Report interpretation
Introduction
A Firstbeat Lifestyle Assessment tends to provide you with a wealth of new awareness and insights, typically more than you can action at any given time.
Based on our experience working with a wide range and large number of people, we find that it is often best to focus on only one or two positive changes. Those positive changes that for you have, at this current point in time, what we call a "tipping point" effect where one or two manageable and sustainable changes have a large effect and tip your various physiological measures into a higher level.
Going forward, often armed with updated insights from a repeat lifestyle assessment, you take things to the next level by making further positive changes.
An important message upfront about stress
Stress has been clearly and squarely put in the “bad corner”. When you received your Lifestyle Assessment Report your eye will no doubt have been drawn to the many red sections on each day.
Red = stress on the report so you may be somewhat concerned.
As with so many of these messages out there, this one about stress is also unbalanced, incomplete and ignores some really important realities about stress. Of course, it is true that a chronically too high stress load without adequate recovery is not good for us and can lead to health and performance issues.
However, stress is perfectly normal and functional - without a certain amount of activation we are unable to perform, connect with other people and live life to the fullest. Labeling stress as "bad" and something that should be avoided is a gross oversimplification and not the answer.
The below screenshot of an actual day from a lifestyle assessment illustrates this well - a really good set of scores even though there is “red = stress” throughout the 24-hour period.
Research has also indicated that our relationship with stress makes all the difference. When we have a strong habitual threat perception about stressful events and believe that stress is bad for us, we tend to suffer from fear, worry and anxiety and our health is more likely to be affected by the stress.
On the other hand, when we perceive stress as functional and regard it as something useful that prepares us to perform well and face an upcoming challenge, it enables us to adopt a “bring it on” attitude and we feel excited and energised. Turns out, this relationship with stress seems to buffer us against the negative health effects of stress!
As you explore your report, make sure to adopt a balanced view on stress. See it as functional and rather than trying to get rid of it, focus on pivoting the relationship you have with it, creating more balance and finding ways to boost recovery during the day and sleep.
Interpreting your Lifestyle Assessment report
This one-page Firstbeat Report Conclusions and this Firstbeat Report Interpretation guide provides an overview of how to interpret your lifestyle assessment and enables you to work through your report step by step and pinpoint your key strengths and opportunities.
The considerations below will assist you further in identifying what your specific "tipping point" changes might be.
Are you like many other people…
and only have a low to moderate amount of recovery during sleep? In other words does your sleep profile look similar to this:
This is a challenge commonly experienced. We are in bed and often have actually fallen asleep but for some reason our nervous system is staying activated and it is not until later in the night that it turns off.
There are five common, lifestyle related, causes:
Alcohol - every unit of alcohol (especially when consumed later in the evening) equates to 1 to 1.5 hours of recovery being lost during sleep
Eating late - having your evening meal within 3 hours of your sleep also keeps our systems in activated mode
Stress - taking the stresses of the day into our sleep or anticipating (all the things to be done) the following day, keeps our brain and nervous system just as busy as during the day
Activating activities - this covers everything with an activating effect on us, including working late, scrolling through social media posts, watching an intense movie and even a hot shower (which raises our core body temperature when it is trying to come down)
Reverse sleep wake cycle - our sleep is regulated by the circadian rhythm which can quite easily get dysregulated with our modern way of living, making us feel activated at night and sluggish during the day. We take this evening activation into (the first part of) our sleep and experience delayed recovery.
Are one or more of these at play for you? Knowing the answer to this question enables you to take a targeted approach and you will find relevant information in the library under the sleep category.
Other factors include:
Sleep latency - this the amount of time it takes to fall asleep after the lights have been turned off. During this awake time we also don’t tend to go into recovery mode and it effect our sleep efficiency. Normal sleep latency is between 10 and 20 minutes. If it takes you more than 20 minutes to fall asleep then this may be contributing to delayed recovery.
Hormone influences - hormonal imbalances or changes (e.g. menopause) can influences our nervous system and have an activating effect.
Sleep disorders - underlying sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea or insomnia, prevent us from going into recovery mode.
If you suspect one or more of these factors are at play, please make sure to book in an individual session and / or seek professional advice from the team at the Sleep Well Clinic.
Is your challenge stress load or recovery?
We find that for most people their daily stress load actually falls in what is considered the normal range (less than 60% of a 24-hour period is in red activation mode ). The real culprit often is insufficient overall (daytime + sleep) recovery considering the amount of stress in your life.
In other words the amount of recovery is not enough to support your current “way of operating”. You may be able to sustain this for a period of time but in the long run it is likely to negatively impact your health, well-being and performance.
In this example, the overall stress load is considered to be well within normal but overall recovery is low at 19% and there is virtually no recovery (only 10 minutes) during awake time.
Note that we need recovery from both sleep and breaks during the day. You can sneak into the good recovery range (≥ 30% and around a score of 60) with at least 7 hours of sleep that is mostly restorative, however day-time recovery is needed to experience optimum stress and recovery balance and to get a high stress and recovery balance score.
Day-time recovery also breaks the pattern of being permanently "on" throughout the day. Regular breaks during the day help downregulate your nervous system and reset the stress response mechanism. This “training” of your nervous system is important as it helps maintain resilience of the nervous system, so that it retains the capability to quickly and effectively respond to changes in your environment. For example, quickly activate you to respond to an important meeting at work and downregulate you properly when you go to bed.
When you have a profile similar to the one above on several or all measurement days, you are likely to significantly benefit from building more recovery into your day and increase the restorative effect of your sleep. Some good questions to ask yourself:
Were there some days where I experienced more day-time recovery? What was I doing and what were the conditions that enabled me to go into recovery mode? How can I turn this into a deliberate daily practice or integrate this into my daily routines so that I experience day-time recovery for longer and on every / most days?
What are some of the recovery techniques (refer to the recovery section in the library for ideas) I can experiment with? Which one resonates with me the most and feels like a practice I can fit into my schedule and sustain?
In what ways is my sleep contributing to insufficient recovery? Am I allowing myself to have enough sleep (is my "length of sleep” at least 7 but ideally around 8 hours)? Or is my "amount of recovery during sleep" in the low or moderate range? If that's the case, do I stay activated (red) at the beginning of my sleep and need to have a look at my sleep hygiene (refer to the sleep section in the library)? Or do I get activated throughout or later on in the night as a result of residual daytime stress? Or is the activation mostly present early in the morning around 4am as a result of cortisol levels being too high too early (which may indicate chronically high stress levels (refer to the stress section in the library)?
What is the resilience of your autonomic nervous system and your capacity for regulating stress like?
One of the somewhat subtle gems in a Firstbeat Lifestyle Assessment is the nighttime heart rate variability (HRV) measure that is reported on the sleep section on each of the 24-hour periods. HRV is an accurate indicator of (among others) functioning, balance and resilience in the autonomic nervous system.
The What is Heart rate variability (HRV) article in the library explains what HRV is and more, including how it is correlated to the autonomic nervous system, physical health as well as cognitive performance, ability to emotionally self-regulate, capacity for social engagement and psychological well-being.
The specific HRV measure used in the lifestyle assessment is called RMSSD (Root Mean Square of the Successive Differences) which is the HRV measure that is strongly correlated with parasympathetic activity. In other words this is a measure of how well your parasympathetic brake is working and down regulating you when needed.
A good functioning “brake” is fundamental to health. Everytime you apply the brake in your car you want it to work really well and the same applies to your physiological brake. If it is not working that well, you end up applying your break (relaxing at home on a weekend with a book or going to bed) but are not actually shifting into a restorative state. So even though you are seemingly relaxing (and may still experience mental benefits) you are not actually physiologically recovering.
Keep in mind when you are reading the next section and reviewing your own results that HRV / RMSSD naturally declines as we age so you cannot compare yourself with others (unless they are of similar age). In your report the low, moderate and good ranges are age adjusted.
When we evaluate the lifestyle assessment report of a client who is flourishing (see example below) - experiencing good health, vitality, energy and engaging in regular physical activity, living a generally healthy lifestyle with good recovery build into their routine and having a sense of purpose in the work they do - we find their HRV is in the good range on all or at least almost all days.
They have great resilience and health in the nervous system and their “brake” is trained or conditioned so well that it responds fast and effectively.
On the other hand, when we find that a client's HRV is in the low or bottom half of the moderate range (see example below), they tend to report living a generally unhealthy lifestyle and often have a chronic underlying health condition and / or are psychologically unwell with depression or anxiety. Their restorative effect of sleep and their capacity for daytime recovery is typically impaired which significantly contributes to a low stress versus recovery balance score and a poor body resources profile.
If your HRV is in the low or bottom half of the moderate range, now is a good time to invest in improve the functioning of your “brake”, increasing HRV and adopting a healthy lifestyle. If your HRV is very low it is recommended you have a general health check up, including blood tests, to exclude an underlying health issue. The good news is that HRV is only approximately 30% determined by genetics and even people with a chronic illness can tap into the remaining 70% of factors like fitness level, lifestyle, stress versus recovery balance etc to improve their HRV.
If your HRV is already in the good range, consider reflecting on what practices / routines you have that have enabled a high HRV and perhaps review the recovery boosting techniques in the Enhance Recovery article in the library (in the recovery section) to see what else you could adopt to help sustain this great profile.
If you find your HRV is in the moderate range, refer to the Enhance Recovery article and look for the various techniques specifically designed for enhancing vagal tone / increasing HRV and refer to the Exercise Right article for ways to increase your fitness. Your future self will thank you for making an investment in improving your HRV and creating a great vagal profile.
Individual days are important but your picture across the entire measurement period tells the full story...
The ultimate goal is not to have perfectly balanced days with perfect scores every day. Stress (or rather a higher level of activation) is a normal and functional aspect of living an enjoyable and meaningful life. The reality of modern living is that stress and recovery vary across days and what is more important: is there good balance between the cumulative stress load versus the cumulative recovery throughout your weeks (and of course months, years).
The overall Lifestyle Assessment score and in particular the body resources chart (both are reported on the "Lifestyle Assessment Summary" page) are great ways to gain insight into your cumulative profile.
If your profile looks similar to the illustration below, your resources decreased from the starting level.
This means that you are placing more demands on your body and its resources than what you are putting back in (through recovery). If you think of your body as a battery and if the measurement days are fairly representative of "your normal", this means that throughout your days, weeks, months and ultimately years you are insufficiently recharging your (body) battery to support the demands your are placing on it.
As us humans are very good at adaptation (adjusting ourselves to changing conditions) but not so good at consciously noticing we are adapting, we often don't notice the subtle but increasingly more significant impact this unsustainable body resources profile has on our health, psychological well-being and performance.
By drawing on the questions above under the "Is your challenge stress load or recovery?" section and the resources in the Enhance Recovery article you can identify and implement recovery boosting strategies to firstly work towards a more evenly balanced body resource profile like the example below.
With time, through experimentation and by expanding your recovery strategies, you have the opportunity to achieve an optimal resources profile like the example below. Note the regular day time recovery moments on several days but also note that some days are not as good as others!
This profile is what we see in people who describe themselves as thriving and experiencing great health, vitality, mental well-being and top performance.
Further reading
The below resources and links provide more in-depth information:
The Firstbeat blogs on stress and recovery are full of useful and bite-size insights.
This article titled "Ten small things you can do to reduce your risk of stress-related illnesses from work" from the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine is also a worthwhile read.
The Firstbeat resource “Tips for supporting well-being and health” contains valuable strategies.
This Firstbeat Stress and Recovery Whitepaper is also a worthwhile read.
If you want to find out the nitty gritty of how Firstbeat estimates your fitness level (VO2Max), you will find all the information you need in this Firstbeat publication.
