[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. Each week we talk about heart rate variability and how it can be used to improve your overall health and wellness.
Please consider the information in this podcast for your informational use and not medical advice. Please see your medical provider to apply any of the strategies outlined in this episode. Heart Rate Variability Podcast is a production of Optimal LLC and Optimal HRV. Check us out at optimalhrv.com Please enjoy the show.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Welcome friends to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. I am Matt Bennett. I am back here with my good friend Stephanie White, who we would we actually had to stop ourselves an hour and about 45 minutes into a conversation because are we going to hit record at some point or are we just going to continue to nerd out? So if you're not new to the show, you probably know Stephanie and her great work. You also know that Stephanie comes with great slides as well.
So if you're listening to this and you're like, man, I really want to see what they're talking about, you can go to our YouTube channel. Very easy to find with that as well. And if you haven't heard Stephanie's previous episodes, basically we get a master class every time Stephanie shows up for an episode. So Stephanie White, welcome back. Maybe for those that are new, we're going to put a lot of information in the show notes as well, but please just give a quick introduction for those that maybe not seen our past episodes.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Cool.
So I'm Stephanie White. I live in Richmond, Virginia, which is turning out to be a hotbed for HIV research, home to the HRVI conference in 2024. So a lot of you guys were here.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: I have been blessed with multiple crazy health conditions that really came to a head in 2016 with cancer.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Immediately had pneumonia, got chronic fatigue, POTS and lymphedema.
And so my HRV tanked and I was stuck in a pneumatic pump Lazy Boy chair four hours a day, had nothing else to do. So I learned how to breathe and listen to everything Roland McCready and Dick converts and Lair and Porges had put out on YouTube because YouTube was available at the time, optimal HRV wasn't, but those things are available at the time.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: And I became a First Beat distributor and got mentored by Tim Wiles at Renovo Advantage. Inherited some of his HRV research clients when he left to do something some other things. So so I've been in the middle of the HRV research community for quite a bit and I specialize in applying HRV biofeedback to physical health issues. There's cuckoos of people that use it. You know, as clinical psychologist and psychiatrist, I specialize it in using for physical health issues. So that gives me a unique perspective sometimes that I like to share with other people just to give them a heads up of what I'm seeing. And this week I found some amazing information from a very unlikely source and I thought I'd share it.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, I think this is what I know this is a key topic for our audience.
As somebody who Stephanie I just keep getting older. I, I don't know, I think I thought this would stop at some point and around 35, I just kind of stay there. And you know, I now haven't taken my HRV for probably about a decade on one format or the other.
It goes from, oh, how do I if I integrate intermittent fasting or I change my exercise routine, how does it improve my HRV to hanging onto it for dear life. So I know this is a topic that, you know, a lot of our people have been measuring HRV for a while now start to face is what happens with age. So I'm excited to jump into this topic with you.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: So hopefully a lot of your fans are going to be able to pat themselves on their back because this isn't happening to them.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: I want to call this Use it or Lose it.
If you do nothing, you could experience.
[00:04:25] Speaker C: A 50% reduction in your HRV between the ages of 20 and 40, regardless of whether you're a male or female.
What, what brought me to that conclusion?
I'm going to share the chart with you first.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Oh, let me give, let me put it into perspective.
I always like to challenge people to think your heart beats 108,000 times a day and that's if it's averaging 75 beats per minute, you breathe 17,280 times a day. That's if you're breathing 12 breaths per minute.
Your body's doing this a lot.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: So if you lose 50% effectiveness of something your body does this much.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Could that have system wide health consequences?
You bet.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: You bet.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: And so one of the clinicians that I know and love and have been treated by is Dr. Cipriano at the POTS treatment center who is a BCIA certified clinician and teaches biofeedback as part of her treatment package for POTS people.
And I love to share the graphic from her How We Can Help page on their website.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: She shows, you know, if you either have age related losses or there's.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Health reasons or some kind of infection or something that causes the alignment to be lost.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: When you lose your parasympathetic functioning or the alignment is lost, you get thrown into sympathetic overdrive.
The clinicians I work with at VCU call it persistent sympathetic activation.
So your sympathetic nervous system can kind of run amok and kind of hijack everything.
And so people may not know what results when that happens. So I'm going to share it again. YouTube has a graphic, but I'm going to read it through. So you don't need to necessarily see the graph to understand what's going on, but it affects almost every system and hormone generation part of your body. So as far as your eyes are concerned, it dilates your p pupils, which can lead to light sensitivity and or migraines.
That's not fun.
It causes your muscle to tense, which can lead to tmj, which is the jaw problem.
Tension headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, low back pain, neck pain. It can accelerate your heart, which leads to tachycardia and or POTS and dysautonomia.
It can constrict your blood vessels, which also leads to migraines, abnormal or high.
[00:07:19] Speaker C: Blood pressure, alopecia, indigestion, and nausea.
It can cause you to secrete epinephrine, cortisol and norepinephrine, which can lead to chronic fatigue syndrome, anxiety, migraines. Again, Crohn's disease, and abnormal blood pressure.
It can cause increases in cholesterol, which lead to arthrosclerosis, heart attack and stroke. Nobody wants that.
It can mess up your digestion. And you know, Matt and I were talking earlier. A lot of graphics show that nervous.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: System is being parasympathetic, sympathetic.
[00:07:55] Speaker C: It's a three part system. There's also the enteric portion of the autonomic nervous system, and so your gut.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Is involved, which can lead to Crohn's.
[00:08:04] Speaker C: Disease and irritable bowel syndrome. And what I'm surprised is not listed here is gastroparesis.
There's a lot of people who their digestive system could completely shut down and I personally have to take a medication to help keep that going.
[00:08:22] Speaker C: It can cause decreases in serotonin, which can lead to depression, poor sleep and fibromyalgia. And it can wreak havoc on your reproductive system, leading to erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, vaginal constriction and reproductive dysfunction.
And so women of childbearing age who want to get pregnant, your body has built in systems to prevent pregnancy if you are operating in an environment where it would not be wise to bring a child into that situation. So if you want to be able to get pregnant, you definitely need to address these issues and make sure your alignment's really good so you can support a pregnancy full term. That's important to most ladies.
Um, so. Yeah. Matt, you got anything you want to add to that? I mean, I bet.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: I bet there's a few listeners out there, and I know I'm asking a person that has an answer to this, and. And if we're going to cover it later, please do is. Well, wait a minute. You've been telling us that what we found out was more. It's the vagal break and the brake releases. Yeah. There might be sympathetic activation in the baro reflex, but.
So when we talk about sympathetic overdrive, you, you know, the nerds. We, we, we, we. We are a proud community here. So I would. I'd be interested in this word because I think I've seen a lot of people move away from the idea of sympathetic activation more so as the vagal break is not, you know, doing the heart rate variability dance and putting, I guess, the parasympathetic in there to. To dance with the sympathetic. So is there.
[00:10:04] Speaker C: Are.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: Are we.
Help me with this. So, so. So I just make sure my listeners aren't. God, Matt, what are you saying now? So.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Okay, so you and I talked earlier about another episode where I show an innovative way to answer that question.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: When we're resonant breathing using the optimal HRV app, we are teaching our body how to efficiently apply the vagal break and release the vagal break. Apply the vagal break and release the vagal break. So when you're doing those exercises, you are exercising the parasympathetic nervous system, because as we age, we lose.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Parasympathetic nervous system functioning and alignment.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: On the other hand, all of us have a sympathetic nervous system that is like the Mighty Mouse that gets worked out all the damn time and has muscles big as Popeye.
We don't need to exercise the sympathetic nervous system.
So if the parasympathetic nervous system becomes weaker, misaligned, the sympathetic nervous system can really take over.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: And when it's driving the ship, these things happen.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Great.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Great. And so doing your optimal HRV breathing practice deliberately exercises the parasympathetic nervous system and the vagal brain to be able to efficiently turn on and off, on and off. And by the way, I love to.
[00:11:42] Speaker C: Mention, it squirts acetylcholine, so every time you do that, it squirts acetylcholine, which calms things down.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:49] Speaker C: And Creates hundreds of other different processes in the body.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: So your body gets better at making.
[00:11:54] Speaker C: And utilizing and clearing acetylcholine.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: So when you do that exercise, you're building up so many things and you're.
[00:12:03] Speaker C: Restoring alignment with so many things.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: It's just amazing what it can do.
[00:12:09] Speaker C: Which is why we found it's so.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Beneficial for physical health issues as well.
[00:12:13] Speaker C: As traditional behavioral health issues.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Did that answer that question?
[00:12:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So I, I think if I'm. If I'm hearing you correctly, again, because this has been an ongoing theme of our episodes throughout the years now, is that we could say sympathetic overdrive equates, especially when we're looking at heart rate variability, because I know we, we've got bear reflex and other things. So if we're looking at, you know, a time domain, 3 minute, 5 minute, 24 hour reading of RMSSD, SDNN, other things, vagal withdrawal, sympathetic overdrive. Could we use those mostly interchangeably?
[00:12:53] Speaker C: No.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:55] Speaker C: And so I want to answer that in another episode and I want to use a different graphic to explain it.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Okay, sounds good.
[00:13:01] Speaker C: And so you and I taught. There's a free class offered by Lepfront that explains this super well.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:06] Speaker C: And so I want to share that the free class is available, but I also want to go over the new things that me learned.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:13:13] Speaker C: You know, I know a lot about hrv and when I first watched this.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: I learned new stuff.
[00:13:18] Speaker C: And I get excited when I learn new stuff. So I'd like to share the things that me knowing everything I know about HRV didn't know until I took the lab front course.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Let's do it.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: And that course answers that question.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: So let's set that aside and just say that, you know, when the parasympathetic nervous system becomes weak or misaligned, the sympathetic nervous system has free reign.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: Perfect. There we go. There we go.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: And can cause all of these things, one or more of these things to occur in the same body. And so there's a wonderful cardiologist in Georgia that was interviewed and he'll say, when you're dealing with a dysautonomia patient, they don't come to you with one problem.
They come to you with a laundry list of problems, which is one of the reasons why doctors don't like dealing with dysautonomia patients.
Several of these things occur because you're. The autonomic nervous system is related to all of them.
So it's not your usual patient with one problem. They have a laundry list of problems. And that's your first sign you're dealing with something that the autonomic nervous system is touching.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: Because it's hitting a wide range of things.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: So it wreaks havoc.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: To look at the data and I'll share the source in just a second. A lot of HRV.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Reports report rmssd, which stands for root mean sum of the square of the differences, which basically means the standard deviation of the difference between beats.
If you calculate the difference between every beat and you calculate the standard deviation, that's going to give you the rmssd.
So I'll go over how this database came together in just a minute, but what I want to point out is your RMSSD peaks around age 20 and it rapidly drops until about age 40 and then it plateaus.
And then from ages 80 to 100 it shoots back up again, which the last podcast episode I did with you, you were teasing about your 80 year old client with 100 plus RMSSD and we talked about why that might happen. You know, this database of normal people that are healthy showed that is a natural thing that occurs as we go from ages 80 to 100. And the, the source actively says this increase is due to heart rate fragmentation. Okay, so it does lead to that conclusion.
So there's the scrapbook.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: That's about a 50% production.
[00:15:58] Speaker C: Does it have to happen?
So I want to share a different source.
Elite HRV was made for athletes who typically have coaches who use their morning readiness reading to avoid over training.
And I indicate a lot people I.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: See who run into problems are overloaded.
[00:16:19] Speaker C: They'Re over training or over living.
So these people have coaches that specifically use HRV to avoid over training.
They have diets designed to support the performance that they're doing, and they've got a breathing practice that they're doing on a regular basis because they know how important it is.
So if you take their database of people and you average the 50 and 45 to come out to a 48, you can, if you know what to do correctly, at least cut that reduction in half, maybe more. If you're deliberately following it.
[00:16:58] Speaker C: You know, and trying to consistently improve your heart rate variability. So this 50% reduction between ages 20 to 40 doesn't have to happen.
If you establish a breathing practice, if you know what the right size load is for your body and you support it nutritionally to carry that load, you don't have to lose that.
And the Elite HRV database proves it.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:17:24] Speaker C: That makes sense. Matt, any question?
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I wonder, like, I mean that, that the elite dad Is very interesting. I haven't seen that specific chart. It also has males with higher RMSSD than females.
[00:17:38] Speaker C: Yeah. There are sex related differences and so this particular child.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Every other like norm I've seen is females are higher than males.
So is. Are we seeing something different with athletes, do you think there or.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: So this.
The males are in blue, the females are in pink and they're following pretty close together.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: And so.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Some of. Sometimes it's the difference between whether you're looking at 24 hour data versus 5 minute data.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: So the source of data is important.
And as you and I were talking early, whether the data is detrended or not detrended is also very important.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Also key. Gotcha.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: So depending on who's doing what, why, the data can look a little different.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: And for very valid reasons. Cool.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: So we know you don't have to lose it.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: Where did I get this from? I never would have thought to look here. But you know I love heart rate fragmentation.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: A lot of time when researchers are studying the abnormal, the first question they have to answer is what does normal look like?
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: So not only did they answer what does normal look like, I mean they answered it in a big way.
So there is an All Star database made of Holter ECG recordings which if.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: You'Re just listening, it's actually called the All Star database.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: That is a noun and not an adjective there.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a pronoun. Proper noun.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: It's called the All Star Holter Monitor database. And it was specifically created so as researchers came up with problems, they could go back and run their metrics against this database to see what happens in normal people, to see if the abnormal people are truly different.
So it's a very valuable database.
And so they had five or six criteria that they ran it against.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: And they separated out the data that matched. And these are all healthy people.
So 294,000 matched. They randomly selected 3,917 so that they had about 100 females and 100 males for every age cluster of five years from 0 to 100. So 100 females, 100 males 0 to 500. 100 females, 100 males 5 to 10, all the way up to 100.
That's massive.
That leads to a pretty daggone good answer. And all these people are healthy, don't have arrhythmias, don't have health conditions, aren't on drugs.
These are normal, healthy people.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Another episode I want to do with you is what should my HRV be? Because they provide all the statistics on a 24 hour basis, which isn't always comparable to what you get off of optimal hrv. And we can discuss that in the next episode. But they give you what all the statistics are for every age.
There's some clear trends by age that are important to recognize.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: But in that database. And I'm connecting dots back to our last episode on how heart rate fragmentation and very high frequency.
Because they ultimately want to study heart rate fragmentation, they too recognize the need.
[00:21:15] Speaker C: To report very high frequency.
They defined it a little bit differently than I did last time. They define it 0.4 to 1. I defined it as 0.4 to 0.9 last time. I'm fine with 1. That works for me.
[00:21:29] Speaker C: And they also recognize what I pointed out last time is it gets forced into the VHF zone when it's the alternon's pattern where it's changing.
[00:21:39] Speaker C: Fast, slow, fast, slow every other beat.
[00:21:42] Speaker C: So they too recognize the need to report vhf.
And you know, I like clinicians to know how to use frequency math.
Let me give strong anchor points for what that range. 0.4 to 1. Looks like. If you were to breathe at the peak 0.4 Hz frequency, you would be breathing one breath cycle every two and a half seconds, which is a 24 breaths per minute.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: Breathing rate.
And so last episode you asked me, can you just dump HF and VHF together?
[00:22:21] Speaker B: And I said no, because whenever it's.
[00:22:23] Speaker C: In vhf, it's dysfunctional. It could be.
[00:22:28] Speaker C: Hyperventilation.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:31] Speaker C: You know, Hyperventilation starts at 20 breaths per minute, so somebody's truly breathing 24 or higher. That's dysfunctional.
It could also be because of heart rate fragmentation.
So I proposed last time. No, you need to report them separately. And I'm definitely on the bandwagon. Everybody needs to start reporting vhf.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: I'm going to keep yelling that until I can change. Everybody, everybody needs to start reporting VHF.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: So that's what a 0.4 Hertz looks like if it was a 1 Hertz, which by the way, is 10 times what normal breathing recommendations are, which is 0.1 Hertz. So at 1 Hertz you're breathing one breath or one second per breath, which is 60 breaths per minute.
So the.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Standard breathing recommendation is 0.1 Hertz, which is six breaths per minute. This is 10 times faster.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: So just so people have anchor points, you know, to be getting VHF frequency due to breath, you would have to be breathing between 24 and 60 breaths per minute to fall in that range.
So that kind of gives people known anchor points. As to what that range looks like in breathing terms. Any questions about that?
[00:23:47] Speaker A: No, it's very interesting.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: So here I'm saying.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: So you're not necessarily recommending breath work practices that make. Make you hyperventilate?
[00:23:57] Speaker B: No, I'm not.
It is not.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: There are some popular.
A popular one out there that.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Yes, and I'm going to share an interesting example with you in just a second.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Okay.
I just couldn't pass that up. Yes.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, yeah, there are some popular.
Yeah, we'll talk about that in just a second.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: But here's. Here's the amazing thing to tie into the last episode. Having very high frequency power is absolutely normal.
[00:24:32] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: It happens from 0 all the way to 100.
Babies are born with premature autonomic nervous systems.
It continues to get better until age 20. Then it drops off to age, you.
[00:24:48] Speaker C: Know, 40, and can kind of plateau.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: And then it goes crazy after that. But VHF is very normal.
You know, last episode, people may have.
[00:24:57] Speaker C: Gotten the impression it's only abnormal in.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Healthy people, you have very high frequency power. So it needs to be reported.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: So let me share. When VHF could occur in perfectly normal, healthy people.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: So I ask a question, and there's a graph here, like, kind of, that's trending like the other graphs, where it. It, like you said, peaks at age 20. Then you've got kind of a valley that starts then going back up at 80. For the reasons you mentioned, I. I'm assuming if very high frequency is triggered by near hyperventilation breathing. I'm sort of confused.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: How do we get this data? Is this when people are working out?
[00:25:46] Speaker C: Let me share a couple of examples.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Okay, great.
[00:25:50] Speaker C: I am blessed.
[00:25:53] Speaker C: To have come into contact with Dr. Peter Litchfield, Scott Sonnen and Dylan McKay, who are carrying the torch for understanding breathing as a behavior, as a strategic performance advantage.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: And.
[00:26:18] Speaker C: As a way to understand.
[00:26:22] Speaker C: The physiology of breathing. So you optimize oxygen and carbon dioxide because it's not all about oxygen.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:34] Speaker C: And so from Peter Litchfield's perspective, breathing is behavior.
Some people encounter situations in life that cause them to hyperventilate.
And when you start to hyperventilate, your CO2 drops.
When your CO2 drops, even though there's oxygen in your blood, the hemoglobin will not let go of it.
And you can lose 20% of the oxygenation to your brain in a matter of a minute.
Even though the oxygen's there, it cannot be utilized, which leads to an anxiety attack.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:11] Speaker C: Or you can have an anxiety attack, which leads to hyperventilation.
Which leads to lower CO2, which leads to poor brain oxygenation, which makes the.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: Anxiety attack life threatening level.
[00:27:25] Speaker C: It makes it a bad anxiety attack because you have air hunger, you think you're dying, but it's bad news. People freak out.
And so normal people, if you look at breathing as a behavior under certain circumstances, they hyperventilate.
So if I can do a 72 hour heart rate variability assessment on someone, I can identify when this is occurring and help offer strategies to circumvent it or short circuit it. If it happens, you know, make it not last 30 minutes, make it only last two minutes, because you can, you can use your body to set the pace for what the rest of your body and your brain are doing, so.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: You can use your breath to get yourself out of this situation.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: So, so when we look like a graph like this that's charted by ages and see this, this dip, I'm assuming we're not in.
Let me, let me, let me say this, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. A person who's breathing in a fairly healthy, normal way will not spend a lot of time in very high frequency.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: It depends.
So I, I want to give you three scenarios. There's the anxiety thing that can drive this.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: There's the exercise thing.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: And so another episode I want to do, and I've alluded this before, is about the catecholamine threshold. But as athletes.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Or weekend warriors approach the high end of their performance zone.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: One of the last stages before exhaustion is hyperventilation.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: And so the people I train start to recognize how their breathing changes, as their performance level changes, and when they need to stop based on their breath changes.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: So that, that brings Scott SONAN and Dylan McKay into the picture. They're both exercise physiologists.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Scott SONAN, recognized in U.S. special Forces.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: People were not passing the physical exercise test because their lungs were limiting, not their limbs.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: So he designed a training program to make their limbs limiting, not their lungs. And the way he did it is he helps them recognize they were prematurely hyperventilating because they didn't have CO2 tolerance.
And when their exercise got them into their upper CO2 range, they started hyperventilating.
By training for CO2 tolerance and extending their range, he could delay the point at which they hyperventilated and they could pass the physical test. Pass rate.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: Gotcha.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: So between Scott and Dylan, they have used that technology to advise US Special Forces, Russian Special Forces, Venezuelan Special Forces, and Australian Special Forces.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: And Dylan has created a performance breathing system to do police officers and firemen and military personnel.
[00:30:33] Speaker C: He's taken that ball and running with it.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: But they've turned this into a performance advantage. If you understand this, you can extend.
[00:30:41] Speaker C: Your performance range and your lungs don't.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: Have to limit you. Your breathing doesn't have to. To limit you.
[00:30:47] Speaker C: So athletes that don't understand all this can be.
They can hyperventilate at their higher ends.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Of performance.
[00:30:58] Speaker C: If they haven't been trained appropriately. So that can throw them into the VHF range. And then the other situation is overloaded under resourced people get heart rate fragmentation which generates the VHF pattern.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: Okay. So that. That can account for some of this too. Because with high.
Very high frequency scores be better. Like this is what, like this. I'm just fascinated. Because this.
[00:31:23] Speaker C: No, they're never better.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: Rmssd, which. The higher the RMSSD the better. But you're seeing a very similar graph for very high frequency. I guess my assumption would be it would be inverse that the older you get, probably, probably the worst breathing you would get. Like, it just surprises me a little bit that very high frequency, which sounds like not a great thing.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: It's not a great thing.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: Trans. Like it looks pretty much exactly like the RMSSD graph that you showed as well. So it's like I would think you. This would get higher as you get into your 50s, 40s, 50s, and instead of going down, which would be.
I don't know. Do you see what I'm trying to say?
[00:32:12] Speaker C: So from 0 to 20, it's the fact that you have an immature autonomic nervous system and something else has hijacked the signal from 20 to 40.
[00:32:25] Speaker C: It'S the loss.
[00:32:33] Speaker C: You know, it's just increased maturity and maybe decreasing activity rates and different things that are happening.
From 80 to 100, it is absolutely an increase in heart rate fragmentation.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:32:45] Speaker C: But whenever you're in the VHF range, it's an opportunity for improvement. Whether it be performance or breathing behavior or health.
[00:32:56] Speaker C: It represents an opportunity for improvement. Improvement.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: Okay.
I just think it's fascinating that RMSSD trends negatively where very high frequency trends the same way. But that trend is a positive as we get older into a. To a point.
[00:33:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: I. It's just fascinating because. Yeah.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Which was, you know, that was another point of the last episode. When VHF is present. It artificially inflates rmssd.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: And so you can have RMSD increase for good reasons, but you can also have an increase for bad reasons, which is one of the reasons why RMSSD takes off between 80 to 100. Because the heart rate fragmentations are.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Fragmentation's happening. Gotcha.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: It's artificially supporting it.
Awesome.
So, yeah. Yeah, I was very surprised. I was glad. But I was very surprised that they pointed out that the VHF occurs in normal, healthy people.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: And did you see any data, like how much time people typically been? Because I'm thinking this is the overall power of high frequency. But like.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it didn't say anything about the two that they.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: Because I'm assuming I don't spend a whole lot of time in.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Right. I would hope not.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's like you might snapshot me walking maybe up the stair. I'm on the fourth floor in my apartment. So maybe when you get to the.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: 80 to 100 level, it could be 24 hours a day.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: In people with.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: Would you live very long if it was 24 hours a day?
[00:34:38] Speaker B: Yeah, you can.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: Yeah, you can.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: It seems like a lot of time.
I guess you got other things going on at that point though too. Okay.
[00:34:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: So the power might be higher when you're younger, but the time in might be longer when you're in your 80s or 90s.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: Correct. That's correct.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Fascinating.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: That is correct.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: And so just to remind people.
[00:35:08] Speaker C: When.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: You look at the vagal nerve, most people know that only 20% of the information is going from the brain to the body.
80% of the information is going from the body to the brain. That's why your breathing practice is so important, to prevent these losses. Because your body can set the pace that the brain follows.
And so people are learning. It's much more effective to use your body to establish the calm and establish the parasympathetic base than to just try to think different. Because thinking different is only going to harness 20% of the power. When you use your body and you lead with your breath, you're harnessing 80% of the power. And so the breathing practice is the number one way to exercise the parasympathetic nervous system and re establish the proper alignment between the cardiovascular, the pulmonary, the autonomic nervous systems, and, you know, the neurological brain systems.
It is the best way to exercise this and to prevent the age related losses that occur.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: Love it.
[00:36:14] Speaker C: That's well known.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: You can use your breathing practices to avoid the age related decline, but you can just as easily turn it into a performance advantage, which I know Matt.
[00:36:27] Speaker C: Specializes in helping folks learn how to do.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: I'm teaming up with the exercise physiologist and I feel like I've got brothers now.
[00:36:37] Speaker C: They have been so supportive in helping.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: Me discover where My fatigue related people are hitting the same walls their advanced athletes and military personnel are hitting much earlier.
[00:36:48] Speaker C: And so I'm applying their sciences to make headway with my clients which are very different. But we're, we're really learning some, some powerful things. So I encourage people to extend this to become a performance advantage.
[00:37:04] Speaker C: Give you a couple examples. You know, Anderson's doing the work with the police officers when they, you know, really dial in their breath practice. They can make better decisions when it comes to friend or foe kill decisions in active shooter exercises.
Peter Litchfield is using this to train people to optimize their CO2 to get better brain oxygenation, to decrease their reaction time, to pay world class video games.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: Interesting. That's awesome.
[00:37:35] Speaker C: So he has a multi team worldwide owner that's invested into his technology and training to give his.
[00:37:44] Speaker C: You know, computer game players a strategic advantage.
[00:37:49] Speaker C: So yeah, it can, it can be executives can make better decisions. You can have better intuition. There's just all kinds of great things that can happen if you use it.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: As a performance advantage.
[00:38:01] Speaker C: So if you're interested in this and you don't want to lose it, you know, great places to start. Optimal HIV on their website has a reader and the app and they've got coaches. Great place to start. There's other apps and devices that you might be familiar with. I'm growing an army of behavioral health coaches that can, you know, teach people how to do this and coach them one on one or in groups if they need it. There's other BCIA certified licensed medical providers that can bill insurance to teach you how to do this, usually from a behavioral health perspective. And BCIA maintains a list of those people. So if you need that help, highly recommend you take advantage of it.
[00:38:42] Speaker B: In that study that I just shared, one of the things that they pointed out is when you get to the point where you're getting into the minutia, the pulse sensor, the light based sensor is, is not good enough and so you need an ECG quality sensor.
So I just want to mention folks that work with my coaches, we use the Polar H10 device which is compatible with optimal HRV.
And something that makes my coaches unique is we also have the clinician software from Somatic Vision called Alive and it allows us to provide a one week license to the people we coach.
So the Polar feeds data to two devices simultaneously. We can support your optimal HRV practice and do a Somatic vision zoom session simultaneously. So we can help you optimize your practice if you're so inclined to do so.
So yeah, if you check out Matt's show notes there's going to be more information about how you can participate in a 72 hour HRV Functional Assessment and or work with our coaches.
And if you're a do it yourselfer, there's some, you know, five major categories of things you can do to optimize your health which will optimize your HRV and prevent the loss.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: Written sources of that information I can provide the FDA Address for Success guidebook. If you go on Matt's website and share your email address, you can get two free books and in the heartbeat of business, Matt, Ina and David are asked specifically what do you do to maintain or improve your heart rate variability? And they've got excellent answers that dovetail what's recommended in the FDN guidebook and it's dovetailed in the Afib Cure book. So all three sources triangulate to tell you there's not a pill you can take to undo what your life is doing to your health.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: Only way you can change it is if you take the bull by the horns. You use your breath to have your body lead your brain and you actively make good health choices to support optimal health.
So yeah, that's what I wanted to share. You don't have to lose it.
[00:40:59] Speaker C: If you do that, you will, but.
[00:41:02] Speaker B: You don't have to.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: Right.
And it's such a great message too because I think that there's, I mean you look at all the norms out there and you do you see what you showed us, that decline there? And I'll say something and you can argue you're probably going to see some decline unless you were like incredibly unhealthy until age 30 and then age 31, you flip the switch and you're doing sleep hygiene, nutrition, movement, breath work, all the, you know, you're, you're probably going to, if you're, I, I hope kind of, I was kind of healthy before HRV entered my life so.
But it gives you that metric to I, I know it probably should say fight against the decline but you know, if you're competitive like I am, you know, I, I'm really trying to say, okay, I'm doing all this stuff, right, but what is the next thing I might be able to tweak like sleep consistency, like really being honed in on it to, to try to get my monthly averages back up because I've seen that natural decline and again I think overall I, I, you know, any metric I've measured with my health is, is unfortunate to be pretty Good.
But man like you can. You could see that my data over years now a decade, you know, drop. But I'm really working on honing in to get that back up. So it's a really great way. I mean, longevity health span is, you know, I think justifiably so all the rage right now.
[00:42:41] Speaker B: And you don't just want to live longer, you want to live better.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: You do. And I think that's where hrv, because western medicine can keep you alive.
It can keep you alive. Like that's all. I don't know.
[00:42:53] Speaker B: And all you can do is sit in a lazy board boy. I mean, my uncle for the last year and a half of his life could only sit in a lazy boy. That's not living.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: Exactly. And so it's like hrv, I think when we talk about the health span is, is such a great metric of that with this. So I, I love, Let me, let.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: Me throw out one unique application of this that I think mothers in particular need to know.
What is one thing that can tank your overnight HRV or your, your HRV in general, like 20% or more in one day? What's the one thing that can happen and totally destroy it?
[00:43:31] Speaker A: Not being a mother, I would say sleep.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: Concussion.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: And so kids, sports teams that are in the know are getting 24 hour HIV baselines with the first speed device.
So they know what the kid's baseline is. If they take a hit on the field, they're doing an immediate HRV measurement. And if it has dropped significantly, they take them off the field. Because the kids will not take themselves off the field. No, they don't want to let their team down.
[00:44:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: And so we know that concussion drops it instantaneously, but we also know that in treatment resistant concussion, HRV will show that the improvement's not happening. You know, the ones with the treatment resistant concussion have the lowest hrv. Yeah. So, and that's where I think the HRV bio of their family.
And you know, you need to have a shoot. What do you call it?
Take your temperature with. You need to be able to take the temperature. You need to get the blood pressure.
You need to get their hiv. You need to know what the baseline HIV is.
[00:44:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Stephanie White, always a pleasure, my friend. I always learned so much from you. Like I said, we're gonna pack the show notes in this episode. So if you're interested in, you know, the slides, obviously we got them up on YouTube.
I would, I would highly recommend you checking out Stephanie's work.
You know, we, we get to work with some great professionals. And Stephanie is on my mount.
[00:45:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: Rushmore. Of those professionals, her knowledge and I think application. Oh, I know. Application of this is just tremendous. So, Stephanie, it's always a great honor when you join us.
So please check out the show notes. You can find
[email protected] and as Stephanie alluded to, she's got some more episodes for us coming up, so stay tuned as always. We'll see you next week. Thank you so much.
