Here Is Cory Booker’s Oura Ring Data From His 25-Hour Senate Speech
WHEN SENATOR CORY Booker stood for over a full day—25 hours and eight minutes, to be exact—to give the longest speech by an individual in the legislative body’s history, he was wearing an Oura ring. The device is a fitness tracker that provides wearers insights on their health via a suite of sensors that collect
WHEN SENATOR CORY Booker stood for over a full day—25 hours and eight minutes, to be exact—to give the longest speech by an individual in the legislative body’s history, he was wearing an Oura ring. The device is a fitness tracker that provides wearers insights on their health via a suite of sensors that collect biometric data like heart rate, heart rate variability, and sleep—and they’ve been embraced by everyone from endurance junkies to the wellness-curious to (as we now know) members of Congress.
The physical toll of staying on one’s feet for this amount of time is tremendous, and speeches like Booker’s have been compared to incredible feats of endurance, like the days-long efforts of ultramarathoners who traverse road trip-length mileage for a single race. Booker was dealing with even more extreme circumstances than most athletes; due to Senate rules, he could not pause to go to the bathroom to interrupt his address without ceding the floor. When the 55-year-old entered the Chamber on March 31 to decry the Trump administration’s policies, he tells Men’s Health he had been fasting for three days and had not had a drink since the night before.
Given these extraordinary conditions, the data collected by Booker’s tracker can provide an intriguing look at the real-time health effects of an historic political moment. Thanks to the Senator’s office, which provided MH screenshots from Booker’s Oura app, we can share exactly how his body responded as he stood, paced, and spoke as he addressed the Senate body from March 31 to April 1. Before jumping into the graphics, we should note that as a consumer product, the Oura ring shouldn’t be held to the same standard as lab or medical equipment for accuracy. The greater value here is being able to track trends over time, thanks to continuous monitoring, and to access data from the device we’d never be able to obtain otherwise.
Booker’s sleep leading into the day of the speech.
Booker went into the speech after a “Good” night’s sleep according to Oura’s algorithm, having logged seven hours and 31 minutes (experts recommend adults get between seven and nine hours of sleep).
As his Vitals readout shows, however, Booker’s Activity Level (measuring movement throughout the day) was high, as he began the speech on the evening of March 31.
Booker’s heart rate spiked right around when he took to the Senate podium at 7 pm.
Booker’s heart rate hovered over 100 bpm throughout the address, then dropped when he finally ceded the floor after 8pm on April 1.
Booker’s heart rate and Stress score (an Oura measure that considers heart rate, HRV, motion, and average body temperature) was elevated throughout his address, and he had considerably less “restorative time” and more stress as the speech stretched on.
Booker started the speech the evening of March 31. This likely considers some of his movements before taking the podium, along with the first hours of the address.
The bulk of Booker’s speech saw him move the equivalent of almost 7 miles on foot.
Even though he stood for much of the speech, Booker’s ring picked up a ton of movement. Between March 31 and April 1, Booker’s ring tracked him taking over 20,000 steps, with 12,000 alone on the second day. After he hit a wall during the third hour of the speech and felt his feet go numb, Booker says he knew he needed to start moving. “I just started shifting back and forth a lot to try to get blood flowing through my legs,” he says.
Sleep? Not during a 25-hour speech.
One surprising key measure missing, according to Booker? “There’s a lot of movement, but there’s just no sleep data,” he says of the app’s feedback from the period. “I thought they would put something on there.” As you can see from the image, the app didn’t even bother to log a zero.
The 25-hour effort threw Booker’s vitals out of whack.
The extreme nature of the address is clear in Booker’s “Vitals” measures: No sleep, no “Readiness Score”—Oura’s “holistic” snapshot of health taking taking into account your recent activity, sleep patterns, and biometric data—but a massive Activity score. Also notable: Booker’s heart rate ranged up to 131 bpm, far higher than what his average appeared to be from the data.
Booker’s sleep following the record-breaking speech.
Since the real toll of the effort would be felt after the speech was done, we also have data from the days immediately following the address. Booker followed his zero-sleep April 1 with over six hours then next night.
The night after that? Not so great. Booker only got just over four hours of sleep. “I just haven’t done enough sleep,” he tells MH. “I just have got to find some time just be off my feet and resting.”
Brett Williams, NASM-CPT, PES, a senior editor at Men’s Health, is a certified trainer and former pro football player and tech reporter. You can find his work elsewhere at Mashable, Thrillist, and other outlets.
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