Lower resting heart rate.
Lower blood pressure.
Raise your heart rate variability.
Obviously, your heart’s health is critical for overall health and anti-aging. Although they’re three separate measurements: resting heart rate (RHR), blood pressure and heart rate variability (HRV) are interrelated. Plus, they affect how much blood – and, therefore, nutrition – reaches the cells and organs of the rest of your body.
The more often your heart beats inefficiently, the higher your blood pressure. That weakens your arteries and veins. When your heart beats too much, it’s struggling to function, and that’s a bad sign for the rest of your body too. The higher your blood pressure, the more often your heart beats to make up for the decline in free-flowing circulation.
It may not be intuitive, but having a high HRV is good. The higher your HRV, the more flexible your heart and blood vessels are. Your heart should be like a willow tree that bends with the winds of stress. If your heart tries to resist, like a strong oak, it’s at more risk of being broken by the stress of life.
The Role of the Vagus Nerve
Your major organs, your digestive system, and your brain are all connected by the vagus nerve – and they all talk to each other, and with your nervous system and adrenal glands.
Therefore, although they manifest in your heart, your HRV and RHR are influenced by the balance between your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
What to Aim For
When measuring these biomarkers, remain at rest. Test yourself only if it’s been an hour or over since you ate or engaged in exercise.
Medical science tells us a “normal” resting heart rate is 60 to 100 beats per minute. This is “normal” only because it’s “normal” for an American to die of a heart attack (it’s been our Number One Killer for decades).
If your heart rate is consistently over 100, that’s tachycardia. Check it out with your doctor.
Athletes have often lowered their RHR to below 60, even into the 40’s.
However, a RHR under 60 bpm is called bradycardia. If you’re a trained endurance athlete, having an RHR under 60 bpm probably just indicates you’re fitter than average. However, see your doctor if you have such symptoms as shortness of breath, fainting or dizziness.
Just as your RHR is how many times your heart beats per minute, heart rate variability is how much this varies depending on your breath, your fitness level, whether you’re at rest or exercising, how much sleep you got last night, and so on. Because our bodies change constantly, our heartbeats should also change to adapt. Therefore, in general, a higher HRV is better than lower one.
HRV scores range from 19 to 75 milliseconds, with 42 being average.
However, HRV scores are individual, and it’s not easy to verify accuracy. Therefore, my suggestion is to always aim for a higher HRV.
Also remember: HRV changes during the day based on circumstances, and from day to day.
Exercise is a Must
Exercise is probably the most critical, direct way of raising your HRV (and lowering both RHR and blood pressure).
Both strength and cardiovascular workouts accomplish this. For a wider range of fitness and health benefits, do both.
However, do NOT overtrain. Get a good workout, then rest for a day or so. Don’t work out intensely again until you’ve completely recovered.
It also helps to vary types of exercise. That is, do your strength training on Monday and running on Tuesday, or whatever works for you.
Coherence Breathing
This is probably the single most important breathing practice you can perform. If you do any breathwork, this is the master technique – and it works because of the vagus nerve.
Remember: both your HRV and RHR reflect the balance between your sympathetic (flight or fight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest) branches of your nervous system. In general, unless you’re in a physically challenging situation where you need to fight or run away, you want the balance to be in favor of the parasympathetic. That’s relaxed, cool, and calm.
This has been put to the test. A group of young men took part in a four-week experiment. They had their HRV and perceived stress measured and then were divided randomly into two groups. The first was the control group, who did nothing different for four weeks. The second group practiced coherent breathing for twenty minutes per day.
At the end of the four weeks, control group participants had the same HRV as when they began.
However, the control group demonstrated improved HRV – and their score on perceived stress went down. This indicates they felt more relaxed than before they began practicing coherent breathing.
The basic explanation is simple. Your vagus nerve influences your breathing. When you’re physically active or feel threatened, your heartbeat and blood pressure go up. HRV goes down.
But, because we can breathe consciously, we can use breath to tell the vagus nerve to signal our sympathetic nervous system to stand down – to take it easy. This increases the parasympathetic nervous system. That is, quiet relaxation.
How to Perform Coherence Breathing
The optimum breathing pattern appears to be a 5 to 6-second inhale followed by a 5 to 6-second exhale.
That’s around five breaths per minute, which is much slower than average. (12 to 20 is typical for adults.)
Slowing down the breathing process tells your vagus nerve to relax. In turn, the vagus nerve passes that message on to your brain, heart and other organs. Therefore, you feel calmer and less stressed.
You can find videos on YouTube that can lead you with computerized accuracy, but you can also practice coherence breathing almost anytime, on your own.
Just breathe slowwwwlllly. Consciously keep your exhales slow and relaxed.
Breathe through your nostrils, not your mouth!
Do that whenever you have a chance: listening (at school or work), studying, reading, driving, watching movies, and so on – especially when you’re under stress.
That’s even more true if you get anxious nervous or stressed out. As soon as possible, focus on breathing slowly. Make your exhales at least as long as you inhale.
Conclusion
When you work on reducing your RHR and raising HRV, you’re making life easier for your heart, so it will keep beating longer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw9XBJmV4SI&t=503s
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32023264/
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/expert-answers/heart-rate/faq-20057979
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/heart-rate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGqIO-ZBsFg&t=255s
https://www.webmd.com/heart/what-is-heart-rate-variability
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-PoUMBtpVU
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8924557/
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/007198.htm
