30. How to Use HRV to Improve Your Health

00:06 - Michael Kummer (Host)

You're listening to the Primal Shift podcast. I'm your host, michael Kummer, and my goal is to help you achieve optimal health by bridging the gap between ancestral living and the demands of modern society. Get ready to unlock the transformative power of nature as the ultimate biohack, revolutionizing your health and reconnecting you with your Primal Self. Welcome back to another episode of the Primal Shift podcast. In today's episode, I'm going to talk about something that most people don't know about, and even those who know often use it incorrectly or make mistakes leveraging that powerful tool, and, of course, I'm talking about hard rate variability or HRV. So in this episode specifically, I'll talk about what is HRV, why does it matter and what does it tell us, or can it tell us how you can use HRV to your advantage to improve your health and well-being, the best ways and tools to measure HRV? That's where I think a lot of mistakes are being made how I use HRV to improve my own health and well-being, and I'm going to point you to some additional resources to talk about how you can improve your HRV and answer the question what is a good HRV? That's actually, I think, the number one question I get on the topic, because most people don't know how to interpret their reading. So let's start with the basics. What is hard rate variability or HRV? And HRV is the difference in timing between heartbeats expressed in milliseconds. What it means is assume you have a heart rate of 60 beats per minute. You might think that well, if that's the case, then my heart beats exactly once a second on the dot. But that's not necessarily true. In fact, your heart might beat at 980 milliseconds and then again at 1050 milliseconds and then at 970 milliseconds. So there's always a little bit of a difference or a variability, and that is your heart rate variability, basically the difference in that timing between the individual heartbeats. But why does it matter? What does heart rate variability tell us about our health, our nervous system? And the number one thing that HRV tells us is it gives us an indication of how our nervous system is responding to our environment and the stressors we're exposed to. More specifically speaking, hrv tells us what's going on in terms of the competition between the sympathetic and parasympathetic branch of our nervous system. So those two branches, they're always in competition, they're always active at the same time, but one is usually more active than the other, and that's important because, if you think about it. 

02:50

Your sympathetic branch is the one that is predominantly active when you're in a fight or flight mode, so when you're in danger, when certain functions in your body need to be in focus so you can either escape danger or fight. The problem is, in our modern worlds we're often in fight or flight mode even though there is no saber-toothed tiger trying to attack us or no other tribe member trying to attack us. It's simply triggered by parenting, by work, by a host of other things. That shouldn't really put us into a fight or flight mode because you're not life-threatening. But our brain doesn't know the difference and so we are in it anyway, and a lot of people are under chronic, chronic fight or flight mode and that's not obviously not good because it taxes your body. You cannot always be in fight or flight mode. That's just not healthy and leads to a lot of those issues that we've discussed in some of the previous episodes. 

03:46

So HRV tells us how active or dominant our sympathetic branch of the nervous system might be. So in relation to your baseline we'll talk about it in a bit If you have a relatively low HRV, that means your sympathetic branch is more active. Conversely, if your HRV is relatively high, that means your parasympathetic branch, the one that's responsible for resting and digesting, is more active, and throughout the day, unless you're exercising or being exposed to acute stressors, you should really be in parasympathetic mode as much as possible, but that's again, unfortunately not always the case for most of us. And so by looking at our HRV, by measuring our HRV, we can tell how our nervous system is responding. Are we more in sympathetic mode or parasympathetic mode? And that's in particularly important if we measure HRV during certain times when we're not exposed to external influences, like if we are sleeping, in particular when we're in deep sleep, we are not exposed to any acute stressors. At that time the body is pretty much disconnected from its environment, from its surroundings, and so if we measure HRV at that time and it's relatively low, that's an indication that our nervous system and some of the other processes and organs in the body, especially the heart, are busy trying to compensate or heal and repair from some of those stressors we were exposed to throughout the day, for example, or in the previous days leading up to that particular night. 

05:18

And so that can tell us if we are in overtraining, maybe if we are not allowing enough time to recover after intense workouts. It can tell us how capable or resilient our body is in dealing with everyday stressors. It can give us an idea if we are sick or if we're about to get sick, even before we feel the onset of symptoms. It can even tell you if you're pregnant, if there is a high chance of preterm delivery. There have been studies conducted by Woop, one of the trackers that I use to measure HRV, that have clearly shown that pregnant women that have a sudden change in HRV during a certain stage of the pregnancy are very likely to have a preterm delivery, and so all of that is important information that you can leverage to make changes, to improve your situation, to improve your health and to better deal with stress. 

06:09

Of course, it can also tell you HRV, that is, if you're making the proper lifestyle choices throughout the day and in the evening. Maybe. If you're consuming alcohol, for example, you know HRV is likely going to be lower at night. If you're very stressed throughout the day, probably your HRV is going to take a hit. If you're making the wrong dietary choices, if you have poor sleep, all of those things can lead to a low HRV and give you an indication if there is maybe room for improvement or something that you need to do. 

06:38

So what does it mean in practice? How can you leverage HRV to your advantage or use it to your advantage? And so one of the things you can do is to establish a baseline. You know, because HRV is a very individual metric, it doesn't make sense We'll talk about that in a bit to compare your HRV with that of someone else. You really need to establish your own baseline to find out what is a normal HRV for you, and you typically do this by measuring it for a certain period, couple of weeks, maybe, especially during a time when you're not exposed to external influences, like during sleep, for example, or maybe first time in the morning. We'll talk about the best ways and tools to measure HRV, but you need to establish a baseline. You need to know what is a normal HRV for you, and from there you can monitor changes or trends that deviate from your baseline either above average or above your baseline or below your baseline and then you can assess those trends and see what lifestyle choices or environmental factors could be influencing a change in the trend. Obviously, if you're trending up, that's a good thing. If you're trending down, there is something going on that warrants further investigation. You know could be maybe that you're getting sick or that you're constantly overtraining without giving your body enough time to recover. All of those things can lead to a downward trend in HRV and give you the tool to release the information, to make changes and the proper adaptations, maybe to a training regimen or to alcohol consumption, whatever the cause might be. 

08:09

Now HRV is also useful. It's also useful to assess temporary changes and think about how they relate to lifestyle choices you've been making, particularly the night before or the day before. So, for example, you know, I woke up this morning and I looked at my HRV readings from the night and it was relatively low. In fact it was very low. And so I'm like, okay, what did I do yesterday that caused my body to having a harder time recovering and repairing at night? And so I assessed well, we watched the Christmas lights last night and I wasn't hungry before heading out, and then it took forever because there was a lot of traffic going on and we came home late and I had a late meal For me. I already know this. That's a trigger to lower my HRV, because my body has to work harder by testing stuff at a time where it should be directing resources at doing some other things resting and recovering and muscle recovery and all of the things that are not directly related to digesting a heavy meal, and I was hungry at the time, so I had a big meal right before going to bed not a good thing. I already knew what would happen and it did, and I could see it reflected in my HRV. I also knew that I had stressful moments yesterday related to parenting, and so I knew what caused my dip in HRV not a big deal. 

09:31

Moving on, if that dip had happened or that drop in HRV had happened without me being able to figure out what is going on, then there is a real possibility that I might be getting sick or that my body is starting to fight something, even if I don't feel any symptoms yet, and so for me that's always an indication to lay low, to take it easier, to focus more on recovery then maybe going to the gym and pushing it to the red line and doing a ton of other things that stress me and take away resources from my body, or that my body might need to fight an infection, or whatever the case might be. So that's how I, or how you, can leverage HRV and how I leverage this as well. Now, how do you measure HRV and when particularly? I already alluded to HRV you need to measure HRV. Best case scenario when you're without any external influences, and while in deep sleep is arguably one of the best times to do that, because your body is pretty much disconnected from its environment, from its surroundings, and so it's a great way to measure HRV, and some of the tools that we'll talk about here in a moment do exactly that, then measure it at night, and some of them particularly during deep sleep. The other alternative if you don't have a tool that can measure it at a set time, you obviously cannot measure it actively while you're in deep sleep. You'd have to wake up for that. 

10:48

But if you have a chest strap, let's say, or maybe an Apple Watch or something else, to measure your HRV, you can also do it first thing in the morning, ideally when you're at rest and when your heart rate is close to or at resting heart rate, because typically, when your heart rate goes up, your HRV goes down. It's as simple as if you're being a monitor with a chest strap. If I get up and start walking, just the fact that I walk lowers my HRV significantly. If I sit back down, it bounces right back. It's important to be at rest and ideally always during the same time of the day. Morning is a good time. First thing in the morning. You sit up, you make sure you're really relaxed, there are no kids and pets or whatever running around you and driving you crazy or whatever. You need to be with as few influences as possible. Then you can measure it. Do it at the same time every single day and do it for a while to establish a baseline. Then you can use those morning readings, for example, to see if your numbers deviate from the established baseline. 

11:49

You can also measure your HRV throughout the day, but that's mostly useful as a stress monitoring tool. It's not very useful to figure out if lifestyle choices have a systemic effect on your body. In other words, a low HRV at some point during the day, maybe when you're out and about, might is not going to give you any indication whatsoever if you're in overtraining, if you might be getting sick or anything in between. But it's useful if you measure 24-7, the whole time, basically to see individual spikes or drops and use it as a stress monitoring tool, because typically when you're stressed as we talked about sympathetic overdrive, etc. Your HRV goes down. If you're not exercising or working out or doing any type of manual labor anything that might constitute a stress in your HRV suddenly drops and you're not physically active at the time. That's an indication that your sympathetic branch of the nervous system is active. Because you're under stress, you're showing a stress response. 

12:50

Some of the tools that I use here for example the whipstrap here, the ordering they can measure HRV throughout the day and then give you a stress score or even send you a notification saying that, hey, you've been in high stress mode. Or they use HRV amongst some other factors. But the bottom line here is they tell you hey, you've been in high stress mode for a significant amount of time. What's going on? Maybe it's time to take a breath or do something to mitigate the stressful situation. Very useful if you want to use a stress monitor. But if you really want to use it to establish your recovery and get an idea of how your nervous system is handing the stressors from the previous day or previous days, measure it at night, best case scenario or maybe in the morning Again. If you do it in the morning, you can use an Apple Watch, it can measure HRV, even though it might not be the best way of doing this. Or you can use a chest strap with an app like there is, elite HRV or some other tools you can use to take on-demand readings and use those to figure out what might be going on. 

13:50

Let's talk about some of the mistakes that you can make that a lot of people make when measuring HRV. One is I already alluded to it in a measuring it during random times of the day, especially if you don't want to use it as a stress management tool. Measuring in a one day at 3 pm and the next day at in the morning and then again in the evening, and then it's not going to give you any actionable or useful information. Those snapshots don't really matter if they're external influences that you cannot control for that's why, again, deep sleep best time, followed by first thing in the morning, if you really want to understand how your body is handling the stressors that you're exposed to. The second mistake that a lot of people make is they freak out when they see a low reading On WOP. I think does a fairly good job of assessing your HRV and some of the other biometrics to give you a recovery score in the morning. They represented in either red, yellow or green, which everyone knows what those colors mean your green is good, yellow is in between and red not so good, especially as far as your health is concerned. 

14:54

A lot of people, when they wake up and they see a red recovery or maybe a low HRV reading using the ad or a ring or any other tool, they freak out and like, oh, today I cannot go work out, I am basically disabled, I should not be doing anything. And that's not true. Having low HRV readings, especially in the context of exercise, is a good thing, because you need to sometimes overreach to become stronger and more resilient and fitter. You need to push your body and then your body needs time to repair. During that time your HRV might be low. If I go work out and I do a very intense crossfit workout and then I'm sore and completely fatigued and whatnot, and then I go to bed during that night, my body is likely working very hard to recover from that workout. 

15:43

The next morning, I don't necessarily expect a very high HRV, because the low HRV is an indication that my body is working actively to recover and so my hrv is low and that's perfectly fine, there's nothing to freak out about. It does not mean that I cannot go work out that day or I shouldn't go work out that day, or that I have to sit on the couch all day. It does not. It just means that I should be aware that my body has had maybe a harder time than usual because the workout was tougher to recover and so maybe you know I take it easier, or maybe I don't take it easy and I push it again because I know that a day later I have a rest day coming up. So you know it can be a helpful tool in the realm of exercise. But it could also mean that you know if you had a late meal or you had maybe a you know a glass of wine too much, or whatever the case might be, and you wake up with a low hrv, it's not a big deal, you will still function. You know I've had some of my best performances on a day where I woke up with a low hrv. It just means that. 

16:38

But if you have multiple low readings in a row, if you have, you know, a week or longer of low hrv, something is likely going on and you need to think what that might be and react accordingly. For example, if you know or if you feel like your low hrv trend is caused by overtraining, well, back off on the overtraining, give your body more time to recover. If you can absolutely not figure out what it might be, maybe you're you're sick or you're about to get sick, so that's also might be an indication to lay low and take it, you know, easier and see, you know how your body responds in the following days where you give it more time to recover. Next mistake, big, big one that cost or has caused a lot of stress and anxiety among many of the users, especially, you know, user of devices like whoop and yawring, is comparing your hrv to that of someone else. You know hrv is a very individual metric. Everyone has a different baseline. You know different genetics, different environment. That you know cause certain readings and so it does not make any sense and I highly encourage you to not compare your hrv with that of someone else, even if you're you know same sex, same roughly same age, same level of fitness or whatever. You know it doesn't make sense, it doesn't help you at all. Now, of course, you know if you see this in a positive light and say, okay, you know, there is someone who is roughly, who is very comparable, similar to how I am, but that person's hrv is twice of mine. You know, maybe there is something you can improve without freaking out about it, because maybe there is nothing you can do and maybe it's it's completely irrelevant. You know, you might not be any less healthy just because your hrv is low. In fact, I know many people who are less fit than I am and less healthy than I am who have a, you know, higher average hrv. So what you know does that mean you know there's an issue? Probably not. It might just be genetics, it might be something else, not everything related to hrv we understand yet. So, you know, take it easy and don't freak out about it. 

18:29

Now I've already, you know, talked about some of the things that I do in regards to hrv and leveraging that information it gives me to improve my health and well-being. And I measure my hrv typically at night. I use it. I use Aidsleep you know it's a bad cooling solution that has sensors built in that measures, you know, heart rate and hrv and some, you know respiratory rate and some other metrics, and I use that pretty much every single night or I look at it in the morning to see how my my numbers were during the previous night and how they line up with what I know about my previous day or days and how I feel in the morning. You know I don't freak out about it if there is something off or I can't explain it, but it's always interesting if something doesn't quite line up, to figure out what it could be and to just be, you know, conscious about it and and and and use that information to do better the following day. I also wear whoop and ordering not all the time, just on off, usually to A compared to what Aidsleep is showing me. You know to test new features to test. You know to use the stress monitor. You know that's very useful of both of those devices really. So I can see when I'm in high stress mode throughout the day, especially during times when I'm not, when I don't recognize that to be the case. So that's what I use as well and I Always look at trends. 

19:48

I do look at individual readings as well, of course, but I mostly pay attention to my trends and my trending is my trend flat, which is okay because usually HRV declines as we age Right someone who is 20 years old, chances are has a much, much higher HRV. Then you know someone like me who is not turning 42, but the average trend shows, at least statistically, the older we get, the lower the HRV, and so my goal is to beat the inflation as much as I can, meaning that to maintain either a steady trend or an upward trend, and there are actually many things that I've done in the past that have helped me improve my HRV, you know, by 50%, and I'm linking those down in the show, not so you can look at those additional resources, but I keep an eye on trend. Most importantly, I also take into account individual readings and really try to assess how they line up with my lifestyle choices and and Factors that I've been exposed to. That warner necessarily my choice. You know if you get into a car accident, you know there's probably there might not have been anything you could do about it, but that likely impacts your stress levels, especially in the moment and maybe even for longer it might. Even if you got injured, you know that's can be a an hreve lowering factor as your body tries to repair and recover from the injury. So I try to assess how my readings line up with lifestyle choices and if there is something I can do better, like, you know, not have alcohol at all, or, you know, not only have it once a week, Maybe, instead of, you know, twice a week, or whatever the case might be, you know, avoid late meals. You know, don't over train. You know all of those things I try to assess and optimize and do better so I can be healthier for longer, improve my health span, basically, and and not to decline right. 

21:33

So those are that's how I use hreve. You know I'm not Militant about it, I'm not, you know, like, hover over every single reading and try to, you know, analyze it the heck out of it. No, I look at it in the morning first thing. You know, okay, all good. You know, or that needs some some thinking, what it could be, and then I move on. You know I don't compare to anyone else, I just compare to my own baseline and see what's going on and what I can improve, some additional resources. 

21:57

If you're now oh, you know, hreve is super interesting, or you might already have been you know measuring your hreve and you want to take it to the next step, I highly encourage you to check out. I have a video and a blog post on how I've improved my hreve. I'm not. A blog post is slightly more current because I I updated it several times since releasing it. The video has also most Of the information in there, but there are some additional stuff in the blog post that you might might find interesting. So check that out if you think you there is room for improvement Usually there always is. 

22:26

And then, what's a good hreve? 

22:28

You know that's I wrote a blog post about and I did a video as well, because that's a question I get quite a lot. 

22:34

I've been getting quite a lot and just to give you some, you know, some framework, without diving into all the details that I covered in In the in the article, in the video. But 65 milliseconds for men and 62 for women across all ages. It appears to be well the average, you know, and there are obviously discrepancies and it does not take the individual age brackets into account, as I've mentioned. The younger you are, chance are, the higher hreve is. The older you are, the lower your hreve is in comparison. But on average, 65 and 62 milliseconds for men and women respectively. But check out the article. It goes into much more details on what constitutes a good hreve and how to assess your own readings. That you can then use to kind of figure out if what you are seeing is within the realm of normal or if there is room maybe for improvement, and then you can use the other article to make those improvements. With that we're gonna wrap it up. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Until next time, you, you,