Validation of the use of heart rate variability measurements during meal intake in humans

Food intake is an essential function for a living organism. Analyzing food intake provides an estimation of a healthy or unhealthy lifestyle of a person. Misbalanced eating behavior often is a result from psychological disturbances like mental stress. To plan a proper therapy, the reasons for this misbalance have to be investigated. As the activity of the autonomous nerve system (ANS) affects food intake, this activity should be monitored in combination with food intake to get a deeper insight on eating disorders. This could help to understand the complex interactions between different eating stimuli and food intake. However, the ANS itself is affected by food intake as well. To quantify this influence, ECG recordings of 81 participants were taken before, during and after a short meal session. Heart rate variability (HRV) values were calculated as a measurement of ANS activity and analyzed. From the recordings, clusters could be built based on the trends of the HRV parameters SDNN, RMSSD, pNN50 and total power. In the biggest cluster, the values of these parameters tend to decrease during food intake and increase afterwards. In a second cluster, these HRV values increased from the resting period to the eating period and from the eating period to the second resting period. This showed that food intake influences the ANS activity in a defined way.