Stress is one of those words thrown about casually when it is actually the key to unlocking most health challenges. Did you know that over 90% of all illness and disease is stress-related? Or that 75% of all doctors’ visits are for stress?
Those numbers alone should stop you in your tracks. Because if 90% of all illnesses are stress-related then it should be clear that dealing with the impact of stress should reverse those illnesses.
How do we measure the impact of stress on the body? We can see the effects of stress in our digestion, our blood pressure, blood sugar, our sleep and much more. But those are effects. HRV is the most direct way to measure how stress is impacting the body.
HRV is short for Heart Rate Variability and it is the gold standard in assessing how the nervous system is dealing with stress. Heart Rate Variability measures the time between heart beats. The more variable the time between each heart beat the healthier you are in general.
Modern Life Stress and Your Nervous System
Stress isn’t necessarily what you might think it is. Our Nervous Systems evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago when the world was a much simpler place. Our survival was on the line every day and our Nervous System evolved to prioritize survival.
That’s a critical development. If we weren’t wired for survival, we might not be here right now discussing this. However, what worked thousands of years ago for survival might not be the best strategy today.
Fast forward to the present day. We don’t typically face challenges to our survival but we do encounter a world that our systems have not yet evolved into. Things like work deadlines, traffic, high speed travel on the highway, the fear propagated by the news, lack of time outside, all the demands on our attention and time, etc.
Your nervous system responds to many of these stimuli as though they were a threat to your survival. It does this by activating the Sympathetic ‘Fight-or-Flight’ system.
The Sympathetic System prioritizes for survival in a number of ways:
- Increasing heart rate and blood pressure
- Sending blood from your organs to your muscles
- Increasing breathing rate
- Shutting down digestion
- Releasing Stress hormones Adrenaline and Cortisol
- Reducing sleep so we can survive another day
Those are all great if you are in the fight of your life. But when you start to live in a state of what I call Sympathetic Dominance it slowly but surely erodes your health. Long term Sympathetic Dominance results in a variety of challenges like:
- High Blood Pressure
- Inflammation
- Digestive Issues like ulcers, acid reflux, Inflammatory bowel disease
- Hormonal imbalances like menstrual irregularities
- Migraines and Headaches
- Autoimmune Disorders
- Insomnia and poor sleep
- Asthma
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Chronic Fatigue
- Fibromyalgia
None of those are issues you want to live with. They are all the result of a nervous system stuck in a cycle of imbalance. The imbalance that might enable you to survive a threat to your life can end up threatening your very survival.
HRV Offers Insights into the Impact of Stress on Your Nervous System
Your body is always striving for balance. In biology this is called homeostasis. The job of keeping you in balance is the job of your nervous system.
The part of your nervous system tasked with maintaining balance is the Autonomic Nervous System, consisting of the Sympathetic ‘Fight-or-Flight’ system and the Parasympathetic Vagal system.
Modern life is full of challenges that push and pull us out of balance. If our nervous system becomes imbalanced for long enough that becomes our natural state. We start to live in a state of ‘fight-or-flight’. This compromises all the functions that enable us to be the best version of us.
This imbalance eventually leads to symptoms which evolve into illness and after a long time, eventually disease.
HRV is a measurement of the health and balance of the nervous system. It’s a bit like an EKG for the nervous system.
If your nervous system is healthy and balanced your heart rate between each beat should be very variable. For instance, if your heart beats 60 times per minute the time between beats with a healthy nervous system should vary dramatically rather than beat every second.
Successfully Using HRV in Stress Treatment
Since HRV gives you a real time assessment of your nervous system it is a great tool in your journey to overcoming whatever stress-related challenges you are facing. Here are 3 critical factors:
- Baseline Measurement: taking one or multiple HRV measurements will give you a baseline of where your nervous system is now. If you don’t know where you are starting it’s pretty difficult to measure your progress. This gives you a great indication of not only where you are but also the journey you’ve traveled.
- Treatment Effectiveness: HRV can be used to measure the impact of a therapeutic intervention in real time. If the intervention is reducing Sympathetic activity and raising Parasympathetic activity you will see an immediate confirmation of the efficacy of the strategy. It doesn’t matter what the intervention is, HRV will measure your progress over time.
- Long-term Change: the goal is to raise your Vagal Nerve tone and lower the activity of your Sympathetic Nervous System. Life presents daily challenges so your HRV can and will fluctuate day by day. Taking consistent HRV readings will allow you to track the increasing health of your nervous system.
HRV offers a way to objectively measure the health and balance of your nervous system. It also offers insights into the practices that contribute most to achieving that. Raising Vagal tone is the key to unlocking the problem of Sympathetic Dominance. This positive reinforcement is valuable in making those practices part of your daily wellness ritual.
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