The Impact of Daily Physical Activity and Sleep on Resting Heart Rate and Resting Heart Rate Variability in Individuals with High and Low Stress Load

Role

Supervisor

Description

It is known that regular physical activity decreases resting heart rate (RHR) and increases resting heart rate variability (HRV), while chronic stress increases RHR and decreases resting HRV. Although it is recommended that stressed individuals exercise to reduce their stress burden, it is unclear if they benefit from exercise to the same extent as those who do not experience stress overload. A current gap in the literature is the lack of studies investigating cardiac autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning in individuals with different chronic stress loads. The current project aims to investigate the differences in long-term ANS responses to daily physical activity in people experiencing high versus low chronic stress. We hypothesize that individuals who experience chronic stress exhibit a blunted autonomic response (less decrease in RHR and less increase in resting HRV) to daily exercise due to an inability to regulate parasympathetic activation effectively. Therefore, in this regard they won’t benefit from regular exercise as much as those who don’t experience chronic stress, owing to their decreased autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity. In order to test this hypothesis, we would like to benefit from the Tesserae dataset.

Date

30 Jun 2024 - 29 Jun 2025

Project Type

NON_FUNDED_PROJECT

Keywords

HRV;RHR;Chronic stress;Acute stress;wearables

Funding Body

N/A

Amount

0

Project Team

Anthony Leicht;Stephanie Baker;Mostafa Rahimi Azghadi;Zoltan Sarnyai