An introduction to Heart Rate Variability and how it can improve your Mental Health
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is the variability between heartbeats. While your heart rate is how often your heart beats, typically per minute, HRV is the variability between these beats measured in milliseconds. To demonstrate this difference, think about a 60 beats per minute heart rate; this does not equate to a heartbeat every second; rather, some beats might be 0.8 seconds and others 1.3 seconds. HRV changes during periods of stress, exercise, sleep, and digestion. The Current Cardiology Review Journal goes into details about HRV. According to the author Reena Tiwari, the average HRV for healthy adult populations is between 19-75 milliseconds and 120 milliseconds for athletes.
The reason why HRV is critical is that it's an indicator of your autonomic nervous system (ANS), which is responsible for heart rate, digestion, and breathing. The ANS is composed of two systems: the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The SNS is responsible for the "fight or flight" response, while the PNS is responsible for the "rest and digest" response. The body's ability to balance these two systems is critical for switching between periods of stress, working out, and periods of relaxation and sleep. In summary, HRV could be the key metric to unlock better workouts, sleep, digestion, and a sense of peace. Additionally, HRV is also an expression of the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the body, originating in the brain and is composed of over 100,000 fibers. The vagus nerve does not just send messages from the brain to the body, but also signals from the spinal column to the brain. It is essentially a communication superhighway between your body and brain. According to the Current Cardiology Review Journal entitled "Analysis of Heart Rate Variability and Implications of Different Factors on Heart Rate Variability," it states, "HRV assessment has the potential to be helpful in trauma as a tool of initial patient evaluation, and regular monitoring of patients with critical injury." There are five factors that affect HRV: 1) lifestyle factors, 2) environmental factors, 3) physiological factors, 4) pathological factors, and 5) non-modifiable factors.
Pathological factors include things like age, gender, and circadian rhythm. Pathological factors include things like inflammation and infection. This could be critical in identifying if you have a metabolic disorder, hypertension, or diabetes. Environmental factors are temperature, social stress, or noise. Lifestyle factors include consuming alcohol or smoking. Psychological factors include anxiety disorders or major depression, both of which are associated with a decrease in HRV.
Why should you care? Well, if you are battling high anxiety, depression, or any metabolic disorder, maybe increasing your HRV will reduce your symptoms. My hypothesis is that your body can heal your mind. Thinking in this way, increasing your HRV may decrease symptoms of anxiety. The truth is it is hard to decrease depression or anxiety as the causes for these illnesses or the triggers may not be known or avoidable. For example, if you don't like your job and it causes you to feel anxious, most people cannot just quit. Therefore, to alleviate the symptoms of high anxiety, maybe the best, if not only, approach is to heal it through your body, by increasing your HRV.
The great news is sleeping, exercise, meditation, and many other activities have been shown to increase HRV. Through this blog, I plan to go into detail about how even if you are experiencing these symptoms, it is possible to have your body heal your mind.
