Does Heart Rate Variability ACTUALLY Matter?

Heart rate variability, or HRV, is a common metric found in sleep trackers. HRV measures the overall state of our autonomic nervous system, and it can be helpful feedback when trying to determine whether we’re well-rested or need to dial back the intensity of our physical activity.

But HRV is incredibly personal and it can be hard to quantify. What counts as a “high” heart rate variability for one person may be “low” for another.

To learn what HRV tells us about our autonomic nervous system and how you can use it to improve your lifestyle, Tom speaks to Shyamal Patel, the Head of Science at Oura, and Marco Altini, a scientific advisor to Oura and an expert on HRV.

0:00 What is HRV?
0:50 HRV: A Highly Personal
1:24 What Does HRV Measure?
2:19 What Does our HRV Tell Us?
4:20 The BEST Way to Measure HRV
5:47 What is a GOOD HRV?
7:08 How to IMPROVE Your HRV
8:34 Tips for Getting the Best HRV
9:37 Final Takeaways

#heartrate #HRV #oura

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[gtromble]

The main criticism of HRV is that there are so many factors that affect it and can't be controlled so you can understand what has actually affected it. I find that the nights I sleep the best, are often ones with the lowest HRV, which is not how I've been led to expect HRV to behave. I think it's a useless piece of data.

[Snowsea-gswu]

Thank you for the video. Please drop the music.

[listrahtes]

This is an ad video for Oura. Everyone keep in mind measuring instruments at the finger or wrist or forearm are highly unreliable. And I say that as someone who mostly uses a Suunto wrist watch. The best conclusive meta analysis show this very strongly ( compared 18 studies). Only way to get a close measurement without actual ecg is a high level chest strap. Dont be fooled everything else is just marketing. Lets hope he got 100 dollars every time he said Oura 😂

[joolima]

This should have more views. Great content 🎉

[topcat]

The basics of HRV is universal but the protocol used to measure it is different. HRV is measured in a number, but reported differently by companies. The major division is that Apple reports SDNN. Almost all others measuring at night are reporting RMSSD. Still others, to ' smooth ' the data report ln(RMSSD). All of these can be correct ways the report HRV but contributes to the confusion when comparing. There are 'norms' out there. It is easy to convert RMSSD to ln(RMSSD) on a calculator. Finally, Don't compare Apples to oranges.

[aethylwulfeiii]

HRV is a way for athletes measure response to training. Lower average HRV is indicating the athlete is under recovering. While high HRV indicates good recovery.

[markyounghouse]

Great video. Looking at the numbers it makes me sad that something like this isn’t viewed more. So much garbage gets millions of views.

[parrotladder]

Surely it would help to provide the HRV info in a different way - such a low /med /high or increasing /decreasing rather than a number which immediately makes people compare to others.

[thecatsbackyard]

This is a useful video. There is a learning curve though. Like knowing about ECG's and experimenting with routine, fitness, meditation, diet, motivation etc.

[SyriusStarMultimedia]

What if it is so arbitrary that it just does not matter? We could just ignore it and move on.

[spiderqueen]

Been wearing an Oura ring for a year and my HRV suddenly dropped a month ago and it’s been driving me crazy. No idea why it changed.

[rjahn]

My sleep "battery" on my Garmin Instinct is always near empty even after a good nights sleep this is scored by HRV.

[gm]

i just got a garmin and it's only been a week and my numbers are super low, so of course I'm jumping to conclusions but I'll let it continue to baseline and then I'll try to see if i can correlate how I feel with the colorful graphs. I can tell you I don't feel great now not sure if that is carry over from being sick in December or stress or over training or lack of great sleep. only a few things to fix lol

[mattparr]

Basically if not too active, waking hours bpm should sit between 75 - 100bpm .. if active it should elevate it.

[Sketch]

I keep seeing people say this.. "HRV doesn't matter". I gotta believe if your HRV is a 10, your nervous system is not working near as good as someone with with an HRV of 100. Can too high of number also be bad, seems like it would, but who knows what that number is.

[RobustMustache]

Eating too close to bed really messes with my HRV. A 'good' night sleep for me has my HRV in the 'rest' range( under 20 stress score according to Garmin). If I eat to close to bed or drink in the evening, my HRV(stress score) will go between 30-50 while sleeping.

[okiebasil]

According to my fitbit, mine is usually between 19 to mid-twenties. Recently it has dipped to as low as 14. Definitely a little low.

[benmackenzie]

If a lower HRV relative to our personal baseline is “bad”, it seems naive to say that there is no such thing as a better or worse HRV in absolute terms.

[armandosouza]

I find it puzzling that the video states "not to worry too much about HRV", and that "there is no optimum HRV", or some words to that effect, but at the same time it says "improve" and "boost" HRV. There is a conceptual conflict here. How could one "boost" or "improve" something that there is no "optimum baseline" to shoot for? I have questions about HRV but have found no answers yet.

[wmp]

Mine is under 20 on a Fitbit and my heart rate is around 60? Marco is cool 😎