Can't Sleep? Why Understanding Your HRV can Help Get Your ZZZs with Dr. Torkil Faero

Can't sleep? Why understanding your heart rate variability (HRV) could change everything

Graced Health Podcast

Host: Amy Connell

Guest: Dr. Torkil Faero

Amy Connell: Okay, Torkil, welcome to the Graced Health Podcast.

Torkil Faero: Thank you, Amy. Very nice to be here.

Amy Connell: I was telling you before we hit record that I have been loosely following my HRV—which we're going to talk about today—for a while, but I don't fully understand it. I've been wanting to have a conversation here on the Graced Health Podcast about it, but I wanted to be able to frame it up right. So when your team reached out and said we could use HRV to support our sleep and our stress, which we'll get into in a little bit, I was like, "Now that is a conversation that I know my community would like to have." Because as women in the transition into menopause and those who are in it, this is a real issue. So I'm so glad that we could connect and am looking forward to your education today.

Torkil Faero: And as you say, that's a quite stressful period in women's lives, and it's important in particular to have better stress management at that time. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Amy Connell: Yes. Okay. So you have an interesting story in your health journey. Can you quickly just share with us what that is?

Torkil Faero: Yes. First, I'm a Norwegian medical doctor, an emergency physician. I've been working as a doctor for 26 years, graduated in '98. For most of the time I've been working as a normal doctor, I was focused mainly on living an adventurous life—working freelance as a doctor, which I can do in Norway, working in intense periods, seeing lots of patients, and then going off for some adventure.

And 10 years ago—or 12 years ago now—I was sailing with my family and we were on a four-year trip around the world. One year into that journey we were about to go through the Panama Canal going into the Pacific Ocean, and my father, who had just been on the boat just one month earlier, was suddenly diagnosed with cancer—gallbladder cancer. Only three months after that, he was buried. He was 73.

I just realized that, okay, I was looking at my ancestors, other than him as well, and I could see that I get nothing free from my genes here. They were hardly getting into their eighties, none of them—not even the women. As a doctor, I just started to realize, "Okay, I need to take a look at how can I live to get into my nineties so I can keep living this kind of a life, to see the world, to be able to do and kind of fulfill my dreams."

I understood that I didn't learn this in medical school, so I just had to reeducate myself and find out: What do I need to do to be healthier? Because I had done all the mistakes. In my book, The Pulse Cure, which is about the different best lifestyle strategies to live longer—and that is, fortunately, you're able to use the heart rate to track the progress of this—I did everything wrong. I had a lot to change.

I basically changed my life around in those 10 years, and I'm still working on it. I did not exercise. I did not care about what I was eating or about sleep. I was drinking alcohol more or less every day—it was even recommended by doctors at the time.

In the last five years, I've been using heart rate monitors—watches and rings and Whoop bands. I have three devices on me at the moment. I've been using them to be able to track the autonomic nervous system and the physiology in my body, which can be measured by the heart rate. I've written a book about it. It's been just an incredible bestseller in Norway, translated into seven languages, which has kind of changed my life. I'm really just a normal doctor from before that, and suddenly I'm getting thrown into this rollercoaster ride of being a media person and kind of a spokesman for preventative health. So that is some of the background of why I'm here.

Amy Connell: Okay. I feel like we could take our entire time and talk about your four-year adventure around the world. That's incredible. You just kind of glossed right over that, so maybe another time we can learn about that.

But what is interesting to me is, you know, there are no shortage of books on health, wellbeing, taking care of yourself, eating, exercise, et cetera. And what I find interesting about—these are my words, not yours, but—you're blowing up over in Norway in terms of people wanting your information and your insight and your wisdom. We're really just using the data that our own body has and being more introspective about how we respond to our heart rate, to our pulse, rather than "eat this, not that," "exercise this way, not that way," you know, and getting all of these external rules. I love that. I don't know if that's really what you meant by it, but that's kind of a connection that I'm making, because this is a new way of thinking about supporting our body in a way that helps us thrive.

Torkil Faero: Yeah, so it's about following your heart in both senses, right? Both in the literal sense and in the more traditional "follow your heart" sense.

As a doctor, we are very used to tracking the heart. When a person comes into the ER, the first thing I'm looking for is the heart rate. Of course it's important in those dramatic situations or when you're really sick, but the heart rate is kind of like the speedometer in your car—it's a measurement of the intensity and state of your health and physiology.

We can use this modern technology that easily tracks the heart rate, stores it, compares it with the data from millions of users, incorporating artificial intelligence and all of these new technologies to be able to tell you so much more about the state of your system—what is going on under the hood, so to speak, in your own body.

For me as a person and as a doctor, this is invaluable information. That we as people can have this information on our wrist available at all times and use it to guide us towards better choices—I think that is a revolution in my mind about how to keep ourselves healthy and avoid getting sick.

Amy Connell: Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, I want to take a step back. I've used this term in our conversation already, so for those who are not familiar with it: HRV—heart rate variability. Help us understand what that is and then what the connection and the difference between pulse and HRV.

Torkil Faero: Yeah, good question. The interesting thing is that the heart rate variability reveals the state of the autonomic nervous system—the foundation in our body. The ancient system that we share with all vertebrates, with your dog and your rabbit. It is an old, old system that we still have in the foundation of our brains.

The autonomic nervous system—the self-governing nervous system—is divided into two parts. It's divided into the sympathetic "fight, flight, and freeze" part that mobilizes us towards something we are chasing or away from something that is chasing us, historically. So that is the mobilizing state.

But we cannot be in that state all the time. That would wear us out very fast. So this system also has a recovery state, which is called the parasympathetic state—the rest and recovery state.

The good thing is that the heart rate will behave differently whether we are in the parasympathetic state or in the sympathetic state. When we are in the restful parasympathetic state and when we breathe in, the heart rate speeds up a little bit because there's more oxygen in the lung and it kind of pushes more efficiently. Then when we breathe out and we empty part of the oxygen in our lungs, the heart rate slows down just a little bit to save some energy.

But when we are in the stressful state, it's like this system gathers that, "Okay, this organism is in danger. We need to use all available forces even when there's less oxygen in the lung." So it will beat at a very steady pace.

In the restful state, there will be kind of a wavy form—the heart will go up and down, up and down. In the stressful state, it'll be like a metronome, like a clock. These variables will detect these small differences measured in milliseconds. They will keep track of it while you are busy living your life and will give you a presentation and an estimate of whether your stress balance is sustainable with health—if it's a healthy stress balance.

Amy Connell: Okay. I have not heard it that succinctly before, so that is helpful. And it's also surprising that when we are in that parasympathetic state—that rest and digest—that our heart rate speeds up when we inhale. Did I remember that correctly?

Torkil Faero: Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Amy Connell: I guess I would have expected it to be different. But now that you've explained it, that makes some more sense.

Torkil Faero: And you would even be able—if you feel your heart rate on your carotid artery, for example, when it's at the lowest, when you're just waking up in the morning—you would be able to feel that small difference. So it is detectable.

Amy Connell: Okay. Even just with our fingers rather than a device?

Torkil Faero: Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Amy Connell: Okay. So a lot of us have some versions of wearables right now. I wear an Apple Watch. My husband has an Oura Ring. Just when you held up your hands, it looks like you have on your left hand an Oura Ring and a... I think, oh, it's a Garmin.

Torkil Faero: It is a Garmin, yeah.

Amy Connell: Okay. So I've heard—the Garmin wears like... there's a joke about Garmin wearers, but it's basically that it's so much better than Apple.

Torkil Faero: It is. It is, unfortunately for you. Yeah.

Amy Connell: Yeah, but I know. But I get this pretty little band on my Apple Watch.

So say we have a tracker on. What do we do with this information? And I think that's where it can get a little overwhelming. In my experience, it's kind of all over the place depending on the time of day. What should we be looking for? What kind of trends? What expectations should we have with these HRV numbers? And then the secondary question to that is: should we be shooting for a particular number, or should we be looking for something different, particularly considering women in the age and stage of this podcast?

Torkil Faero: Yeah. So the number that most of the wearables, including the Apple, will give you is the heart rate variability during the night. That is maybe the most important one also, and that is when it's easiest for the devices to track the heart rate variability without many disturbances from movement and so on.

So that's what you are saying—if you're measuring at different times during the day, it can be confusing. I think that it's not really useful to do that, actually. So it's much better to observe what's happening throughout the night.

Then you'll be able to see that if you're drinking alcohol, if you're having a late meal, if you're in the fertile part of the female reproductive life, then you will see that the week before menstruation is a heavy load on the system with a lower heart rate variability as a sign that your body's under strain, particularly if you are among the women with PMS symptoms.

You would be able to see it in the perimenopause and menopause that your heart rate variability will go down in that period. You may even see that when you are starting, for example, with bioidentical hormones, that it will improve your heart rate variability.

But the worst things for your HRV overnight would be late night meals, alcohol, or too much stress in general. You would get that from your Oura Ring and your Apple Watch and your Whoop band that I have on my other arm here.

But by far the best instrument, if you really want to understand what's going on in your physiology, is a Garmin watch because they will give you a much easier readout from the whole day. You would be able to push a button and at all times see the stress level that you are having. It's like in your car—you can see the speed, the current speed.

Your Apple Watch and Oura Ring would be able to give you the average speed, but that is not always so useful. It would be better to be able to see the speed and intensity throughout the day also, which is why Garmin is better if you want to micromanage your stress levels.

But not everybody wants to do that, and not everybody needs to do that. If you're feeling well, you're feeling healthy, you feel you have enough energy, then you may only need to make small adjustments in your lifestyle, and they could be easy to see on, for example, your Apple Watch.

If you are finding that you are quite stressed, that you have a lot of symptoms, you have contracted some diseases, you understand that you are easily fatigued, you are under a lot of stress, then you may need a more precise instrument like the Garmin watch to maneuver and navigate your days.

But as I said, the most important thing is to have the sleep measurements and the heart rate variability overnight that you and your husband have.

Amy Connell: Okay. In general—and correct me if I'm wrong or clarify—a higher HRV means that we are in a less stressed, more balanced state, and a lower HRV is that we are in a higher stress point. Is that accurate?

Torkil Faero: Yeah, that's right.

Amy Connell: Okay. So if we're talking about taking our health and calibrating that with our HRV, what do we do? Give us some examples of how we would actually do that on a day-to-day basis. If we have our HRV taken at night, we wake up and it says it's a certain number—and I don't even know what's good, what's not to be desired—then guide us with what to do about that.

Torkil Faero: Usually the wearable, like the Oura Ring—I don't remember the Apple Watch anymore, I used it a couple years ago—but the Oura Ring, for example, would give you a recovery rate in the morning. That would be, for example, 85. It would also tell you, for example, that today you have charged enough energy, you can do whatever you want, you can do some exercise and so on. You would also get a sleep score on how good your sleep was.

That kind of gives you in the morning an estimate of your physiological resources available that day. Then you can make smaller or big adjustments into what you are planning for that day.

Say that, for example, if I had been eating a meal with a lot of chili the day before, which I respond terribly to...

Amy Connell: Me too.

Torkil Faero: ...then I would have woken up in the morning, I would have a recovery score of maybe 60, and it would tell me, "Okay, today you should relax and recover. Maybe rather do some meditation or breathwork and don't do the exercise," for example.

So usually the wearable would give you advice on your condition and how to interpret your heart rate variability. I would expect that the Apple Watch would have something like that, and particularly you could have some app. I remember the best app on the Apple Watch is called Athlytic—the combination between "Athlete" and "Analytic"—that would give you a score, either red if you have a poor recovery, yellow, or green if your recovery is good.

So the Apple Watch would have different apps to tell you if the Apple Health basic one does not. I don't remember, as I said. And the Garmin would give me a Body Battery, which is why I think it's really useful. So it would tell me that your Body Battery is 80, for example, and throughout the day you will see how it goes down. I will try to not let it go down below 20.

So if I'm somewhere in that sweet zone there, I know that I have good enough resources available. Of course, we're not supposed to be rigid, so if you have a couple of days that are rough and hard and you are using all your forces, that's fine. But you just need to understand that you are pushing yourself and plan for a recovery day, maybe the next day, for example, so you can kind of compose the intensity of your days and weeks.

When you get the insight into your system, it's so much easier. What can be measured can be managed, right? When you see—I often compare it to the dashboard in your car. You see the speed, you see how much gas is left in the tank, you see the temperature. You would be warned if your oil is down. It would be warning you.

In the same way, these wearables will use the heart rate, they will use the pattern of movement, they will use the temperature and the oxygen level to provide kind of the same values about what's going on under the hood inside you. These trackers are really, really useful for most people to aid them towards a sustainable stress balance.

Amy Connell: Okay, well that's good to know. I do have the Apple Watch and it does have the HRV, but I don't have any additional apps on top of that. And so I think that's been one of my pain points with it. I'll look at it and I'm like, "Well, what do I do with this?"

I can see it going up and down, and it'll measure periodically throughout the day. So, for example, when I—once a week I try to have a really short but intense workout, like a sprint workout or something like that where I'm really kicking it up, a high intensity workout. I can see when I'm done with that, a little bit after, it drops way down, and then it'll go back up at night.

Torkil Faero: Yeah, yeah. That's right. So that is good stress. You are pushing your body, you are making a signal to your body that "I need more power."

What happens then after the workout is that you'll have more mitochondria. The mitochondria will improve—the powerhouses of your cells. So you're putting a signal to your organism and your basic system that "I use this power, I need this power."

Because if you were not doing that—say that you had a sedentary lifestyle, you didn't do any exercise—mitochondria are expensive to maintain. So once this system understands that this person is not really having any use for these extra mitochondria, "We're saving energy and we are deleting them so that we don't need to—this person is not using them anyway." So we're just cutting down and downsizing the amount of mitochondria in our body.

So it is an important thing to do, even if there will be a temporary decrease in heart rate variability that has shown that you have stressed your body. Then you will recover and build yourself stronger after that. But if you are pushing yourself too hard every day without recovering, then you will just break down your system.

Amy Connell: Yes. Yeah, and that's the key. That's what a lot of us have had to work really hard to stop doing—pushing too hard every day.

But what do you mean by mitochondria are expensive to maintain?

Torkil Faero: Mitochondria—that will be the powerhouses of your cells. They'll take the energy from your food and also from the sun actually, and provide a currency called ATP in your body that is the energy source that your brain and every cell uses. That's the powerhouses that are at work converting the food into energy. Just maintaining them, having them, costs energy.

Amy Connell: Okay. Okay.

Torkil Faero: For example, when you are exposed to cold, then you will be producing something called brown fat that will be involved in temperature regulation. It's called brown fat because it has a brown color, which comes from mitochondria.

But if you're not exposing yourself to cold temperatures—by being comfortable and putting clothes on all the time and being in room temperature all the time—then you will not have that brown fat because it's expensive for the body to maintain when you're not using it, when you're not exposing yourself to cold.

This is why it's good—probably in the US just like in Norway, cold exposure, going into the sauna, into the cold plunges is also quite a popular thing to do.

Amy Connell: Yes, I have certainly heard a lot about that. And just as a side note, I do know that the recommendations are different for women, particularly menopausal women—higher temperatures. So what from Dr. Stacy Sims...

Torkil Faero: Yeah, I know she talked about it. There is some debate about it. I think the best person on this is Susanna Søberg. She's a Danish woman. She does not agree with Stacy Sims, and I know it depends on the result. I know so many perimenopausal women that this kind of gives them the energy—they feel a lot better.

You would also be able to see this from your heart rate, particularly again with the Garmin.

Amy Connell: Okay.

Torkil Faero: I must say then you would see the effect of it. So it may be that many postmenopausal women cannot tolerate the amount of stress—they may need to do it easier, maybe not so long time in the water, maybe not so cold water. But you would be able to see that on your Garmin watch, how you respond to this.

Amy Connell: Okay.

Torkil Faero: And it's all individual. We as doctors, we are used to relating to population-based studies and the average of that. So for example, that would be if you put 1,000 postmenopausal women into the cold, we would get a result back from the average of that. But that does not mean anything to you, right? Because you could be anywhere on that scale from the average.

Just like say that in your neighborhood, the average wage is so and so—that does not mean anything to you. You could have a low wage or high wage. What the average is in your neighborhood does not really matter to you.

What these wearables do is that they reveal how you react to a certain stressor or a certain thing.

Amy Connell: I appreciate that so much, and I think that's a fantastic point. I'm also thinking that as someone who lives in Houston, Texas, where it is so hot, I'm kind of screwed in that department because it never gets cold. Though I definitely feel like I deserve to be, or my body needs to be, up north. But anyway, thank you for going down that tangent with me.

Torkil Faero: And heat is a really, really strong stressor. So if you live in Houston and have 110 degrees, that is a really hard stress on your system that you need to know the effect of, that you can measure from your heart rate variability.

Then it's easier to understand that, "Okay, I need to ease down on other stressors so that I'm not overstraining myself."

Amy Connell: Okay. Heat definitely stresses me out in many ways, especially right now. My air conditioning is not going, and I'm like... anyway.

Okay, so back to HRV—heart rate variability. How can we use that? So now we kind of have a broad understanding, and I know your book The Pulse Cure goes into much more detail, so that is a resource that is helpful. Once we get that, how do we use that to help manage our sleep, to help manage our stress, and to improve those HRV numbers, but at the same time do things that will help us feel better?

Torkil Faero: Yeah, and that is why The Pulse Cure will explain what is useful to do to get better sleep, for example.

Some of that would be to have a quite cool bedroom, maybe 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit at night. You would need also to not eat maybe three hours before bedtime. Most people find that a late meal, and particularly if that would be ultra-processed food, would disturb your sleep way into the night.

Most people find that calming down the last hour or two before you go to bed, dimming the lights and so on, will make it easier for your body to relax during the night.

For example, what I used to think was that if I really pushed hard and went to sleep really tired, that would be a good night's sleep. And that clearly shows on the heart rate variability that that is not right. So the more you can ease down into a calm state before you go to sleep, the better the sleep will be usually.

Often also postmenopausal women will see that their sleep will be a bit harder to manage. You would see the stress levels going up and down throughout the night. Then often you would also be able to see that the bioidentical hormones would help you and will relieve the stress during the night also.

So many postmenopausal women can try out different hormone replacement therapies and find out what suits them the best by watching their heart rate variability response to that.

Other than that, alcohol is by far the worst killer of sleep. I don't think I've met anyone using wearables that have not cut down on alcohol when you see the physiological price of it, which is quite expensive.

So that would be the most important thing to do, and to make sure that you are sleeping between seven and eight hours a night.

Amy Connell: Okay.

Torkil Faero: That is also important, and it's actually dangerous. As a doctor, of course, I used to work night shifts and evening shifts and morning shifts and just switch the circadian clock back and forth. I knew it was uncomfortable and painful often to be working at night, but that it was dangerous and carcinogenic, I had no idea.

But now we know from the excellent book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker that if you sleep less than six hours a night compared to more than seven, you have double the risk of cancer.

Amy Connell: Wow.

Torkil Faero: So getting enough sleep is not only good for your wellbeing, it is good for keeping dangerous diseases away, including heart disease and many others. So making sure—the first chapter in The Pulse Cure is about sleep because that's the foundation of a good physiology.

Amy Connell: What are your thoughts on naps, and particularly how they, number one, impact our sleep, and number two...

Torkil Faero: Naps should be good. We could see that historically when they started skipping the naps in Greece and Spain and these countries, the heart rates—or the heart disease rates—went up.

Amy Connell: Really?

Torkil Faero: Yeah. And it would depend, of course—if you get enough sleep during the night, you may not need a nap. In general, the nap should be 20 to 25 minutes and preferably before 2:00 PM. Of course, most people would be at work at that time, and if it's a late nap, it could disturb your sleep quality the day after.

But of course, if you had a poor night's sleep—maybe you only got five hours at night for some reason, you were kept up or woke up during the night—I think it's really useful to have a nap.

Amy Connell: Okay. So if we're listening and we want more information, number one, we go get The Pulse Cure. And number two, can you guide us—what are next steps? What tracker? I mean, you seem to be a fan of Garmin. And then what do we do from there? Does it take a while for the Garmin to populate a certain amount of data over a certain amount of days? Do we just look at the battery and say, "That's good, I can do whatever I want," or if the battery's low then I've got to take it easy or not do anything? Can you just give us some general guidance with that?

Torkil Faero: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would definitely recommend Garmin if you don't have any particular interest in any of the other devices. It's also the one you would get down to like $200, $250. So you can probably even buy it secondhand.

It'll use three weeks to calibrate itself to your system, and I often recommend not to change anything in the first maybe a month or even longer, so that you know your baseline from where you are starting. That's interesting. So I would have loved to have known mine from the very start of my health journey.

So don't change anything, and then change it little by little. If you know that you have a stressed system, you understand that you are a person that has a lot of stress in your life, it's really important to be patient.

Even if you see that your watch or device will give you the alarm signals—literally they'll say, "Go to your mechanic and fix this"—then it's important to be patient and be accepting of what you're seeing. It's just a reality check. It's what's going on in your body. If you haven't been stressed for many years, it can take a long time to get out of it as well, with small steps at a time. And to also use things like breathing exercises, breathwork, to be able to calm yourself down.

Amy Connell: Yeah. Well, two stories. One, I have a colleague who wears an Oura Ring, and she has it set up to give her an alarm, I guess, on her phone if she gets too stressed throughout the day. So that's her cue to take a pause—have some mindful breathing or meditation or whatever she does for five minutes. And she said if she does that or if she does not do that, she notices a difference with her sleep that night, even if it was 11 o'clock in the morning. So that was really interesting to me.

And then the second story is a bit more personal. My husband's in a fairly stressful job, and at the beginning of the year he started coming home—when he got home from work after a high-amped day and lots of traffic in the Houston area and all of that—he would just go to a room. He would do probably about 10 minutes of meditation, and then he'd take five minutes and pray. But, you know, of course that can also be journaling or whatever.

And his Oura Ring—I mean, you could see his resilience score going up and up and up. I mean, it was fascinating to see. Just that one change had so much impact on his whole physical being. He slept better. I mean, it was like, "Wow, why don't we do this all the time?"

Of course we've gotten off the habit of it. In fact, even last night I was like, "Hey, I think I was supposed to—you haven't done that in a while. Did you want me to remind you?" And he was like, "Yeah, I was just thinking about that too." So I don't know why we don't do it more often, but yeah. I mean, those are anecdotal, right? And I think it's typical.

Torkil Faero: It is what most people—everybody will have those kind of experiences. They will see that, "Oh, this relaxes me or this stresses me. Wow, I didn't know that."

So when you suddenly get insight into you, you will be surprised. We are not really equipped from nature's side to know these things. Because we have excellent senses for the outward threats. We have eyesight—we can see millions of shades of color. We can hear a twig breaking far away and a bird chirping. We have an excellent smell and taste and sense of touch. But the sense of our inner stress, we are not really equipped to feel.

So this is like having a substitute for that sense that we never needed to develop, but that in our times is really super important. So many people think that, "Okay, why don't we just listen to our bodies?" But we are not really equipped to be very good at that.

Amy Connell: Yeah. Well, so that answers a question that I wanted to ask, so I will just not ask the question. But yeah, a lot of us too are learning or relearning to listen to our body of like, "Oh, I'm hungry, I need to eat," or, "Oh, I am satisfied, I can stop," instead of tracking everything in a fitness tracker or a diet app. So that's a great explanation of like, we were not designed to have to deal with all of this that we are, and it's very difficult to manage the internal signals or to understand the internal signals without a little help.

Torkil Faero: Yeah. And in the beginning you must expect that it'll be all new to you, and maybe you'll be too stressed by it. But after a while, it's just like in your car, in your dashboard. You just take a look at it once in a while and check your speed, check that you have enough gas left, that you know when you have to start looking for a gas station and so on. You just check that the outside temperature is so and so.

You will be used to it, but in the beginning it can be stressful for some people, and particularly if they see that their body is under stress, that they get all red signals and alarms beeping, right? And that just means that there's a lot to gain also from getting control over this to prevent—because the problem if your heart rate variability is low and you're stressing too much is that your immune system is not working efficiently. There's not enough resources allocated to your immune system because your body's under stress. So your immune system is underperforming, and that can lead to any kind of disease.

You can literally Google—or now in these days, rather put a disease that you either have or are curious about and add if it has a connection to heart rate variability—and most diseases will have that. It's connected to the most serious diseases like dementia, Parkinson's, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, and all of this.

Amy Connell: What about autoimmune?

Torkil Faero: That too, yeah. Absolutely. That's interesting.

Amy Connell: Okay. So you've written this book, The Pulse Cure. It sounds like a bestseller in Norway and beyond. We're trying to get this more publicized here in the States. Tell us more about what we will get in the book and then where to get it.

Torkil Faero: Yeah. In the book I'm explaining the essentials about the autonomic nervous system, the different parts of our brain that are involved. I'm explaining about the immune system, about how, of course, we can use heart rate variability that we have been talking about.

And then there is something I call an expedition—because to change your lifestyle is hard. You have to brace yourself for some effort. You either do the effort to stay healthy or you'll get sick, and then the effort comes after that. It's less controllable.

So I have expedition stages of sleep, stress management, movement, things regarding alcohol and active rest, as I call it—meditation and breathwork and all that stuff. So it's a guided expedition, so to say, to find your stress balance.

It's also an audiobook, so I know that many podcast listeners would rather listen to a book than reading it. I'm not the narrator—the narrator is a British person that does that.

Amy Connell: Okay. Well it sounds like "expedition" was probably an intentional word, given your love for activity.

Torkil Faero: Hmm. Yeah. I love expeditions—not the most dramatic ones, but to do some sailing or some long trek also.

Amy Connell: Yeah. All right. Very good. All right, so Torkil, I have a few questions I like to ask all of my guests. One of them is I love learning about people's tattoos because I have found that when someone chooses to put something on their body for life, they typically have a meaning behind it. So I was wondering if you have a tattoo. If you would be willing to share what it is and the meaning behind it. If you don't, but you had to get one, what would it be and why?

Torkil Faero: I don't have a tattoo. I was close to doing it in French Polynesia in the Marquesas Islands where I think the tattoo originally comes from. But I didn't do that. I'm not sure. I would probably not have anything written, but rather a pattern, I think.

Amy Connell: Okay. All right. And then tell people how they can connect with you and where they can go to purchase The Pulse Cure.

Torkil Faero: Again, The Pulse Cure—they could buy it on Amazon, for example. They would be able to get it on the iPhone also in the Book app on the iPhone, probably on Android as well.

I'm on Instagram at @DrTorkil, or also @DocTorkil—that is only English in the last one. So that is where they can reach me. I'm on LinkedIn also with my own name, of course.

And also I have a website called ThePulseCure.com where I have a video where you can see what I mean about the watch, explaining everything with the graphs and so on.

Amy Connell: Okay, that sounds good. Okay. So what I typically like to do on this show is I let the guest have the last word, and that is where you pick out one simple thing that we have discussed in our conversation. It can be big or small, but what is one simple thing that you would like my community to remember about our conversation?

Torkil Faero: I think what's most important is that we have more control over our health than we would've thought, and that you can use the wearables and your heart rate to help you, to guide you towards a better stress balance.

Amy Connell: Okay. All right. That sounds great. Thank you so much. That is all for today. Go out there and have a graced day.

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