Heart Rate Variability, your Heart and Mood

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a measure of your body's adaptive capacity and resilience to challenge or stress. Specifically it is a sign of resilience of your autonomic nervous system - the part of your nervous system counterbalanced by the sympathetic, fight or flight nervous system. While the sympathetic nervous system gets you going, the parasympathetic is the rest, digest and relax part of your nervous system.It is your vagus nerve, as part of your parasympathetic nervous system which slows your heartbeat and elongates the time between beat of your heart. The sympathetic nervous system does the reverse. You can think of it like your car - for an ideal driving experience you need to both accelerate and slow down as appropriate. HRV, when healthy is the variation of time intervals between each heartbeat. Your heart should not beat like a metronome at a steady beat, but variations between the beats are ideal. Your HRV is influenced by physical activity, breathing, emotions and hormonal change.The higher/healthier your HRV, the lower your risk of heart disease, the greater your emotional well-being, the better your recovery from illness and injury and the more enhanced your exercise performance.You can go online to see what your HRV range should be based on your age. There are several devices that measure your HRV: apple watch, or Fitbit or Oura ring or Whoop band. If you don't have access to any of these you can try this exercise:Sit comfortably and the do a 60 second sprint (if this is appropriate for your health status) and then sit back down and see how fast your heartrate slows back down and you can concentrate and easily get back to work. Was this easily done or did you have a hard time either revving up or slowing down? This will pinpoint the part of your nervous system which needs support.If your resting heart rate (HR) is greater than 70 beats per minute it indicates your sympathetic nervous system is too dominant and your vagus nerve, a major component of your parasympathetic nervous system, is not signaling correctly.This is correctable naturally. Hopefully you found this information helpful. Optimizing your HRV is something we help each individual to do based on their health history and what they're experiencing. It is very worth your while to get your HRV in a good range.If you need assistance improving your health, reach out for a consultation. Call 727-335-0400.