Technology to Save Your Life

On Monday my father had a heart attack. His story may be similar to many others. You see my dad is a typical type A workaholic. He has never given less than 120% with anything he has ever done in his life. This is ultimately what led to his heart attack. At 58 he is no spring chicken but could still out work the majority of those a third of his age and took great pride in that fact. He also doesn't know the meaning of the word rest. In fact the day he suffered his heart attack was the first day of a week's vacation and what was he doing on his day off? He was pouring a concrete pad by himself and fixing some issues in his well house. After getting done he started noticing that he was having troubles catching his breath and he was sweating profusely. He found that quite odd as his job is very physical and he never had those feelings before while working so he sat down and called my mom and went to sit on the couch. After talking with my mom for 10-15 minutes his symptoms were not improving so he decided to call for the ambulance. Upon arrival the EMT's performed an EKG which showed some abnormalities so he was rushed to the hospital and ultimately put into surgery where they found that his left anterior descending artery was completely blocked so they cleared it and placed a stint in saving his life. Afterwards the doctor told him that his heart had no damage from the incident and that the only real explanation for what he found was stress induced. So now he has been ordered to rest for the next month until his follow-up. My dad, finally seeing the writing on the wall, is now reading up on stress and relaxation and trying to implement it into his life. I also introduced him to some technology that will help him better understand his stress levels and is something anyone can do. What I showed him was what is now known as heart rate variability. HRV as it is commonly referred to measures the spaces between beats and the more stressed you are the more uniform the spaces are. So if stress is kept in check your HRV will be extremely varied but as stress starts to take hold that variability reduces. This is an easy thing to monitor. All you need is a heart rate monitor chest strap and a HRV app for your phone and you can track your own. You can also use this to test different stress reduction techniques to see which ones get your HRV back to an unstressed state ASAP. This technology can truly prevent heart attacks along with an assortment of overuse injuries and illnesses. I would highly recommend getting one for yourself. It just might save your life .