What Is Heart Rate Variability (HRV)?

As you’ll know, our remarkable shots make a real difference to how you feel. A huge reason for this is the improvement in Heart Rate Variability (HRV) that ZAAG provides, as confirmed by countless daily users.

HRV as a health metric is becoming more frequently cited and for good reason: it’s an indicator of your body’s ability to manage stress. As wearable devices have proliferated to the point that over a third of UK households now own and use a wearable device regularly, so too has research surrounding this metric.

At the end of the day, the most important thing is that ZAAG works. But wondering why something you swallow each day makes a difference to your heart is totally understandable.

We’ll get to that. First, let’s explain exactly what HRV is.

Defining HRV and the Autonomic Nervous System

HRV is a measure of the variation in time between your heartbeats. 

TL;DR it’s the number that gets spit out when determining the efficacy of your autonomic nervous system (ANS). For the sake of this email, the ANS includes two important parts: the sympathetic (SNS) and parasympathetic (PSNS) nervous systems.

Your SNS controls your fight/flight response, shifting energy to maximise performance when faced with stress.

Your PSNS is the rest/digest response, calming you down after the stress and returning you to homeostasis.

HRV is a number that measures how well your body balances activity and rest.

Ultimately it outlines your body’s ability to perform, which is exactly what ZAAG is designed to enhance. 

To take a deeper dive, and to learn how to identify your own HRV, head here. 

Your HRV Baseline

Your HRV is a super useful indicator to understand how your body is managing the stress you’re putting it under.  The first step is to determine your baseline, that is to say what your usual HRV is. After a week (or longer, if you’re scrupulous) you’ll have a number.

Once you’ve got that number, you can follow the below general guidance to understand where your body’s at in terms of maximising performance.

• Close to or above baseline: You’re in a good place to train.
• Small drop: Usual stuff if you’ve been training recently.
• Large drop: Best to take a rest day as you’re likely overstressing your system.
• Consistently lower than usual: Probably aren’t prioritising recovery enough.
• Consistently higher than usual: You’re in a good place to push.

What Factors Impact Your HRV?

In broad terms, there are five main things to improve HRV and they’re exactly what you’d expect: exercise, diet, hydration, sleep, stress management/mental wellbeing.

Given the design of our shots, it’s no surprise that four of these five areas are impacted by ZAAG – hydration's not really our wheelhouse. 

Nutrient consumption impacting HRV makes perfect sense but is often overlooked. Our bodies require fuel to operate properly. That’s why some people are healthy, and others aren’t. 

What we consume can either diminish or enhance our body’s ability to manage all kinds of stress.

Targeted Nutrition for Heart and Immune Health

Antioxidants play a vital role in addressing inflammation, which taxes your internal systems and hamstrings their potential. Omega 3, CoQ10, Vit C are all found within ZAAG and are powerful antioxidants.

The immune system is (duh) vital for wellbeing, but is also linked with inflammation and requires appropriate fuel to fortify our body. When our immune system isn’t working optimally, our performance suffers. Rare ingredients within ZAAG have all been found, in countless scientific studies, to benefit our immune system. In particular:

Snow fungus increases the production of immune cells and enhances their activity (Ma et al., 2021)

Astragalus stimulates the body’s production of white blood cells, which fight off infection (Denzler et al., 2016)

Selenium activates immune cells, enhancing their ability to destroy pathogens (Hoffmann et al., 2013).

Vit B6 produces antibodies and cytokines, which fight negative bacteria and viruses (Mikkelsen et al., 2023). Vit B12 helps to produce red blood cells, which deliver oxygen to immune system cells.

Last but not least, both Vit D and zinc regulate the immune system, so it operates properly. (Aranow 2011  & Jin et al., 2014)

Addressing Nutritional Deficiencies

Then we come to micro and phyto nutritional deficiencies. With a perfect diet, this wouldn’t be important. But you don’t have a perfect diet – nobody does.

Swallowing a performance shot of 29 ingredients you won’t find in a Boot’s Meal Deal is a great starting point to cover potential deficiencies that you may be experiencing, but won’t be aware of, without undergoing clinical tests.

Then you get the broader strokes like stress, sleep and exercise. All of which are improved by way of ZAAG’s ingredients. We’ve covered all three of these in-depth on our socials and in our musings, so no need to repeat ourselves.

There’s so much more we could, and will, say regarding ZAAG’s ability to improve performance. HRV is an easy way to understand the heavy lifting that extraordinary supplementation can provide.

If you haven’t experienced it for yourself, get your hands on a starter pack now.