Typical everyday movements cause specific patterns in heart rate

Abstract

Physical inactivity and sedentary behaviour are important risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Knowledge about the impact of everyday movements on cardiac autonomic regulation is sparse. This study aims to provide evidence that typical everyday movements show a clear impact on heart rate regulation. 40 healthy participants performed two everyday movements: (1) calmly kneeling down (“tie one’s shoes”) and standing up again and (2) raising the arms to the horizontal (“expressive yawning”). Both movements elicited reproducible pattern in the sequence of heart periods. Local minima and local maxima appeared in the transient period of approx. 30 s. The regulatory response for ergometer cycling, which was used as control, did not show a pattern formation. Calmly performed everyday movements are able to elicit rich cardiac regulatory responses including specific patterns in heart rate. These newly described patterns have multiple implications for clinical and rehabilitative medicine, basic research, digital health data processing, and public health. If carried out regularly these regulatory responses may help to mitigate the burden of physical inactivity and enrich cardiovascular regulation.