Quantitative assessment of autonomic nervous system responses induced by graded training workloads in healthy elderly, through indices obtained from heart rate variability analysis
Authors: Fenici R , Picerni M , Brisinda D 
Published: October 2021

Background

Quantitative assessment of individual body adaptability to physical training performed with the purposes of health maintenance is particularly necessary in the elderly age, to avoid the risk of overstrain induced by inappropriate exercises workload and physical stress. For that purpose, heart rate monitors and heart rate variability (HRV) analysis are nowadays commercially available. However, their reliability to guide individualized fitness training in elderly people needs to be tested, knowing that users might not have medical education.

Objective

To preliminary quantify autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses to graded physical effort and recovery in healthy elderly basing on the parasympathetic nervous system (PNSi), the sympathetic nervous system (SNSi) and the stress (STRi) indices, derived by short-term and time-varying HRV analysis.

Methods

ECG of a 75 healthy male subject was monitored, from April to November 2020, during three times/week training sessions with a professional bike–ergometer. Each session consisted of 10 minutes baseline rest, 5 minutes warm-up, 30 minutes work and 10 minutes recovery. According to age, the training workload was graded from low (65–75 watt/min), to moderate (75–85 watt/min), semi-intensive (85–95 watt/min) and intensive (95–110 watt/min).

For this pilot study, ECG data of only 40 training sessions (10 sessions for each workload to evaluate reproducibility) were analyzed with Kubios Premium software (version 3.4.1), in the time (TD) and frequency (FD) domains, with nonlinear (NL) methods and with time-varying (TV) algorithms. Short-time HRV was calculated from 2-minutes intervals. The PNSi, SNSi and STRi induced by each workload were averaged and compared.

Results

Average values of PNSi, SNSi and STRi were significantly different (p&lt;0.05) among training sessions carried out with different workloads (Table 1A) and among measurements obtained at rest, at every 5 minutes step of each 30 minutes training session, and at 1 and 5 minutes of recovery (Table 1B). Interestingly, the correlation between SNSi and STRi was strictly linear (R= 0,98), whereas that between PNSi and STRi was better fitted by a cubic function (R=0,82 with cubic vs 0.68 with linear function), when evaluated either as a function of the sessions' workloads (Figure 1A), or of four time-intervals of each training session (Figure 1B). PNSi and SNSi were inversely correlated, with cross-point at about 15 minutes of training and 75 watt/min workload.

Conclusions

The calculation of PNSi, SNSi and STRi from HRV analysis is an efficient method for quick and simplified quantitative assessment of dynamic ASN adaptation to effort-induced stress from HRV analysis. If confirmed, the method may be useful for safer and even remote monitoring of training/rehabilitation in elderly. However, more detailed evaluation of spectral and NL parameters may be necessary to interpret more complex patterns of abnormal cases.

Funding Acknowledgement

Type of funding sources: None. Table 1Figure 1