Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is one of the ways you can monitor your health and empower yourself. What is it? ~ Simply put, it’s a measurement of how quickly our body can shift between parasympathetic (a relaxed, calm, sleepy, slower digestive state) and sympathetic (an excited, adrenaline based, fearful, faster state) nervous states. If you’re training, stressed, starting to feel a little off, or want a spur to begin better breathing practices, checking out HRV is a great place to start!
Most people understand the concept of heart rate and can make a stab at taking their own pulse (the number of times your heart beats per minute). For those with a Garmin watch or other training device, chances are you’ll have seen feedback on your training sessions (some of the ones we hate to see are ‘Over-reaching’, or worse still, ‘unproductive’, when you’ve just ran a marathon!)
Generally, the fitter we are, the lower our resting heart rate will be. Exercise makes our heart rate go up, while age means the maximum heart rate we can attain goes down. Heart rate variability, on the other hand, is a different beast! Simply put, it’s a measurement of how quickly our body can shift between parasympathetic (a relaxed, calm, sleepy, slower digestive state) and sympathetic (an excited, adrenaline based, fearful, faster state) nervous states. Generally speaking, higher heart rate variability is thought to be better and there are a range of conditions will make heart rate variability improve: including improved fitness and practice of good breathing techniques.
Declines or changes in your personal heart rate variability from the ‘norm’, can often be an early indicator of impending illness, a larger swing towards a parasympathetic or sympathetic state than normal, fatigue or other variables.
I’ve known about HRV for a while, having trained it with coherance breathing, studied Heart Math breathing and played around with it in those with post-concussion syndrome. This year, after I had Covid and had lingering symptoms, I renewed my interest in it as a measure of overall ‘health’.
For those who are interested in data and measuring their physiological state, it’s a cool, objective tool. We know that people with chronic fatigue, post viral illnesses, post-concussion syndrome and other complex things are prone to burnout, or ‘boom- bust’ cycles (where you feel ok one day, overdo it in the garden / at home or wherever, and then suffer for hours-days afterwards). This makes it really difficult to plan anything you’re doing. Often people either continue to push themselves to the point of burnout, or simply don’t push themselves hard enough to obtain any gains or benefits at all. Neither of these are ideal, and as we know, simply relying on how we ‘feel’ at a given time, is no guarantee that we won’t under or over cook ourselves!
My personal issues ‘post Covid’ were: increased tiredness, re-increased resting and maximum heart rates, low energy overall and my general tendency towards taking too much on / multi-tasking / constant striving for achievements – and all of those other good things which we’re regularly told not to do 😉 Because I’m a big believer in maximising health and seeing what the body IS truly capable of, I hooked up my little finger HRV monitor (bought from CorSense) and connected it to an App called Elite HRV. I started with box breathing (breathe in for a count of 4-6, hold 4-6, out 4-6, hold 4-6. Mount Sinai are doing a great research program on this related to Long-Covid, which is proving to be beneficial), as well as coherance breathing (in for 4, out for 6). Elite HRV has a biofeedback section in it, where you can monitor your HRV as you complete the exercises – I found this great for making me more accountable to do them! There’s also a score of ‘Morning Readiness’, where you take your HRV first thing in the morning and obtain a measurement on how ‘ready’ you are to face the day (compared to your personal baseline). As you can see from the images attached, the ideal situation is actually ‘Eustress’- where there is complete balance between your parasympathetic and sympathetic systems.
The other 2 images are from different days. When my parasympathetic system was more dominant, my solution was: ditch my longer training run planned that day, in favour of a light jog/walk with the dogs, and prioritise my day around what was ESSENTIAL to achieve (hint- there’s NEVER as many things that are ‘essential’ as we think!). When my sympathetic system was more dominant, I did an Active Recovery breathing session in the early morning sun (it’s recommended to spend 20+ minutes outside, with no sunglasses, at sunrise and sunset to reset the circadian rhythm).
HRV tracking and using physiological variables to track your recovery and wellbeing is becoming increasingly more accessible, with apps such as Welltory enabling measurements of Coherance, Focus, Stress and more using your Iphone sensor. As somebody who has had Chronic Fatigue and issues like noise and light sensitivity with headaches, as a result of my Post-Concussion Syndrome in the past, it’s certainly not a route I wanted to go down again.
The difficulty for many with Long-Covid, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and more, is knowing where to start! Working with your Allied Health professional to discuss your tolerance for all of your daily activities, plan your best individualised treatment approaches and see where the use of ‘gadgets’ and tracking will help you, is definitely the best approach. I’ve been there – we all want to eat the magic food, see the specialist, sort out our anxiety / pain / whatever and get back to training ASAP – but if your cells are depleted, they’re depleted and you may not be able to take on ALL of the ‘cures / tools / advice’ at once (and nor should you!). But if you’re training, stressed, starting to feel a little off, want a spur to begin better breathing practices, checking out HRV is a great place to start! Plus, if Breathwork is something that appeals to you, why not book a Respiratory Assessment with our Physiotherapist Campbell, available via Zoom.
