Eli5 What is heart rate variability and why is it important??
In: Biology
Your heart never really beats at a steady rate, instead it varies from moment to moment based on need. You can use this to determine some things about a person’s health and mental state.
For a person living relatively normally without a lot of stressors, getting into a situation that is stressful or anxiety inducing will cause abrupt shifts in heart rate.
But someone under a lot of stress for a long time will have a much slower change in rate in similar situations. They’ve gotten ‘used’ to it to the point where their body only just barely cares.
So a higher variability means you are in general in better health. Of course this alone doesn’t tell you very much, so you need more data from other systems to really tell you how someone’s doing. And it also really only matters when measured long term, just because of natural variation that happens from daily events which otherwise have no impact.
So its a useful tool, but not a clear indicator of much on its own.
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