Here I was, having a 1-on-1 conversation with Professor Torbjorn Åkerstedt at the Karolinska Institute at Stockholm University.

I travelled here to learn more about their way of measuring stress via Heart Rate Variability - also known as HRV.

And there was one part of the conversation that hit me like a shockwave.

It was when Prof Åkerstedt uttered the following:

“I’ve spent decades and I still haven’t found the one psychophysiological measure of stress”

The year was 2010.

HRV

In our first videogaming and sleep study (Weaver et al., 2010), we wanted to test the theory that evening technology harmed sleep because of increased physiological arousal.

To this end, we measured heart rate - as the number of beats per minute.

Our hypothesis was not confirmed.

And I guess the fact that teenagers were falling asleep within 10 minutes after playing Call of Duty didn’t help.

Yet over in the land of the Swedish Cook from the Muppets, there were some Scandi researchers who observed significant changes in Heart Rate Variability (HRV) when teenagers played a videogame before sleep (Ivarsson et al., 2009).

HRV actually has multiple components, including low frequency- and high frequency HRV.

Each of these reflect the input from two different sides of what’s called the autonomic nervous system.

We were primarily interested in one of those sides - the sympathetic nervous system (SNS).

The SNS prepares you for the few Fs.

Flight.

Fright.

Fight.

Fuck.

It was that last one that I muttered in my head when Prof Åkerstedt said there was no silver bullet measure of stress.

Is HRV the New Fad?

After decades of performing research, reading research, listening to research at conferences (at exotic locations), I’ve learned that sleep is virtually related to … everything. Well, almost everything.

This means I’ve lived through many Sleep Fads.

Take for example Martin Seligman’s positive psychology, that merged into the wellbeing movement, and later the wellness movement.

Sleep was linked to all these.

The wellbeing movement has likely kept me busy - and likely you as well. That’s because sleep is identified by folks as one of the Big (insert whatever number here you want) factors of wellbeing.

People are measuring their wellbeing by slapping something on their wrist - or lately marrying a Finnish company by slipping on one of their rings.

And for their trouble, they are presented with a simplified version of their HRV.

Get Busy Living …

A long time ago during the last millennium, there were psychological theories explaining how human beings would persist in their belief that they purchased the right gift for themselves - even in the face of evidence suggesting that the gift didn’t live up to expectations (Klayman, 1995).

So I don’t expect this blog to change your mind if you’ve bought a wristband, “the world’s most accurate ring”, or a strip of thin plastic and metal underneath your mattress.

Nor should I expect you to continue hate-reading this blog right now.

But I will say that today I reflected on this whole ‘Readiness’ thing that these HRV devices are sending to their consumers each morning.

This morning - I wondered …

“Am I missing out?”

I haven’t bought one of these devices, so I guess I never know my Readiness score. I haven’t known what to expect from the day ahead of me.

Will I do well today?

Will the HRV acolytes do better than me today?

A thought stopped me during this self-reflection …

It’s Sunday morning.

Do you know how many people are waking up on a Sunday morning and getting told that their Readiness is shit? A whole bunch of people.

Because last night was Saturday night, one of the most common nights of the week for people to drink alcohol. And alcohol fucks with your (simplified) HRV.

But I’m alcohol free. So I don’t need a machine to predict the future of my Sunday.

And then I did a bit more …

Self-reflection

Was my life a failure because a machine didn’t tell me my Readiness score each morning?

If I look back at my career - so far - the answer is a big “Fuck No”.

And I’ve got the numbers to prove that.

So if a machine wasn’t the reason for my success - what was it?

Maybe it was the damn hard work, or the splashes of good luck along the way. Maybe it was ceasing to edit an email to a sleep guru by pressing the send button whilst simultaneously saying “Fuck it” (and striking it lucky 20% of the time). Maybe it was that I was fortunate enough to start early. Maybe it was the amazing mentors I had, or the amazing research students I was able to recruit.

Or maybe it was some of those qualities available to all us?

Things like self-reflection. The willingness to take risks, with the understanding that when a failure occurs, you’ll try to learn how to do better next time. Or maybe it’s simple goal setting - setting goals for the day, the year, 3 years from now.

Conclusion?

People, I’ll predict in a few years from now that the HRV wave will subside. It will likely be due to the discovery that HRV doesn’t tell us what we need to know to better our day.

To do that, listen to yourself.

And maybe. Just maybe. Read a bit of real science.

• Prof MG