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Alcohol is one of the clearest patterns I’ve noticed in my Whoop data. After drinking, the night can look very different from my usual baseline, and I tend to feel the difference too.
I’m not a doctor, and these are personal observations rather than a controlled experiment. One of the nights in my notes involved a dangerous amount: roughly two to three bottles of wine plus some beers. That isn’t a sensible health experiment, whatever I called it at the time. I wouldn’t repeat or recommend it.
After the heavy-drinking night
| Measurement | Usual figure in my notes | After drinking |
|---|---|---|
| HRV | Around 100 ms | Around 30 ms |
| Resting heart rate | Around 49 bpm | Around 70–80 bpm |
| Respiratory rate | Around 12.9 breaths/min | Around 16 breaths/min |
| Estimated REM sleep | Around 2 hours | Around 30 minutes |
| Whoop sleep performance | Around 75–80% | Around 50% |
Whoop also showed a higher temperature reading. I felt awful, with a hangover lasting into the early evening.
The sleep stages and scores are wearable estimates. A higher overnight heart rate doesn’t establish that I suddenly lost fitness, and a temperature change doesn’t diagnose inflammation. Taken together with how I felt, though, this was a pretty unappealing night.
Even one drink showed up
On another occasion, with one drink about an hour before bed, my HRV went from roughly 100 to 60 ms. Resting heart rate was a bit higher, respiratory rate was about one breath per minute higher, and my sleep didn’t feel great.
I can’t use those two nights to predict what one drink will do to everyone. They were enough to make me question the idea that a small amount is automatically harmless for my sleep.
What I’m doing with that information
Less alcohol, preferably none, is the useful change for me. In the period these notes describe, I was drinking about once a month or less; it had been roughly six weeks since my last drink.
Water can help with hydration, but it doesn’t cancel alcohol’s effects or make heavy drinking safe. I’m more interested in avoiding a bad night than trying to “hack” my way out of one afterwards.
If you want the background on the measurements, I’ve also written about HRV and the Whoop itself.
Archive note: restored from my 2023 notes. The publication date is approximate, and products and routines reflect that period.