3 weeks of 20 min/day audio that perturbs the heart: resting RMSSD +52%, anxiety basically gone. Hormesis without the workout? Looking for people to try and see if it replicates. N=1

Disclosure first since this involves something I made: I built the app I'm talking about here. It's a free beta, I'm not selling anything, I genuinely just want to find out if this does anything in bodies that aren't mine. Mods, pull it if it's not allowed, no hard feelings.

So the background. I didn't start from wanting better numbers, I started from anxiety that was wrecking me. And the thing I ended up trying is sort of counterintuitive. Instead of trying to calm the nervous system down, you briefly stress it. The app plays audio that perturbs the heart a little, your body takes on a small controlled dose of stress (you don't actually feel stressed while it's happening), and then a few days later it seems to settle in above where it started. Basically hormesis. The same reason a workout makes you fitter, except there's no workout. Sport without the sport, if that makes sense.

If you're into the HRV weeds: it's working in the very low frequency range, roughly 0.033 to 0.05 Hz. That's lower than the 0.1 Hz cardiac coherence stuff most apps do, and it isn't paced breathing at all. The audio is driving the oscillation, not your breath.

What actually happened over 3 weeks (and yeah, this is n of 1, no control group, no blinding, take it with salt):

resting RMSSD went up about 52%. Subjectively the anxiety dropped maybe 90% and my energy through the day is noticeably better.

Before anyone says it, here's everything wrong with this. It's one person. RMSSD bounces around a ton depending on your state, and I started from an anxious baseline, so just feeling less anxious would push that number up on its own. Could be regression to the mean. Placebo is completely uncontrolled, and I literally built the thing so my bias couldn't be higher. Three weeks is nothing. I'm not saying it caused anything. I'm saying there's a signal here that seems worth poking at.

What I'm actually after: if you already track your HRV, especially RMSSD, I'd love a handful of people to run the same thing (20 min a day) and just tell me whether your numbers move at all, or don't. Even pure subjective feedback helps. Happy to share my full daily data with anyone who wants to pick it apart.