
Try this. Immerse your face in cold water and watch your heart rate plummet - awyu
So just tried this. Immersed my face in a sink of cold tap water. Programmed my Apple Watch to read out my live heart rate readings. Resting HR = 89, after immersion immediately plummeted to 61 then carried on dropping as far as 53. Not sure if this is the &quot;master switch of life&quot; as per the TED article author but definitely worth a try. May upload binary to Github. Can anyone think of any cool APP-lications for this?
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ideas.ted.com&#x2F;science_of_freediving&#x2F;
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cdvonstinkpot
When I was a kid, I had a heart condition called 'SVT'\- Supra-Ventricular
Tachycardia. When you're born, you have a collection of nerve endings which
control the heart rate, & normally, the weaker ones die off & leave a single
strong connection. In my case I had a tie for the heartbeat-signalling
transmitters. They would oftentimes get caught up in a feedback loop which
would leave me with a double heart rate until something would interrupt them &
set a hiccup to make my heart just listen to the dominant transmitter again.
It was eventually rectified vie an Radio Frequency (RF) Ablation procedure
which burned & killed the second-strongest transmitter causing the problem.
But before I had the operation I was instructed to dunk my head in ice water
when I had an attack- to try to initiate a hiccup & disable the second-in-
command transmitter. Another technique was to do a handstand & stay upside-
down as long as it took for the gravity to cause an interruption in the
signals enough to disengage the offending transmitter. Yet another technique
was to bear down as if I'm taking a constipated dump, which increases blood
pressure in spurts & would issue just enough resistance to stop the feedback
loop. The most effective of these methods was the ice water & I remember since
it wasn't readily available at school, I'd be upside down alot of times in the
hallway outside my classroom- & it took forever to get it under control alot
of the time. I got picked on for that- it sucked.

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gburt
This effect is called the mammalian diving reflex:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex)

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Spare_account
Depending the place I looked, a testing heart rate of 89 may be a cause for
concern. Some places say anywhere up to 100 is 'normal' but this one says over
85 is 'poor' (you may want to consider improving your fitness levels):
[http://www.topendsports.com/testing/heart-rate-resting-
chart...](http://www.topendsports.com/testing/heart-rate-resting-chart.htm)

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gburt
By the sounds of it he was standing at the sink in order to do this. That's
not "resting" for the sake of a resting heart rate.

Edit: for instance, I just tested mine from sitting (at my desk) to standing
beside my desk it increases 25 points, on the linked chart going from
"athlete" to "below average."

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Spare_account
Tru dat. Awyu can relax after all.

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darrelld
I think this may be mammalian response to being submerged in water in an
effort to need less oxygen

