When you’re back at rest, the nervous system should calm everything back down. In this relaxed state, your heart rate naturally beats at a more variable pace – for example, speeding up a little when you inhale, then slowing down when you exhale.
A high average heart rate variability “shows that your system can, when it needs to, quickly change heart rate and blood pressure to match the environment or to match the circumstances”, says Dennis Larsson, a postdoctoral research fellow at Kiel University in Germany who has studied heart rate variability. This suggests it can spring into action when something is stressful but relax again when something doesn’t have to be stressful.
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