Hi Marco, excellent panel and conversation, very down to earth to the everyday questions we ask ourselves with all this data. Thank you.
.
I measure 4-5 days a week my HRV with a garmin hrm dual pro heart rate band and eliteHRV (must try yours), and what I do is for 5min sit in the mornings just after waking up while doing nasal breathing 4s/6s inhale/exhale. I do this because I read that it is an exercise that helps to improve your HRV. My question is: is the data and trends valuable if I always use that pattern and keep all variables constant? Or would the data be better if I let go of the breathing pattern and measure breathing naturally?
Another question is whether you have tried Muse Headband to study sleep phases. In the podacst you mention that watches don't actually measure that and that the calculation to approximate it is inaccurate, Muse as such does measure the electrical activity of the brain. I just wanted to know if you know anything about how reliable Muse data can be.
I think that for the morning assessment, it is better not to do the breathing exercise. As you say, this exercise might help in the long term, but it also makes the data not representative of your physiological stress level (apart from situations in which there are very large stressors, which will still be captured, e.g. if you are sick, even the deep breathing will result in lower HRV than normal, and higher heart rate). My recommendation would be to switch to regular self-paced breathing, relaxed but without forcing it, which likely will result in 2-3 breaths extra over a minute. Maybe you can keep your routine with Elite HRV and add a morning measurement with HRV4Training :)
Regarding the Muse headband, I knew it as a meditation tool, hence in that case it can probably capture e.g. alpha waves as you relax, but I wasn't aware there's a version for sleep as well. Checking it out now, it seems the accuracy is still quite limited and not too different from wearables, probably due to the limited capabilities (e.g. measuring only 1 EEG channel, and still lacking other measurements that are part of polysomnography, like eye movement, muscle activity, etc.). I guess we have to live with the limitations if we want something practically usable :)
The question remains of what to do with this data as well. Personally, I don't find sleep structure particularly interesting per se, as there is no actionability on the data, nor we know what we should expect under different conditions. What interests me more is how sleep, just like any other positive or negative stressor, impacts our physiology and long term stress, and that can be captured with morning measurements of HRV (e.g. sleep deprivation or sleep issues will result in depressed HRV, and so on).
Hello Marco, thank you so much for your time and response.
My reasoning for incorporating the 4s/6s breathing pattern into the measurement was that if it’s always done that way, the baseline would be built taking the breathing pattern into account. Consequently, deviations from this baseline and the readiness markers would be okay. However, I understand that if we look at values like SDNN, for example, it wouldn’t reflect the real state. Am I understanding this correctly?
Regarding tracking sleep phases, my intention was to see what changes could promote deeper sleep and REM. I’m aware that my sleep is very light and that I might not be recovering sufficiently. For example, even minimal sounds wake me up.
thank you Antonio. I think that due to the deep breathing, we cannot be sure that we can capture physiological stress correctly, despite the fact that the breathing is always the same. It's about consistency, but also about the protocol used, and in this case I think it is preferable to use regular breathing as we are distorting the data otherwise. What you say about sleep makes sense, I'm also a light sleeper, but my fear is that relying on technology to capture aspects that are not captured with high accuracy and for whom there is little evidence of the ability to capture within-individual changes, might end up 'fooling us', and therefore I prefer to focus on sleep hygiene and checking the impact of overall stress on my resting physiology in the morning. You can of course experiment in different ways, but I'd keep in mind that we cannot be sure that what we see in sleep stage estimates is actually what is going on, due to technological limitations. Have a good weekend!
Marco, what a great and powerful response; you’ve helped me a lot, and I truly appreciate it. I think I’m going to tone down the intensity of my personal experiments a bit. A big hug, and thank you for your work!
Hi Marco, excellent panel and conversation, very down to earth to the everyday questions we ask ourselves with all this data. Thank you.
.
I measure 4-5 days a week my HRV with a garmin hrm dual pro heart rate band and eliteHRV (must try yours), and what I do is for 5min sit in the mornings just after waking up while doing nasal breathing 4s/6s inhale/exhale. I do this because I read that it is an exercise that helps to improve your HRV. My question is: is the data and trends valuable if I always use that pattern and keep all variables constant? Or would the data be better if I let go of the breathing pattern and measure breathing naturally?
Another question is whether you have tried Muse Headband to study sleep phases. In the podacst you mention that watches don't actually measure that and that the calculation to approximate it is inaccurate, Muse as such does measure the electrical activity of the brain. I just wanted to know if you know anything about how reliable Muse data can be.
Thanks y saluti,
Antonio
grazie Antonio!
I think that for the morning assessment, it is better not to do the breathing exercise. As you say, this exercise might help in the long term, but it also makes the data not representative of your physiological stress level (apart from situations in which there are very large stressors, which will still be captured, e.g. if you are sick, even the deep breathing will result in lower HRV than normal, and higher heart rate). My recommendation would be to switch to regular self-paced breathing, relaxed but without forcing it, which likely will result in 2-3 breaths extra over a minute. Maybe you can keep your routine with Elite HRV and add a morning measurement with HRV4Training :)
Regarding the Muse headband, I knew it as a meditation tool, hence in that case it can probably capture e.g. alpha waves as you relax, but I wasn't aware there's a version for sleep as well. Checking it out now, it seems the accuracy is still quite limited and not too different from wearables, probably due to the limited capabilities (e.g. measuring only 1 EEG channel, and still lacking other measurements that are part of polysomnography, like eye movement, muscle activity, etc.). I guess we have to live with the limitations if we want something practically usable :)
The question remains of what to do with this data as well. Personally, I don't find sleep structure particularly interesting per se, as there is no actionability on the data, nor we know what we should expect under different conditions. What interests me more is how sleep, just like any other positive or negative stressor, impacts our physiology and long term stress, and that can be captured with morning measurements of HRV (e.g. sleep deprivation or sleep issues will result in depressed HRV, and so on).
I hope this makes sense to you!
Hello Marco, thank you so much for your time and response.
My reasoning for incorporating the 4s/6s breathing pattern into the measurement was that if it’s always done that way, the baseline would be built taking the breathing pattern into account. Consequently, deviations from this baseline and the readiness markers would be okay. However, I understand that if we look at values like SDNN, for example, it wouldn’t reflect the real state. Am I understanding this correctly?
Regarding tracking sleep phases, my intention was to see what changes could promote deeper sleep and REM. I’m aware that my sleep is very light and that I might not be recovering sufficiently. For example, even minimal sounds wake me up.
I’ll try HRV4Training for morning measurements.
Grazie :)
thank you Antonio. I think that due to the deep breathing, we cannot be sure that we can capture physiological stress correctly, despite the fact that the breathing is always the same. It's about consistency, but also about the protocol used, and in this case I think it is preferable to use regular breathing as we are distorting the data otherwise. What you say about sleep makes sense, I'm also a light sleeper, but my fear is that relying on technology to capture aspects that are not captured with high accuracy and for whom there is little evidence of the ability to capture within-individual changes, might end up 'fooling us', and therefore I prefer to focus on sleep hygiene and checking the impact of overall stress on my resting physiology in the morning. You can of course experiment in different ways, but I'd keep in mind that we cannot be sure that what we see in sleep stage estimates is actually what is going on, due to technological limitations. Have a good weekend!
Marco, what a great and powerful response; you’ve helped me a lot, and I truly appreciate it. I think I’m going to tone down the intensity of my personal experiments a bit. A big hug, and thank you for your work!