0000000000409111

AUTHOR

Jari A Laukkanen

Measuring psychosocial stress with heart rate variability-based methods in different health and age groups

Abstract Objective. Autonomic nervous system function and thereby bodily stress and recovery reactions may be assessed by wearable devices measuring heart rate (HR) and its variability (HRV). So far, the validity of HRV-based stress assessments has been mainly studied in healthy populations. In this study, we determined how psychosocial stress affects physiological and psychological stress responses in both young (18–30 years) and middle-aged (45–64 years) healthy individuals as well as in patients with arterial hypertension and/or either prior evidence of prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. We also studied how an HRV-based stress index (Relax-Stress Intensity, RSI) relates to perceived stress …

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Sauna bathing is associated with reduced cardiovascular mortality and improves risk prediction in men and women: a prospective cohort study.

Background Previous evidence indicates that sauna bathing is related to a reduced risk of fatal cardiovascular disease (CVD) events in men. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between sauna habits and CVD mortality in men and women, and whether adding information on sauna habits to conventional cardiovascular risk factors is associated with improvement in prediction of CVD mortality risk. Methods Sauna bathing habits were assessed at baseline in a sample of 1688 participants (mean age 63; range 53–74 years), of whom 51.4% were women. Multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) were calculated to investigate the relationships of frequency and duration of sauna use with C…

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The effects of regular sauna bathing in conjunction with exercise on cardiovascular function : A multi-arm randomized controlled trial

Regular exercise and sauna bathing have each been shown to improve cardiovascular function in clinical populations. However, experimental data on the cardiovascular adaptations to regular exercise in conjunction with sauna bathing in the general population is lacking. Therefore, we compared the effects of exercise and sauna bathing, to regular exercise using a multi-arm randomized controlled trial. Participants (n = 47) aged 49 ± 9 years with low physical activity levels, and at least one traditional CVD risk factor were randomly assigned (1:1:1) to guideline-based regular exercise and 15-minute post-exercise sauna (EXS), guideline-based regular exercise (EXE), or control (CON), for eight w…

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Cardiorespiratory Fitness Estimation Based on Heart Rate and Body Acceleration in Adults With Cardiovascular Risk Factors : Validation Study

Publisher Copyright: © Antti-Pekka E Rissanen, Mirva Rottensteiner, Urho M Kujala, Jari L O Kurkela, Jan Wikgren, Jari A Laukkanen. Originally published in JMIR Cardio (https://cardio.jmir.org), 25.10.2022. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Cardio, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://cardio.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included. Background: C…

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