A flurry of new offerings in the health tracker market alongside my surprisingly dramatic improvements in my own health over the last two months after going off my IL-17 inhibitor and onto a peptide stack has me considering a major life change: ditching my five year long relationship with my Whoop. I’m not entirely sure it’s healthy for me anymore.
I wear an Apple Watch but I have for five years now trusted my Whoop with my biometrics as their data display was significantly better and I trusted their data resolution as they took many more samples.
Whoop’s emphasis on HRV (heart rate variability) in particular won me over in the early days. I care more about my recovery than my exertion. I was simply too ill to ever train that hard. Nevertheless I wear both. I’m not alone in wearing multiple devices.
Fun fact: About 90% of smart-ring owners also own a smartwatch, according to research firm Circana – WSJ The Wearable Showdown
I tried an Oura ring early in the pandemic and found it to be too large to be manageable as I simply have very small hands. Their new claims to having made a 40% smaller band. This has me considering a switch if I’m able to port over my historic data and able to reconcile it with my historical inputs across personal vibe coded apps. Data portability is a huge plus in personal data products.
My fear is really don’t believe Oura Ring management team has a feel for women’s health. It has stopped me from considering them after I returned my first ring due to its comically large size.
But they are trying even if they are so damned awkward. The ceo brought up in an interview that “other cardio” to quote the XKCD comic is logged as wrestling or horseback riding. Gee. Thanks for that image guys. But I am a data obsessive and Whoop is driving me crazy.
You see I am someone who is obsessive about my biometrics as a double device users and I worry it’s driving me crazy. Recently Apple changed its resting heart rate data to lowest daily average while Whoop has stuck with evening sleep average.
I have easily a 35BPM difference in resting heart rate between the two. And Whoop rags on me constantly about my high RHR at night. I got an EKG I was so concerned about it. Turns out that was totally unnecessary.
We may be correlating high resting heart rate at night with adverse affects when in reality it’s much more about your cardiovascular fitness. When I’m in pain at night and repairing of course I have a heart rate that is higher than ideal. But when I’m managing it during the day I do get much lower results.
And I have no idea how much to worry about this as I have a low HRV but fine to average V02 max. I do low impact work daily, maintain mobility and slowly work my lean muscle mass so how much do I need to panic based on my Whoop? It’s genuinely hard to tell.
The largest ongoing debate is whether RHR is a true causal factor or primarily a surrogate for cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF). Studies show that unfit individuals with high RHR have the greatest mortality risk, while unfit individuals with low RHR (pharmacologically induced) don’t gain the same benefit as fit individuals with low RHR. This suggests CRF may be the deeper driver, with RHR as its most easily measurable surface signal — meaning wearable-tracked trends in RHR over time may be as or more valuable than a single snapshot reading. – AI synopsis on RHR and cardiovascular fitness.
At this point I find it is hard to understand how much I should worry about how Apple measures its resting heart rate versus Whoop versus the nagging stress of never being good enough when I am simply doing my best to improve slowly with sensible measures like lean mass, lower fat mass, regularly enjoying cardiovascular exertion, sleeping well and eating as well as anyone can be expected to in the American food system.
If anyone has any opinions on the topic I am open to suggestions as I worry more than I’d like based on my Whoop whereas my Apple Watch makes me think I could be doing a lot worse. Meanwhile Whoop makes me so freaked out I’m considering beta blockers and pushing myself to exertion that takes days to recover from. If Oura Ring might be a step up is it time to break up with Whoop?