Measuring HRV When on Medications

Each medication can have an effect on your HRV, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to getting around this HRV interference. We'll line out some tips that may be helpful for you if you are on a medication and wish to continue to measure your HRV and gain insights from the long-term trends.

We recommend taking your Morning Readiness reading early, noting in the journal section of the readings when you've taken the XXX MED (or maybe even create a custom tag "XXX MED"). That way, when you are looking back at your HRV history, you'll see that the change aligned with your starting the medication. You'll get a new HRV baseline as it updates on a rolling 7-10 day basis. It will catch up to your "new normal" so to speak.

The danger of waiting until later in the morning to take your reading is that now other factors have had a chance to influence your score, like something you eat, coffee, morning news, checking email, etc.

It may be hard to have a new, lower HRV baseline but at least you can work on it from there. HRV is such an individual measurement, and many factors contribute to your score; this medication is just the latest. You can still make progress with it.

In the future, if you're taken off of the medication or switch medications, be sure to update your tags or journal accordingly so you can track the effect it has on your HRV.