Heart Rate Variability Being Used to Reduce Pain

[Cort]

Heart rate variability testing is used to determine how your autonomic nervous system responds to stress.

We know the ANS is whacked out in both FM and ME/CFS. In fibromyalgia and in some ME/CFS patients, pain itself dysregulates the ANS. Low HRV scores indicate the ANS has lost it's resilience in both ME/CFS and fibromyalgia but more importantly for people with FM and ME/CFS low HRV scores have also been tied to increased pain levels and poor sleep.

Check out this article on Medpage which reports on the link between low HRV scores and pain and how the VA is using HRV biofeedback to reduce pain in veterans.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/887600

Pain initiates a stress response that increases sympathetic output and autonomic imbalance. Sympathetic overdrive, shown as reduced HRV (the variation in the time interval between heartbeats), is common in chronic pain.

"Pain is amplified by the stress response, so if you have a little bit of pain and you add a big stress response on top of that, now you have elevated or amplified pain," explained Dr Ginsberg. "If you can lower that stress response, which is what this maneuver does, you then reduce the amplified pain down to a much more manageable level."

One nice thing about HRV is that it's pretty darn cheap compared to most treatments.

Find out more how to use HRV in a series of blogs by Karmin

https://www.healthrising.org/forums...-cfs-and-fibromyalgia-for-better-health.5668/