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Author of “Less Doing, More Living” interviews Ronda Collier

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Ari Meisel interviews Ronda Collier on HRV. See below for a summary and a list of topics. At the bottom you will find a link to the original podcast.

Summary:

In Episode #104 Ari talks with Ronda Collier, CEO of SweetWater Health™, a company striving to revolutionize mobile health monitoring and stress management by combining verified medical research with the most recent mobile-tech innovations. During their conversation, Ari and Rondatouch on the frequently overlooked value of Heart Rate Variability and the future of health technology. 

7 Key Points:

  1.        The heart does not beat at a consistent interval like a metronome
  2.        Stress isn’t “bad”; How we react to it – our inability to come down – is what makes it bad
  3.        People who are in constant “fight or flight” mode normalize stress in their brains, which makes it difficult for them to institute change because these individuals don’t “feel” stressed
  4.        Monitoring HRV is a great way to maximize recovery from physical training and keep track of stress
  5.        When HRV levels are low do “busy work”; When they are high do “creative work”
  6.        Sensitivity to certain foods can significantly impact stress and HRV levels
  7.        Good nutrition, consistent exercise and self-awareness are the pillars of healthy living

Time Stamped Show Notes:

  •          02:05 – Happy Thanksgiving from Ari and the Less Doing Team!
  •          02:55 – Felix and Ari address tryptophan
    • Editor’s Note: Ari mentions that tryptophan occurs naturally in the body – he meant to say the opposite, we can only get it from outside sources vl
  •          03:25 – Tryptophan is not what makes us tired…overeating makes us tired
  •          07:56 – June 9th-12th of 2015, Ari will speak at the Fortune Leadership Summit
  •          19:27 – Ronda discusses her background and the journey to founding SweetWater Health
  •          20:40 – HRV: Heart-Rate Variability
  •          22:28 – It’s not that stress is a bad thing of and in itself…it’s how quickly we can recover from that stress.
  •          23:00 – Why should we care about HRV? Why even track it?
  •          25:55 – SweetBeat and how the SweetWater apps work
  •          27:00 – The SweetWater and the Vital Connect HealthPatch
  •          29:57 – HRV has been used by athletes for decades to help them mitigate the risks of overtraining
  •          29:05 – How can HRV monitoring work for a non-athlete?
  •          30:50 – SweetBeat can alert people to everyday behaviors that induce commonly overlooked stress
  •          32:10 – Meditation has always been a challenge for Ari
  •          33:15 – How Ronda personally uses her HRV monitoring tools
  •          33:39 – The bucket of willpower
  •          34:30 – When HRV is low; do busy work. When HRV is high; do creative work
  •          34:45 – When you are “in-flow”, HRV starts to go up naturally
  •          35:32 – Food sensitivity and how it relates to stress
  •          39:10 – Most people are not aware of modest heart rate spikes
  •          40:23 – The future of SweetBeat
  •          41:35 – The value of correlation
  •          43:27 – Ronda’s Top 3 Tips for Being More Effective:
  •          43:43 – Improving nutrition; eating fresh
  •          44:00 – Being self-aware of what’s going on inside your body
  •          44:30 – Exercise, even minimally, every single day
  •          45:10 – BeatHealthy.com

Click here to hear the podcast!

“CrossFit’s dirty little secret..” – by Joe Bauer

joebauerJoe Bauer is a fitness and weight loss expert with over 13 years of experience as a CrossFit coach and personal trainer. Joe’s known as AllAroundJoe on his blog. He was able to make some very interesting discoveries using
SweetBeatLife’s HRV for Training feature. Read below for his blog post and a link to the full podcast.

“When it comes to CrossFit it’s easy to get addicted. You start to see improvements, it’s fun, you see more improvements, you’re looking amazing, you see more improvements, you’re getting competitive, you see more improvements, you push even harder, you start to feel like crap.

You cannot figure out why you feel like crap. You’ve been eating great. Mostly Paleo, lots of calories.

You workout all the time. Sometimes up to 2 hours a day. You drink tons of water. You take all of the recommend supplements for muscle growth and recovery.

Lake Chelan Ice Bath

In order to start feeling better for your workouts you take pre-workout supplements loaded with caffeine, or drink coffee. It works for a little while, and you crush workouts.

What you don’t realized is that you are fatiguing your insides. You hormones are drowning.

Finally you hit a wall. You can’t sleep (or you can’t stay awake). Your energy levels just don’t feel right unless you’re jacked with caffeine.

And finally you’re workouts start to suffer. You can’t hit the numbers that you used to hit, and when you tell your body to push… it literally shuts down, and you can hardly move.

When you ask your coach they probably say to take some time off, and eat more.

You take a week off, and when you get back to CrossFit you feel better. Well, you feel better for a few days or weeks. It really depends on how many times you’ve gone through the overreaching cycle.

The problem is that every time you train you don’t fully recover.

Eventually your hormones can’t keep up. And in my case it was my adrenal glands.

These are the glands that are located on top of your kidneys, and produce that hormones that are responsible for your fight or flight (sympathetic), and rest & relax (parasympathetic) nervous systems.

In my case the fight or flight system became fatigued, causing all of the above symptoms.

The initial feeling of fatigue is what lead me to the Ben Greenfield podcast, and the SweetBeatLife iPhone app.

My HRV ReadingThe SweetBeatLife app measures your Heart Rate Variability (HRV), and the power of your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems.

The coolest things is that the HRV can tell you how recovered your body is, and if it’s ready for another CrossFit workout. It will literally tell you to have an easy workout day, or even take the day off. It does this when you simply open the app and take your heart rate for 3 minutes in the morning.

The SweetBeatLife app is so beneficial that I’ve asked ALL of our competitive athletes at StoneWay CrossFit to start using it daily. If the app says to take the day off there’s no arguing.Parasympathetic/Sympathetic

We all want to get better, and we get better during rest from hard training.

I’ve always told people to listen to their bodies, but the real truth is that we can listen, but without tools like the SweetBeatLife app we have no idea what our bodies are saying.

In this episode you learn about CrossFit and overtraining, plus…
  • The HRV tracking Sweet Beat Life app.
  • Where to learn about HRV.
  • What heart rate monitor that I’m using.
  • And much more.
Resources and links mentioned in this podcast

Sweet Beat Life app for iPhone
60Beat Heart Rate Monitor
Ben Greenfield Fitness HRV/SweetBeatLife Podcast #1, #2, #3

*above could be affiliate links. I get a small commission if you click through them and buy, but they in no way make the products cost anymore. If you decide to use them please let me know so I can thank you.

Listening options

Help me out!

If you haven’t done so already, it would totally help me out if you could give me a quick iTunes review by clicking the link below. My goal is to help as many people as possible with this podcast, and each review helps me get more people listening.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/allaroundjoe-podcast-fitness/id690333495

5 Women to Watch in Health Tech By Bonnie Boglioli-Randall

Below is a small exert from a great article by Women 2.0, highlighting the accomplishment of five amazing women:

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“Healthcare has seen impressive advances in technology but what might come as a surprise is the number of women whose research and investment lies behind them. Here are just five:

By Bonnie Boglioli-Randall (Contributing Writer, Women 2.0)

Women in technology may remain a minority, but that hasn’t stopped them from flocking to the fast-evolving landscape of health tech. Bringing their own brand of savoir-faire to address a variety of issues old and new, they innovate, problem-solve and collaborate to create uncommon opportunities.

Given their penchant for helping others and the voids to be filled that an industry in flux presents, it’s little wonder that there are more female-owned businesses in healthcare than any other single industry.

The women below represent a slice of those tackling obstacles in wide-ranging areas including digital health, wearables and biotech. Though they are as diverse as the technologies they stand behind, their shared passions urged them into new frontiers – carving out pathways for themselves, their peers and ultimately for healthcare consumers.

Ronda Collier

Co-Founder & CEO of SweetWater Health

Ronda ColliersRonda Collier pivoted away from her career as a senior director of engineering in the high tech sector in search of something fresh, challenging and altruistic. Cashing out old stock money to earn an M.A. in Psychology, Collier studied the direct correlation between stress and our biochemistry. “Stress is the weak link in our chain,” explains Collier. “90 percent of chronic diseases are related to it.”

Together with two fellow women geeks-turned-entrepreneurs, Collier co-founded SweetWater Health in 2011. The company’s smartphone app helps uber athletes and everyday Janes alike monitor and manage their stress by tracking heart rate variability (HRV).

Collier and others believe that HRV sheds light onto how we cope with stress, and may be a key indicator for a range of additional health issues. To Collier, SweetWater Health’s bottom line extends beyond their financials. “We know we’re going to be successful any way we look at it,” she says. “We’re doing something good for people.”

Elizabeth Holmes

Founder & CEO of Theranos

Elizabeth HolmesThe tale of the 19-year-old prodigy Stanford dropout who applied for a patent on a wearable patch that administered drugs and monitored the bloodstream is fast becoming Silicon Valley lore. Recognizing that advancements in old-fashioned phlebotomy could provide early diagnosis and detection along with greatly reduced healthcare costs and increased consumer access, Elizabeth Holmes is turning health diagnostics on its head.

Now 30, Holmes leads the helm of the company she founded in 2003 with technology that is considered revolutionary. Using infinitesimal amounts of blood compared to traditional draws, Theranos provides quick, efficient and full bloodwork results for hundreds of tests that can be run in combination, thus eliminating trips to the lab. The company also provides full cost transparency along with price tags that are a small fraction of typical hospital lab charges.

“We’re building the first consumer healthcare technology company,” Holmes told the Wall Street Journal last year. “Patients are empowered by having better access to their own health information, and then by owning their own data.” Expect to see Holmes’ brainchild at a Walgreens near you soon, where Americans from coast to coast will have access to fast, affordable lab testing for the first time ever.”

Continue reading the original article here!

Brand New Instructional Videos for SweetBeatLife

Our wonderful engineer has taken the time to create instructional videos that will make your transition into the SweetBeatLife update* seamless. Several of our users have been asking for the ability to download old sessions from SweetBeat into SweetBeatLife. We are happy to announce that this feature will be available with the newest update, along with data tables and the ability to turn data on and off in the correlation feature. More videos to come – subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay tuned!

Starting Out With the Stress Monitor

Understanding the Correlation Metrics and Functions

Correlation – Available Data and Tables                                                                                           

Downloading Sessions from the Server

Note: The sessions must be uploaded to your account in order to download them into SweetBeatLife.

*The newest update of SweetBeatLife has been submitted and is awaiting approval.

Slides: HRV for Improved Sports Performance

In case you missed it, here is the HRV for Improved Sports Performance slideshow! Put together by our very own CEO and co-founder, Ronda Collier. Some of you have read the HRV Measurement Explanation slides and found them very useful. This is one step further in detail. We want our users to get the most out of their metrics!

Many of our support questions can be answered by simply browsing through these slides.

 

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SweetBeatLife & Restwise: Ultimate Recovery – 15% OFF!

Thanks to the popularity of our new partnership with Restwise, we have the pleasure of extending a limited time, 15% OFF discount for the intelligent recovery system! Right now you can sign up for a free trial of Restwise and receive 15% OFF when your first month ends! This offer has been extended for one more week, so act fast! 

To try Restwise free for 30 days, subscribe to one of the plans on their website using your Paypal account, a credit card, or debit card. After the free 30 days, automatic payments will start and continue until you cancel the subscription, which you can do at any time from your PayPal account or by emailing support@restwise.com. (If you cancel during the first 30 days, you will not be charged.) Sign up for a free trial now and receive 15% off when the trial expires. See prices on the Restwise plan page. 
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If you have a RestWise account and SweetBeat/SweetBeatLife, please follow these instructions to authorize the export:

1) Login to your account on our website. 
2) Scroll down until you see the RestWise banner. 
3) Enter your RestWise account information and click “connect”.

IMPORTANT: When you run a session on SweetBeat or SweetBeatLife, it is important that you save the session with the pre-existing tag “HRV”. This ensures that your heart rate and heart rate variability numbers export to RestWise.

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Announcing Our New Partner in Intelligent Recovery – Restwise

We believe that sharing data between multiple devices and software providers is a vital key to understanding and creating meaningful feedback. Over the last few years, we have found several partners who feel the same way. Through collective design we have brought our users the most comprehensive view of their health and fitness.

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The partnership between Restwise and SweetWater Health offers athletes the world’s most accurate, comprehensive picture of global fatigue state outside of a laboratory. Users of SweetBeat and SweetBeatLife will be able to export their heart rate (pulse in Restwise) and heart rate variability to Restwise with ease.

What is Restwise?

Restwise design was driven by two principles: simplicity and accuracy.  The biggest challenge in recovery monitoring is getting athletes to adhere to the protocol, so the process needs to be fast and easy.  But it also needs to paint a reliable, global picture of recovery state. To achieve these goals, Restwise combines several bio-markers, each of which is easy to record and is clearly supported by sports science, into a single algorithm. Restwise takes less than a minute to complete, and it has been validated through work with UK Sport and through years of successful field use.

If you have a Restwise account and SweetBeat or SweetBeatLife, please follow these instructions to authorize the export:

  1. Login to your account on our website.
  2. Scroll down until you see the Restwise banner.
  3. Enter your Restwise account information and click “connect”.

IMPORTANT: After you finish a SweetBeat or SweetBeatLife session, it is important that you save the session as the pre-existing tag, “HRV”. This ensures that your latest heart rate and heart rate variability numbers export to Restwise.

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A message from Restwise to their users:

Heart Rate Variability in Restwise Your Enter Data page has a new field: HRV, which stands for heart rate variability. HRV is a relatively new recovery marker, but there is a rapidly growing body of evidence that it is a reliable indicator of central nervous system fatigue.

Why are we adding HRV now? There are two reasons.  First, you asked for it. When we initially designed Restwise we chose markers that give you the most accurate picture of your global fatigue state possible in the least amount of time.  Completing Restwise takes less than a minute, whereas getting a reliable HRV reading takes 3 – 4 minutes.  We simply did not want to require users to spend this much time. But enough of you have said you are willing to invest a few more minutes to get a more complete picture of your recovery state that we are now providing this option.

The second reason is that we have found a great partner, Sweetwater Health. They offer a simple, accurate, and affordable way to capture HRV. If you take HRV using the SweetBeat or SweetBeatLife iPhone apps, your HRV and pulse numbers will automatically load to Restwise, where you can chart HRV against your Restwise Total Recovery Score, Load, and other individual inputs.

What’s next? HRV does not yet affect the algorithm, but it will soon. We will also update our apps to capture and display HRV. Meanwhile, if you want to get a better understanding of HRV, listen to Ben Greenfield’s 20-minute Podcast featuring Sweetwater CEO Ronda Collier. 

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Don’t have a Restwise account?

We are working with Restwise to provide our users with a free trial using their intelligent recovery system. Check back soon for instructions on how to sign up!

Other partners in data-sharing:

  • Our newest application, SweetBeatLife, includes the ability to import data from Fitbit, MapMyFitness and Withings for correlation with the app’s metrics. To authorize these fitness devices to work with SweetBeatLife, please read over, “Starting Up With SweetBeatLife”.
  • Both SweetBeat and SweetBeatLife work with AchieveMint, the dashboard that earns you money. To authorize your AchieveMint account go to your app’s account settings and select AchieveMint login. You can create an AchieveMint account from there or enter your already existing AchieveMint email.BlueBirdieIcon                                                                     SweetBeatLife