[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability podcast.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: Each week we talk about heart rate.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: 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 Matt Bennett. I'm here with a very special guest today who I am excited to talk about. Joey, I want to welcome you to the show. I'm excited to dig into your areas, use of heart rate variability in your life and how you think about overall health and wellness. So to start us out, why don't you give us just a quick introduction of yourself.
[00:00:58] Speaker C: Hey, my name is Joey. Thanks for having me here. So I was a firefighter paramedic for about twelve years, and that's kind of where I got interested in HRV, was educated on the nervous system, sympathetic, parasympathetic, all of that. And through my career as a fire service, I ended up getting diagnosed with PTSD. And HRV was an instrumental device for me to kind of track how my healing process was going. And it gave me a window into understanding some more holistic practices like breath work, ice bath, things like Tai Chi, meditation. And it allowed me to track the effects those things were having because sometimes those more holistic approaches are a little less easy to nail down in a scientific way. So HRV, I think, allows you a window into some of these more alternative practices.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
If you don't mind me asking, I'd love to talk about your journey sort of into this.
Knowing some of my best friends, firefighters I've known, paramedics, thank you for your service with that, because I know the exposure to trauma in those occupations and I would imagine too, at least for the folks I know, the schedule, sleep quality, like, there's so many challenges to that work and then you put trauma on top of it, that I know it can just be devastating because the nervous system is somewhat already vulnerable due to scheduling and overnights and different kind of shift work. So if you don't mind sharing, sort of, not necessarily not share about your trauma, but sort of when HRV came into your healing and how that sort of informed your journey to what I hear in your voice now, something I like to call post traumatic growth.
[00:03:17] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So I got diagnosed, I guess about almost three years ago, and it was about probably a year or so of doing a more traditional pharmaceutical driven route toward healing. And it wasn't until I read the book the body keeps the score and started to explore that kind of route towards healing trauma, understanding that these effects are basically an energetic shock to the system.
And once I put that together, I understood PTSD as a dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system. And then when I discovered HRV and how it's literally a measurement of the autonomic nervous system, I started to try do the meditation, do the breath work, do the ice bath. I experimented with Tre and somatic experiences, these approaches to releasing this stored trauma that is inherent from doing these jobs, like you said, on top of the lack of sleep and the poor food quality and all the negative coping strategies. So probably two years into my healing journey, I figured out HRV. I was already doing these other methods and was feeling results, but HRV showed me, I saw my score improving and I would see it go down when I would skip some of these practices or let my stress kind of build up on me.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Excellent. And I kind of wondered in that journey too, were you tracking your HRV every morning as well? Were you doing that tracking? And I wonder what you saw as you sort of implemented some of these, really their best practices. Now, as I like to say, as a mental health professional, therapy is cool nowadays because you kind of think of know the old, old school, somebody's laying on the couch.
The newer school was, you were sitting in a chair. I was sitting in a chair. Now the movement stuff, Peter Levine, vessel Vanderkall all these great researchers finding these alternative pathways to healing. So I sort of wondered, what did you see as you were kind of measuring, utilizing biofeedback in these other practices through your journey? What was happening to those baselines?
[00:05:56] Speaker C: They were increasing steadily. Yeah.
When I understood it, and I think we spoke, it's probably been a couple of years ago when I first got the product and was just understanding how it's such a powerful measurement.
I was tracking it every day, first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and watching it steadily rise over time of using these practices. So it's a measurement of resiliency, as the literature shows, and that resiliency is something first responders need because the job is so stressful. And like you said, therapy is changing. And part of what I'm trying to do with my work is I want to create a change in the culture of the fire service, police, military to understanding that trauma is an inherent part of the job. And you have to have positive ways of expressing that trauma to be able to allow your nervous system to become back to homeostasis so you can be the best version of yourself, so you can be the best first responder. Husband, father, wife, spouse, all those things. And HRV should be measured in every first responder, honestly, because it's such an early indicator of when a guy is struggling. And a big message I want to push is currently in the fire service, the approach to handling trauma is basically a reactive approach. We don't do anything proactively to give people skills to allow them to be more resilient for what's coming in the job. You know what I mean?
It's a lot of repression, alcoholism, the suicide rate.
It's very sad.
And with some tools on the front end, we could empower our first responders to do a better job and to keep their sanity and keep their life outside of war.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: And I wonder, my exposure to law enforcement and more firefighters I've known through friends of mine, but I'd love to get your impression of, there's a lot of masculinity, maybe a kind word to say it, that there's a culture that I would say, yeah, trauma is what we do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And if I complain about it means I'm kind of weak. There's that mentality there that still holds fast in some areas. And I'm no way, shape, or form generalizing every law enforcement, every police officer or firefighter. But I wonder if you've encountered that and really looking at how to integrate something like, hey, you need to breathe. Might get something thrown at you in certain departments, but just kind of how you message that. Obviously, your lived experience probably gets you in the door in a different way. But I'd love to hear your messaging around this into fields that I've kind of seen have been very tough minded, so to speak, and you throw some dirt on your trauma and walk it off.
I've confronted that mentality a lot more than kind of taking a look at the literature around this stuff.
[00:09:37] Speaker C: Yeah. So my biggest thing is there was a study that came out, I think it was 2017 or 18, that as a first responder, you're more likely to die by suicide than in the line of duty. Yeah. So just let that sink in for a second, guys. What we're doing is not working.
So the tough guy mentality is just not working. You know what I mean? It's alcoholism, divorce rates, domestic violence, suicide.
These first responder fields, it's an epidemic in those fields of those things. So what we're doing is not working. And I think HRV so powerful because it can cut through that story of tough gum.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:28] Speaker C: All right, John, we got your HRV score when you first started at the department. Look, you've been having a run of bad nights, you've seen some stuff. Your HRV score is steadily dropping.
There's no way for them to be dissociated from the fact that the job is having an effect on them. And a big part, when I first realized I was having issue, I had already done the job for 910 years. And I thought I was doing just great. Until you get to that breaking point. And then it becomes obvious how every time I would run a bad call, it would affect my sleep, it would affect my mind, it would just not leave me in a good place. And if I'm doing this tough guy act of keeping it stuck in, I have no shot at healing. So a big narrative we need to shift in that culture is taking back vulnerability.
You are not weak to shown vulnerability. You are a human. And keeping your humanity as a first responder, keeping your heart allows you to do the job you signed up to do. If you're responding to my kid or my spouse or my grandparent or something, you should show up as a person and have your heart, because that's part of caring for people.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: How are you seeing? Because one of the things I love about heart rate variability, we could go into the mindfulness biofeedback because the tracking piece, I've had some success. One is you throw tactical in front of anything and all of a sudden people pay attention to you.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Yeah, the fire service loves tactical breathing.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: I know it's funny, like everything's woo woo until you throw tactical.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: But that's why the HRV was so powerful for me in accepting a lot of these other practices. Because once I understood the biofeedback mechanism of it, or component of it, it allowed me to tune into my body more and start to feel the sense of that relaxation, parasympathetic dominance in the nervous system. And that is a felt relaxation in the body.
HRV can show you, yes, that thing is really happening.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Right?
[00:13:00] Speaker C: You know what I mean? And that's the skill we need as first responders to be able to recognize, oh, I'm in a stress response. My body feels ramped up. And there are practices, breath work, ways of doing movement to settle your body. And when you're in a settled state, you're going to be a better first responder. You're going to be able to be a better employee, you're going to stay longer, you're not going to have as many sick days, cardiac issues, all these things. So HRV is such a preventative measure that we need to be more proactive in these services of giving people skills to protect them from the inherent traumas.
I'm not mad. I'm so grateful I did this job. I love what I got to do, but I had no understanding and I had no skills to deal with all the stuff I was taking. So it just builds up, builds up, builds up, and then you break, you know what I mean? So if I would have had this understanding prior when I first got on the job. Body keeps the score. You got to get this stuff out. HRV is a direct window into how your nervous system is doing. Here are ten different practices that you can do.
Get after it. Firemen, go man up. Let's go. If you want to have that tough guy mentality, let's do it with doing the work in stuff, doing the stuff that allows us to empty our cup so that we can go respond to the traumatic call and show up with our hearts and be the civil servants we signed up to be.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Absolutely. And then be able to go home and be the parent or the spouse or the friend you want as well. Because I think that that was so hard for me. And I'm not comparing my work with mental health, with trauma, with some of the things I know. You've experienced different ways of working with trauma, but just so hard leave work at work and home at home, when you only have one nervous system fails pretty quickly if that's all you got. And that was the only self care skill I got taught all through seven years of psychology education. It's like it failed, like, day one when I knew a child was being harmed in their home. I made a call and then was told to go home and I was supposed to leave that at work and it just failed me with that. So I think recognizing that we work, I use the term whether mental health or actual fires, it's the fire we signed up to walk into was working with trauma. But just as you do for the physical part of firefighting, the better equipped you are to go into that fire, the better, the lower the likelihood of injury. Same thing with your mental health as well. It's to build those resources that you have in order to perform at your best. Tim.
[00:16:11] Speaker C: Absolutely.
That idea of compartmentalizing, that was kind of what was. I put in my claim with the fire service and started to get out. I was on light duty for a while, which I was just working kind of nine to five. And a lot of the narrative I got from the older people was, man, you just got to compartmentalize it. And I would ask them where, how, you know what I mean? The understanding we have of HRV, like you said, it's the nervous system. You got one nervous system, you take it with you everywhere you go. There's no leaving it at the door.
It's with you.
And you can train your nervous system. That's a big message that I think the fire service and police would benefit from. You can intentionally train your nervous system. The better your HRV is, the more a greater window of tolerance you have and the more able to be able to stay present in these extreme circumstances and then regulate back to where you can sleep, recover, and then be the best person you can be the next day and not leave your kids and your spouse out of it because the job completely has drained you.
We sign up and we want to be heroes, but we end up not taking care of ourselves. And it's just something that has to change, for sure.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Yeah. In my advocacy in this area, working with some police officers, what we were trying to do, and then Covid hit and everything got put on back shelves is really to also. And I'd love to get your thinking about this, get this into the training part of it, because there's existing cultures, and you go into one firehouse, you've seen the culture of one firehouse, but there's these cultures that exist that usually are less.
You stuff it down, you don't talk about it.
Maybe with some. I think we're fighting this fight pretty good. Is seeking mental health services. Historically, might have been a sign of weakness. And you learn what to tell the therapist so you can get back on the street in service and duty. And so trying to get this into the initial training, the onboarding the law enforcement academies, to really get new people to the job equipped with this tool, not that we can't go into the existing culture for sure, but also giving people that are new to this work before they've maybe experienced some of the more traumatic sides of it, some of these tools ahead of time in order, instead, just leave it at work.
No, you need to breathe 20 minutes a day, that sort of thing. So that's really where I think we can have a huge impact in shifting these systems.
Is getting this into the training for folks.
[00:19:15] Speaker C: Yeah, 100%. And that's where I think HRV cuts through the facade. We have of being the tough guys. Because if you come in and, all right, we're measuring your HRV. We explain how stress and trauma affects the nervous system, how the nervous system basically runs every system in your body, and if there's dysregulation there, you're going to have problems.
You bring that probationary firefighter in and you're monitoring his HRV, and you make that a norm for him. And then he has his first crazy fire or traumatic call, and then he doesn't sleep a couple of nights, and he's been tracking his HRV, so he doesn't even have to be open to the idea of, man, I've been traumatized. Or there's a mental health aspect. No, just look at your score, dude. It went down, I think, with the police, or at least fire. We have paramedics. We have this understanding of the nervous system already.
HRV allowed me to accept the mind and the body as one thing, because I started to see these issues I was having was affecting my score, which then affected my sleep, my digestion, my emotional regulation, all these things. So I think getting it into the guy's hands right away in probationary school and having that be a norm, that's how the culture is going to change. And HRV gets you into the window of now.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:53] Speaker C: Yes. You got to do somatic experiencing, breath work, trauma release exercises, like understanding that the body keeps the score. The issues are in the tissues. If you don't express it, it stays trapped and it causes dysregulation.
But I think HRV is that first way in.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: Absolutely. So the issues are in the tissues. Did you make that up?
[00:21:19] Speaker C: I'm sure I've heard that somewhere.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: I heard that before.
That's a great.
[00:21:25] Speaker C: It's the same. The body keeps the score.
The same thing. But, yeah, it's catchy.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: You should trademark that.
[00:21:35] Speaker C: I might be stealing it from someone, but that understanding completely shifted my healing, because prior to that, I was very materialistic, analytical. I'm broken. I need this pill. I started to understand. No, I've experienced all these traumas, and I was repressing everything because I was the tough guy. I was afraid to be vulnerable. I was afraid to express any emotion, and it built up, built up, built up to now, I'm in a completely dysregulated state, which is PTSD. My nervous system is out of whack.
And if you have that understanding, first off in the service, you can have a longer career by addressing your traumas head on. Facing the dragon. Right. To find the gold on the other side, you talk about post traumatic growth.
I was not in a good place a couple of years ago, and a lot of my healing process is literally just expressing this stuff. And as I express it, my body's able to regulate and I'm getting it out of my tissues. Right. Getting the issues out of the tissues.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Love it.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: With that, HRv improves.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: You don't have to think any of the woo woo stuff.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: No, but look.
[00:22:55] Speaker C: Wow. Your scores improve, man. You've been breathing in a down regulated, I forget on your app, what's the breathing?
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Resonance frequency.
[00:23:06] Speaker C: Yeah. That's amazing.
And that type of breathing, you feel the change in your body. And I think as you train first responders to tune into that, that becomes a barometer for you to understand where you are physiologically. You know what I mean? As a first responder, I'm too stressed out. I need a practice, or I need to take a day off or whatever it is, so we don't get burnt out and end up like myself. I thought I was going to be a fireman for 30 years. You know what I mean? I'm having to completely recreate myself at 33 years old. It's not been easy.
But on that other side of it, coming through this and finding the light, the silver lining through my situation is I want to give us skills. First responders need skills to regulate their nervous system.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: HRV is the measurement for them.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So knowing you and having talked over the years about you, your interest, your work, I'm curious, HRV being a part of it. But you go into a firehouse, and I would say the food quality, on one hand, is some of the best in the world, on the other hand, if you think about how healthy that food is, my experience, at least, not the greatest for you, even though if you're looking for taste, some of our best chefs in the country, I believe, are firefighters with that. So when you walk in, obviously, HRV being a way to track it, you have the message about the issues in the tissues. And that message, what are some other things that sort of, you help people look at? Because in some ways, it's an inherently unhealthy, especially like the fire.
You're working 24, 48 hours, I think is kind of the norm in there somewhere. You're getting woken up at all hours of the night. My firefighter friends say, even if I'm supposed to be sleeping, I'm not really sleeping, that the sleep quality and the HRV, even if there's no disruption during the night, is much lower than it is at home. So you're going into this kind of culturally, historically not very healthy, just in general.
And then you've got some real structural things that medical emergencies will always happen at 02:00 a.m. You can't stop those. So when you go in and you think about restructuring this environment, what are some other things that you bring in with your expertise you're learning over the years to help folks?
[00:25:53] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, sleep is the biggest one, probably. And that's like you said, it's inherently the job. Just you don't sleep. And even if you are, like your friend said, your sleep quality at the station is still less than it would be at home because you're in a fire station, you're not in your house. Maybe the tones go off. It's not your truck, but it's the other truck. So you're up anyways. Then the guys come back in the station, you don't sleep well. So sleep is one that I don't know the answer. Honestly. There's a lot of departments that are going to different shift schedules, like a 24 on, 72 off, 48 on, 96 off. I don't know what the best way is.
But again, I think having skills for that inherently bad night of sleep, like, for me, using yoga, ninjra, or these down regulating breathing practices, was my first way into realizing I can use, I call it leveraging my biology. I can use biological systems to shift the state of my nervous system. So I come back, I'm up regulated because I was just out on a call. I got 3 hours left, so I got to be up for shift. Okay, let me do this. 30 minutes practice that, even if I don't fall asleep, is putting me in a restorative state, right?
[00:27:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:28] Speaker C: I will always preach the skills because I think that gives us. Okay, we can do something.
Sleep is huge. You mentioned diet. I was the chef on my crew. I didn't cook the healthiest, but it was good.
Now I eat very clean.
I got rid of all the processed foods. I try to eat everything organic.
Wild pastures is an amazing resource for that. Getting biodynamic food, but staying hydrated in the service. There's a lot of alcoholism. Alcohol is a horrible thing.
Having positive ways to deal with your stress.
And then one other concept I'll share that I got from a man named Paul. Check. Is this idea of working in and working out. So I think if people understood this, this would be a huge help for them. So working out is expending energy. Right. Fire Yang working in is cultivating energy rest restoration going in. So a simple question I ask myself every morning is I try to tune into my body and ask myself, do I need to work out or work in today?
Love that the fire service as a whole, we are type a hard chargers.
I used to have horrible night's sleep. I was up all night fighting fires. Sleep for 2 hours. I get up, I'm going to slam a red bull and go get a crazy workout, and it's like we're killing ourselves at that point. So just simply understanding, oh, I can work out and I can work in.
That would shift the culture in a big way, I think.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: I love that. Yeah, it's just being aware of some of these things.
I think the thing that I'm curious about with the firefighters, the paramedics, the police officers is the athletes and the military are like, oh, yeah, hrv.
There's that niche there that we just kind of have to find. And I think you're doing great, amazing and powerful work on this. Find the right message because it's got to be a little bit different. Maybe the military is all consuming in that way. People are telling you what to do all the time, so them telling you to take your Hrv. It's part of everything else I have to be told to do. I think athletes have fully, at least I won't say all of them, but so many of them. Oh, this is going to improve my performance. That's all I need, right. This is one more thing that I can do to improve my performance. Okay, I'll give that 20 minutes a day. It's just kind of really finding that right messaging, that's where I've gotten a lot of use out of tactical, which I just think is hilarious. But I also feel like I'm cool when I say it and people get it, too. I get a little bit of a dopamine release there as well. So that's why I love what you're doing because we got to find the message that will be received for folks.
[00:30:54] Speaker C: Performance aspect is a big one.
I was a lifelong athlete. Part of being in the fire service was I got to be an industrial athlete. They call it. You know what I mean?
I want to perform at the best of my ability. When the tones drop, that's our third, whatever, fourth down, big play. That's our time to go. And I want to be able to do the job. So I think the way in or part of how I'm trying to get in is what we're doing is not working guys, we're killing ourselves left and right. And you can also push the tactical performance aspect.
And I think both those ways will eventually. Until we get to that deeper level that all this dysregulation is caused by the trauma of the job, I don't think we're going to have a cultural shift. And that's where I find us lacking. So when I got in twelve years ago, very minimal talk about it, when I was getting out about three years ago, we were starting to have talks about it, but no one was addressing the body.
And HRV gives you that measurement of the body and trauma is a somatic experience and it needs to be released from the body. So hopefully we can get in with the message that we're not doing good on another level. Hey, you want to be a good performer, you want to be a badass fireman, you want to be a great first responder, do these things. And then hopefully some people open to that deeper level of, wow, my HRV is in the gutter.
What work? In what positive way can I release this trauma instead of doing what we've been doing? Compartmentalizing, tough guy act. Emotions are for weak people. All these kind of suck it up, buttercup. There's a million sayings and they all in my mind inherently are afraid to be vulnerable.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:05] Speaker C: And that is the shame of it all, because if you can't be vulnerable, you don't get to be a human, you know what I mean? And that's a lot of my healing. Three, four years ago, I would have said my heart. I had no heart. I had shut it off. Yeah, that allowed me to be a good first responder because I'm dealing with this traumatic call and I'm able to be cool, calm and collected and run the protocol and do the thing. But then when I would go home, I'm not living, you know what I mean? I don't experience positive or negative emotions. I'm just kind of numb. And until I understood that the body is where I needed to heal from, I had no shot. And then as I started doing it, HRV showed me, yeah, man, what you're doing is actually working. You're not just crazy. You know what mean? Like these things are really helping you.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: I love that. Joey, I don't know a better way to end the podcast, so I'm going to shut up and say thank you for your time and work. We'll put some information, contact information and other things in the show notes for folks. So if you want to reach out to Joey, learn more about his work. My friend, it's been good to reconnect with you. It's been a little while, so I just love your passion for this. I know it comes from a personal space and you just see this need at a larger level. And I always love this concept of the hero's journey and a lot of folks who have been through those darker spots when they experience that post traumatic growth just see the opportunity to go back in to that pain and suffering and help others see the light out. And I don't know what better word to describe you, my friend, than hero. So I thank you for your amazing work and it's been fun to be a small part of your amazing journey along the way.
[00:34:56] Speaker C: Wow, man, those are very nice words. I really take that in, brother. I appreciate it.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Thank you so much. And as always, you can find show notes, learn more about
[email protected] and we'll see you next week.
