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.

Keywords: cardiovascular health; everyday movements; heart rate pattern; heart rate regulation; heart rate variability; light physical activity; public health; transient oscillation.

FIGURE 1

Example of patterns in the RR interval series during (A) kneeling down, (C) getting up again, (E) moving the arms and hands from the lap to a straight horizontal line at shoulder level, and (G) cycling on an ergometer (blue line: regulation within first 30 s of cycling). Grey lines depict the RR interval series during each repetition of the movement (8 repetitions); the black line shows the average RR interval pattern. The vertical dashed line in (A) and (C) indicates the start of the movement. In (E), the vertical dashed lines from left to right indicate the 1) start of raising arms, 2) start of moving arms outwards, 3) start of moving arms inwards, 4) start of lowering arms to the lap, and 5) end of arm movement. The red crosses indicate the local minima/maxima or time points [in (G)] used to quantify the pattern of each average RR interval series. The results of the pattern quantification for all participants are shown in (B) – kneeling down, (D) – getting up, (F) – arm movement, and (H) – ergometer cycling (including at start and after 30 s of cycling). For further details, see text.

FIGURE 2

Examples of the movements. Kneeling down: the subject stands for 30 s and then kneels down for 30 s (A). Arm movement: the arm movement begins with the hands resting on the lap. The hands are then raised forward to shoulder height and then moved outwards to form a horizontal line. The arms are moved forward again and then placed on the lap (B).