flowt: Stress Management Beta

How do you manage your stress response?

The infamous "fight or flight" reaction is familiar to anybody with a pulse. Common symptoms include cold, sweaty hands, increased heart rate, and anxious, racing thoughts. In addition to being uncomfortable, this type of stress has a detrimental impact on many areas of life including cognitive performance, social performance, and cardiac health. In order to help you manage stress, flowt uses a biomarker called Heart Rate Variability. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a statistic calculated from your pulse which serves as a quantitative measurement of stress. No hardware purchase is required in order to perform these measurements, flowt uses only your smart phone camera to measure color changes in your finger, which are induced by your heart beat. The measurements from your pulse are combined with your own subjective reports in order to track and control stress in the moment, and over time. The ability to actively influence your HRV is acquired through a technique called "HRV Biofeedback". The idea behind HRV biofeedback is simple: we measure your HRV in real-time as you attempt to improve it through timed breathing exercises, such that you get instant feedback on what's working, and how your body is responding.

Wait, but what exactly is "Heart Rate Variability"?

Heart rate variabiliy (HRV) is a measure of the variation in beat to beat intervals. In other words, your heart rate is not constant, it is always changing, and HRV measures exactly how much it is changes over time. High HRV describes a state when your heart rate changes a lot in a given period of time, this is a actually a good thing! It may seem counter-intuitive, but a highly variable heart rate is characteristic of the "Rest and Digest" mode of your nervous system, while low HRV is characteristic of the "Fight or Flight" mode. This relationships can be understood in the following way: when you are healthy and stress free, your heart responds flexibly to changes in breathing and other stimuli, whereas when you are stressed, you loose that flexibility and your heart rate becomes more rigid. So by all means, take a deep breath, relax, and flowt on :)

Note: Links to scientific studies and explanatory resources are included throughout the app's tutorial.

Note: I consider this application a "rough draft", please direct any and all opinions and ideas to flowt.biohacker@gmail.com so that I may use them to improve the app!

Disclaimer: I consider this application to be a "General Wellness" product, and do not claim to cure any specific disease or condition.