(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
I'll admit that the headline looks a bit hungry when I see it black and white. Fortunately, not my expression, but something I caught up with in a family company quite recently. A distant relative had undergone a heart attack, and his cardiologist had subsequently explained to him about the variability of the heartbeat, the so-called HRV (heart rate variability). Since I have come so far in medical studies now, people have now begun to confide in me about their troubles in private. If I write about what they mean to me here in this column, it might have some deterrent effect.
Pulse. I have been told by Truls Lie that I should try to associate each column with something relevant – this was the order when I initially got this job. I have to admit that this is not always easy in a busy day. The medical program demands its own, and in addition, family, young people and the approach to social life. Plus some weird interests. The temptation to pull a Tommy Olsson – that is, to write about myself or what I happen to be interested in at the moment – becomes intrusive. Through this process I have also finally broken the code associated with Olsson's writing: The reason why he writes as he writes is simply that research takes time. However, there are limits to how far one can tease a reader. As the good contemporary artist Olsson is, he consistently tries to push this boundary. In each text.
Health is always relevant. In a way, my relative's story illustrates a kind of sign of the times, maybe more. The cardiologist had explained to him that the heart should not beat completely regularly, but that it should perform a form of dance. Most people who have played a little with a heart rate monitor may have experienced this, that the heart rate does not stand still, but that it moves. If you have a resting heart rate of 60, the number on the display will not show 60 evenly, but will soon be down to 56, soon up to 64. The heart rate actually performs a form of wave motion. In addition, you can play with seeing what happens when you breathe in and out, namely that the heart rate drops and rises synchronously with exhalation and inhalation. If one is healthy and fearless, well and good. If the pulse beats like a metronome, one is most likely dead, or at least equipped with a pacemaker. If you have had a heart attack, the chance of a long and good life is significantly higher if the variability of the heart rhythm is large, and this makes the HRV analysis a cheap and suitable predictor for the future of heart patients.
"Stress". Through relatively complicated mathematics – we are talking here advanced trigonometry (waves, frequencies, phase shift) – one can give this dance a numerical expression through the so-called Fourier analysis. I know this because I happen to be researching HRV. Fortunately, one has computers, or computers, as they called it in the 1980s, so that today's HRV researcher strictly speaking does not need to understand much of advanced mathematics. There is good software that translates the ECG signal, well note if this is stored in a digital medium. Software development may explain why this research did not begin to accelerate until after the turn of the millennium, despite the fact that basic research was done 30-40 years earlier.
For some reason, most people are surprised that great variation in heart rate is a sign of good health. That is also why I take the chance to write about this. There are certain types of variations in the heart rhythm that are not good – so-called heart rhythm disorders or arrhythmias – but these fall into another category. Psychophysiological studies have shown that the healthy heart rhythm variability is greater in those who are good at relaxing, while it is less in those who are tense. The research on heart rhythm variability fits into a pattern where medicine is becoming more and more concerned that the life lived affects health and illness – also beyond more prosaic factors such as smoking, exercise and a so-called healthy diet. As a rule, one pulls on the strange word "stress" in addition, whatever this means. Perhaps in the future one will replace this "stress" word with references to the dance of the heart. Instead of saying "I've been so stressed lately" one could say, with a sigh, "no, my heart has been dancing so far too little lately". Probably the heart rate variability would increase a little just by swapping these two word choices with each other.
Næss is a medical student and master of philosophy.
torekierulfnaess@hotmail.com.
