“Have you ever wondered what the health impact of a stressful day was? Will you perform well during your long run tomorrow morning? Is there anything you can do today that would improve your ability to have a better day moving forward? Heart rate variability may be the best answer.” – Dr. Marcello Campos, M.D.
HRV – A Vital Biomarker for Overall Health
We live in an era of accelerating change, social and political polarization, and a culture that demands we are always on and available. The result is constant stress.
Stress, when not managed properly, leads to disease.
As the quote above emphasizes, we need to understand and monitor the amount of stress our body is under and do something proactively about it. If we don’t, the bill will come regarding your short-term performance, relationships, and long-term health.
In this article, we will explore three main points:
- What is HRV?
- How Can I Improve My HRV?
- Who Can Help Increase My HRV?
What is HRV?
Heart rate variability measures the inter-beat variability between successive heart contractions. In layman’s terms, it measures the change in time between successive heartbeats.
Why measure HRV? Our bodies constantly adapt to changes in our environment, and variability is good.
Heart rate is different than HRV. Heart rate is simply the rate at which your heart beats.
It’s easy to think that a consistent heartbeat rhythm would be good, but it’s not.
A consistent heartbeat is more brittle, which means the heart’s ability to “flex” is lower. Therefore, it will not perform as well as a “flexible” heart rate in the face of challenge or stress.
A simple analogy will help better understand why HRV is so essential.
HRV is like a rubber band; when a person has poor or low HRV, it’s like an old, brittle rubber band—any stress exerted on it causes it to snap easily.
A person with high HRV is like a new, flexible rubber band. When you stress, it stretches a long way before it snaps. When you train your HRV to increase, your heart is more flexible to withstand the changing conditions you face on a daily basis – leading to better resilience, focus, and immune function.
Improving HRV is an objective measure indicating you are improving in your ability to manage stress, which has significant positive long-term consequences.
How Can I Improve My HRV?
The short answer is lifestyle and data. You must utilize biofeedback to understand if you are making progress so changes can be made to your habits and training to achieve the desired results.
How you feel matters, but it is not a reliable indicator.
The Top Four Means of Improving HRV
- Diaphragmic breathing
- Optimizing sleep
- Daily movement
- Mindfulness practice
If you can obtain a wearable device and implement the four lifestyle habits above, you can improve your HRV score as measured by an MS score.
The older you are, the lower your starting HRV MS score will typically be. Your score isn’t vital when you start. The trend moving forward is the critical indicator you want to monitor.
Understanding HRV and learning how to improve your score are best done under the direction and care of a highly qualified health coach and/or physician.
Who Can Help Me Increase My HRV?
A health coach trained in HRV is an excellent place to start.
You must have confidence in their ability to interpret wearable data and educate you on how to adapt your habits to optimize HRV.
Tiger Medical Institute has trained professionals who understand HRV and the practical strategies you can implement to establish a positive trend line for all important biomarkers.
If you work with Tiger Medical staff, you will establish an extensive medical data baseline to establish the truth about your health. The research is conclusive. It gives you an advanced understanding of your health and an edge as you pursue higher HRV.
From this mosaic of health data, Tiger clinicians connect the dots from all testing and imaging to create a personalized medical treatment plan for you.
Tiger clinicians understand the drivers of optimal cellular health and will go to work treating the imbalances limiting your cellular health and HRV today.
While completing testing and receiving a customized treatment plan, you’ll work with a health coach in consultation with Tiger doctors to help you implement the treatment plan and eight health habits. These habits will naturally improve your HRV.
The root cause of your health imbalances and contributors to a lower HRV will be identified in the testing, and a plan to address it successfully will be included in your personalized medical plan and health coaching.
When you make the changes our Tiger doctor and health coach recommends, you’ll find yourself energized by the knowledge you are on the right path to optimal health. You’ll improve HRV and enjoy greater resilience, focus, and immune function benefits!
What Are My Next Best Steps?
If, based on the information you have reviewed here on our website, you feel Tiger is an excellent fit to help you improve your HRV, then the next best step is to go here to book a call with a Tiger Professional.
In this first call, the meeting is about learning your history, struggles, and goals. We want to ensure that you are a good fit for our program and that our Tiger team can help you resolve your challenges.
It’s time to make yourself patient number one and embrace self-care.
The first step in that process is to meet with us to learn how!
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