<aside> 👨🏻‍⚕️ Primary Investigator

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<aside> 🗓️ 7/2021 - 12/2021

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<aside> 💡 Follow up study of Masters Thesis with improved protocol measures. Funded by the Student Research Fellowship Grant from Touro College and University System; Mentors: Victor Nuño, DO; Ted Wong, PhD

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<aside> 💬 Special thanks to Touro University in giving me the opportunity to perform this research under the Student Research Fellowship Grant. Click here to learn more about the grant.

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<aside> 📊 Presented at:

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Featured in:

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Introduction:

Studies have shown that improving heart rate recovery (HRR) via exercise significantly reduces mortality in patients who started cardiac rehab after a heart procedure compared to patients who did not. However, patients recovering from such procedures often have difficulty performing physical activity and may lack the capacity to achieve this outcome through exercise. Studies have shown that improving HRR via exercise significantly reduces mortality in patients who started cardiac rehab after a heart procedure compared to patients who did not. Thus, identifying other interventions capable of facilitating vagal activation and a more rapid HRR is important both physiologically and clinically. While sub-occipital release Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment (OMT) is theorized to stimulate vagus nerve activity via enhancing indices of heart rate variability (HRV), to our knowledge the ability of OMT to influence HRR has not been directly investigated. Our study chose to investigate whether a self-administered version of the suboccipital release technique could facilitate a change in HRR.

Methods:

18 subjects were recruited from Touro University California’s College of Osteopathic Medicine (classes 2024 and 2025). Utilizing a provided HR monitor, subjects established their baseline resting HR and HRV. Subjects performed two separate data collection sessions via participating in a group high-intensity interval training session. The 20-minute exercise session was immediately followed by a 5-minute recovery. During recovery, subjects either performed a suboccipital OMT recovery or a recovery without OMT (control).

Results/Conclusion:

HRV metrics were higher for six participants when performing the OMT Recovery (compared to control), these differences were not statistically significant. OMT Recovery showed improved HRR’s for both 1 minute and 2 minutes post-exercise compared to control (40 bpm vs. 32 bpm for HRR-1 min; 61 bpm vs. 57 bpm for HRR-2 min), these differences were not statistically significant. Our findings may be explained by the limitations of the study. Other factors known to influence HRV may have interfered with our data as well. Such as the subject’s individual: respiratory rate, assigned sex at birth, allostatic load, body position, and other factors known to influence HRV.