What is HRV
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is the measure of the variation in the time interval between heartbeats. It is governed by the same system in the body that automatically regulates your heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and digestive system among others.
HRV is different for every person in the same way blood pressure is different for every person. There are expectations on what an average HRV level should be depending on your age (a normal HRV at rest for someone in their 20s is 55 to 105 and for someone in their 60s, it’s 25 to 45) – higher is better for HRV.
HRV can be measured by most modern smart/fitness watches that have a heart rate monitor built-in to the watch.
What I did to improve my HRV status?
Monitoring
The first step in improving anything is understanding the baseline (what is my current HRV?) before trying anything to change it. If you don’t have a base to start from, how will you know if it is improving or getting worse?
In my case my new sport watch can monitor and track HRV status, providing me with a baseline metric to track.
Increase fitness
This fits in with my overall journey to lose weight and becoming a runner. Seeing my HRV generally increase as my ability to run further and faster, doing my best to not getting ill or overworking my body in the process, brings a great feeling of achievement.
Reduce caffeine intake
Research1 on caffeine intake (particularly with coffee) appears to indicate that while coffee is generally good for your health, restricting intake to only the mornings allows your body to metabolise the caffeine sufficiently that it will not adversely affect sleep, which is very important to HRV and overall health.
Improve sleep
Getting to bed at a regular time each night and getting a full night’s rest of at least 8 hours is important for overall health and a great way to improve HRV levels. I am fortunate that I have seldom had issues with sleep, so just by making sure I go to bed a reasonable hour every night is helping to maintain a good sleep schedule and improve my nightly sleep and HRV numbers.
What other options are available to me?
Improve diet
Eating a diet with more leafy greens and less high fat foods is a win in general for achieving a healthy life. I believe improving my heart health in general should help improve my overall HRV status too.
Reduce stress /over-working
Focus on taking more personal time outside and away from the keyboard during the day. Having my meals away from the work desk and keeping to my work hours (avoiding working late into the evenings) could help with reducing my overall stress and improving my HRV.
Improve mindfulness
Adding focuses breathing exercises to my daily routing – or trying meditation exercises may help with improving my HRV. It should also help me focus a bit more where it matters too.
What are you doing to improve your own HRV status? Do you know what your HRV is?
1 Coffee Research: