Heart rate variance: The most important health metric you didn't know about
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. It’s always a good idea to get your step-count in every day, and to check your heart-rate and how many calories you have burnt per workout. These are the standard fitness metrics that have gained popularity over the last few years, and most active people use these parameters.
But one metric which has gone under is heart-rate variability (HRV). There are two reasons for this. One is that it’s not always easy to measure without going to a clinic for a checkup.
And the other is that while you can access this data on certain fitness wearables, it is buried under a lot of other information, and therefore not particularly easy to find. “HRV is simply a measure of the variation in time between each heartbeat. This variation is controlled by a primitive part of the nervous system called the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
It works behind the scenes, automatically regulating our heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and digestion among other key tasks," states a Harvard Healtharticle titled, Heart Rate Variability: How It Might Indicate Well-Being. Heart rate is the number of times the heart beats in a minute, but variance is measured in milliseconds because that is the space between two beats. This can vary according to age, fitness, and the sleep-wake cycle.
“HRV metrics change as you grow older but a ballpark healthy HRV would be 20-70 milliseconds. It would depend on your fitness. But one must take into consideration other factors as well.
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