[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome, friends, to the heart rate variability podcast. Matt Bennett here. Just to give you a quick introduction, we're going to replay one of our classic episodes with one of my favorite guests, Greg Elliott.
As I mentioned in this episode, Greg was one of my early teachers. He didn't know it at the time. It was all virtual training that I did with him, but it was great to get to talk to him, to explain his expertise.
Greg has always been influential in my thinking about heart rate variability. I still go back to some of the slides I learned from Greg to get really good information over time. So this one was several years ago. So I thought, you know, over the holiday weekend, at least here in the United States, and if you celebrate Thanksgiving, happy Thanksgiving. It'd be a great time just to bring one of my favorite teachers and thinkers on heart rate variability back to the show. So without to do, here is my episode with Greg Elliott. 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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Welcome, friends, to the Heart Rate variability podcast. I am Matt Bitt. I'm here with Greg Elliott today.
Greg, I am so excited to have on the podcast because I can say with great pride that I am a student of Greg's and through the elite Academy's foundation of heart rate variability. As I was trying to figure out how to integrate certain solutions that were on the market into the mental health trauma world, I needed to learn what the heck HRV was and I went to Greg's course.
I believe I watched it twice, and then I kept it on repeat on my dog walks for a few weeks at a time.
It is a great honor to have my teacher and somebody I've really admired over the years and excited to talk about his current work as well. So, Greg, besides being my teacher, I'd love to just do a quick introduction before we start nerding out about your work.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: No, absolutely. Thanks for having me on and it's always great to hear stories of. Again, the main purpose of the course was just be able to get the message out about heart rate variability and kind of the the whole understanding out for people to understand its value from the very basic standpoint. So it's great you got a lot out of it, and I think it's grown a lot of people's companies and spurred new companies and everything that we did. So it was a great little project that Jason and I worked on. I'm glad you definitely got a lot out of it, but yeah, thanks for having me on.
It's been a decade of using heart rate variability. Now I can actually officially say that in clinical practice, I'm an exercise physiologist, kinesiologist, and osteopath in Vancouver, Canada, using heartbeat variability, like I said, for a very long period of time for various types of populations, and really trying to be able to. My main path over the last little while is be able to spread the word about, oh, heart rate variability, mainly to show people how to use it from a practical application. Sometimes it can get a little confusing and a very nuanced in regards to Harvey variability. And so I try to provide some clarity around how can you utilize this marker for your population or for you to kind of get the most out of your health and well being?
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Awesome. So I would love to go back to the beginning, ten years or so ago, what was your. What initially got you excited about heart rate variability?
[00:04:16] Speaker B: So I got introduced to it first in my master's thesis. And so my master's thesis was around noninvasive ways of measuring heart function. And we're trying to validate a specific device during exercise. And so I started reaching researching around various noninvasive ways of measuring heart function in general. And so at the time, Harvey variability was there, I thought it was really cool kind of marker included some of it into my, my thesis into there. And so it was always kind of front of mind. And when I graduated and came back home in 2013, you know, I started seeing it more and more, kind of, you know, come out with the people that I respected into the field and like, okay, well, what is this thing? And like, how is this more applied into kind of the general population into that? And at the time, in 2013, it was, it was really obviously heavily involved with, you know, high performing athletes. You talk about the companies that were around wherever I bioforce by Joel Jameson. You talk about omegawave from their athlete out of the UK. So there was a lot of the all geared around to the high performance aspect of it all. And so me being me, obviously wanted to dive in even more and kind of understand more of what is more about this marker and everything to better understand. And I started to look at majority of the papers and research that was out there and sort of realize it really came from health. It came from overall people suffering from heart attacks or various health issues to deal with the heart in particular. And I was starting to. Well, why is this? And starting to realize the impact that it had on health more than anything. And so I was very intrigued by that and went to go down, met with Joel to kind of get some devices, kind of to be able to play around with what's going on, because the time, it wasn't as accessible as it is today. You had to get a package or an app that costs a significant amount of money. And so I got a few down and started to test with my friends and coworkers and things like that. And my aha. Moment with heart rate variability was I had it on a few of my colleagues at work, and one of them came in one day and said, hey, Greg, my HRV's. And usually I'll just throw numbers around 80, and today it was 50. Like, why is that? Why is that? I feel fine. Everything's normal.
I have no idea. I couldn't tell you. Right? Like, I was just trying to learn what's going on. And I was very kind of like, I have no idea.
And this was really early in the morning. We started 06:00 that this happened. And so it was about an hour after she woke up that she came to work.
Literally an hour or two later, she had to cancel the rest of her day and go home because she was so sick.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: So many symptoms, like stuff nose, all, like, coughing, and literally went home. And I go, oh, wow. Like, it relatively, before she felt any symptoms, was kind of predicting that something was going on with her body.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Right? And I was like, how that, like, how is this possible? Right? So I started to, you know, dig even more into. And that kind of spurred the whole thing of really starting to get understanding how this necessarily could be applied, because at the moment, it's kind of like, it was like, is today already a good day to train or not? Right. I realized that it can indicate something to do with, you know, other than training or something to do with. With inflammation or sickness. I was. I was very intrigued. And that kind of spurred into looking at all sorts of populations into that. And now using it primarily with.
In my practice, it's primarily chronic pain type of populations, people with fibromyalgia, long standing pains where they don't necessarily have anything medically wrong, but there's something dysfunctional that they're going through. That's where I've put my focus into and also supporting people that are looking at all sorts of areas of health.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: Well, what I'm curious about what that. And it sounds like there was a shift from kind of like the peak performance arena to chronic pain, other things that something the average person might encounter at some point in their life. I wonder, what was that transition like as you sort of moved into? Because to me, that's where the real, I think the elite athletes have led the way in this arena and given us, the everyday person, a nice role model to say, well, if LeBron James does this, maybe it's something I can pay attention to in my own life. I'd love to hear, like, as you evolved in your career, just kind of how, you know, HRV went along with you in that evolution.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. I mean, it was very hard initially, especially when talking to different colleagues and different practitioners and things like that. Like I said, you know, there's a lot of people that took the foundation, and so we had, like, cardiologists take the course and be like, oh, I had no idea about this experience.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Like, and I'm like, you haven't learned about this or anything. So it was around for a few decades now. Yeah.
And so, and even to a point of they didn't necessarily realize of how we would translate to clinical practice or how we would work. And so it was a very difficult transition to say from professional standpoint, to get people understanding of kind of what this is. Right. And I'm so happy now that I don't have to go around being like, so heart rate variability is. And go with the super basics, and people go, well, I thought my heart rate was supposed to be like a metronome. And so, like, it's more commonplace now of understanding that we need a more variable heart rate at rest indicates some positive health outcomes. So which was, which was fantastic. So from a professional standpoint, it took a little bit of massaging with people, a little bit of understanding for them to take, you know, take a deep dive into that.
And then from a clinical practice perspective, I just tried to find something, because to me, what the difficulty was is that obviously, with certain conditions that we deal with, we have some objective markers of progress. We have some.
We can look at blood markers, we can look at this and that. For people that are suffering from certain conditions that I was dealing with, whether it's fatigue or chronic pain, things like that, there was nothing for me to be able to determine progress, really, other than what they're telling me. Right, post concussion, all that stuff, the subjective, the diagnoses that rely on subjective measures in order to be able to determine that. So I thought, hey, heart rate variability is a good indication of our overall ability to be in a parasympathetic state, which we know is associated with health and things like that. And started looking at some of the research is that, hey, people that have heart disease or cancers or diabetes have lower heart rate variability, maybe other diseases, it would fit that as well. And so that's where I started putting Harvey variability on people that at the time, there was not a lot of research around saying it would be a benefit. People with chronic pain, people with chronic fatigue, or these kind of, as we quote, invisible type of illnesses, whether it's ptsd or depression, kind of these more mood type of symptomologies to put them on this thing and say, can we use this marker to be able to kind of have an objective marker that we're making the right decisions, we're doing the right stuff, we're doing the right things to making sure that we're on the right track. Right. Because that's a very difficult thing with that type of population, is determine, like, is doing the meditation actually beneficial? Is the breath work you're doing, actually making long term changes? Is the manual therapy I'm providing, is the exercise I'm giving you, is it the right dosage at the right time with the right response? And so this was able to give me some, that kind of very high level feedback from these individuals to give that one marker. And this is what I love about Harvard variability to me is it's kind of that overall umbrella marker that we can kind of look at from a single data point saying things are progressing, are things are not progressing as much.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that and your work, and I'd love for you to talk about at health QB as well.
I love from our conversation, and just like, looking at the work you're doing now, it seems like, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but I think I'm pretty safe to say, a very holistic approach to this. And that's what I love where, like, looking at what you're doing, I just kinda like, yeah, how's heart rate variability sort of fit into what I see with your team now? A real holistic approach to a healthy individual, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, with all. I think you have 30 factors of what you're looking at. I'd love to just see how heart rate variability fits in there.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's, I mean, the big thing about all started with the foundations course was people have an idea of kind of like, from a heart rate variability or health perspective, they have certain silos that they look into, right. It's. And I always ask this, funny enough in any interview that I. For hiring a team member and things like that, I always ask, like, what is health to you? Like, what is. What does it mean to be healthy? Right. And I'm always surprised by the answers, because to me, it's like there's certain things that I would say in regards to what health would be, right. Into a degree where, you know, I get, you know, to the point of, you know, eating the right foods, I get to the point of being happy and content.
I would get to the point of, you know, being around family and having good social. Like, it was always very all over the place in regards to health. Right.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: I.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: And so to look at health as a holistic type of model, you gotta take into all these kind of factors that people need in order to be healthy, right. And so it comprises a lot of the biopsychosocial, spiritual type of components. And so the biggest struggle, and this came from a struggle clinically, to me, was using heart rate variability, doing that type of information, we see something that they have a very low heart rate variability comparatively to their demographics or where they should be, right. But they've optimized their sleep as much as they can. They've done their. Dialed in with the nutrition, are doing 90% of it, of what they should be doing, and they're getting a regular amount of physical activity, but their heart rate variability is still low. Right. And it was like, how do I bridge that conversation of understanding how people's psychological and social habits actually impact their health and well being? Because sometimes with the type of personalities that we deal with, they don't want. Necessarily want to hear that it's their stress management. They don't deal with stress.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Well, imagine not the typical approach, kind of from your at least educational background. And I don't want to, like, say you never think about that stuff, but a definite expansion.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Well, it's not as weighted as heavily.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: That's how I should have put it. Yes. Yeah.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: But it's not weighted as heavily in regards to its impact on people's health and well being. And it's two degrees. Like, absolutely, you can make massive improvements in your health when it comes to looking at your sleep, with your nutrition, and looking at your physical activity, but you can also make massive improvements to your health from the psychosocial aspects of what's going on. And so I want to be able to present that in a non judgmental way because I don't want to go to seeing, go to someone, be like, hey, do you realize that your high power job, that you have a poor relationship with your kids, and the fact that you travel all the time is actually impacting your health even though you're doing some other things that are absolutely fantastic, right. Because it comes across sometimes like almost like a personal attack. I'm like, well, how do I be able to kind of bridge that conversation through a medium that would be able to do that? And to me, it's like through data, right? That's how my head works. And so with the company that we started, I want to be able to have this holistic view of the standardized model of saying, okay, if we looked at everything relative to one another, regardless of its impact on health, can we determine which specific area of your health and well being needs to be addressed more than others? Can we prioritize what's going on purely based on the data that we can accumulate? So it's not like it's my opinion versus theirs is really something that is not judgmental, that their answers of saying, hey, look where you are comparatively where you should be, and let's start to be able to address those things. So that's how kind of everything necessarily came down. And we start to realize the impact of dealing with this holistic type of model on people's health.
And we're seeing obviously phenomenal results. And I think the biggest thing is that people are becoming aware of what health actually means.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I love this, too, because what heart like from, because I come from that mental health perspective, which again, is what. What do we weigh? Well, we weigh heavily. Talk therapy, you know, depression skills, anxiety skill, you know, and what I loved, and your course really challenged me to think this way. And it was one of those initial sparks is like, you know, and then the folks who listen this podcast are going to be tired. That. Yeah, take a drink, everybody. Matt's going to talk about his ceiling. But if I don't talk about, like, sleep movement, you know, nutrition areas I started out with no expertise on, I really set a ceiling on how much I could help people. So it's like it brings where you and I could have existed in the world caring about the same things, but maybe never having a shared vocabulary. This little biometric brings us together to learn from each other. And I just like, that's the whole exciting thing about this journey in so many ways. It's like, oh, there's so much I can learn from Greg that I could actually bring into the mental health world. And now it looks a little different, but it's. Or does Greg inner my treatment team in a different way? And that, to me, is, like, the exciting piece of where we're at is that we're starting to look at the body as sort of this holistic system, and then this rhythm of your heart gives you data on that entire system. And I just find that such a cool place to be in this time that we're in.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Oh, I love it. And, like, again, you know, going through this, you know, from, from a clinical perspective, I always say to the person, you know, based on my assessments, based on the results, I want to make sure they're in the right room. Yeah, I know what I'm good at. Right. Yeah, I. And I am very aware of what I'm not good at. Right. And I want to make sure that, like, if I go down my. With my lens, that we're going down the right path, right. Specific person. Right. And so this is where Harvard variability has been a great feedback mechanism, saying, I'm doing my things. This type of stuff I use in conjunction this kind of holistic marker I can have when it comes to moving. I do my movement data that I have, and I go through that process of going through that. If those things are necessarily improving, but we're not necessarily moving the needle on Harvey variability, and this person's goal is health and longevity, I go, well, maybe we're not doing the right things right now. Let's start to be able to figure out what their areas, you know, it sometimes, you know, with a professional with osteopathy, for me, people go, oh, if I do osteopathy, I can impact the person's health and well being with everything that I possibly can. I have all the tools necessary for me, but in my head, I always went to the point, well, well, how do dietitians help people then? Right, right, exactly. How do sleep therapists, how do clinical counselors, or, like, those people get people better? Right? So, like, I don't have all the tools. It doesn't make sense into what's going on. So how can we collaborate saying, how can we get the person in front of the right type of therapy at the right time to go forward? And so that's, that was always my approach. And, you know, my sessions are. My initial sessions are typically 90 minutes when it comes to. Because I want to. I want to get this background. I want this person's story and understand, of where they're at and where I feel we can be able to kind of go with this individual or say, like, listen, my opinion is you need to go here first. Yeah, go. Go here first. Let's address those things. And then when that practitioner therapist says it's ready to go, that we can come back into this room, we can start with our process, but that, that's where we need to go first.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Right. Well, and I love, too, it's like, well, maybe seeing a dietitian, nutritionist, a therapist, exercise, you know, we're working on the movement and maybe Gargle and take a hot, cold, alternating shower as well. Like, like join a choir. To me, as a mental health, like, that's what it's like. Maybe a choir might. I mean, you got that social coherent. I mean, it's just like, it opens up all these things. And I've never been a fan of the gag reflex one, but, like, gargle. Like gargle. Like, so, I mean, there's so many doors that open with this that I just think it's like we're discovering different things about, like, different approaches, I think, to overall health healing, and I think even disease of looking at this at different, different levels that I really hope will change the western approach to the medical model. And I don't, like, demonize the medical model because it saved so many lives yet. I think there is so much that this challenges that sort of symptomatic diagnosed. There's one treatment approach that I just don't think works for so many people.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's intriguing. Like when, you know, I just saw something that hospitals were designed for when people have these kind of, like, big injuries or big illnesses or big sicknesses. Right. And it's obviously being come by our behaviors and how we're dealing with, you know, life in general, how our life is, is that these behaviors are breeding these chronic diseases. Like, you're not supposed to be at a hospital for, like, to be there and stay there.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: You're designed to go there, get something, and then leave and be done.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: Right. That's, that's the whole point of hospitals is in and out. Right. And we create this model where people are just, like, constantly there in a constant time because of these, these development of these chronic diseases over that. And. And some of the stats that are kind of, like, shocking to me was, you know, there's a postal medicine doctor that showed the study where the fact that 93% of Americans now are classified as metabolically unhealthy.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Right. And to me, the even more shocking factor is there was a big study being done that looked at some just very easy predominant health behaviors. When you talk about not smoking, having a relative balanced diet, getting a minimum amount of physical activity and exercise. Um, and, and, uh, I can't remember the, the last one. Um, but there was like four factors. I'll send you the studies so we can post it in show notes. But there's these four predominant factors that show, like, hey, if you do these things, like, you know, you're mitigating a lot of risk of chronic diseases. And they did a study of like 5000 Americans to see, like, how many actually people did these things. Yeah. And you know, how many people actually, percentage wise, how many people actually did all, like, for these basic behaviors, it was 2.7%.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Oh, gosh, I was going to guess ten, 2.7%.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Right. Do all the basic four fundamental health behaviors. Right. And they looked at the study and they go, well, how many people did none of them, like, how many people didn't engage in any of those things? 11%. So four times as many people didn't do any of these health behaviors. Not one of them, comparatively to only 2.77, did all four. Right. So it's like you're looking at like 97% of the population is doing some sort of behavior that's increasing the risk of development of chronic diseases.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah.
I wonder. So I have a couple just like, questions I have to ask my teacher as a follow up to the course. So one is, I would love to get, because it just seems to me like something we need to learn to talk about that. Every research study I've come out with, and I've done some, like, in of one studies on myself, alcohol, like that, that to me is like, I'm starting to think about it and I know people again, it's like Matt's talking about, but it's like, it does seem like it's. Smoking was when I was young, like, you used to be able to smoke on a plane, for goodness sakes, of restaurants, you know, and even when I was like, bar going age, you know, you had almost come home and burn your clothes after you went out because it was so disgusting. I wonder, like, I'd love to get your opinion because I believe you mentioned, I mean, alcohol doesn't get any props in the heart rate variability world. And I just kind of wonder how you approach this with folks, because I'm starting to see it as a toxic thing that is, we put in our body. And I just, I gotta take. I gotta take advantage of my time with you to get your thoughts on this, Evan.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Actually, a good case example about this is that we have somebody on our system that was suffering for fibromyalgia, and she used alcohol for 13 years as a coping mechanism. Yeah.
And she understood that it may not be the best thing for help because. But it's a way for me to deal with my pain. Right. Like, so she goes and stop. She started monitoring her HRV. Yeah. And she started to realize the nights that she drank, they started to see the absolute tanking that she had in regards to heart rate variability. Right. And she's like, it was unbelievable to see the absolute change in my health from an objective standpoint. And from that, it is now, since October 31, she has not had a drink since.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: Right. And so, like, it's one of those. And Health Canada just came out to the point of, like, oh, there's like, oh, maybe one drink, you know, this, or a couple drinks a week. Health Canada just came out and said, no drinks.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Like, no. Like, it's. To a point, it's like, there's no benefit. Right.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: And because there were, like, at times of two drinks a day, I mean, binary gender roles here, but two for men, one for women.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: Was supposed to be, quote, good for you. That message that was out there for.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: Quite a while, even something relatively releasing, like the blue zone diets. Right. They said it's like the alcohol consumption is a part of that. Now, I obviously think that personally has to do with more the social aspect of the alcohol than itself. And it's not to the point that they're having, you know, many drinks. It may just have a glass of wine, but that social kind of component of what's going on from that perspective.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: It'S not like that's the only area I also see hanging on. And I know I've never seen any explanation of why that might be uninformed people. Still, again. And I'm. I judge being a mental health person, talking alimizo, but, like, okay, like, thin's the blood, maybe, but does it. I think when I hear the blue folks talk, the blue zone folks, I was like, yeah, I looked at the research on this. Like, yeah. And they practice so much other healthy stuff that that doesn't. That gets kind of, uh, shifted out on the negative category, maybe.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Totally. And I'm starting to see from the ground, grassroots, you know, like, you see certain grassroots movements around various things. Right. You know, kind of early on with the mental health, you know, push that. That was, uh, you know, before COVID and really exponentially before COVID and just certain things, you start to see that just trending in certain directions. And for sure, when you talk about the high performing individuals and people that are kind of at the forefront, starting to grow, things that are kind of like the CEO's of big companies that are relatively young, you're starting to see to the point of like, uh, no alcohol for me. Like, I've stopped. Yeah, right. And you start to see that more and more that message come through where people are going to alcohol free and you're showing the difficult transition that they're having in a social setting of saying, because, you know, the number one thing people go and they like, you go to a social setting and like, oh, I don't drink. You usually think of like, there's a reason why. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: That, that in I'm also eat a plant based diet just for wide. The two things I hate most talking about, like, because everybody's doing it while you have to talk about how bad they're, you know, it's just like, it is the social aspect.
That's why I'm all for having kombucha on tap. Because I like to say, give Matt a special drink too. We're all good. Like, make Matt drink water while you're having a nice IPA. Matt gets a little jealous, but as long as Matt gets his special drink too, we're all good.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: Yeah, no, but you're starting to see it push a lot more. Even you can see, even with our company, you'll see people more and more having that kind of alcohol free lifestyle and seeing more acceptable and people just. Yeah, as more research comes out, it's starting to detrimental facts of doing it on the chronic basis or even to the point of doing it, once you start to see what it actually does to your body. HIV is a phenomenal feedback mechanism. I remember back in the day where I'm at in my clinical practice, which is fit to train in Vancouver where we were all measuring heart rate variability. We had a company party one night, and then everyone's setting everyone's HRV results through the group messaging of like, oh, look at the graph, look what's going on, and you see the impacts of what it has in your body.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Right? Absolutely amazing thing. So I would also love to know because it's been a few years now since that foundation training came out, and I think that and a lot of other factors have. Heart rate variability is more pervasive. I mean, you have a student here who started the heart rate variability podcast in part thanks. Due to your education of me and getting excited about this in the mental health arena, I'd love to. What do you think the current state of HRV? As somebody who's been really involved in this for ten plus years now, we got the Apple Watch out there. We got. Yeah. Who's like me who got excited about this now too? There's probably a lot more company, for better or worse, but I just love, if you looked at the current state of this biometric, I love the good, the bad, the ugly, where you see the current state being.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: Yeah. I think the good is the fact that it's becoming more mainstream in regards to the regular consumer understanding, you know, the value of this type of metric. I think that's a good. I think the good is obviously accessibility as well when it comes to various devices coming out in the market is they're coming out, people are saying that they're measuring it and so people are being privy to this type of information, which is great.
I mean, the bad part is obviously there's still a lot of education needs to be done for the regulating consumer to understand of what this, this marker is and how much of value it could be. I think because, and this is one of the things that I was trying to be able to, or trying to be able to solve is the fact that, you know, you, you have a device that measures heartbreak, variability, but there's so much data in there. There's so much data in regards to respiration rate and steps and activity levels and Fitbit with their activity points. And, you know, there's, there's so much data that's in there. Right. And we know through, you know, people monitoring their health through variables like actionability of data and interpretation of data are the two biggest reasons why people abandon it, is they just don't know what to do with the data. And then this is like, well, what is this data like? What is the value? So it's kind of convoluted and it's kind of put in there without necessarily highlighting its value comparatively to the other metrics and kind of where it sits in conjunction of it all that's to be that. And another, the bad part is obviously the, as it gets out there, more accessible, the kind of the quality of the HIV data coming through. I just tested a wearable product. I had four on at one point. And yeah, my team calls me something. It was the human cyborg version too, wearing all these devices and things like that. And you start to be able to see of, like, even the messaging there from the company, even the fact of, like, the engineering is there for the company. The data that comes in and spits out, you're like, you can't use this comparatively. It's like, it's so far off in regards to its, its actual metrics, it's like, ah. Like it's, you know, people are trying to jump the bandwagons, but it's kind of decreasing the quality of the data necessarily that comes out.
So that's be the. And then the ugly portion of it all. I don't necessarily that there's too much of the ugly component of it all, but I think, I think, I think obviously, the application of Harvey Beer, the actionability is something that seems to be still very segmented in the fact of, like, people have these narrow views and narrow scopes into how to best improve and have, have certain things. And, like, again, like, I've seen when you talk about interventions that work for people, like, it's all over the map. Like, for me, I remember actually, one of the ones that improved my Harvard variability at specific time was being more social. Right. And not social drinking, but just interacting with people and being more social. I've had it where people have done it, obviously, through constant meditation, through cold shower, ice baths, from journaling. I've seen someone actually have 100% increase in their heart rate variability.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: At least an ex practicing therapist. Smile.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And this is, and when I tell that story about the journaling person, and I'll give a little case study here, but, like, when you start to tell the people in the athlete population of it all, or kind of more that kind of meta biomedical side, they're like, really? Like, I always, when I bring that example up, like, they're just dumbfounded about, like, how something like that could be a benefit. So give a little bit of a backstory. This is a user that was wearing a wearable for many months, right. And she's 38, so she's the wife of an ex professional hockey player, you know, very well off, you know, a few kids, and. But she got Lyme's disease and has been suffering consequences of that. Right. And so one of the reasons, you know, working with our team members, she got a wearable, started to be able to kind of monitor HRV in for months, like two, almost three months of data prior to us doing anything, really. She never had a score above 30 milliseconds in RMSSD, right?
[00:35:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Great diet, physically active, sees all the practitioners, the kind of naturopaths and doctors and this and that, to kind of overcome various things.
Tries to get a decent amount of sleep every single night and things like that. And everything seemed to be good. And I won't give too much away in regards to the case study, but it had to do more with, like, understanding her emotions and expressing them in a more positive way of getting out rather than internalizing everything. And so having that purpose and doing that with journaling, she had a month where her score was an average of 45 when never having anything higher than 30 ever. Yeah, right. And that was the only major change, was being to do that and have conversations with her husband on certain issues and blah, blah, blah. It was that. That weight off her shoulders of having some time for her to do that and making her feel more value. Boom. Is like, all of a sudden, you. You see that. That increase in stay. You're like, okay, there it is.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: Well, what a motivator, too, to get data at that level on that, that behavioral adjustment.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: Well, that's the thing is like, she's like, I've done journaling in the past, and, like, I don't know if it was a benefit. And this is the thing, is that, like, she saw this data change, she kind of goes, oh, I guess. Oh, I guess. Okay. Well, now noticing it's like that feedback that people needed to be able to. To be able to continue that. And she obviously continues that to this day. But it's such a. It's such an important feedback mechanism for people that have these more of a subjective or non, non medical diagnostic from an objective standpoint metric to be able to kind of go off. Just go off of how they feel.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So the final question I have for you until your answer brings up two or three more. But the final one I have to ask you is, where do you see us 510 years from now? Where do you, as you look into the future, obviously, you're a part of that future, doing some amazing work. Where do you see this going?
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I see, you know, Harvey variability being more integrated in regards to out of, out of clinic, out of patient type of care. Like, very much to the point of it's a great, easy to obtain behavior modification tool that we can be able to assist people in supporting the right behavior change and decisions. I don't think the future is in diagnostics in regards to diagnosing various things. I don't think it'd be as specific as that. But from a holistic type of marker, I seen this being an absolutely fantastic way, an easy measurement to obtain to be able to. Making sure that people are doing the right things, making the right choices and just to be aware of their health at various moments. Right. When you talk about like, you know, as people come out with more of these continuous, continuous wearables, that kind of emerging things, it can indicate of saying, hey, are you stressed right now? Calm down. Take these brass. Like what leaf is trying to be able to do in regards to their, their software. Yeah, you know, you talk about, you know, overall, you know, making sure that we recover through the day in regards to nocturnal captures of heart rate variability and you know, making sure that indicating, hey, you know, your body didn't fully recover. Make sure that you do this and that today or, you know, whatever. Right. It's, it's more that out of clinic decision making for people to make the right choices and the right decisions and hopefully kind of going towards that more that prevention type of model. So we hopefully start to be able to shift some of this, you know, the progression these kind of chronic diseases that are becoming more rampant, be able to kind of control those things, you know, outside of having to be in a specific facility meeting with an individual all the time. It's that access to higher quality care for people, especially in remote populations, are people that may not be as financially well off to be able to spend the money to go see somebody about something, but making healthcare more accessible to everybody at a very high level to understand what they need to do to kind of be their own advocate for their health and wellbeing and then use that feedback with heart rate variability to kind of help them guide the right decisions. So that's where I kind of see a big push for heart rate variability in particular when it comes to improving overall quality of life.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: Love it. I could ask a million more questions, but I think you ended on such a beautiful note there. I will not ruin that with a five minute question that I'll just ramble on with. So we'll put information links into the show notes. Just if somebody's listening to this, they're in the car. Where can they find out more about you and your work?
[00:39:40] Speaker B: Yeah, so our startup company is called Healthqb. So it's yourhealthqb.com dot. We're there. We're kind of in kind of beta stage in regards to what's going on. So you can kind of check out that obviously the foundations of Harvey variability course there at the elite HRV academy. You can find them there. Last part, from a clinical standpoint, I work out of a company called Fit to train. They're in Vancouver. So from a clinical aspect, that's where you can find me as well. All my information is there to be able to contact me, LinkedIn and Instagram and all that type of stuff, to be able to find me. I'm pretty accessible when it comes to that stuff. So any questions, I'll be shooting my way. I'd love to be able to talk to anybody that's interested in this stuff. And I just want to say, Matt, I want you to keep up the phenomenal work that you're doing trying to promote this stuff again, like, you're fighting the good fights of trying to get this out there to people understand of how to take control of all their lives. And again, my hope of the course is to be able to inspire people like you, to be able to go out and be able to support this message, to be able to continue to grow it. Right. It's just I wanted to facilitate this type of conversation to be had, be able to keep going. So I'm obviously absolutely loving the work that you're doing, so please keep up with it. And as I kind of always say, at the end of whether it's podcasts, webinars, and things, I want to take a. Thank you, everybody that's listening, to take the time out of your day, whether it's I know you're taking time away from doing work or being with family or whatever necessarily may be, I want to thank matt, you, and obviously the listeners of taking the time to be able to sit down with us to learn more about harvey variability and how to best help your health.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you so much. One of the great things about the journey you started me on is to share that. I think as somebody who does a has made my living over the last decade, decade and a half just doing trainings, you sometimes throw out seeds. I see that. And sometimes they hit fertile ground, and I see that person doing amazing work. Other times, it may need a wind to blow it and it ends up somewhere else. But I thank you for planning this passion within me and really giving a concrete direction to go. And then I just. I love the journey that I hit a point in this, that you reached out to me kind of in a non related way to ask a question. I had. I was like, ooh, I got Greg. And I shared with my teammates. Like, Greg reached out to me. They're like the course guy.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: I'm like, yeah.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: So I've got. I'll just shout out to my team, especially Doctor Dave Hopper, a little bit jealous. I got to do this interview, but I just want to thank you for all the great work you've done, and it is an honor to be a student of yours, and I'm excited to continue to learn from the great work that you're doing.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: No, Brian. Peg. Gotcha. I'm excited for what you guys are doing as well, so this is great.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, as long as you can find show notes, optimal HRV podcast, optimalhrb.com. we'll put all Greg's links in there, too, so you can get ahold of him and Greg audience, thank you so very much, and we'll see you next week.
