Heart rate variability: how to measure, interpret, and utilize HRV for training and health optimization | Joel Jamieson

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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My guest this week is Joel Jamieson. Joel is the CEO and founder of Morpheus Labs and Eight Weeks Out. Morpheus Labs aims to work with trainers and individuals to maximize training results using a combination of data science and physiology, primarily through heart rate and heart rate recovery training systems. The system is used by a number of professional sports teams in the NFL, NBA, MLS, NC2A and more. Eight Weeks Out is a company that helps coaches, athletes and fitness enthusiasts improve their strength conditioning and performance.
In this episode, we speak about what sparked Joel's personal interest in the world of heart rate variability and the history of heart rate variability development over time. We break down the science of HRV and how HRV is calculated. There are many different methods and how the interplay between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system affects your heart, the reliability of tracking HRV, and ultimately what it is that HRV is telling us about these autonomic nervous systems. We talk about the decline of HRV with age and what drives this change and how much of it is within our control versus genetically predetermined. We then talk about Morpheus, which is a product that ultimately led to my meeting Joel. We talk about my skepticism around Morpheus when I first began to use it and ultimately why I came to believe that it is a really valuable tool for people when they're training, especially people who might not be as interested in, for example, using lactate testing or other really advanced forms of testing to fine tune their training zones. We talk about the impact of lifestyle choices on HRV and its significance for overall health and how to use the data from HRV to inform daily choices. Finally, we talk about HRV within the broader context of other health metrics and where it sits in the hierarchy of measurable insights.
Final point I'd like to make is that while we speak extensively about Morpheus, I want to make sure everybody understands I have no financial affiliation whatsoever with Morpheus. I'm not an investor in the company. I'm not an advisor to the company. We have no affiliate deal with Morpheus. Of course, we have no affiliate deal with any company. In other words, there is no financial remuneration of any sort that exists between me and this company. I am simply a huge fan of this company, and I speak about it often, recommend it to a number of my patients because of my belief in its efficacy in helping people achieve their exercise goals.
We do discuss a couple of other companies in this podcast that I do have relationships with. These have been disclosed previously, and they're all on my disclosure page, but I would like to again reiterate them here. I am currently a scientific advisor to the company 8 Sleep, and I am a passive investor in the company Aura. Those two companies do have a mention in this podcast as well. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Joel Jamieson.
Joel, thanks for coming out to Austin. Been looking forward to this discussion for some time. We've not met before but had what seems like an endless stream of email communication. So I always appreciate your willingness to not just respond to all my questions, but the thoroughness with which you do so. This is a topic that as we were discussing just a few minutes ago, I think everybody has heard of it. People have a vague sense of what it is. But once you get beyond a very superficial description of it, most people, I think, don't really understand it. And certainly most people don't understand how to use the data. And I would absolutely include myself in that category. So the topic, of course, of heart rate variability is near and dear to your heart.