Heart Rate Variability Monitoring (HRV) and Mental Models

More Models: How Models inform Heart Rate Variability (HRV) analysis and acupuncture
What I noticed years ago in doing HRV monitoring in the clinic, is that in patients who are likely to respond to acupuncture, one sees a decrease in their LFR/HFR ratio during the session. My latest study suggests that more sensitive yet is the Sample Entropy increase during the session. This is counter intuitive since most studies have looked at HRV before and then after the session.
But why a “responder” will respond to the needles immediately after placement with a decrease in the stress response within the first 10 to 15 minutes is because you’ve perturbed their system with the “nudge” of the needles and they respond with a relaxation response. This model is a sort of “stress test” on the system akin to a Valsalva or tilt test and then we watch to see what happens.
In other studies, researchers have looked at HRV before and after treatment, which makes utter sense according to their models that acupuncture decreases stress over time.
In my model I’m looking at the reaction, in theirs, they’re looking at the outcome.
More on my practice here. Research here