I’d be able to report on it if I had been actually using it but for some reason it’s been collecting dust and I never seem to find time / room for it in my routine. What I found encouraging was that the device had been designed to stimulate the parts of the ear that were shown to be most sensitive to stimulation — so whoever designed it must have read the research and most likely followed the tested voltages from those studies.
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I have been using the Nurosym for a month. I have observed 15 points increase in HRV as well as a decrease in HR (47). However, this happened the first and third week, With my last increased dose of rapamycin, my HRV has taken a plunge and HR is higher at night (55).
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I’ve been using the Pulsetto and I’ve seen about a fifteen percent increase. I’m only a couple of weeks in. Last night was my highest score since I started measuring.
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blsm
#85
That’s super interesting about salt @RapAdmin. I stopped salting my food last year well before starting rapamycin. I’ve never noticed rapa having any impact on my heart rate other than a gradual reduction in my resting heart rate per my Fitbit report over the past 6 months.
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I haven’t noticed any difference in my HRV when I take Rapa, although I tend not to knowingly consume any salt. But it does raise a good point. There may be interactions we have no idea about.
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Here is my N of 1 data point. I started rapamycin 5mg/week at the end of January.
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Wow - a 20%+ drop from 27 to 21. What have you changed since May that has it increasing?
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I was sure somebody would ask 
Started L-theanine 500mg end of June and added NAC 2x750mg a few days later.
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And you have made no changes in your rapamycin regimen/schedule?
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No, same 5mg/week. Increased to 6mg/week this week.
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Bicep
#92
Looks like it was already recovered by then.
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Very interesting- looks like you were consistently around the 30ms level at the end of last year. Has anything much changed with your exercise regime over the past six months?
I am not myself certain whether the HRV measured whilst sleeping or that measured whilst awake is the best. I record the value from fitbit (which is the sleeping value) and that from elite and polar H10. Elite/polar tends to be about 20-30ms higher than fitbit.
I think the different fitness monitors have sufficiently different mechanisms for measuring HRV as to make them not usefully comparable.
I thought I would add some figures from this week going backwards by date Fitbit then Elite in ms.
31,52 (may have been lower because I had 3g of creatine during day which messed up sleep)
28,57
30,58
31,56
35,50
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Both your fitbit and polar use the same method of measurement as far as I could find, John, rMSSD and I find it interesting that you can’t really compare the two as you comment.
Personally I use an Oura ring which is rMSSD and an Apple Watch 24/7 which uses SDNN. Over the past three years the Oura has consistently tracked downwards by 1ms per year on average - 22 to 19. Apple watch has recorded the exact opposite: 28 to 34! So which is right?
Overall it seems to be accepted that overnight readings are the most useful since they are less affected by external influences.
However, I just discovered that the amount of both deep and REM sleep affects HRV negatively and both of mine have increased by 25-30% over the past few years.
I’m beginning to think that HRV is possibly not a particularly useful parameter to be looking at in terms of monitoring the effect of rapa!
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A very basic difference is that fitbit measures when I am asleep and Elite/Polar measures when I am lying in bed having recently woken.
How accurate the measurement of heartbeats is via a wrist monitor is another question. I have no idea about the answer to this.
I am not too focussed on HRV at the moment. The last measurement (Sat) was a night I played keyboards in my jazz band and drank about 2 1/2 pints of lager over a period of 4 hours. The one before that (Sun) I had 6 pints of lager and cider (I went to listen to jazz as part of Birmingham’s jazz festival). I was physically very tired on the Saturday (as I am my own Roadie and have to carry around the PA, keyboard etc). If my drinking disrupts sleep HRV tends to suffer, but that is what is odd about Sunday night (31,56) compared to Wednesday night (31,52) where I had no alcohol, but uniquely took some creatine during the day which caused an early waking.
The other nights I was sober and had done nothing out of the ordinary (I do a small amount of calisthenics each day normally before noon). If I remain sober for a while my HRV (E/P) might trend up to the low 60s.
I have another gig tomorrow evening and at 1pm on Saturday so I will be interested to see if the physical challenge impacts on HRV in any way.
I am surprised that you have that reaction to creatine. I have been taking 5gms daily in my morning coffee, stopping for a few days before blood tests. Never have I noticed any effect on my sleep, one way or another.
As for the accuracy of various heart rate and HRV monitors, most of them seem very accurate if used correctly.
“Conclusions: Our results cross-validated a freeware smartphone application with the ECG-derived reference condition for asymptomatic adults at rest in the supine position and during orthostatic challenge.”
This is achieved by determining the RR interval of sufficient amplitude and subsequently detecting the fiducial peak from the SCG and BCG signals. In PPG, the accuracy of this method was also demonstrated in a study by Alaleef et al, who found a 99.7% accuracy and maximum absolute error of 0.4 beats/min
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Same exercise regime: Running around 30~40km/week
Same diet: keto/low carbs
BTW this are my Oura ring measurements but I have similar data with my Garmin Epix
I’ve also noticed that HRV and deep sleep are inversely correlated which seems counter intuitive to me.
Its a known response to creatine.
“S decreased total sleep time and …” (yes its rats, but it is still less sleep because the brain has more energy)
Both of those papers are looking at mobile phone apps - Elite is a mobile phone app.
I am comparing mobile phone apps to fitness wearables. The biggest difference is that the wearables measure HRV when people are asleep. Things like Elite/Polar are run when people are awake.
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