Discover How Food Affects Your Heart Rate

No. It is not intended to diagnose IgE-mediated food allergies. This app is intended to help you identify foods and beverages that raise your heart rate more than others.

The app requires the test to last at least 35 seconds because the heart rate increase is not immediate. The test can last as long as 30 minutes or more, but tests in the range of 1.5 to 2 minutes may be best.

This is still being researched, however, when a food causes a greater heart rate increase than others, it may indicate that this food is causing a stress reaction in the body.

This will depend on the situation and your goals. You might try decreasing foods that cause higher heart rate increases or avoiding having them near bedtime. If you make substantial changes in your diet, check with your doctor or nutritionist, and make sure that you don’t become deficient in nutrients (for example: calcium, iron, Vitamin B12).

This is not something that is necessarily a cause for concern. The normal resting heart rate when not eating is considered to be 60 to 100 beats per minute. The heart rate when eating is typically not studied. Consult a licensed physician who knows your medical status if you are concerned.

You might try some activity that you find relaxing. One option is to breathe in through your nose, hold your breath for 2 to 7 seconds and exhale through your mouth for 5 to 10 seconds. This may be repeated if you find it helpful.

It would not be surprising if this happens in some cases. This might be similar to stopping caffeine suddenly in some ways. The body has become used to the stress or stimulation and thus there may be an adjustment period when stopping or decreasing something that causes a heart rate increase. In addition, be aware that shifts in diet may lead to other food reactions becoming more apparent, and additional heart rate tests using the app may be helpful. Gradual changes in diet may reduce this type of problem.

Symptoms related to consumption of a particular food may be delayed for up to several days. Or perhaps there will be no symptoms associated with that food. But if this food contributes to a higher resting heart rate overall, this could potentially have long term consequences. However, more research is needed and we are not offering recommendations at this point. You can consult your doctor for a suggested course of action.

It could be that testing in a different location would reveal a larger heart rate increase, or a different brand or different form of the food (milk vs. cheese). Also, it may be that you have not been eating as much of that food lately and the reaction may have lessened due to that. It also should be noted that not all food reactions are associated with a heart rate increase.

It is expected that there will be some random variation (e.g., 1 to 3 bpm), and so a range of values would be expected. Also, the level of heart rate increase from a given food or beverage may vary some from day to day and at different locations.

It may be that inhaled substances or other features of certain locations might affect the results and including this data will allow you to better understand location effects.

Certain medications might blunt the heart rate response (e.g., beta blockers), but the information from the tests could still be useful for comparisons between foods and beverages, despite heart rate increases potentially being lower due to the medication’s effects.

This is not known. However, in most cases, we believe it is unlikely to affect the results very much if you do a 1 to 2 minute test, since whatever you take before the meal is unlikely to have effects on the short time scale of 1 or 2 minutes. Certain medications could be exceptions and are discussed further on the website URL to fill in later

You can, but it would be best to keep the test fairly short (e.g., 1 to 2 minutes) and expect the results might underestimate the increase from the food by 1 or 2 beats per minute or more.

It is possible that they do in some situations, but we believe they are unlikely to explain the heart rate increases during eating in most cases.

The answer is unknown, but there is preliminary evidence suggesting that there might be some relationship between the level of heart rate increases while eating different foods and IgG- and/or IgG4-specific blood test results for the foods.