2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/84327It is shown that the distribution of low variability periods in the activity of human heart rate typically follows a multi-scaling Zipf's law. The presence or failure of a power law, as well as the values of the scaling exponents, are personal characteristics depending on the daily habits of the subjects. Meanwhile, the distribution function of the low-variability periods as a whole discriminates efficiently between various heart pathologies. This new technique is also applicable to other non-linear time-series and reflects these aspects of the underlying intermittent dynamics, which are not covered by other methods of linear- and nonlinear analysis.4 pagesMedical PhysicsData Analysis, Statistics and ProbabilityQuantitative Biologytext