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Every so often new ways of interpreting existing data come forward in the Medial World that revolutionizes the practice of medicine. The interpretation of the Variable Rhythm of our Heart Beats or HRV is just such a breakthrough as it relates to Healthcare in General and Integrative Medicine specifically. WE NOW HAVE AN OBJECTIVE MEASURING SYSTEM TO DETERMINE THAT THE CORRECT REMEDY PLAN HAS BEEN SELECTED THAT WILL ENABLE US TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN HEALING REACTIONS AND THE NEED TO CHANGE DIRECTION OF THERAPY. In order to properly understand the beauty of HRV measurement we need to understand the two main parts of our nervous system; CENTRAL and AUTONOMIC.
The CENTRAL nervous system starts in our brain and becomes our spinal cord which exists at the various levels of our spine and has sensory fibers that supplies sensory information back to the brain which then sends motor fibers back out to the periphery of our body which ultimately control all of our WILLFUL activities. For example we touch something and sense that it is hot and we WILL our arm muscles to withdraw our hand to keep from getting burned. We see a piece of fruit on the table and we WILL our hand to pick it up and put in our mouth to chew and eat it. ETC ETC.
Our AUTONOMIC Nervous system is a step more autonomous from our willful mind and controls all of the AUTOMATIC functions of our body such as breathing, digestion, heart beating, urine production, glandular function and all of the other functions of bodies that happen awake or asleep whether we think about them or not.
This "other" Autonomic nervous system starts off in the deeper parts of the brain and sends its nerve fibers to each and every cell of our body with pathways that lie outside of the spinal cord (which is why spinal injury patients continue essential bodily functions if the cord is severed by an accident).
There are two parts to this system: PARASYMPATHETIC fibers that slow things down and SYMPATHETIC fibers that speed things up. Each and every cell and location receives a fiber from both branches of the system which is like having a gas pedal and a brake pedal for each function.
This is what we know for sure about the Autonomic System:
There is no question that the rate that our Heart Beats is a function of Sympathetic Activity that speeds it up and Parasympathetic Activity that slows it down.
There is also no question that the more variable our heart rhythm (from a fast rate to a slow rate) the longer that we will live and the less likely that we are to die. IE: IT IS A MEASURE OF HEALTH
In other words during a minute that our heart beats with an overall rate of 80 beats, part of that minute our heart may be beating at a rate of 90-100 and part of that minute it may be beating at a rate of 60-70 with the average rate being 80. A person that has a variableness of a low of 60 to a high of 100 with the average being 80 is considered HEALTHIER than the person whose rate only varies between 75 and 85 with the average being 80.
What is even more interesting to us as Integrative Physicians is that we know that Homeopathy, Neural Therapy, IV and supplement therapies, Chelation Therapy, Mercury Detox, Biological Dentistry and all of the myriad of procedures performed in our practice all affect the Autonomic Nervous system FOR THE GOOD when performed correctly.
With HRV monitoring we now have a real objective measurement device that can do its measurement in 7 minutes rather that the 24 hours needed to perform the test otherwise and according to the leading Cardiologist of Columbia Medical School in New York correlates in an "excellent" manner to the more expensive Hospital based units. |
