Our health is exceptionally important. Just about any issue with any organ of our body can turn into severe problems if not properly dealt with or noted in time. A frequent organ to have sudden issues that can get out of hand is our heart. The heart has a key role in the human organism, being responsible for the blood flow through the entire body and negation of harmful materials that get swept through our blood. Issues with our heart can quickly result in other organs being compromised so it’s best to monitor its state as frequently as possible. In this article, we will cover an item that may be just what you need to do so.
What is heart rate variability?
To gauge our body’s current state, medicine utilizes many parameters. These parameters are based on the internal processes of our body and can assist in a proper diagnosis of the person’s issues.
One of these parameters is HRV, which is a measure of variation in time between heartbeats. This indicates how different the intervals of your heartbeats can be. The variations stem from the autonomic nervous system which also dictates breathing, digestion, heart rate, and other tasks. Think of it as a director for all of our important but simple bodily tasks. The autonomic nervous system is the reason why we needn’t manually do most of the body’s actual functions, instead of indulging in other actions.
The way it achieves this is through its connection with parts of our nervous system that dictates relaxation and the one that dictates the fight-or-flight mechanism. You may not notice it but it is exactly this part of the brain that dictates responses to stimuli. Whether they are positive or negative, any stimulation is guaranteed to get its first response from this part of the nervous system. To be more precise, it is the autonomic nervous system that signals to the hypothalamus how to respond.
So how does this relate to HRV? As we’ve said, it is exactly this part of the brain that dictates the variation between heartbeats and the incoming stimuli can often mess up our standard HRV, which leads to further issues.
The HRV’s impact on the body
A healthy individual in a healthy situation should have a higher HRV during relaxing and a lower HRV during a stressful time. That’s due to the switch in the dominance of our nervous systems and the acceleration or deceleration of our heart rate. The changes in HRV can happen on a daily basis though, it changes based on our level of activity as well as outside stimuli. However, while you can expect daily changes there are cases where it is a worrying factor to have an impactfully different HRV.
However, in general terms, higher HRV is better. It showcases that our heart has enough time to contract and expand without sudden strain being put upon it from short beats. While HRV is partially mandated by genetics, about a third of the factors are related to our genetics, it is still possible to alter it to be a lot healthier. One such factor is exercise. Research shows that exercise can heavily improve our HRV. Stress management helps here too so make sure to pay attention to that.
What is a heart rate variability monitor?
In medicine, each and every condition has a way of being discovered. Sometimes this requires a few examination techniques performed by a doctor and sometimes it is left to machinery to deal with deducing the issue while the doctor only needs to read the results to give you a proper diagnosis.
A heart rate variability monitor is one such thing. It follows the current beats per minute of our heart, immediately giving out information of our blood system’s current state of heartbeat variability.
This means that the device doesn’t only calculate the current state but potential variations that happen in our bloodstream. It’s useful to note that there are multiple technologies related to this practice. Each of them uses a different approach to actually calculate heart rate variability so do not be surprised if you get different results from different devices.
One of these monitors can help reassure you that your HRV is at a good place at any point of the day. It can also serve as an early warning for any potential problems that could come from HRV.
You should also make sure you are getting the best HRV monitors possible. The quality is important because it plays a huge role in the overall accuracy of results. If you want to learn more please click here to check out some high-quality HRV devices.
How do HRV monitors work?
The HRV monitors will usually use a few factors to discern your HRV. All of these will imply changes in your autonomic nervous system so the best way of locating symptoms is by checking available factors. These factors include HRV itself, heart rate, sleep quality, stress levels, and environmental changes.
When all of these are taken into account you’ll get an accurate measure of potential changes as well as better insight into present problems with our health.
We have to note once more that these calculations may vary depending on the user device as they may have varying technologies applied to their measurement process. Don’t be surprised if a new device shows slightly different results. It may just be the difference in principles used rather than a change in your HRV.
Conclusion
When all is said and done, we can deduce that HRV is a very important parameter of our health. It should be used as a way to discern the current state of our system and the health of our hearts.
We should use the best HRV monitors to get the best results out of their readings. The different technologies on different devices may showcase different results but when utilizing the same device there are a few bits of information we should worry about. One would be short HRV. This is a sign that our hearts could be affected by everyday stress and daily negative stimuli. The other one is high fluctuation in our HRV.
While it can change from day to day, there is a difference between regular changes and extreme ones. Lastly, we should try to increase our HRV by exercising and using stress relief tactics. Get yourself an HRV monitor now and prevent future health issues by noticing them as they form.