I have raised this before, and afterwards went to see a cardiologist privately to ask about low HRV, Mine is very low but he said he was not worried as it can lower with age and that strengthening exercises would help. I checked Dr Google (yes I know shouldn't be looking) who gives all sorts of dire outcomes and everything I read is negative.
Has anyone a low HRV? If so have you been able to increase and how? I had an ablation in January (successful so far) and wondered if that could be the cause. I already exercise by walking 11,000 steps a day. would appreciate any comments
thank you x
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foxglove1
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mine is generally low but I know I’m well when it is. When I’m Afib my HRV goes through the roof. When first diagnosed a few years ago my HRV was in excess of 200-300 and the minute I came back into NSR it dropped to less than 30. The other day it was up at 363 and I felt off and when I did an ECG it confirmed I was in Afib. So don’t worry if it’s low.
I'm 78, have been in NSR for 12 months possibly 15 or even 18 months. In any event, can't really remember when I was last hit with a AF event and my HRV is between 16 and 34 ms according to my tracker. I don't go out of my way to exercise whatsoever and my average regular walking steps per day is around 5200, can be as high as 7000 but not often. As a matter of interest my BP is steady around 131/73 (helped by meds) and my average daily HR is around 64 to 67 bpm ( helped by meds) ........ at 78 and still driving buses for around 30 hours a week in College term time ......... what's the problemo ???
That’s amazing! Well done on NSR for so long! I’m 75 and fit - it’s the pesky HRV that has bothered me. Maybe (as Bob often recommends 😃) should stop looking. Everything else is good.
What do you call ‘low’ and what measurement are you using?
In AF it will always be really high, if you sit on a couch, not in arrythmia, it will normally be quite low. But low for me is less than 20. My average - over a year - is 27-30. I use to assess my emotional state rather than physical - and it’s very revealing. Stress is a factor in high HRV - my highest recorded state when very anxious and in AF was about 200.
An elite athlete would use HRV for very different purpose and aim for HRV much higher - but then they often suffer with arrythmias in later life. It’s not an easy measurement to make generalisation but I use it to assess how well I am generally and I know my ‘norm’ after about 20 years of tracking, that I think is more useful - using averages over a long period of time.
I would also point out that stress is a huge factor in raising HRV, which is often used to determine exactly how your ANS is reacting so being fairly low and in ‘cohesion’ is often something to be aimed for.
Mine was really low (often as low as 12). I have an Apple watch so I can monitor it moment by moment and I can say categorically that it's very influenced by stress. If I do some deep breathing exercises and/or meditation it can come up to 50+. I recommend you work on some relaxation approach of some kind, several times a day, and see how that effects it.
I do think it's a helpful indication of your heart's general state of welbeing. Monitoring it makes me pay more attention to my stress levels and do something about it.
I wouldn't take too much notice of doctors, whose standard response to anything as far as I can tell is 'Oh, that happens when you get older'!
~Spot on TopBiscuit - I find "their" comments amazingly convenient to factor almost everything to aging. Sure some of it is correct but not entirely. One way of shutting down a conversation and moving us on. Oh and all whilst we are paying them for their advice and knowledge
My HRV was consistently above 50mS until I had an ablation in Jan 2022, when it dropped immediately to around 10mS. It stayed like that for 15 months and then started to rise very slowly. Now at about 20mS average, but I still get occasional readings of 0mS, which means my heart is beating extremely regularly like a metronome. I couldnt find any studies that addressed this. High HRV readings are meaningless if you are in afib, but a low reading is a real thing, so I wish I knew why it is happening. My cardiologist had no suggestions. I have been able to continue running half-marathons, so it doesn't seem to have affected anything.
that’s interesting Halfheart. Like I said my ablation was in January and I wondered if it might be due to that. My cardiologist consultant doesn’t want to see me till Dec and will decide then whether ablation worked or not but in meantime no afib 🤞just low HRV😢 thank you for getting in touch
Huh, that's interesting, Halfheart. I note that when I've taken Flecainide (as PiP) the same thing happens and the effect seems to last for up to 24 hrs.
For you (and maybe foxglove1 ) maybe it's due to a long recovery process for the heart? Or does the ablation interfere with the normal fluctuations in some way, I wonder? So many questions, so few answers!
Since my HRV dropped as a result of the ablation, I assume it's caused by nerve damage in the heart from the RF, rather than being a marker of other underlying heart problems. My HRV can drop to 0mS, which normally would be a predictor of imminent demise, but I'm running half marathons.
The following is from a Harvard Medical School blog about HRV:
>>HRV may offer a noninvasive way to signal imbalances in the autonomic nervous system. Based on data gathered from many people, if the system is in more of a fight-or-flight mode, the variation between subsequent heartbeats tends to be lower. If the system is in more relaxed state, the variation between beats may be higher.
This suggests some interesting possibilities. People who have a high HRV may have greater cardiovascular fitness and may be more resilient to stress. HRV may also provide personal feedback about your lifestyle and help motivate those who are considering taking steps toward a healthier life. You might see a connection to HRV changes as you incorporate more mindfulness, meditation, sleep, and especially physical activity into your life. For those who love data and numbers, this could be a way to track how your nervous system is reacting not only to the environment, but also to your emotions, thoughts, and feelings.
There are questions about the accuracy, reliability and overall usefulness of tracking HRV. While HRV has been linked to overall physical fitness, the correlation between changes in HRV and how your autonomic nervous system is functioning will require much more research. Still, if you decide to use HRV as another piece of health data, do not get too confident if you have a high HRV, or too worried if your HRV is low. Think of HRV as another way you might tap into your body and mind are responding to what your daily experiences.<<
Thanks for the Harvard blog frazeej and good advice I think. Very encouraging Halfheart re took 15 months for HRV to increase and that you are back training and running half marathons. Previous to February when my AF began, my HRV was 60-70’s, and dropped immediately to 20-30’s. I’m now 7 days post-ablation, and it’s 19-25. My biggest angst in all this is that I may not be able to return to my previous lifestyle trail running, skiing etc, as exercise became my biggest AF trigger. Finding this forum invaluable for knowledge and encouragement.
Exercise was also a trigger for me, but since the ablation it no longer is. That allows me to not worry so much about going hiking etc, and has resulted in a great improvement in QOL. I used to have to plan exit routes for every hike.
Folks should enlarge with a dictionary explanation when they use abbreviations.. don't you think. Now I know what the abbreviation is.
With me I would have thought that over exerting was a negative but my DHB wants me to have spurts of over exertion as his question makes me feel "it is great for my heart"!
Reading through all the later replies doesn't have AF. So really although an interesting chain it is not appropriate for us NOT to comment.
Dreamers internet information makes it clear. For athletes variation is looked at. But they did not have AF.
Thanx for replying as it brought back the thread which I delete. I saw Half.... note at bedtime. I'm in NZ.
That's not quite right. If you are in afib, it is not mathematically possible to have a low HRV. By definition, afib is irregular, and HRV is a measure of regularity. You can't have an irregular beat and a normal HRV. The common HRV statistic, used by the Apple Watch et al, is SDRR which is simply the standard deviation of the beat intervals. You can enter the RR intervals into a spreadsheet and calculate it easily. You can get those intervals from the Apple Watch via the Health app. It's pretty simple mathematically. In sinus rhythm, the beats are fairly regular, so the standard deviation is quite small, say 50mS. If you are in afib, the interval between beats is irregular, and the standard deviation has to go up, typically to over 200mS. It's possible that some devices might report a low HRV even when you are in afib, because they are computing SDNN where NN is the set of normal RR intervals ie it is discarding all the irregular intervals. But that is kind of meaningless if all the beats are irregular, because you would be ignoring nearly all the measurements. It's a bit hard to explain without going into a lot of maths.
Something to bear in mind is that if you measure HRV with an Apple Watch, it is calculated over a period of around 1 minute. If you then go on Google and find some study that gives healthy HRV values, be aware that those HRV values are usually measured over 24 hours, which gives a much higher value. So it's not apples-to-apples. Don't panic if your HRV seems lower than in some table on the internet, there's lots of different ways to measure it and calculate it.
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