Dr. Andy Galpin

That's what that number means.

But it doesn't necessarily mean it's on the exact same rhythm.

So it would not be like on a metronome.

Your heart would not be beating every second on the second.

there is a variability in the space between heartbeats.

So while you, again, you would achieve the same number by the end of the minute, in this case, 60, it might do two or three fast ones in a row, have a little bit of a pause, have a little bit of a pause, a fast one, five fast ones, et cetera.

So there's a variability in that rate.

Now it's not very long.

It's actually so small that you won't even be able to perceive it, but we can measure this with a number of different technologies, right?

This is called heart rate variability.

You may have heard of it before.

It's been around for over 60 years, and there's extensive evidence and research on this.

Originally, most of the work there, again, came from these disease and health models.

HRV has been associated with cardiovascular health, mortality, mental health, depression, anxiety.

But more importantly for me was when HRV started coming along for things like athlete readiness.

recovery, sleep, and performance.

And so as always the case, physiology is physiology, friends.

If it's dysfunctional, it's dysfunctional.

If you're leading that to long-term health implications, if that's leading to short-term performance detriments, it's really the same thing, right?

So understanding the role of HRV is something we're gonna have to get into a lot later in future episodes.