Monitoring Heart Rate Variability: A Key to Longevity

On this Living to 100 Club podcast, we invite Dr. Torkil Faero to discuss the value of monitoring our heart rate variability. Dr. Faero’s latest best-selling book, The Pulse Cure, focuses on the strategies to staying healthy. It explains how to use a smart watch or other wearable device to monitor heart rate variability. We discuss the now well-known strategies for longevity, including nutrition, exercise, reduced alcohol consumption and stress levels, hydration, and cold-water immersion. According to Dr. Faero, 9 out of 10 diseases are associated with and detectable by abnormal heart rate. Therefore, by monitoring our own heart rates, we can take proactive, preventive steps to return to healthy baselines. How can we use a heart rate monitor to measure our heart rate variability? What are the best smart watches to purchase?  We answer these and other questions to help us stay more informed about owning another key to longevity.  Mini Bio Dr Torkil Færø is a general practitioner and emergency physician, documentary filmmaker, author, and photographer. In 1996 he was one of the first Norwegian medics to work for Doctors Without Borders when he worked in war-torn Angola. Over a 25-year career as a freelance doctor, he has worked all over Norway. He has had tens of thousands of consultations and gained a unique picture of the diseases that plague us. He has learned that the cause is most often found in the stresses our lifestyles place on our bodies.  Dr. Færø is also an award-winning photographer, author of Kamerakuren (The Camera Cure). He has made documentaries about his pilgrimages to Nidaro and Santiago de Compostela. An inveterate traveler, he has made his way by bicycle, motorbike, kayak, boat, and car through over 80 countries, and speaks eight languages. He lives in Oslo with his wife and two children.  The Pulse Cure has spent 58 weeks on the best seller list. It has been sold to five languages: Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Polish and World English. Færø believes that the book’s appeal lies in the fact that many people experience the immediate effects of The Pulse Cure.  For Our Listeners Torkil's new book: The Pulse Cure