WHOOP Podcast - WHOOP studies how first COVID-19 vaccine dose affects recovery, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

WHOOP is researching how COVID-19 vaccines could affect your body. VP of Data Science and Research Emily Capodilupo breaks down our latest study, which found that the majority of 1,200 vaccinated WHOOP members did not show a significant difference in recovery, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability after getting the first shot. This study also found that those who did see a change in physiological metrics did not experience a diminished recovery for more than a day or two. Emily and Will Ahmed discuss how this research began (2:39), how vaccines work (4:18), why two shots are needed (7:07), WHOOP data post-vaccine (9:43), the quick data rebound for those who do feel the effects of the shot (11:06), why feeling sick after being vaccinated isn't a bad sign (11:56), studying the differences between the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines (13:26), how sleep can help your body build antibodies (14:41), our next research steps (16:34), and how WHOOP protects your privacy (18:00).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 back to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Amit, founder and CEO of Woop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. We have a phenomenal podcast today with Emily Capital Lupo, our head of data science and research. And before we get to that, I want to remind you that you can check out a WOOP membership at WOOP.com and get 15% off if you use the code. Will Ahmed, that's W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D. WOOP builds technology across hardware, software analytics that is designed to help you perform at a higher level and be healthier, which frankly right now seems very important.

And this podcast, on point for that, is all about the COVID-19 vaccine and what we are seeing as a response in WOOP data to getting the vaccine. You know, how does your body respond to the COVID-19 vaccine? As some background, the FDA has approved the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, dating back to December of 2020. Over 20 million Americans have had the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine so far, and the White House is pushing to have enough doses to fully immunize 300 million Americans by the end of the summer, which would be a terrific accomplishment. So with this podcast, Emily and I go deep on what we've seen in the day.

data. Emily first explains what is a MRNA vaccine and why is it such a breakthrough in the scientific community? The 1,200 WOOP members who have reported getting the first dose of the vaccine and what we have learned about their WOOP data, how you can action this data to be better prepared for getting your first COVID-19 vaccine, a bit on privacy and how we think about research and privacy. And lastly, where WOOP is taking it from here. So, fascinating. podcast, especially if you are interested in getting a vaccine, which I hope you are. And without further ado, here's Emily. Emily, welcome back to the WOOP podcast. Thanks for having me. Always, always. You're everyone's favorite, favorite guest and host, I should say. Now, tell me, we've got

1,200 WOOP members who have reported getting the first dose of the vaccine. So what does that mean exactly just from a data collection standpoint. Yeah. So last March, we introduced a new feature into the Woot membership called The Journal. And the Journal allows us to collect data every morning from our members, totally voluntary, opt-in. And a couple weeks ago, when the COVID vaccine first started becoming available in the U.S., our social media started getting flooded with people sending us screenshots of their recovery score the day after getting vaccinated. a lot of them showing like really shockingly low recoveries like single digit recovery scores. You know, so in response to this, you know, all the requests from these members to look into this data,

we added to the journal the opportunity for members to self-report having received a COVID vaccine. So we missed the start of the vaccine being available by about like four or five weeks. And then we collected data for about a week before the analysis that we're going to talk about today, such as reflecting about a week's worth of self-reported vaccination. And we took all this data and we looked at those members, obviously their baseline. So the 14 days prior to getting vaccinated, what their resting heart 8, heart variability and recovery scores looked like. And then we looked at what those same values looked like the day after getting vaccinated

as well as like a couple days after that. All right. Before we go into the results, which I know are fascinating, Emily, I think it would be helpful to just explain what are these vaccines? Because the FDA approved the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in December. Those are really the main vaccines that Americans are taking right now. Talk about these vaccines, MRI vaccines, and why it's a big deal. Sure. So like you mentioned, Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines are by far the most popular in the U.S. I think worldwide there are about five different vaccines that are being administered.

And the way all vaccines work, MRI-1s included, is by stimulating your immune system, by making them either by presenting them with a pathogen, which is, you know, disease-causing organism in a dead or a weakened state, those are the vaccines that we're sort of most familiar with. Or in the case, these like mRNA or they're sometimes called like subunit vaccines, it's a protein from the pathogen that is the binding site of how the pathogen gets into your cells. And so our immune system can recognize just that protein

and from that create an antibody that works just as well on the whole pathogen itself. And so at a super high level, the way all vaccines work is you get this essentially like easy target practice where you have this training round on something that's going to be really, really easy for your immune system to defeat. you then easily defeat this target practice,

but then you create these antibodies and store them. And so then in the event that the big bad real pathogen presents itself in its full strength form, you've already seen it and learned how to defeat it. And so you can kick into mass production of these antibodies way, way faster than if you first had to figure out how to defeat it and then mass produce your antibodies. And so, you know, the mRNA vaccine, it's just enough. version of that, where it's something that looks enough like, this case is the spike protein on the SARS-CoV-2 virus that gives us that target practice that in the event that we are exposed to

the full-strength SARS-CoV-2 virus, we can super easily defeat it. And one of the reasons why you've heard all these different things, like the Pfizer vaccine needs to be kept super duper cold, the Moderna vaccine only needs to be kept regular levels of cold, is because different companies are producing different types of vaccines. And so it's still a little bit TBD what all the different kinds of like the functional form of these COVID vaccines will be. But yeah, MRI was considered an interesting target that, you know, in the case of Pfizer-Maderna did work out well because it cut down the development time. It was a lot faster than traditional methods of using like dead or weakened vaccines. And explain the two shots versus the one shot.

Why, you know, when I get a flu shot, do I just get one shot? But for COVID-19, I need to get two shots. So there is some data published in December regarding the Pfizer-Bioentec vaccine, which showed that after the first dose, it's actually only 52% effective. And that sort of that 95% efficacy number that we hear, you know, critically only applies after you have the second vaccine. And the understanding as to why, you know, you need the second dose is that after the first exposure, you know, we recognize, oh, this thing is bad, and we create these

T-cell antibodies in order to kill the invading pathogen. But what seems to happen if we don't have a second exposure is that we very quickly lose those. And so what the second exposure does is almost this kind of like, oh, this thing is a real threat. I better hold on to these T-cell antibodies and remember them. And so it seems that like the second exposure triggers our immune system to hold on to these memory T cells for a long time there, you know, for certain vaccinations for other diseases, you know, we can hold on to these protective antibodies for decades, if not for a lifetime. But it seems that, you know, in the case of COVID, at least with the vaccines that have been approved so far, the immune response to the first

vaccine is pretty mild and, you know, might only protect about half of people and that you need that second dose to get closer to 95 percent. What will be? be interesting to see is, you know, as additional COVID vaccines come out, if they can develop one because this does exist for other vaccines that can protect us at a higher rate with just one exposure. It makes the logistics of getting everybody covered a lot easier. Got it. And the 21 days, that's mostly the optimal period between first and second shot? Yeah. So there's a couple different protocols out there. Some are 21 days, I think, in the case of the Pfizer vaccine and 28 with the Moderna vaccine.

I know that, like, you know, logistics with the vaccine have been a huge challenge globally. And I believe that, you know, they're approved, like, if you can't get it within that for much longer than that. So, you know, if you miss the 21 or 28-day window, they'll still give it to you and it'll count, like, closer to, you know, 30, 40 days. So that's just the recommended protocol and that's what they've tested. So that's like, you know, the protection that we best understand. Technically, that's like what the FDA has approved. But it's not like, it's not super magical 20 versus 21 versus 22 days. There's no reason to think you'd have like a meaningfully different level of protection.

Okay. So that's helpful background. And in your opinion, I mean, I think this goes without saying, but in your opinion, everyone should get a vaccine, correct? That's certainly the CDC guidelines. I'm not a doctor. So, you know, I think everybody should consult with their, you know, trusted medical professional. But I certainly hope to get vaccinated as soon as they can. Now, explain Emily what we learned from a data set of 1,200 WOOP members who have reported

getting the first dose of the vaccine. Yeah, so the data was really interesting. So not that surprisingly, most people seemed to have no effect. Their data looked pretty much like what you would expect if they hadn't gotten vaccinated. For about one in five people, we saw meaningfully reduced recovery. So higher-resting heart rates, lower heart rate variability. Now, the important thing to keep in mind in interpreting this data is on any given random day, about one in 10 people would have a low recovery score for all of the other combined reasons

that we could have a low recovery score, like drinking the night before or having a really tough workout or, you know, not sleeping well, all those things. And so if you sort of subtract out the people who you would just, because it's a random day, would, could be red, have these low recovery scores. It leaves you with about one in ten extra people, sort of above what you would expect if the COVID vaccine had no impact on recovery who experienced a red recovery score the next day. But what was really interesting about this data is that even though there is this, you know, very statistically significant, you know, profound effect on recoveries, and, you know, I can't even tell you how many reach out on social media

and email and stuff of people sharing anecdotal responses as well. By the same, second day after the vaccine, the data was not statistically significantly different from just a typical day's distribution of recovery scores. And so what we're seeing is that even though you get this pretty strong immediate response, it's very short-lived. If you think about the difference between a potential first shot and a second shot, would you expect that a second shot, and I know we've got some early data here, but would you expect that a second shot would have a meaningfully more profound effect on the body? So it's interesting.

I mean, certainly the anecdotes floating around the internet suggests that the second one's a little bit tougher than the first. The important thing to keep in mind is like, you hear a lot from people, things like, oh, I don't get the flu shot because you can get the flu from the flu shot or, you know, that they're getting COVID symptoms the day after the vaccine. Like, what you're actually experiencing are symptoms of your immune system being activated. And as much as it kind of like is, you know, unpleasant for it. a day or two. Like, that's actually a sign that it's working. The vaccine can work without

eliciting any unpleasant symptoms, but the fact that, like, you had, you know, mild fever, like some aches and chills and, you know, headaches, all these things are actually just the sign of your immune system being active. So what it seems to suggest that the second vaccine is maybe eliciting this, like, stronger response or a response in more people than the first one is that our immune systems are having a really active response to it, which is a good thing because it probably means that, you know, we're converting, you know, that exposure into long-term antibodies that are going to protect us if we get exposed to the actual SARS-CoV-2 virus. And I'm looking here at the core results from the first shot.

It seems like 24% of people vaccinated had a red recovery. 22% of people reported a significantly elevated resting heart rate. And 29% had a significantly decreased. heart rate variability. But the good news is of those results, most folks who saw these deviations saw a return to normal by the second day after the vaccination. Is that a fair summary? Yeah. Yeah. So it's unpleasant for a small but meaningful number of people, but that unpleasantness is in almost every case, very, very short-lived. Did we notice any differences between the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine?

So we actually did collect that data, but we haven't analyzed it yet. So when we follow up with more information about the second vaccine, we'll be sure to look into that as well. And people listening to this who are inevitably not vaccinated yet, but going to be vaccinated, what are things that you can do to potentially lessen the physiological response that your body has to the first vaccine? Yeah. So I think there's two interesting takeaways. So we are seeing this meaningful increase in people who are showing signs of being physiologically run down the day after getting vaccinated. And so if you know that you're going to be read or that you have a greater chance of being read, say on a week from Monday when your vaccine is scheduled, like you can plan your day

and you're training around that. So, you know, if you're going to get vaccinated, I'd probably not plan a super intense workout. You know, it might be a good idea not to plan anything super stressful, kind of make that day easy for you because you might not feel up to all that much. And then you give yourself the best chance of just recovering quickly and getting back at it the next day. The second thing is that there's some really interesting research, not on the COVID vaccine, actually on the hepatitis vaccine that came out of UCSF a couple years back that looked at how sleep deprived or sleep replete individuals were the night before. they got vaccinated and how that impacted the effectiveness of the vaccine. And so we know that like

vaccines aren't 100% effective. The data so far with the COVID vaccine seems to suggest that they're around 94, 95% protective. And so you really don't want to be in that like five, six percent that like gets vaccinated, but somehow didn't convert that into an, you know, protective immune response. And so, you know, while there's still a lot of COVID specific research to be done, there is some, you know, research from other vaccines is suggested if you are sleep deprived, when you receive a vaccine, it's less likely to convert into like a permanent protection. And so this is exactly the type of thing that sleep coach is built for, you know, set your sleep coach to peak mode, try and get as much sleep as possible, be well rested going into the vaccine, which will also just help you feel better

in the event that like you do happen to be one of those, you know, one in 10 people who have that like impact to recovery if you're run down and you know have a strong vaccine reaction like it's going to just kind of be a double hit versus if at least you're well rested you're going to be in a better position both to have a good response to the vaccine in terms of creating the immunity but also to like make it less bad if it kind of knocks you out a little bit for the day so be well rested going into the vaccine both because that will help your body be more immune as a result of the vaccine and because it will potentially lessen the symptoms that you feel from getting the vaccine. Now, where are we going from here on the research front, Emily, with this vaccine?

Yeah, so, I mean, we've barely just scratched the surface. We had so many requests from our members to look at this data and, you know, let them know what we were seeing that, you know, we just did, you know, the very beginning. And I think some of the things that are interesting to look into are, it seems like, you know, roughly one in 10 people have this extra bad recovery response. Well, you know, is there anything we can tell about who those people are? Are they younger members or the older members? You know, are males or females experiencing this differently? Like, is it affecting their sleep and that's why their recovery is run down or is it, you know, affecting something else? And so you're trying to kind of break that down a little bit,

I think would be really interesting, as well as comparing the first dose of the vaccine to the second dose of the vaccine. Anecdotally, we've heard that maybe the second seems to have a slightly stronger response, and so we'll see if the data supports that. But really, this whole project came out of just, you know, countless member requests. So we're going to do what our members want us to look into. And, you know, so keep us posted on what you want to see. Yeah, a big thank you again to our members for, as always, being very research-oriented

and wanting to learn more about this information. And, Emily, you wrote a terrific blog post about this as well on the locker. So I'd encourage people to check that out. And we're going to keep doing the research. Emily, how do we think about protecting member privacy as well? Yeah. So, I mean, just before I jump in, the biggest thank you to all of our members who volunteered the information about their vaccination that enabled this research. You know, we can't do this stuff without you.

but, you know, it's really important to us that we're respecting everybody's privacy and, you know, the fact that this is sensitive information while we do it. So there's a couple of different ways that we protect the data. The first thing that's, I think, you know, our members don't necessarily know, but it is really important is that all of the journal data. So all of this, all the information about, you know, COVID, COVID vaccines, as well as, you know, whatever behaviors you were doing around sleep and recovery that we're collecting are actually stored in a separate database. that doesn't have any personal identifying information in it. So none of that, like, PII. So when we pull this data in order to put out pieces like the one we're talking about today, you know, we're not pulling it alongside anything that can identify any of these people

and it's all pulled in aggregation. So it's anonymized from the beginning. And we're not actually looking at like any of these individual cases, just looking at these population level trends, trying to understand what's happening at a super high level. So, you know, we thank you, you know, for contributing your data and, you know, make sure that, like, on our end, you know, we're respecting it and keeping it, you know, confidential and private the way it deserves to be traded. Yeah, we completely appreciate everyone who contributes to this research, and we want you to know that we've got your privacy first and foremost in mind. So, Emily, thank you, as always, for informing all of us on Woop Research.

Of course, my pleasure. Thanks, as always to Emily for coming on the podcast. Thank you to all of our Woop members who are contributing to COVID-19 research. We love you. We love the research. We're going to keep delivering it. And a reminder, you can get 15% off a WIP membership if used the code Will Ahmed. And you can follow us on social at WOOP at Will Ahmed. And stay green, folks. Thank you.