[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. Each week we talk about heart rate variability and how it can be used to improve your overall health and wellness.
Please consider the information in this podcast for your informational use and not medical advice. Please see your medical provider to apply any of the strategies outlined in this episode. Heart Rate Variability Podcast is a production of Optimal LLC and Optimal HRV. Check us out at optimalhrv.com Please enjoy the show.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Welcome, friends, to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. My name is Matt Bennett. I'm here for a solo episode to celebrate with you, our listener on our 200th episode. It may not be exactly our 200th new episode.
I think we might be on like 202. But you know, I'll be honest with you, I've been too busy to go back and count because we've had some replays along the way. I've got better things to do than count podcast episodes. But we are right around, I think we've slightly surpassed the 200th episode mark. And so I thought it'd be a great time to talk about the past, present and future of the podcast with you and just share some stories along the way. So if you're a newer listener, and now that we're on episode 200, a newer listener may have joined us for 100 episodes ago. We've got that much content out at this point.
This whole thing started with the co founder of Optimal hrv, Jeff Summers, and I, you know, kind of having this frustration of we would listen to these podcasts that started out talking a lot about heart rate variability. And over time, I don't know if they got bored of hrv, if there were other things to talk about, I don't know what happened, but they barely ever talked about HRV anymore. And you know, it was frustrating for me not to have a place to go and learn about the more recent research in heart rate variability. And you know, Jeff and I is like, well, we're in this space now, hey, you know, let's see how many episodes we can record on one biometric. And it was a kind of a joke is like, how much can you talk about one biometric? Even though we loved heart rate variability, you know, you know, how much is there to talk about? So here we are 200 episodes later. So Jeff and I just started back and you can get those episodes on YouTube and I really still believe, I went back and looked at some of the those early episodes and I still think they're very good, especially for folks that are newer to heart rate variability. Just jumping in with your first episode of me talking to like Stephanie White or you know, Dr. Gewurtz, you know, you might feel a little lost because we're talking about new really great but pretty substantial research into hrv. Whereas, you know, what is heart rate variability? You know, you can go back to those early episodes and you know, kind of start your journey there and then skip around to topics that you're really interested in. So we started this, we had a few guests on here and there.
I think we kept momentum up to about 65, 70 episodes before we kind of needed a break. And when I say we kind of needed a break, I kind of needed a break. One, because it was a lot of work to keep up a weekly publishing schedule and two, it was, I'll be honest with you, sometimes really difficult to find really good quality guests. Sometimes again, like, hey, you should have so and show on your show there's, I think these companies that reach out for other people and I'm like, oh great, I'd love to have them tell me their expertise in heart rate variability. And then crickets. Nothing, nothing back. So there are a limited amount of HRV experts in the world and we've interviewed most of them that feel comfortable speaking on an English podcast. So that's that. We took a little bit of a break and in that time really started working with Dr. David Hopper, Dr. Ina Hazan, both of which have been on the show multiple, multiple times and both talking about their own work and being, you know, co hosts with me four episodes. And so, you know, we, we started with those connections, really started to open up new guests and especially with Dr. Ina Hazan really got us in the AAPB world. I got the most recent version of the journal here. I'm excited. So the applied psychophysiology, it's still a hard word for me to say, and biofeedback. So aapb. But this is where the most of, not all, but I would say most of the really interesting research in heart rate variability and HRV biofeedback is being done.
So, you know, Ina's connection to that world really opened up and revitalized the podcast where we were both interviewing people publishing, you know, you know, game changing research on heart rate variability and you know, people who, Dr. Gebert, Fred Schaefer come to mind who really moss were responsible for bringing HRV and HRV biofeedback to people like my consciousness and being the research drivers behind the work that I do every day around heart rate variability. HRV biofeedback so, you know, it was a re energized day and we really had, I think, just a great stretch. Every time I go to the APB conference, I get. Get more and more people and we do replays every once in a while, especially through the holidays or maybe the kind of low time in the summer months. But have been able to keep a pretty regular publishing schedule.
I'll be frank and honest with you, that seems to be getting more difficult. One is, again, as I mentioned, I've already interviewed a lot of folks, so if they publish a new paper, it gives me a great excuse to reach out to them. But, you know, it's, you know, trying to find new guests isn't the easiest thing to do. And not every episode do you want me to be talking probably solo to you in this way. So, you know, it's been a lot of work trying to get good guests. You know, we do this all in house. So to structure the interviews, edit, produce, publish is all on me and my team, you know, to get all that done, market it, to get it out there. So it has been a labor of love. And I mean, I've just been, you know, I believe so, so fortunate that as somebody who was really fascinated with hrv, then got really frustrated, that was the commercial apps out there weren't really focusing on the mental health side of this in a, in a scientific way at least. And then, you know, building optimal HRV with Jeff, Dave, Ina, Ben, all have been on the podcast and our great development team, you know, my learning curve has just been supplemented by the opportunity to intervene, interview all these amazing researchers, clinicians around the world who are using this HRV to help help the people that they work with, you know, address chronic disease, improve, you know, public safety, address medical conditions, you know, all these different use cases that we have featured, you know, on every episode of the podcast. While really, I hope sticking to that heart rate variability and is at least definitely 30% of what we talk about. Maybe we always don't get to, hey, we may stray in, but I feel like we always bring it back to HRV or HRV biofeedback, which I've been, been very, very proud to do. So I find myself here at episode 200 in kind of another, you know, it's a nice round number to reflect on, you know, where everything's at. You know, we've had really good constant viewership over the years.
You know, it seems like, you know, we got a thousand or so listeners on a regular basis, which for such a niche Podcast, you know, I'm pretty happy with it. Seems like everybody except for my mom right now has a podcast. So while we're not a Joe Rogan as far as that level of listenership, I think for who we are and who our audience is.
There was a statistic I read once that the average journal article, like 10 or 15 people read it. And if I can help bring those researchers to a thousand more people, one, maybe they'll read the article.
I hope a lot of you have that we talk about, but it just brings the research to a wider audience and I hope in an entertaining and fun way as well. So, you know, I've tried to throw out new ideas over the years. Sometimes I've done my single podcast where I just talk.
Pretty decent feedback on that. Talk to people about, you know, their own practices, which has been a lot of fun as well. And to be frank and honest with you, as we hit the 200 episode, I feel like we need to shift things up again. One is, I don't want to ever be in the position where I'm grasping for guests.
One is because, you know, I don't want to just reach out to you to interview with me because, hey, I'm desperate and maybe you got something new to talk about.
And I kind of was feeling that over the past several months.
I do that in no shape or form. As you look at the guests we've had over the last few weeks, you can say I have not acted on that because we've had some, you know, world class guests on talking about very important topics. So. But I felt that gizzle, who's going to be my. I only got two more weeks of guests, who can I reach out to? And it just, I don't want to hit that level of desperation because what I'm afraid I'm going to do is start to create episodes that might mention heart rate variability, like somebody's doing, you know, training for a 100 mile marathon. And yeah, they look at HRV once a week in their train or something like that. You know, that I want to make sure we keep the focus on heart rate variability. And I'm not sure if that's possible with also holding that, you know, trying to find a guest, a good guest every week to talk about something new.
I don't know if that's going to be sustainable for us going into the future. So. And I want to see again how many episodes we can get out of this because I don't feel at the same time that the podcast is done. I Don't feel that. But I also don't want to feel like, hey, let's sacrifice quality to maintain a weekly podcast with new material. So I've been kind of holding that for a couple of weeks and we're going to try something new. Then whenever we try something new, we're always looking for feedback because if you don't like what we're doing and enough people don't like what we're doing, we'll stop doing it. But one of the things that I really thought could be useful because one of the big issues that I have had is that there's a lot of really great research out there, but not everything's done in English.
I reached out to, you know, dozens over the years of researchers who are honest with me and say, you know, I just don't feel comfortable being interviewed in English. It's not my first second language. I don't feel comfortable doing that.
You know, it's a limiting factor for something that's, you know, really when I, when I open up journals, when I get, you know, alerts on new journal articles on hrv, maybe one out of every four is done in the US or, you know, England or Australia, primarily English speaking country. Being fortunate as my only language being English is that a lot of my guests do speak English because their educational systems taught them different languages, unlike mine. And so, you know, we've been able to cross that a little bit, but it's been limiting in the research that we can provide.
So moving forward, one of the things that we're going to try out here is what we're going to call this week in heart rate variability. And that is doing a, you know, looking at the research and the news of heart rate variability and pushing that out in a kind of newsletter, podcast, ish form. So we're going to publish kind of a newsletter in the form of a
[email protected] so if you'd rather read it, that's going to be there for you. And then we're going to also record a podcast. Probably the 15 to 20 minutes an episode is kind of what we're shooting for. So fairly robust with a review of the research of the week. What, what's been published out there, how, where's HRV made the news? And so really bringing together all of that in a real, you know, hopefully accessible format. So if you want to put that on while you're walking the dog, great. If you want to read it, we will definitely link to all the articles that we mentioned so you can Kind of scan through that, see which ones you might want to get more detail on is we want to be a really good clearinghouse for all the amazing work being done on heart rate variability. I love now with open Source journal is most of these articles, you know, you don't have to have a subscription you can read. And so to link to the ones that you want to read, maybe digging deeper into some of the ones that, you know, are really maybe pushing the field of heart rate variability. But also, you know, looking at the. Maybe some of the smaller, you know, studies that are looking at something specific. You know, I see meta studies coming out all the time and then just looking at heart rate variability in the news.
You know, our biometric here that we talk about is becoming more and more known.
You know, I love it that about every other week I see an article, you know, with somebody being surprised that, you know, you can measure HRV on your Apple watch and this measures your autonomic nervous system. It's, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah, welcome. Welcome to the club.
So I think more and more people, I know, more and more people are getting excited about what we've been excited about for a long time here on the podcast. And I'm just really looking forward to trying this out. And as always, I'd love to get your feedback on this. I hope it's a really good resource. So our plan is. And you know, with this episode, you know, the first week might be a little bit different because if we want to publish this episode to introduce, it is you'll get this week in heart rate variability will hit your podcasting stream on Tuesday.
That kind of gives us Friday and Monday and over the weekend to get everything ready for a good episode published. On Tuesday we tested out this. This makes me laugh.
Whether me reading it or a cloned version of me through AI reading, it sounded better.
I'm humble enough to admit that the AI version sounded a lot better. May not have some of the annoying enthusiasm I have around this stuff, but at the same time, it's better than me. I have a reading disorder too, so I'm not really good at baseline of reading the written word. My team can tell you that. And then, you know, I think even if I was, it's better than me. So it will be. And I'm just full disclosure out here. I'm not going to pretend that that is me reading it, but that is a AI clone version of me reading it. And for the first time, I kind of like my voice.
Whereas when I listen to these episodes.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: I'm like, oh, I'm horrified at my voice.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: So if you hate that, let me know. We have the ability to use other voices as well, but we, we figured, hey, if you're listening to me talk on this one, bam. Might as well keep the voice the same. But we're not going to pretend that that is the live mat because the live mat would make a lot more mistakes and mispronounce every other word. So. But we're going to. We're going to do that through an AI Voiceover also just helps us. If my schedule gets really busy, helps get that.
My goal then becomes is to try to publish an episode every. A new interview episode or one of our other me just talking episodes, you know, every two weeks.
That is not going to be set in stone.
So maybe there'll be an episode each week for a while. There may be three weeks between episodes.
But what we wanted to do here at optimal was to make sure that we're giving, you know, our listeners something to value. And I really do having, you know, really tested out the this week in HRV format in different ways to do it and produce it. I really think we're giving our listeners, you know, hey, put us on while you walk the dog and get updated on the latest research in hrv. And if one strikes your fancy, go to the website. You know, you can get a link to the article and, you know, we can hopefully be that bridge between, you know, the. Our listeners and the research out there. I don't read every article that comes across my desk.
You know, I usually, you know, open it up, read the summaries, because I find pretty much any article written on HRV interesting.
You know, read the results with that. But others I know I really want to go through, okay, how did they set up their study? You know, what are those tangible results? So really giving you the opportunity to dig deeper then as well with again, hopefully the format that we've been using with interviews continues to be a big part of what we do. I really personally enjoy those, you know, and yet I don't want to be desperate for interviews. I don't want to seem that way to the people that I interview. I want to really be prepared for interviews. Sometimes doing it weekly, especially when I get busy, can be really difficult. And as you can imagine, there's been days where I've recorded three podcasts, and then there's been three weeks where I've struggled to find an interview to get one podcast recorded. So it kind of ebbs and flows that way. So spreading these out a little bit, I really hope allows us to keep our quality really strong and gives us just a little bit more flexibility while I think stepping up the value we give to our listeners. So, yeah, we're on this journey with you. If you've been listening to our podcast for a while, one thing you do know about us is we're okay to try new things out. I don't think you get to 200 episodes without trying a few new things out here and there.
So we'll try this out again. I would love your feedback on this and you know, we'll keep learning together. Like I said, you know, I hope we can get to episode 300.
You know, I, I hope so.
200 has been a amazing journey. I think we have more to talk about with HIV because of the great research being done out there. And as always, if you're sitting there, it's like, hey, I know I use HRV in my clinical practice or we just did a small study, I don't know, it's amazing. I reach out to these world class researchers who I like hold up on a pedestal and they're nervous to come on the show and I'm like, just listen to the episode.
So if you're using our heart rate variability professionally in your research, I'd love to talk to you. So don't hesitate to reach out because I think we can be intimidating sometimes with the guests that we do have. However, some of the best reviewed, most listened to episodes are clinicians that maybe using HRV biofeedback for a year because a lot of people who listen to the episode are kind of relate more to a clinician that's new to HRV than one that's been using it for 20 years and published six research studies and a book on it. So please don't hesitate to reach out, you know, and if you're intimidated, just listen to a couple of past episodes.
If anything, like I said, my goals with every episode is to nerd out about heart rate variability and have some fun. So here's to the next hundred episodes.
I can't promise you that, but I'm really hoping that this week at HRV gives us a really nice way to keep giving great content for learning, do it in a multimedia sort of way while continuing to interview just amazing people and amazing researchers. So I want to thank you, the listener, for joining us. Like I said, we, we've kept our numbers pretty steady. Once we got up to, you know, a few thousand listeners a month, you know, did get about thousand listens per episode for such a niche little podcast like ours. Self produced, self edited, I think Omna for helping me with marketing. But you're kind of looking at the staff around this, you know, but the fact that I want to put social media posts up, I do appreciate Amna's help with that. And she's been also great with this week in hrv. So bring in a little bit more of a team support and hopefully continue to provide value for you and grow our audience in the future. So, as always, thank you so much for joining us. You'll be able to find again this week in Heart Rate Variability is going to hit your stream probably in a couple days if everything works out good with publishing. And as always, either it's AI Matt or it's real Matt. We'll see you next week. Take care. Thanks for joining us on this journey.
