A Masterclass in Improving Your HRV - Dr Jay Wiles

HRV is kind of like the new hot girl in school. Everyone's real interested in her, finding out where she's come from, and what she can do, and who she likes. Assume that I know nothing about HRV. What is it? What does it measure?

The funniest thing about this, Chris, is that let's say circa ten, fifteen years ago, like we would have never been having this discussion. And so for someone like me, who is early to the game in the field of heart rate variability, because I was exposed to it, let's say, fifteen years ago when I first started doing mostly clinical work, uh, now everybody has access to this. Like, it's in-- because of the advent of wearable technology, we all have accessibility to something that you used to have to go into like, let's say, a specialized academic clinic in order to receive. So I worked at the Department of Veteran Affairs as, as a resident, and so within that context, like I was exposed to it because we utilized three lead, six lead, twelve lead EKGs. And so it's-- these are thirty thousand, fifty thousand, sixty thousand pieces of, or dollars worth of equipment. And so within that context, it's great to see now that we can all obtain this data, but the problem is, is that nobody actually understands [chuckles] what the hell this thing is.

It's a cool new metric that nobody has a clue what it does.

Yeah, indeed. So the way I like to explain heart rate variability is first by giving a broad definition of what HRV actually is, and then I like to backpedal a little bit because I think that the definition that I'm gonna give is probably a little bit too broad, and heart rate variability in and of itself is actually quite nuanced. So when we think about HRV or heart rate variability, and I'm gonna say HRV probably for the rest of the podcast 'cause heart rate variability is a mouthful, HRV is the single greatest non-invasive proxy that we have for measuring the adaptations of the nervous system. HRV is a signal. It's a window into how the nervous system is responding at any given time, or the time we're actually measuring it. And so when we think about HRV, I want people to think about adaptation, to think about resilience, and to think about flexibility. Those are probably three words that I'll use quite often within this context. So if it's looking at the adaptations of the nervous system, w-- I like to backpedal a little bit, and I explain what we mean by nervous system, 'cause I think a lot of people, they hear this word nervous system, it's kind of like one of those cool catchphrases in terms that people use in the health and wellness sphere right now, that I don't think people actually fully grasp and understand what it is. So maybe it makes sense for me to explain the nervous system a little bit. Okay, so when we talk about nervous system, we're talking about a massive signaling highway, and when we think about a massive signaling highway, we think about nerve endings that are running throughout the entire body, so all the way from the brain and spinal cord out to the periphery of the body itself, and it's all about communication. It's ab-- all about sending signals and messages to and from the brain and the spinal cord, out to the body and then back up, so efferent and afferent signaling. The nervous system is not just in one location or in one area. So a lot of people, when they think about nervous system, they think about what's going on within the brain. That's the central nervous system. So the central nervous system is the brain and the spinal cord, but there are also other signaling highways, one being the peripheral nervous system, which is a larger umbrella term that people use. But within the peripheral nervous system, we have the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. Somatic n- nervous system is all voluntary, so it's movement, coordination, muscular contraction, whereas the autonomic nervous system is all about involuntary, or at least we thought it used to be all involuntary. And so that's-- this is things like managing things like your respiration, your blood pressure, heart rate, digestion. It's all kind of under autonomic or automatic control. So what does the autonomic nervous system even do? Like, what do we, what do we need it? It's a threat detection signaling mechanism that we have built in. From an evolutionary perspective, the great way to think about it is that it's constantly scanning our environments, receiving internal cues, external cues, and making adjustments to our physiology so that we can maintain balance, maintain homeostasis throughout the body, because we don't want things dysregulated in one way or another, because that can cause pretty significant dysfunction from a mind-body perspective. So it's all intended to say, "Hey, let me zone in on which way I need to adjust. Do I need to move blood pressure up? Do I need to move it down? Do I need to increase heart rate up and down?" And it's kind of like this back-and-forth communication highway that we have. When people think about the nervous system, they think about it being either like the stress response or the relaxation response, and it's actually a bit more nuanced than that even. Because when we think about the autonomic nervous system, it consists of two different branches: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is what most people see as the fight, or flight, or freeze response, and I actually think that that's a bit of a bastardization or overgeneralization as to what the sympathetic response is. Uh, I actually think that t- to conceptualize the paras... or sorry, the sympathetic response, it's much more of a way that we mobilize energy. So if we think about mobilizing energy, why would we need to do that? We would need to mobilize energy in an effort to evade perceived threat or even potential viable threat. And then on the other side, we have the parasympathetic nervous system. So when we think about parasympathetic nervous system, the way I was taught about this in graduate school, is para is like a parachute. It helps to bring us down. The whole intention behind the parasympathetic nervous system is our rest, digest, or relaxation response. But again, I like to think of it more as a way of conserving energy. So mobilizing energy, sympathetic nervous system; conserving energy, parasympathetic nervous system. And we have both of those kind of working together, uh, not just antagonistically. They're not just like this seesaw where we turn one on or we turn one off, and that's where a lot of people get this wrong, is that there's a misconception that I turn on my stress response, and I can turn it off, or I turn on my relaxation response, or I can turn it off.... it doesn't work that way. It's not a seesaw. They actually work together. And so w- kind of taking a step forward now to HRV and kind of how this relates to everything, is that we can actually gain insight or window through a biometric, which is heart rate variability, which actually looks at that autonomic nervous system and whether or not it's actually making true adaptations and is resilient, or is it lacking in flexibility and potentially causing us some significant harm?