As a chiropractor, one of the most common questions I get asked at our clinic is: “What do I need to do to get over this, and how can I get over this faster?” Whether you are dealing with chronic pain, autoimmune challenges, or just feeling completely run down, you want to know what your next logical step is to feel better.
Yesterday, I was sitting at my desk reading an incredibly interesting research article published by Gidron in 2018. It focused on a metric that we have used in our clinic for a long time, and one that is the ultimate key to answering that question: Heart Rate Variability (HRV).
If you have been struggling to find your energy, recover from chronic illness, or manage daily stress, understanding your HRV is the absolute best place to start. Let’s dive into what this metric means, what the science says, and how you can use it to build true stress resilience.
What is Heart Rate Variability (HRV)?
To understand HRV, we first have to talk about how your heart actually beats. Most people assume that a healthy heart should beat like a metronome—perfectly regular, clicking right on the beat.
However, this is actually a misconception.
In reality, we want your heartbeat to be highly variable. Heart Rate Variability measures the tiny, millisecond-level fluctuations in time between each consecutive heartbeat.
When your HRV is high, it means your heart is highly responsive to every tiny change in your environment. For instance, if you feel a cool breeze, hear a sudden noise, or have to turn your attention quickly, your body has to dynamically shift its blood flow to supply your brain and muscles. A highly variable heart is a responsive heart, allowing you to adapt quickly, survive, and thrive.
The Science of HRV: Why Responsiveness Matters
The 2018 study by Gidron analyzed how HRV correlates with health outcomes in both communicable and non-communicable chronic diseases, including cancer and autoimmunity.
The findings were striking:
- High Heart Rate Variability: Individuals with high HRV demonstrated excellent environmental responsiveness. Because their bodies adapted easily to changes, they experienced significantly better health outcomes.
- Low Heart Rate Variability: Those with low HRV were highly stressed. Their hearts could not respond effectively to environmental changes, which directly correlated with poorer health outcomes when facing chronic diseases.
When your HRV is low, your body is effectively locked in a rigid state, unable to adapt to the demands of life.
The Modern “Energy Debt”
Today, we are constantly bombarded with stress. Between crazy traffic, demanding kids’ activities, financial pressures, and the general uncertainty of the world, we are under constant pressure. In fact, most of us walk around with stress directly in our pockets because our phones keep us constantly available to the world.
This constant bombardment makes it incredibly difficult to turn ourselves down and slide into that essential “rest and digest” state. Without this state, your body cannot grow, repair, or heal.
I like to think of this as an energy debt. When you run out of energy but keep pushing forward, your body begins running on credit. Just like financial finances, you can only run a debt for so long before it catches up to you. Many of the people we see who are chronically sick, fatigued, or in pain are simply buried under a massive, growing energy debt.
How Chiropractic Care Pays Off Your Stress Debt
Fortunately, you do not have to stay in debt. You can actively improve your Heart Rate Variability and build stress resilience.
While general stress reduction tactics like deep breathing and regular exercise are excellent habits, chiropractic care is a phenomenal stress management therapy.
Many people view chiropractic care solely as a treatment for back pain. While pain relief and better sleep are common benefits, the primary mechanism of chiropractic is improving the communication between your brain and your body.
When your body feeds high-quality, accurate information to your brain, your brain can make better decisions and send efficient, healthy responses back. This efficient loop is the very definition of stress resilience. The better your brain-body communication is, the less stress impacts your long-term health.
Measuring Your Progress: HRV Testing in Our Office
At Better Life Chiropractic & Wellness, we believe in testing, not guessing. Over my 17 years of practicing functional neurology, functional medicine, and chiropractic care—working with over 5,000 patients—I have seen firsthand how powerful objective testing is.
In our office, we use a Polar monitor strap to perform HRV scans. Here is how we use it to measure your stress resilience:
- Baseline Scan: We hook you up to evaluate exactly where your nervous system is currently operating.
- The Chiropractic Adjustment: We perform a targeted chiropractic adjustment designed to relieve nervous system interference.
- Post-Adjustment Rescan: We measure you again to immediately see how your body responded.
Because younger people naturally have higher HRV than older individuals, we can use normative databases to calculate your biological nervous system age.
Sometimes, we see as much as a 20-year biological age improvement before and after a single adjustment. This means that by clearing communication pathways, the body instantly functions with the biological resource level of someone 20 years younger!
Take Your Next Step
Improving your HRV is not an overnight cure-all. However, by knocking down your stress and improving your stress resilience, you give your body the critical resources it needs to heal, repair, and recover.
Instead of ending your day completely drained, building your HRV ensures you have the energy left over to do what you actually love—whether that is playing with your kids, hitting a round of golf, or enjoying your hobbies.
If you are ready to stop running on an energy debt and start paying it off, let’s get your HRV checked.
Are you ready to discover your body’s true stress resilience? Contact us at Better Life Chiropractic & Wellness today to schedule your HRV scan.
You might also be interested in:
- Chiropractic care is natural fertilizer for the brain
- Chiropractic and it’s impact on sleep quality and quantity
- Why lab results might be holding you back from better health
- Chiropractic care boost neurological drive and muscle activation
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