Blood pressure and heart rate variability explained

Watch the rest of my series on wearables (including two more videos with the excellent Dr @MedlifeCrisis!) here: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg0VbZ0kyCHl0yKBAQZ0NaI… Probably the most important thing in this video is the table of things you can do to improve your blood pressure at 02:54. It’s a simplified version of Table 15 in this paper (this link should take you straight to the table): www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/HYP.00000000000000… If you’ve got any other numbers that your watch spits out that you want to know more about, let me know in the comments!

I'm still wondering what happened to that poor skeleton... 🤔

I can definetly see the times when I was ill in my HRV tracking. It appears to be semi quantitative, based on 9 month experience with a modern fitness watch.

I have a Fitbit that tracks sleeping HRV (i know, questionable accuracy), and its interesting seeing the things that seem to impact HRV. Drinking, overexertion, and reduced sleep quality are the main ones, and when I had Covid last year it nuked my HRV for a while. Weirdly, when I take Benadryl to help me sleep my HRV actually goes up by quite a bit according to this thing, which i guess tracks with better sleep even though Benadryl gives me a sleep hangover. It is funny though, if I go back through my long term HRV stats, I can point out the binge drinking nights pretty easily lol.

Got rid of my hypertension and BP meds by getting rid of sugar and most starches. Off meds within 10 days. Now 108/68

Important information - many thanks to both of you :-) Great heart action animation too - the best I've seen.

Thanks, very informative.

Full marks for the magnificent tash!

Thanks again fo these videos providing insight into data that smart watches provide us👍 I was highly sceptical of HRV being anything other than a tech company buzzword, but it's reassuring to hear that it does serve a purpose. I've also found this series quite helpful in re emphasising how we should focus more on the trends in our smart watch data rather than the exact daily readings. Keep up the good work👊

It is just crazy that Doctors do not get nutrition training in Medical schools. Every doctor visit should include some nutrition discussion. The majority of the population is over weight or obese leading to high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer. Schools and hospital cafeterias should be leading the way to good health by setting the example of what is a healthy meal and teaching people what to eat and why.. Every person in the hospital for heart disease should have a nutrition class before being checked out from the hospital with follow up education and training in nutrition. Medicare and Medicaid should require patient nutrition education as part of their standard of care. Nutrition information should be run on the hospital TV channel.

I tend to use my Garmin's HRV reading as a sense check when I think I might be falling ill. If HRV is down in addition to me feeling it I'll take it easier for a day or two and see what happens. If it's not I will go ahead and train (though obviously if I start to feel bad I won't push as hard). It's early days (only had the HRV function for a few months), but so far it does seem to pick up illness. Agreed regarding bad sleep or drinking, though perhaps where HRV can be useful is motivating change. I am planning on giving up caffeine in February and I suspect if I see an increase in my HRV over the month I might be more motivated to try to keep it up beyond that month.

I suspect any particular individual would have to have tracked their heart rate variability long term to know what their current number means. If you were active in your youth and your variability was still fairly low, then you'd know that it being low when you're in your 50s is not a sign of deterioration. It really doesn't matter if a higher value is generally associated with lower mortality if yours is simply genetically in a lower range.

When my lifestyle is sedentary my SBP is 140. If I do a reasonable amount of exercise (45-60 minutes of low intensity), my SBP is 120 for about 2-3 days afterwards.

In October of 2022, I went to the hospital for chest pain. Turned out to be a nothing burger, but whilst I was there, they measured my BP, it came out to be at 240 at the highest. After some medication, it went down to 170. I ended up staying at the hospital for 3 days because of this, left the hospital against doctors wishes, went to my doctor and we talked. She put me on medication and told me to get healthier basically. I‘ve had my ups and down ever since, but I‘ve recently have been dealing with diverticulitis, which means I‘m not allowed to eat solid foods, drink carbonated beverages, no spices and all that stuff. My BP recently measured 102/76,my pulse used to be high as well, it’s been all in the 50s-70s, before it used to be in the 80s.

Thanks. Next time maybe a few words on low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension?

My age is 79 How come that whenever I think of going to the GP my blood pressure shoots up? and after the gym and I walk home my blood pressure decreases enormously? I have between 130 and 133 systolic; I have got it down to below 120 on occasions. while I have between 76 , (an outlier), and 85 diiastolic. I do the gym about two to three times a week. I need a day in between to recover. I hate the idea of taking drugs forever. I walk rather than run on the tread mill at between 5.5 and 5.7km/hr and do about 2.3 km in about 21/22 minutes. At about 1km my heart rate is about 110 to 115 ; my resting HRV varies between 69 and 85. At the end of 2.3 km "walk", my heart rate is between 133 and 125 depending on how stressed I am although I have got it down to 117 which I ignore as false. I sometimes row. Other exercises include abduction and adduction, torso exercises, deltoid and pectoral , deltoid exercises etc, I don't do weight lifting. For good measure I have enlarged prostate. I eat more fish than meat but TRY to avoid sardine and tuna to reduce the incidence of uric acid increse. I eat apples/pears/banana. for my breakfast I have muesli with 49% nuts, bran flakes and say pomegranite or strawberries Should I get worried? I hate going to the doctors' surgery. That has nothing to do with the doctors themselves, just me.

Hi Andrew this video series is very informative, but there is one thing that i always think about, and that is with all this monitoring of blood pressure /HR etc, does this not stress some people out. Which could add to the rises in BP/HR and maybe not cause problems immediately but may very well increase problems down the line. On the other side i myself have increased BP as i am getting on now into my late 60!s i realised this not from testing my BP/HR often but by pulsatile tinnitus that seams to be constantly plaguing me.

At 11:12, I think Rohin meant to say bro-cus pocus. And the increase in heart rate with full lungs versus the decrease with empty lungs is the primary source of HRV as a function of “vagal tone.” There’s a bigger difference between these two states when we are relaxed and healthy than when we are excited or stressed.

Generally great content. Not sure why doctors still roll out the salt comment. Salt has only a very short term effect. But super low salt levels could be dangerous.

HRV is very good way how to get to know yourself. You can tell people not to drink alcohol, not to drink coffee before bed, not to eat before bed, they all know. But if you start to measure HRV, you directly see the numbers how it really affects your quality of sleep and recovery, if you are trying to get better in any sports. I stopped to drink alcohol because of that. I do intermittent fasting, I have my last cup of coffee 9 hours before my bed time. I thought I need 8 hours of sleep to have "good" sleep, but this is not true. It really depends on many factors, and HRV is one of them. I can now have perfect sleep with scores of 85 or more only after 6 and half hours of sleep, when my HRV is balanced, my heart rate drops to 44. That is good quality sleep :) so I recommend to track HRV, it can really help you to understand your own body more.