Vaccine or Prilosec or Stress

Training
1

The last month, my recovery has been really terrible. Before that, I was in a good place. Resting heart rate was as expected and my HRV was consistently over 50, which I think is pretty good for me.

On April 2nd, I got my second dose of Moderna. Had a mild fever, but otherwise, felt fine. Around the same time, I started taking an 8 week regimen of Prilosec due to some stomach or esophageal inflammation.

Right after the vaccine, I went to the beach, spent 4 days doing easy rides on the beach. I felt pretty good on the bike, but my Resting Heart Rate and HRV were declining. HRV was in the 20’s pretty much the whole week. Resting heart rate was about 7-8 beats higher than normal.

The following week back, my workouts seemed harder. I attributed a bit of that to detraining, but was still riding pretty well. Completed Kaweah perfectly and tacked on another 1.5 hours at high Z2. All along my heart rate and hrv are still lower than normal.

Things have continued to be bad, actually getting a bit worse. I started correlating the worst nights with alcohol consumption. On one occasion it was excessive, but in some cases, just one beer early in the evening would send my resting heart rate up 7-8 beats. My behavior hasn’t changed, in fact, I’m trying now to be overly cautious and am reluctant to even drink a beer. Took a recovery week last week (unplanned) and things seemed to bounce back, but then nosedived again after a dinner with a friend.

I’ve read Prilosec is pretty well tolerated and no references to it messing with heart rate. If it’s the vaccine, I’m just surprised that it’s lasted a month at this point. I have a bit more work stress than usual due to a project launch, so that could be part of it and my 4 year old has been a bit of a train wreck since the beach, which has caused a lot of frustration in the house.

I feel mostly good riding. Had a great 70+ mile group ride at a fast pace Saturday after 4 days of easy Z2 spinning. But I am worried about these recovery metrics.

Does anyone have any similar experience with Prilosec?
Does anyone know of such lingering effects of Moderna?
Could stress be this impactful to resting heart rate and HRV?
Should I put less stock in these metrics than I am?

2

Not sure I can really answer your question, but for what its worth, Prilosec and other drugs in its class can cause hypomagnesemia and thus hypokalemia with chronic use. I would imagine it also impairs rapid digestion of carbs too. I would steer away from taking it regularly if you can, and instead focus on dietary changes that can help GERD (drinking less caffeine/coffee, not binge eating, etc.). - your friendly TR forum MD

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Obviously n=1 and I should probably post this in the vaccine training thread but my HRV and rhr have been way up too after second dose Pfizer about 10 days ago. I’ve bailed on several workouts this week, and that’s not like me, good sleep, don’t drink, fairly young still though getting older by the year :slight_smile:.

Dunno just going to keep an eye on things. But certainly might be at least part the vaccine.

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Yeah, I suggest checking out the vaccine training thread too. Like I posted on there recently, I had the moderna shot and just as of yesterday busted out in a upper body rash. It’s been a little over 10 days, but I am feeling fatigued again since the rash. I had to bail on my ride today after only a 20 minute warm up. I don’t know if the vaccine caused it, if my rash is related, or if there is something else, but at least know that I had the modernist shot and I am feeling exhausted and unable to hit workouts.
I know something is up when 180 w for a warm up feel impossible, when just a few weeks ago I hit my all-time record of 306 Watts normalized power for 5 hours.

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I had my second Moderna on May 13th…since then, my “readiness” score from my Oura ring has been stuck in the 50’s and 60’s. Yesterday was the first day that I hit 70 since the shot (but back down to 60 today). I can’t say definitively it is causation, but it is some pretty damn strong correlation. But my performance has been great on the bike, hitting all my numbers and riding buddies are saying I have been riding strong. :man_shrugging:

Absolutely.

Quite possibly…I’m not sold on the “readiness” scores and similar metrics that Oura or Whoop pull together, a lot of which is based on RHR and HRV.

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Oddly, I snapped back to green last night. I decided I was gonna try to be “normal” the last two nights. Had a few beers for Cinco de Mayo, and Oura ring was telling me I wasn’t recovered, as I would expect probably normally. Yesterday was a threshold workout and I drank one beer just to test things. I had a rough nights sleep because my 4YO was scared of a thunderstorm. Expected readiness to be low again, but amazingly, Readiness was 80. RHR was 50 (normal) and HRV was 62 (above average). Weird. Hopefully my body has overcome this reaction after a month.

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