're hungover, you need to go and respect your strain coach. Well, your strain coach probably going to be telling you not to do very much. If instead you were green because, you know, you didn't poison yourself the night before. And so you go out and you get an incredible

workout and it's Sunday. So, you know, you don't have work. And so you can actually, you know, go for that three hour bike ride or whatever it is you want to do. Like all of those things have tremendous positive benefits. So it's not just about like removing some negative, but it's in that space that that frees up. What do you go do with it? And so, you know, whoop can't always quantify I like how productive I was and how much I got done. But that stuff's like super real too. I mean, just think about nursing your hangover. You're going to be short with the people around you.

You know, another people aren't the most pleasant people. So it's damaging your social relationships, all those kinds of things. And I think your interactions with children as well, you know, for folks who have kids. It's hard to be present and engaged when you're hungover. Yeah, I completely stopped drinking, you know, an anticipation of pregnancy and then during pregnancy and then, you know, breastfeeding and all of that. but toddlers are the greatest alarm clocks. They're up at 6.15 no matter what, every single day. And so it's like, there's no fun in drinking if I know that like my toddler wants to play at 6.30 tomorrow. And so it's also like there's that whole element of like, you know, she'll wake up at 630 having just got 11 hours of sleep. So she's ready to go. Yeah. I need to match toddler energy, which if you've ever seen a toddler is just an incredible amount of energy. And I just can't do that if I'm drinking. I think in other data sets, too, we've seen our small. all our samples, but, you know, we see that it doesn't just getting back to neutral is not just a 24-hour thing. I mean, it can take up to five days, right, depending on how much you're,

so you're not like operating a lower-level functioning just for 24 hours. Like, it could be an extended period of time, which is another, I think, reason to try dry. Yeah. So we talked about the benefits of jumping into Sober October and Chris and I are going to do it, so please do it with us. Yes. You know, I think it'd be unfair and a bit of a disservice. to not also acknowledge that like behavior change is hard. And, you know, it's easy to be like, hey, this is beneficial guys. You should do it. And then hard to actually go make it happen, especially if there's like people in your life who are like, want you to go and, you know, have some beers or you, whatever it is. You've done a lot of work in the behavior change space.

What is some advice you would give our members who are like, oh, I'd like to do that. But this behavior change and commitment is a bit daunting. You know, I think there's a fair amount of consensus in the scholarship around behavior change that when you link the change to your identity and values, you have much more chance of being successful in that change. You know, I think before you embark on any sort of change, thinking about, all right, how does this help me be the person I aspire to be in the world? You know, and that's really around your identity. And I think coming to terms of that and being really clear about that is, I think, the first step in giving yourself the best chance at successfully engaging in this change. I think the second piece to that is really linking your values. So what are your core beliefs?

We talked a little bit about parenting. And one of my goals as a parent is to be present and engaged, you know, and so really thinking about, all right, how does this decision of not drinking or trying dry help me live my values in a more authentic. honest way. And so, you know, just those two kind of moments of introspection can really help ground this change initially and help you feel a sense of confidence as you embark on, you know, what can be challenging, right? I think the third piece of the kind of overall scaffolding is around anchors. You know, what else do I need to be true in my life in order to, in this case, avoid drinking alcohol? And that can be a little bit more complicated, right? Maybe every night, you and your husband have this kind of hidden commitment where you have a glass of wine before

dinner. So you're going to have to change that, right? So that's going to be making sure that you're shifting what was kind of an anchor in your life. You're kind of shifting that and replacing it with something new. So maybe you talk to your partner and say, hey, instead of having a glass of wine, I'm trying dry. Let's go for a walk instead so we can connect or let's just replace it with something else. So oftentimes when you're incorporating a new change, you have to eliminate other things in your life that are going to disrupt or get in the way of that change. Yeah. And if I can make some of that a little bit practical, and one thing that I found really helpful is instead of framing things in terms of like, I'm giving up alcohol, what are you

getting? Yeah. You know, stop saying like I'm not drinking, but instead it's, I'm really excited to feel amazing at 6.30 in the morning. And, you know, my daughter and I are going to build a fort or, you know, go to the park or like, whatever it is and that's going to feel good and be fun. Right. And go to the week, firing in all cylinders. Or like, you know, I get to be really productive on Sundays, and I love that. You know, I get to avoid all those calories and I'm going to have dessert, you know, and it's a slice of chocolate cake instead of get those calories in the form of a cocktail. And that's really fun. Like, I know a lot of people who don't drink and, you know, they kind of say things. Like, I'd rather have a piece of cake than a cocktail. It's like, well, if you frame it that way, like, chocolate tastes a whole bunch better than alcohol. And so I think, you know, thinking about you're not just giving it up. This isn't some, like, exercise and self-denial. It's an exercise in unlocking yourself. And like, and living your values. We're trying to encourage you to like give up poison. We're not trying to encourage you to give up, you know, fruits and veggies and sunlight and stuff where it's like just about denial. And so like

zoom in on the I get to, not I'm taking away. 100%. The other thing, and you touched on this, think about how to make this easy for yourself. So, you know, if a friend's like, hey, do you want to you have a drink after work. You don't have to say no, but like, hey, can we go find a bar that has mocktails? You know, I'll drink that or we can go try out this cool tea shop, right? Like, you'd still have that exact same social interaction and they can even drink, right? It doesn't always have to be that. You know, I gave up alcohol initially. I mean, it wasn't never a big drinker, but, you know, in the context of pregnancy and it's so easy to do that because nobody wants to give alcohol to a pregnant person. So you get all the social support. Yeah. You know, you can recreate some

of that, like, if you're thinking, I want to do so over October, tell your friends. So they're not going to, like, put it in your face, especially if you're the kind of person who would have more trouble sticking to the commitment if you are surrounded by alcohol, versus, like, if you're comfortable with people drinking around you. So, like, I would say people have a better chance of success when they deputize the people around them to, like, be on that committee with them. And it doesn't have to be a big ask, but, you know, if your colleague says, you want to go grab a beer after work, what they're really asking for is they probably have something on their mind. They want to talk to you right. They want time with you. And so saying, like, hey, I'm doing sober October.

Do you want to go for a walk? Do you want to go grab coffee? They might join you. They might not. You know, you kind of go from there. But I think that it doesn't have to be this like massive exercise and self-denial. It should be this fun unlock of, you know, trading. And that's what the identity and values exercise will be is is really help you think about all the positives that this is, you know, bringing into your life and how it's allowing you to be the person that you say you want to be anyway, right? How does it contribute to that? And just kind of putting that down on paper and being really clear about that is going to help you have these conversations in a more clear, authoritative kind of way. I think the other piece to this is just the planning piece. So thinking about your week

where this is kind of the fourth piece of the scaffolding, if we think about identity values, what are the people, places, and things that kind of might trip you up. And just being really proactive about your week and making sure to your point that you're kind of scheduling what would normally be an after work drink and just replacing that and making sure that, you know, people you normally kind of do this stuff with, they're just clear on what's happening and that you're, you know, not giving up that social, but just replacing it with a different type of social opportunity that aligns with what you're trying to achieve. Yeah, and I think that's where, like, problematic drinking can be tricky because a lot of problematic drinkers will have

drinking buddies that are also problematic drinkers. And so when they then sort of get encouraged, to go give up drinking, there's this other piece of like, and give up your friends and the thing you do after work and all the stuff. And so then all of a sudden it's like, well, what do I do? Like what? I have no friends now because like my friends are at the bar. I have nowhere to go because normally I go to the bar, right? And like as much as it's about alcohol, it's not about alcohol too. And so just making sure that you're thinking about the complete thing and what role is alcohol playing in my life and where is that showing up and how do I keep all the best? You still want you to have the socializing, still want you to have an activity to look forward to after work, all of that, and just remove the alcohol.

And it might even be a moment where you, you know, take on a new activity that you've never done before and you might meet new people, you know, go to the rock climbing gym after work instead of the bar, you know, like something like that where, you know, it's totally kind of a new adventure. That's another way to frame it. I think too, like maybe just a final point, you know, your friends and your loved ones should nurture and support, you know, your values. So I think it is also a moment to kind of pause and just make sure that the people in your life are actually supporting who you want to be in the world and supporting your values. So as you consider a change in your journey in any way, you know, taking stock of the people around you is also an important exercise. Yeah. And I'd say that's also some of the fun about doing this.

as a WOOP challenge and why we do Sober October as a company and not merely saying, like, hey, go pick a month and like do this on your own because if you do this with us, you'll do it alongside thousands and thousands of other Woot members. It's a huge community. And so if it is feeling lonely, I think there is something to pay attention to in that. Why is it that removing alcohol creates a feeling of loneliness? But you're not alone. come do it with us, engage in the whoop, sober October content.

I think some of it will be funny. Yes. It'll all be very interesting. Looking forward to kind of closing the loop on the other side. Breaking down the results. Breaking down the results. So stay tuned for some of that. But this should be, you know, it's a big global community event that we're running for

the next month. So I'm looking forward to having you join us. Well, thank you so much, Emily, for sharing all your expertise and insights. This is such a fun discussion. as always. Thank you, Kristen. I had fun doing it with you. Big thank you to Kristen and Emily for that detailed breakdown on alcohol and its impact on your body. If you're a WOOP member, go sign up for the Sober October Challenge in the Woop app. If you enjoy this episode of the WOOP podcast, please leave a rating or review. Please subscribe to the

WOOP podcast. You can check us on social at Woop, at Will Ahmed, at Kristen, underscore Homes, 2126. have a question. What's the answer on the podcast? Email us. Podcast at whoop.com. Call us 508-443-4-9-52. If you're thinking about joining Woop. Good news. You can sign up for free. That's at Woop.com. New members can use the code will. W-I-L. Get a $60 credit on WOOP access tories when you enter the code at checkout. All right, that's a wrap, folks. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.