How to Know If Stress Is Hurting Your Body

hello I've had quite a few people ask why it is that I wear two watches well actually I don't wear two watches I've got one regular watch but this is a woop band and that's because I'm measuring heart rate variability now I want to be really clear I'm very much brand agnostic there's quite a lot of devices My Gin in itself will measure heart rate variability I've got polar devices choros even fitbits will measure heart rate variability it's that personally I quite like this device because it doesn't have a screen for when I'm essentially trying to do a bit of screen less time take the watch off leave the phone at home and just be without so that's personal preference but why do I like monitoring my heart rate variability now to be clear this isn't that your heart is doing 60 beats a minute of 80 beats a minute whatever it's the interval it's the beat to beat variation between each beat and this is a surrogate marker of the balance within your autonomic nervous system so that's the part of the body that runs the background services so your heart rate your breathing bowel and it's comprised of two separate units you've got the sympathetic nervous system which is part of our fight and flight and our parasympathetic system which is rest and digest essentially if you're biologically stressed then your sympathetic nervous system will be very active which will push your heart rate variability down conversely if your sympathetic nervous system is quiet and your parasympathetic is more active then the HRV is going to go up question's got to be why does this matter well I've used it from the sport Sports World if my HRV is going up or stable I'm looking after myself if my HRV is going down then I'm perhaps overdoing it and need to ease off so if you're looking at a way of monitoring yourself your stress levels whether or not you're overdoing it with training which can cause quite a lot of medical problems have a look at a device that monitors heart rate variability and see if you can incorporate it into your training into your lifestyle and see if it helps you have a better quality of training with that mik take care we'll see you that Jer