Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

Advanced CardioLogix uses the measurement of Heart Rate Variability as the cornerstone of its innovative educational products. Research suggests that HRV is one of the most powerful assessments of stress resiliency, and possibly general health, yet found.

What is HRV?

Simply put, HRV is the natural rise and fall of your heart rate in response to your breathing, blood pressure, hormones, stress and even emotions. It is age and gender sensitive, meaning that the older we get the less variability we have.

In a healthy individual, heart rate should increase as you inhale and decrease as you exhale. The greater the heart rate variability, the healthier the heart and the nervous system that provides its feedback loop with the brain. Even more critical, HRV is reflective and predictive of general health and overall psycho-physiological (mind-body) wellness.

Why is HRV important?

Recently heart rate variability has been cited as an amazingly accurate predictor of risk associated with a variety of chronic diseases, behavioral disorders, aging, and even mortality.

It is very unusual that a single factor is associated with such a wide variety of disorders and is strong evidence of some underlying phenomenon of disease and health that we are only beginning to understand. Even so, changes in HRV seem to be a common denominator in this phenomenon.

Most important for those concerned with their own health or that of others, is that robust HRV is also associated with the balance of the sympathetic (fight-or-flight response) and parasympathetic (relaxation response) branches of the ANS (Autonomic Nervous System, your Stress Control Center).

HRV is important because :

• Measurement of HRV provides us with excellent feedback about the state of the ANS and its response to stress. That means it is a measure of the amount of "response-ability" in your nervous system to deal with stress.

• Anything that improves your ANS balance and power and thus HRV will improve your overall health*

OK, so a lot HRV is a good thing to have. What causes some people to have reduced or compressed HRV? As mentioned, HRV is a reflection of the strength and balance of your ANS and its ability to recover from and resist the impact of stress.

When you face a stressor, your body must mount an appropriate response. This fight-or-flight response takes the form of increased heart rate and blood pressure, the release of special hormones, the tensing of muscles, etc. All of these actions are natural and necessary.

Problems arise when, you light up this response too often or don't give your body a chance to rest and reset to normal balance between challenges. Sound familiar?

When this occurs, the parasympathetic branch that provides the relaxation or reset function may become exhausted and no longer be able to stop the stress response. The result is consistently increased heart rate, reduced HRV, a continued extreme level of damaging stress hormones and the onset of stress-related symptoms and illness. In short, you have lost your ability to respond to stress.

Although there are hundreds of "stress management" programs available, many do not address the real cause of stress-related problems. Some can even increase the stress in their participants by asking them to learn new and/or complex behaviors in addition to the stress of having to catch up on the work that they have missed due to the time involved.

After years of research into stress and its impact, we have concluded that:

1. ANS balance is critical in reducing the impact of stress.
2. If stressors cannot be readily reduced then resilience to the effects of stress must be increased.
3. High HRV is a good indicator of stress resilience while low values reflect the opposite.
4. The easiest way to improve HRV, and thus stress resilience, is through a simple breathing exercise that strengthens the dynamic function of the ANS and helps return the system to balance.

*Practicing paced breathing at a specific rate can, over time, re-couple the two branches of your ANS so that they work the way they were designed.