We are about to perform an intervention with a view to the recovery of a client / patient. Then you will always be asked about the prognosis.
As a professional, how long do you expect treatment or counseling to be necessary? Of course, that can never be specified precisely, but Professionals estimate these options based on the information they have and compare the situation with previous treatment processes. What is crucial here is the ability to recover. What are the internal conditions that are necessary for recovery?
On the physiological side, the function of the 10th cranial nerve, the Nervus Vagus, is of great importance. And it is precisely this factor that can hardly be reliably estimated without an objective investigation. We know that the recovery mainly takes place in sleep and if someone indicates that they usually sleep well, we might think that recovery is doing well. Nothing is less true. The subjective sleep experience says nothing about the objective amount and quality of the recovery.
A quick and reliable way to measure the Vagal tone, as it is called, is a multi-day HRV measurement.
The Vagale tone says something about:
- an objective picture of the stress / recovery balance during daily life,
- the eventual influence of lifestyle on that,
- the quality of the recovery.
The example below is illustrative, it concerns a man who indicates to have slept pretty well, yet both the amount of recovery (only 1% of the night!) But also the quality of the recovery (average HRV during sleep only 11 milliseconds) is serious inadequate.
If the average HRV during sleep is much too low for a multi-day measurement, this indicates a structurally too low Vagal tone.
The N. Vagus plays a very important role in the functioning of the “Gut-Brain axis”. Therefore, intestinal health in the broadest sense is important for, among other things, the condition of the N. Vagus.
It is not surprising that there are many people with chronic complaints whose Vagal tone is insufficient or even poor. So, treatment of a patient / client with a low Vagal tone will take considerably more time compared to a normal Vagal tone.
This makes the multi-day HRV measurement often a necessary analysis tool with an important impact on a reliable prognosis.
