Heart Rate Variability Explained - User Manual For Humans S1 E04 - Dr Ekberg

all right welcome everybody thanks for coming we're very excited to have you

this is our series user manual for humans part 4 and we called it that

because you everybody gets a user manual for the car they get a user manual for

their toaster they get it user manual for their garden gadgets but we have

this very very complicated thing called a human body mind and nobody gave us the

user manual that's what we're trying to provide with a series today we will talk

about something called heart rate variability and first of all why would

we bother why would we be interested in talking about something like that well

every one of you have heard about the mind-body connection everybody has heard

that the mind is very important how you feel is very important in in in

development of health or disease we've heard of the phrase

psychoneuroimmunology if you go on google and search there's hundreds of

millions of hits on psychoneuroimmunology and what it means

is psychology and neurology and immunology they're so tightly so closely

linked that it makes no sense even to separate them so what it means is

systems work together in the bob ian and the psyche and the neuron know the

nervous system in all effects everything else we've heard we're supposed to relax

we're supposed to stress less the the relaxation state and the meditative

state is supposed to be good for us but but what is it

what are these things what do they look like

what is it healing state what entails peak performance what what happens in

the body when you're frustrated versus when you're peaceful so what does that

state look like that's the question we're going to try

answer today and as it turns out it's it's we do know must we get good at it

we know how it feels but wouldn't it be nice if we can actually measure it and

understand it and chart the progress so that we we know we have a little gadget

we can we can get a visual on when we are in that state that'd be pretty

useful right so heart rate variability moving to slide number two here it

simply means how much the heart rate varies in a given breath so when people

say that they have a heart rate of 70 that's not actually true that's an

average heart rate so if you have a normal heart rate variability and an

average heart rate of 70 that means your heart rate actually fluctuates from

about 60 to 80 and it does this with every single breath and that's a very

healthy and very normal thing to do so if you look at the graph it indicates

each heart beat and depending on how long there is between the heart beats it

determines the heart rate so no two heart beats occur at the exact same

frequency they battery and this brings us back to what we've been talking about

in the previous sessions about the sympathetic nervous system which is

stress or flight flight and the parasympathetic nervous system which is

peace and healing and Fida breathe so your heart has a built-in pacemaker it

will beat it will pump blood no matter what but if we want it to be faster we

have to stimulate it that's what the sympathetic nervous system

does and if we have to want it to read slower then we have to stimulate it with

parasympathetic stimulation so it's like this heart is this machine that just

goes and goes but if we want it to speed up we give it some gas if we wanted to

slow down we put on the brakes and the heart does this with every single breath

that we take and the better it works the healthier we are and we call this

coherence between the heart and the brain and that is the state that we're

talking about so if you look at state number slight number three at the top is

it's labeled frustration that's what the heart rate variability looks like for a

given person it is I'm not going to mess up the graph there it is basically very

very disorganized and totally haphazard there's no order to it at all but when

we find a state of appreciation when we find the state of coherence then there's

a very very nice and smooth sine wave and in the heart rate indicating that

there's a good balance that the sympathetic and the parasympathetic are

taking terms so we're going to do a demo later and watch this also so in the last

twenty years there's been a even ten years there's been a lot of new

development in this and there's a lot of nice little gadgets

for people that they can use for home use to measure and train this heart rate

variability we have one now that we're going to start using in this office it's

a brand new product and the good thing is that it's a combination of a handheld

and a computer use so you can use it in both places you can carry it in your

pocket you can practice as you're driving or sitting in a meeting and then

it saves the session and you can upload it and take a look and see how you

progress over time so it's a it's a training program and this particular

products called n way - and it's designed to increase coherence which is

again a state of synchronization between heart and brain and these two things

when we're talking about this very very prominent researchers and doctors and

authorities have named heart rate variability and coherence the number one

indicator of future health potential that's how big this is you can look at

someone's heart rate variability and their coherence and you can predict how

likely they are to have degenerative diseases in the future if there's a very

very good correlation just a little bit of research that they've done on

increased coherence a lot of that has been done by a company called heart math

and it's a wonderful resource for you to go online they offer a lot of

information at no cost you can go in and check it out it has been shown to reduce

blood pressure that's the most commonly prescribed medication and we know that

it's only a stress response people have followed a series of know that blood

pressure is nothing more than a stress response but here we have something that

we can turn it around it has been shown to have increased functional capacity in

chronic heart failure a chronic heart failure means that the

you have a limited ability to pump blood and to breathe and by practicing this

you can actually increase your your breath

capacity and your function with that next improve asthma very common problem

and we all know that asthma rates there's more and more kids and more more

people getting asthma because we have more more stress there's another way we

can turn it around it can improve calmness and well-being well that's not

a big deal who wants to feel good right no big deal

increased emotional stability that would be a good thing

improve cognitive performance how is that in school and the workplace anybody

want to function better cognitively see so all of these things were talking

about their quality of life they're there how well do you function as a

human being and even improve hormonal balance and we'll we're going to look at

some of these in more detail and then I have included a cartoon here my favorite

cartoon is glass Bergen there's this guy at the doctor saying I've always been a

high achiever always striving for bigger faster greater and now suddenly I'm

expected to settle for lower blood pressure and less cholesterol and it's

funny and we can laugh but it's sort of it's sort of true also that we we lose

perspective often times that there's so much go getting there's so much

measurement of productivity but it doesn't bring you many kudos if people

ask well how many contracts did you land today none but I felt really good and

yet that's what life is about it's the quality of life depends on

we feel so we need to find some balance and real quick just to give you give you

an idea that this is becoming more and more widespread the next slide who uses

this technology we have individuals corporations executives hospitals

physicians mental health care facilities government agencies police agencies pro

athletes families schools pain clinics a DD clinics ADHD clinics drug rehab

clinics and weight loss clinics so this it's catching on people are are the

cutting edge people researchers they're starting to understand that this sort of

technology is is a big deal so we're using the N wave for home use that

people can can take home and practice and of course in our evaluation we use

the neuro infinity which can measure and even more precise but that's more for

clinical use that we can evaluate and bring you back and check this out now we

get into the fun stuff and this is some of the research that that they have done

we're looking at two hormones called DHEA and cortisol and let me just give

you a little background on these cortisol is a stress hormone it's linked

to depressed immune system it is linked to weight gain so basically the body

makes cortisol as part of a stress response and because it inhibits the

immune system they give this as a drug called a corticosteroid to people who

have chronic inflammation and immune problems and thereby they depressed in

your system and we'll get all bloated so that's

basically what cortisol does it's a great tool for the body short term to

survive a crisis but it's devastating long term so when we have long term

stress responses the cortisol is linked to virtually all chronic health disease

that we have DHEA on the other hand is another hormone that's made in the same

place that both of these hormones are made in the adrenal cortex but DHEA is

an antagonist it counteracts the effects of cortisol so as such DHEA has been

linked to a reduction in depression it has been linked to a reduction in

diabetes it has been linked to a reduction in anthro sclerosis and heart

disease and it has been linked to an increase in longevity so sounds like a

pretty good thing right it sounds like something we'd be interested in so

here's what they did with a study they took a bunch of people you can go to the

heart math site and look at the details I abbreviated it but essentially they

had people practice a breathing and relaxation and visualization technique

to calm the body down and feel good they did this for a month and they managed

for people to increase the DHEA the good one they doubled their their basic blood

levels of the good hormone so that means that they have a lesser chance of

depression lesser chance of diabetes lesser chance of atherosclerosis and

increased chance of health and longevity sounds like a pretty good big deal to me

and what happened on the other side they also found that in cortisol people also

had a 23 reduction in cortisol so this is pretty

profound they've done nothing else they haven't they haven't changed the diet

they haven't changed their exercise they haven't taken any medication or

supplements they just change how they breathe and how they feel and their body

start working differently at the fundamental level at these very very

important markers that determine basically life and death that's big

stuff the immune system anybody care about their immune system that's a

pretty good thing to have right so we know that the immune system is inversely

linked to stress anytime that you have stress your body shuts off the immune

system because it's not important in the moment of stress and this is why all

students get sick around the time of finals and if you've ever taken a final

you know this to be true it's it's not in one school sometimes is every school

every time all across the world finals time students get sick and it's because

they increase their stress levels they sleep less they eat junk and their new

system shuts down so what is what can we what can we look at here then well we

looked at what they looked at the immune system as measured by something called

IgA immunoglobulin a and it's one of the primary markers for immune system

function and they took a number of people and they had a thing for five

minutes in one group they hadn't think about some

passed and or something in the past that made them angry they revisited that

thought for five minutes and initially as an acute stress response it's what we

have GERD it's not thank you as and that's the red line so they

started here at the baseline and as an acute stress response it increased a

little bit and this is five minutes after but in the following hour it

dropped down to a fraction of the previous level and then it stayed low

and during the next six hours it didn't even come up to the baseline level now

think about this all they did was to think of a past

event that made them angry they weren't even in traffic they weren't even

getting really mad at someone they just thought of a past event and it shut down

the renew system for the better part of the day that's powerful stuff on the

other hand they took somebody and they had them think the opposite they hadn't

been thinking of some care of some loving of something that made them feel

good they did that for five minutes and they saw a dramatic increase immediately

after during the next hour rather it dropped down to baseline and then during

the next six hours it gradually rose up to higher ever-increasing levels

so essentially health or or a profound component of health is as simple as

taking five minutes a day and choosing you feel and if you get angry at

something realize and recognize it and say oh I'm not going there I can't

afford it my health is more important than that

I'm going to change my thoughts I'm going to do something and that's what

personal growth and and health is all about we talked before about we need to

eat well move well and think well and this is the think well art it doesn't

happen by itself it's something that takes practice but if you take the time

to practice it you can create some astonishing results one more study and

this had to do with cognitive performance they did a test called

auditory discrimination I dunno exactly how the test was done

but they have a button that they're supposed to press whenever they hear a

change or a change of a character of sound so before the training they tested

two groups of people I think that has fifty something people in the test and

it took them about 350 360 milliseconds on average to press the button to

recognize that the brain was sharp enough to recognize the change in

stimulus and press the button and then they had the practice for I think it was

a single single practice time and then they tested them again and in the

experimental group they had the people practice one of these relaxation

techniques from hard math where you practice your heart rate variability

along with practicing a feeling or a a picture in that group the average

reaction time went down about 10% it went down 37 points on average and if

you think about this their brains were working better they were more they were

more on point they were better focused they had a better ability to

discriminate between stimuli simply because they practiced a few minutes in

the other group they had them just do a relaxation they set them down and said

okay now just relax and do your best to to relax and feel good in that group it

made no difference whatsoever thank so even though I'm mentioning hard math a

whole lot here I want you to know that there's no affiliation they just have a

really good product out that we've decided to use simply because the

benefits that they can have so I don't know if I'm starting to sound like a

commercial here sometimes but it's really just the the principle of

practicing there's many different ways of doing it but you have to have a

feedback method of knowing when you're doing it right so that's that's the main

part of the heart rate variability now we're just going to expand a little bit

into the neurology of this and talk about what what does it really do how

does this really matter and affect and change anything so the first thing that

we need to understand is is what neural plasticity is this was the greatest

discovery of the 1990s it was a breakthrough there was a revolution in

the understanding of the brain that as plasticity in

changes it grows stronger and it grows weaker and it makes new synapses and it

breaks all synapses and that's how behavior changes we all know this

intuitively or at least through the principal use it or lose it so we

understand that if you don't use a muscle it's going to atrophy if you go

to the gym and pump iron it's going to get big and strong if you don't do

anything with it you're a couch potato or you put your arm in a cast the muscle

goes away and that makes a whole lot of sense because the body wants to allocate

resources to the places where they're being used so if you're using one arm

and not the other the body says why should I waste valuable resources

rebuilding a body part that has no purpose that's just hanging around

astronauts know this because when you send somebody into space and there's no

gravity the body says well in this environment the skeleton is virtually

useless so I'm not going to devote valuable resources to replenish the bone

because here in space I don't need it so astronauts have I believe about a 2%

bone loss per month that's pretty dramatic but we also have to understand

that brain cells have the same fate that a brain cell is only going to be

replenished it's only going to to be make new protein and stay strong if it

has a purpose so that's how the brain evolves that's how we get better at the

things we do and we forget about the things we don't because the body is not

going to replenish something that has no purpose and the brain cells that are not

used they get weaker and they become unstable and stability in the nervous

system is one of the key features of a functional nervous system is that the

nerve cells are strong and stable we've also heard the expression practice makes

perfect anybody who's heard that well I'm afraid

it's not true practice does not make perfect practice makes permanent and

anybody with a bad golf swing can can can affirm that because anything that

you do over and over and over whether it's right or wrong becomes a pattern in

your nervous system it becomes a habit and you can't break it because that's

the only way the body and the brain knows how to do it that's why bad habits

are so hard to break and what is a skill and a habit well where does the skill

reside some people think that they talk about muscle memory and they talk about

oh well I have the dancing legs or whatever but it's all in the brain and

nervous system every bit of it you have a hundred billion brain cells

and the way that they communicate with other brain cells is through something

called the synapse so it sends out a little tentacle and connect

to another brain cell and the brain starts making patterns and each of the

hundred billion brain cells make about 5,000 connections on average so you

figure out the total number someone who's a mathematician it's a lot okay

but those patterns those synaptic patterns determine all your behavior all

your habits all your skills reside in those patterns so now let's talk about

this in terms of breathing and coherence because people say well when I relax and

when I do a breathing exercise and that practice feeling happy I feel really

good for the five minutes that I'm doing it but I feel it's a waste of time

because I can't do that I have a life I can't do it all the time so is it only

good during the five minutes or do I have to do it all the time and here's

the answer it's right in there Oh plasticity that during those five

minutes you are creating new synapses you are strengthening those cells that

are lying dormant that are responsible for the parasympathetic outflow for that

healing response if you are always stressed then those cells are virtually

never stimulated but if you just take five minutes a day you're giving those

cells literally a workout they get stronger you're creating new synaptic

patterns and the more that you practice those patterns the more likely they are

to fight on their own when you're not thinking about it so the more that you

practice these things and the recommendation is somewhere between

others say five to ten minutes once or twice a

day and if you can do that for three to six months you will probably never feel

the same again you will probably lift yourself to a level of feeling wonderful

with no return so that is that's the benefit of all of this and that's how it

works long-term that you can actually rebuild

and recreate your nervous system just by practicing these things and that's about

it for the basic presentation and thank you all very much for coming and if you

have any questions we'll be more than happy to answer those we will also take

and run a small demo so that you can see this visit action as well all right