Health, 2016, 8, 959-970
Published Online July 2016 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/health
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/health.2016.810099
How to cite this paper: Komazawa, M., Itao, K., Kobayashi, H. and Luo, Z.W. (2016) Measurement and Evaluation of the
Autonomic Nervous Function in Daily Life. Health, 8, 959-970. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/health.2016.810099
Measurement and Evaluation of
the Autonomic Nervous Function
in Daily Life
Makoto Komazawa
1,2
, Kenichi Itao
2,3
, Hiroyuki Kobayashi
3
, Zhiwei Luo
4
1
Graduate School of System Informatics, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan
2
WINFrontier Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan
3
JUNTENDO University, Tokyo, Japan
4
Organization of Advanced Science and Technology Kobe University, Kobe, Japan
Received 15 June 2016; accepted 12 July 2016; published 15 July 2016
Copyright © 2016 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Abstract
We developed a smart-phone based system to measure the activities of autonomic nervous system
during everyday life. Using commonly marketed smart phones, by touching your fingertips on the
phone’s camera over a short time of about 30 seconds, it will detect changes in the brightness of
the blood flow and in turn analyze your heart rate variability. By using this system, about 100,000
cases were measured and from this large amount of data regarding heart rate variability, we eva-
luated the autonomic nervous function in their daily life. As a result, for the correlation between
autonomic nervous system and age, we found that as the increase of age, the total power becomes
decreased and the sympathetic nervous system tends to increase between thirties and fifties. For
the correlation between autonomic nervous system and BMI (Body Mass Index), it is found that in
general, the higher the BMI, the lower the total power and the stronger the sympathetic nervous
system. In other words, people who are fat are lower about the total power and stronger about the
sympathetic nervous system. In addition, for the correlation between autonomic nervous system
and one day life, it is found that total power and sympathetic function tend to increase, while as
evening approaches, sympathetic function tends to become suppressed.
Keywords
Heart Rate Variability Analysis, Autonomic Nervous System, Age, BMI
1. Introduction
It is extremely important to check health conditions scientifically in daily life as Japan is facing a super-aging