Could the secret to improving your sleep, spotting the early signs of illness and staying slim and happy lie in monitoring your pulse constantly — using just a shop-bought fitness tracker?
That’s the promise being made for an increasingly popular health strategy that focuses on the fact that our pulses can vary from heartbeat to heartbeat by a matter of milliseconds.
This subtle shift in pulse timing is called heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is something that’s long been measured in medical settings with an electrocardiogram — using sensors attached to your chest to check the heart’s electrical activity.
A high (or good) HRV is where your pulse naturally varies between heartbeats when you inhale and exhale — your pulse quickens as you inhale and slows as you exhale.
With a low HRV, there is less variation — the heart beats more steadily, like a clock. This is seen as a sign of stress and, increasingly, Shape Kapseln Erfahrungen potential ill health.
Indeed, HRV is becoming something of a buzz-phrase in the wellbeing world, and HRV-based therapies are now being adopted by complementary therapy centres such as the Body and Mind Clinic, based in London’s swish Kensington and Knightsbridge, and in private clinics such as Nova Recovery in North Ayrshire, Scotland, where it’s being offered to treat alcohol and substance addictions.
Dr Torkil Færø claims that using a wearable fitness tracker to monitor heart rhythm can enable people to turn back their biological clock, live longer and lose weight, among other things
The Body and Mind Clinic, for example, offers a ten-minute test to assess clients’ HRV levels that involves them sitting with their wrists and ankles wired to a machine that records and analyses their pulse.
The clinic’s website says that a low HRV is ‘a proven indicator of early-stage coronary heart disease, diabetes, and high cholesterol’. Conversely, ‘[a] good HRV reading is powerfully associated with healthy longevity, particularly in people who manage internal stress well’.
Depending on a person’s HRV, the clinic says its experts may recommend supplements, exercise, breath training or relaxation to improve HRV and overall health.
Nova Recovery private clinic’s website, meanwhile, says that its clinicians can analyse patients’ HRV to find subconscious yet powerful triggers that may cause someone recovering from addictions to relapse.
The clinic says that by monitoring their HRV, patients can see how their heart rates respond to hidden stress triggers — this can help them review how they respond emotionally and then modify their behaviours so that the stressors don’t overwhelm them.
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