Yesterday was a hard leg day, the kind where you know you'll feel it on the stairs for the next 48 hours. I had dinner out with a girlfriend that evening, we split a bottle of wine and spent two glorious hours catching up. We laughed at the kind of stuff you can only laugh at with someone who has known you for 13 years and discussed all the conspiracy theories where the AI overlords rule and make us thankful we have friends with farms. You know, the usual 😂

Given the wine, leg day and later than usual bedtime, I would have bet money on a bad recovery score. A hard lower body session followed by alcohol within a couple of hours of sleep is a one-two punch your wearable doesn't usually forgive. Lower HRV. Higher resting heart rate. Worse Readiness the next morning.

Instead, I woke up to one of my better HRV nights of the month. Above my 90 day average. Resting heart rate was normal and solid sleep too.

Why am I telling you this? Here is what I think happened.

The wine didn't help my HRV. Almost certainly it cost me a few points. Neither did the heavy training. But the rest of the night, the actual dinner, the connection, the laughing, the not being on my phone for two straight hours, feeling thankful to see my friend and catch up on her life did so much more for my nervous system than either of those things took away.

This is the part of the longevity conversation that doesn't get enough airtime.

THE RESEARCH IS STAGGERING

​Julianne Holt-Lunstad and her team at BYU did a meta analysis hat has stuck with me for years. They looked at 148 studies covering more than 300,000 people. People with strong social relationships had a 50 percent higher likelihood of surviving the study periods. Lack of connection carried a mortality risk roughly comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

I think we all "know" connection matters. But knowing that loneliness is bad and seeing the actual effect size are two very different things.

WHAT YOUR WEARABLE WILL AND WON'T TELL YOU

You know I track a lot. Oura, Whoop, Hume Band, Elonga, Function Health, Eight Sleep, ChiliPad. I love the data...if you do too and have been looking for new wearables I have reviews on all of these at HealNourishGrow.com.​

What the data has shown me, after years of wearing and tracking all of this, is that the inputs moving my biomarkers the most aren't always the obvious ones. Sleep, stress management, protein and strength training are foundational, no question. But the nights I sleep best, the mornings my HRV is highest and the weeks my recovery is strongest are almost always the weeks I have been actually connected and taken the time to relax. Having real conversations or time with my husband off our screens. Events with friends and family. Dinner with a girlfriend who has known me long enough to talk about the REAL stuff.

The wearable can't label that for you. It just shows the result.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU (AND ME)

If you have been telling yourself you don't have time to call your friend, or that you'll catch up "after this busy stretch," I want to gently (yet firmly) push back. Connection isn't a reward you earn after you finish optimizing your health.

It is part of the optimization.

This week, pick one person. The one you have been thinking about and not texting. Actually make a plan to connect with them and keep it...in person if that's possible, but a good old fashioned phone call works too.

I would be willing to bet your sleep tracker thanks you.

Cheryl

P.S. The first issue of my new monthly meal plan went out to subscribers on Wednesday (so much more work than I thought!!!), and the response so far has been so encouraging. If you have been wanting a plug-and-play, high-protein, flexible carb plan that takes the "what's for dinner" decision off your plate every week, you can join here.