Wow! I am getting such an education! I am glad to hear that I don’t need to stress over my low HRV. I have been fascinated by HRV since getting my Fitbit and seeing the negative impact of alcohol and the positive trend I can influence through exercise. I am also interested in the connection between HRV and insulin levels.
I want to use your apps to track my efforts in treating my body better instead of relying on the scale (so much dieting and so much angst). At 58, I just want to work on improving my health, especially heart and brain. I am retired but I am also dealing with my mother’s Alzheimer’s so my stress level is often through the roof.
I bought your app bundle and have used the biofeedback and HRV measurement. It seems like what I really need is the HRV training, and biofeedback. Is that what you would recommend?
thank you Sue. Yes, I’d use HRV4Training in the morning to assess resting physiology, and then biofeedback as a “positive stressor” when you feel like it during the day
Wonderful read Marco! I'm using Morpheus to measure HRV in the mornings, and some days my recovery score is high when my subjective feelings and Oura measurements suggest otherwise. I understand the meaning behind a low or high HRV reading, but I wonder about the possibility of measuring during the transition between low and high, when HRV hasn't actually stabilized. Is that a valid concern and could it produce artificially high recovery scores?
thank you Brian, I am not sure I understand what you mean with this “I wonder about the possibility of measuring during the transition between low and high“, if you can comment further I can try to provide my view.
Sorry I wasn't more clear. It may just be a misunderstanding on my part.
Let's say I do a hard workout today. Tomorrow I would expect to see a lower than average HRV, but (according to the folks at Morpheus anyway) the following day I would expect to see a higher than average HRV. Both lead to a low recovery score in the app.
Somewhere between tomorrow and the next day, on the way from lower than average to higher than average, my HRV must land on my actual average value. If I do my recovery check at that point in time, the app would give me an unrealistically high recovery score.
an abnormally high HRV is rather rare and giving it a negative interpretation should be even more rare, as it is normally not a problem. On rare occasions, we might have an overly parasympathetic response to stress, but this happens typically when the stressor is really large, see an example here: https://marcoaltini.substack.com/p/abnormally-high-heart-rate-variability (and is also something that is more of an outlier than anything else, e.g. no systematic study has actually reproduced this clearly, as far as I know)
we should also be talking about normal ranges more than lower / higher than average, because we all have a normal range where changes are not particularly meaningful, but just part of day to day variability (as shown in the homepage of the HRV4Training app for both heart rate and HRV).
To go back to your example, if you do a hard workout today, I would expect HRV to be within your normal range tomorrow, if you are well conditioned and the stimulus was hard but appropriate. A low HRV would not highlight 'good hard work' as much as it would highlight a mismatch between the stimulus and your ability to assimilate it at this point (due to either fitness or non-training related stressors). See the article above about stability in HRV for more context about this. Unclear to me why the tool you are using would expect your HRV to be higher the day after, as this would not normally be the response.
I can't thank you enough for the detailed reply Marco!
It appears that my premise, that HRV would necessarily or even likely be elevated on days two and three, is flawed. Morpheus introduced me to the concept and it's outlined in multiple articles. I've got a screenshot with a chart handy but it doesn't appear I can attach it here.
The app's recovery score prioritizes stability and penalizes HRV values that deviate from average. Like low HRV values, high values are treated as necessarily bad, where it seems your view is more nuanced.
Wow! I am getting such an education! I am glad to hear that I don’t need to stress over my low HRV. I have been fascinated by HRV since getting my Fitbit and seeing the negative impact of alcohol and the positive trend I can influence through exercise. I am also interested in the connection between HRV and insulin levels.
I want to use your apps to track my efforts in treating my body better instead of relying on the scale (so much dieting and so much angst). At 58, I just want to work on improving my health, especially heart and brain. I am retired but I am also dealing with my mother’s Alzheimer’s so my stress level is often through the roof.
I bought your app bundle and have used the biofeedback and HRV measurement. It seems like what I really need is the HRV training, and biofeedback. Is that what you would recommend?
Thanks again for these clear, detailed articles!
Sue
thank you Sue. Yes, I’d use HRV4Training in the morning to assess resting physiology, and then biofeedback as a “positive stressor” when you feel like it during the day
Wonderful read Marco! I'm using Morpheus to measure HRV in the mornings, and some days my recovery score is high when my subjective feelings and Oura measurements suggest otherwise. I understand the meaning behind a low or high HRV reading, but I wonder about the possibility of measuring during the transition between low and high, when HRV hasn't actually stabilized. Is that a valid concern and could it produce artificially high recovery scores?
thank you Brian, I am not sure I understand what you mean with this “I wonder about the possibility of measuring during the transition between low and high“, if you can comment further I can try to provide my view.
Sorry I wasn't more clear. It may just be a misunderstanding on my part.
Let's say I do a hard workout today. Tomorrow I would expect to see a lower than average HRV, but (according to the folks at Morpheus anyway) the following day I would expect to see a higher than average HRV. Both lead to a low recovery score in the app.
Somewhere between tomorrow and the next day, on the way from lower than average to higher than average, my HRV must land on my actual average value. If I do my recovery check at that point in time, the app would give me an unrealistically high recovery score.
thank you Brian. Here is how I'd say it works:
- we face a stressor
- parasympathetic activity is suppressed (lower HRV) during and after the stressor
- depending on the stressor and other factors (e.g. environmental, repeated exposure, our fitness, etc.) HRV re-normalizes
see also this blog for some good research on post-exercise HRV: https://marcoaltini.substack.com/p/stability-in-heart-rate-variability
an abnormally high HRV is rather rare and giving it a negative interpretation should be even more rare, as it is normally not a problem. On rare occasions, we might have an overly parasympathetic response to stress, but this happens typically when the stressor is really large, see an example here: https://marcoaltini.substack.com/p/abnormally-high-heart-rate-variability (and is also something that is more of an outlier than anything else, e.g. no systematic study has actually reproduced this clearly, as far as I know)
we should also be talking about normal ranges more than lower / higher than average, because we all have a normal range where changes are not particularly meaningful, but just part of day to day variability (as shown in the homepage of the HRV4Training app for both heart rate and HRV).
To go back to your example, if you do a hard workout today, I would expect HRV to be within your normal range tomorrow, if you are well conditioned and the stimulus was hard but appropriate. A low HRV would not highlight 'good hard work' as much as it would highlight a mismatch between the stimulus and your ability to assimilate it at this point (due to either fitness or non-training related stressors). See the article above about stability in HRV for more context about this. Unclear to me why the tool you are using would expect your HRV to be higher the day after, as this would not normally be the response.
I hope this helps, thanks again!
I can't thank you enough for the detailed reply Marco!
It appears that my premise, that HRV would necessarily or even likely be elevated on days two and three, is flawed. Morpheus introduced me to the concept and it's outlined in multiple articles. I've got a screenshot with a chart handy but it doesn't appear I can attach it here.
The app's recovery score prioritizes stability and penalizes HRV values that deviate from average. Like low HRV values, high values are treated as necessarily bad, where it seems your view is more nuanced.