Understanding HRV

This week we are chatting about HRV (heart rate variability). HRV is important because it is an insight to the state of your nervous system, cardiovascular health, athletic performance, sleep quality and more! 

If you have questions, or topics that you want to hear about, head over to our Instagrams https://www.instagram.com/bayleethedietitian/ or https://www.instagram.com/brianna.dietitian/ and send us a DM! You can also follow the podcast https://www.instagram.com/mocktailminutes/

Featured Mocktails: 

Vital Proteins

Just Ingredients 

Click play, sip back, and be empowered.

Transcript

Baylee And Brianna: 0:23

Hello everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of Mocktail Minutes. Oh yeah. This is Bailey you just silent and this is Brian This week I am drinking the bomb pop flavored vital proteins. They're pretty delicious. Like I was, I was skeptical, but it does taste like a melted bomb pop. Ooh, I'll have to try those. I'm doing the orange pineapple electrolytes from just ingredients. Did you see Just ingredients, has bone broth protein now? I did see that and I wanna try it. I'm excited and I'm gonna order some. Mm-hmm. Because I love just ingredients products and bone broth protein that's a little bit higher in calcium. Yeah, and I feel like it's perfect as we're heading into like fall. Yeah. Sick. Well, like you can use them as just like regular smoothie too. And I've had like the Taylor Beef Wellness one and they're pretty good, but I'm very excited to try the just ingredients ones. Is it flavored? Yes. Yeah it is, right. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. It's like snickerdoodle. I think there's a mint, I think there's a chocolate. There's like six different flavors actually of it. I'm gonna try Snickerdoodle'cause I like their snickerdoodle protein. Okay. It's, I don't know which one I'm gonna try. Yeah, we'll see. We should do different ones. I mean, we can do whatever, but can you just like mail me a sample? Can you just like, yeah, just put a little bit of Ziploc bag? Yeah. Yes. Well, this week we are talking about heart rate variability. We talked about like the wearable technologies and some apps a little bit last week when we talked about using your phone to help your habits. So we wanted to take a little bit deeper dive into HRV this week. So, HRV, if you don't know what that is, it stands for heart rate. Variability and it's a good measure of, I would say like overall health, like stress, recovery, that sort of thing. It's really big. I think it got really, really big when the AA ring came out.'cause that was one thing that it was like focusing on. But basically what it does is it does it time or measures. There we go. Words are hard. It measures the time in between. Each heartbeat. So obviously if your heartbeat is really close together, you're gonna have a low HRV. If your heart rate is more spaced out, it's gonna be higher. And this kind of gives you a good indication of like what nervous system, like sympathetic versus parasympathetic system you're kind of operating in. Mm-hmm. The aura rings specifically how it's. Calculating your like nighttime HRV. So Aura calculates your nighttime HRV by using, it's like the root mean square of successive differences, I think is what it's, yeah, which is. Like, it's a well-known HRV parameter that provides just reliable and accurate view of your autonomic nervous system activity. So the average HRV you see is the mean of all five samples it's taking while you're asleep. The Aura accounts for changes in your HRV every five minutes throughout the night, instead of just like at one single point. And this is what helps it to be a little bit more accurate and you can get it more of a detailed view of how your body's responding to stress from the previous day and how well it's kind of like preparing for the day ahead of you. Mm-hmm. So. Aura provides like your average HRV, so your average HRV is captured over the entire night, and it also does your max HRV, good general rule of thumb, high HRV relative to your baseline. This is gonna be more associated with the activation of your rest and digest side of your nervous system your general physical fitness and good recovery, higher average. Nighttime. HRV has also been linked to better sleep quality. Low HRV is associated with activation of like more fight or flight. It's more stress, it's more illness and over training. So this is why your HRV will drop a little bit, like when you're sick or when you're experiencing a lot of stress in your AA ring will tell you to like simmer down a little bit. Yeah, yeah. It's the just recognizing like, okay, we're in that fight or flight, our nervous system's a little bit tapped. We need to do more things to help you rest. And it should be said that like, because everybody always asks like, what is a good HRV? And just like general rule of thumb, a low one isn't great. Higher, better, but it's like very, very individualized, so. Mm-hmm. You may have maybe a number that's under like what people are like, oh, this is where you should be for your age, but it's if that's kind of always your baseline and your like other things are really good, then maybe that's just your H HR V. So it's very highly individualized. And I would say like this is something that's a really big debate right now. It's like what is an optimal HRV? But the more data you have, the better. So don't freak out if like your HRV is low one day and it's just. You know, just an outlier. It's much higher. Kinda get like, what is my baseline and work up from there. That's what I would do. And then also pay attention to, like we're talking about the Ora ring, but I know other things like the Apple Watch, I think whoop, there's other things that measure HRV and they might be doing it a different way. So kind of understanding what their scale is Isn't like normal for an adult, like 50 to 70? Is that what it's, yeah, it's supposed to be like, I think between like ages 18 to, I don't know, probably like midlife or a little bit older. That's like the general rule, but there's people that can get up to a hundred, over a hundred. I would say you have one over a hundred. You're probably like very well trained. Yeah. But yeah, I would say yeah, 80 to a hundred is usually like more athlete side of things. Yeah. And then what, do you have your phone with you? What's your HRV? I was just looking at my, I'm gonna die. My h HRV is horrible. I literally this, oh no. This is been the topic of discussion with Victor forever, but it's strange because I'll get great sleep scores and I get great deep sleep. But are you ready? What's yours? So my, for the week, if we look at that, it's 61 to 70 for the past week. Okay. Okay. I also haven't been wearing my ora ring. I just started again the last couple of days'cause I was like, okay.'cause I had to take a break from it mine last night. 13. Oh no, I'm dead. I'm actually dead. And this is, so like I've talked to Kristen from Stat about this too and she, yeah, kinda walking me through like, okay, well what's your other, like this, you know, it might be okay, it needs to go up, but it might not need to go up as much as you think type thing. I think I'm usually between like 15 and 35, and I've been like that for probably two years. But I know I need to work on my nervous system. So stress is definitely a big one. Have you done an htm a recently? Yes. Not super recently. Maybe. I think it actually was a year ago now, and it showed that it showed like, okay, your adrenals mm-hmm. Are tapped. yeah, just been working on stress. My lowest, if I look at the past month, it was 20. Okay. What's even that one, I'm all mine is so low I don't get it. Well, I do though. I know that I could work on stress and I was actually talking to Victor.'cause there is like certain things you can do to like improve your HRV. Obviously like breath work is one of'em. Mm-hmm. Getting into that rest and, and digest more breath work is actually probably the main one. Focusing on sleep, not doing the stressors like a ton of caffeine. Undereating is a major stressor and I actually see that a lot of people that chronically undereat is their HRV is low, but there's certain types of like cardio you can do, like strategically. And he wrote me up a plan and I instantly regretted it. Hey, I don't want this, try again. No, no, no. So looking at my past data, July, my HRV went, it was like between 46 to 86, so it was 80 Great. In July. When looking back, so February is when I left my previous job, I decided to resign and totally just change things up. Mm-hmm. My RV was down to 13. My, it's been going then. Isn't that crazy? Let see. Yeah. I will say the highest one I probably had was over the summer and it was 35 to 45. You guys did so bad. it's interesting though because usually you like that is a, like your readiness score is really like related to your hrv. Yeah. I will have like great readiness scores. Like I'll have like 85, 90. Interesting. I don't know. well, I guess so why is having a low HRV bad? Not like bad, but just like chronically low can be a red flag. I would say yes, it can indicate some, like stress overload means your body is stuck in a little bit of fight or flight, and your nervous system isn't switching easily and. Recovery mode, it can be reduced recovery. So low HRV shows your body hasn't fully bounced back from emotional strain. So sometimes, like even athletes can see low HRV, like before injury or illness or like performance plateaus too. So it's just something to, what I like to, how I like to explain it is it's like a check engine light. Like it's going on saying like, okay, something's wrong here, whether you're over training undereating, not getting to recover, recovery, not sleeping. I also know it happens, it's basically with like hormone shifts too. That's a big one. Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And it's basically just, it can suggest that your nervous system isn't super flexible or resilient. Which is a great marker of our overall health where,'cause like high HRV, you can go from stress to recovery. Stress again. You're good. Low HRV, your system is less adaptable. It's like you're just stuck in one gear. Yeah. But it is interesting about your sleep because if HRV is usually low, it's usually like poor sleep quality. Yeah. So I'm, I don't know if I'm just like an anomaly. I do know I need to work all my stress for, for certain, but it's, it's literally my biggest goal, I think for the, throughout the end of the year. And I was reading the research on it, and it's something like 20 minutes of breath work a day. It's supposed to really improve your HRV and it can be done in snacks, right? So like it doesn't have to be 20 minutes straight. Yeah, it could be like five, five or whatever. So I'm gonna do that and I will say I did it yesterday morning and the Oura ring like showed it and it like went up and it was like, good, good job, girl. But yeah, it's. It's just a measure of how adaptable you are. Like are you stuck or can you come in and outta stress?'cause I think that's a good point is a lot of people think like there just needs to be no stress ever, but that's not realistic. It's fine to have stress, like it shows you're alive and like you can, you know, survive. It's, can I go in and out of it? So yes, which is why strategic cardio can be helpful because you're. Doing a stressor and your body tries to adapt to it, but it's, it's intense. Like sprints, ew. Yeah. No. Yeah. And I wonder too if it's like a way that I trained, like in my early Yeah. You used to do a lot of fit, didn't you? Yes. I was like obsessed with it. Yeah, you're crazy. You know, I need to, I do this to myself. This is why I get it. When people are like, I love working out like that. I'm like, yeah, but it's not good for you. And like that's why it does feel good like operating under cortisol, right? Like it feels good, but it's not good for your long-term health. So if you are wearing something that is tracking your HRV. Where you really wanna think about supporting your body's ability to recover, manage your stress, and maintain balance between fight and flight, rest and digest. So thinking about high quality sleep, hydration, dehydration is actually like kind of sneaky way of decreasing your HRV and especially, you wanna make sure you're getting electrolytes. Yeah, the managing of the stress. So like the deep breathing, the meditation, even like just taking a pause. Practice yoga, journaling, walking, whatever you need to help shift your body into recovery. Mm-hmm. And like Brianna just said, doesn't, it's not that you're doing an hour of meditation, like start with five minutes even. And training smart, alternating those intense workouts with recovery and active rest days. Cutting back on alcohol or like late night eating even one or two drinks can significantly lower your HRV mm-hmm at night and late. Heavy meals keep your body in digestion mode instead of like deep recovery. It also helps to support your circadian rhythm. Those are all things that I kind of think of to help the HRV number increase. Yeah. So it's, it is just another data point. Yeah. So I would say just look at it, know what yours is and track it over time. It's always the trends. Try to improve it, you know, and then whatever wearable you're using, really understand how they're measuring it and what it needs.'cause the scale may be different. Like maybe it's not on that. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, 20 to one, 20 scale, maybe it's a little bit different, but. Just trying to improve and I would say use it as data that like really shows you a bigger picture into what's happening. And for those who do like to overtrain or undereat or drink alcohol often or you know, all the things, it's a, it's a good like neon light to be like, Hey, actually you're not doing as well as you thought. Yes. Speaking to myself. Yes. And just like with all the things you're looking at, patterns. Mm-hmm. Over time, you can start to see how your daily choices affect your recovery and your resilience. Thinking about the sleep, the stress, what you ate, what how's work doing, all those things are affecting it. So just how I just looked at like each month, February was my lowest. HRV, I mean, we were planning a wedding, had a new car, had a new house. Gannon was still pretty young and I left a job. I resigned from a position that was very stable to do something that was a little bit more riskier and my HIV increase. So Yeah. And that, yeah. So like knowing what season you're in. Yeah. And that makes sense. Yeah. That's a super stressful season. Yeah. So. we hope this was helpful to give you some more information on data you can collect on your body to become more in tune, and we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Bye bye.