Impact of Posture on Heart Rate Variability of Individuals under Mental Workload Conditions

Abstract

Professionals having desk jobs have reported increased levels of stress in recent times. A major reason for this can be attributed to sitting in poor postures for prolonged period of time. Maintaining such postures, especially under high mental workloads, may lead to reduced Heart Rate Variability (HRV), leading to increased stress levels, thereby increasing the risk of cardiovascular health disorders such as heart attacks, strokes, etc. Therefore, this study investigated the influence of both right and poor posture on HRV during high mental workload conditions. We recorded the Heart Rate (HR), using chest based wearable, of ten healthy subjects under controlled environmental conditions. All the measurements were obtained with each subject maintaining different postures such as High Power (HP) pose, Low Power (LP) pose, High Power pose under mental load conditions (HPm), and Low Power pose under mental load conditions (LPm). HRV indices like time domain and frequency domain for the above postures were computed. We observed that eight subjects showed higher HRV during HP pose compared to LP pose. Likewise, the subjects showed higher HRV during HPm pose compared to LPm pose. We studied the impact of postural change on HRV through statistical t-paired test and observed a significant difference $(\mathbf{p} < \mathbf{0}.\mathbf{05})$ in the HRV indices across subjects for different postures. Hence, this study demonstrated the positive impact of the right posture on HRV of individuals having desk jobs.