Where your DNA places you among other people, and the studies behind it.
Not tailored to your result, and not medical advice
Build Aerobic Fitness: Regular cardiorespiratory exercise is the most powerful modifier of resting heart rate. Consistent aerobic training (running, cycling, swimming, brisk walking) raises cardiac stroke volume and vagal tone and remodels the sinoatrial node, lowering resting heart rate over weeks to months. Even modest gains in fitness are linked to cardiovascular benefit. Nature Communications
Manage Stress and Anxiety: Chronic psychological stress keeps sympathetic tone elevated and can raise resting heart rate. Relaxation techniques such as slow breathing, meditation, yoga, or progressive muscle relaxation promote parasympathetic activation and may lower heart rate over time. Tracking your baseline and not obsessing over short-term fluctuations is also part of a healthy approach. American Heart Association
Maintain a Healthy Weight: Excess body weight increases cardiac workload and is associated with a higher resting heart rate. A systematic review and meta-analysis found that weight loss in people with obesity was associated with a meaningful fall in resting heart rate. Combining weight loss with regular exercise tends to produce the greatest improvement. JACC: Heart Failure
Moderate Caffeine and Stimulant Intake: Caffeine and other stimulants can acutely raise heart rate and sympathetic activity. Individual responses vary with genetics and tolerance. National Academies Press (NCBI Bookshelf)
Track Your Resting Heart Rate: Monitoring resting heart rate over time gives a simple, noninvasive window into cardiovascular fitness. Check your pulse when you are calm and rested, or use a wearable to track daily trends. A gradually falling resting heart rate often reflects improving fitness, while a sudden, sustained rise can signal illness, overtraining, dehydration, or stress. American Heart Association
How much of this is genetic?
Genetics explains 50% of why people differ in this trait. The rest is environment, daily habits and chance.
Heritability estimate: Wang et al. 2015, Twin Res Hum Genet
Background and further reading
Resting heart rate (RHR) is the number of times your heart beats per minute while you are awake, calm, and at rest. It reflects the balance between sympathetic (accelerating) and parasympathetic (slowing) input to the heart's sinoatrial node, the natural pacemaker. For most adults a normal resting heart rate is 60-100 beats per minute, and well-trained endurance athletes are often as low as 40 bpm because their hearts pump more efficiently [1]. A lower resting heart rate is generally a marker of better cardiorespiratory fitness. In large population studies, a higher resting heart rate is associated with greater cardiovascular and all-cause mortality, and genetic evidence suggests at least part of this link may be causal [2].
Genetic Basis: Twin and family studies estimate the heritability of resting heart rate at roughly 40-60% [4]. Genome-wide association studies have steadily expanded the list of associated loci: a 2013 meta-analysis identified 21 loci [3], and a larger 2016 study in up to 265,046 people identified 64 loci, 46 of them new, that together explain about 2.5% of the variation in resting heart rate [2]. Implicated genes point to several biological themes, including cardiac development and contractility (MYH6, the alpha-myosin heavy chain), cell-to-cell electrical coupling (GJA1, connexin 43), ion-channel signalling (SCN10A), and metabolic regulation (GCKR) [2][3]. The sinoatrial pacemaker channel HCN4, which carries the so-called funny current, is a well-established regulator of heart rate and is downregulated by endurance training [5].
Modifiable Factors: Resting heart rate also responds to lifestyle. Regular aerobic exercise is the strongest modifier, lowering resting heart rate over weeks to months through a combination of increased vagal tone and intrinsic changes in the sinoatrial node [5]. Higher body weight and obesity tend to raise resting heart rate, and weight loss can lower it [1]. Chronic stress and anxiety, caffeine and other stimulants, dehydration, fever, and poor sleep can all push resting heart rate up [1], while prolonged physical inactivity and deconditioning raise it over time.
The published research behind your score, and the variants it draws on.
8 published scores from 5 studies
The heart rate score combines 8 polygenic scores drawn from 5 published studies.
American Heart Association All About Heart Rate (Pulse). American Heart Association (2024)
These traits are influenced by some of the same genes and variants as this one
Content updated August 2026.
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