What Needs to Shift?

Place a finger on your pulse and feel your heartbeat.

Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub…

Steady. Predictable. Reliable.

It seems to tick along with perfect regularity.

But that's an illusion.

Each beat lands just milliseconds apart from the next — never quite the same, but close enough to fool you.

Think of a perfectly steady heart at 60 BPM. 💗

Each beat would come exactly 1.0 second after the previous. But a real, healthy heart might show:

Beat 1: 0.97 seconds

Beat 2: 1.03 seconds

Beat 3: 0.99 seconds

Beat 4: 1.01 seconds

Those tiny fluctuations between each beat — 30, 40, maybe 60 milliseconds — are what we call heart rate variability (HRV). You'll never feel them, but today's wearables can track them effortlessly.

To visualize HRV, picture the difference between:

🎼 A metronome: Tick... Tick... Tick... (perfectly even spacing)

❤️ Your heart: Beat… Beat…… Beat…. Beat.. Beat… (each beat arrives a few milliseconds early or late, exaggerated here so your eyes can catch it)

It’s the difference between a robot drummer hitting every beat with machine precision and a human drummer nudging each beat slightly early or late.

And that subtle variation is a sign of vitality. 💪🏽

Because beneath those quiet variations lies a remarkable early-warning system: a hidden signal that can help you decode stress, fatigue, illness, and even predict your longevity.

The Hidden Language of Your Heartbeat 💓

Your heart rate variability emerges from an ongoing conversation between two opposing forces in your nervous system:

• Sympathetic: Your body's accelerator, think "fight or flight” mode.

• Parasympathetic: Your body's brake, think “rest and recover" mode.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what typically drives each side:

These two systems don’t wait their turn. They simultaneously talk over each other, constantly shifting in volume. HRV is the byproduct of that tug-of-war, reflecting how smoothly your nervous system adapts.

Picture a car being driven through changing terrain. 🚗

A skilled driver constantly makes tiny, precise adjustments: a little gas here, slight brake there, small steering corrections everywhere. To passengers, the journey feels seamless, but if you could measure each adjustment, you'd see hundreds of precise, responsive micro-adjustments.

🟢 That’s high HRV: your heart’s rhythm making continuous, tiny, adjustments to life’s internal terrain.

Under chronic stress, illness, or poor recovery, your heart becomes more like a tense, novice driver gripping the wheel: functioning but rigid, less responsive to changing conditions.

🔴 That’s low HRV: a heartbeat that’s suspiciously, unhealthily consistent.

While a metronome-like heartbeat might sound ideal, it’s a reason for concern. A healthy system doesn’t tick with perfect regularity. It adapts, moment to moment.

And when adaptability slips, the studies speak for themselves.

🔬 38,000 People, One Critical Discovery

A massive analysis involving nearly 38,000 people uncovered that those with consistently lower HRV had 32–45% higher risk of heart attacks and strokes¹, making HRV an important signal of longevity.

🧠 Your Heart Knows You’re Stressed, Even Before You Do

HRV reliably drops during psychological stress, even before you consciously feel it ^2 3. Lower HRV is also linked to chronic anxiety and depression⁴.

🦠 Predicting Illness, Days Before Symptoms Appear

A landmark study from Mount Sinai found that declines in HRV could predict COVID-19 infection up to seven days before symptoms appeared⁵. Similar patterns show up in other inflammatory and viral illnesses.

Your HRV is a living journal—each tiny variation between beats narrating the story of your stress, recovery and resilience before you even realize there’s a story unfolding.

HRV is a Compass, Not a Score 🧭

“What HRV number should I aim for?”

Unlike resting heart rate or blood pressure, HRV doesn’t have a fixed, “normal” reference range. It varies wildly between people, devices, and methods.

High or low HRV is relative to the individual.

My Apple Watch shows HRV in the 60’s. WHOOP reported 80’s. Garmin hovers in the 40’s and 50’s. Different tools, different baselines.

What matters is your HRV trend across multiple days-weeks:

• Decreasing HRV: You might be overreaching—training too hard, sleeping too little, or dealing with stress you haven’t acknowledged yet.

• Rising HRV: You’re trending toward better recovery, lower stress, and resilience.

HRV isn’t a metric to hit. It’s a trend to watch.

Reading Between The Beats

My HRV kept its own travel diary when I visited Southeast Asia last month. The opening chapters weren't pretty: record low HRV scores as jet lag, tropical heat, and disrupted sleep strained my system. 😮‍💨

My nervous system was speaking a language of exhaustion my conscious mind hadn't yet translated. 📉

But the story took an unexpected turn.

As I surrendered to my holiday—daily massages, zero work, zero difficult conversations—my HRV skyrocketed to levels I had not seen before.

This is what makes HRV so revealing: while I was experiencing my holiday, my nervous system was silently documenting its own version of events. The rising HRV values weren't just confirming I felt better. It was quantifying my recovery in real-time, showing the shift from stress to restoration long before I recognized the full extent of either.

Those heartbeat shifts read like journal entries, first scrawled in stress, then rewritten in calm. 📝

And then there's the eerie part.

Some weeks my HRV graph will be stubbornly low despite my seemingly model behavior. No alcohol. Training completed without compromise. 7-8 hours of what passes for "decent sleep" in my world.

That's when my HRV becomes the whistleblower, exposing the stress my rational mind has expertly rationalized away.

Often it's a difficult conversation with a friend I've been dreading for weeks. Sometimes it's the raw friction with difficult personalities at work, still burning beneath my professional composure. Maybe it's relationship tensions I've labeled as resolved but haven't truly put to rest. 😩

Your heartbeat becomes a biological polygraph, excavating the emotional truths your rational mind expertly buries.

When your mind whispers "I'm fine," your heart might be writing a different story in the milliseconds between beats. 🎯

Your Next Move

HRV’s usefulness isn’t about chasing perfect numbers. It’s about interpreting trends and responding strategically. Here’s how to use the data:

📈 Let the Trend Tell the Story

• Don’t obsess over daily HRV dips. They’re noisy, inconsistent, and often meaningless on their own.

• Zoom out. Watch the trend across the week. That’s where the signal lives.

🔍 Decode the Patterns

Insight comes from connecting the dots between behaviours that repeatedly impact HRV.

• Alcohol: That "harmless" glass of evening wine? By morning, watch your HRV plummet. And it counts even the smallest drops.

• Poor sleep: You might swear you "slept fine," but your declining HRV reflects the tossing, turning, and shallow sleep your memory conveniently edited out.

• Lingering stress: That work tension you thought you left at the office? Your nervous system didn't get the memo. HRV often drops before you consciously realize you're still bothered.

Think your body doesn't keep receipts? Think again. ⚠️

🚩 When It’s Low For Days, Don’t Wait

A consistently low HRV over 5–7 days isn’t just noise. It’s your nervous system waving a flag. Respond with:

• Alcohol and caffeine-free evenings.

• Upgrade your sleep: consistent bedtime, blackout darkness, and screens banned after sunset.

• Find your recovery ritual: that walk, journal session, or breath work you've been putting off? Your nervous system is requesting it now.

Still Unsure?

In this quick 30-second video, Dr. Andy Galpin does an amazing job breaking down what HRV is all about.