How To Improve Your Heart Rate Variability (HRV) - Dr Leah Lagos

what's the history of HIV who who discovered it you know it's really interesting it originated being in matric that doctors looked at before babies were born to predict the Vitality of the of the unborn baby that they would be healthy upon birth and then in time doctors began using it as a metric of cardiovascular health and other conditions uh HRV is very much associated with clinical conditions from myalgia to irrit bowel syndrome to depression to anxiety and then a cohort small subset of people including myself came along and said well what about people that aren't afflicted by a condition but just wanted to get better and and that question has been the last 17 years of my research and practice wow so I think a lot of people listening will be familiar with HRV what it is and sort of the the fundamentals but just give us a 30,000 F foot overview recap sure so HRV has to do with the variability in between each heartbeat and essentially the short simple answer without getting too Technical and I think that's one of the things the public has to understand people get lost in the science Chris is is that we are looking for bigger numbers for greater health and resilience but everybody has a range and and so the scientific definition has to do with the oscillatory variability in between each heartbeat um and measured in milliseconds and that's the technical definition what we'll talk about today is HRV in terms of RSA resonance sinus rythmia and it's so much easier to understand and grasp as a user because you can look at with all sorts of different variables that are out now the peak to trough so when you inhale your heart rate goes up and when you exhale it goes down and that phenomenon is known as resonant sinus arhythmia and ultimately we want that variation to be as big and beautiful as possible almost like ocean-like waves but that's not exactly what happens in life we get stuck there are stressors and and we can talk about the different variables in time but we want to optimize those oscillations to be resilient adaptable flexible um marked by agility to to kind of respond as we need and acclimate flexibly is that what you mean by autonomic flexibility it does it does and people think about stress in terms of am I stressed or am I not but what we really should be talking about is your agility and handling it how long does it last are you able to let it go when it happens how long does it take You Are there specific stressers that take you longer and you begin to look at HRV and we can dive into this as deeply as you want but as a metric that gives you insights about yourself so of course we can train HRV and I'll take you through my protocol for doing that which is in my book heart breath mind but but I want the world to understand HRV is a measure of who they are what amplifies them what takes away from their natural gifts and it's it's a metric that people can calibrate with breathing but also with study and research on on what kind of leads to these changes in Inay I have never heard anybody explain the Adaptive reason for why HRV lowers when we are stressed there must be an advantage that is given to the user for having a lower HIV under sympathetic arousal what is that it's likely associated with The Reptilian response of immobilization our body immobilizes in in prehistoric days to conserve energy and while The Reptilian response served a function and can serve a function in certain stress situations usually it doesn't and it stays longer than we need so that's so interesting so your hypothesis is that when we were reptiles we would need to but what surely surely a high HIV if we needed to uh lay out in the sun and warm ourselves on a rock surely that would have allowed us to regain more energy than a low HRV no that would lying laying on a rock and being in the sun Sunshine the light exposure is is what could enhance HRV but the autonom nervous system during times of stress wants to conserve energy and um and what it tends to do is fragment what I call autonomic bandwidth so if you have an HRV Chris let's say just you measure it with your or ring or or other wearables and there are many and you have a range of 42 to 75 you begin to look at what's happening on different days to understand what's what's reducing your HRV and maybe it's getting too late maybe it's a conflict with a a good friend um but what you're asking me is how could this have been adaptive for us yes and my hypothesis would be in in terms of trying to conserve energy and and somehow keep the body safe in that way however we're in such a dynamic world that if if we're a fraction of our ourselves and and the flexibility to respond is reduced it doesn't work out that way because we ruminate on the stressor for so long that we actually extend the stressor for a good amount of time yes and that for most people is beyond conscious control so the idea of Just Let It Go is is great great idea but then how do you do it and I would argue that letting go is much more a physiological construct that that can be taught through processes such as heart rate variability bio feedback training than than just and I'm a psychologist by trade then than just cognitive techniques But first you have to teach the autonomic nervous system how to let go right so you're suggesting that we go bottom up from the body to the mind as opposed to top down from the mind saying hey calm down you're being too stressed why can't you just let go of this thing which often makes you more stressed so the other the other question that I have what determines our range you've mentioned that we have a range within which we sit I know that one of your prescriptions will be your goal is to get to the top end of your range so therefore comparing your HRV with somebody else's is kind of pointless unfortunately I'm in I'm in a a whoop group with some pro athletes some cricketers and some of their hrvs are in the 200s so I I'm always going to be bottom of the pile uh around them but what is it that determines our range there are a multitude of factors there are biological um pieces to this and and low HRV um in some cases can indicate a clinical condition and um and I've had that happen with clients where we've uncovered and properly gotten treatment and then and then worked on amplifying HIV as they went through through other treatments but it also can be chronic stress that's not properly managed it can be a host of different pieces there are also people that are more sensitive in this world and they're people that feel deeply they connect quickly I call them biologically gifted that in stressful moments their heart rate reactivity May jump 30 beats whereas someone else may jump 10 and that's not conscious and that's not something that talk therapy is going to change but they can increase the Precision of their their response under stress by having a stronger what's called um it bar reflex gain through this process The barer receptors control heart rate and blood pressure and we gain control over that reactivity in the moment it's it it just calms and um with that said there are many many different reasons people have different levels of HRV I had one person it took us three sessions I mean questions after questions I got it they were drinking 19 cups of coffee a day so times the variables Chris are internal sometimes they're medical and sometimes they're external a big variable that people think about consciously that having a few glasses of alcohol they know it impacts them but they don't really have a sense of how sensitive their nervous system is or how long it lasts but you can measure that and so factors like sleep alcohol use lack of exercise chronic stress can certainly dampen HRV but they're not the only reasons what does low HRV feel like experientially if it's uh acute let's say that you could just throw low HRV at someone that's listening now what would that feel like in their body and their mind someone can't identify low HRV I if if that's their General Baseline state but some people can and we and we actually sometimes train this um from from my clinic with clients that are athletes on being able to recognize when when they have a lower HRV than a higher HRV when they wake up before they look at their scores just to develop their sense of sematic awareness and and being just aware of what their body is telling them um some people will say when they their HRV is on the lower end of the range that they feel more myopic meaning their mind gets stuck more more irritable they're less able to control their reactivity and they speed up faster but it's it's really different for each person and what's so fascinating is there's no one size fit so uh composite HRV this is exactly how you'll feel in low HV versus high HRV it's about really understanding the person helping them be aware of what it feels like for them at the lower age V and what it feels like at higher HRV and then understanding the factors that they can control um to continue to amplify their HRV talk to me about the relationship between HRV autonomic flexibility and the brain and brain function so we used to think of heart rate variability just as a metric of the autonomic nervous systems resilience to flexibly respond which means if I need to amp up and run across the street I can this isn't this isn't associated with relaxation or just being calm it's acclimating or adapting flexibly to the needs of the moment but then after I've run across the street and and dealt with this a specific need that caused me to run across the street that I can return back to Baseline quickly and and so for many years HRV research really honed in and focused on HRV as a measure of adaptability and resilience in the last 10 to 15 years myself and several other researchers have focused on heart rate variability impact on the brain and sure enough this concept of oscillation if we think of resonance science arhythmia as that oscillation when you inhale your heart rate goes up when you exhale it goes down and we want these oscillations to be as big as possible we also want that oscillatory ability in our in our mind right to be able to focus on something deeply and let it go it's a different style of oscillatory functioning but conceptually the ability to oscillate is what I call cognitive dexterity and we're beginning to understand that heart rate variability is also indicative of someone's cognitive dexterity as well meaning that someone can flexibly alter between kind of deeply diving into a subject matter and then zooming out to consider contextual details or they're able to to consider a lot of information and have a pause before they react so there are different types of of dexterity but what can be really useful is is the ability specifically and it's the first one that I work on with people that want the kind of cognitive benefits associated with HRV is inhibition so Chris if there is something and everyone when you really dive deeply in someone's being authentic and open everyone has a place in their life they wish they had a little more control over before they act and it could be work it could be partnership it it could also be in a sports performance domain But ultimately to have the ability to screen out negative thoughts and consider the desired behavior before they respond becomes a part of the cognitive process that they do gain control over and this process HRV impacts the prefrontal Lo specific wow what about so I I understand that HRV is a metric which which is uh both acute and chronic or systemic it's uh an indicator of where you're at now and it's also an indicator of your sort of overall capacity autonomic flexibility probably health and fitness as well uh stress response stuff like that what is the relationship between heart health and HRV do healthier hearts always have a higher bet quote unquote better HRV yes in fact there's a a wealth of research that that suggests that low HRV is indic is correlated with cardiovascular condition so we want that that heart to have those large abundant oscillations um that that variability is essentially associated with longevity and and a longer life so when I when I see people go through um in my clinic 12 week training many people stay for years after they say it's it's not just a change of heart but a change of life and and we go through this process but in the first 12 weeks we often see the heart rate independent of physical activity drop five beats and so let's say your Baseline heart rate is generally 65 it's now at 60 there's improved cardiovascular efficiency and and certainly that has implications for heart Health and Longevity how do you think about the difference between sort of hacking HRV in the moment so that you get the state change and long-term duration impact on HRV the trait change over time is there a difference between hacking and improving or do all of the hacks that improve in the short term result in improvements in the long term there it's such a good question and I I I I really am so glad you asked because people don't understand that there are two different very distinct Pathways for using HRV and and focusing on HRV for different outcomes so the first one is going through a process such as HRV training 10 to 12 weeks to increase heart rate variability at Baseline meaning without even breathing and why would you do that what what does it matter well first of all you want an autonomic nervous system that without even any conscious intervention can flexibly respond to the world so people who are out and about have lots of meetings then go home to a family with with things happening will say I just have more energy to to manage the sensory inputs of the World require less from that nervous system because the nervous system is optimized okay so that's one which is optimizing the Baseline how do we do that with the resonant frequency breathing and it it really takes a minimum of 10 weeks 15 minutes a day twice a day breathing at resonant frequency which I'll describe a little bit later but what that does Chris is by week four you have increased barer reflex gain meaning barer reflex controls heart rate and blood pressure and you've increased the mechanisms the Precision by which it senses and responds it's just more precise and I say to my clients is let's say you're a Volvo coming into my clinic there's everything's going well you get to where you need to go but but now you've you've really increased to being more of a sports car where you can accelerate and decelerate just very quickly with without expended more expended energy so that is the Baseline piece and then within the 10 weeks you continue to strengthen what's called bar reflex gain and what happens is that the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system and in stressful situations the sympathetic activation occurs but now you're parasympathetic your parasympathetic dominant at Baseline and it comes quicker to bring down the sympathetic the sensing is faster and it allows you to let go and this all happens underneath you're not conscious of it but you would just say to me you know let's say Chris one of can you give me a stressor something just emails emails and what about emails when there's lots of them and I need to reply lots of them and so maybe you come in and you say you know the the abundance of emails in every day is is an eight out of 10 stressor and as you go through the process the emails don't change the emails have maybe even increased but your reactivity to them the feeling of stress towards them goes down a few numbers and that has to do with the nervous system becoming more precise in your responding meaning you can amp up but you can let go faster and I call it return to Baseline so that is the Baseline piece you would go through this process to increase your flexibility agility adaptability without doing anything it's a nervous system that is just more precise and and that's what the HRV training can do one improving Baseline two is what I call HRV hacking and using variables to calibrate your Elite self so you start to collect data okay on Tuesday I was a 42 HRV on my on my weable but on Sunday I was a 65 what's the difference and you begin to Target the variables and then Define the algorithm through your own tracking to get a sense of what really helps calibrate you and what's so fascinating is it's different for everybody so when you when you really get to know somebody and and look at the way they live their life the way alcohol may impact you make may be completely different from your neighbor you may be someone that running three miles a day really activates your parasympathetic nervous system in a beautiful way that shows up in your HRV calculation so but if you do it too many days it drops it so you start to really get a sense of who am I from a physiological perspective talk to me about the resonance breathing how this works the sort of pushing at the right time on the on the bike pedal yes so this process came about to to me um many years ago in gr school at recers University Paul leer who teaches at UMDNJ was giving a presentation about his work with afen vilo and Bron vilo that he brought from Russia they were they were working with cosmonauts in Russia when they discovered something called resonance sinus arhythmia and it it essentially is a frequency that activates the entire nervous system it's and and different what's called vagal afferent Pathways from the brain to the heart to the digestive tract and when you activate this frequency which is a specific frequency in the body the numeric is 0.1 Hertz you activate multiple Pathways at once allowing them to to tighten or or strengthen the homeostatic um regulatory mechanisms okay sure um kind of short succinct way he was using this at Ruckers and with the vilos to treat a multitude of health conditions with Incredible outcomes depression PTSD fibromyalgia asthma and so I I went up to Dr Lear and I said have you used this with athletes i i in interested in Elite Performance and and that question LED so the last two decades of my research and practice and what we found is that specifically for athletes this allows them to gain control over anxiety and and being able to perform at what I call their full autonomic bandwidth or their Elite self and and so the HRV training it takes approximately 10 weeks meeting once per week and identifying a rate of breathing that optimizes the beautiful heart rate oscillations I have you practice that 15 minutes twice a day the first four weeks we work to maximize your Baseline heart rate variability and and I look for What's called the bearer reflex gain the the indication around week four that your homeostatic mechanisms that control how you respond in the moment how you anticipate a stressful moment and how you recover from a stressor are are going to to increase and that's the first sign and then sessions 5 through 10 I walk you through my protocol for managing stress more in the moment and and being able to oscillate from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic State and becoming aware of when you're in each of those States so for people let's say at the Olympics they want to be able to create that parasympathetic State on demand in a certain number of breaths we do that a decision maker for the UN well want to make sure that he or she is in a parasympathetic open agile receptive state where they can be very focused or contextually driven and they will want to learn how to reliably enter what you could call a flow state but I would scientifically call a parasympathetic state so I I tailor the training based on the needs of the individual but it is some modulation of physiological states to then control behav avial outcomes and even how they feel okay so as far as I'm aware about your process there is a particular breath rate between five point something and six point something yeah so it's it's generally between five breasts per minute and 6.5 breasts per minute cool so there is a particular rate which is individ it's individual for each person when you find that that helps based on the rate at which your heart beats and the way that it beats the breathing in and the breathing out at that particular Pace can help to amplify or getting it wrong to make worse your HRV you're suggesting 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening so twice a day and the first four weeks as you trying to basically dial in what is that particular breath rate and then we sort of move forward from there so so almost that that was great and and and I love that explanation so generally in the first session we identify resonant frequency that rate between 5 to 6.5 uh breasts per minute and um then we do a little a little extra fixing on the side and helping to to breathe from the abdomen on the breath um and also then learning to be able to inhibit other thoughts and so there are pieces of this that I've I haor in and I talk a little bit about in my book but to activate the prefrontal lobe and one of the pieces since we're talking about HRV in the brain a bit today is to make sure to use the Pacer that set to your resonant frequency if you close your eyes or listen to music you won't have the same cognitive effects when you look at a Pacer matching your breathing to the Pacer it's a two for one a little bit because you're optimizing oxygen and blood flow all over the body especially to the prefrontal L while training attention so it's maximizing the the cognitive enhancements a Pacer is just some sort of cue maybe on a screen something like that right and there's several different ones on the iPhone and the Android if you just type in breath Pacer you can find the one you prefer some are just a line going up and down some are balls that expand and contract I have an um an app on Elite HRV that walks you through my 10 week Proto protocol you're welcome to use that if you like there's many but that watching the Pacer as you do your practice 15 minutes twice a day does make a difference in terms of the cognitive impact of the okay so you have this 15 minutes twice a day is the Assumption from you methodologically that those 15 minutes sessions will begin to bleed into your breath rate outside of that session getting closer to that how long does it take because I breathe at whatever rate I breathe at 6.8 breaths per minute throughout the day on average uh how long does it take to do two 15 minute sessions a day to basically reprogram my breath rate that seems like a very big change to come from only 30 minutes a day so it does and you're absolutely right it does become your habit but what I'm really targeting is training your heart so so that the rhythms the resonant frequency rhythms are going to be different when you breathe let's say that first week at resonant frequency versus just your natural Baseline but I want The rhythms from your resonant frequency to be your Baseline and the heart is a muscle breath rhythms or or heart rhythms heart rhythms okay so you're training the heart more than you're training the breath during these 50-minute sessions is that right correct and subsequently you train the breath after seven to eight weeks but first and foremost you train in the heart and by week four I start to see the heart pattern that we that I teach breathing at resent frequency to begin occurring just at their Baseline that's interesting so how long or how much work is required after going through your protocol of 10 12 weeks how much work is made is required to maintain those gains afterward if I stop after 10 weeks do I just go back to Norm so you have to you still have to do some breathing not the not the same level and what I recommend is to breathe three to four times a week at least for 15 minutes so it's it's kind of like calf phrases in a sense Chris and once you get to a certain level of of the muscle you wanted to develop you don't have to push as hard to maintain it but you do have to exercise it people it's it's not a perfect algorithm people will say they are fine with twice a week other people will say I just need to do once a day five days a week other times I'll have people that will come back and just say you know the cognitive impact the the screen door effect where I can screen out what's not important and really focus on what is is kind of waning after nine months I want to just do a surge for another 10 weeks and we do so so if you notice the benefits minimizing then then you up it and sometimes it's less maybe it's two weeks of going back to every day 15 minutes and you're feeling great again and then you titrate so you don't have to breathe for the rest of your life for 15 minutes twice a day but you do have to do some breathing and I would just base it on how you're feeling and what you're needing to maintain how should we be breathing throughout the day outside when we take it off the cushion so to speak what is your advice to your Elite Performance clients on what they should be doing and what they learn in week whatever it was 6 to 10 or 8 to 10 yes I love that question I believe if we had everyone really understanding the powerful impacts of breathing not only on how we feel but how we make decisions and how we behave we'd have a very different world and there are ways to use the breathing to enhance health and so particularly moments that bring someone anxiety and then taking what I call a power five focusing just on that feeling of the crisp fresh air through the inhale and then letting go of the fear or or the anxiety on the exhale to reset and they can take those small intervals as needed but there are also kind of fun ways to use this to enhance functioning in other aspects of one's life uh parents might use this in terms of with their own children and and being able to flex flexibly respond to multiple children asking many needs at a time and before responding taking a power of five or doing it with their kids Al together and and we should talk about that physiological connectivity is real and it's really amazing um but um finding moments that that you either want to have more control over how you're responding and and be able to create a desired response or enhancing cognitive functioning mental Clarity objectivity for decision let's let's go into that explain to me uh give me a couple of protocols and also I think importantly the cues of how people know to do the protocol um what are some of your favorites what are the ones that give the most benefit sure so many athletes professional athletes whether NBA or PGA Tour will notice their mind racing and it it can be even something that something great that happens a birdie on the golf course but their mind races the sympathetic arousal sets in and and their mind is racing and so as they're walking from hole to Hole they're practicing their breathing counting four in six out to clear the mind and also return the body to their basine self four in six out correct and what's interesting about adding the counting C is is you can't count and think at the same time they require the same part of the brain so for many people the counting with the breath and this is not for the 15 minute twice a day practice that's too much but this is for kind of epic epic of time uses to use the counting while while they're taking a few breaths to quickly enter their desired Basel State yeah I guess anyone that's tried to do breath counting during meditation knows that you lose the count when you also lose your focus it's very difficult to keep on top of that as you're going in and out it's like playing music over the top of a sound that you don't want to hear you can kind of really only hear one of them the loudest sound at one time okay um what about so four in six out longer on the exhale what are some cues that you like to give people to remind them hey this is something that you need to pay attention to this is something that you haven't done yet today so you for some people they love being able to use this on demand if they have erasing mind or a heart rate that speeds up will identify physiological responses that would necessitate using let's say the power five to return to Baseline there are other people that that just want to use this during the day to keep them calibrated without any specific need and so we'll do things like set their phone and to to vibrate at three different points during the day just so they can have a quick reminder to take five resonant breaths and recalibrate in other instances I like to pair it with habits for people let's say eating so before before sitting down to have breakfast or lunch or dinner um they they take a moment to take five breaths and it doesn't have to be eating but it can be some other regular activity so that so that this becomes a way not just two bookends at the start and end of every day but a way to stay calibrated and open and engaged with the world without kind of the energetic expenses of the world coming at them nasal breathing ever since James Nester wrote uh breath fantastic book he came on the show to talk about it uh nasal breathing's kind of another hot new girl in school at the moment what has your research showed about the impact of nasal breathing on HRV and what do you see as being the best uh facial strategy when it comes to maximizing HIV training through breath so it's interesting and I've had many clients who've read James nestor's book and and they have so much difference for his work um and and we evaluate and I've had a few instances where the nasal breathing has shown over the what I call the P lips breathing where you inhale through the nose but exhale through the mouth maximize their HRV but in most instances that's not what I've seen and and in more instances than not the inhale through the nose and the exhale through the the mouth leads to increases in HRV when we test it in the moment um I've also had people specifically say well I feel better one way or another and and I'm going to defer to the person I don't believe Chris that there is a one-size fits all and I I very much honor when someone says this makes me feel this way then then I'm going to defer to it and we're going to work with it so what's interesting I don't have my clients take a pause at the top of their breath before they exhale but every once in a while I'll say someone will say I need that pause so so we incorporate it and and there's just nuances for everyone's nervous system so just frankly to answer your question I have not seen uh that the nasal breathing produces HRV gains that are um more than the inhale through the nose and the exhale through the mouth there is something about the inhaling through the nose and the exhaling through the mouth that increases what's called Peak expiratory flow and leads to cardiovascular effects so my endurance athletes including my golfers on the tour will say Doc at week seven my training has a change and I'm just not tired on whole eight anymore what's happening and um that I haven't found to happen with the nasle breathing but we certainly could explore it more who are some of the clients that you work with what what are some of the illustrious Heights that they've got to I I've worked with NBA coaches that um have have done extremely well um in the ba I've worked with hedge fund owners PJ tour players at the Masters Olympians that PR and what I love about HRV and the training of this process is that it helps any individual maximize their Elite self and and so it it's not s it's not Sports specific or situation specific if you are an incredible and I've worked with uh one of the top dancers at Martha Graham and and she had incredible experience going through this training and and being able to reduce performance anxiety and and have one of what she called her best performances on stage but what I love about this is it takes anyone and any talent and allows them to remove the anxiety or the fear and then consistently be able to stay at a bandwidth of of of their maximum talent and abilities and and to be able to inhibit other factors that would detract from it um so the the big question that I've had since learning about your work I have a friend Yousef who went through your uh protocol at the start of this year and a question that both of us had in the back of our mind is what is the relative effect of Simply training V2 Max i. in increasing your Fitness versus resonant breathing practices they work beautifully together and that's why you see athletes with these incredible HIV scores and I wouldn't say one is better than the other but what the HRV does the V2 Max does not is developing a reflex that kicks in on its own unconsciously to help you modulate stress right right what do you see as the role then of VO2 max training um also what about the role of low and slow versus V2 Max I'm sure even if this isn't your area of expertise you must have an awful lot of insight into this because your clients are going to come to you and they're going to say Dr do you need me to stay in zone two for 45 minutes a day three times a week or would you rather me try and get up to maximal uh sort of 90% plus heart rates for 10 minutes twice a week what do you know what's your Insight when it comes to Fitness training for HRV improvements what does the research say that this enhances recovery and and it allows for the heart rate to stay lower for activities during no no no no so in terms of Protocols of training if somebody was to do a physical training uh protocol what do you tend to suggest to your clients are you saying I want you to focus on Zone 2 I want you to focus more on your V2 Max work from a physical perspective what do you what do you tend to advise that's that's not a specifically an area of training that I incorporate sometimes I'll work with athletic trainers and will compare data and and our goal is to collaboratively kind of integrate for a specific outcome um have you ever are there any learnings that you've taken away from that are there any uh particular protocols that you've found where you go why this seems to reliably improve HRV from a training perspective that's a great question I I've had some I'll tell you some trainings yes some kind of unexpected um data Collections and and so forth so um sometimes I will see that running for specific individuals for a specific distance has an incredible impact on their HIV not all and and sometimes it's it's I've seen that with swimming as well and um the amount the distance run is really interesting because for one person it's three miles and for another it's six and and and binding what distance and what frequency and measuring it with HRV um can be really insightful the kind of unexpected ones I've seen acupuncture improve HRV I've also and this is kind of a funny one but um I've seen two people actors that don't know each other come from energy healing and and they show up at my office and and on both of those occasions and and throughout their training I I kept saying what was happening and it didn't improve their Baseline but when they came directly from that session I could see in the moment that their AG V was uniquely higher than normal and their parasympathetic State more easy to access um there I've also seen people take supplements that augment HRV what are some of those I have no affiliation with it but lima lima is a supplement that um has a scientific formula l y ma correct to to optimize it has antioxidant effects anti-anxiety effects and to improve sleep um people take it for various reasons it's and again I have no affiliation with it but I had enough clients tell me about it and we measured it and and I measured also their sleep um as related to HRV and we saw improvements in both so it's interesting is it a supplement or is it a laser that you put on your skin that's separate but I can also tell you a funny story about uh light exposure which is applicable um that I've had people use different lasers I've I've had people use the verilux lamp and put it next to their computers and I've I have many times more times than not also seen how that impacts HRV so what's interesting is to use HRV as a metric to determine the effectiveness of an intervention and making changes on your autonomic nervous system HRV will reflect it and and it's a reliable measure talk to me about what people get wrong when it comes to measuring HRV there's a million ways to do it there's lots of different wearables what are the worst and the pitfalls and what are the best ways to do it nocturnal HRV is a Fairly reliable way to measure heart rate variability because there's generally less movement at night and less variables impacting you but of course a measure after a lot of drinking or eating late or specific stresser is going to skew that I've had people have foot twitches and then their HRV is not reliable and so it's not perfect and if you see abnormal numbers there's generally there something happening with the wearable or there's a specific behavior occurring in the moment to make it an aberration and there's no need to panic you just you want to collect data and I always say all data is good data it leads to to understanding um the Aur ring can be really helpful for tracking HRV uh Elite HRV had a sensor core sensor polar for measuring HRV in the moment is also helpful but when you're walking or talking your heart rate variability is going to change and so one of the things people will see increases in HRV on Aura and they don't understand it's movement related even at night if they had a really restless night of sleep or were up and down to help children or go to the bathroom their HRV HRV reading is going to be skewed yeah that's that's one of the things that I learned uh Joel Jameson has been on the show Bri uh Brian McKenzie also being on the show um you know both of those guys are talking about one of the challenges you have when wearing a lot of wearables that throughout the night they take these snapshots but these snapshots are dependent on what sleeping position are you in are you awake or are you not and unless you have something which is continuous whatever happened to that core sense thing that that you guys had question I had to call Jason Moore and ask because it was very good and the way to use it was to take it as soon as you woke up in the morning and then you could reliably measure your HRV across time and and I I have to I have to give him a call I don't know if they they ran out or yeah for for the people that don't know there was a fingertip HRV sensor thing that you guys were like quite highly affiliated with at least for this is one of our suggested uh measurement devices and um yeah I thought that was a great idea I couldn't get it in the UK and then by the time that i' moved to the US it had stopped uh shipping so I think you guys suggest polar straps and a few other bits and pieces the polar is great and and has fairly High scientific reliability such that you can even publish research on of it and um it allows you to capture HRV in the moment as well as at sleep at night so you have that optionality so I'm a I'm a big fan of the Polar you can also download it to your phone and so I've used it with coaches and and specifically NBA players to be able to get a sense of where they're at right before a game are they in a sympathetic or parasympathetic State and then we play games like how to bring your heart rate down by five beats and two breaths can you do it in one breath can you do it in half a breath and so it's it's a very simple way to increase HRV and and also to allow someone to enter into a competition in an ideal performance state are there any other vagal practices that you recommend or that you like they it's interesting there are host there's something that there are different places in New York and California I don't know how popular it is all over the world sound baths and and you go into a training center or a spa and and they use different instruments to produce different sounds the vibrations are really fascinating because they do activate the parasympathetic nervous system and of course I've collected the data on that and and it does p for some people for beyond the moment um with but what I really think people should understand is before trying to add all of these different interventions to increase vagal tone or to get into a parasympathetic state or even to increase parasympathetic State at Baseline is to understand thyself and measure what really helps to calibrate their most elite self what what amplifies and also detracts from them and then what their goal is and you can even do things like well how many days of the week am I in my top 25% of HRV so if your best days are Saturday and Sunday but you're training competing making decisions Monday through Friday we have a we have problem right um and and so that would be the where I would start for most people and then after they have a sense of their HRV range and the variables that amplify and detract then committing to 10 weeks or 10 to 12 weeks of the HRV training breathing 15 minutes twice a day at their resonant frequency the reliability is really important you're training the biggest muscle in your body your heart but without the training that stimulates the bearer reflex at that certain algorithm you don't get the result if you do exactly what I've asked the 10 weeks twice a day 15 minutes it works but I've tried I you know I've had people call me from India Chris can I do can I work with you for 10 days it doesn't work like that it's The Chronic stimulation of the bar reflex at this rate 15 minutes twice a day 10 weeks to reliably increase bar reflex gain and and really gain control over the modulatory mechanisms of how you anticipate respond and recover from stress is there such a thing as a non-responder to to Resonance breathing yes but at first and then it becomes a bit of detective work to understand why and so if someone is not responding to the resonant frequency breathing then we begin to talk about what's happening in their life whether it is a a chronic almost paralyzing state of stress um it's a lack of recovery it's over training and and then we address it and um after we take away that variable then HRV training Works across ages around the world and and it's just a commitment to time and disciplined breathing at resonant frequency that produces the results what are the most common pitfalls when someone does their HRV training let's say that someone thinks that they're a non-responder and they're going through the checklist of particular things is it that they've got their frequency wrong they've detected it wrong and they're trying to breathe at the wrong rates is it what are the uh common errors it's it's funny it may it may surprise most people it's not breathing at the wrong rate even if you breathe 02 seconds off you're still going to have salutary Health positive benefits it's the trying so hard that I have to make this perfect I have have to make this time meaningful that they don't actually let go in the moment and they put so much pressure on themselves that that they minimize the impact of the training so and I've seen that happen a few times and and then what I'll say is I want you to make this your spa time or playful and and I I want you to be playful about your breathing light gentle and the more and it it it's really true the more you can enjoy it the more the benefits will find you isn't it interesting we're trying to go bottom up to teach our nervous system that this is safe that you are okay as you are that you can deal with this to expand that uh autonomic flexibility so that the brain then is is given the room to be able to make better decisions and in the process of trying to do bottomup training a top down problem comes in yeah how funny yeah yeah the other condition I've seen interfere with the immediate effects of HRV is PTSD and and so if you take someone who has just experienced a traumatic event their body is in such a startle state it takes time but don't give up the HRV biopic can work for you it can work for anybody that's gone through a source of trauma it's it's just sticking with it and being persistent and sometimes in those cases I'll pair a memory of feeling safe it's not the memory the cognitive it's the feeling and so it's really interesting you can you can help someone access physiological imprints for many people men too leaders of huge corporations software companies Banks I mean one of the most potent times people have felt safe or of connection is holding their child for their first time men as well as women and and recreating a a feeling of safety going back to an imprint that exists connecting to it on the inhale and letting go of the rest of the world so if you're feeling stuck I would I would also add connecting to a time in your life you felt really safe connected or a sense of love and letting go of trying so hard and and persisting with the practice it it does help everybody it just sometimes it takes just a little more time to start hell yeah Dr Leos ladies and gentlemen where should people go they want to find out more of this they going to follow the program so my program for heart rate variability bio feedback is in the book heart breath mind it's on Amazon it's Baron Noble it's a local Distributors around the world um and if you want to also connect with me my website is Dr Leah Le ah logos L aos.com damn right Liam I appreciate you thank you for the day thank you Chris such a pleasure if you enjoyed that episode you will love a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last couple of months and it's available right here go on give him a watch