Your smartwatch is lying to you
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- čas přidán 4. 06. 2024
- Many leading brands of smartwatch are outright lying to users about resting heart rate, providing us with misleading numbers that make us seem far fitter than we actually are. So I decided to get to the bottom of these resting heart fakes, with a bit of help from CZcams’s Dr @MedlifeCrisis.
You might also enjoy the previous video in this series, in which Rohin and I discuss the most important number for your health: • The most important num...
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:59 Dropping some beats
03:17 Am I crazy-super-fit?!
04:18 Why lie?
06:47 Sleeping heart rate
Sources and further reading
Sleeping vs resting heart rate in 11 teenage athletes journals.plos.org/plosone/art...
The study I mention comparing the resting and sleeping heart rate for predicting all-cause mortality academic.oup.com/eurheartj/ar...
Links at which various manufacturers state how their ‘resting’ heart rate values are calculated:
• Apple Watch support.apple.com/en-us/HT204666
• Garmin www.garmin.com/en-GB/garmin-t... but I also found this page support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq... which states ‘Daily RHR is calculated using the lowest 30 minute average in a 24 hour period.’ Though this doesn’t specifically target when you’re asleep, the lowest 30-minute average will almost certainly come from sleepytime…
• WHOOP www.whoop.com/thelocker/resti...
• Oura ouraring.com/blog/resting-hea...
• Fitbit are super-vague about this and don’t seem to have any official information about this. But I enjoyed a quote in this paper looking at Fitbit users’ resting heart rate data, which states audaciously that ‘RHR was calculated by a proprietary formula’. It’s kind-of incredible to me that you can publish something so explicitly intransparent-especially in a journal like PLOS ONE that champions open science, open data and open code! journals.plos.org/plosone/art...
And finally…
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If you thought you’d seen the last of Dr Rohin ‘Medlife Crisis’ Francis and his magnificient moustache, think again. And I’ve actually made more Medlife content since this vid so check out the smartwatches playlist for me of me and Rohin chatting wearables: czcams.com/play/PLg0VbZ0kyCHl0yKBAQZ0NaI-Gxax6_0oX.html
Really enjoying this series - could I ask, what software/apps were used in conjunction with the Polar H10 to gather the RHR data?
@@MacellaioNero Thanks, glad to hear you’re enjoying these! :) For the Polar, I used this great Android app to collect all the data as massive CSVs: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.j_ware.polarsensorlogger I did the analysis with some home-made R scripts which I’m planning to tidy up and share at some point…
@@DrAndrewSteele Thanks so much!
HRV is what is used by Garmin for the stress level as I understand. I'm looking forward this video. Garmin seem to give this indicator a high value: Their "body battery " rate of descent seems based on that.
I liked what this guy does, he is measuring many kinds of smart watches and compares that with a Polar chest strap:
czcams.com/video/bEM1m7OdlyY/video.htmlsi=xHzQUsK7Y0V8Y-uP
That moustache has it's own resting heart rate.
do you think he could fly with that thing if we go him going fast enough?
I'd really like to know. Seems like it might be able to produce enough lift 😊
I think it's also prehensile!
Worryingly, there might be refugees hiding there…
Boom boom
😂😂
You can find more clarification on Apple's RHR figure in their 'Health' app. Specifically, it says "Your resting heart rate is the average heart beats per minute measured when you've been inactive or relaxed for serval minutes." and continues with "Resting heart rate does not include your heart rate while you're asleep and is validated for users over the age of 18 years."
In that case it's just straight up inaccurate, right? His wakeful resting heart rate is far from 44 bpm, so if that's what it's supposed to be measuring, it's completely off.
@@MrAwawe my apple watch has never said mine was that low this dude is doing something fishy
@@davidbraswell1481 have you measured your actual resting heart rate and compared it to the results from the apple watch? Andrew is quite fit, which will exacerbate the issue. Maybe you're getting 52 while your actual resting heart rate is 60.
@@davidbraswell1481 Yes, this guy is lying to invalidate Apple for... reasons, rather than the notoriously inaccurate measurements from a wearable just happened to be inaccurate when he checked. Legit take, well done.
I came here to say this. But the strange thing is, I had a Garmin for a few years. When I bought my Apple Watch my resting heart-rate figure increased from around 52bpm to around 60bpm.
Whenever I go to the Doctor's office, my heart rate is like 20-30 BPM over what it is normally. I don't want to tell them that it's because all the nurses that work there are ridiculously attractive and I'm trying very hard not to say anything too stupid
They aren’t there to date you and giving them bad information will only hurt you.
There is something called White coat syndrome - you get nervous when seeing a doctor because you are concerned about what he/she may find. You just proposed an alternative explanation, at least for men :)
Amazing breakdown of all the data points, you've displayed them all fantastically. I've gotta say, I really do think the the 'cynical' reason you started with is the real reason. But yes, I accept the alternative that it's just simpler to measure overnight, however unlike the cardiac monitors we tend to use for patients, wearable devices have a major extra feature - accelerometers. Surely it would be really easy to find a 5 minute period with minimal activity and then use that for RHR. And maybe repeat several times.
I think sleeping HR is a perfectly good metric to track (as you suggest), but people should be made aware of the difference. We've been focusing on the low end, but I would hate people ignoring 90bpm overnight because they think it's in the normal range of 60-100. If someone's HR is that high at night, I'd recommend getting checked for things like sleep apnoea etc.
Thanks, doc! And very good point about patients at the higher end-it’s definitely even worse at 90 bpm! And totally agree about the accelerometers, in fact that’s exactly what I did to split the heart rate data up into active, resting and asleep…I used the Fitbit step counter and found every point where no steps were registered for at least five minutes. It wasn’t rocket surgery.
UwU doctoru-san
Samsung watches do exactly that. And the app shows when the measurement was taken/chosen, so you can judge for yourself if the measurement was correct.
That is what apple
Does, it has resting and sleeping heart rate en even walking heart rate.
I've been wearing a Fitbit for over 3 years, and I believe that the Fitbit resting heart rate (RHR) feature is useful for two reasons. 1). Monitoring your RHR over the past year can indicate whether your health is improving or deteriorating. For instance, I quit consuming caffeine six months ago and noticed my RHR gradually decreasing. When I contracted COVID-19 three months ago, my RHR skyrocketed during the 10-day period, even while I was asleep. As my RHR began to decline, I started recovering from COVID-19. 2). I also check the lowest heart rate during my sleep, as I find it helpful in assessing my overall well-being. I've noticed that my lowest heart rate decreases as my body becomes healthier. In my opinion, the exact RHR number doesn't matter; what's important is observing the trend, whether it's going up or down, as it provides valuable insight into your health.
yes correct but , Apple is correct too, you just need folks to know how to use the watch......as most don't even show or talk about sleep focus ..which is very important !!!! for more metrics!!
Yep, I too have noticed that each time I get COVID, my resting and sleeping heart rate shoot way up until I begin to recover. I've seen this happen dramatically over the course of a single night, from 100 down to 70 (I'm usually in the 50s).
It would seem a bit strange for heart rate to gradually decrease from ceasing to consume caffeine. Any effect from caffeine should be gone pretty quickly.
while not backed by any data, my theory as to why the clinical world has settled on 60-100 instead of 50-90 as their RHR range, is because of the lack of time in a clinic setting. they take your heart rate & blood pressure after having gotten up, spoken with the nurses, maybe gotten nervous, walked around, etc. they don't have time to let you sit for 10 minutes in a stress-free environment just to get your heart rate.
Might be true
Great clear video man! Conclusion; Don’t trust the number, trust the trend… Going up or down indicates more than the actual number. Same for body fat % on scales if you’d ask me :)
As a cardiologist I can tell you *all peripherals* (including BP monitors) under-count the true *heart rate* (i.e. the number of times the heart contracts). This is different to the *pulse rate* How can this be true? Well even fit people get ectopic beats (VPC, PVCs etc) which cause a cardiac contraction, but not a strong enough pulse wave to register peripherally. I'm sure each device has a different threshold for detecting weaker pulse waves. Furthermore, these devices use temporal smoothing - some up to 10 beats at a time. That is why you don't see an instantaneous jump from 60bpm to 100bpm like you would on an ECG. The number is smoothed over time and can result in varying heart rates at any given time.
Interesting, I knew it was smoothed during the signal processing (you might enjoy the video I made with Steve Mould about how the peripheral measurements work! czcams.com/video/BFZxlauizx0/video.html ) but I’d not thought of the implications of ectopic beats on that… Presumably the pulse rate is what we’ve measured for decades in studies, because you’d not feel a pulse in the ectopic case?
@@DrAndrewSteele Correct. Same with palpating a pulse rate - ectopic beats are perceived as a pause rather than a beat. That's why ECG data is the correct method to assess heart rate. For example I often get my patients to purchase an AliveCor/Kardia device online or other ECG based peripheral (Withings or even Apple watch) to assess if necessary.
In practice it doesn't matter, because the previous alternative for people measuring at home was to take their pulse. What I measure when taking my pulse matches what my watch is telling me, so I consider the watch to be accurate enough for its intended purpose.
As a Garmin user I know that my resting heart rate is roughly 45 BPM and when I have went into the NHS for a check up they always correlate that my resting heart rate is in the 40's and they ask me if I am an athelete, which I do fitness train, so its not any other underlying cause. I was always told that Garmin has a 10% error factor built in.
So Garmin is telling you that is your sleeping heart rate, but incorrectly labelling it your RHR. Add around 10-20bpm to get your real resting heart rate.
@@KindredBrujah did you even read the part that he went to the doctor and the numbers were similar? 🤦
@@sepg5084 no they are NOT
@@sepg5084 my brand new Garmin can't even get that right!! the Garmin Epix 2 pro 51... only thing its good for is to connect it to a Polar h10 chest strap to get accurate data even the highest gps tracks are shitty. They are so bad they look like a crack head running from law and I am nowhere near builds.
@@sepg5084 Wasn't how I interpreted it, but it could be that, yeah.
That was a great video! I subscribed.
As Fitbit user for years, I found their RHR an actionable insight linked to general fitness, stress, recovery and stress.
And this insight really makes sense comparing to your own values, not someone else's.
Then once adding HRV it's even better as the later is really representative of recovery after exercise, getting sick and stress.
Very nice video mate, helps a lot, thank you. These watches are often giving people so much anxiety.
Good to know! My Garmin gives me a RHR in the low 50s, but during the day I rarely see it below 60.
I wonder how reproducible each platform is. If I'm working toward getting more fit, I could be persuaded that it doesn't really matter if my indicated RHR is 58 or 48, as long as the trend is headed downward.
This is definitely the right way to use them! Trends are reliable, even when the numbers themselves aren’t. If you’ve not seen it you might enjoy the previous video in this series where we discuss just that!
My feeling is that the conventional definition is lower quality. 5 minutes of rest just in from a long run probably settles at a significantly higher number than after a short burst of exercise or a previously rested state, etc. Overnight conditions might tend to be more consistent. Maybe?
This is my feeling too…would be great to have a few more studies to back it up! Sleep seems like a much more consistent physiological state in general… (cue furore from sleep scientists haha)
That's probably why we were always told to check our heart rate immediately after waking in the morning.
I used to have a Fitbit with a RHR reading 46 bpm for resting. I’m assuming that might be alright since I’m a runner in college but I have wondered the accuracy of it before.
Andrew, where do I find table of recovery heart rate? Which value would show that I’m in the clear? And is it also affected by age or is it affected by the peak value that occurred during exercising?
I love you bro! such useful work you are doing my G
Waking resting heart rate depends on what I've been doing. If I exercised in the past 30min, probably 80. If I've been sitting for an hour, probably 70. If I've been sitting for a few hours, probably 60. If I've been relaxing for a few days, probably min-50. My sleeping heart rate is nearly the same for every one of these situations. Low 50s.
How would you exercise before you wake up? Waking resting heart rate would be taken immediately after waking in the morning.
In the Apple health app, German version, I am told, that resting heart rate is validated for persons over 18 years old and is specifically not monitored during sleeping time. So, which is it?
My SE 2. gen Apple Watch doesn't seem to include sleeping data. I'm averaging around from 50 - 60 resting but I have below 50 when i'm sleeping.
Great video. Does anyone know of any fitness rings that rival oura?
What Fitbit did you use? The google watch takes measurements every second for heart rate so I wonder if that can be more accurate?
I did this testing with a Fitbit Charge 4, but I’ve since got a 5 and, being a nerd, wore both for a couple of weeks when I got the new one. To say they were identical in every way would be understating it… Not sure about Google watches but my understanding is that they’re very similar too. :)
The thing is, a traditional ‘taken by a doctor in an uncomfortable clinic chair’ HR is way less likely to be accurate - no-one is relaxing in that environment. So it might be more true to say “traditional medical science is lying to you about what a healthy HR is”. And it’s easy to verify smartwatch measurements. I’ve done this many times to verify that my ‘slobbed out of the sofa in the evening’ HR of 38 or something is accurate. It is. Just now I’ve just sat on the sofa and confirmed my watch’s reading of 43bpm. Which is actually 2 beats lower that it’s been showing me as my RHR this week and 2 beats higher than my overnight sleeping low.
So I’d say the watch is doing a good job, and it’s the doctors who need to catch up!
On my garmin watch it'll report a resting hr of say 58 but while im checking it in real time sitting on the couch I'll be looking at an hr of say 50. When the watch finishes syncing the reported resting hr may adjust down a bit or not.
Also, my nights sleeping are often filled with higher HRs than sitting on the couch. 70s and 80s rather than 50s. I dont know why that would be.
Knowing how and what your watch is measuring your RHR, your ECG, etc. is just as important as your readings.
Can you do the Samsung 4 Classic?
Thanks!
Very very interesting. Explains why I always thought my resting heart rate was 72/73 before I got a fitbit and it said it was 64.
My polar gritx pro shows low 40:s sometimes under 40. ive done ekg at hospital and that is also low in par with the watch and have been asked from the medical staff if my pulse always is so low. So it seems that my polar watch is accurate. I workout nearly daily.
Resting heart and hear rate is a tough number to measure health in my mind. For someone who's numbers are in the 60s while sitting but if i try to monitor it by myself it rises in the 90s. We things called emotions (anxiety) that can alter numbers. So sleeping heart rate seems like a better metric to me.. Mine is like 48-53 while sleeping.
I'm still wanting to know how Samsung Galaxy Watch compares to these. Would be nice to get a followup video on that one.
I have an Oura ring and I find the daily measurements pretty accurate after comparing it to a blood pressure cuff at multiple exercise intensity levels. I just take that resting heart rate level and use it as a minimum outlying heart rate rather than an average. I get the concern about the misleading averages though.
So if I never sleep with my Apple watch on, is the resting heart rate measurement going to be fairly accurate compared to the medical standard resting heart rate while awake?
This was my first thought as well, I don’t want any devices in my bedroom so I take off my apple watch, in fact I take it off around 7 pm.
I don’t know actually! It would be interesting to test. The week I borrowed the Apple Watch for, I wore it 24/7 for MAXIMUM DATA but perhaps it would’ve given more reliable numbers if I’d taken it off at bedtime… Maybe if I get hold of one again I’ll try it. :)
I own none of these devices…now I’m not worried that I haven’t.
Haha
as I sit here watching your video, I decided to look at my Fitbit Sense. It's reading about 61-62. That's pretty much exactly what it records my resting heart.
in apple health app, when you look at resting heart rate. its written that' its measured when you are at rest for a couple of minutes. and that its not a sleep measurement. so I think apple is doing a good job. my Garmin epix pro measures during the night. but in my case they provide the same resting heart rate.
This is amazing content and is appreciated
My Fenix 7 gives RHR of 47. It’s roughly that when I’m sleeping. But it’s saying that it is that now, I’m chilling out on here. Did the old count BPM for 15 seconds and multiply by 4 trick and had 48. So mine is pretty accurate, but is it strange that my sleeping heart rate isn’t lower than my awake resting heart rate?
when is the resting heartrate supposed to be measured?
just when you're awake and idle not doing anything
or while sleeping
because my mi band shows 55-53 bpm when most of the time i get 80-90 bpm
When you’re awake and have been sat or lying still for about five minutes :)
When I was in the height of cross-country season, my Garmin watch said my heart rate was in the 60s while sleeping, but low 40s when awake
I recently upgraded from a Garmin Venu 2+ to a Forerunner 965 and voila! my RHR jumped from 52 to 63. So you cant even compare the results within one brand unfortunately.
For reference: I am sitting here on my desk for hours now with barely any significant activity today and currently my Hr is at about 60, which aledgidly would still put me in the "excellent"" category at age 40.
Nevertheless my heart rates are really high when training. Lactate threshold is at about 183 and max HR at 204.
So which is it now? am I fit or unfit? its all really confusing
Very informative 👌
As a determiner of cardiopulmonary health, recovery rate from stress to rest is far more instructive.
When do people have heart attacks? Do they have them when their heart rate is low during sleep or when their heart rate is high while shoveling snow?
fwiw: have both oura v3 and fitbit. Oura for sleep and Fitbit mostly for the day Don't really care about the number but the trend. When the trend changes I look for a reason.. Lowest night time heart rate, hrv, temp and resparation are my goto. usually alcohol, stress, infection or exercise. During the day both mostly agree closely somewhere in the 60s.
Very interesting results. If you use sleep tracking on the Apple Watch it specifically separates between Resting Heart Rate and Sleeping Heart Rate. And for me these are about 10 beats apart and in ranges that make sense and match my expectations (by measureing myself). So for me it does not seems to factor the time asleep into the calculations for RHR. But maybe the caveat is that you actually have to use the sleep tracking feature.
Exactly, my findings are the same. I think it suggests the video was made without full understanding of the product perhaps.
Just watched this video again today, and made me think about some of the different apps used to measure sleep.
They very rarely guess when I'm *actually* sleeping. So the "numbers" are not really to be trusted per-se.
But what I think is helpful is that the comparison is helpful! For instance, if one night is stays I slept more than the previous one, that is generally true, even if the actual number of hours are not accurate. So my question is... if we take those numbers as "arbitrary units", rather than "bpm" or "hours of sleep", is that more accurate/helpful to help people getting in better shape?
Interesting thought! I wonder if ‘arbitrary units’ might be too confusing to non-nerds, but I think emphasising the uncertainty in estimates and telling people to focus on the trend is good. It’s definitely true of sleep-my watches often get the details wrong, but the overall trend is usually instructive.
@@DrAndrewSteele By the way, I eventually stopped using those apps because instead of relying on my own internal feelings, I started relying on the app to decide if I had a good night sleep or not. 😅 "I feel refreshed, but the app says I slept 5 hours. So yeah, I kinda feel sleepy now that I think about it..."
@@AlanZucconi You are not alone! Studies show that people’s self-perceived tiredness can be affected by sleep data, even if it’s faked! twitter.com/statto/status/1635559652799791104
Don’t wear my watch when I sleep. Easy. Not sure they are as inaccurate as you say. My Garmin if anything puts my rhr higher than what I see rested. It’s tricky to put out content on these trackers. They are regularly updated in software and tweaked to be more accurate and they take time to ‘get to know you’. Comments here suggest they are pretty good. Glad to see you finally got a Garmin.
Garmin algorithm is described on their webpage. They average the lowest 30 minutes and add some percentage to that, can’t remember exactly. It gives me the result in mid 40s, but it’s not unusual for me to see readings in the mid 30s when I drink my morning coffee. A cardiologist gives me 44, as measured at a visit some time ago. In my case the number seems reasonably accurate.
My resting heart rate right now is 92 bpm, but my FitBit is telling me my RHR is 70bpm, which I’m guessing was while I was asleep. FitBit tells me that I’m super fit for someone my age (73), which I can tell you is blatantly incorrect.
Maybe to get a more accurate RHR I have to NOT wear my FitBit while I sleep?
I don't understand ... my Mi BAND 5 doesn't flatter me, on the contrary ... It "tells" me every day what the nurse told me after the ECG (you need to be carful otherwise you will not be here for long).
An interesting discussion. It wouldn’t be the first time that technology forces the well known medical gold standard to be reevaluated. One thing I would note, not mentioned in the discussion was the impact of “variable” HRV (heart rate variability) which could easily corrupt getting an accurate resting HR. Different manufacturers may well have chosen different algorithms to manage readings.
While we all need to be aware of the limitations of these devices, I push back on them as being “fake”
Thanks for your vids. They're interesting but I find them a bit confusing and unstructured and hard to follow...
I'm glad for this video because I'm not super fit and my Garmin says something about 46 bpm and I was starting to think I have a heart problem. when I sit still it is more reasonable about 55.
Great information
When I first got my garmin it seemed to use the lowest value over 24 hours, almost always sleeping but I noticed if I had a high number from a bad night of sleep I could drop the number meditating in the afternoon. Now it seems strictly a night time measurement. So I suppose there is some risk of the algorithm changing and moving your numbers up or down. If you are on the edges of either extreme you should do some follow up.
It’s been much easier to measure a resting hr after sitting 5 minutes and quickly repeatable in a medical setting rather than having someone monitor you sleeping for 8 hours so it will remain more important. Garmin could easily give you both sleeping and resting hr and maybe they will update it.
Last note, I got the garmin blood pressure monitor and it also gives you a hr for the test which you do after sitting still for 5 minutes. Looking forward to the video on blood pressure.
Interesting how the algorithms seem to have changed over the years! I only got my Garmin a few months ago so it’s been consistent so far…but one frustrating thing about it is that it only seems to store your step count in 15-minute intervals (I have no idea why) which could make it pretty hard to calculate resting heart rate retrospectively…
Using my sleeping resting heart rate, max heart rate by age and the Karvonen method helped me calculate my most accurate training zones, especially Zone 2. Far from perfect to use this method or train by heart rate zones, but it worked fairly well.
Is a low RHR always a sign of fitness? Could you have a higher RHR than someone but still be considered fitter?
Interesting. I use a Apple Watch 7 and do not wear it at night. My resting heart rate that shows on my apple watch is pretty accurate. It shows typically in the 42-47 range. When I am in (college) class, sometimes I just have it on the heart rate app and it will be exactly that. I have done some informal lab tests where I lay down or sit and it will also be in the same range. Laying down typically results in the high 30s while awake and talking.
A good video that Apple should review and consider the implications.
They should always be trying to be more accurate with their measurements.
I wonder how to send it to Apple
I find the anatomy of that skeleton a bit disturbing!
My problem is that my watch reports heart rates almost double the measured rate. This leads to double the kcal usage predicted by Google Fit. From my own research, Google Fit is outputting a good estimate based on heart rate. But the heart rate measured by my watch sensors is too high.
My smartmatch is lying to me. Damn you garmin.
There is no standard for resting heartrate. Interesting.
Manufacturers don't tell how their algorhitm works. That's annoying.
But they do tell if they use sleeping heart rate. Ok, well they are not lying then, are they?
My garmin has always been pretty good when compared to traditional "lay down in bed for 5 minutes with the monitor on". I would hardly call it misleading. Taking the absolute minimum it hits during the night is silly for reliability reasons, but I find nightly average coincides very closely with the traditional definition. I am using the top of the line garmin.
I wonder what percentage of people wear their watch at night? I pop mine on the charger at night and wear it when I wake up. Is this a major problem, you can check your resting heart rate in real time when you've been sat for a while?
Interesting question, a few other commenters say they don’t wear it at night and (perhaps as a result?) get more normal-seeming RHR values. I don’t think it is a problem though-you can still keep an eye on the numbers. :)
@@DrAndrewSteele thanks for the reply!
interesting, as I wear a basic Garmin watch, and its RHR number is consistently 7-10bpm above my measured RHR of either relaxing for 5 min or upon waking.
...to your other point though. In my data sets I have markers for which period is being measured by which device because like so many things we aren't really getting apples for apples comparisons across manufacturers of biometric data like this.
The resting hr garmin repots is not the lowest number registered over night, it’s usually a few beats above that as I assume it has to maintain that number for some amount of time instead of just one brief moment.
I think I've read that it's the lowest average HR over a period of 30 minutes
Ditto my Garmin Epix Gen 2 definitely doesn't report the lowest number but some sort of lowest average period as it's usually about 2bpm higher than the low.
I think you’re right about this-when I was looking for info on how Garmin calculates RHR I also found this page support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=F8YKCB4CJd5PG0DR9ICV3A which states ‘Daily RHR is calculated using the lowest 30 minute average in a 24 hour period.’ So it sounds like it is an average, and the lowest 30-minute period will almost certainly be while you’re asleep…
I prefer to subtract my lowest heart rate from my maximum heart rate over the day. Divide this range by 6 to get the standard deviation. My estimate of my RHR is then RHR =Lowest HR + 1 Standard deviation. This is based on the assumption that my heart rate will follow a normal distribution. This way of calculating my RHR is more consistent across the various heart rate monitors that I owned.
I have a Garmin Forerunner 55. I've tested it against taking my pulse upon waking for 60 seconds and it's spot on.
My Samsung watch and fitbit say my resting heart rate has been around 54 to 62 over the last 2 years. When I manually take my hr when I'm just sitting, relaxing, etc., it seems pretty close to accurate. However, my sleep hr has been as low as 29bpm.
Interesting that your Samsung seems to be on the money! I didn’t have one to test and their website is also super-vague about how they calculate it but it sounds like they could be one of the good guys!
@@DrAndrewSteele It's my Samsung that says my sleeping hr has been as low as 29. I am not out of shape, but I'm not marathon runner. It's actually concerned me as that's one heart beat every 2 seconds!!! In general, my Samsung hasn't been very accurate compared to my chest strap or my fitbit so I question the accuracy of the sleeping rate too.
@@henrytuttle Interesting! It’s possible that 29 is a mistake (because of how the processing is done they sometimes lock onto half the actual heart rate, so 58 is maybe more plausible?) but equally it does seem that hearts do bonkers things once in a while… :D
Dear Andrew....Many many many many many million times many thanks for your video. You finally hit the light switch for me to understand the RHR Value of my Garmin. Sometimes I think that the documentation for the smart watches are so low grade that it's even more confusing. You get a ton of data but it's hard to understand all of it and build a big pictue out of it. Ok, Garmin etc. have their Body Battery, etc. to give the user an easy access to the data in a overall context. But when I checked my RHR in the last days I really got nervous when seeing 45 or so as RHR. I'm by no means fit or even an athlet, but I take a Beta-Blocker. So I thought that maybe this has to be reduced to compensate the sport effects I have. But all doctors said that it's ok. I was so confused. But now that I know what the RHR really is I know that my value is more likely higher. And when I "scan" trough my day HR data I can see that I'm more in the 55 to 60 bracket. So everythin ok. But I was worried. Your video helped me a lot to understand all of that. So thank you for calming my mind and understanding my metrics better. You got a new subscriber. ;)
Thanks so much for your comment! Amazing to hear when someone gets real-world impact from a video. :)
I agree it would be much better if the manufacturers made the documentation clearer-I understand some of it has to be trade secrets etc, but calculating resting heart rate is really important for people’s health.
Good luck and thanks for the sub!
Just looked up what my watch(Garmin) based my resting heat rate on, and they do a 24hr average 🙃
Ahaaaa, so when I changed from whoop to a aemin last month... My resting heart rate went down with on average 8 beats. So unfortunately not magically more fit.... That's a shame 🤣 thanks for this great video
Haha sorry!! Glad to be of service :)
I don't know if it is still the case but when I was comparing FitBit vs. Garmin RHR calculations several years ago it also seemed that FitBit does a decay function rather than just taking a one day value. This lead to much smoother variations compared to what Garmin would give in times where the RHR was fluctuating a lot. IIRC it was something like a one week smoothing. I'd rather have the day value directly and do the trending myself if I so choose. Again FitBit may not be doing this any longer.
I could have *sworn* somewhere at some point in the Fitbit app told me that RHR was calculated with the first instance of being at rest after waking up; usually the few minutes you're laying in bed awake. Oftentimes if I check my heartrate first thing after waking up (since my alarm is one my Fitbit), I find it's in the low to mid 50s. But after a few minutes on my phone, it's in the low to mid 60s - and this correlates to the number I see when I open the Fitbit app.
Then the watch is doing it correctly. Immediately after waking, before getting out of bed, is the best time to check.
I suppose the follow-up question is - do we factor this difference between resting and sleeping heart rate into our fitness thresholds on the device or has it already done so in its algorithm? How annoying.
Mi band is accurate?
I use fitness tracker measurements as a RELATIVE value, i know they are not perfect. But you can compare day to day and make some conclusions how your particular lifestyle influence your heart rate etc...
old school here... I take out my stopwatch, find my pulse, start the stopwatch as I start counting my pulse, stop the watch as the count reaches 30, and divide 1800 by seconds it took to reach 30. May not be able to monitor my heart BPM constantly, but as long as there is a watch, I can measure my BPM.. LOL
When I exercised a lot, I found my resting heart rate could be lower than my sleeping heart rate, in fact it could be 100-110 for hours while sleeping, only dropping to 60 and below just as I was to wake up. I got down to 41 BPM in the mornings, just sitting at the computer with some coffee. But stop excercising and resting hear rate goes up quickly, after a few months I can't get below 60 anymore. I was doing about 10 hours of cardio per week before, always on the edge between aerobic and anaerobic. My watch just reports the actual measured heart rate, once per hour or when I check manually.
rates that high during sleep is concerning, might want to get that checked
I’ve been using an Apple Watch since 2021, when I was about 75 lbs heavier than I am now. I looked back at the RHR trend over the last 3 years, and the graph shape looks nearly identical to my weight loss graph. In 2021 my average RHR was near 60, then dropped to below 50 after losing all the weight in 2022, when I also greatly increased my activity levels. As of this year it’s in the low 40’s. I do keep my watch on at night so I know it’s categorizing sleep HR separately. I just checked with a pulse oximeter and the number matches my watch’s real time measurement exactly (44 at the moment). So I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of my Apple Watch’s RHR numbers.
I basically ignore the actual value my Garmin watch gives me - except the variance. I found out the hard way (Covid) that the resting heart beat value tracked very accurately the disease progress and my recovery from it.
Mine too, if anything the Fitbit I was wearing at the time _underestimated_ my covid heart rate spike because I think it does some kind of day-to-day smoothing on resting heart rate values… I was amazed how high it went though!
Sleep heart rate could also be significantly more accurate in people who take in caffeine during the day, or take other medications that affect their heart rate.
I found that my awake RHR differs vastly depending on the time of day and what I've been doing in the last (few) hour(s). In the morning it's in the low 50s, after lunch more like 60-80 depending on what and how much I ate. In the hours before I go to bed it can drop significantly below 50 again. So measuring by 'sitting down and resting for 5 minutes' would also give me a wide range of numbers.
That’s a really interesting idea, and we must all have loads of accidentally collected data throughout the day thanks to watches…I’d be interested to see how much mine varies now!
Did you measure it with a strap or with the watch? Cause imho the hr calculated by watches is highly unrealiable
@Andrew Steele Would love to see you dive deeper into that 🙂 To elaborate a bit further: my RHR tends to be lowest if I haven't eaten in a while, haven't had a hard workout in the past few hours and wasn't stressed by anything else. If I'm doing a 40 minutes threshold run and eat a whole bunch of fat and protein rich foods afterwards, my RHR will be at around 80 for hours, even if I'm just lying around doing nothing. Same goes for stressful work days or being around a lot of people all day as an introvert 😉
So I guess there is no 'one waking RHR', but instead one needs to take the circumstances into account. Maybe that's the main reason the sleeping RHR might be a better or more stable indicator, allthough it's not completely stable as well of course (for example due to drinking alcohol in the evening, again eating too much etc.).
@@mikestunt77 I have a Fenix 7 and a HRM Pro-Plus which I mainly use for running. I compared the readings and for me, the Fenix delivers very accurate and reliable HR data when I'm just walking, sitting or sleeping. What the OHRM really struggles with are intervals with very quickly rising and falling HR or a lot of wrist movement (for example when I do push-ups).
@@gizamaluke Ha! Being an introvert is…free exercise?! I’ve mainly noticed that my heart rate gets very low if I stay up beyond my normal bedtime, which I guess is due to my physiology going sleep-wards? And it probably is elevated post-exercise too… Fascinating and confusing stuff!
I was always told that resting heart rate should be measured first thing in the morning before getting out of bed. On that basis my Apple Watch, albeit a model from several years ago, is accurate.
A good takeaway from this video is that health science is dynamic and that different studies say different things. If you have concerns about your health, you should likely pursue professional opinions for your specific situation if possible!
I have an active lifestyle; I walk 3-4 km a day and try to eat healthy. My Apple Watch gave me Low HR notification while sleeping on 2 occasions which led me to goto ER and get ECG, Echocardiogram, and Holter Monitor done. They all turned out to be normal but it increased my anxiety so much that now I have to take anxiety medication and I am really wary of my heart.
Apple Watch is a curse for me. I have stopped wearing it.
Apple Watch always tells me my resting heart rate is in the high 40s or low 50s. But then it says 59, measured 6m ago. I go with that 😊
Garmin is best as they don't charge you a monthly subscription to keep capturing and accessing all your own data. So no reason for them to 'flatter' you by trying to give a lower number. Yes, they may give a total based on night rate, but you can simply look at your own resting heart rate WHILE RESTING rather than relying on the device to give you a total figure.
You should do a collaboration with the Quantified Scientist on this topic. He rigorously tests the smart watches.
Definitely on the to-do list, I love his videos :)
There are PLENTY of definitions that do say to use the sleep number AND I recently wore a holter monitor and THAT also recorded my resting heart rate as the lowest during the day (sleeping). So someone should tell the medical profession they are doing it wrong according to CZcams
As we explain in the video, we’re talking about the many long-term studies that have identified resting heart rate as a predictive factor for disease. Very interested if you know of any of those that use sleeping HR. :)
@@DrAndrewSteele The definition of resting heart rate was developed long before there was a smart anything to measure it 24 / 7 other than medical equipment. The definition has not kept up with the times and technology. When it was originally established people did not have a way to know their rate while sleeping because the sleep part :) so a definition was developed for people to use when they were awake that applied to everyone. Now we have the technology to know the lowest rate and to be able to trend the lowest rate over multiple days, weeks, months, and years. So I believe that if you can show over time, that nightly your lowest rate achieved is x over a period of time then THAT can be considered your true resting HR. It meets all the other definition qualifiers as far as feeling well, at rest, calm, no stress etc. There certainly are no studies either to show that we ARE being misled by using it. There are no studies of people with wearables that have sleeping HR in the 40's and 50's are at more risk of anything because their HR when they open their eyes and take it lying in bed for instance is x number of beats different as the body ramps up for activity. I think we are pretty safe to say that if the 'normal' range is 60-100 of HR then if your trend over time while sleeping is lower AND your normal while awake is 60-100 then you are on the healthier side of the equation for no other reason that EVERYTHING that does less repetitions over time takes longer to wear out.
I’m too smug about my low resting heart rate to share!
What about if you dont wear watch at night. I only use my Apple Watch in the day and it always says my resting heart rate is between 65-90~. Is that more accurate?
Maybe! I only had an Apple Watch for a week, and I wore it 24/7 to get as much data as possible, so I don’t know! Maybe next time I have one I’ll try it…
same values here, its probably better to set your own baseline and correlate changes with that, in Apple watch HRV measurement is even worse
I knew I was doing badly but then I looked at your graph....
I suppose I should buy an Apple watch & it can tell me my resting heart rate is in the low sixties...
Old school, wake up and find your pulse and gosh, there it is!
I see the RHR value from my watch as a not totally accurate benchmark. I can see from one day to the next what is going on, even if I don't take the exact number as gospel. For instance it suggests early to mid 50s but the two times I got covid that daily average crept into the early 60s. Took a few weeks and ramped up then back down. Both times the same.
I would like you to make next tests with a Huawei SmartWatch since a lot of people claims that it is very reliable and apparantley Huawei has been working really hard with medical certifications to get the most realiable measurenments.
CONGRATULATIONs!!! for the ring.. :D
Haha thanks!
Resting heart rate is only part of the metric for fitness. So when there is an inaccuracy for a single data point for an overall picture it should be scaled to its value to the picture of fitness. Simply put, if resting heart rate is 50% of ones fitness and maximum heart rate is the other 50%, then a 5% spread in readings for one of those values becomes less significant to the whole picture. Since we know that fitness is multi faceted, more than one data point, more than Resting heat rate and maximum heart rate, then the discrepancy in sensor values is less critical. Still, this is a good observation, some people are looking for 1% improvement and this certainly illustrates that could be the case.
Coros explicitly mentions RHR is measured when you are inactive while awake 👌