Mo points out, it's possible for a 65-year-old who's physically fit and active to have a higher HRV. The opposite can happen, too: Your HRV may increase when you start managing stress and improving your food choices, getting regular exercise, staying hydrated, drinking less alcohol, and sleeping for a solid seven to nine hours each night. Besides merely getting older, you may also notice a lowered HRV when you're under a lot of stress, dehydrated, drinking a lot of alcohol, eating unhealthily, less physically active, and having poor sleep, says Dr. Your HRV decreases, or 'worsens,' naturally as you age. Regardless, we asked the experts to explain everything you need to know about it.Ġ4 of 06 Which lifestyle factors impact HRV?

Maybe you're one of the many people who monitor their HRV or maybe you've noticed the HRV metric on your device or app but aren't sure what to make of it. HRV may be a good metric to use to measure improvements in stress regulation and healthy lifestyle behaviors, says Tamara Horwich, MD, associate clinical professor of medicine and cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

While Americans are more proactive about their own health these days and are self-tracking their health metrics, the interest in HRV may also be linked to the ever-increasing focus on wellness and lifestyle medicine. 'When I typed 'heart rate variability' into Google, a definition of it came up, and right after the definition was just all the devices that measure HRV,' she adds. Vivian Mo, MD, clinical associate professor of medicine in the division of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Southern California, believes it's because technology is giving us the ability to track key health metrics easily in the way of wearable devices and apps (think: Whoop, Fitbit, and other smart health and fitness trackers). On the Internet and social media, it certainly seems like HRV is a health stat many people are excited to self-monitor.

If you own a smartwatch, you may have encountered a metric called heart rate variability (HRV).

What does low and high variance mean