Daily Stress and Heart Rate Variability Among Mindfulness Meditation Practitioners: An mHealth Observational Study
medRxiv August 19, 2025 Jun Takezawa, Sinong Geng, Masahiro Fujino et al. preprint
An observational study using smartwatches and smartphone surveys tracked 90 people for three weeks: 19 regular meditators, 32 recreational runners, and 39 controls with no regular exercise or meditation. Although meditators reported lower stress than controls on questionnaires, their overall heart rate variability (HRV) in daily life was not higher. However, during actual meditation sessions, HRV increased by about 4.7 milliseconds, and this effect lasted at least 30 minutes afterward. In contrast, runners showed both lower stress and higher daily HRV than controls. Across all groups, higher momentary stress was linked to a small concurrent drop in HRV. The findings suggest meditation may offer a way to temporarily boost HRV, which could contribute to stress reduction, but more controlled research is needed.