If you have ever been given a ‘stress score’, ‘recovery score’ or ‘readiness score’ by a wearable device, you’ll probably have already encountered Heart Rate Variability (HRV), but what is it, and why is it important?
I personally have found HRV incredibly useful in highlighting things I should avoid. When I discovered how much alcohol negatively impacted HRV it made it much easier for me to cut back. I’ve seen other important trends like exercise, sleep, and medications and how they impact HRV to be more aware of my health. I often recommend my patients track HRV to get a better sense of stress on the body when undergoing cancer treatments. I plan to explore this as a deep dive soon.
Definitely a really useful metric to look at! Whether the data we get from wearables is good quality is another story, but great for trends if nothing else 😎
See The Real Science of Sport podcast about how inaccurate these devices are.
HRV, like sleep, is a metric which wearables are a long way from mastering, for sure!
I personally have found HRV incredibly useful in highlighting things I should avoid. When I discovered how much alcohol negatively impacted HRV it made it much easier for me to cut back. I’ve seen other important trends like exercise, sleep, and medications and how they impact HRV to be more aware of my health. I often recommend my patients track HRV to get a better sense of stress on the body when undergoing cancer treatments. I plan to explore this as a deep dive soon.
Definitely a really useful metric to look at! Whether the data we get from wearables is good quality is another story, but great for trends if nothing else 😎