138: What Does Your Heart Rate Really Reveal About Your Health?

Your heart rate metrics are valuable indicators of your nervous system health and overall performance capacity, revealing critical information about stress levels, inflammation, and recovery potential.

• Resting heart rate, sleeping heart rate, and heart rate variability act as a performance dashboard
• Long COVID (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome) can devastate nervous system function
• Recovery requires systematic approach using the DE-STRESS protocol
• Optimal resting heart rate ranges from 50-65 beats per minute for most people
• Higher HRV generally indicates better adaptability, stress tolerance, and resilience
• Wearables like Whoop, Oura Ring, Garmin, and Apple Watch provide valuable tracking
• Never compare HRV between different devices or between different people
• Zone 2 training (100-120 bpm for most 45+ adults) builds endurance without spiking stress
• Minerals testing is the most cost-effective functional lab test for overall health assessment

Schedule a free optimized consult at JeffreyMort.com to review your metrics, labs, and customize your protocol for optimized performance.

Chapters

• 0:00 Wearables and Performance Metrics
• 1:50 My Long COVID Survival Story
• 5:50 Understanding Heart Rate Metrics
• 10:50 Measuring With Wearables and Labs
• 15:10 Optimizing Recovery and Performance
• 21:40 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

If your wearables are showing a high resting heart rate, a low heart rate variability or poor workout recovery, you're not just tired, you are underperforming. In today's episode, I'm breaking down what your heart rate metrics are really telling you about your nervous system, your stress load and long-term performance, and exactly how I rebuilt mine after having long COVID and it wrecked my health in 2022. At 52 years old, my numbers are better than most 30-year-olds, and I'll show you how to do the same. Let's get into it. Hello, I'm Jeffrey Mort. If you're like most entrepreneurs, you're busy taking care of business, yet who's taking care of you? If you're ready to take your energy and performance to the next level in your life and your business, then this podcast is for you, because today you're going to start breaking boundaries of your mind, body and business with integrative health, and when you do that, your possibilities are limitless. I'm grateful you're here. Yes, always grateful for you joining me. Welcome back to Breaking Boundaries. I'm Jeffrey Mort, your personal certified high-performance health coach, and today we're cutting through the noise and getting into the raw truth behind one of your body's most reliable performance indicators. Behind one of your body's most reliable performance indicators your heart rate. I'm talking about resting heart rate, your RHR, talking about sleeping heart rate, talking about workout and recovery zones and, yes, the big one, heart rate variability. Most people treat these numbers as nice-to-know data, but high performers, we treat them like a dashboard and a race car, because they are. So. I want to share a little bit about my personal wake-up call, the crash that I had back in 2022. Let me bring you behind the scenes, back to that date, when it was actually for that date, when it was actually for, it started in January. Actually, it started in December of 2021. It was actually New Year's Eve and then proceeded to last throughout until about September or October of 2022. I was completely wrecked, that's right. I had long COVID, which is actually a term that was developed. You know the term long COVID really didn't exist before COVID happened, before the pandemic. But what is it? It's actually CIRS.

Speaker 1: 2:37

Chronic inflammatory response syndrome is the clinical term for it, the technical name for that, and you know that goes for anything like chronic fatigue syndrome or Epstein-Barr virus or any of those symptoms, syndromes, things like that. It's a chronic inflammatory response. It's an inflammation response of the body and it hit me like a freight train. I'm talking about brain fog, brain fog so bad that and it was worse in the afternoon, by the afternoon for most of 2022, I could not even have a conversation. I couldn't string together the thoughts to create a sentence. If you can imagine what that's like. That's how bad the brain fog was and it was frightening, like imagine not being like being able to I can't even say being able to think, because I wasn't, I wasn't able to. It was so confusing, so confusing and so frightening. And so that's that was the brain fog.

Speaker 1: 3:40

Then the daily fatigue at for about two of those months in 2022, like most of the days in those two months, I wasn't even able to walk, like if I could get up and make my way to the bathroom and make my way out into the sunshine just to lay on the grass. I mean, I'm getting all choked up here just talking about it, like that daily fatigue, and wondering like, is this what the rest of my life is going to be like? It was horrible. So the brain fog, the fatigue, the resting heart rate that spiked into the 80s, you know, for a metric, into the 80s it was. You know, that was my body's tachometer. That was just redlined, it was maxed out and my heart rate variability was in the gutter. My numbers were so low consistently. And then my mindset I was in survival mode. I really was in survival mode. It was frightening and I tried, I did my best to stay out of fear and just understanding that I needed to put my body in a position to heal. And I had the skills.

Speaker 1: 4:50

At that point I was a certified integrative health practitioner. I was not yet a high-performance health coach, but I had the skills to be able to revitalize my body. And I remember thinking how the hell did I go from health leader to barely making it through the day? But I didn't guess my way out. I used the same integrative health practitioner strategy, the de-stress protocol that I coach my clients with exercise for stress reduction, for toxin removal, for rest, for emotional balance, science, back supplementation and, like I want to say, most importantly, keeping that success mindset. To round out that de-stress protocol, it you know, some of the things that I did was just getting into nature, like I said, to go lay on the lawn and earth and ground myself and get that sunshine, that natural vitamin d um, keeping that emotional balance, knowing the right supplements to take, being able to do toxin removal strategies like infrared sauna and liver detoxes modified of course, because I couldn't handle that full detox protocol and graduated exercise program and eating the right foods and I tracked my recovery using data.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Now fast forward to today, at 52 years old, my heart rate metrics reflect somebody 10 to 20 years younger and that's no fluke and you know, honestly, this. My inspiration for doing this episode here was not only to teach and inspire, but today I went on. So today was a cardio day for me for exercise in the morning and I went on a two and a half three mile run and when I looked at my final metrics at the end, you know I looked at my peak heart rate on that run, that run and you know it should have been down around 120, but it was elevated, telling me that my exercising heart rate, my zone two cardio heart rate, is higher than what the average is for my age. And then when I was done with that cardio run, I checked my heart rate about five minutes after to see how quickly my heart rate came down in the two minutes after I was done exercising and it came back down to a resting heart rate very, very quickly. So you know that tells me that you know my heart rate metrics are that of somebody, like I said, 10 to 20 years younger than myself. So what? You might be wondering what heart rate data really tells you. So let's break that down.

Speaker 1: 7:27

Your resting heart rate, your RHR this is a benchmark of cardiovascular fitness and PNS If you hear me say PNS, that stands for parasympathetic nervous system. So that is the rest and relaxed tone of the nervous system, as opposed to the sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight or flight tone of the nervous system. So optimal for your resting heart rate is somewhere between 50 and 65 beats per minute and it really depends on the individual. We're going to talk about some caveats here as we go through heart rate. If you're measuring around 70 for resting heart rate, you're likely running hot with chronic stress or inflammation. So that's a great indicator on how stressed out your body is, and you can measure this simply with a wearable. We're going to talk about some wearables in a few minutes, so stay with me here.

Speaker 1: 8:19

Your sleeping heart rate next. Sleeping heart rate tells you how well you are recovering. Very, very important to understand. Ideally, dips lower than your resting heart rate ideally. If you're not, your body is stuck in fight or flight mode. So sleeping heart rate very, very important and it's different than resting heart rate. Resting heart rate is when you're awake. Sleeping heart rate is, as you may have guessed, is when you're sleeping. Now, your workout heart rate and recovery your peak heart rate shows cardio output. So recovery heart rate, meaning how quickly you return to baseline this is what I was mentioning earlier, that I checked after my run today. This equals adaptability and resilience. Your recovery heart rate is very important to understand your adaptability and your resilience. And slow recovery means there's poor vagal tone. Your vagal tone is a reference to the vagus nerve that runs from your brainstem down into your abdomen and branches out into all of your organs. Your vagus nerve is very, very important and there's something that's called vagal tone and you have poor vagal tone when your recovery heart rate takes a long time to come down. Recovery heart rate takes a long time to come down and this is a represented representation of sns dominance, sympathetic nervous system dominance, as I mentioned earlier, and last but not least, heart rate variability. You know there's been a lot of buzz around hrv because this is the gold standard for nervous system readiness. This is like the stress tachometer your heart rate variability so you can get instantaneous data information depending on the wearable.

Speaker 1: 10:09

We're going to talk about wearables in just a minute. And higher heart rate variability generally means more adaptability, more stress tolerance and more resilience. And lower consistent heart rate variability means that you could be challenged with more inflammation, more fatigue and slower recovery. And optimal ranges vary from person to person and from device to device, but greater than 60 milliseconds is solid for most people, for most people. We're going to dive deeper into that in just a minute. So, best ways to measure we'll talk a little bit about wearables.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Uh, there's things like the whoop strap, which is amazing, the aura ring, which is amazing, the garmin watch or the apple watch. They're all solids. But here's the caveat do not compare data, heart rate variability data from one technology to another. So never compare your aura ring hrv to your whoop strap, because you're you're looking at two totally different uh ways of measuring. Um, the whoop strap, the garmin, the apple watch those are on your wrist. The aura ringa Ring goes on your finger, as you may have guessed, and there used to be another device that was a chest strap, and they have. I think they're retooling and going. I'm not even going to mention who it was. But the closer to the heart the device is, the more accurate the heart rate variability is going to be. I'll just, I'll say that. So never compare the HRV data from one device to the next. And you really shouldn't compare your heart rate variability to somebody else. You shouldn't say, oh, that other person's got a heart rate variability of 100. What are they doing that? I'm not doing that's. That's really bio-individual to that person and so is yours to you. So two things don't compare Apple Watch to Garmin, so apples to oranges, and don't compare your heart rate variability to somebody else's.

Speaker 1: 12:12

And then get consistency. You want to wear it at night and track trends, not just daily numbers. You want to. You know it's important to understand your heart rate variability at night. So there's manual tests for resting heart rate as well. You want to do this first thing in the morning, especially before coffee, because coffee can spike your heart rate. Because what's it doing? Caffeine is causing your body to release norepinephrine and adrenaline and that will affect your resting heart rate. So you want to measure first thing in the morning. Uh, before coffee or before movement, I get out of bed and I go right for a morning walk. You know I do a short morning routine, do my hypnosis and then, um, luna and I, my australian shepherd, we go for a quick little walk. So, um, another test for resting heart rate is you want a pulse count? Uh, for about 60 seconds at the radial radial artery. So the radial artery runs from your elbow to your thumb, so you can usually measure that around your wrist. But it's much easier with a wearable device than manually testing for your resting heart rate. And then, of course, there's lab data.

Speaker 1: 13:20

This is advanced testing here. This combines metrics with functional medicine lab tests, and we're talking about at-home functional lab tests, so very convenient that you could do these on the go while you're traveling. You can do them at home. There's no need to go to a laboratory. No blood draw, no phlebotomist. Things like the hair tissue mineral analysis this is our minerals and metals test uses a simple hair sample, as you might have guessed.

Speaker 1: 13:45

The Candida metabolic and vitamins test, which is a gold standard in functional testing it's called the organic acids test. This is a urine test. And then there's salvo salivary cortisol testing, which is done through our stress, mood and metabolism test, or our men's and women's wellness tests. These are very important as well, and this gives a complete picture of stress or medic measuring cortisol or measuring inflammation. We're measuring detox pathways. We're also looking at neurotransmitters and you know, if we wanted to go a little bit deeper, I would add two more labs to that stack and I would be looking at the omega-3 levels, omega-3 to omega-6 ratios. That's a simple blood spot test, so a finger prick, and then a food sensitivity test. This is looking at a delayed reaction of food sensitivities with the immune system, so it's an IgG test. I could go deeper into that on a different episode and that's also a finger prick or a blood spot test. So those are the five labs that I would highly recommend for anybody that wants that data, wants that dashboard on a point in time of where you are at with all of these markers for stress, inflammation, detox. All of these markers for stress, inflammation, detox, brain health, things like that.

Speaker 1: 15:10

Now you might be wondering what do I do with all this information? Well, let's get into how to optimize and outperform and before I do that, I want to say I'm not providing any medical advice. I don't claim to treat, diagnose or cure any disease, but what we do is we use those lab tests to get to the root cause of what's going on. And if your numbers are off, here's what works. So you want to train smart and you want to recover even smarter. So using zone two training, zone two, cardiovascular training. And what is that? Zone two? That's a heart rate of, for most people that are over you know, let's say, average 40, 45 years old, 100 to 120 beats per minute. That would be zone two cardio training. The younger you are, the higher that number might be. And that is used to build endurance without spiking your stress response, without spiking cortisol. And then, of course, you could add breath work.

Speaker 1: 16:01

Infrared sauna, cold exposure I don't recommend cold exposure for everyone, unless they know if their nervous system is more SNS or PNS, dominant, meaning are they in fight or flight or are they in rest and relax most of the time. Because cold exposure, although it's great for an anti-inflammatory and for recovery, if somebody's body is completely stressed out, if their nervous system is redlined, then cold exposure is typically not for them. Infrared sauna everybody can benefit from that. Just low and slow with the heat and work your resilience, your tolerance up in that sauna for higher temperatures and longer durations, and then, you know, do that post-workout to be able to shift into the parasympathetic. And you know I gave you a couple of caveats on that Very important.

Speaker 1: 16:49

When I say breath work, the best thing for reestablishing your heart rate variability and your resting heart rate is it's called 7-11 breathing, so the exhale is longer than the inhale. So seven seconds in, 11 seconds out. Do that for five minutes. That's going to be great for endurance and resilience as well. You know the 3-2-1 method stop eating three hours before bed, no screens two hours before bed and no liquids an hour before bed. And super, super important. And then you know we use things like sleep support. We use the sleep help protocol in our practice and that incorporates targeted supplementation. This is all backed by science. Magnes important.

Speaker 1: 17:50

What kind of magnesium? Well, um, you know there's several different kinds of magnesium and some are more absorbable than others and some are better before bedtime, um, so magnesium I'm drawing a blank on it now. I'll get back to that, uh, it'll come to me. Gaba is another supplementation that we use l-theanine, melatonin, um, and so much more magnesium. Uh, chelate is one of them. Um, magnesium threonate is really good. It's also good before bed, but magnesium threonate is more for brain health. You certainly combine those um together and uh, yeah, those are great before bed, especially with the micronized liquid. Melatonin makes a huge difference and you know. So a lot of these terms are generalized like melatonin. Like what kind of melatonin? Well, micronized liquid melatonin is much more effective, uh, and doesn't leave you as groggy and you can vary the dosage. You know what kind of magnesium is it? Magnesium oxide? Well, that's more of a laxative and you wouldn't want to use that, especially before bed. So the type of magnesium makes a huge difference and this is why it's important to have a certified integrative health practitioner on your side, because we know all these things.

Speaker 1: 19:00

Next, manage inflammation at the root. So we're talking about gut testing, talking about removing those hidden food sensitivities, not forever, just for a short duration, until we can heal and seal that gut wall. So we make sure that the proteins from the foods that you're eating are not slipping through that leaky gut into the bloodstream, causing that delayed immune reaction. And then, of course, detox quarterly, super, super important, especially if HRV is low. Next, mineral balance is king. Things like sodium and potassium and magnesium super important. And those need to be in balance with each other, very, very important. That's why that minerals and metals test that I mentioned earlier with a simple hair sample, we can look at your ratios between sodium and potassium, calcium and magnesium and all of the ones in between, and that can tell us what we need more of.

Speaker 1: 19:57

You know these athletes that are going out and and just mega dosing with electrolytes, you know, before or after a workout. They probably are not measuring what they need and that's why the data is super important for understanding. Do we need magnesium only? Do we need magnesium with calcium? The minerals and metals test will give you that information and they drive the sodium and potassium and magnesium, and calcium plays a big role in this too. They drive heart rhythm and recovery. That's why it's king.

Speaker 1: 20:29

And the minerals and metals test, as I said, it tells you where you stand. This is a non-negotiable. This is like if you were to just do one at-home functional lab test. Minerals and metals test gives you the most information for a single lab at that cost. And then, of course, mindset you want to win that inner game, you want to win that inner race. Stop reacting, start responding, and that switch alone changes heart rate variability.

Speaker 1: 20:58

So final word on today's episode don't let your nervous system, run your life. Data is your ally and a safe, natural, proven system is your plan. Use it to calibrate, to optimize and to dominate. You're not just training for health, you're training for life. And if you want help dialing in your numbers, you can schedule a free, optimized consult with us. We'd love to review your metrics, your labs and customize your protocol for you to be able to optimize your performance. And, of course, the link is always in the show notes or you can find that at JeffreyMortcom. This is Breaking Boundaries, where we trade burnout for high-performance health. This is your edge. Let's get to work. Bye-bye everybody.