Dr. Jay Wiles

This is due to a lot of reasons.

I mean, we have things like autonomic efficiency is reduced.

So the ability to kind of like actually handle stress is reduced, likely due to compounding stress.

And we're just disillusioned by like all the stuff that we've experienced in life.

The second is like vascular stiffening.

So as we get older, we actually know that we have vascular stiffening, whether it be due to things like atherosclerotic plaque buildup or like the hardening of arteries, like that can occur.

So we see this steep decrease.

The great news though, is that even though we see declination in HRV across kind of the longitudinal studies in regards to age, we actually know that the ceiling for HRV isn't reduced.

And so what I mean by that is that just because it declines doesn't mean that we can't increase it and doesn't mean that there is some ceiling that's like, okay, once I hit 60 years old, I'll never get over 30 milliseconds.

So that's the good news.

So age is one non-modifiable factor.

The second one would be genetics.

And I guess given kind of advances in technology like CRISPR and stuff, people might argue that you can now influence this aspect.

But I would say that currently with what we have, we cannot influence it.

It's just genetics.

Like some people are actually just born with a genetic predisposition towards lower heart rate variability.

So when we look at twin studies on hereditability of these genes related to cardiovascular structure and nervous system structure,

Like we find that there is a pretty moderate to high influence of genetics on HRV.

And kind of as a story, like I see this all the time with my pro athletes, actually.

Like I'll have a pro athlete come into my clinic and I'll have one come in who's an Olympic sprinter, who is in the best cardiovascular condition that you could ever imagine.