How to lower a resting heart rate in the 80s or 90s. | Masterjohn Q&A Files #31

Question: Thoughts on lowering my resting heart rate. It's often in the high 80s or low 90s once I'm up for the day.

I wish I knew the answer to that. I'd use it for my heart rate. I don't even measure my heart rate because my whole life it's been kind of high. I think breathing and meditation are probably the best things that you can do. 

I've typically had a white coat syndrome response to getting my blood pressure taken, and because as soon as I feel the pressure, I start to get anxiety and I'm like, “oh no it feels like it's high” and I get an adrenaline rush.

A couple of years ago I got rejected from giving blood three times in a year because either my blood pressure, or my pulse was too high when they measured it, both because of the adrenaline surge.

I was not able to donate blood until I started using Headspace, the meditation app, in particular the visualizations of the happiness portion.

The first time I was able to donate blood was when I went in to get my blood pressure and pulse taken and I imagined that bright light in the middle of my chest I just did the visualization and "boom" my heart rate and my pulse, just went straight into normal zone because I was able to create an association between that visualization and the state that the meditation produced. 

So that would be the first thing that I'd try. If I find out that I have a medical condition with a physiological solution I'll let you know, because I have the same thing.

This Q&A can also be found as part of a much longer episode, here: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/podcast/2019/02/24/ask-anything-nutrition-feb-17-2019/

If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About Nutrition, sign up for the CMJ Masterpass, which includes access to these live Zoom sessions, premium features on all my content, and hundreds of dollars of exclusive discounts. You can sign up with a 10% lifetime discount here: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/q&a

Access the show notes, transcript, and comments here.