Heart Rate Variability-HRV

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What is HRV?

Heart rate variability (HRV) is the ability of an organism to change the frequency (pulse) of the heart's rhythm. Changes in the time interval between two heartbeats also occur spontaneously at rest. It seems that our heart rate is usually regular. We don't even recognize the slight fluctuations in the range of a few milliseconds in a normal ECG. It is all the more astonishing that the traditional Chinese doctors were able to determine the subtle differences many hundred years ago with pulse diagnostics and then also their frightening realization: "When the heartbeat is as regular as the rain drips on the roof or the woodpecker against hammers the tree, the patient will die within 3 days.”

 

I can give the all-clear. With the modern diagnostics of HRV with specially developed ECG devices, we very rarely see such findings, but we often see the missing natural fluctuation in the frequency. With this ECG, we do not so much examine the heart, but much more the vegetative nervous system, which controls the heart.

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As already described in traditional Chinese medicine, the cause is often a “kidney weakness” that attacks the heart. However, the anatomy knowledge of the TCM doctors was not very good. Because it is actually a weakness of the adrenal glands, which lie as a cap on the upper pole of the kidneys. I can very often prove the weakness with the tensor examination or with the help of hormone-related saliva tests. After all, the TCM doctors already knew where the weakness was located.  

 

But why does adrenal insufficiency occur so often, which manifests itself in lack of concentration, memory and sleep disorders, as well as states of exhaustion and even burnout?

The adrenal glands are our stress organs. They produce many hormones and also the stress hormones cortisone, adrenaline and noradrenaline. When a patient has a lot of stress, they use up a lot of the stress hormones. The adrenal glands are then overwhelmed and this is reflected in the heart in a very regular heart rhythm, since the vegetative system is no longer able to influence the rhythm with its natural ability to oscillate.

Ultimately, we can use the HRV test to make less of a statement about the heart than about acute and chronic stress.

 

How does the HRV test work?

In the HRV test, the signal is picked up by clamp electrodes on the wrists and evaluated and graphically processed in a special HRV ECG.

HRV results from many years of scientific research. The HRV test combines the standard tests of neurovegetative functional analysis (RSA test, short-term HRV, lying-standing HRV and 24-hour HRV measurement) and HRV biofeedback in one system. The current state of the autonomic nervous system (sympathetic/parasympathetic) is determined in just a few minutes. The precise analysis shows a comprehensive view of the vegetative and provides information on your state of health.

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indication of the examination

The HRV test clearly shows patients how sensitively and quickly our cardiovascular system reacts to mental stress and how harmful excessive stress can be. The HRV test has become an important part of basic diagnostics for cardiovascular diseases because it reliably detects disorders in the area of the autonomic nervous system (including stress) and improves the risk assessment for cardiovascular patients.