What is Heart Rate Variability?
Heart Rate Variability, or HRV?
Heart coherence training is a method used for stress and tension complaints, sleep problems, fatigue, cardiovascular problems and mood problems, among others. Especially for stress and tension complaints, it is getting more and more known. The method is used more and more in the business world, in health care, but also in the police force, to provide optimal guidance to employees in dealing with stress and promoting recovery after a stressful event.
Below is a great film clip where the police tell how they use heart coherence training in their work.
Conversely, our ANS is also affected in turn by our digestion, circulation, respiration, metabolism, cellular processes and other (known and unknown) factors.
A high HRV is a sign of health and fitness. The parasympathetic and sympathic systems then work together in harmony. Whereas at a low HRV the "brake" and the "gas pedal" are pressed simultaneously and this gives a jerky action of the pump that is our heart and blood flows unevenly to our organs.
You can actually analyze HRV in two ways:
- Domain frequency analysis
This looks more at the shape of the pattern of the heart rhythm. If it contains many nice even sinus waves with a frequency of 0.1 Herz, then there is a coherent HRV. This is called cardiac coherence.
- Time domain analysis
This mainly involves looking at the height of the amplitude of the waves in the pattern. This value says something about your overall health and ability to self-regulate. Here, measurements at rest or in activity are very different. You actually have to take that into account.
Heart Rate Variability (HRV), in English Heart Rate Variability, is the phenomenon of variation in the time intervals between heartbeats. It is measured by measuring the time interval between each beat of the heartbeat.
Other terms in English are: " heart period variability ", "cycle length variability" and "RR variability". In Dutch it is also called "RR variability" (where R is a point corresponding to the peak of the waveform in an ECG, or electrocardiogram and RR is the interval between consecutive R). See (RR picture)
Methods used to detect heart rate include: ECG (electrocardiogram) and the heart rate signal coming from an infrared ear sensor or an advanced sports heart rate monitor. ECG is considered superior because it displays a clear waveform and is somewhat more precise. This is used in the hospital cardiology department, for example.
HRV actually reflects the interactions between the autonomic nervous system, blood pressure, respiration and cellular responses. These responses produce short and longer rhythms in HRV measurements.
Heart Rate Variability, also known as heart rate variability or HRV for short, refers to the changes in time between one heart rate and another, measured in milliseconds. So you can see in the image below that this varies between different heart rate spikes. Above the number of milliseconds is then the BPM (beats per minute or beats per minute). For example, below is 70, 76 and 83 BPM. If you graph these numbers, you get a picture of the pattern of your heart rhythm. In HRV Biofeedback software or also called heart coherence software this is depicted.The time spans between our heartbeats are directly influenced by the our autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS is the part of the nervous system that takes care of involuntary, unconscious functioning processes, such as those of digestion, circulation, respiration, metabolism, cellular processes. The autonomic nervous system can be divided into the sympathetic (the "gas pedal" of your body) and the parasympathetic (the "brake pedal" of your body).
In sports, for example, the time domain analysis of HRV is mainly used to measure whether the athlete is already fit enough for the next hard workout. Thus, it is a tool to determine how hard the next workout can be in order not to get injured.
The Coherence Heart Trainer
The Coherence Heart Trainer (CHT) app was developed in collaboration between the Complete Coherence organization and the world's leading manufacturers, of non-invasive cardiovascular technology.
Go to the Appstore to download the "Coherence Heart Trainer" App. This app will show you the HRV (Heart Rate Variability) on your smartphone.
Benefits of using the CHT.
- The CHT app possesses several functions to train breathing and easily achieve a higher degree of coherence.
- A breathing guide that can be set between 4 and 12 breaths per minute.
- Setting inhalation and exhalation times.
- Coherence & HRV charts.
- Objectives per session.
- Remarks and notes during the session.
- Sharing results on social media.
- History of sessions.
- Progression reports and charts.
- Data may be sent to third parties.
- Passive app monitoring while smartphone or tab is locked.
