Why Do I Only Receive a SNS/PNS Report with Morning Readiness?
Heart Rate Variability can be affected by changes in circadian rhythm, hormonal shifts, and acute stressors throughout the day. Also, whatever you were doing before taking a reading has a very strong impact on the reading results.
In order to reduce this “noise” and gain a clearer picture of Autonomic Nervous System activity (read: your stress and recovery status!), we recommend taking HRV readings first thing in the morning after waking up – within 30 minutes of waking is best.
When you have just woken up, you haven’t had the chance to experience the stresses of work, school, or the day. Your circadian rhythm and hormonal patterns should be in a relatively similar state as they were the previous day.
By calculating your HRV baseline first thing each morning, you can eliminate many other variables and highlight the patterns that matter most for decision-making. You cut through the “noise” and get insights about how recovered you are and how ready you are to tackle the day’s challenges.
From these daily baseline readings comes your "long term" or "chronic" HRV score, which is what we look at when calculating your Readiness score. We do not calculate Readiness for snapshots or open readings, since those are taken at different times throughout the day and are not accounted for in your baseline.
When analyzing HRV readings OTHER than your Morning Readiness reading, you can always compare these subsequent readings to your Morning Reading. For example: if in your Morning Readiness reading you received an HRV score of 45 with a Readiness of 6 Sympathetic, then later in the afternoon you take your HRV and receive a score of 42, you can assume that your "Readiness" will be slightly lower at that point and you're more sympathetically dominant. If you later receive a score of 48, you can then assume that you are more recovered than you were in your Morning Readiness reading and that your parasympathetic nervous system is coming back into action.
Keep in mind, the body is meant to go back and forth in S and PS throughout the day, that is natural and part of balance. You'll want to use your morning readiness reading to make sure that you don't start every day in only S or PS as you want it to fluctuate and not stay fixed on either.