What is HRV?
Heart Rate Variability (HRV), is an objective and non-invasive measure for analysing the balance of the autonomic nervous system.
It is considered one of the most important biomarkers of the level of psychophysical stress, useful for assessing health and fitness.
How is it obtained?
The HRV is calculated from the variation of the time intervals between heartbeats, the RR intervals.
The human heart is not a metronome, so it does not have constant intervals between beats, but reacts to various factors by varying them.
What is it for?
Due to its dependence on the autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for the body’s self-regulation, HRV is useful for assessing health and fitness.
Monitoring HRV can help to better understand the body’s level of well-being, so that everyone can be aware of their state of health in order to prevent excessive stress, avoid overtraining and improve performance.
How is it calculated by the Howdy Senior system?
The Howdy Senior monitoring system can measure HRV1. Thanks to the textile sensors integrated in the top that detect the heart rate, the Howdy App is able to calculate the HRV value.
The measurement is taken at rest, preferably just after waking up, and is not instantaneous, but takes a few minutes to collect the amount of data needed for the calculation. It is important to maintain a constant and repeated measurement frequency over time in order to create a reliable baseline and assess the long-term trend.
The HRV index is between 0 and 100 and is derived from lnRMSSD2, the higher the index, the greater the variability.
A deviation of the HRV figure downwards from the baseline indicates a situation of stress and low recovery.
An upward deviation, on the other hand, indicates an activation of the recovery systems.
Example of HRV Dashboard
_____________
HRV and sport
HRV is an interesting value for the sports world.
Measuring and evaluating changes in HRV on a day-to-day basis can help understand how the body reacts to the stress caused by an intense physical activity such as training or a sports performance.
Therefore, once the baseline is defined, it is possible to understand how long it takes the body to return to normal, and therefore how to plan the intensity of training to avoid overload and reduce the risk of injury.
- HRV functions are additional and are not included in the medical certification of HOWDY SENIOR.
- lnRMSSD: logarithm of the square root of the mean of successive squared differences.
The measurements in the Howdy App are not intended for diagnostic purposes, but purely for general fitness and well-being.
Please consult your doctor or a specialist before making any decisions regarding your health.