Real-world effects of alcohol on heart rate, sleep, and physical activity by age and sex.
Grosicki GJ, Robinson AT, Joyner MJ, et al.
PLOS Digital Health · 2026
What the research tells us
More alcohol than a person’s usual intake was associated with lower nocturnal RMSSD and higher resting heart rate in wearable records.
Scope & interpretation
Self-reported alcohol, residual confounding and selection into one commercial platform limit causal and population-wide conclusions. A within-person association does not explain every individual low reading.
Study at a glance
- POPULATION & SAMPLE
- 20,968 users; 5,109,185 person-days.
- EXPOSURE / INTERVENTION / SUBJECT
- Retrospective analysis of self-reported alcohol and wearable measurements, including within-person variation.
- OUTCOMES
- Nocturnal RMSSD, resting heart rate, sleep and physical activity.
- TIME FRAME
- Repeated daily observations; the person-day total is not a common follow-up duration for every user.
Cited on this site
Editorial & review record
Record for v1.0 · Updated
Editorial responsibility: TAP Editorial Team
Editorial note
Under the editorial responsibility of the TAP Editorial Team, this publication used AI assistance for content organization and editing.
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How responsibilities and review are recorded ↗Scope of this reading note
Full-text methods, results, limitations and published funding/interest statements. The title uses “effects”; this note retains the observational interpretation.
- Study funding
- Funded by WHOOP. Company-affiliated authors participated in design, data work, analysis and manuscript preparation.
- Competing interests
- Seven authors reported WHOOP employment; six reported stock options. These commercial relationships matter when interpreting the results.
Project support
Founded and supported by Resilio.
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