The Nervous System Papers · Issue 01

Your heart rate variability and chiropractic care

The one number that tells you how much your body has left to give, and what your nervous system has been doing while you were not looking.

16 pages · ten minutes · start reading here

What is HRV?

HRV stands for heart rate variability: the variation in time between each of your heartbeats.

Your heart is not a metronome. Even at a steady 60 beats per minute, those beats are not spaced perfectly one second apart. One beat might land after 0.92 seconds. The next might take 1.05. That moment to moment difference is your HRV.

Both hearts are beating at 60 bpm. Only one of them is adaptable.

Here is the part that surprises people:
the more variability you have, the better.

That sounds backwards until you know what HRV is really measuring. It is a reflection of your autonomic nervous system, and specifically of how well you are balancing its two branches.

Sympathetic

Fight or flight. Alert, reactive, ready to act.

Parasympathetic

Rest and recover. Digest, repair, settle.

If your HRV is high, your nervous system is flexible. It can ramp up when you need it and wind down just as easily. If your HRV is low, your system is stuck, usually in a chronic state of stress activation. That is the part worth understanding, because it is the part you can change.

There are 14 more pages. Tell us where to send them.

What raises and lowers your HRV, hour by hour
The four pillars of recovery, and a four question self audit
What chiropractic care has to do with your nervous system
One habit swap that costs nothing

Issue 01 lands in your inbox in a minute. After that, a short note every week or so: one idea about your nervous system, one thing worth trying, nothing else. If it ever stops being useful, one click and we are gone for good.

Send this to someone

Someone who sleeps eight hours and still wakes up tired. Ten minutes to read.