Key result
A 4-week resonance frequency breathing intervention increased vagal activity but did not significantly change fasting glucose (4.39 vs 4.35 mmol/L, p=0.71) or overall glucose metabolism in healthy adults.
Why the study?
Increased sympathetic tone is common in prediabetes and diabetes, and parasympathetic activity might be improvable via resonance frequency breathing with heart rate variability biofeedback.
Does 4 weeks of resonance frequency breathing with heart rate variability biofeedback improve glucose metabolism and autonomic tone in healthy adults?
Does 4 weeks of resonance frequency breathing with heart rate variability biofeedback improve glucose metabolism and autonomic tone in healthy adults?
Absolute Event Rate: 4.39% vs 4.35%
p-value: p=0.71
A 4-week resonance frequency breathing intervention successfully increased parasympathetic tone in healthy adults but only improved glucose metabolism in a more insulin-resistant subgroup, suggesting potential as a non-pharmacological approach for prediabetes.
May lower glucose in insulin-resistant adults; leaves open efficacy in prediabetes or diabetes.
BACKGRUOUND: The autonomic nervous system plays a crucial role in the brain's communication with metabolically important peripheral organs, modulating insulin sensitivity and secretion. Increased sympathetic tone is a common feature in prediabetes and diabetes. The parasympathetic nervous system activity might be improvable through resonance frequency breathing (RFB) with heart rate variability biofeedback (HRV-BF) training. METHODS: We here investigated the effect of a 4-week mobile RFB-HRV-BF intervention on glucose metabolism and HRV of 30 healthy adults (17 females; mean age 25.77±3.64 years; mean body mass index 22.65±2.95 kg/m2). Before and after the intervention, glucose metabolism was assessed by 75 g oral glucose tolerance tests (with blood sampling every 30 minutes over 2 hours) and HRV was measured through electrocardiography. RESULTS: RFB-HRV-BF training did not influence glucose metabolism in healthy adults but reduced fasting as well as 2-hour-postload glucose in participants categorized as more insulin resistant before the intervention. In addition, RFB-HRV-BF training was associated with an increase in the time and frequency domain HRV parameters standard deviation of all NN-intervals, root mean square successive differences, HRV high-frequency and HRV low-frequency after 4 weeks of intervention. CONCLUSION: Our findings introduce RFB-HRV-BF training as an effective tool to modulate the autonomic nervous system with a shift towards the parasympathetic tone. Along with the observed decrease in glycemia in those with lower insulin sensitivity, RFB-HRV-BF training emerges as a promising non-pharmacological approach to improve glucose metabolism which has to be further investigated in prediabetes and diabetes.
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Herhaus et al. (2025) studied Healthy (n=30). Resonance frequency breathing with heart rate variability biofeedback vs. Pre-intervention baseline was evaluated on Fasting glucose (mmol/L) (p=0.71). A 4-week resonance frequency breathing intervention increased vagal activity but did not significantly change fasting glucose (4.39 vs 4.35 mmol/L, p=0.71) or overall glucose metabolism in healthy adults.
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