Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCPPresident at Five Journeys, Functional Medicine & Wellness Provider, Best Selling Author, Passionate Champion for Health

Why Variability is More Important Than Consistency

13 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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0:59

A short two-speaker YouTube segment arguing that variability in heartbeats (heart rate variability) is more desirable than strict consistency. The speakers emphasize that variability enables transition into the parasympathetic (restful) state, that humans are evolutionarily adapted to be in restful states much of the day, and cite wearable data from extant hunter‑gatherer groups indicating 10–12 hours/day in restful physiological states.

Chapters

So most of the time, we think of our heartbeat as going boop, boop, boop, whatever, 50 beats per minute or 60 beats per minute or whatever it is for you, what you're saying is between those beats, sometimes it's variable, sometimes it's not exactly 60 beats per minute. And what we want is the variability, not the. Not consistency. Not consistency.
Yeah. We want to be able to reach the state where there is a variability. Right. So that we can relax and calm down into the parasympathetic mode. We also need to push ourselves and do challenging things, both mentally and physically. But we need the balance to be sustainable with our physiology, because we have ancient physiology and we are made to be in the restful state most of the time. So when we have these wearables on hunter gatherers that still exist today, they would be in the restful state 10 to 12 hours a day.