Dr. Jay Wiles

VO2 max, like out the roof.

But his actual HRV is like in the 30s, 40s.

And then I'll have another guy, like an NFL, let's say, lineman.

who maybe isn't in the highest degree of cardiovascular shape, but it's still in good shape to be able to take on all that they do.

And genetically, they just have a high predisposition towards high HRV, and it's in the 150s, 160s.

And so it's like, okay, is one healthier than the other because one has a higher HRV versus low HRV?

And the answer is that we have no evidence in the literature to suggest that that HRV should be seen, that number absolute value should be seen as a longevity metric.

The answer broadly is no.

Their experience, if you were to jump in to say someone who has a 200 millisecond, 250, 300 millisecond RMSSD value in their HRV baseline reading overnight, you wouldn't necessarily inherently experiencing anything different purely just based on that baseline reading.

Now, that person may have

really strong, let's call baroreflex gain or a really strong adaptive nervous system to stress because maybe they've been training it or some other things are influencing their ability to be resilient in terms of a nervous system perspective.

You may notice it then depending on kind of your baseline level of stress and anxiety, but just purely based on feel.

No, it's kind of like I think this is kind of analogous to blood pressure, right?

So if you were to have, let's say, a standard blood pressure of

120 over 75.

And then you were to hop into the body of somebody who has, like, let's say a 145 over 95.

You wouldn't necessarily experience it just kind of at baseline, a difference in feel between those.

And so that's kind of synonymous or I guess I would say analogous to HRV.

Mm-hmm.

But if you've got somebody who's got a very well dynamically trained nervous system to adapt to stress, and so their inherent physiology knows what to do when it encounters stress and almost does it subconsciously, you might experience that, especially if you had a high propensity towards things like anxiety, stress, even depression.