Your smart watch can predict your lifespan!

What is Heart Rate Variability?

• Heartbeats are Not Uniform: Your heart does not beat like a metronome. The time between each beat changes slightly.

• Interval Measurement: HRV measures these changes or variations in the intervals between heartbeats.

Why is HRV Important?

• Indicator of Health: A higher HRV generally indicates better cardiovascular fitness and resilience to stress. It suggests that your heart can adapt well to different situations.

• Stress and Recovery: HRV can be used to gauge how your body is handling stress and how well it is recovering. Lower HRV can indicate stress, fatigue, or potential health issues.

Imagine your heart beats like this:

• Beat 1 to Beat 2: 0.9 seconds

• Beat 2 to Beat 3: 1.1 seconds

• Beat 3 to Beat 4: 0.8 seconds

The variation in these times (0.9, 1.1, 0.8) is what HRV measures. More variation generally means better adaptability and resilience.

Key Insights

• HRV and Longevity:

  • High HRV is associated with healthy longevity, indicating better autonomic function and resilience to stress.

  • Low HRV predicts higher mortality from all causes, suggesting compromised health.

• Autonomic Function and HRV:

  • Parasympathetic Dominance (Rest and Digest): High HRV often reflects a healthy balance with strong parasympathetic activity, indicating good recovery and relaxation.

  • Sympathetic Dominance (Fight or Flight): Low HRV may indicate excessive sympathetic activity, suggesting the body is under stress or not recovering well.

• HRV as a Health Indicator:

  • Reduced HRV is linked to an increased risk of sudden death and cardiovascular diseases, highlighting its role as a marker for autonomic dysregulation.

  • HRV can be a non-invasive tool for assessing the autonomic nervous system's activity and predicting potential health issues.

• Neural Correlates of HRV:

  • High-frequency HRV (HF-HRV) is related to cardiac vagal control and is associated with specific neural activities in the medial prefrontal cortex, which is involved in autonomic regulation.

Conclusion

HRV is a valuable indicator of health and longevity, with higher HRV generally signifying better autonomic function and lower mortality risk. It reflects the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activities and can be a non-invasive diagnostic tool for assessing overall health. As indicated by HRV, preserving parasympathetic function is particularly important for longevity, especially in older adults.

Sources:

1. Usman Zulfiqar et al. "Relation of high heart rate variability to healthy longevity.." The American journal of cardiology, 105 8 (2010): 1181-5 .

2. G. Ernst et al. "Heart-Rate Variability—More than Heart Beats?." Frontiers in Public Health, 5 (2017).

3. J. Jennings et al. "Resting state connectivity of the medial prefrontal cortex covaries with individual differences in high-frequency heart rate variability.." Psychophysiology, 53 4 (2016): 444-54 .

4. J. Dekker et al. "Heart rate variability from short electrocardiographic recordings predicts mortality from all causes in middle-aged and elderly men. The Zutphen Study.." American journal of epidemiology, 145 10 (1997): 899-908 .

5. T. Kara et al. "Heart Rate Variability:." Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology, 14 (2003).

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