The Functional Health Podcast

Can movement extend healthspan? How can we age well? Can we remain strong, capable, and independent throughout later life?

Darryl Edwards is an internationally renowned speaker, movement coach, author, and founder of the Primal Play Method®. His evidence-based approach combines exercise physiology, evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, and play psychology to make movement enjoyable, effective, and sustainable.

In this episode, we explore the science of functional ageing and the practical strategies that help people maintain strength, mobility, balance, and independence across the lifespan.

We discuss:

• Can movement extend healthspan?

• Functional ageing, why preserving strength, mobility, balance, and independence matters as much as longevity.

• How to build physical resilience and reduce the risk of falls, frailty, and age-related muscle loss.

• The power of “playspan”, staying physically capable of playing with children, grandchildren, and continuing to enjoy an active life.

• Movement as medicine, including insights from Darryl’s work with people living with cancer, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease, and how playful movement can improve adherence and quality of life.

Books
Ted Talk
Website
Instagram
Twitter
Facebook

Can heart rate variability actually predict illness before you feel it? What makes HRV rise or fall from day to day, and how should you use it?

Dr Boon Lim is a consultant cardiologist and electrophysiologist at Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and one of the UK's leading specialists in atrial fibrillation and the autonomic nervous system. In this episode we go deep on heart rate variability: what it really measures, what shifts it, when it is useful, and crucially when it is misleading.

 

Chapters

0:00 Introduction
0:30 Can HRV improve healthspan or reduce disease risk?
1:20 What heart rate variability actually is
2:31 The autonomic nervous system, your body's control room
3:40 Why you cannot think your heart rate up, but you can feel it up
4:03 Yin and yang: sympathetic and parasympathetic balance
4:52 Provoking ectopic beats with mental arithmetic in the cath lab
6:54 Does your resting heart rate determine your HRV?
8:57 Why athletes score higher, and why wearables measure overnight
9:55 What alcohol does to HRV, and how fast you recover
10:58 HRV as an early warning system, days before symptoms
12:32 The stressors nobody counts: emotion, purpose, security, trauma
14:12 HRV in IBS, fatigue and brain fog
14:46 Should you train on a low HRV day?
17:07 Track trends, not days
17:40 Why you should never compare your HRV to anyone else's
18:32 From 38 to 53: Boon's own HRV over eighteen months
19:08 HRV and ageing
20:17 Hormones, the menstrual cycle and HRV
22:33 The standardised two-minute autonomic assessment
23:20 Resonant frequency and the six-second breath
25:11 HRV as a treatment, not just a measurement
26:27 Building coherent breathing into an ordinary day
28:47 Breathing for anxiety and emotional regulation
29:47 The heart as a command centre: signals travelling upwards
31:02 Bottom-up physiology meets top-down emotion
32:33 Primary and secondary pain, phantom limbs and the splinter story
37:26 When to measure HRV: the morning protocol
39:22 When HRV is not a useful metric: AF and ectopic beats
42:09 Can a wearable detect undiagnosed atrial fibrillation?
44:14 LIVE DEMO: the 60-second coherence reset
48:18 Reading the coherence graph
49:40 Do you actually need a device?
51:41 When data-driven medicine falls short: the long covid lesson
53:20 ENO Breathe: singing as breath training
54:17 Connection, community and loneliness as autonomic medicine
59:07 Where to find Dr Boon Lim

 

 

What we cover

Heart rate variability is not a fitness score. It is a window into the autonomic nervous system, the part of you that runs your heartbeat, your gut, your sweat glands and your stress response without ever asking permission. Dr Lim explains why the heart is not a metronome, why two people with identical heart rates can have wildly different HRV, and why your watch does most of its measuring while you sleep.

We also get into the stressors most people never count. Alcohol, jet lag and poor sleep are the obvious ones. Job insecurity, unresolved trauma, loneliness and a lack of purpose sit underneath, and they shape your autonomic baseline far more than any single bad night.

Then there is the part almost nobody covers: when HRV becomes useless. In atrial fibrillation, HRV goes sky high, but that high HRV is not a good sign. Ectopic beats skew it the same way. Boon explains how to spot this, and how a sudden unexplained jump in HRV on a wearable has flagged undiagnosed AF in his own patients.

 

A live demonstration: the 60-second autonomic reset

Boon takes out a HeartMath Inner Balance sensor and shows coherent breathing in real time, with live biofeedback on screen. You watch his heart rate settle into a smooth sinusoidal wave and his coherence score shoot up in under two minutes. This is the top-down, bottom-up approach he uses in clinic: slow nasal diaphragmatic breathing to send calming signals up from the heart to the brain, paired with a deliberate positive emotion sent down from the brain to the body. Both directions at once. No theory, just a measurable shift you can simply observe in 2 minutes, and hopefully replicate with the tools and techniques shown in the live demonstration.

 

 

Resources and further reading

Free patient education

www.StopFainting.com , Dr Lim's free resource for fainting, dizziness, orthostatic intolerance, POTS and autonomic dysfunction, with self-management strategies you can start today.

www.DrBoonLim.co.uk, clinical background, atrial fibrillation, arrhythmia and syncope services.

Programmes mentioned in this episode

ENO Breathe, the English National Opera and Imperial College London breathing and wellbeing programme for people recovering from covid, using singing technique to retrain the breath. https://www.eno.org/engage/about-the-eno-breathe-programme/ 

Suzy Bolt's Chronic Illness Recovery Program, a long covid recovery community combining gentle movement, yoga, breathwork and, just as importantly, connection and shared experience. www.suzybolt.com 

The British Society of Lifestyle Medicine, whose pillars include social connection and relationships. www.bslm.org.uk

Books by Dr Boon Lim

Keeping Your Heart Healthy (Penguin Life Experts)

Books referenced in conversation

The Compassion Project, Julian Abel

Together, Vivek Murthy

Stolen Focus, Johann Hari

Tools for HRV tracking and coherence training

HeartMath Inner Balance Pro, the ear-clip sensor and app used in the live demonstration, available at www.heartmath.co.uk

About Dr Boon Lim

Consultant Cardiologist and Electrophysiologist at Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London. Cambridge and Imperial trained, with over 2,500 atrial fibrillation ablations and more than 100 peer-reviewed publications. He leads one of the UK's busiest electrophysiology and syncope programmes, with a particular focus on the autonomic nervous system in AF, vasovagal syncope and POTS.

Website: drboonlim.co.uk

If this was useful, subscribe and share it with someone who stares at their HRV score every morning and is not quite sure what it means.

#HeartRateVariability #HRV #AutonomicNervousSystem #Cardiology #AtrialFibrillation #POTS #Syncope #CoherentBreathing #Breathwork #VagusNerve #LongCovid #LifestyleMedicine #StressResilience #HeartHealth

Are there any benefits to Hyperbaric Oxygen therapy? How does HBOT support your mitochondria? What conditions can HBOT be used for?

Dr Mohammed Enayat, also known as Dr E. is London trained GP who has focussed on bringing cutting-edge advancements to the world of medicine. He has incorporated some frontier technologies and life-enhancing methodologies to HUM2N into a system that helps to identify and reverse the effects of some of the processes that drive ageing. 

I first met Dr E at a conference in London and had the chance to visit the clinic at an open day and it was incredibly impressive. There are technologies focussed on improving mitochondrial biogenesis and function as well as some to increase bone density throughout the whole skeletal system. On top of that, Dr E works with my friend Dr Nirusa Kumaran who is an incredible Functional Medicine GP.

In this episode we cover:

Optimising mitochondria through Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

The best duration and frequency of HBOT

How HBOT can be used to support health and disease prevention.

Much more

Check out Dr E’s clinic, HUM2N here - https://www.hum2n.com

Can liver disease be prevented? Could lifestyle play a major role in reducing the risk and in the treatment if liver disease? What are the major causes of liver diseases?

Dr. Ajaz is a highly trained clinician with a deep passion for Lifestyle Medicine. She holds certifications from the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine and the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine. I has the pleasure of speaking to her in her home in London where we talked about all things liver health, disease prevention and treatments. 

In this deep dive, we cover: 

The prevalence of liver disease

What are the major factors that cause liver disease

The signs and symptoms of the condition

The role of lifestyle medicine in prevention, treatment and management 

Dr. Ajaz earned her MPhil in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, followed by a PhD in Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolism from King’s College London in 2016. With over 17 years of experience as both a medical doctor and a researcher in the translational field, she has dedicated her career to investigating non-invasive biomarkers and preventative strategies for early detection of chronic metabolic diseases.

https://www.kch.nhs.uk/about/get-involved/groups-and-events/livfit/

https://www.provigilant.co.uk/wellness

https://hssh.health/consultants/dr-saima-ajaz/

How can diabetes be put into remission? Can lifestyle approaches be a long-term effective strategy for Type 2 Diabetes?

PLEASE NOTE, this recording took place some time ago but the content is still hugely relevant! You can find all updates on Helen's work using the links below. 

It is my absolutely pleasure to be speaking to Helen Gowers. Helen is a registered dietitian and director of The Lifestyle Club (TLC) a health coaching service for adults with type 2 diabetes, developed by the charity, Public Health Collaboration. This service has helped hundreds of people and is commissioned by over 60 GP surgeries across the UK and continues to go from strength to strength. It’s making a huge positive difference and I am excited to share this conversation with you.

In this fascinating episode we cover: 

Why so many people are struggling with Diabetes

How a lifestyle forward approach can support diabetes and even put it into remission

Why low carb can be an incredible effective strategy for T2D

How you can get involved

And much more

Socials

https://www.embrace-nutrition.co.uk/about-5

https://www.thelifestyleclub.uk/

https://phcuk.org/