On the beat

Constantly feeling threatened isn't good for our nerves, or our heart.

- Marc Wilson

When I started at Victoria University, I was going to be a computer scientist, and when Julian Thayer went to Boston's noted Berklee College of Music, he was going to be a jazz bassist. Both of us ended up in psychology, or in Thayer's case psychophysiology, but he's both rather more famous than me and an accomplished bass player.

Psychophysiology is the study of the intersection of psychological and physiological phenomena. In particular, Thayer is a world authority on heart rate variability. In Thayer's words, "When you inhale, your heart rate increases, and when you exhale it decreases... and, contrary to what you might believe, your heartbeat is not regular. And the more variability, in some ways, the better."

When you stand up, your heart rate variability goes down, to make sure blood gets to your brain, for example. The time between beats is not perfectly regular, and that is often a good thing.

So far, so technical, but this is seriously important. If you have lower heart rate variability, your chance of survival is lower, says Thayer, because your body is less able to adapt to what you need in the moment.