Fact Check: Improving Heart Rate Variability with Diet, Exercise, and Lifestyle

I improved my heart rate variability from being in the ' 70s to regularly surpassing 120s and sometimes being in

the 150s but the craziest part is that this transformation happened in just 6 months so let's start with diet most

people think the most important thing is what you eat and while there's some partial Truths Behind it when you eat

and how much you eat is even more important eating before bed literally killed my HRV you can see my stress

levels of when I ate food before bed compared to when I didn't and the reason behind this is when you eat close to

your bedtime your body diverts blood flow to the digestive system which increases your heart rate which results

in a lower HRV essentially digestion requires a lot of energy and resources which takes away from the body's ability

to recover and repair itself during sleep to fix this stop eating at least 3 hours before bed however if you want to

fully optimize stop eating at least 10 hours before bed and when I started doing this my HRV shot up to the moon

but now that you know when to eat you must also eat the right foods for example when wanting to boost

specifically for HRV a study from North Carolina found that a higher intake of fish vegetables and fruit generally led

to beneficial changes in HRV it was also said that there were significant associations between high cholesterol

and low HRV individuals on a low sodium diet had a higher HRV than when they had been placed on high sodium diets meaning

you need to eliminate processed foods as much as possible I used to love going to Chipotle thinking it was healthy only to

discover that it was actually lowering my HRV due to the seed oils that they were using and this is the phase when I

tested it out you can see a huge dip for a couple months so basically instead of eating out I've been following Brian

Johnson's blueprint diet plus meat fish and eggs now there are multiple ways to be healthy you can do carnivore keto

paleo there's so many great diet these days but my main pitch in improving HRV is try and stay consistent on whatever

diet works for you and avoid processed foods seed oils or tap water basically enjoy real actual food now an

observation I've made is basically the less you eat the higher the HRV and it does come at a cost you know I'll get so

hungry that I'll just open up my fridge to see what's up and usually when I feel hungry is when I actually unfort sleep

and recover better and my HRV shoots up but it sucks being hungry now if you're a performance athlete or a bodybuilder

now this is suboptimal advice um definitely don't follow this but if you're going for health and productivity

I can 100% say this got me better in every single aspect you know what diet plays a big role in improving your HRV

it is only a preite and without proper exercise it is going to be impossible to get to your maximum genetic potential

for your HRV so how do we get there now there are certain workouts that will drastically increase your HRV more than

other exercises and in fact from a metaanalysis study they broke it down into top three exercises that

drastically increase your HRV so first the study emphasized the effectiveness of aerobic exercise stating that aerobic

exercise training can alter neuro regulatory control over the heart and that exercise training results in

significant increase in RR intervals and high frequency power so basically when you do aerobic

exercises what's going to happen is your heart rate is going to go up and as the heart rate goes up your heart starts to

stretch more increasing stroke volume and making the heart bigger and stronger meaning your heart rate doesn't have to

go up as high when you're at rest because your heart is becoming more efficient due to aerobic exercises which

kind of leads to the next Point endurance exercise in the next study they did experiments on dogs the paper

notes that animals increase their HRV after endurance exercise due to enhanced baroceptor control and vagal modulation

and it's kind of true because right now I'm training for a marathon and as I'm increasing my mileage I also notice my

HRV starts going up now I'm pretty sure if I do hardcore endurance-based workouts ultramarathons every day my HRV

is not going to go up you know the day after a marathon or even after long runs my HRV always always goes down but

usually what happens 2 to 3 days later is I tend to hit a PR on my HRV so how I view endurance workout is you're

basically taking a step back to move two to three steps forward so one to two times a week of endurance training would

be the sweet spot for endurance training up till this point I'll say all the workouts are working below 90% of your

maximum heart rate but what would happen if you go beyond that in this study it says High interval training

significantly increased high frequency power reflecting stronger parasympathetic activities meaning by

getting your heart to Twitch instead of stretch it actually tries to find more ways to lower your resting heart rate

which makes your heart more efficient if you do it occasionally of course so this is basically what I do for workouts I

know weightlifting doesn't contribute too much to HRV but I still love to do it so uh I still put them into my

workout program but I did start prioritizing my runs more than my lifting so 80% of my workouts are all

easy runs to build the engine for my heart and once a week I do a long run to build endurance and I do one

high-intensity interval training like track workouts or Sprints or Hill Sprints to work on speed and my fast s

muscles but if you don't get great sleep and I use the word great here because not all sleep are the same you are not

going to increase your HRV I used to have a hard time waking up hard time falling asleep and sometimes I would

wake up in the middle of of the night and not be able to fall back asleep but ever since I started implementing this

simple strategy I was able to solve all of my sleeping problems and the three factors I decided to focus on to fix my

sleep was what I do in the day my sleeping environment and tools to make me fall asleep faster and deeper so

starting with what you do set a consistent bedtime because that will also help you wake up consistently at

the same time I usually sleep at 8:00 and naturally wake up at 4:5 then I try to get sunlight in the

morning I get my sun from my morning runs the sun will help set your circadian rhythm then find a time to

exercise because based on my experience if I don't exert my body I don't get as much restorated sleep as much as the day

I exerted myself so usually working out helps being productive helps try and exhaust your body throughout the day to

get more restorative and deeper sleep also again don't eat too late because your stress level is going to be off the

charts remember your body could either recover or digest but it can't do both at the same time and last wind down 30

minutes before going to bed so you can shut down your brain now as a bonus and this is only if you have time because I

know all of you guys are busy but one observation that I made is whenever I do Wim Hoff breathing I notice my

respiratory rate goes down meaning that I breed less per minute you know I do it when I'm overwhelmed or feeling anxious

but it does help control my my breath now going to sleeping environment to make sleeping easier I turn the AC to

67° use blackout curtains to eliminate all lights and listen to iasa music I know um it's weird but I noticed I get

deeper sleep going to sleeping tools I use Mouse tape to practice nasal breeding and if I'm struggling to fall

asleep which normally happens when I'm traveling I start doing this thing called box breeding uh you inhale in for

6 seconds so hold for 6 seconds and then exhale for 6 seconds and then hold for 6 seconds and

then repeat that cycle over and over I try to build that box breeding up to 10 seconds each and by the time I reach 10

I'm usually exhausted because of the breathing exercise and then I just naturally fall asleep now if you're

still watching this video and yet alone doing all the three things we just talked about you are doing all the

actions that will get you the 99% results of increasing your h RV now the next couple things we're going to talk

about are the hardcore stuff for the hardcore people who wants to take their health to the next level so we'll talk

about HRV devices coal plunges sauna and how to lower your stress so regarding sauna and coal plunge they both didn't

impact my HRV as much as good sleep diet and exercise but in a study on the relationship between plasma volume and

heart rate variability sauna resulted in Peak plasma volume expansion after four exposures with a likely large increase

increase of 17.8% and reduction of heart rate when waking up by 10.2% meaning it does

impact HRV in a positive way also with cold shower Andrew humorman talks about it you know I think it would be better

for me to reference a clip instead of me trying to mess up his research but it's just a different way of training your

cells in your body it's going to create what is healthy stress it's called hesis in the cells and the more you expose

your your muscle cells or your brown fat cells to this kind of like healthy stresses exercise cold and heat exposure

it's going to make them uh better at like activating and also um at keeping you healthy but yes these small actions

do compound over a long period of time so I still do them I've tested couple HRV devices neuroim petto and sensate

now for neuroim I don't really have an opinion because I've never used it before however for petto I've noticed it

makes me feel more tired and it seemed to work p stos is designed to stimulate the Vegas nervous system through gentle

vibrations on the neck you know it almost feels like you're getting electrocuted to the neck but somehow in

a good way but you know the downside is you have to use a gel and you have to clean it up afterwards but while petto

seems to work I honestly don't think I could say the same with sensate Sensei is a vibrating Zone and gives me a

pseudo science Vibes you know it felt more like a placebo than actual practical device of improving your HRV

so last aspect on increasing HRV is reducing stress I found a really interesting case study which is Warren

Buffett the reason why I say Warren Buffett is a great example for this he works really hard but also did what he

loves surrounded himself with people he loved and despite his notoriously bad diet he is well and alive and I believe

he just passed 90 and I believe that is the epitome of What happiness and low stress can do if you guys have any more

HRV tips uh please leave them down below in the comments but I'll see you guys next week