I DOUBLED MY HRV!
Most women who track their health are looking at steps, calories, maybe resting heart rate. But there's one number that may tell you more about your recovery, stress resilience, and cardiovascular fitness than almost anything else on your wearable.
Heart rate variability. HRV.
What Is Heart Rate Variability (HRV)?
HRV measures the variation in time between each heartbeat, in milliseconds. Your heart doesn't beat like a metronome. There are tiny fluctuations between each beat, and those fluctuations are controlled by your autonomic nervous system, the system that manages your stress response (sympathetic) and your recovery response (parasympathetic).
Higher HRV generally signals that your body can shift between those two states more efficiently. It's associated with better cardiovascular fitness, stronger stress resilience, and improved recovery capacity. Lower HRV may indicate that your body is under more strain, whether from poor sleep, chronic stress, illness, or overtraining.
What Is a Normal HRV? Average HRV for Women vs. Men
Here's where it gets interesting, and where most of the data online can be misleading.
HRV varies between men and women. According to WHOOP data, the most common HRV score for women is 37 ms. For men, it's 40 ms. On Oura Ring, the median HRV for female members is 35 ms.
So if you're a woman looking at your ring or strap and seeing a number in the 30s, that's not "low” per-say it’s typical.
Research also confirms that men tend to have slightly higher HRV than women until around age 50, when the difference essentially disappears (Umetani et al., JACC, 1998). HRV also declines naturally with age for everyone, which is why your personal baseline and trend over time matters far more than any population average.
How I Improved My HRV
My current HRV averages 60 ms. It used to sit in the 30s.
My cardio baseline was already solid, so for me the biggest lever was stress. Once I identified that, I built a system around it. I implement 4 intentional parasympathetic activations every single day:
A walk in nature with my husband
Morning prayer
Midday breathwork
Evening wind down and breathwork
I treat these like meetings. They're scheduled. They're non-negotiable. Just like we wouldn't skip a work meeting, we shouldn't skip the moments that shift our nervous system back into recovery mode.
I also do everything else I'm about to cover below: consistent sleep, high-quality nutrition, regular exercise. And one thing I've noticed personally is that the earlier I stop eating at night, the better my HRV is the next morning.
How to Improve HRV: What the Research Says
HRV is modifiable. That's the good news. Here are the strategies with the strongest evidence behind them.
Exercise consistently
A 2024 meta-analysis of 16 randomized controlled trials found that regular exercise training significantly improved multiple HRV indices in healthy adults (Amekran et al., Cureus, 2024). Consistency matters more than intensity. You don't have to train like an elite athlete. You just have to keep showing up.
Prioritize sleep quality
Sleep deprivation has been shown to reduce parasympathetic activity and lower HRV, shifting your nervous system toward sympathetic dominance (Bourdillon et al., Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2021). 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep can support better HRV recovery. This is foundational. If your sleep is poor, your HRV will reflect it.
Breathwork, prayer, and meditation
Practices that activate the parasympathetic nervous system may positively influence HRV. Even a few minutes of slow, controlled breathing, around 6 breaths per minute, has been studied for its effect on vagal tone. This is one of the fastest ways to see a shift, and it's one of the main strategies I personally use.
Omega-3 fatty acids
Omega-3s (1 to 2g EPA/DHA daily) show some of the strongest nutritional evidence for supporting HRV through reduced inflammation. Studies have found that EPA and DHA supplementation can improve vagally mediated HRV (Christensen, Frontiers in Physiology, 2011).
Magnesium
A randomized controlled study of 100 participants found that 400mg of magnesium daily over 90 days increased HRV parameters, specifically pNN50, an indicator of parasympathetic activity (Wienecke & Nolden, MMW Fortschritte der Medizin, 2016).
Track Your Own Baseline
HRV is highly individual. It declines naturally with age and varies between men and women. Comparing yourself to someone else's number, especially a male-skewed average, isn't useful.
What is useful: tracking your own trend over time. Know your baseline. Make changes. Watch the data. That's where HRV becomes one of the most powerful tools you have.
Bio-individual results only, and always work with your doctor.