Episode 55: Dr Raouf Gharbo – HRV, Breathing and Sleep

Dr Raouf (Ron) Gharbo, Director of Autonomic Rehabilitation at VMU Health, is an expert in using Heart Rate Variability (HRV) to diagnose and treat people with traumatic brain injury and autonomic conditions.  He has turned his knowledge of treating concussion, addiction, POTS and MECFS to treating Long Covid sufferers, with tried and tested methods of sleep rehabilitation and breath dynamics.

In this week’s episode Dr Gharbo explains the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and how so much stems from their dyregulation.  Using nocturnal HRV metrics alongside their history, he assesses his patients and builds workable programmes for them. His primary symptom target in the majority of his patients is sleep and his primary treatment tool is breathing.

“My clinic thesis starts with: Safe, evidence based Autonomic Rehabilitation towards Parasympathetic Health for those with glitchy autonomic software that repairs at night worsened by countless sources of persistent sympathetic activation assisted with self-efficacy remote monitoring tools. (Autonomic Rehabilitation 2020)”.

With a pragmatic approach to health care, he is candid that we still don’t know what is causing the malfunctions but is confident we can help heal our out-of-whack systems with some targeted, statistical care.

“There are four basic health actions. Purposeful movement, thoughtful intake and intentional recovery. Various nocturnal HRV metrics and tools finally propel people to be come intentional about recovery”.

For monitoring nocturnal HRV Ron suggest: https://www.sleepwatchapp.com