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I’ve been tracking my heart rate variability for years now. Not obsessively—just enough to notice when the numbers dip, when they spike, when they refuse to budge no matter what I try. HRV is supposed to be a window into autonomic balance, a proxy for resilience, a way to quantify how well your body handles stress. And yet, the more I watch it, the less I trust it.
The problem isn’t the data. The problem is what happens when you start treating it like a score to optimize.
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Most mornings, I wake up, strap on the chest monitor, and wait for the reading. If it’s high, I feel a quiet satisfaction—good, my nervous system is in order. If it’s low, I start troubleshooting: Did I drink too much last night? Not enough electrolytes? Too much screen time before bed? I adjust, I tweak, I try again the next day. And sometimes, the number improves. But not always. And when it doesn’t, I’ve noticed something strange: I feel worse about feeling worse.
This isn’t just about the number. It’s about the loop. The more you chase HRV, the more it starts to feel like a performance metric, not a biological signal. You’re not just measuring your nervous system—you’re negotiating with it. And the negotiation itself becomes a stressor.
I’ve talked to other people who track HRV religiously. Some of them describe the same unease. One friend, a former athlete, told me he stopped wearing his monitor altogether after he noticed he’d start his day anxious before even checking the reading. Another mentioned that on days when her HRV was low, she’d cancel workouts, skip social plans, even avoid caffeine—all in the name of "protecting" her autonomic balance. But the avoidance, she realized, was making her feel more fragile, not less.
There’s a paradox here. HRV is supposed to be a tool for self-awareness, a way to listen to your body. But when you start treating it like a report card, it stops being a reflection of your state and starts becoming your state. The feedback loop tightens. The measurement changes the thing being measured.
I don’t think the answer is to stop tracking. But I do think we should ask: What are we really optimizing for? If the goal is resilience, does it matter if the number says 70 or 50? Or does the real work happen in the moments when you choose to move anyway, to breathe anyway, to live anyway—regardless of what the data says?
I’m still not sure. Some days, I check the monitor and feel nothing. Other days, I check it and feel everything. Maybe the variability isn’t just in the heart.