[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
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[00:00:32] Speaker B: Welcome, friends, to the Heart Rate variability podcast. I am back here with my good friend, partner and author of his second book, Dr. David Hopper. Dr. Dave, welcome back to the show, a show that you've hosted many times in the past.
How are you doing, my friend? How is life?
[00:00:53] Speaker C: Life is really great and thank you, Matt. These are always so much fun to do. So I'm extremely happy to be chatting with you on a podcast again, and especially when we get to talk about a fun topic like heart rate variability, our favorite and chiropractic, one of my other favorites.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. So I know I held the book up. I will hold it up for our YouTube watchers there. But on Amazon you will be able to find in paperback and in kindle format heart rate variability for chiropractors, a simple guide to understanding and using HRV in practice by Dr. David Hopper. So going through the book, I love it as a simple guide for chiropractors. And I know you've been doing a lot of training for different chiropractic associations across the country. So I just kind of want to start out by what have you been learning from that experience? I don't think you've really been on the podcast. We haven't talked about it, at least since you've really ramped up the training side of your work. So just as you go around, probably introduce HRV to some chiropractors, maybe get them thinking about implementing it in just kind of what are some of the lessons from the road, so to speak?
[00:02:16] Speaker C: So it's very interesting because there's a very clear division, and it is people who have never heard of HRV before and people who use it but don't understand it, that pretty much makes up the two groups of people using heart rate variability.
At least that's what I get.
So it's really fun doing these trainings because I get a lot of very interesting questions and I get to teach a bit. So I teach hour long trainings, and I've done that for many of the chiropractic associations across the country at this point.
And we give them a really good introduction a really good overview of what HRV is and the beginnings of how you can use that in practice. And then I do have an online course that I offer that they can take extended to get more in depth training. But actually, the reason why I ended up doing this book, Matt, was because I had so many people who would ask me some of these more basic questions about HRV. And I kept answering the same questions over and over again and finally made me say, you know what? Let me just write a quick guide on how to just do this.
That is what motivated me here and what helped me answer a lot of these questions in a much simpler way.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Awesome. So I would love from the chiropractic perspective, I know our listeners vary across a range of different professions, but from the chiropractic perspective, and then we can maybe generalize a little bit, too. I love section three of your book being the nervous system led care and a concept that I loved. I know I've used HRV informed care in the past when talking about mental health, but from a chiropractic perspective, again. And I know it's been a long time since our first episode where I'm kind of wondering what a guy who helps me align my back, why do they care about my heart? And I've learned from you a lot more about the integrative, holistic approach of chiropractic care and have come to appreciate that. But when you use the concept of nervous system led care and chiropractic care, tell me what you're talking about there. Help define that for our audience.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: Well, absolutely.
First, let's talk about that in general, why would we care about heart rate variability? So to take a step back and just do some generalizations, right. Heart rate variability is looking at the function of the autonomic nervous system. And specifically, we're looking at vagal tone with that. So when we are doing chiropractic care and for most types of therapy, what we are doing is we're affecting the nervous system, and that's what we care about. That's why we want to know is, are we making a positive change or a negative change? What does this look like in recession, and what does this look like over a longer time period? And by measuring heart rate variability, we can get answers to those questions. We can see if the things that we are recommending, whether that be lifestyle changes or therapeutic interventions, we can actually see if these things are making a positive impact on this person. So when we say nervous system led care, what we're saying is that, well, nervous system runs your body. And if that isn't behaving well, if that isn't doing its job to the best of its ability, nothing else is going to really function great.
So we need to listen to that first. So when we get a patient in the door and we measure their nervous system, and we measure their autonomic nervous system specifically using heart rate variability, then we know where this person is at. And then as we begin our care, it's going to inform us about how we are affecting that nervous system. So let's start with the moment a patient walks in the.
And I know I've said this on past episodes, but what I try to do is I try to get patients to start collecting their heart rate variability even a week before they step in my door. So right when they call for their new patient exam, I say, martha, let's have you come in, and you're going to pick up an HRV reader, and you are going to start taking your readings every single day until we start seeing you. Now, we know we have a shot of what this person actually looks like in real life before we ever put hands on them. So we know where their nervous system is at. Now, how that helps us as therapists is, we know that somebody with a high heart rate variability is going to respond faster to care and they're going to respond better to care now. And the opposite is also true. Somebody who has low heart rate variability is going to take longer to respond to the same therapy. So just from a programming standpoint, right, that helps us so much more. With frequency of care and length of care plan, we can estimate that way better. Just understanding where this person is walking in the door. And then when we get into nervous system led care, well, that's just what we've been talking about, which is let's see how they're actually reacting once we start the process. And we can see if we're putting the gas pedal on too hard, right? Like, if we're doing too much for this person and it's actually decreasing their HRV, or if we're doing just the right amount to where we can see this person gradually increasing in HRV, or at least maintaining the same, but we see symptoms, we see symptoms, unfavorable symptoms, for that matter, disappear as we go through care.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: I love that. Let me ask you, I want to dig into what you said just a little bit deeper because it's something that I haven't seen research on.
I'm going to just throw an assumption out there. When I think about mental health care. I would assume if I got somebody coming in with a low HRV baseline, I'm almost set up to succeed pretty quickly because hopefully I could get them with some interventions, psychological, maybe talking about movement extra, that I might see, get some big jumps pretty quickly. It's almost set up to like, if the team's doing horrible, you throw me in the game, I can't make it worse, maybe I can make it better. But you're seeing that the higher. Again, chiropractic care and mental health care are. We're working on the nervous system, but in very different ways. But you're actually seeing the higher rate is getting better results quicker than someone with lower HRV. And I wanted to throw that out there. Maybe you can unpack it or throw some insight about why that might be happening.
[00:09:25] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely.
What we look at with that is because you might actually see quite the opposite from your assumption in that somebody who has a very low HRV, even though when they walk in the door, you say, yeah, exactly. Well, what I can do can only make this better, certainly, but it might take that person a lot longer to actually begin to respond because their nervous system isn't in a state where it's ready. So I like to say that we're all Lamborghinis, right? So our nervous system is a Lamborghini, right.
And depending on what we put into that Lamborghini depends on how well that Lamborghini is going to perform. Right.
If you have a Lamborghini that's been fed garbage its whole life, right?
That's lack of movement, that's poor sleep, that's poor breathing, that's the list goes on and on and on. Right.
This person is going to walk in with a very low HRV. They have the potential to perform very high, but it's going to take them a while to get all those repairs done, to get to performing at that level. Whereas somebody who walks in with a high HRV, well, that's a Lamborghini that's not too far away from performing great. So it's a much shorter distance to get that person back on track, to get that person performing really well. It's a difference between if we're using the car analogies, between needing an oil change and needing a new engine. Right, exactly.
We can look at it that way. But without a doubt, the people with the lower HRV, although there's a lot more to work on, the response is going to be a lot slower in general.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: And do you see that with the physical healing?
I'm assuming that's kind of what we're talking about here, but you see a higher heart rate variability. Let's say somebody with like me, for example, is pretty good for my age group and demographics. At least I'm a rock star with HRV because I'm a nerd and I hyper focus on it. But I was snowboarding like an 18 year old this weekend and mistaked a powder boulder for a powder stash, which, if you've ever snowboarded, you handle rocks differently than a four foot pile of snow. And I threw pretty much everything out. At my age, if you jump 4ft in the air and slam into the ground, everything hurts. It's like for some reason my triceps are beyond sore. So you get a yahoo like me with a fairly strong HRV for his age. I come into you and say, man, I hit a boulder. Dave, you're probably going to have better results for me than, hey, I'm not living a healthy lifestyle. I hit the same rock in the same way, fall down that Matt. That version of Matt is probably going to take a little longer to heal than the rock star that I humbly am.
[00:12:51] Speaker C: Well, I'm glad that you're self identifying as a rock bar and that you are, Matt, that you are, but 100%, exactly like you said, somebody with a higher HRV is going to respond better and they're going to respond faster. And if you look at the research and you look at HRV predictions with anything, it's going to show you from just about any disease, any kind of mortality, the lower your HRV is, the worse the predicted outcome.
With the exception of.
Why is it escaping me what Janelle works on?
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Eating. Yeah. Disordered eating.
[00:13:47] Speaker C: Yeah. Her eating disorders. Yes. Yeah. That is the only exception.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: It's absolutely fascinating. We'll have to do a show, I'm trying to get her on an episode, but is weirdly fascinating what she's finding.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. What you said, though, is 100% true.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: So I would love to kind of use the rest of the episode because again, the book does a great job of what is heart rate variability, how to measure it, things that you and I have actually talked about quite a bit on the podcast over the years. I would love to explore both in your book, section four, and also just through your work with chiropractors. And I know you also, it's not just chiropractors that you talk to, you work with as well, but this idea, especially for the professionals out there, of integrating HRV into care in a profitable way, because there is some upfront probably expense, whether that's $10,000 biofeedback machine or our $50 reader, that there's some expense there probably for the professional, even if it's minor. So how do you help people who, maybe they're one of those folks that you're introducing HRV to, how do you help them? Think about it from sort of that business perspective, with the ultimate goal of, yeah, sure, it's great to make money, and making money allows you to run a business, but you're also obviously making money by improving the patient experience and the patient's outcomes at the same time. So I would love to kind of explore with you how you kind of talk to folks about integrating HRV into their chiropractic work.
[00:15:49] Speaker C: Yeah, so I do get this question a lot. And number one is, I don't even make it an option. It's not even a question of whether or not they're going to be using HRV measuring throughout care. It's just built into their plans, and that takes out people who would say, oh, well, this all sounds good, but I think I won't do that.
So just build it into the cost of the care plans. And I build in a device into the cost of the care plans as well, actually into their initial visit.
With that, though, to rewind for a second, like you had said, it used to be where it was tens of thousands of dollars to use this. And that's why HRV was not so popular.
When I first came out of school, there was basically one option for using HRV in your practice, and that was several thousand dollars.
And that's what I did. I bought that.
And there are many doctors out there still using that particular device and several other like it. And don't get me wrong, it's a great device. It does a really good job.
And they still do, like the big, bulky, expensive ones. They still do a great job. It's just the technology has advanced to the point where, like, what you just held up our reader as. I'll hold up. Right, there we go. Yeah. So our reader you can get for $50 and you can get the same level of data.
So it's pretty amazing that we're at that time, but it makes the hurdle, the financial hurdle anyway, much less so that when you're a chiropractor thinking about getting into this, if you buy a box of ten of these, ten or more, you get a discount.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: You do. Good job, Dave. Good job.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: Right.
So it's pretty easy to cross that hurdle and justify. Okay, I'm going to spend $500 as my entry fee rather than $5,000 as my entry fee. It's quite a bit different.
And then, especially as each patient comes in, you knock that away, right? Because each patient is buying one of those devices as they come in, then there's the ongoing with it, too. So if I'm monitoring a patient's HRV, if I'm looking at that every single week, and in some cases, if it's somebody that I'm particularly concerned about, I may even be looking at that on a daily basis.
Very easy to check that.
And I do like to, again, look at, we did an awesome job with our dashboard where it's very simple to check a patient's HRV.
It's right there every single morning. You just glance at it and we can see their trends, we can see where they're going. And to charge for that is easy. You build that into the price of your adjustments.
You build that into the price of your packages if that's how you run things at your office. So it's very easy. We're integrating these fees into there.
Now, the other thing is, after, in chiropractic specifically, we're going to be seeing people typically at a higher frequency in the beginning of care than we're going to be seeing them at the end of care or when they go into a maintenance type of care plan, what I do with patients is I put them onto a fee where I'm just checking. I'm looking at their HRV, and they're paying a very small fee. But what's really cool about that is that's my reason to call them up and say, hey, Matt, your HRV has been down for three days. How are you doing?
And Matt says, you know what? It's funny that you called me. I'm not doing that. Well, here's what happened. And I. Okay, well, let's get you back in here. Let's take care of that, right? It's a great mean. You're literally monitoring this person's health from a distance, and it pays for itself in that regard.
When I can reactivate a patient, get them back on a care plan, because this person isn't doing well, they need my help at that point. And then we get them back to a good place, and then Matt can go on his lovely way. And then if I get alerted again that Matt's not doing well, and we see his trend going down. All right, then I'm going to reach out to Matt again.
We're going to help him out.
And another big thing that I talk about a lot is that it opens up the door to other conversations.
So a lot of patients won't tell their specific doctor about something that's going on in their life.
As a therapist, people put you in this box as these are the only things that a therapist can help me out with. Right. So people aren't going to tell their therapist that their triceps are sore from snowboarding. Right. Because in most people's heads, that has nothing to do with their therapy. Right, right.
Just like people, a lot of people aren't going to tell their chiropractor about the fact that maybe they didn't sleep well. Right. Or maybe that their bed partner doesn't sleep well because it has nothing to do with why they're seeing me. But when we see an HRV trend that isn't making sense for this person, it's so easy to call that out and say, well, what else is going on? Why aren't we seeing the improvements that we would expect to see? We're doing everything right. You're doing everything right. What's the missing ingredient? Well, my husband is a really loud snore and it keeps me up all night. Oh, okay. Let's talk about that. And it gives us an opportunity. Right. And same with the therapist who says that, well, I had this snowboarding trip and I had this horrible fall, and I'm super sore all over. Okay, well, I might be your therapist, maybe I can't help you with that, but I know this great doctor who can.
So let's take care of that. Because again, we're not just parts.
If we look at our patients as individual parts, we're not going to get anywhere. But if we're caring for everybody as a whole, which is what HRV really helps us out with, then we get awesome results. So that's another huge, powerful piece of using HRV.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: I love it.
I always love to ask authors this question.
One of the things I love about writing books and with you publishing this, it's kind of kicked me in the butt. I've got a 10th anniversary or a second edition of my first book that I need to get out. 2016. 2017. So I'm working on outline. So you've really inspired me. It's like, oh, man, I want to publish another book. It's so much fun. But one of the things I love about it, which is I find different than doing a training, which I also love people having to listen to me talk, I'll never get sick of that. But you think about things a little differently. You got to think deeply what concepts follow other concepts and what. I have always found that when I'm done writing a book, I think about things a little bit different. I get insights along the way that obviously then inform how I deliver trainings or how I talk about different subjects. And I just kind of wonder with your first solo effort on heart rate variability for chiropractors, just kind of what that process was like for you. Any insights that sort of came out of your process in getting this book published?
[00:24:03] Speaker C: So the process, fortune, wasn't all that horrible? Well, one, because hurry. Variability is something that I just really think about all day and dream about at night.
But I had developed an entire course for heart rate variability and it was pretty easy to take that outline.
Granted, that took a lot of insight and a lot of thought to come up with that entire course and to do that entire course.
So I took that course and just basically smashed that outline down and took the biggest concepts out of that course and made that into this book. So that really helped in making the process not that bad to think about because I had already done all the hard thinking when I was developing the course. So I took all the biggest concepts out of that and threw them in here. And then I made it specific, really, as you read through, although it says for chiropractors, it really applies to every healthcare practitioner.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: I was going to mention that. Yeah.
Yes, chiropractors and everybody else, right?
[00:25:32] Speaker C: Yeah. So fortunately for me, that wasn't all that bad of a brainstorming process there.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Excellent. So I just want one more plug for Dave's book. Again, heart rate variability for chiropractors. I got my print copy on Amazon. I know there's a Kindle version out there as well. Anything else you want people to know about the book before we wrap up, Dave?
[00:26:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
If you get one, make sure you leave me a five star review whether you've read it or received it or not.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: I realize I should have done that the moment I got it. So I will go do that exact thing once we get off here. So, Dave, congratulations.
When I googled heart rate variability, I saw our book. My book, your book, all right there, which just put a smile on my face. It's just such an honor to work with brilliant people like yourself, and I think you've given chiropractors and again, everybody else who breathes a really good, simple, accessible way to integrate HRV into their own life and their own way of thinking about their own health and if they're a professional, their practice as well. So congratulations, my friend. Always great to have you on the show. So you put a huge smile on my face when, like I said, this came to my door and I could hold it. I love holding books in my hand, whether it's my book or people that I truly value in my life. It's just so fun. I know like probably 1000 people who have written a book, but there's no book out there for me to buy. So I know that it's a big process. So congratulations, my friend.
[00:27:34] Speaker C: Well, thank you so much. And you were a huge motivation for this. So thank you, Matt.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Thank you. Hey, as always, you can find show notes, other
[email protected]. Everybody. Thanks for listening. And Dave, thanks for joining us. And we'll see you next week.
