Simple Tool to Boost Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

00:00:00.000 | - We hear a lot nowadays about heart rate variability.

00:00:05.000 | For those of you that have heard of it,

00:00:06.260 | and for those of you that haven't,

00:00:07.660 | having a higher HRV or heart rate variability

00:00:10.920 | is a good thing, right?

00:00:12.700 | Normally, if you hear something like heart rate variability,

00:00:14.520 | sounds like a bad thing,

00:00:15.440 | turns out it's a great thing.

00:00:16.760 | Heart rate variability is essentially the distance

00:00:20.160 | or the time rather between beats of the heart.

00:00:22.880 | So you might think that it's great

00:00:24.180 | to have a really consistent heart rate, boom, doom,

00:00:27.420 | or actually in reality,

00:00:28.620 | it's more like and I'm missing some of the beats

00:00:32.220 | within the wave form, but you get the idea.

00:00:34.240 | But actually it's well known to be correlated

00:00:36.580 | with a number of positive health outcomes,

00:00:39.280 | including things related to brain and body and longevity

00:00:42.820 | and performance to have high heart rate variability.

00:00:45.740 | Heart rate variability is going to lead to a pattern

00:00:48.920 | of heartbeats that is more like

00:00:56.520 | Now, you might say that's arrhythmia.

00:00:59.020 | Ah, but there are cases of arrhythmia that are good

00:01:02.140 | and there are cases of arrhythmia that are bad.

00:01:04.480 | Higher HRV in general is a good thing.

00:01:08.060 | You want it during sleep and you want it during wakeful states.

00:01:11.520 | In sleep, heart rate variability comes about

00:01:14.260 | because this vagal pathway from nucleus ambiguous,

00:01:17.140 | the cell bodies, the nuclei, literally the DNA within those nuclei

00:01:21.100 | of those neurons reside in nucleus ambiguous

00:01:22.760 | and they project to the sinoatrial node.

00:01:24.760 | And every once in a while, they'll just pump the break

00:01:27.100 | on heart rate and slow heart rate down.

00:01:29.100 | And then they'll come off that break, slow down,

00:01:31.600 | come off heart rate.

00:01:32.560 | And here's the really beautiful part.

00:01:33.760 | And the way that you get actionable leverage over the system,

00:01:36.760 | The control by the vagus nerve of the sinoatrial node

00:01:41.720 | and heart rate is coordinated with your breathing.

00:01:46.180 | Now, as I tell you this, it'll make perfect sense,

00:01:48.880 | but I just want you to step back from it a second

00:01:50.720 | and realize that these systems of the body

00:01:53.160 | are so elegantly coordinated.

00:01:55.420 | And here's how it works with respect to heart rate

00:01:57.340 | and breathing.

00:01:58.340 | When you inhale air, of course, your lungs expand.

00:02:02.000 | You have a muscle that sits below your lungs

00:02:04.480 | called the diaphragm.

00:02:05.680 | As you inhale air, of course, that diaphragm moves down.

00:02:09.720 | Now, as your diaphragm moves down and your lungs expand,

00:02:13.360 | your heart literally has a bit more space

00:02:15.640 | in the thoracic cavity to expand.

00:02:19.000 | Okay, it's not going to swell massively,

00:02:20.760 | but it's going to expand.

00:02:22.680 | Now, as a consequence of that expansion,

00:02:24.500 | the blood that's moving through your heart

00:02:26.840 | is going to move a little bit more slowly per unit volume.

00:02:30.540 | That is sensed by a particular group of neurons

00:02:32.900 | in your heart.

00:02:34.180 | And that sends a signal to your sympathetic nervous system

00:02:37.000 | to speed your heart rate up.

00:02:39.640 | Put differently, inhaling speeds your heart rate up.

00:02:44.320 | Now, the converse is also true.

00:02:46.200 | When you exhale, your lungs deflate,

00:02:48.300 | your diaphragm moves up.

00:02:49.980 | And as a consequence,

00:02:50.960 | there's slightly less space for the heart.

00:02:53.160 | So the heart shrinks a little bit,

00:02:55.980 | not a ton, but it shrinks a little bit.

00:02:58.180 | And it's enough such that whatever blood is in the heart

00:03:02.140 | moves through more quickly per unit volume.

00:03:05.060 | That faster movement is sensed by neurons within the heart,

00:03:08.320 | sends a signal to the brain,

00:03:09.940 | and the brain activates those neurons within nucleus ambiguous,

00:03:13.420 | and very quickly sends a signal to the sinoatrial node

00:03:17.080 | to slow your heart rate down.

00:03:19.060 | Put differently, exhale, slow your heart rate down.

00:03:22.920 | And they do so by way of vagal control over the sinoatrial node.

00:03:26.880 | This is the deceleration pathway over heart rate.

00:03:30.560 | So as I mentioned, this is happening all the time during sleep.

00:03:33.060 | You don't have to be consciously aware for this to happen.

00:03:35.820 | It's a fortunate consequence of nature

00:03:37.960 | that the neurons within your brainstem

00:03:39.720 | that control breathing,

00:03:40.720 | and the neurons within your brainstem that control heart rate,

00:03:43.280 | and the other neurons within the heart itself

00:03:45.320 | that control heart rate, the pacemaker cells,

00:03:47.240 | all can function without you having to think about it.

00:03:49.800 | That's a wonderful thing for obvious reasons.

00:03:52.120 | It's also the case that because we have this input

00:03:55.240 | from the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

00:03:57.640 | down through a couple of other structures,

00:03:59.160 | like the cingulate and the insula,

00:04:00.680 | and that converge on nucleus ambiguous,

00:04:03.220 | if you decide to slow your heart rate down, you can do it.

00:04:06.860 | And you do so by doing a deliberate exhale

00:04:10.680 | and or by increasing the intensity

00:04:13.880 | or the duration of your exhale.

00:04:15.980 | So you can do that right now.

00:04:17.600 | If you want to slow your heart rate down,

00:04:19.720 | that is if you want to increase

00:04:21.280 | parasympathetic nervous system activity,

00:04:23.020 | and you want to calm down fast,

00:04:24.760 | you can literally just .

00:04:28.880 | Exhale, slow your heart rate down,

00:04:30.820 | and exhales tilt that seesaw

00:04:33.120 | that is the autonomic nervous system

00:04:35.080 | more toward the parasympathetic side.

00:04:37.680 | Now, I've talked before on this podcast

00:04:39.260 | and all over social media

00:04:40.620 | about the so-called physiological sigh,

00:04:42.640 | a naturally occurring form of breathing

00:04:44.600 | that occurs in sleep and that we can deliberately do

00:04:46.660 | anytime we want to calm down fast.

00:04:48.600 | And the physiological sigh consists of,

00:04:50.520 | as many of you know, two inhales through the nose,

00:04:53.720 | followed by a long to lungs empty exhale through the mouth.

00:04:57.700 | Typically the first inhale is longer.

00:04:59.800 | Again, it's done through the nose.

00:05:00.840 | The second inhale is shorter, kind of a sharp inhale

00:05:03.520 | to make sure you maximally inflate

00:05:05.000 | all the little sacks within your lungs.

00:05:06.560 | And then the exhale is a long, slow exhale

00:05:10.180 | that dumps all your air.

00:05:12.500 | I'll just demonstrate the physiological sigh for you.

00:05:14.520 | For those of you that haven't seen it,

00:05:16.260 | you again, big inhale through the nose,

00:05:19.040 | second sharp inhale through the nose

00:05:20.580 | to make sure you maximally inflate the lungs,

00:05:22.300 | and then long exhale to lungs empty.

00:05:24.680 | It goes like this.

00:05:26.280 | Okay, lungs are empty.

00:05:31.200 | That is indeed the fastest way to activate the parasympathetic

00:05:47.200 | nervous system, and to tilt that seesaw from levels of high

00:05:51.260 | sympathetic nervous system activation to lower levels of sympathetic

00:05:55.420 | nervous system activation.

00:05:56.460 | In fact, I immediately feel calmer.

00:05:58.180 | Maybe you can even hear it in my voice.

00:05:59.920 | So when you do a physiological effect,

00:06:01.460 | you're getting both a chemical signal into the brain.

00:06:04.420 | That is the adjustment of that carbon dioxide oxygen ratio.

00:06:07.720 | It's mainly due to the offloading of carbon dioxide.

00:06:11.640 | That lower level of carbon dioxide is registered by the brain

00:06:14.280 | very quickly and leads to an increase in calm.

00:06:17.200 | The deceleration of heart rate driven by the exhale

00:06:20.360 | is also registered by the brain very quickly,

00:06:22.400 | leads to an increase in calm.

00:06:24.220 | When you just emphasize an exhale,

00:06:26.540 | meaning you extend it or you make it more intense,

00:06:29.040 | and you don't do the two inhales first,

00:06:31.200 | that is you don't do the physiological sigh.

00:06:33.580 | Well, you get the mechanical signal,

00:06:35.380 | but you don't get the chemical signal,

00:06:37.120 | at least not to the same degree you do

00:06:38.460 | with the physiological sigh.

00:06:40.140 | Put simply, if you want to calm down fast,

00:06:42.880 | ideally you do the physiological sigh.

00:06:45.720 | However, it turns out that one of the best ways

00:06:47.520 | to improve your HRV,

00:06:49.120 | both in sleep and in wakeful states,

00:06:51.580 | which takes a very minimum of effort

00:06:53.740 | and is rarely if ever discussed,

00:06:55.840 | is simply throughout the day,

00:06:57.660 | I would say 10, 15, maybe even 20 times per day,

00:07:00.860 | anytime it occurs to you

00:07:02.080 | to just deliberately extend your exhale,

00:07:04.400 | that is to pump the brake on your heart rate

00:07:06.820 | through the vagus nerve pathway

00:07:07.980 | that I've been describing.

00:07:08.820 | Just, just exhale, slow your heart rate down

00:07:13.400 | and then get about your normal routine.

00:07:15.180 | You can do that essentially anytime you remember to.

00:07:17.940 | This is literally going to increase your HRV.

00:07:20.720 | You now know the mechanism by which it does that.

00:07:22.940 | And get this,

00:07:23.980 | it will also increase your HRV in sleep at night.

00:07:27.200 | And the reason is this pathway

00:07:29.160 | that originates with the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

00:07:31.980 | and goes down to nucleus ambiguous

00:07:33.560 | and then to the sinoatrial node of the heart

00:07:35.480 | because it's under conscious control

00:07:37.960 | and because it's subject to what we call plasticity,

00:07:41.240 | to strengthening and to weakening.

00:07:43.600 | That is, if you use it deliberately, it gets strengthened.

00:07:46.740 | If you don't use it deliberately, it gets weakened.

00:07:49.980 | Well, that's a great thing

00:07:51.360 | because it means that if you just simply remember

00:07:53.520 | to do some extended exhales throughout the day,

00:07:56.600 | you're going to strengthen this pathway such that it operates

00:07:59.400 | in the background through auto-regulation

00:08:01.560 | without you ever having to think about it.

00:08:03.780 | Now, of course, that effect wears off over time

00:08:05.940 | if you don't occasionally remember to just do some,

00:08:08.760 | some longer exhales.

00:08:10.100 | But this is a wonderful protocol in my opinion,

00:08:12.160 | because it capitalizes on a inborn circuit, right?

00:08:16.100 | A circuit that you were born with that is already installed,

00:08:19.480 | that you can use at any point.

00:08:20.960 | It doesn't take any learning,

00:08:22.440 | but that if you just ping every once in a while

00:08:24.520 | with some extended exhales throughout the day,

00:08:26.300 | it takes essentially no time.

00:08:27.760 | You get the benefit of feeling a little bit calmer,

00:08:29.500 | slowing your heart rate down and your HRV,

00:08:31.300 | which is correlated with a host of positive health outcomes

00:08:34.280 | in the short and long-term will increase.

00:08:37.180 | you get the benefit of feeling a little bit.

00:08:39.020 | You get the benefit of feeling a little bit.

00:08:40.520 | It's a good thing.

00:08:41.140 | You get the benefit of feeling a little bit.

00:08:43.140 | You get the benefit of feeling a little bit.

00:08:44.040 | You get the benefit of feeling a little bit.

Simple Tool to Boost Heart Rate Variability (HRV) | Dr. Andrew Huberman

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