Question: Thoughts on lowering my resting heart rate. It's often in the high 80s or low 90s once I'm up for the day.

I wish I knew the answer to that. I'd use it for my heart rate. I don't even measure my heart rate because my whole life it's been kind of high. I think breathing and meditation are probably the best things that you can do.

I've typically had a white coat syndrome response to getting my blood pressure taken, and because as soon as I feel the pressure, I start to get anxiety and I'm like, "oh no it feels like it's high" and I get an adrenaline rush.

A couple of years ago I got rejected from giving blood three times in a year because either my blood pressure, or my pulse was too high when they measured it, both because of the adrenaline surge.

I was not able to donate blood until I started using Headspace, the meditation app, in particular the visualizations of the happiness portion.

The first time I was able to donate blood was when I went in to get my blood pressure and pulse taken and I imagined that bright light in the middle of my chest I just did the visualization and "boom" my heart rate and my pulse, just went straight into normal zone because I was able to create an association between that visualization and the state that the meditation produced.

So that would be the first thing that I'd try. If I find out that I have a medical condition with a physiological solution I'll let you know, because I have the same thing.

This Q&A can also be found as part of a much longer episode, here: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/podcast/2019/02/24/ask-anything-nutrition-feb-17-2019/

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Access the show notes, transcript, and comments here.

Chris Masterjohn, PhD, is the Founder and Scientific Director of the mitochondria test Mitome.