Cardiac coherence and optimal acupuncture – smart health with Traditional Chinese Medicine

The vegetative or autonomic nervous system

The vegetative or autonomous nervous system is made up of sensory and motor fibers and automatically manages a large part of the body's functions, including breathing and heart rate. It consists of two antagonistic systems, the sympathetic (or orthosympathetic) and the parasympathetic which act with the help of chemical mediators by inducing an accelerating effect on the organism for the first and brake for the second.

Thus the orthosympathetic stimulates the mind, places the body on alert, ready to take action, and induces an acceleration of the cardiac and respiratory functions in case of danger or stress for example.

The parasympathetic produces the effectotherwise since it helps calm the mind and rest the organism,to save the cardiac and respiratory functions and to allow a fastrecovery when the danger is gone.

The autonomic nervous system is notnot generally subject to our will but we can however act on itby breathing and changing our heart rate.

Thus, it has been observed for a long time, that inspiration stimulates the sympathetic system, which induces a slight acceleration of the heart rate while expiration stimulates, it, the parasympathetic system, which produces the opposite effect, a slight slowing of the heart.

Heart and breathing

Cardiac functions andare closely related. It is estimated that the respiratory rateaverage of an adult at rest is 12 to 20 cycles per minute while theheart rate of this same adult at rest is 60 to 80 beats perminute.

To simplify, we see a 4-1 ratio emerge, knowing that four heartbeats occur on average during a single respiratory cycle consisting of an inspiration phase that lasts about two beats, followed by an expiration phase during also two beats.

Given the antagonistic stimulation effect of inspiration and expiration on the heart, it is easy to understand the arrhythmia induced in the heart by breathing and that there is therefore a certain heart rate variability (HRV). VFC is the degree of fluctuation in the duration of heart contractions, or the interval between two contractions. High variability indicates a good immediate ability to adapt the heart to stresses and is therefore both a sign and a health factor.

VFC would provide fairly reliable indices in several fields such as physiological responses linked to emotions and physiological responses linked to stress. HRV is a good indicator of cardiovascular risk and mortality.

Of themthings to remember:

1 / By acting voluntarily onrespiratory rate, we tend to change globally and fairlyproportionally heart rate

2 / Inspiration and expiration naturally generate a cardiac arrhythmia knowing that one acts on the sympathetic system and the other on the parasympathetic one.

Cardiac coherence

The cardiac coherence state isobtained when you reach a specific point of harmony and balance atlevel of action of the ortho and parasympathetic systems.

At this time, the heart synchronizes with breathing optimally.

In a way ourorganism is then sufficiently active (orthosympathetic stimulation) andat the same time sufficiently relaxed (parasympathetic stimulation).

The variability of the heart rate is, in this particular situation, both ample and regular, our organism functions in an optimal and coherent way.

When we analyze the cardiovascular system by spectral analysis (mathematical method allowing to detect the different oscillations of a rhythm and to analyze the distribution of waves according to their frequency.), The results have two main components:

The high frequencies (HF) between .15 and 0.4 Hz. They are an indicator of activity parasympathetic. However, HF does not only reflect parasympathetic activity in the case where the respiratory activity is less than 0.15 Hz (9 cycles per minute) which remains relatively infrequent (Novak and Novak 1993; Berntson et al. 1997).

Low frequencies (LF) between 0.04 and 0.15 Hz. They would mainly reflect the activity nice. However, for some authors, they represent an amalgam of sympathetic and parasympathetic activities controlling the sinus node (Pomeranz et al. 1985; Persson et al. 1992; Houle and Billman 1999) while for others, LF would only reflect 'sympathetic activity (Pagani et al. 1986).

Conclusion

The body functions properly when the sympathetic (accelerator) and parasympathetic (brakes) systems cooperate.

In many patients, only the sympathetic system works. These patients are difficult to treat. They must practice a form of slow breathing to induce a parasympathetic reflex and relaunch its regulatory function.

The circulation in the channels begins to function with the activation of the parasympathetic system.

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