Acute Changes in Heart Rate Variability to Glucose and Fructose Supplementation in Healthy Individuals: A Double-Blind Randomized Crossover Placebo-Controlled Trial
by Max Lennart Eckstein 1, Antonia Brockfeld 1, Sandra Haupt 1, Janis Ramon Schierbauer 1ORCID, Rebecca Tanja Zimmer 1, Nadine Bianca Wachsmuth 1, Beate Elisabeth Maria Zunner 1, Paul Zimmermann 1, Maximilian Erlmann 1, Barbara Obermayer-Pietsch 2ORCID, Felix Aberer 1,3 and Othmar Moser 1,3,
Received: 3 February 2022 / Revised: 16 February 2022 / Accepted: 20 February 2022 / Published: 21 February 2022
Simple Summary
In this study, we investigated the cardio-autonomic stress responses to the ingestion of liquid glucose, fructose, a combination thereof and a placebo in healthy individuals at rest. The cardio-autonomic response was more pronounced in all groups with carbohydrates compared to placebo indicating an increased cardio-autonomic stress response resulting in a reduced heart-rate variability. When investigating different levels of blood glucose, the findings showed a significant decline in heart-rate variability with increasing blood glucose levels. This was also seen with severely low levels of blood glucose. The speed of how quick blood glucose increased and decreased also impacted the cardio-autonomic response which further deteriorated heart-rate variability. These findings indicate that healthy human’s autonomic system responds quickly to changes in their blood glucose.