HRV in Active-Duty Special Forces and Public Order Military Personnel

Abstract

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a simple, non-invasive, real-time analyzable, and highly reproducible measurement that captures incidences for assessing a person’s health and physical condition. Public security jobs are characterized by major exposure to risk factors known to influence the cardiovascular response to stimuli, e.g., night shifts, highly physically demanding activity, and acute stress activity. This study aimed to evaluate the HRV parameters in a population of 112 male personnel of the special forces and public order of the Carabinieri, aged 25–59, when engaged in several duty tasks, such as paratroopers, night shift police station officers, night shift patrol, dynamic precision shooting evaluative team, dynamic precision shooting non-evaluative team, and office clerks (used as control group). During the specific task of each participant, the HRV parameters were collected with wearable devices and processed. The HRV parameters in the time and frequency domains collected were average heart rate, standard deviation of all normal RR intervals, root mean square of successive differences in adjacent normal-to-normal (NN) intervals, very-low-frequency power, low-frequency power, high-frequency power, stress index, parasympathetic nervous system activity index, and sympathetic nervous system activity index. Parametric tests for independent series to compare the HRV parameters by subgroups within the study subjects were used. A multivariate linear regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the association between the HRV parameters and some personal and organizational factors. The comparison between different subgroups showed that activities with a high demand for concentration and precision, as is the case with paratroopers and dynamic precision shooters, differ significantly from activities that can be defined as routine, such as office work. Other activities, such as patrolling or remote management from operations centers, although including critical elements, did not deviate significantly from the control group. The study of HRV parameters is therefore a useful tool for occupational physicians, both for addressing work suitability assessments and for better targeting health promotion campaigns, to be considered as being aimed at monitoring the subject’s physiological parameters, and not at the diagnosis of any pathological condition, which should always be carried out by the medical specialist.

Humming (Simple Bhramari Pranayama) as a Stress Buster: A Holter-Based Study to Analyze Heart Rate Variability (HRV) Parameters During Bhramari, Physical Activity, Emotional Stress, and Sleep

“…The insights from such a pilot study can provide more validation and create a context in which the humming (simple Bhramari) could be evaluated as a lifestyle intervention - especially as a stress buster - compared to several other activities performed during the day and the night. Several studies have measured the HRV of different individuals [ 8 ], but not many studies have explored how HRV changes during various activities [ 9 ]. An essential element that the study explored is the ability of HRV biofeedback-related humming practice to significantly increase the HRV parameters, something that does not happen during stress or physical activity.…”

A Reasonable Officer: Examining the Relationship between Stress, Training, and Performance in Use of Force Encounters

“…Index, computed in Kubios HRV software, were used in this study. These or similar indices have been used in other research with samples of civilians (Ayuso-Moreno et al, 2020;Lundell et al, 2021), police (James et al, 2020) and special forces (Giuseppe et al, 2021). The PNS Index uses mean R-R intervals, root mean square of successive differences between normal heartbeats (RMSSD), and normalized Poincaré plot index SD1, which is associated to RMSSD (Kubios Oy, 2021).…”

“…These indices have been used in other research with samples of civilians (Ayuso-Moreno A REASONABLE OFFICER et al, 2020;Lundell et al, 2021), police (James et al, 2020), and special forces (Giuseppe et al, 2021). See Appendix C for further details on the measures and methods used.…”