The Heart of Complexity

The Heart of Complexity

Superwave Theory, Heart Rate Variability in Disease and Health:
A Provocative New Idea

Irving Dardik, M.D.

Forget traditional "cause and effect" thinking. Forget the idea of a black box with inputs and outputs. Instead, we must think in terms of loops.
As a vascular surgeon, Dardik was working with parts. But he always thought about how they connect. Complexity theory is looking for a mathematical solution to those connections.

How marathon runner deaths led to awareness of superwaves.

Dardik was Chairman of the Olympic Sports Medicine Program. In 1985, his friend and Olympic Committee President Jack Kelly died suddenly during a long-distance run, just three weeks into his presidency.
The first Marathoner was Phidippedes, the messenger, who also died after a long run.
About that time, a book titled "Running without Fear" was published, an indication of the growing awareness of this problem.
Dardik resigned to devote his time to this one issue. Why were marathon runners, like FloJo, dying? Dardik's hunch: Athletes die during the recovery "cool-down" period. It was a simple and logical idea. Recovery from exercise is physiologically identical to meditation. Your hormones and oxygen flow lower, sometimes drastically. In exercise, getting to that state is very stressful on the body. It's all a wave of energy.
Dardik began to see all behaviors as waves of energy
expenditure and energy recovery. For example: Anxiety --> relaxation; Awake --> asleep; Hunger --> eating; Exercise --> recovery.
All chronic diseases are waves, too. Manic --> depression; Addiction high --> crash; Stress --> depression.

Disrupt the waves at your own risk! Health

Waves are part of our evolution. We were not designed to be long distance runners. We're designed to hunt at certain times, and take a siesta at others. As we shall see, this plays an important role in maintaining healthy waves.
As heart rate variability decreases, chronic disease increases. (See illustration below.) Note that you can see waves within waves within waves. This is a fractal structure. These fractals are organizing our body chemistry. These heart waves decrease and "flatten out" as we get older.
ADD is huge with kids right now. Dardik suggests that ADD kids are desperate for waves to be restored. That's why ADD kids can't just sit there.

Exploring the waves in a heartbeat

Heartbeats are always climbing up and down in these waves. We always see EKGs in a linear line. But nature doesn't produce graphs! Our body clocks are really waves, within waves.
As heart rate variability decreases, chronic disease increases. (See illustration below.) Note that you can see waves within waves within waves. This is a fractal structure. These fractals are organizing our body chemistry. These heart waves decrease and "flatten out" as we get older.
Is it possible to expand the variability of waves? It certainly is possible to make it flat, by stressing it out too hard.
Maybe this is how the placebo effect works. I'm affecting the shape of the waves. Same with relaxation. Macrobiotic diets too. It's also why fevers are good for you -- they make waves.
All organisms have life cycles. Antibodies are 100x more effective if they have periods of activation and periods of rest.
All of our medical texts plot everything out on a linear graph. The world was linear to Galileo, Newton and Descartes. But nature is waves to begin with.
Waves cluster at the peak. That's where they are condensed. I't's a pattern of order, then chaos, then order, then chaos.

What can we do with this information about waves?

An understanding of waves represents an opportunity for an individual to be empowered to influence their own health. Exercise, for example, restores this healthy complexity and regulates the energy from within.
There is now a computer program to analyze people, and identify these cycles within cycles. This can be measured down to the atomic level.
This is a way not just to reverse chronic disease... but to prevent.