The sympathetic nervous system is supposed to turn on when we are in danger. So what happens when for five minutes we can’t think straight, digest food, or clear toxins from the liver? It won’t matter if we don’t survive the current threat. The problem is that many of us are in fight or flight much of the time—even when there is no true danger. Can you think of situations that stress you out when your life is not in danger?
The sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for “fight or flight.” This means that the majority of the blood flow goes to the muscles because your body thinks it is going to have to fight or run. The blood no longer goes to the stomach to digest food or to parts of the brain for creative thought. Have you noticed you can’t think straight or even have indigestion when you are stressed?
The mainstream use of heart rate variability (HRV) is to measure the activity of your nervous system. That’s right! By looking at your heart rhythm on a computer (or smart phone) you can see what your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system is doing and whether it is in balance.
The organs of our body, such as the heart, stomach and intestines, are regulated by a part of the nervous system called the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS is part of the peripheral nervous system and it controls many organs and muscles within the body. In most situations, we are unaware of the workings of the ANS because it functions in an involuntary, reflexive manner. For example, we do not notice when blood vessels change size or when our heart beats faster. However, some people can learn to control some functions of the ANS such as heart rate or blood pressure. How about you?
Heart rate variability (HRV) is a measure of the patterns embedded in your heartbeat. It includes time, frequency, fractal and chaotic measurements. It turns out that the more fractal-like and chaotic your heart rhythm is, the more resilient you are! Ask yourself; Are you able to quickly calm down after a stressful situation?
What exactly is chaos? Chaos theory is about finding an underlying order in what looks like random events. It turns out that weather is chaotic. Weather cannot be predicted exactly. This is because too many random events occur in the atmosphere that impact weather. However, when you use a computer to plot these random events, a predictable pattern occurs. Can you think of something in your life that at first glance seems random, and yet does have an underlying pattern?
It turns out that the rhythm of your heartbeat has many types of mathematical patterns. It has time and frequency patterns as well as chaotic and fractal patterns. Would you like to see and hear your heart patterns?
Fractals, which are geometric patterns that are repeated at ever-smaller scales, are abundant in nature. A head of broccoli is a great example of a fractal. If you tear a piece of the broccoli off, it still looks like the whole. And if you tear another piece off, it, too, looks like the whole. A fern leaf has the same fractal nature. Can you think of other examples of fractals in nature?