(More) Heart Rate Variability
Heart rate variability (HRV) measures the time intervals between adjacent heart beats. When you sit down for the 3 minute reading in our office, the HRV instrument reads your pulse and the skin temperature of your hand. From this data, the computer is able analyze how your autonomic nervous system is functioning. By looking at both resilience and the balance between sympathetic (fight/flight) and parasympathetic (rest/digest) tone, this reliable, non-invasive, and quick scan provides some really important information about how you have been and are currently able to adapt to stress.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) coordinates the vital functions of your body, such as heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and sweating. The ANS has three branches, two of which are easily mapped to the spine: sympathetic and parasympathetic. The sympathetic nervous system is activated when we encounter actual or perceived danger - this is the fight/flight response we feel when distressed. This part of the ANS originates in the thoracic spine (where your ribs are). The parasympathetic nervous system regulates rest and repair and originates in the upper neck and lower back (sacrum).
HRV measures the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic tone. Like the gas and brake pedals in your car, both are important and neither should be activated all of the time. We often consider stress as having a negative connotation. What may be stressful for one person is energizing for another. I think it depends on the person and the context. Running for exercise because you want to is different than running for exercise because you are forced to, which is also different than running away from a bear. Eustress refers to “good stress” - activities which are taxing to the body and mind, but that contribute to health. Whether we consider an event or activity as eustress or distress depends largely on how well balanced the ANS is and how much energy is available to adapt.
When talking about the ANS, the energy available to adapt to stress is called resilience.
Resilience is the reserve energy in our bodies that allows us to prepare for, recover from, and adapt in the face of stress, adversity, trauma, and challenge.
Resilience varies based on the the environment and how adaptive and flexible your nervous system is. HRV measures the resilience of the ANS, which is why it is such a useful tool for chiropractic. Chiropractic facilitates the flexibility, adaptive capacity, and resilience in nervous system by directly addressing areas in the spine that are limiting the flow of energy between the brain and the body. Chiropractic is one of the ways you can positively influence your HRV. My 2021 blog post about HRV contains references and goes into more detail about this technology, as well as six ways to support the nervous system.
Two years and many scans later the most important things I have found both professionally and personally to improve HRV are meditation/contemplative practice, regular chiropractic care, and time in Nature. Our ability to adapt to the inevitable and increasing stressors that life presents depends on the tone and tension of the nervous system. HRV reflects our capacity to adapt to stress. Being able to measure this capacity is an invaluable tool. It provides a window into health and a way to track progress over time.
To learn more about this technology and how it relates to the work we do in the practice, click here.