The Resilient Engine with Dr. Jay Wiles

Jay Wiles
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Mental Health

A show about the nervous system, human performance, and what the measurement industry keeps getting wrong. Dr. Jay T. Wiles is a clinical health and performance psychologist who has spent his career measuring physiology in high performers. Most of what circulates about nervous system health is noise, and most of what is being sold trains state change, which is transient, rather than trait change, which lasts. Solo episodes work through the model piece by piece: resonance, sleep, attention, load, and what the wearable on your wrist is and is not telling you. Interviews bring in the researchers and practitioners who actually run the data. Reading the gauge is not training the engine.

Episodes

  1. 3d ago

    One nicotine pouch: heart rate 62 to 70, HRV 85 to 66 in 15 minutes

    Nicotine has not gone away. It has moved from cigarettes to vapes and pouches, and athletes and high performers now use it for focus, energy and calm. Dr. Jay Wiles used it that way too, until he noticed what it was doing to his nervous system. This episode follows nicotine from Native American ceremony to the cigarette rolling machine, the 1964 Surgeon General's report, the vaping wave and the pouch era. Then it goes inside the body. Nicotine is shaped enough like acetylcholine, one of your own neurotransmitters, to fit its receptors, and those receptors sit in the relay stations of both branches of the autonomic nervous system: the gas pedal and the brake. Jay walks through what the research shows nicotine does to heart rate, HRV, blood pressure, the baroreflex and sleep, why much of the calm it brings is relief from the withdrawal the last dose started, and what happens in the first week after quitting. Then he ran the test on himself. After three to four months without nicotine, he took a baseline, used one 6 mg pouch, sat still for 15 minutes and measured again. His resting heart rate went from 62 to 70 beats per minute. His HRV went from 84.6 to 65.9 milliseconds. That is one person and one dose, not a study. It is also not a score going the wrong way. It is what an acute stress response looks like in the data: a nervous system pushed toward the gas pedal while its owner sat in a chair and did nothing. The episode closes with what to do about it. If you do not use nicotine, do not start. If you do, delay the first dose, keep it away from the evening, keep the ritual and lose the drug, and, if you already track HRV, run the same experiment on yourself. Disclosure The readings in my experiment were taken with The Resilient Engine app, which is mine. Ohm is my company too, and I mention the Ohm Circle group at the end of the episode. Weigh what I say about either with that in mind. Nothing in this episode was paid for by anyone. This episode is education, not medical advice. Chapters 00:00 Why nicotine, and why now 02:14 My own nicotine story 04:16 A short history of nicotine 07:44 Vaping and the pouch boom 12:25 What nicotine is and how it works 17:06 Why nicotine feels calming 19:55 The gas and the brake 24:38 Blood pressure and the baroreflex 29:24 Pouches, heart rate and sleep 31:44 What happens when you quit 32:34 My one pouch experiment 35:30 What I recommend Run the experiment yourself I ran this right before recording, after three to four months without nicotine. It is written out so that anyone who already uses nicotine and tracks HRV can repeat it. If you do not use nicotine, this is not a reason to start. 1. Sit where you will stay for the whole test. Use the same device, in the same position, for every reading. 2. Take three two-minute readings and average them, for resting heart rate and for HRV. That is your baseline. 3. Use one pouch. I used 6 mg, which hit hard after months without one. If you already use nicotine, use your usual product and dose. 4. Stay seated for 15 minutes. Do not get up, move around or change anything else, or you are measuring the change in context rather than the nicotine. 5. Take three more two-minute readings and average them. My averages, measured with The Resilient Engine app: Resting heart rate: 62 beats per minute before, 70 after. Up 8. HRV: 84.6 milliseconds before, 65.9 after. Call it 85 to 66. Show notes, with every study: theresilientengine.com/media/nicotine HRV CV 101, episode 3: theresilientengine.com/media/hrv-cv The app: theresilientengine.com Dr. Jay T. Wiles is a clinical health and performance psychologist and the creator of Nervous System Resiliency Training.

  2. Oct 20

    HRV CV 101: Why a Stable HRV Beats a High One

    Every wearable hands you one number in the morning and a traffic light to go with it. Most people check it daily and change nothing. Dr. Jay Wiles argues that is worse than not tracking at all: data without action is a waste of time, and a red light you cannot act on is one more source of stress. This episode is about the number to watch instead. HRV CV, the coefficient of variation of heart rate variability, measures how steady your HRV stays across a rolling week rather than how high it reads on any one morning. Average HRV tells you where you sit. HRV CV tells you whether your nervous system is keeping up with what you are asking of it. Two cars can both average 65 miles an hour. One is on cruise control. The other swings between 50 and 80 the whole way down the highway. Same average, very different ride. A low HRV CV is the car on cruise control. Also in this episode: why the overnight number from two different devices is often apples and oranges, why chasing a higher HRV and comparing yours to a friend's is the wrong game, why one day of data is noise and a trend is signal, how to calculate HRV CV yourself, the morning measurement protocol, and how to read the result in green, yellow and red zones. The zones come with a caveat stated on air: the research does not yet support firm cut points, and these are working guardrails as of 2026. Above all of it sits one rule. Check in with how you feel before you look at the data. Disclosure Ohm is a company I work for and helped develop, and I use a discount code for it in this episode. The Resilient Engine app and Thrive Wellness and Performance are mine as well. I talk about all three here because they are what I actually use, and you should weigh what I say about them with that in mind. Nothing in this episode was paid for by anyone. Chapters 00:00 Everyone is chasing the wrong HRV number 01:42 Data without action is a waste of time 04:38 Where this data used to come from 05:52 One number, captured differently by every device 06:48 The most context dependent biometric there is 07:29 A word from Ohm 09:37 Why two devices disagree 10:16 HRV is a family of metrics, not one number 12:08 Should you try to raise your HRV? 14:17 Train the vagus nerve for control, not a number 15:41 One day is noise, a trend is signal 16:52 HRV CV, defined 17:32 How to calculate it 19:28 Two cars averaging 65 21:13 Getting it from your wearable 22:59 The morning reading, step by step 25:58 Which device to use 26:48 How many readings you need 27:19 A word from Thrive Wellness 28:24 Reading your number, and the caveat 29:45 The green, yellow and red zones 31:17 Green: keeping up with the load 32:55 Yellow: proceed with caution 34:10 Red: recovery mode 35:25 Always check in before you look 37:52 Building the morning ritual 39:09 Biofeedback, dosed by zone 40:31 The takeaway How to calculate HRV CV 1. Take the natural log of each morning's RMSSD. Use the log, not the raw number: on raw RMSSD the same week reads several times higher, and the zones below assume the log. 2. Over the last seven days, divide the standard deviation of those values by their mean. 3. Multiply by 100. The result is a percentage. How to read it These are working guardrails, not validated cut points. Read them alongside resting heart rate, and alongside how you feel. 0 to 8 percent, green. Your nervous system is keeping up with its load. Train. 9 to 15 percent, yellow. Proceed with caution. Consider dialing down intensity or duration, or adding a recovery session. Above 15 percent, red. Genuine instability. Recovery mode. Check in subjectively first, every time. You can be green and feel off, or red and feel primed. Neither one overrides the other automatically. Show notes: theresilientengine.com/media/hrv-cv The app: theresilientengine.com Ohm: ohm.health, code DRJAY Dr. Jay T. Wiles is a clinical health and performance psychologist and the creator of Nervous System Resiliency Training.

  3. Oct 6

    Resonance Breathing 101: Train Your HRV, Don't Chase It

    Episode one argued that almost every nervous system technique being sold right now produces state change rather than trait change. This is the follow up, and it names the tool. Resonance breathing is the practice Dr. Jay Wiles would keep if he had to give up every other one. It is also, strangely, the one almost nobody outside academic psychophysiology is teaching. Every popular nervous system creator will walk you through the physiological sigh, box breathing, or 4-7-8. Those are state tools. They answer the question of how to feel better in the next ninety seconds. None of them answer how to raise the floor. You have probably heard someone say to breathe at six breaths a minute. That number is not folklore. Your body holds blood pressure steady through a reflex loop called the baroreflex, and the full loop takes about ten seconds to run. Six breaths a minute is five seconds in and five seconds out, which is that same ten seconds. Breathe at the speed of your own blood pressure control system and your heart rate begins swinging up and down with your breath in far bigger arcs than normal. That is the vagus nerve being worked, the same way a muscle gets worked. Six is the average rather than the answer. Most adults sit somewhere between four and a half and six and a half, and this episode covers three different protocols for finding your own: the original stepped assessment developed by Paul Lehrer at Rutgers, the newer sliding method, and a dynamic approach that ignores what your rate was last time. Also in this episode: the Soviet space program origin of all of this, why chasing a higher HRV number is usually chasing genetics, where the research actually sits, and the dose that produces change. It is smaller than people expect. Four or more days a week, eight to twelve minutes in a single unbroken session, six to eight weeks before any of it is readable. Disclosure Ohm is a company I work for and helped develop, and I use a discount code for it in this episode. The Resilient Engine app is mine as well. I talk about both here because they are what I actually use, and you should weigh what I say about them with that in mind. Nothing in this episode was paid for by anyone. Chapters 00:00 Why almost nobody teaches this 03:08 What resonance actually is 05:43 Cosmonauts, and the move that made it work 08:08 A word from Ohm 10:13 Paul Lehrer, and finding one person's rate 11:34 HRV is not a vanity metric 13:20 The nervous system gym 14:01 The baroreflex, and what it is for 17:01 Why six breaths a minute is not arbitrary 21:15 What the research actually shows 22:25 The original protocol, step by step 24:27 Why taller people breathe slower 24:59 Newer and more precise methods 27:20 A method that ignores your last result 29:28 Practising without the hardware 36:49 How often, and for how long 40:10 A word from Thrive Wellness 42:09 Why past twenty minutes stops paying 43:21 What to measure, and it is not average HRV 44:00 Six to eight weeks before you judge it 45:46 The violin Links Show notes: https://theresilientengine.com/media/resonance-breathing/ The app: https://theresilientengine.com

  4. Sep 29

    So Much Nervous System B.S....

    Nervous system care has become a buzzword and most of what is circulating about it is wrong. Dr. Jay Wiles is a clinical health and performance psychologist who has spent his career measuring physiology in high performers, and this first episode is his case against the noise. The core argument: almost every technique being sold right now produces state change, not trait change. State change is real and useful. It is what gets you back down after someone cuts you off in traffic. But it is transient, and there is little evidence that repeating it changes the underlying system. Trait change is the adaptation that lasts, and it is different training. Also in this episode: why stress is inherently good rather than something to eliminate, what the baroreflex actually does, where the evidence for the popular techniques runs out, and a technique that costs nothing and lets you feel your own vagal brake working in real time. Chapters 00:00 Why this show exists 01:53 The money being spent on nervous system technology 02:40 There is no magic elixir 03:17 Ohm, and why Jay uses it 06:05 I might be wrong, and here is my take anyway 07:10 State change is not trait change 10:00 What psychophysiology actually studies 10:58 Stress is inherently good 13:17 The baroreflex, and why stability is the point 18:06 Where the evidence runs out 24:06 A free technique, using your carotid pulse 25:51 Respiratory sinus arrhythmia and finding your rate 30:02 Where to go next More at https://theresilientengine.com/media/episode-one/ DISCLOSURE Ohm, discussed at 03:17, is my own company. I built it, which is exactly why I talk about it here. Nobody paid for that segment.

  • 4 Episodes

About

A show about the nervous system, human performance, and what the measurement industry keeps getting wrong. Dr. Jay T. Wiles is a clinical health and performance psychologist who has spent his career measuring physiology in high performers. Most of what circulates about nervous system health is noise, and most of what is being sold trains state change, which is transient, rather than trait change, which lasts. Solo episodes work through the model piece by piece: resonance, sleep, attention, load, and what the wearable on your wrist is and is not telling you. Interviews bring in the researchers and practitioners who actually run the data. Reading the gauge is not training the engine.

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