Stress Is Cellular: The Night My Average HRV Hit 222, and What It Took to Get There | Salim Najjar

Can You Outsmart Your Next Doctor’s Visit?

Your Oura tracks your sleep. Your Whoop measures your strain. Your CGM watches your glucose. Your bloodwork sits in a PDF. And none of them talks to each other. In Episode 59 of the 90% Healthy Podcast, hosts Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley sit down with David Korsunsky — founder and CEO of Heads Up Health — to unpack how AI is finally connecting the dots between wearables, lab results, and personalized medicine. David built Heads Up Health after a sleep tracker shattered his assumptions about his own health. Ten years later, his platform is the device-agnostic hub powering longevity clinics and biohackers worldwide, pulling data from Apple Health, Oura, Whoop, CGMs, bloodwork, and more into one AI-readable dashboard. In this conversation, we cover:00:00 Intro — Why your health data is fragmented02:00 The Zeo, Dave Asprey, and David's wake-up call07:30 The keto rabbit hole and quantified self origins14:00 Don's full biohacking stack (and why nothing talks to each other)17:00 The state of AI + health data today29:00 Decoding 100+ biomarkers without a doctor33:00 How David's father uses LLMs to prep for specialist visits38:00 The "Joe Bag of Donuts" use case for AI health40:00 Data aggregation as a social determinant of health43:00 Bayesian analysis vs. population statistics — the N-of-1 revolution53:00 Hallucinations, citations, and trusting AI with your health57:00 HRV predicting illness before symptoms appear01:04:00 What sparks behavior change01:07:00 Vibe-coding your own clinical dashboards 🔗 LEARN MORE ABOUT HEADS UP HEALTHWebsite: https://headsuphealth.com🎙️ ABOUT THE 90% HEALTHY PODCASTHosted by Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley, the 90% Healthy Podcast explores the intersection of human performance, longevity, biohacking, and modern medicine — with the world's leading practitioners, researchers, and founders. 🔔 SUBSCRIBE for new episodes every week.👍 LIKE this video if it made you rethink your wearable data.💬 COMMENT: Which device is sitting in your drawer doing nothing?

Stress Is Cellular: The Night My Average HRV Hit 222, and What It Took to Get There | Salim Najjar

What if your heart rate variability score could tell you exactly how stressed, burnt out, or aligned you are?In this episode, we sit down with Salim Najjar (@ThatHRVGuy), a former nuclear power plant engineer turned HRV educator and nervous system coach. Salim broke down the science and the deeply personal story behind how he took his HRV from a baseline of 32 all the way to an overnight average of 222 and why chasing a high score isn't the point.We cover:→ Why chronic stress → cellular inflammation → is the root cause of all mortality→ What HRV actually measures (hint: it's the language of your nervous system)→ Salim's ART Framework: Awareness → Regulation → Transformation→ His 5 Pathways for HRV Growth (sleep, hormetic stress, reframing, intentionality, community)→ The difference between nervous system regulation vs. nervous system sovereignty→ How trauma, ayahuasca, and a dislocated shoulder all showed up in his HRV data→ Why you should never compare your HRV score to someone else's→ Tools Salim uses daily: NuCalm, binaural beats, somatic activation, and more→ How to find your HRV archetype (free quiz link below)🎯 FREE RESOURCES:→ Take Salim's free HRV archetype quiz: www.thathrvguy.com→ Don's 20 Tips for Measuring HRV + 10 Evidence-Based Techniques: trainrecoverwin.com/products👥 GUEST:Salim Najjar | @ThatHRVGuy | www.thathrvguy.com🎙 HOSTS:Don Moxley | trainrecoverwin.comKlaudia Balogh | longevityjournalist.com📌 SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes on nervous system health, HRV, longevity, and performance optimization.

Why Vagus Nerve Stimulation May Be the Missing Link to Your Low HRV | Ep57 with Povilas Sabaliauskas

If you track your HRV and the number won't move, this is the episode to listen to. Don Moxley has 8 years of HRV data. The day he started vagus nerve stimulation, his floors tripled and his ceilings doubled. He hadn't changed anything else. Povilas Sabaliauskas built the device that did it. A biomechanical engineer with a background in implantable neuromodulation, he spent years in operating rooms watching electrical stimulation do things medication couldn't — then went home to Lithuania and designed a wearable version. He built the first prototype for his father. In this episode, they get into: * Why low HRV is fundamentally a nervous system regulation problem * What vagus nerve stimulation actually does to shift your autonomic state, * Why most recovery tools are treating the symptom while the cause keeps running in the background. They also discuss athlete data, GLP-1 stacking, the attention economy's measurable toll on your nervous system, and a road rage story that might be the most unexpected clinical outcome this technology has produced. If your HRV has plateaued and you've run out of obvious answers — start here. To learn more about Povilas Sabaliauskas and Pulsetto: https://pulsetto.tech/ [https://pulsetto.tech/] Don Moxley: https://trainrecoverwin.com/ [https://trainrecoverwin.com/] Who's the 90% Healthy Podcast for? It’s for you who wants to build a resilient body without losing your mind. If you are sick of counting every calorie, tracking too many stats, or not even wanting to start, yet ready to stop feeling just “OK”. Klaudia and Don invite you to build resilient health that bends with real life. No rigid rules. No guilt. Just simple 1% shifts that create a strong foundation, so you can sleep like a baby, perform like a boss. and feel damn good. We cut through the noise, bring you real science (not TikTok trends), and make it easy to understand what works for the long run. Tune in wherever you listen to your podcasts.

What Olympic-Level Performance Requires (And What It Costs) | Ep 56

The Harvard professor who studies Olympians says: If you have to choose between exercise and sleep, take the sleep. That's not an excuse to skip the gym. That's elite-level biology. This week on 90% Healthy, sports scientist Don Moxley and longevity journalist Klaudia Balogh broke down what it takes to perform at an Olympic level, and why blindly copying what elite athletes do will break most people. We talked about:→ The 50% load rule elite coaches swear by→ Why tapering feels like giving up but is actually the science→ What HRV data tells you that your coach can't→ The thing Lindsey Vonn's comeback got wrong→ Why being "in flow" means you won't remember your best performance. Referenced article: The Science of Olympic Performance [https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/3/2/the-science-of-olympic-sport/] Who's the 90% Healthy Podcast for? It’s for you who wants to build a resilient body without losing your mind. If you are sick of counting every calorie, tracking too many stats, or not even wanting to start, yet ready to stop feeling just “OK”. Klaudia and Don invite you to build resilient health that bends with real life. No rigid rules. No guilt. Just simple 1% shifts that create a strong foundation, so you can sleep like a baby, perform like a boss. and feel damn good. We cut through the noise, bring you real science (not TikTok trends), and make it easy to understand what works for the long run. Tune in wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Autonomic Rehabilitation: The Science of Training Your Nervous System to Recover | Dr. Raouf Gharbo | Ep 54

There are only a handful of physicians in the world practicing autonomic rehabilitation. One of them is on this episode. Klaudia Balogh and Don Moxley sits down with Dr. Raouf Gharbo, MD, Don's former Ohio State wrestling teammate, All-American, and one of the world's foremost experts in autonomic rehabilitation — the emerging field of training your nervous system to switch, shift, and recover on demand. Dr. Gharbo was admitted to his own hospital with atrial fibrillation at age 32. That wake-up call sent him deep into the science of Heart Rate Variability, parasympathetic function, and what it takes to rehabilitate a nervous system pushed past its limits — not just in patients, but in elite athletes, burned-out physicians, and high performers of every kind. In this episode you'll learn: * What autonomic rehabilitation is — and why almost no one is doing it yet * What HRV really measures (hint: it's not a fitness score) * The two independent levers of your nervous system — and why "balance" is the wrong framework * Why high performers can look completely fine while their nervous system is in crisis * The difference between courage breathing and sleep breathing — and why it matters * How gratitude physically shifts your physiology — backed by a veteran study * The mitochondrial housekeeping your body does at night (and what happens when it can't) * Why trauma — including generational trauma — seeds burnout at the nervous system level * Dr. Gharbo's "Stop, Shift, Decide" autonomic reset method * The 10-factor autonomic recovery checklist — rated live on air If you've ever felt "fine but exhausted," performed well while running on empty, or wondered why willpower alone isn't enough — this is the episode that explains what's happening under the hood. Who's the 90% Healthy Podcast for? It’s for you who wants to build a resilient body without losing your mind. If you are sick of counting every calorie, tracking too many stats, or not even wanting to start, yet ready to stop feeling just “OK”. Klaudia and Don invite you to build resilient health that bends with real life. No rigid rules. No guilt. Just simple 1% shifts that create a strong foundation, so you can sleep like a baby, perform like a boss. and feel damn good. We cut through the noise, bring you real science (not TikTok trends), and make it easy to understand what works for the long run. Tune in wherever you listen to your podcasts.