Don’t take that bite! Dogs, diets and heart rate variability

0
2981

Two new reports related to heart rate variability (HRV) reveal more about its significance as a measure of our physical and emotional health. Higher HRV is associated with better stress management. It is a way to peek into the state of a person’s nervous system, particularly the vagus nerve, the mind-body information superhighway. The more active your vagus is, the better you are at coping with stress. It is the neural path through which your “rest and digest” system signals your “fight or flight” system to calm down.

One new article reports that people with high HRV can more easily resist temptation when dieting. Greater self-control of that kind is also linked to better psychosocial and physical health.

HRV is similar in other mammals, so another researcher looked at the relationship between HRV and aggression in dogs, hoping that HRV might predict how aggressive a dog is likely to be. Just as humans with high are better at resisting that extra slice of cake, perhaps dogs with higher HRV would be better able to resist taking a different kind of bite.

The resulting article reports that indeed, less aggressive dogs had higher HRV.  “Dogs with bite histories had significantly lower HRV” and owners who reported that their dogs were aggressive also had lower HRV. The researcher’s work suggested that HRV could be an objective way to measure the effectiveness of dog training that is intended to reduce aggressiveness.