When we refer to heart rate, we are often only concerned about whether it is fast or slow. While the speed of your heart rate does matter, it doesn’t give you a ton of information. If we also take into account the variability of that heart rate, we gain a lot more insight into how your body is functioning.
There are devices that many of us already have that is tracking this for us. For example:
- Apple watch
- WHOOP strap
- FitBit
- Oura ring
- Garmin watch
When we track heart rate variability (HRV), it gives us a glimpse into the health of our autonomic nervous system (ANS). Your ANS has 2 branches:
- Sympathetic (fight-or-flight) mode
- Parasympathetic (relaxation) mode
When your ANS is functioning well, you easily go back and forth between both branches. A healthy nervous systems will be able to adapt appropriately to its environment.
You can think of HRV as a way to measure the ‘adaptability’ of your nervous system. If you have high HRV readings, your ‘adaptability’ is high. If your nervous system isn’t responding well, your HRV readings will show as low.
One of the reasons for these low HRV readings is chronic stress. Acute stress can activates our sympathetic nervous system (SNS). However, when the stress is gone, you should swiftly move back into a relaxed state. The more unregulated your stress becomes, the harder it gets to pull you out of sympathetic mode.
It is important to emphasize that not all stress comes in the form of emotion stress. Stress comes in many forms and all can affect your HRV.
The different forms of stress include:
- Emotional (work, relationships, money)
- Chronic disease
- Infections
- Over exercising
Some of these stresses can improve your HRV over time, ie balanced exercise, but most will lower it. Furthermore, there are many other things that can lower your HRV as well.
Examples of HRV lowering factors are:
- Certain drugs (many of the heart medications)
- Alcohol
- Dehydration
- Poor physical conditioning
- Cigarettes
- Diabetes
- Heart attack
- Chronic kidney disease
- PTSD
- Diabetes
- Inflammation
Overtime, these factors wear down the nervous system and consequentially lower your HRV.
Why Do We Care About HRV?
Low HRV is a risk factor for many disease/conditions. For example, low HRV in diabetic patients, increase their risk of complications such as sudden cardiac death.
HRV is also used to track recovery from things such as exercise. Many of todays highest performing athletes are using it to guide their training and prevent burnout. For example, when your HRV begins to lower, it is an indicator that you are overtraining.
It is for these reasons HRV tracking devices, such as the Oura ring, are becoming more and more popular. They give us insight into our health in real time!
Rather than waiting for your monthly/yearly check-up with your doctor to find out how your health is doing, you can track it every day.
You can see which habits (sleep, exercise, diet, meditation, etc.) have the biggest impact on your nervous system. HRV provides objective data that takes the guesswork out of which therapies are most helpful.
If you would like to learn about how you can utilize HRV for your health, book your 15 minute ‘Discovery Call’ now.
Disclaimer
Information can be empowering, but we all have unique health profiles and needs. The health-related information contained in this article is intended to be general in nature and should not be used as a substitute for a visit with a licensed naturopathic doctor. The advice in this article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
References
- Kim, H. G., Cheon, E. J., Bai, D. S., Lee, Y. H., & Koo, B. H. (2018). Stress and heart rate variability: a meta-analysis and review of the literature. Psychiatry investigation, 15(3), 235.
- Hjortskov, N., Rissén, D., Blangsted, A. K., Fallentin, N., Lundberg, U., & Søgaard, K. (2004). The effect of mental stress on heart rate variability and blood pressure during computer work. European journal of applied physiology, 92(1-2), 84-89.