Heart rate variability, or HRV, is a measure of the time variation between each heartbeat. This marker is a recent addition to the family of heart monitoring, but it gives you clues about how resilient and flexible you are.
When you’re in fight-or-flight mode, or you’re experiencing intense emotions, the variation in time between heartbeats is low. When you’re in a relaxed state, the variation is high. People with high HRV may be more resilient to stress and have better cardiovascular health. Low HRV is associated with worsening anxiety or depression and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and death.
Tracking your HRV can help you stay motivated to make behavioral and lifestyle changes by creating more awareness around how your behaviors and emotions increase or decrease your HRV. The most accurate measure of HRV comes from your doctor, who examines a long strip of an ECG. But to use HRV as a personal health marker, you need something you can do on a regular basis yourself.
How to measure HRV at home: A few apps and heart rate devices have been developed in the past few years to measure HRV, but since this is a rather new concept in personal heart monitoring, they aren’t yet regulated by any agency—and their accuracy is still being investigated and improved on. According to Harvard Medical School, the least expensive and most accurate way to measure your HRV is with an inexpensive strap heart monitor plus a free, downloadable app for heart rate variability.
Here are two free heart monitor apps— ”AFibCheck”and”Heart Rate”,which can be downloaded and used after searching in the mobile app store.
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