Brain Fact Friday ”Review of Heart Rate Variability: The Most Important Biomarker for Tracking Health, Recovery and Resilience.”

<p>Welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we cover the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (for schools) and emotional intelligence training (in the workplace) with tools, ideas and strategies that we can all use for immediate results.</p> <p></p> <p>I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and educator with a passion for learning specifically on the topics of health, wellbeing and productivity, and launched this podcast to share how important an understanding of our brain is for our everyday life and results--whether we are a teacher or student in the classroom, or in working the modern workplace.</p> <p>For today’s Brain Fact Friday, I wanted to revisit a topic that we have covered once already on the podcast, Heart Rate Variability or HRV. We covered an introduction to the importance of understanding HRV back in April of 2021 on EPISODE #125<a href='#_edn1'>[i]</a> on “What is HRV and Why is it Important for Tracking Health, Recovery and Resilience?” I wanted to go back to this episode and the basics of HRV because it’s such an important number to measure and understand “not just for health and recovery on a regular basis, but (for) resilience.” (Neurohacker.com) Recently, I found myself not being able to explain what it is, or knowing exactly how I can manipulate it for improved results, leading me to take a closer look at what it is, or go back to HRV Basics.</p> <p>What is Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and Why is it Considered “the Most Important Biomarker--a measure that captures what’s going on in a cell at any given moment that can serve as an early warning system for your health?”<a href='#_edn2'>[ii]</a></p> <p>Unless you have been training with a forward-thinking coach, you’re an elite athlete, or someone who has taken a serious interest in measuring their performance, most of us have not heard of, or really understand what exactly heart rate variability means. From the name, we can tell it has something to do with our heart rate. M