Brain Fact Friday on ”Monitoring and Measuring Your Health During This Global Pandemic”

<p>Did you know that “many people experience an increase in respiratory rate prior to any other symptoms of COVID-19?”<a href='#_edn1'>[i]</a></p> <p>Welcome back to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast for Brain Fact Friday and EPISODE #180 on “Monitoring Your Health During the Global Pandemic.”</p> <p> I'm Andrea Samadi, author, and educator from Toronto, Canada, now in Arizona, and like many of you listening, have been fascinated with learning and understanding the science behind high performance strategies that we can use to improve our own productivity in our schools, our sports, and workplace environments. We can achieve outstanding and predictable outcomes with whatever it is we are working towards, when we act intentionally, with our brain in mind.</p> <p>This week’s Brain Fact Friday hit me unexpectedly, when I woke up and saw something that caught my attention with the Whoop Fitness Tracker I’ve been wearing, since I interviewed Kristen Holmes on EPISODE #134 earlier this year.<a href='#_edn2'>[ii]</a></p> <p>BRAIN FACT FRIDAY: Changes to Respiratory Rate Are An Early Warning of COVID-19</p> <p>Did you know that “many people experience an increase in respiratory rate prior to any other symptoms of COVID-19?”<a href='#_edn3'>[iii]</a> I woke up to an exclamation mark next to my daily vitals that I watch, and never having seen something like this, I clicked on it to see that my respiratory rate had risen, higher than usual.</p> <p></p> <p>Not thinking much about this, I clicked on the chart, and noticed it  had jumped up significantly from 15.5 to 17.6 rpm and the note at the top of the screen said my “recent RPM measurements are significantly above your typical range. This indicates that your body may be experiencing illness, anxiety, or another condition.” I felt completely normal, but remembered reading something that WHOOP had covered with a Pro Golfer who noticed his respiratory rate jumped up prior to a positive COVID test, and I searched for that article.