Dr. Jay Wiles

So we know that people who have chronic health conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic pain,

Those all significantly lower heart rate variability.

So the one thing that I would say is that if you were battling with any of those kind of conditions, and it probably doesn't even need to be said, is that working on kind of managing those is going to be a significant way to move heart rate variability in the right direction.

And then the last one, which is probably what I'd argue, and I'm a little bit biased on this, is the most important, is just overall stress load.

Like if you are someone who is like the typical person in today's day and age, especially Americans,

is that we are freaking stressed all the time.

And this chronic buildup of stress over time then results or equates to a nervous system that becomes way more rigid, way less adaptive.

We're not able to actually have these things that we encounter in a day-to-day basis bounce off of us as easily.

And so therefore, we kind of retreat to just kind of this chronic state of stress where we're on high alert.

Scanning the environments for threats nonstop.

And that has a negative, a net negative compounding effect on us.

And so I think that if there's anything that people could do is just creating better adaptability to internal and external stress.

Yeah.

HRV is not a measure of direct stress.

I think a lot of people will think of, oh, I see HRV and that's how stressed I am.

Okay.

I can backpedal a little bit and say what I say there.

And I think you're talking about me saying how do we improve it is by helping to... If you are more stressed, therefore...

over time your hrv is going to decrease yes therefore my hrv has gone down i must be stressed right what i should what i should say is that when i think about stress i'm thinking about the psychological construct of stress and so there's physiological stress and psychological stress and both of them actually manifest in the body the the the same way i don't look at hrv and say like so for instance if i put a strap on you and i said okay let's measure chris's hrv right now

and it's a singular reading.