Meaningful analysis of the surveys. The first step: estimating the value of vital energy

2013-05-26

After a five-minute survey VedaPulse program automatically calculates the set of indices that characterize the psycho-physiological state of a person. The most important of these indicators have pop-up tips that include both physiological significance and normatives. However, novice users often get lost, do not know where to start. In this article we begin a cycle of successive materials on how to conduct the analysis. And we will move from the general to the specific.

In begining, a bit of philosophy. First of all, we need to understand what we research, conducting the pulse diagnosis. Only then the kaleidoscope of numbers will form a clearer picture. In short, we examine the relationship between a man and the outside world. Life of any organism is only possible in close interaction with the environment. This contact takes place both on the physiological level (breath, food intake, regulation of temperature and so on) and on social, psychological and spiritual levels. We are studying this complex and multifaceted interaction between a man and the environment.

Does it sound a bit of abstract? Now elaborating.
To begin, we must answer the following questions:

1. What volume of energy has a person to react and adapt to the environment?
2. How the functional state of an organism is balanced? How harmonious are relationships between a man and the environment? How harmonious are flows of energy — in a human body, as well as between him and the environment?

These are the fundamental questions of life and death. Man is alive only as long as he has a vital energy. And he is healthy only as long as his interaction with the environment is harmonious and balanced. Balance is broken — illness begins. Vital energy is ended — death comes.

Do not give in to provocations of a patient who wants to talk about his diseases and asks you to faster open the tabs “Meridians” and “Atlas” so that he could compare where he feels a desease with what the program will show to him.
From the experience of communicating with users on Skype I know how difficult is to reverse the enduring love to talk about diseases and begin learning what has caused them.

A patient may have a lot of diseases, plus a host of various phobias that undermine his strength no less than the disease, manifested on the organic level. Through the pulse diagnosis, we study the combined effects of all-all-all the factors that affect his health. Our goal is to find out how much the vital energy is undermined and the body is imbalanced. Then we will form recommendations to bring the body into a balance and restore vitality. We’ll have to take into account patient’s deseases, but only at the final stage of analysis for clarifying which recommendations should be given.

So, we’re moving from large to small issues.

Measuring the vital energy

Before we’ll measure it, we need to define what we mean by this concept of “vital energy”. We’re not going to measure it in joules, kilowatt-hours or TNT. Then what are we talking about?.. And why the pulse diagnosis is the best way of measuring this vital energy?

The point here is the following. The source of the vital energy are primarily oxygen and nutrients derived from food. All organs and systems of a body receive this nourishment through blood. A heart sets the rhythm to the process of blood moving and supplying a body with energy.

From previous articles, we know that the heart rate is variable. Thus a body is adapted to the external environment. Even when a patient lies on a couch during the survey and does nothing, however, there is a complicated process of interaction with the environment. Scientifically speaking — ADAPTATION. This process of adaptation is accompanied by a continuous change in the heart rhythm.

It’s simple. If the heart rate varies this means that the heart responds to needs of the body and doses volume of blood directed to the tissues through the circulatory system. And if the heart beats in rigid rhythm (the variability is little) it means that the heart ignores the problem of adaptation to the external environment. It’s — as in war communism — strictly limited how much food should get every single member of society, and here, there is like a tough distribution list, according to which all the organs and systems of the body are supplied with blood (energy) without regard to their actual needs.

By the way, in the course of the survey we can roughly estimate how much the heart rate is variable. During the five-minute test we need to look at the changing numbers on the ECG signal, where the program displays the duration of the cardiac cycle, in milliseconds, and recounts in parentheses how the heart rate (HR) changes. If the heart rate is almost unchangable — hence, the organism lives, “according to the laws of war communism.” And if the heart rate is changable this means that the process of the blood supply, and therefore the energy is regulated. Effective or not this regulation, we will consider separately. In the meantime, continue to deal only with the volume of energy.

So, let’s remember the simple truth. The higher heart rate variability, the greater potential reserves of the body to adapt. Of course, everything has reasonable limits. Excessive variability in no way should be regarded as a large energy potential, it’s more like to shoot out of a cannon on sparrows. Total chaos reigns in the systems of regulation — respectively, the energy is spent foolishly. The optimal variability is 150-250 ms. (I’ll tell you where you can find the exact volume of the variation range: the tabs “Histogram” and “Statistics” – MxDMn, ms. The program calculates it according to the formula: MxDMn = RR max – RR min. That is, the difference between the cardiointervals of minimum and maximum duration.)

In addition to the variation range, the volume of vital energy, or rather to say, “adaptive capacity” can be estimated by several indicators. Now let’s look at them in detail. It will be a completely different indices, calculated by different mathematical formulas, but they are, by and large, for one and the same — assessing the energy potential of the body. The question arises: why, then, are so many of them, if we need to examine only one physiological parameter?
The fact these all are the indirect methods to measure the vital energy. We can not measure it directly. How can we measure the Prana or Qi, or Wilhelm Reich’s Orgone, or Hans Selye’s Adaptation Energy?

I have just listed a few of the terms used to call this energy. But no matter how we define it, this is possible to measure it only indirectly. The more indicators that characterize the circulation of this energy we take into account, the more accurately we will be able to appreciate it. So go over these indices.
Immediately after the survey we can estimate a cardiointervalogram (tab ECG) by eye. Take a look at Example 4 of those that are installed for training with the program. This is the heart rhythm of the healthy person, full of energy. Do you feel how energy circulates?

Compare it with Example 3. This is the heart rhythm of the person whose ability to adapt is very much reduced. This is depleted state (asthenia). The energy flows just barely, a thin stream. In general, everything is already visible by eye.

But it’s not enough to see by eye how energy pulsates in the histogram (in the heart rhythm), we are interested in the numeric value of this energy, so we go to the tab “Spectrum” and move a cursor to the upper right corner — to the table. We look at the top indicator — Total Power (TP, ms^2), the absolute value of the spectrum power. There’s a tooltip of the norm value — 1500-3000 ms^2.

We compare our examples:
Example 4: 1548 ms^2 — the norm.
Example 3: 77 ms^2 — an obvious asthenia.

For those who have forgotten what is the spectral analysis, I remind that this is the fast Fourier transform. The essence of this mathematical conversion is easiest to imagine, if you compare it with the work of an optical prism. White light, passing through it, is decomposed into the composite spectrum. Such a transformation is happening here. But instead of light waves we transform wave oscillations of the heart rate.

After the Fourier transform, the spectrum with frequencies from 0.04 to 0.4 Hz is allocated.
How it splits into three parts, and what is the physiological significance of each of these ranges was described in detail in the article.
Now we are only interested in the absolute power of the spectrum — Total Power. This value characterizes the combined effects of all the regulation systems on the heart.

Let me explain it in a simple way. The basic heart rhythm is given by an internal pacemaker. But also the heart rhythm is affected by various extracardiac systems of regulation. Their main function is adaptation of an organism to external conditions. The need for adaptation to the environmental conditions obligatorily requires a change in the heart work. The more these exocardial systems of regulation affect the heart functioning, the more opportunities the heart has to adapt for changing challenges imposed by the environment.
How these extracardiac regulation systems work is balanced, we will consider in the next article. Now we will focus on the awareness of the relationship between the total capacity of the spectrum (Total Power), and the total active exocardiac regulation. The ability of the heart to control the blood flow depends on this power — it is the flexibility to reallocate flows of the vital energy in the body.

Kinetic and potential energy

Our next task is to evaluate the ratio of kinetic and potential energy in a human body.
To do this, we’ll go to the tab “Histogram”.

Histogram is a bar graph in steps of 50 ms. In each column there are cardiointervals, whose duration is placed in these 50 ms. For example, the upper graph shows the histogram which consists of five columns. The first column includes all cardiointervals lasting from 750 to 800 ms, the second column — 800-850 ms, and so on. The base of our pyramid has taken the interval from 750 to 1000 ms.

The higher the column, the more cardiointervals it includes, the duration of which has laid within the 50 ms. The central column on the top graph consists of cardiointervals with the duration from 850 to 900 ms.

In a healthy person with a normal energy potential the obtained pyramid must be symmetrical and in its central column between 30 and 50% cardiointervals have to be concentrated. This relative proportion of the most common cardiointervals is called the mode amplitude (AMo,). On the top graph the mode amplitude = 43.
The physiological significance of the mode amplitude is the evinced kinetic energy.

A width of the pyramid is the potential energy. The higher pyramid is stretched up, the more energy a human organism uses, and thus its potential reserves are decreased. If, instead of the pyramid, the only one column would be, it can be stated that all the energy reserves have been involved.

Here is an example histogram of a patient with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. His adaptation reserves are almost exhausted.

To understand why the base of the pyramid is related to the potential energy and the height — to the kinetic, you have to realize that the central, highest column indicates the dominant function which is necessary for adaptation. The larger the value of the column, the more difficult adaptation is given to the organism. The wider the base of the histogram, the more flexible the organism can distribute the power to other functions.

It is known that, experiencing stress, the organism redistributes the power “switching off” less important systems — those which can not be used to fight or flight.

Faced with any difficult challenge, the body is forced to send reserves for its implementation. And no matter what is the task — climbing up to the tenth floor by stairs or fighting with the flu virus, by the magnitude of the mode amplitude we can estimate how much reserves of the power the organism has thrown on its implementation.

Thus, the value of the mode amplitude is shown in the table of the tab “Histogram” and in the common table of the Baevsky indeces on the tab “Statistics”. The most obvious version of this indicator is presented in the tab “Indeces”, on the basis of which the index “Adaptation level” is calculated. It also, like many other important indicators has pop-up prompts. So, if you’ve forgotten that the norm is 30-50%, just move your cursor to the colored strip “Adaptation level.” This is the indicator of the evinced kinetic energy — the energy that the body spends for adaptation to the external environment. That is, if a person does not do anything and just lays on the couch while the survey, he should not use for it more than 30-50% of his forces.

In the end of the theme about the estimation of the energy volume, learn the Stress Index in the tab “Indeces”. There’s also a pop-up tips that will help you to understand enough or not energy to withstand the pressure of the external environment.

Stress represents a wide range of physical responses that occur as a direct effect of a stressor causing an upset in the homeostasis of the body, and the corresponding state of the nervous system of the body (or the body as a whole). In medicine, physiology, psychology positive (eustress) and negative (distress) forms of stress are distinguished.

The formula for calculating the Stress Index:

Si = AMo /(2 * Mо* MxDMn)

Mo (the mode) — is the most frequently occurring value of cardiointervals in milliseconds.

Amo (the mode amplitude) — is the proportion of the most common cardiointervals, from which the central column of the histogram was formed, of all cardiointervals.

MxDMn (the variation range) — the difference between cardiointervals of the minimum and maximum duration.

That is, the Stress Index takes into account both the kinetic and potential energy.
So we’ve figured out how to measure the vital energy. Next, we’ll have to figure out how its flows are balanced. But we’ll do this in future articles, because I understand, that the patient reader, has come down to this place, has already read more than 10,000 “letters,” and now he should go to drink tea…