HRV…What’s That?
One of the coolest technologies we use in the office is called Heart Rate Variability, or HRV for short. Yes, this technology is measuring your heart rate, but it is also measuring two other things as well: Skin temperature and skin conductance. Looking at all three of these things together, we are looking at our body’s stress response. Our body is constantly adapting to our surroundings.
We all have this mechanism called the autonomic nervous system; it controls bodily functions that don't require any thought on our part. There are two parts of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic nervous system. Ideally, we want these to balance each other out. But in many situations, one might take over and go above the other. For instance, the sympathetic nervous system will overpower when we’re experiencing lots of stress. Daily stress looks different for everyone but we can all agree that we have dealt with stress in one way or another. Think for a moment about a typical day for a young family. Rushing out the door to wait in the drop off line while eating in the car since there was not enough time in the morning. Arriving late to work because you were busy trying to rush your family out the door and dealing with the crabby children who weren’t ready to start another day. At work, you are dealing with deadlines and meetings that you aren’t always prepared for, only to rush out of the office to head back to the pick up line and grab your kids after a long day at work. Unfortunately, your day doesn’t stop there so you are grabbing fast food on the go and headed off to sports and other events. Once you arrive home for the night, you are helping with homework and getting things in order to start all over the next day. This day that we are all too familiar with activates our sympathetic nervous system, increasing your heart rate, increasing body temperature, and pumping you full of adrenaline. We term this sympathetic response the “fight or flight” response. It is one of our most primitive reflexes for handling large amounts of stress. When our body is in this constant state of fight or flight over a long period of time, things begin to break down and that repetitive stress creates disease and dysfunction in the body.
The parasympathetic nervous system does the opposite, it is responsible for resting, digesting, and healing. It regulates the body’s sleep cycle to get us to sleep at night, it stimulates our digestive system, and it also promotes the healing process to occur.
To assess where you are at, we monitor the change in these values for three minutes. We’re looking at the heart rate to see if there are changes in how fast it’s beating. We want to make sure the body adapts to its surroundings; an easy example of this is when we exercise. If we go for a walk or a run, our body needs to sense that it needs more oxygen, and the heart needs to pump faster to achieve this. Once the data is collected, it plots us on a graph. The white dot represents where you are at. Ideally, we want the white dot to be centered on the middle line as well as at the top of the green box. We see shifts left or right from the center line when there is an imbalance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. When the white dot shifts left, we are under lots of stress, causing an imbalance that can come from physical, chemical, or emotional stressors. If the white dot shifts to the right, the parasympathetics might be overworking the sympathetic nervous system. Often, when we see this, it is because we are still under stress, but the sympathetic nervous system is experiencing burnout. This translates to too much stress for too long.
When we have this imbalance, we see shifts up and down on the graph. When the dot is moving up and down, there are changes in the energy reserves in the nervous system. The easiest way to explain this is if our nervous system had a battery charge. The top of the graph would represent a full charge; the lower we go, the lower the battery charge.
What causes these changes is either being balanced or having imbalance. When shifted either left or right, we shift down and drain the battery charge. When our body is constantly being put under large amounts of stress, we deplete our battery quicker. Being balanced will boost the battery and allow your body to function more effectively and efficiently.
Remember HRV is just giving us one piece of the puzzle. We use three other technologies, thermography, and surface electromyography, to assess the function of the nervous system. X-ray to assess the bone structure that protects the nervous system. Finally, subjectively, we use the information you give us on how you feel to connect all the dots with the other technologies to give you the best possible care in our office.
