[HN Gopher] Show HN: Every Breath You Take - Heart Rate Variabil...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Every Breath You Take - Heart Rate Variability Training
Through controlled breathing it is possible to regulate your body's
stress response. I've built an app to measure and train this effect
with a Polar H10 Heart Rate monitor. With every breath you take,
you can set the pace of your breathing rate, measure your breathing
control with the chest accelerometer, and see how heart rate
variability responds.
Author : kbre93
Score : 95 points
Date : 2023-09-16 19:48 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| I've found my HRV (measured by a Garmin watch) directly
| correlates with my anxiety levels. So much so, that I use it as a
| marker to check in with myself, because stress and anxiety can
| quietly creep up ... but my HRV status is always reflective.
|
| It's magic. Like having an accurate anxiety metric, even if the
| anxiety is purely unconscious.
| kbre93 wrote:
| I've it's quite common for fitness trackers to predict the
| onset of sickness from heart rate variability. I've found they
| don't offer much real-time feedback, and don't have breathing
| detection though which was what I wanted to explore for this
| project, to train hrv
| lloeki wrote:
| > don't have breathing detection
|
| FWIW my Garmin watch reports a breath per minute metric.
| Dunno if this is what you were alluding to.
| haldujai wrote:
| They probably are but I'm confused as to how you've measured
| your anxiety level to determine correlation with HRV.
|
| Depending on your answer this leads to the follow-up of why not
| use that measure?
| tra3 wrote:
| Garmin also has a "stress" metrics but I've found it
| unreliable.
| lloeki wrote:
| As with all things measured from a wrist worn sensor, and
| ove the course of the order of a decade of essentially
| continuous wearing, I've found that the device may be wrong
| (and completely off the mark at times) but is also mostly
| right most of the time.
|
| I don't expect anything else for a device I wear loose most
| of the time (and snug+proper placement when working out)
| yet it still gives me eerily accurate metrics to work with.
| haldujai wrote:
| Basically my question is how we're measuring anxiety to
| determine correlation.
|
| The OP mentions "unconscious anxiety" which is confusing
| me, wondering if they are using a questionnaire or
| something else neat.
|
| If "unconscious anxiety" is being diagnosed based solely on
| HRV that's not how correlation works.
| kman82 wrote:
| Welltory
| haldujai wrote:
| How does Welltory measure anxiety? Their website just talks
| about HRV.
| tra3 wrote:
| Do you use the watch or the garmin app? Is it the instantaneous
| reading you're looking at or some sort of average?
| mohaba wrote:
| wow. This is incredible for multiple reasons.
|
| I've seen apps that somehow read what looks like an ecg from the
| h10, so maybe there's further pretty pictures to be made. Not
| sure why they'd be helpful, but this is certainly cool to look
| at.
|
| It's amazing how much information this device throws off, and it
| all usually gets simplified down to Heart Rate only.
|
| Thanks at the very least for a sample project that I can use to
| mess with some data acquisition in the future.
| kbre93 wrote:
| Hey no worries and thanks. It was a break-through for this
| project to find the H10 gives accelerometer data as well as
| heart rate, so that it would be possible to estimate breathing
| rate, which I haven't seen other apps do
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| This looks amazing. Have you seen benefits from HRV training?
| Would it work with other chest strap pulse meters?
| kbre93 wrote:
| Thanks, I've personally found benefits from being to learn to
| control my breathing in stressful situations.
|
| Right now it only works with the Polar H10, but it would be
| possible to adapt it if other chest strap monitors have an
| accelerometer in them.
| alfonsodev wrote:
| what about an Apple Watch ? would it be possible to create an
| app for it ?
| modo_ wrote:
| You might be interested in this https://www.59breaths.app/
| miketery wrote:
| Nice work!
|
| How do you calculate HRV from the series of heart rates? Is it
| taking the min and max from the latest cycle?
| kbre93 wrote:
| Yep it's taking the difference between peaks and troughs in
| heart rate, for plotting with the breathing rate it looks at
| the min and max over the breathing cycle.
| tux3 wrote:
| It's an interesting fact that the heart rate increases during
| inspiration, and decreases during expiration, which is why you
| can see the red dots following the blue curve on the graph
|
| So if you breathe in a more regular way, it's also normal that
| your heart rate will vary a little less, since it follows your
| breathing cycle.
|
| There's definitely also an effect where slow, regular respiration
| can help with anxiety. But I'm not sure how much of what the tool
| is measuring is really tied to stress response, versus just
| demonstrating this direct inspiration/heart rate correlation
| Horffupolde wrote:
| This phenomenon is known as "respiratory sinus arrhythmia"
| (RSA).
| vrc wrote:
| The term is "cardio respiratory coupling". Basically
| inspiration increases intrathoracic pressure which triggers the
| CV control mechanism to think BP is higher via the baroreflex
| and therefore lower HR. If you take an FFT/PSD of pulse
| waveforms you will actually see a distinct peak at the
| breathing frequency. This is how a lot of the finger sleep
| measurement devices work to track breathing without a chest
| strap.
| kbre93 wrote:
| As you breath more slowly, heart rate oscillations (i.e. the
| variability) increase, which is a reflection of the
| parasympathetic nervous system activating (the "rest and
| digest" response). This can help to mediate the stress
| response, which from the sympathetic nervous system or the
| fight-or-flight response.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| It is interesting that I, and many others, experience our
| digestive cycle as anxiety.
|
| At certain points in my digestion, my HR spikes, anxiety
| spikes, impending doom sensations occur.
|
| These are also sensations that happen with pre-stroke SNS
| responses.
|
| Rest and digest, indeed!
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I get something similar in that I start to feel a tiredness
| come on about 2-5 mins before I start to get gas pains. If
| I don't help that gas along (by moving or pushing on my
| stomach) in short order, it turns into me needing to run
| for the toilet. It's as if the trapped gas, left untreated,
| triggers a rapid digestive emptying. Or, the cases where I
| can receive the gas, there's no other contents in the way.
| The cases where I can't relieve it, well, there's lots of
| stuff in the way.
|
| Anyways the thing is that I get super tired before the pain
| in my stomach is even noticed. I've become attuned to it
| where it now gives me anxiety when it comes on.
| sebasvisser wrote:
| Your hyper sensitivity to the gas's might actually cause
| the stress, which in turn causes more symptoms. Find a
| way to relax and let the gas be. Find what works for you:
| mindfulness, sports, hypnosis, medication... However, try
| first to focus on normalising your perception of the gas.
| [deleted]
| jackmott wrote:
| [dead]
| guzik wrote:
| I'm curious, have you explored compatibility with other hardware
| as well, like the Polar H7 or even other types of physiological
| monitors? We've conducted a study comparing Aidlab physiological
| monitor's accuracy of heart rate variability measurements with
| the Polar H7 and found a high correlation in the data. It would
| be interesting to know how your app performs when paired with
| various hardware.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-09-16 23:00 UTC)