Is Low HRV Causing Your Sleep Problems?

You might be familiar with HRV — heart rate variability — as a popular training tool for workouts, and a biomarker for measuring exercise recovery. Beyond exercise tracking, heart rate variability has a lot to tell us about the underlying health of our nervous system and our risk for disease. And there’s an important two-way relationship between HRV and sleep that’s often overlooked.

HRV is a measurement of variation in time between heartbeats. It is different from heart rate, or pulse, which is a measurement of the number of times the heart beats in a minute. But our hearts don’t beat at a fixed tempo. The intervals of time between heartbeats aren’t precisely the same every time—and HRV is a measurement of the changes in these intervals between heartbeats. So in this video, I’ll walk through everything you need to know about HRV, how to track it, and how to improve that number for better sleep.

📕 If you’re ready to take actionable steps to get better sleep, Dr. Breus has developed a 28-day Sleep Wellness Program just for you. With on-demand video, daily emails, and a Sleep Wellness Guide, his program uses science-backed techniques to improve your sleep in as little as three minutes per day! Learn more here: https://shop.sleepdoctor.com/pages/28-day-video-library-lp
➡️ Enter code SleepDoctorYT for 20% off!

0:00 What is HRV?
3:30 How does HRV impact sleep?
6:20 How to track your HRV
7:00 How can I make my HRV better?

😴 Michael Breus, Ph.D., is a double board-certified clinical psychologist and sleep expert. He’s been in practice since 1999 and helped thousands of patients improve their sleep. Dr. Breus has written five books on sleep and conducted over 1,000 interviews to the press and public.