My Review of the Elite HRV App
I've been using the Elite HRV app for about two years now, and it's an excellent tool for tracking my heart rate variability. The app is free to use, but I've opted for the paid web interface, which makes it easy to track trends over time. Here's a look at how I use it and what I think of its features.
Morning Readiness Readings
My main use for the app is the "morning readiness" reading. I take a five-minute reading every day, right after I get out of bed and before I look at my phone or engage with any distractions. Taking a longer reading (more than two minutes) is important because it gives you a better picture of the frequency spectrum metrics of your HRV, which offer insights into your autonomic nervous system.
It’s crucial to make sure your morning routine is consistent. Things like checking emails or having to use the restroom can activate your sympathetic nervous system, which will lower your HRV and give you an inaccurate reading. The morning reading is a great predictor of your readiness to handle stress and intense activities for the day. This is different from an overnight HRV reading from a sleep tracker, which shows how well you recovered from the previous day. Both are valuable, but they tell you different things.
HRV Metrics and Analysis
The app provides a variety of HRV metrics, including RMSSD and SDNN. RMSSD is a good overall measure of your parasympathetic nervous system, or your body's "rest and digest" mode. Elite HRV also provides its own "Readiness Score" that compares your current reading to your past data, making it easy to see if your HRV is improving over time.
While the app has some great features, I've found its biofeedback for breathwork to be a bit clunky. The breath pacer is functional, but it doesn't give you real-time feedback on how your HRV is changing, which is essential for things like finding your personal resonance frequency. For that, I prefer a different app called "Breath Coach" to guide my breathing while I use Elite HRV just for the data recording.
Finding Your Resonance Frequency
Even without a real-time biofeedback tool, you can still use Elite HRV to find your resonance frequency. This is the ideal breathing rate that maximizes your HRV, which is typically between 5.2 and 5.8 breaths per minute. You can do this by taking a series of five-minute recordings at different breathing rates—for example, 5.2, 5.4, and 5.6 breaths per minute. Afterward, you can go back and analyze the high-frequency spectrum data from each session to see which breathing rate gave you the highest reading. This will tell you your personal resonance frequency. A video on how this is done is linked here:
Final Thoughts
Overall, Elite HRV is a powerful and comprehensive app. It gives you a wealth of data, and the ability to track your trends over time with the web interface is a huge plus. The community and additional resources, like the courses with Dr. Laura Lagos, make it a robust tool for anyone looking to understand and improve their health.
