I get the same reaction as you - I'm calm, still, patient. Much more "present" with my wife and far less likely to argue. If I need to plan, or organize something, the initial feeling of "oof" is no longer there. I just do the task.
I have however noticed that my heart rate (normally in the low 50s) hovers in the low 60s. I assume (but have not checked) that my blood pressure is also increasing. Both of these things are concerning.
Mostly it's anxiety, fever, and overall dizziness. Sometimes I'm also feeling slightly more aggressive (e. g. when something's not working I might wanna punch my laptop, but usually I'm able to calm down quickly).
"From my own experience, my HRV is low when I'm not doing anything - and why wouldn't it be? I'm not _doing_ anything. I have no need for sudden changes when I'm typing on a keyboard."
It's not about whether you "have a need for sudden changes" or not, but whether the sympathetic or the parasympathetic nervous system has the upper hand. There are many reasons for why it could be one or the other, but they are usually roughly summarized as "physical or mental stress".
For instance, when you sit at your keyboard and respond to someone who is wrong on the Internet, that is likely to cause negative emotions and mental stress. This would increase sympathetic nervous system activity and as a result lower your HRV.
"Further, you can be as healthy as a marathon runner and have very low HRVs."
Marathon runners are not always equally healthy. They also get sick or stressed sometimes, and quite often they are under physical stress due to training a lot. That's why some of them observe HRV to get an indication of their readiness for high intensity training or competitions (e.g. Whoop, Garmin Recovery Advisor).
That means, just sitting at their keyboard their HRV could be high or low, depending e.g. on how well they recovered from a hard training run.
There’s something to this. I’ve noticed an increase in heart rate, possibly a sympathetic reaction with the effect of pumping more blood to the brain? In any case it is not long before beat fatigue sets in and my mind is worse off.
For me it correlates to elevated stress either in the moment or the few days (or weeks) before. If I've also not slept well or enough, I notice it faster.
I no longer consider it a thing to be fixed, but a fact of life. Delivering at 100% of "potential" every day is not really normal, and some of my most productive moments are in days I've consciously accepted I won't accomplish "normal" amounts, and end up solving some unsolved problem because my brain had the space to process it.
I went to the doctor because of general shortness of breath all the time, heart rate spiking during normal activity like standing up, palpitations out the wazoo, and general fatigue. If I felt “sick” or fluish that’d be one thing.. this seemed different.
Maybe a year ago I felt sluggish at times. Slower to process and react. I had to manually think through things that I could normally do on autopilot. I was concerned about my long-term health.
This is the case for me as well. I have noticed similar increase (~52 => ~62 avg sleeping BPM) for the last two months and last week have been diagnosed with anxiety/depression and I am also burnt out. I love the objectivity it provides.
Yep, mental exhaustion is undoubtedly a thing! I'd love to see how heart rates change with something like test question difficulty. Since sweat is generally a product of heat and occurs when your heart works harder during exercise, I wonder if the heart also works harder to pump the brain with more oxygen to enable it to... think harder? Obviously just musing, am no physiology expert.
This sounds like an emotional or energetic balance problem. Would you care to go into more detail? I have had the problems for a number of years, but the fluctuations (appear to) be decreasing.
The times I've felt like this have been in conjunction with slow-burn stressful events. I've also felt my body sometimes seem to handle nutrition differently under stress, like I'm keeping the lights on but actually joints and muscles feel terrible if the stress lasts too long.
This is typically a retrospection thing, and not a revelation that occurs in the midst of the feeling. One day I'll wake up, make a huge breakthrough, feel great, and wonder if I've been asleep for a month. My memory of the period is also fuzzy.
I think our brains are way more nuanced than we appreciate.
Having a lot of these kind of symptoms when in a highly stressful environment is normal. It’s having them even when resting or doing only moderate activity that isn’t. Imagine if you didn’t have kids, got plenty of rest, etc and still felt like you do now. Then imagine what the prospect of looking after your kids would feel like if you already felt this tired when rested.
Similar thing here. Also had feeling of pressure in frontal lobe and strange taste. Intensity changed based on how much fitness time I could fit in schedule.
I get the same reaction as you - I'm calm, still, patient. Much more "present" with my wife and far less likely to argue. If I need to plan, or organize something, the initial feeling of "oof" is no longer there. I just do the task.
I have however noticed that my heart rate (normally in the low 50s) hovers in the low 60s. I assume (but have not checked) that my blood pressure is also increasing. Both of these things are concerning.
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