How to instantly reduce stress
There was a lot I was hoping to achieve in 2024. Some of it was achieved, some wasn't, as it often the case.
One thing that often pops up in these goal buckets is to "be less stressed out". In my notes, I will often write aspirations such as "do more creative things" or "catch up with my friends more often". All of those things not only make me happier, but also lower stress.
Out of all those goals, what I definitely didn't have planned for 2024 was to learn how to lower my body's physiological stress response to almost sleep-level, on-demand.
I can visualize the whole process real-time using my fitness tracker. This is not just a subjective experience.
How did I do it?
Basics
When feeling stressed, there is an imbalance between your "fight-or-flight" (sympathetic) nervous system and your "rest-and-digest" (parasympathetic), with the former being excessively activated.
In order to reduce stress, it is recommended to dim down the excessive activation of the sympathetic system, and strengthen the parasympathetic activation.
"What gets measured gets managed". After running a company for 12 years I've become conditioned to look for metrics to optimize. Luckily, there is one biomarker that provides a reliable window into our body's stress levels (not perfect, but good enough to be useful): heart rate variability (HRV).
Meet HRV
Popularized by health influencers, HRV is a measurement of the variation in time between heart beats. You can read more about HRV here and here.
Many fitness trackers in the market provide real-time HRV readings. I use a Garmin Venu 3, which provides a real-time "stress level" readout (calculated as a proxy for HRV, details here). In addition to that, the watch includes real-time heart-rate monitoring which I also found useful.
Generally speaking, HRV goes the opposite way of your stress levels: higher HRV numbers imply lower stress, and vice-versa. In this article I'll be referring to HRV and stress indistinctively for convenience.
An important thing to mention is that HRV is that a highly individual metric. It is tempting to start comparing your HRV with that of others, but that is a waste of time. You are in your own HRV journey and that's what matters.
Can you still do this without real-time HRV tracking? Possibly, but I wouldn't know how to. In saying that, real-time heart rate, which is more common, can be used up to certain degree (I tested that as well). This is covered later in the article.
What my HRV was showing
While I wasn't feeling particularly stressed, my stress readouts were indicating otherwise. This is how I learned that at least for me, the subjective "worry" experience doesn't always match my physiological stress levels.
At times, I'd find that my stress levels had been high all day, even though I had felt calm, worry-free and happy working on interesting projects. Often, those stress readouts would still be high at night time, likely impacting my sleep.
I already do most things that are recommended for lowering stress: lots of exercise, healthy eating, positive relationships, meaningful work, etc.
What I was looking for was a way to bring that HRV up on the spot.
Common protocols for lowering HRV on-demand
If you go into the HRV rabbit hole like I did, you'll quickly find a few common breathing protocols which share one crucial element: the exhale duration is longer than the inhale.
These are some of the most common protocols, which in theory should increase your HRV in 2-5 minutes:
1) Box Breathing (4-4-4-4): inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, wait for 4 seconds.
2) 4-7-8 Breathing (Dr. Andrew Weil's method): inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds, exhale for 8 seconds.
3) Physiological sigh: popularized by the Andrew Huberman podcast, this method consists in two quick inhalations, followed by a long exhalation.
I tested them all. Did they work for me?
No, they didn't. Tracker would show an elevated stress response with all of those protocols. I tested them multiple times.
This has lead me to believe that the optimal protocol for increasing HRV is different for every person.
Protocols can be dangerous
When testing the above mentioned protocols, I noticed an interesting pattern. My stress response would often go down in the first breathing cycle, usually during the exhalation phase. But it would then go up in the next cycle and stay high for the whole session.
After doing 2-3 minutes of these protocols, my stress readout would be much higher than when I started. My heart rate would also be up.
In other words, all of these protocols were making me more, not less stressed, according to my fitness tracker.
Doing any kind of protocols without data is honestly a dangerous game. It is frustrating to see people presenting these methods as silver bullets when they clearly don't work for everybody.
Using AI to create my personalized optimal protocol
Even though the protocols didn't work, they did provide me with data and insights.
I put it all in an AI chatbot (I used Claude) and asked it to suggest what to test next. Since I was seeing a reduction in stress in the first cycle of Box Breathing (4-second inhale, 4-second hold, 4-second exhale, 4-second wait), we started experimenting with different durations for each stage.
We ran multiple iterations in which the AI would suggest changes to the duration of the different stages. I would try it out and report my results back to the AI.
Eventually, found a pattern that lowered both by stress levels and heart rate! From there on, further tweaks took me to what seems to be my optimal protocol.
The final protocol I landed on can consistently lower my stress levels, no matter how stressed I am at a given time.
It takes me no more than 8 cycles (~2.5 minutes) to see a significant reduction in stress. If I do it for 5-10 minutes, I can get my stress levels to numbers only seen during sleep.
For me, the magic protocol happens to be 4-2-5-7 (4-second inhale, 2-second hold, 5-second exhale, 7-second wait), but the whole premise of this article is that this will be different for each person.
Building a mini-app
In order to try different protocols I used Claude to create a mini "HRV Training" app. This was created as a Claude Artifact - a self-contained webapp that was coded and deployed within the AI platform. If you are curious, you can check it out here.
This app is what I'm currently using for my sessions.
How is this different from meditation?
I've been doing mindfulness meditation for the best part of the last 12 years, and HRV training is a completely different animal.
When doing HRV training, all you have to do is sit down and breath in the established pattern. It doesn't matter what you are thinking or not thinking. As long as I keep the pace, my stress level will trend downwards (with occasional reversals that don't last more than a few breaths). You don't have to focus on anything in particular. Feel free to let your mind roam wild while you do it.
What about using heart rate instead of HRV?
At least for me, heart rate (HR) can't be controlled as reliably as HRV/stress. If my heart rate is close to its resting value or if my stress levels are low, it won't lower further using my protocol.
In saying that, I did use it at the start and generally my optimal protocol does decrease it (and protocols that didn't work, increased it). But as I said, at least for me the results with just HR as not as repeatable as with HRV.
It also often happens that my HR will be elevated many hours after exercise, and doesn't come down when I do my protocol.
How am I applying what I learned?
Even though I've learned to lower my stress at will, I often forget to do it. The time of the day in which I'm doing it the most is before bed. But I'm actively working in incorporating this exercise through my day.
While my sleep is far from amazing, my initial deep sleep stages are consistently good according my tracker. I have also noticed an overall lower stress readout for that first half of the night, which I attribute entirely to my HRV training efforts.
Lastly, please keep in mind I'm no expert in any of these topics! I'm just biohacking and discovering what works for me.
Any questions?
I hope you found this useful! Please let me know if you have any questions, or if you'd like me to expand on any particular aspect.
This information is for educational purposes only. Please consult your healthcare provider for medical advice.