WHOOP Podcast - Understanding Respiratory Rate: How groundbreaking WHOOP research applies to the pandemic

Episode Date: December 12, 2020

We are continuing our groundbreaking research looking at the connection between an increase in respiratory rate and COVID-19 infections. This episode is a deep dive on everything you need to know about respiratory rate and how to monitor your WHOOP data during the pandemic. VP of Data Science Emily Capodilupo shares our latest research updates, and pro golfer Scott Stallings returns to the podcast to detail how his data indicated that he had come down with coronavirus. We cover our respiratory rate findings (4:00), detecting the incubation period (8:42), putting WHOOP data to work (10:19), when to be concerned about your respiratory rate (12:30), non-COVID factors that can cause a respiratory rate spike (13:48), how accurate our respiratory rate algorithm is (18:16), Scott’s data tanking (23:07), how WHOOP alerted Scott to a possible illness (24:52), difficulty in diagnosing COVID symptoms (27:47), recovering from coronavirus (31:09), and gratitude during COVID (34:12).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

Hello, folks. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, the founder and CEO of Woop, and we are on a mission to unlock human performance. That's right. We've got a membership that collects data for you on sleep and recovery and strain. It includes the Woop Strap 3.0. It's pretty phenomenal. And look, this is a very important episode. We are going to go deep again on respiratory rate, and we're going to give you a real-life example from Scott Stallings, a professional golfer, for how he used respiratory rate to predict COVID-19. We've got Emily Capital Lupo, our brilliant VP of data science here with us. She's going to talk about the peer-reviewed research that we've done.

This is now peer-reviewed and published, which is another sort of layer of validation in the medical community. And it shows the importance of respiratory rate. I'll keep saying it, respiratory rate. It's the number of breaths you have in a minute. And we've been able to see that about 80% of cases have this distinct elevated respiratory rate. So we're going to talk to Emily about the research and how you can use respiratory rate to better understand your body during this crazy pandemic. And then we're going to go to Scott Stallings, professional golfer, PGA tour, great guest on the earlier podcast, episode 30. and Scott talks about the fact that he just tested positive for COVID-19

and literally discovered that he had COVID-19 by looking at his WOOP app. You can't make this stuff up. Scott's not endorsed by WOOP. This is just his experience. And a reminder that you can get 15% off a W-W-M-M-M-E-D. If you use the code Will Ahmed, that's W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D. So without further ado, here's Emily. Emily, great to have you on the podcast.

podcast. Thanks for having. Well, it was a pleasure. Now, we have a big update on the respiratory rate research. Tell us about it. Yeah, so the paper that we had submitted for peer review back in the beginning of the summer has officially been accepted and so is now, you know, through the peer review process and fully published in the journal plus one. Now explain for people the difference between having something published versus peer-reviewed and published, which is the stage that we're at now? Sure. So, you know, everybody's been told probably a thousand times not to trust everything you read on

the internet. And that's because anybody can go and write an article and post it on their own website or anything like that and say whatever they want. What the peer review process does is it takes experts in the field, these so-called peers, and has them read your article and really scrutinize all the methodology. They ask a lot of really in-depth questions, why we chose to do the next. analyses the way they did. They make sure that you have the statistical power that the claims that you're making are legitimate. Your methodology is sound, that your conclusions are sort of fair and not you're overreaching or anything like that. You know, you can't show that something has a tiny effect and be like, oh, we solved this problem. So they want to make sure that the language is appropriate and the methodology is appropriate. And then they essentially sign off. And so there are these peer-reviewed journals and there's thousands of them all over the world. But they are all go through very, very similar processes where you have usually two, sometimes three of these peer

reviewers. They give you feedback. And then you have to go back and edit your manuscript and essentially say like, okay, now have we made changes? Are you happy? And this can go on for a number of rounds. And the journals will not publish your paper until the two reviewers agree that all the claims and all the methodology are legitimate. And then that's when it goes out to the world. And so it's just this higher level sort of stamp of approval and prevents people from putting nonsense out there. So obviously we've now passed this important hurdle and explain what are the claims that have now been peer reviewed that are out there. Sure. So the paper has two primary findings, both of which are exciting and novel in their own right. So we looked at 25,000 Woot members during the month of

November 2019. So it was intentionally chosen prior to the introduction of COVID-19. We looked at these 25,000 WOOP members, all of whom had collected data in all 30 days of November, and what their standard deviation of their respiratory rates on WOOP was. And what we found is that the average Woot member standard deviation was about half of a breath per minute. And this is something that had never been documented before, so what normal night-to-night variation in healthy people is in their respiratory rates. And what that means is that respiratory rate is an extremely stable metric. So night-to-night and healthy people, you don't expect it to change very much from what it was before. And that's really what leads to the second finding, which is when respiratory

rate suddenly increases, and particularly when it increases in this interesting gradual pattern over the course of a couple nights is the sustained increase, that that can be indicative of COVID-19. The first 270 Woot members who reported experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and then getting tested for COVID-19, of them 81 had actually had COVID-19, and the rest ended up testing negative. And we looked at what their respiratory rates did from two nights before the onset of symptoms through three days into their symptomatic illness. And what we found is that over and over again,

there was this steady increase pattern in respiratory rate. So it's like climbing night overnight. And that this, for people, even if they reported experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, like the shortness of breath and fatigue and all these different things, fever, if they then ended up testing negative, they tended to not have this pattern in respiratory rate. So what this means is that when respiratory rate increases following this particular pattern, it could be a sign that you have COVID-19.

So the recap here is looking at healthy people, just looking at the whole population on whoop, we found that your respiratory rate is incredibly stable. So breaths per minute while you're sleeping incredibly stable, right? Rarely changes, which is why when I look at my whoop app, my respiratory rate's been 13 plus or minus, 0.3 for the last 12 months. So that's really stable. And then you looked at the people who tested positive for COVID-19, and they had an enormous increase in their respiratory rate. And then you also looked at the people who thought they had COVID-19, who had symptoms like COVID-19, but who tested negative. And those people did not have an increase in their respiratory rate. Is that

accurate? Yeah, and what's so interesting about this data is almost everybody in the study is in the U.S. and all of this data came from March and April through the beginning of May when testing in the U.S. was really at a significant shortage. And so in order to get one of these tests, it's not like today where you can just walk into the free clinic and get a test so that you can go home for Thanksgiving or whatever. Like you had to have a doctor sign off that they actually thought that you had COVID. So it was this level of scrutiny that you looked to an expert like you might have COVID and then ended up testing negative. So had something else potentially just the normal seasonal flu or anything like that.

And so it was so interesting about this data is that symptomatically these people had something very, very similar looking, but then didn't have this pattern in their respiratory rate. And so it's an interesting screener that was maybe even more interesting when testing was at such a shortage. Now intuitively, it makes sense, right, that if you got COVID, COVID-19, your respiratory rate would increase, correct? Yeah, so COVID-19 is primarily a lower respiratory tract infection, and so it impacts our lungs. And so when our lungs aren't functioning as efficiently, because there's sort of an active infection there, we're going to have to breathe more in order to get the same amount of

oxygen into our bloodstream because each respiration is itself bringing less oxygen in. And so, you know, we see this with other lower respiratory tract infections too, like with pneumonia that elevated respiratory rates a common clinical symptom. What is particularly unique about COVID-19 is its long incubation period. And so we believe that the reason why we're seeing this particular pattern of like the gradually increasing respiratory rate over the course of a couple nights is because that's what we're actually seeing is the incubation. So the infection is setting up shop, for lack of a better word, it's like in your lungs

prior to where you would actually consciously feel symptomatic, but that efficiency loss is there. And so the respiratory rate starts to rise to compensate. Yeah, it's amazing. And I mean, I've gotten so many messages from WOOP members. I can't understate this. How many people have sent me screenshots of their respiratory rate shooting up, getting tested, and having COVID-19.

It's unbelievable. So let's transition, Emily, to talking about how to use this in an actionable way. How should WOOP members think about using respiratory rate as a way to understand whether they might have COVID-19? Yeah, I think the most important thing to keep in mind here is that the data that this algorithm was based on was all people who had symptomatic COVID. And one of the things that's so sneaky about this pandemic is that lots and lots of people have totally asymptomatic COVID.

So they'll go through the entire course of their infection. They'll never cough once. They'll never feel tired. Never know that they had it. but they can still spread it, and then the people who they spread it to can end up with symptomatic COVID. So just because you didn't get it bad doesn't mean that the people who you give it to won't have it, you have a bad go of it.

And so the best way to think about how to use something like this is to know that this elevated respiratory rate can be an acute sign that you do have COVID and that, you know, you should use that as an invitation to get tested to maybe, you know, be that much more, you know, conscientious about your social distancing and, you know, not having any unnecessary contact with anybody, obviously, wearing a mask, washing your hands. But we're actually not at a point right now that if your respiratory rate is constant that I would say, you know, carte blanche to go do whatever you want, you don't have COVID. Because we just haven't seen enough, and certainly not with this paper of what happens with people who are totally asymptomatic. It's possible that they

would have a similar pattern, but we don't know that yet. What would we consider, though, an elevated respiratory rate. If someone has a respiratory rate of 14 or 15, what for them is concerning and sort of a red flag? Yeah, so that's the beauty of whoop is that there is no one-size-fits-all answer, and that's not how our algorithm works. And so if you look in your app today, you'll see on the respiratory rate trend view what we call the typical range. And so if your typical range or your typical standard deviation of your respiratory rate is 0.5, then any variation plus or minus 0.5 of your baseline is totally normal. And you'll see that. For those of you who are Woot members, you'll see the gray bar around your data. And if all of it's in there, that's,

it's totally normal. And so some people's standard deviations, like you said, yours is about 0.3. Other people's are closer to 0.6.7. There's just normal variation. And so it's how far it is out of what normal variation for you is, and that varies a lot. And it's not like if you're 14, it's less. And if your average is 18, it's more. It's just what it is, yeah, for you. And so what the algorithms really looking at, though, is not so much that you're a standard deviation or two standard deviations above baseline. I mean, we've seen people go as high as like six, seven standard deviations above baseline. So you're like, wow, that's a huge jump. But we've also seen, you know, like one and a half or like even just one. So like really not crazy,

crazy changes. But the interesting thing and what we pull up in this paper is that it's not so much the one day change because other things can cause your respiratory rate to acutely increase. It's this pattern of like a couple of nights where it's steadily increasing. And so what you really kind of look out for is that like you sort of, you know, maybe the first increase will still be within your typical range, but it'll be kind of coming up to the top edge of that. And then you'll see one that's like a little bit elevated and then you kind of see this big spike. And so you typically see like three or four days where it's like increasing a little bit and in a way that you would totally dismiss and not think that much of. And then like the big spike

right around like the day before or the day of symptom onset. Yeah. Typically the people, the people's data I've looked at, you do at some point see that spike though, right? You see it like it just There's a dot on the screen that is so much higher than all the other dots. It stands out. And you make a great point. You can do this in the Woop app. You just go into your respiratory rate trend. You swipe up on the recovery page.

You look at your respiratory rate trend. And you tap the screen and it'll actually show you exactly what your typical range is. And therefore, if you see a dot above that typical range, it's a sign something may be going on. Now, let's cover the false alarm. here too, right? What might be something that triggers your respiratory rate to jump up that is not you have COVID-19? Yeah, that's really important to cover. So any kind of acute change in your air quality and even in temperature can change your respiratory rate. And so we saw, for example, with the wildfires in California a couple of months ago that like the air quality all of a sudden went down quite a lot. And that's

going to make your respiratory rate go up because you're going to be bringing in sort of junky air and then your lungs are going to have to work that much harder to actually get oxygen into your bloodstream. And so that can cause an increase. Also things like certain medications might change your respiratory rate. And so if you changed your medications and you see a sudden change, especially any like medications to promote sleep, you know, I'd kind of be careful of overreacting to any changes. It really in any of your vitals that you see, you know, we see that. allergy medicine, like just tanks, HRV, and people get really freaked out about that every spring when they start taking all their antihistamines and everything.

So that's sort of generally good advice. But then other than sort of environmental things that can cause these changes, so I definitely, if you're seeing a sudden change, I think a first good question is, did anything external to me change the quality of the air that I was breathing at night? But then the second thing is that there are other lower respiratory tract infections. Like, COVID is not the first thing to, you know, take up shop in our lungs. And especially now, you know, it's December. So, you know, we are sort of in the middle of the normal, you know, flu season and all of that.

It wouldn't be that atypical to see a flu raise your respiratory rate or, you know, something like that as well. So other infections, even ones that- pneumonia would definitely raise your respiratory rate, correct? Yeah, absolutely. So not every flu is a lower respiratory tract infection. often cause pneumonia when they're lower respiratory tract infections. Some of them can be more upper respiratory and so then you wouldn't necessarily see the same change. And also, especially in older and more vulnerable populations, even like the common cold can like travel downward

and then cause increases in respiratory rate. Although much less likely to than COVID-19. Yeah. Well, for a cold to kind of cause those times that symptoms is a relatively rare thing in healthy people. But yeah, I think there's a variety of illnesses, any lower respiratory tract infection. Obviously, COVID's the one on everybody's mind. But, you know, all those other things that existed before are still around. Did you hit smoking? Oh, I didn't. You know, for somebody who's a chronic smoker, your baseline will be based off of your normal smoking. And so you'd have a high baseline. And so you wouldn't see these acute changes. How about someone who has that like once a month stogie. You can for sure. And I think like stuff like that, because we do measure respiratory

rate during sleep, it could impact it differently based on like the timing of your consumption. So, you know, if you have an afternoon cigar, like maybe your lungs have cleared more of that by the time you're going to sleep versus if you like have it right before bed. With things like smoking, a lot of the way that we respond is related to prior exposure. So the more used to it you are, we actually do respond a little bit more efficiently. And so you might see a bigger response if somebody has like their first cigar close to bedtime because their lungs are like, what the hell just happened versus somebody who's like sort of in the habit of, you know, most weekends they have a cigarette at night or something.

Maybe you'd be like a lot less likely to see something. So, okay. So recap, things that can increase your respiratory rate that are not COVID-19, being at altitude for the first time, smoking, meaningful change in air quality, really heavy drinking, and then probably something else that would be a lower respiratory tract infection, although COVID-19 is by far the most common right now, something like pneumonia could cause a lower respiratory tract infection. Absolutely.

So that's the recap. Where can people find this amazing research that you and the team have done, Emily? So it's been published by the journal, Plus One. You can find it on our website. And we'll include it in the show notes. Yeah, that's a good point. And just to recap, what percentage of the COVID-19 cases did your elevated respiratory rate algorithm catch? 80% of them. So that's, I mean, look, that's pretty amazing. It's, of course, worth noting that therefore it didn't catch 20% of the cases. So we're not claiming that this is a perfect catch-all. But this is a pretty amazing, amazing finding that is now in a peer-review journal. And so I think it's very important that this research is out there and that people recognize that respiratory rate can be an important metric right now. Emily, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks so much for having. And more importantly, all the work that you're doing in this area, because it's really important.

And I think it's helping a lot of people. Oh, thank you. Okay, that was Emily Capital Lupo, sharing our now peer-reviewed research on COVID-19 and respiratory rate. Frankly, a pretty amazing pace with which we just released all of that research. I mean, we started doing the research in March, and it's now peer-reviewed in December. For a community that, frankly, moves at a glacial pace, the research, community. That is really, really fast. So very happy with everyone in the research community for helping us get this out the door. And it's amazing. Look, respiratory rate is a smoking gun. It really

is a very, very important statistic. I think if anything, we're undermarketing, how big of a deal it is. We want to be careful because obviously we don't want to make claims that are overreaching. But this is a big deal. And our next guest, Scott Stallings, who is a professional golfer, on the PGA tour, literally just experienced using respiratory rate as a mechanism to understand that he had COVID-19. So I'm going to pass it over to Scott. Here's my conversation with Scott. I want to be clear, too, Scott's not endorsed by WOOP, that we're not paying him to say any of this stuff. This is literally just his experience using respiratory rate. And I'll keep reiterating. I think this is a very important statistic that more people should be talking about.

Scott, welcome back to the Woop podcast. Hey, thanks for having me, man. First of all, it sounds like you're feeling okay. You actually look pretty good. Tell me. Thanks for me. No, seriously, you look good. I mean, what are you going to say?

I feel good, man. This is, I guess, the best day. I tested positive on Monday. And, you know, I had a little bit of congestion, a little bit of, you know, a little cough. And, you know, everything was pretty mild for the most part. And more just on the mentality side of it, just kind of learning and dealing with. you know, everything that kind of comes with the waiting game and the patience and what does this. And not only am I thinking of myself, but the people I were in contact with and my family

here, I have a wife and two kids and trying to managing that. I single-handedly got my son out of school for the remainder of December. Wow. So as much as we weren't pumped about it, he was thrilled. So just everything else that kind of comes with just my, everyone thinks about me being the one that was positive, but there's so many other things that you don't want to say collateral damage, but there's just a lot of the things that, you know, are taken into account when it's more than just me. Well, the good news, though, is that it sounds like you've got it under control. Let's go back. So you tested positive on Monday. Where were you the week prior? I was off week. I was signed up to play Mexico, which was hindsight, looking back, like you just kind of used

the surroundings and was training, you know, kind of play and practicing, going to enjoy Thanksgiving and then be ready to go down and play. And I was always a little hesitant just going out of the country with everything that was taking place and testing. And personally, I didn't really want to get stuck in another country for a couple weeks. But the tour has done an incredible job as far as to create an environment to where we can at least play. to this point and hats off to them and hats off to you guys as well for being a huge partner for us to monitor and help us get to this point in the season. Yeah, thank you.

I had one of my training partners had come in contact with someone that had tested positive so we were aware of it and, you know, that kind of just furthered more the idea to not play and to not put myself in a spot where I could get stuck somewhere and just kind of managed symptoms. And like I was saying before, recorded the weather change. a lot in Tennessee over the course of about a 48-hour period dropped about 40 degrees. So I started seeing some sinus congestion and some little things that kind of come with seasonal changes. And, you know, it was kind of looking at my strap and all the data and, you know,

nothing was really changing. And my buddy, the guy that I was with tested positive. And I woke up Monday. And I sent you those numbers of just like, oh, my gosh. And I had no explanation for other than I should probably go get tested. I had a day strain of Sunday of eight, which is super low, you know, really low key day with my family. I had eight hours of sleep, you know, solid night. And I woke up and my respiratory rate was 19. My HRV was 40 points down. My resting heart rate was 10 points up and my recovery was 11. And I wish there was a good story behind that, but ultimately it was just a good night's sleep at home on a pretty low-key day and called my doctor, Dr. Kevin Spouse, who's been on the podcast before, awesome dude. And I asked him

and hate him and his team kind of found me a spot to go get tested. Went and got that afternoon and a lady walked in and told me I was positive and that was kind of it. And I got out of there and started making the phone calls and make sure all my family and everyone was kind of aware of the situation that was taking place. And as soon as I knew I was getting tested, I could kind of figure it out from there as far as what was taking place and just trying to make sure everyone was aware and try to do my part as, you know, whatever kind of due diligence goes with that. And it was definitely a weird experience to kind of go through all that in a short amount of time where you just don't even really think about that all of a sudden the reality

hit you of this, oh, this is this is really happening. And but thankful to you guys that I was able to find that spot because ultimately I would have just written it off as just weather changes and that would have been it and kind of gone about my day. And thankfully, I was around people as minimal as possible during that whole time and was able to kind of get myself in a spot where I could quarantine and hopefully not affect very many people at all. So this was a case where the whoop data helped you realize that something was up? There's no doubt.

I mean, I would not have gotten tested if it wasn't for it. And like anyone that's watching this, like this isn't like a whoop, Bromo, this is the podcast and everything, but legitimately, if it wasn't for whoop or whatever, like I would not have been in the spot where I found out and I would have been out in the public, I would have been, you know, kind of probably playing and practicing. I mean, heck, I may have even gone to Mexico to this point. And who knows, you know, what impact I would have had of just being kind of in the public. And, you know, while my symptoms are mild and, you know, pretty manageable. I know it's detrimental for others. And I'm trying to do my part and be respectful

and cognizant of that. But again, very, very thankful for the tool that you guys have put in my hands to help me make those decisions and you're kind of understand what's happening on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, look, thanks. I mean, it's, it's been unbelievable for us to just see how this is played out on the WOOP platform. And you've shared your data with us, which I'm now looking at. And it's amazing how many examples I've seen of this. And I get messages like this data. now. And, you know, we want to be careful not over-marketing this, but it's unbelievable how consistently people who get COVID-19 or test positive for it have this dramatically elevated respiratory rate. So your November baseline was a 16.7 respiratory rate, right? So 16 breaths per

minute is what you were normally averaging. And it's like completely flat for all of November. and then boom you wake up and it's a 19.1 and it had never been it looks like it'd never been above 17 before and you've been on whoop for three years yeah it's it's pretty bizarre and I had the week before when I was at sea island when which was the last tournament that I played and I had made some supplemental changes a little bit of routine changes before I went to bed and I started seeing some dramatic increases in REM and deep to the point of where I was first seven days in a row, I averaged over four hours of deep, or I'm sorry, of REM a night, which was crazy. So, I mean, I had a good baseline leading up as far as, you know,

solid rest of recovery, good training, you know, a full week's tournament prep and then come home. And I had three or four days of training. We had like two days during Thanksgiving and, you know, kind of everything was just kind of holding steady. And I really had no indication as far as, I was about to kind of, I don't know, fall off a cliff or whatever, but eventually it just and then you see that dramatic spike in the data that I sent over and it just kind of came out of nowhere. It's unbelievable how high your respiratory rate got. And you woke up that morning, otherwise feeling fine, it sounds like.

Yeah, I mean, I had a, it's been well documented. I had major significant sinus surgery at the end of 2015. And so any kind of seasonal change for about the first week or so. I get a little congestion, just a little bit of maybe sore throat just from a little drainage. But for the most part, it just kind of comes with the territory and something that I was well aware of when I had the surgery. So I really doesn't bother me that much. Just kind of deal with it, manage the symptoms, and kind of move on. But I was able to utilize kind of tools outside that to help me make the decisions to take the necessary steps to find out I was positive and hopefully get to a spot where I didn't affect hardly anybody out of.

couldn't imagine if I didn't have it. I legitimately wouldn't have been or wouldn't be having this conversation either. It's amazing. So the other data that we've got here, very consistent with illness. Your resting heart rate jumped up by what looks like about, you know, 15%. Your heart rate variability really plummeted, right? It tanked. Yeah. The same morning that you had a, and it's actually suppressed right now, which isn't surprising, considering you still have COVID-19 in your system. You know, you went from like a baseline in the 60s to being in the 30s on the day where you had a respiratory rate of 19. That's amazing. I think it's especially anyone that's used whoop for a long time, you can start to understand what affects what. And, you know,

a hard training day, long travel, you know, dehydration, alcohol, stress, all these different other variables that kind of come into play to, you know, have dramatic effects on things like that but you know I do my journal answer all my questions and kind of go through that and I kind of give a baseline in my mind as far as all right this is kind of how I feel let's see how it feels to bit and then my thing comes up and I look it's like oh no and like I don't have any story or any understanding as far as how this is possible other than you know some form of sickness or whatever it was it was nice to see and kind of the trio of metrics HRV resting heart rate and respiratory rate and kind of see it kind of all come together and kind of get to the point

to point me down that road of where I am now. Just to hammer the point for people listening to this, this is how not subtle it was. You woke up with an 11% red recovery, which is incredibly low, a 37 HRV, which is about 40% off your baseline. Your HR, your resting heart rate was up about 10, 15%. And then the respiratory rate, which is, in my opinion, the biggest smoking gun, went from 16 to 19 you had never been above it looks like 17 i mean that's that's amazing yep that's uh that's pretty much it in a nutshell as far as how it just kind of and it's a incredible tool to help understand what you are and kind of the more that you interact with it and you know participate i mean the journal feature that you guys have added have been incredible

especially for someone that does what i do for a living and the many variables that we deal with on a day-to-day basis, and then to be able to come and the culmination and now be on the positive side of knowing what I know, it kind of helped on the road to recovery for the road of getting tested, getting the positive diagnosis, and then coming on the other side and using the tool for recovery and evaluating, you know, just truly where I'm at. You know, you said before, my HRV slowly, but surely coming back to baseline, my resting heart rate's kind of about where it was, my respiratory rates back down the normal level. you're starting to see the, you know, everything start to level out.

In my recovery, you're still, you know, relatively moderate, you know, after Monday. But, you know, sleep scores have been great. Sleep performance have been great and kind of seeing everything slowly start to level out. So, well, I can help make, help you make decisions as far as when things are off. It can also help you make decisions as far as when you're trying to come on the back on the other side. So I think a lot of people have seen, you know, whether you had you were asymptomatic, are mild symptoms, you see a lot of people come back too soon and then really, really struggle and make it last a lot longer than it probably should. I think that's absolutely right. And it's

good to see that your data is now in a pretty good place. I mean, your recoveries are in the yellow at least again. And interestingly, resting heart rate, and I've seen this now for a number of people with COVID, resting heart rate, if you're fairly asymptomatic, comes back pretty quickly to baseline so you're you're already pretty much back at where you were prior to being sick heart rate variability that that one uh seems to stay suppressed even if you don't have symptoms so hrv and respiratory rate being two important metrics well what are you doing uh what are you doing right now to try to to try to feel as good as you can man uh you know a lot of hydration i mean i I slept, I don't know if it was more just the mental side of it, but I turned my phone off.

I notified as many people as I could that I felt like was appropriate and necessary. Then I shut my phone off and slept for a good long time. Man, I haven't taken a nap in the middle of the day, and I couldn't tell you the last time. And I just tried to kind of get out of my own head a little bit, you know, try to figure out the days, you know, what's 10 days, what's seven days, what's 14 days, figure out my kid's school. And then kind of, you know, we got into a routine of into a day or two of just trying to understand what that looked like, make sure my supplementation is good, my zinc, vitamin D, vitamin C. And I'm pretty well on that this time of year as it is, but I increased it all.

And then slowly but surely, today is the best day I felt. I share with you before we started, Corey, this is the first day I've been in my gym since last weekend and no training, no elevated heart rate anything. but still work on my mobility. I'm going to clean out my golf closet this afternoon, which I'm sure it would be a disaster. You know, being home, and it's a very unique culmination of the year for us,

and it kind of makes you laugh a little bit and kind of just saying what could have been and but thankful for the time that we have had. And my kids have been great and super supportive. My son started to call me the pandemic. It's a good nickname for me. So, yeah. Yeah, he wrote, he drew this, like, Star Wars thing and slid it in the door of where I was.

He's like, I love you, the pandemic. And that's, I just started referring to me that last night, which is hilarious. But, I mean, you think you've got to have to laugh about it. But, I mean, you still have to be serious and understand that, you know, it is, you know, running rampant all over, no matter where you are, where I live in Tennessee, the numbers are off the charts, the highest they've ever been. And so with respect to that, not trying to. to make light of the situation, but we're trying to make, handle it in the best way we possibly can and kind of deal with it one day at a time. Well, it sounds like you've been super thoughtful

about it and I'm glad that it's going as well as it can. And look, I mean, to the PGA Tours credit and all the players yourself included, you guys have been able to, you know, operate a fairly normal season despite all these challenges. I've been in and out of the, out of the bubble with you guys from time to time. And I just feel like it's been, it's been well, run. It's been taken seriously. You've put out a great product. At least maybe you can be grateful that this didn't hit you right in the middle of the season or something, right? Yeah, it is. My PT, the guy that travels with me on tour, he works with five or six other guys. He was in a group of guys that were working out, and he also tested positive as well. And we were talking on the phone last night, and it was just

kind of comical. We just traveled the world through a pandemic playing on the PGA tour and never had an issue and come home in the first week of like off season or you know kind of semi off season training and you know we test positive and we train through all of quarantine all of everything and people still have to have uh be diligent uh with you know everything that's you know mandated mask washing hands and you know kind of separation as much you possibly can and understand that you know it can truly happen to anybody and i'm no different and not that i felt like I was immune to anything or, you know, I kind of lost of lack of due diligence on my side. We still sanitized.

We still separated. We still did all the things we did the whole entire time. And just kind of a unique set of circumstances came and test positive. But what you said earlier, the tour has done an incredible job to get us to this point and where we can play. And you guys have been an incredible partner to help us be a good way to kind of evaluate that and keep track of what we're doing on and off the golf course. Yeah, look, man. I appreciate that and good for you looking at your WOOP data and figuring this out and taking

the initiative. I mean, your story is very similar to Nick Watney's, who I remember talking to about this as well, where he was like, I would have been playing if I hadn't looked at my data. So I do think for all the WOOP members listening to this, like, just have to keep emphasizing the importance of looking at respiratory rate. It's amazing here at Woop, like, you know, because we build hardware, because we do data collection, Scott, we have people coming into the office. So we've created this whole infrastructure around if your respiratory rate is a certain number above your average, you can't come in.

If you have a red recovery, you can't come in. So we're trying to use WOOP data too in our own office to create a safer environment. That's awesome. That's awesome. And Kristen has been a great advocate to a bunch of other people as far as a great tool to be able to ask questions and understand. But she was the first person that I sent my data to is like, is this alarming? And she just sent me the big eye emoji. She's like, what's going on?

And I said, I'm on my way to get tested. And then I sent her at the text as far as back and forth. But it's cool to be able to see you guys use your own tool to be able to evaluate a safe environment for everyone and something that can be trusted and utilized to you guys continue to put out product that helps all of us. So thank you. Yeah, of course. And we're going to keep doing the research. We'll keep putting it out there for everyone who wants to learn more about respiratory rate.

And look, Scott, I'm glad you shared your story. Thank you for doing so. And we wish you a speedy recovery. Yeah, thank you guys for having me and I look forward to seeing everyone out on tour here in January. Thank you to Scott for coming on the podcast and telling his story. I think it's really important to be very open about research and data during this time. And so a big thank you again to Emily and both and to Scott for sharing all this information. You can check out all the show notes at whoop.com slash locker.

And in particular, I would encourage people to look at the research on respiratory rate and to use the respiratory rate trend graph in the Woop app. Stay healthy, everyone. Keep checking your respiratory rate. We're going to get through this pandemic together. All right, I'll see you on the other side. You're going to be able to be.