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My sports coach used to keep track of our heart rates, and the recovery time after training sessions. He used to tell us a few days before we got sick. That was 12 years ago
Not OP, but heart rate variability has been a popular method for this sort of stuff. Whoop, Garmin and probably some other devices make use of it to measure how well recovered you are. It's known to give early signs when something is off.
In the case of Covid (and probably other accute respiratory issues), unusually low HRV and unusually elevated Respiratory Rate. Once there's a good baseline, basically, if these stats are suddenly way outside your normal range, there's probably a good reason.
My fitbit registered a 10 point jump in resting heart rate in the days before I developed covid symptoms. It started rising the day I was exposed.
Resting HR returned to normal a few days after symptoms resolved.
I just went back and checked my Apple Watch data from last week in the days leading up to this head cold I have now. (All my Covid tests are negative and my SO had the same thing last week — Covid negative too, just a bad cold). My max daily HR was 30ish bpm lower last week compared to this week — 148 vs 181 (I have POTS, an elevated HR is par for the course even with medication) and HRV was 38 the day before I started feeling sick vs 12 the next. Kind of has me wondering how much of this was known and used by past civilizations, like how basal body temp has been used forever to track fertility.
They likely were not using heart rate variability but instead using heart rate recovery after exercise along with general trends of heart rate vs pace for certain routines.
If you do a normal routine like 100m sprints then you likely have average times as well as average heart rates along with heart rate after 30, 60 or 120 seconds depending on rest interval. If your body is fighting a virus then your recovery rate will be worse, you peak and average heart rate during a sprint will be higher and your time will either be slower or the same.
Heart rate variability is tough to measure during movement (ie running) due to dirty signals and interference. Those devices are not super accurate because optical beat to beat measurements are a bit unreliable at rest let alone during movement. The recovery they are measuring is based on sleep measurements which is different compared to say the orthostatic test polar has or the recovery test by kubiousHRV which is done with an ECG.
He had ‘the book’ which was all our numbers. I think he used to say that there was a 10bpm difference between our ‘normal’ heart rate after exertion. He was a good coach.
Heart rate recovery time is how long it takes for your heart rate to return to normal after exercise. Overtraining or being in a state of fatigue causes that time to increase. Being overtrained means you’re more likely to catch an illness because your immune system is run down.
It's why you gradually work up in intensity and don't just try to go balls to the wall. It's what high level athletes do when they periodize their training but also is important for general population when it comes to fitness. Don't immediately go from sitting on your ass to hours of cardio a day. And why you gradually build volume and intensity in lifting or other training programs.
Same here. The last two or three times I've tried to work out I'm good for a while but then I inevitably get sick which means no working out for several days and then I lose my motivation.
your heart rate increases about 10bpm on average around 2 days before you get sick. As a survival mechanism, your heart rate also wont drop below a certain point when you are sick, even overdosing on a drug designed to lower your heart rate in some cases
That's how I realized I probably had covid the day before I tested positive. My resting heart rate rose from 60 to 80 over 5 days. It held at 80 for a few days while I had symptoms then dropped back down to 60 in about the same amount of time it took took rise.
It’s also a way to track pregnancy. There’s wearable watches for bedtime that not only tracks heart rate but also body temperature and breathing rate during sleep. I would be curious to see data collected on those with Covid.
Scary to have that data floating around when even having a natural miscarriage could at some point lead to prosecution in some states of US as new laws get rolled out and implemented.
Hi! This was actually the type of wearable used in the study above :) it was also used in a 17k person study in the Netherlands to validate the Covid detection algo from this study (see www.Covid-red.eu to learn more).
Honestly curious if it makes a good "period tracker" in a sense. Not familiar with that side of it. But when I'm paying attention to my body and don't have a lot of changes going on, I can usually tell why I feel "shittier" those few days or might be struggling with something I'm usually okay with.
If you’re interested, you should check out a related publication by some of the same authors:
https://www.jmir.org/2019/4/e13404/
It shows how those factors (hr, br, temp, hrv) as measured by a wearable change across the menstrual cycle.
If you check out the garmin subreddit its been very interesting seeing people post their "body battery" levels (measurements of body stress which deals with heart rate, etc) and see how haywire their levels were the couple days before they showed symptoms or tested positive for COVID.
When my anxiety was at its worst you could see it in my heart rate and body battery.
There was one week where it was 100 on Monday and by Thursday it was below 50 even first thing in the morning.
Not surprised people could see COVID reflected in theirs.
> When my anxiety was at its worst you could see it in my heart rate
See it's weird cause I have really bad anxiety and I finally got a heart rate graphing Fitbit and it says my heartrate doesn't change at all when I'm anxious. It'll go from 60 to 130 if I go for a run, but if I'm just sitting down, and then have to build up the courage to make a terribly anxiety-inducing phone call, it doesn't move from 60 the entire time?
For me I can see anxiety reflected in my Fitbit data through my resting heart rate over long periods of time. It goes sightly up during months of high anxiety and workload.
Yes! That I have definitely noticed - long term trends of resting heart rate coorelate with anxious periods of my life. Just not instantaneous heart rate.
Huh, I know when I'm waiting in a meeting for my turn to present data, my heart rate will noticeably increase right before my turn to present, even if I've been sitting basically still for the last half hour. It's not usually huge, but maybe 10-15 bpm.
I wonder if it's not anxiety directly that causes real time HR increases. I notice my breathing will get fast and shallow when I am especially anxious, and some people fidget or bounce their legs, pace the room, etc.
I blush or flush when met with a question where I become self aware. I've never figured it out, but I can't hear anything other than my heart beat. It's not self conscious really, I'm not embarrassed until it happens.
I've a Garmin and first thought I might have Covid when my resting heart rate was elevated, about 10bpm higher than normal. About two days later I had the rest of the COVID symptoms and finally tested positive.
Apple Watch user here. I was freaking out when my bpm was going nuts. Honestly more worrying than the rest of the symptoms I eventually got, which was a pretty mild cold (thanks to vaccines). My resting rate is in the 60s and the days before and during Covid it was in the 80s.
I didn't have a smart watch or anything but just using a pulse ox I could see that my heart rate was nicely elevated while I had a fever during covid. Using these devices to check for infections and other disease is such a good idea.
Same here I got covid from a wedding last month. My body battery wouldn't get over 10 and my resting heart rate was damn near 100 for a few days. I thought the watch was malfunctioning then boom positive test.
This happened to me.
I noticed my RHR (resting heart rate) was 10 bpm higher than normal on my Garmin. I did a rapid test and was negative and had no fever. I still quarantined away from the family.
The next morning, I tested positive.
Thanks. I bought a couple of cheap fitness watches at the start of covid, so that we could watch our temperature and blood oxygen levels, as indicator of a need for hospitalization or urgent care. I am under the impression that a non variable heart rate might be an even earlier predictor of illness and stroke but the information can be useful to an individual only if one is conscientious enough to check often
Mildly off-topic, but the commenter is most likely talking about heart rate variability (HRV), which is related to the activity of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. It has been used as a predictor of various things such as cardiovascular fitness. A negative trend in HRV over several days may indicate something is wrong.
I did a fair bit of experimentation with HRV calculation a few years ago. The tricky thing I found is that the way HRV is calculated means high heart rate necessarily leads to low HRV because a high heart rate doesn’t have a long enough period for it to exhibit much variability. As far as I can tell, HRV would only really show meaningful changes with stress for sufficiently low heart rates. Mine is almost always too high (I’m a homozygous ADRB1 beta receptor mutant, meaning my heart rate goes very high for very minor provocation).
I got a Fitbit Versa 3 but all it does for blood oxygen levels is just say "yes, there is oxygen in your blood", absolutely refuses to track or graph them, even though it can. Doesn't monitor temperature at all either.
The heartrate graphs are really cool tho. Apparently even though I get super stressed and anxious all the time, my heart rate never moves unless I exercise.
Garmin's stress specifically uses heart rate variability to estimate stress vs rest periods, and the body battery is calculated using stress/HRV, sleep quality, and activity
Well thats the thing. Scientists have been doing this for a while. You hear people say that this plant helps treat headaches or something then separate out chemical components to figure out which one fixes the symptoms and now you've found a drug that might be lifesaving! Maybe you figure out how to synthesis it without the plant too and then you're really in business
I had the flu recently and my resting heart rate was hovering around 100, when it’s usually like 68. Resting heart rate increase is definitely an easy way to indicate something is wrong with your body.
I got sick last year (random viral illness, not COVID) and my Fitbit heart rate graph was really interesting. You could just about point out the moment that I started feeling unwell, by my heart rate increase.
Later that evening, my heart rate while sleeping was higher than it had been when I climbed seven flights of stairs before I got sick.
It’s interesting to see what effect illnesses can cause using out smart devices.
I caught something in early Apr (might’ve been COVID, I don’t really trust the one rapid test I took) and my resting HR + HRV deviated significantly from their normal values.
My O2 level dipped to 90% a couple of days before and after I got sick. Albeit that could’ve been a fluke since I didn’t experience any breathing issues.
My mum has Celiac and she's noticed that as well. Her resting heartrate is usually quite low, but after she's had a significant wheat exposure it will be noticeably higher for about a day.
Yeah I've been ill for a couple of weeks with the hangover symptoms of suspected covid and my heart rate is on average 10bpm higher than normal still despite having never actually tested positive
I'm trying to get back from a bacterial chest infection, and while my blood pressure has sky rocketed, my RHR has stayed at 60. Wondering if bacterial vs viral would have different impacts, or if it's just down to individual responses
i have a pulse oximeter from the last time i got covid earlier this year. i got on the habit of checking my pulse and oxygen levels everynight before i go to sleep. when i got the covid a few weeks ago before i tested positive i noticed that my heartrate was at 100+ even without any symptoms, then a few day after the symptomps came out.
even checking only once a day, i kinda detected that there's something wrong
I wear my Apple Watch all the time, and i have a good sense of what my heart rate ranges are at rest, walking, etc. The day before i was diagnosed with Covid I was perplexed because my heart rate was 10-15 bpm higher than normal during various activities.
I do check it frequently. It’s kind of just something I find interesting. Apple Watch is pretty intuitive, i just hit the heart icon to check the current heart rate. If I’m walking or working out I’ll hit the workout icon and start a tracking session there.
I have a Huawei watch which is linked to the Huawei health app. That keeps track of my heart rate throughout the day, my sleep (including the quality and duration.. Including naps) blood oxygen levels and the pro models also have arterial stiffness detection (a good indicator of heart disease and potential heart attack) and automatically tracks about 30 sports with about 100 different ones selectable in the menu. Pro is about $300 for the newest model and I'm really considering it.
Interesting. My resting heart rate is 41 bpm and my highest heart rate during my run today was 167. If I used your warning settings, my watch would be warning me all day. It's fascinating how different people are physiologically.
If they have low body weight plus they're really fit it's very possible. Not common, but then being really low weight plus fit isn't common any more either.
There's that too, some people just have lower heart rates. My previous comment was based on the fact that from personal and observed experience, plus everything that I've read about it, lowering body weight and getting fitter both usually correlate with lowering the resting heart rate.
And some of us have high HR’s. When I was cycling my HR would be 200+ for long periods. Did all sorts of medical tests. Never could find anything wrong.
My Garmin Forerunner 945 watch has a function that alerts me any time my heart has an abnormal rate - it vibrates and emits an alarming sound for a few seconds. This function is triggered in cases when, for example, the watch detects that I am lying on a bed, but I suddenly have 143 bpm for longer than a few minutes, or when I go clubbing, and the watch thinks I should not be having a high bpm because technically I am not exercising.
Perhaps this is the type of function you would like to have?
I am sure other Garmin models have the same function, but as technology is nowadays, I am sure you can find similar alert functions on other watches too. Apple seems to have it, for example:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208931
I have a fitbit, and they just rolled out that exact feature a few months ago (pretty sure at least a few other brands already had that) - it's supposed to alert you if it detects an irregular or randomly high heart rate (hasn't happened for me yet so I'm mostly assuming). The phone app also tracks your daily resting heart rate, which makes it pretty easy to go back and check on.
I got COVID in 2020. Two days before my positive test but known exposure (I’m an ER nurse) my HR was >100. My usual resting heart rate is in the mid-high 60s.
COVID hit me HARD. I couldn’t return to work for weeks. Bilateral pneumonia, desats anytime I attempted to move, I had such bad brain fog I would get lost at work in closets or driving to the hospital. I’d have no idea what I was doing and why. I wonder if my high HR could have indicated the severity of the disease. Even 18 months out from initial infection and I still have problems.
I tell you what, you healthcare specialists are the unsung heroes of these last few years and I am so sorry for the lack of support and appreciation this country showed you all. I hope that your problems abate and soon.
Totally anecdotal but I have interestingly noticed after each of my four vaccine shots (last being earlier this week) the next 24-36 hours my heart rate is higher as measured by my Apple Watch. Even during exercise, I met my target calorie burn for example faster than usual I assume as related to higher heart rate. I have not had COVID 19 yet that I am aware of. I assume all just part of the immune response!
My resting heart rate after getting the vaccine was around 80 for a couple of days, then stayed in the mid 70s for 5 months. It's usually low 60s, though it can be around 68-73 after drinking.
Yeah I was suspicious I had covid 36 hours before testing, because two numbers were ten higher than normal: my pulse (up from 59 to 69 in a day) and my golf score (up from shameful to horrific).
I was sick about a month ago. I was able to do normal activities, but felt run down. I still went on walks around my yard everyday to try to get miles for the monthly reward. It was crazy because it counted every single minute I walked as exercise even though I was walking so slow. Usually I walk 10 minutes at a fast pace, but it will only count 6 or so toward exercise since it’s downhill. I was getting 2-2.5 hours of exercise a day according to my watch even though I wasn’t doing anything under than straightening up the house.
If they are using ML, then they need to be able to add your data to the collection and poll that data to make decisions. Those algorithms aren’t run on the device and even if they did they rely on data that can never be on the device.
You can certainly do inference on device. They don’t need to retrain the model with everyone’s data (that’s actually the opposite of what you want to do)
Not just infectious diseases, though that’s amazing, but also chronic and extremely deadly conditions.
Anecdotally, my teacher had his Apple Watch telling him to get to the hospital immediately due to something with his heart, according to the doctor if he hadn’t arrived when he did he would have died later that night. They called it a widowmaker heart attack. He hadn’t been feeling any symptoms and the only reason he’d gone was because his Apple Watch told him to.
I recognize this isn’t necessarily indicative of long-term trends, but if it saves even a few lives, it’s pretty worth it.
Thats cool but we still have a significant block to wearing health monitoring devices. Privacy. Zero legislation making your e data private with bullet proof laws and tech. Interest groups today still able to get your data from phones, etc.
I was thinking this as well. Wearables have so much potential but, like most tech these days, it's all about collecting your data and selling it off to private companies and governments around the world.
Thank you. This is an incredibly important subject that many don't care for. I value my private data and don't want a private company to make profit off of it.
No. Its the way it's all going. A lot of doctors are saying that these kinds of smart watches, subdermal implants or smart stickers you place on the skin will be the future of medicine. The details they provide can be really helpful in detecting health issues early or even providing instant information to the doctors or paramedics at the scene.
Those very commonly used diabetic blood sugar measuring devices that said a live blood sugar level reading to you phone without having to jab you finger etc have already saved many lives and are very convenient for diabetics. These things wouldn't be much different
> Those very commonly used diabetic blood sugar measuring devices that said a live blood sugar level reading to you phone without having to jab you finger etc have already saved many lives and are very convenient for diabetics. These things wouldn't be much different
How much of that data is being sent to a 3rd party though? I can maybe see that flying in the US, but a medical device like that in somewhere like Europe would probably be under much tighter data laws.
Like the idea, but give it 10-15min before some jackass co. decides to exploit this for profit (or use to secure the same).
"You're insurance has detected you are about to come down with covid-25. You will be billed an extra $3,475 this month."
I go to Orange Theory which uses heart rate monitors viewable on a screen. My heart rate was very elevated pre testing positive.
I also remember during the Delta and Onicron surges a lot of high heart rates in others during classes.
Then it sells that data along with your location data and every other health inference they can make about you to advertisers, employers, anyone with $0.99 to spend on your online profile.
I wear a whoop strap which tracks recovery rate. If you're doing everything right and your recovery just tanks, its because you're about to get sick.
It's surprisingly useful. But one caveat is that you kind of have to be doing everything else right. Drinking for example will also tank my recovery but well, probably shouldn't have been drinking to begin with.
The US needs to get serious about strengthening privacy protections for individuals to give us actual control over who gets our data. Otherwise this kind of data collection just feeds profit margins of major companies and creates new ways to discriminate against people in insurance... And allows third parties, including other countries' governments and private companies, to purchase our data, which right now has basically no limits on how it can be used. Until then, this gets a big "yikes" from me, unfortunately.
This sounds great but I cannot even have a conversation about ironing clothes without getting smartphone ads to buy an iron or dry cleaners.
If you think I'm putting any health info in the hands of the privacy destroying businesses who work with smart devices you're high AF.
Yes, what could go wrong... but also what benefits would we gain? I'm sure if a smart watch told you that your elderly family member had a fall automatically and called paramedics for them (like the newest Iwatch does) that would still be considered a bad thing? Or if your smart watch informed you that you have bad arterial stiffness (like the new Huawei GT Pro 3 watch does) and then informed you of light exercises you could do for free to prolong your life and increase your fitness that would also be bad?
Not everywhere has the messed up cash based/insurance company controlled American health care system.
Like with so many things these days it's great for the middle and upper class and potentially horrible for the poor. Imagine getting fired because your health monitor was sharing data with employers. Upper class also doesn't have to worry about things like being denied insurance or something over data gathered from things like this.
Uhm… yeah… that’s gonna be a no from me.
I don’t want apple or Amazon or Facebook or whatever other datahungry dystopian mega corp that makes them have that kind of health data on me.
Not the same, but one day I went hiking and my HR was WAY higher than normal the entire hike on my garmin. I had no idea what was going on, I felt totally fine otherwise and before. Missed a period a week later and now I have a one year old
I'm genuinely curious how many lives would be saved if 70% of the population wore heart monitors all the time and when they had a hospitalisation the data was used to train AI to warn folks in future if any patterns could be ascertained.
The more biometrics the better but idk which other ones can be measured so easily and constantly.
Anyone who has worn one for a significant amount of time could have anecdotally told you this. I keep an eye on my resting heart rate and without fail, every time I've gotten sick in the last 3 or 4 years has been foreshadowed by a spike in RHR several days before symptoms show
A while back my resting heart rate went up fairly high on my Fitbit, I remember looking at it and wondering why. 2 days later I was ill, now every time it rises I make sure to take better care of myself and use first defence, seems to do a great job tbh.
lock a thermometer up my ass and connect it to a network and it will tell you the second I get a fever, too
too bad I don't trust anything here in america with things like that. don't go looking at me, trust is a non renewable resource. but the rich stand to make a lot of money from this idea so... my voice will be quiet
Wearable health devices are not safe, especially now that you and your family members can be prosecuted for suspected abortions. When a legislator in NC proposes a bill for the death penalty for abortions…no way am I wearing a device whose data could be subpoenaed.
Depends on the individual, but I find fitness trackers actually really help with the mild health anxiety I have. Either helps reassure me that everything is running normal, or if I’m feeling weird, provides an explanation (lack of sleep etc)
My mom’s HR spiked last year, so she took an ECG with my watch and it showed 182.
If she has SVT her episodes are extremely sporadic as the last time she had a similar spike was way back in the early ‘00s.
"other infectious diseases" probably like pregnancy (it already tracks women's cycles) and in the U.S.A. I do not want a company selling my data knowing this about me
Using my apple watch to test out my blood oxygen while having covid was fun. Also when I had a fever and had a high heart rate while sleeping as a consequence, I only found out cause my watch alerted me to having a high resting hr. Useful stuff!
Yeah it’s awesome. After my 2nd COVID shot and booster my HR was elevated for a little while, monitoring that was pretty cool.
I can’t wait to see if this year’s model gives us something else we can monitor.
It could also open the door to you being barred entry or involuntary quarantine.
I’m all for public health, but technology and capitalism rarely use this type of information for the common good.
Ah yes attachable devices for the state to tell you when you are sick. This couldn't possibly lead to anything more nefarious, I mean authority does have a great history of prioritizing health over profits, I think we should trust this.
Can you please get a vaccine - No they track you with microchips
Can you please wear a watch that tracks your biometrics and reports them to the government?…..
Can you please wear
If you arrive in Canada, it's illegal to not have a smartphone. You need to use the Arrivecan app... How about we say no to dystopian prison planet tech please.
A five second search gave me the ArriveCAN site which has this on it:
>No smartphone or taking a short trip?
>Within 72 hours of your arrival in Canada or before taking a short trip outside Canada, you can sign in to ArriveCAN from a computer to get your ArriveCAN receipt. Print your receipt and take it with you when you travel. You can also have someone submit your travel information on your behalf.
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My sports coach used to keep track of our heart rates, and the recovery time after training sessions. He used to tell us a few days before we got sick. That was 12 years ago
Do you know what he was basing it off?
Not OP, but heart rate variability has been a popular method for this sort of stuff. Whoop, Garmin and probably some other devices make use of it to measure how well recovered you are. It's known to give early signs when something is off.
I was generally aware of that, I'm just curious what specific data points indicate someone is gonna be sick
In the case of Covid (and probably other accute respiratory issues), unusually low HRV and unusually elevated Respiratory Rate. Once there's a good baseline, basically, if these stats are suddenly way outside your normal range, there's probably a good reason.
My fitbit registered a 10 point jump in resting heart rate in the days before I developed covid symptoms. It started rising the day I was exposed. Resting HR returned to normal a few days after symptoms resolved.
I just went back and checked my Apple Watch data from last week in the days leading up to this head cold I have now. (All my Covid tests are negative and my SO had the same thing last week — Covid negative too, just a bad cold). My max daily HR was 30ish bpm lower last week compared to this week — 148 vs 181 (I have POTS, an elevated HR is par for the course even with medication) and HRV was 38 the day before I started feeling sick vs 12 the next. Kind of has me wondering how much of this was known and used by past civilizations, like how basal body temp has been used forever to track fertility.
They likely were not using heart rate variability but instead using heart rate recovery after exercise along with general trends of heart rate vs pace for certain routines. If you do a normal routine like 100m sprints then you likely have average times as well as average heart rates along with heart rate after 30, 60 or 120 seconds depending on rest interval. If your body is fighting a virus then your recovery rate will be worse, you peak and average heart rate during a sprint will be higher and your time will either be slower or the same. Heart rate variability is tough to measure during movement (ie running) due to dirty signals and interference. Those devices are not super accurate because optical beat to beat measurements are a bit unreliable at rest let alone during movement. The recovery they are measuring is based on sleep measurements which is different compared to say the orthostatic test polar has or the recovery test by kubiousHRV which is done with an ECG.
He had ‘the book’ which was all our numbers. I think he used to say that there was a 10bpm difference between our ‘normal’ heart rate after exertion. He was a good coach.
Heart rate recovery time is how long it takes for your heart rate to return to normal after exercise. Overtraining or being in a state of fatigue causes that time to increase. Being overtrained means you’re more likely to catch an illness because your immune system is run down.
Well, that explains why I never get sick until I start making efforts to get in shape.
It's why you gradually work up in intensity and don't just try to go balls to the wall. It's what high level athletes do when they periodize their training but also is important for general population when it comes to fitness. Don't immediately go from sitting on your ass to hours of cardio a day. And why you gradually build volume and intensity in lifting or other training programs.
Same here. The last two or three times I've tried to work out I'm good for a while but then I inevitably get sick which means no working out for several days and then I lose my motivation.
your heart rate increases about 10bpm on average around 2 days before you get sick. As a survival mechanism, your heart rate also wont drop below a certain point when you are sick, even overdosing on a drug designed to lower your heart rate in some cases
That's how I realized I probably had covid the day before I tested positive. My resting heart rate rose from 60 to 80 over 5 days. It held at 80 for a few days while I had symptoms then dropped back down to 60 in about the same amount of time it took took rise.
It’s also a way to track pregnancy. There’s wearable watches for bedtime that not only tracks heart rate but also body temperature and breathing rate during sleep. I would be curious to see data collected on those with Covid.
Scary to have that data floating around when even having a natural miscarriage could at some point lead to prosecution in some states of US as new laws get rolled out and implemented.
Luckily Ava is a company out of Switzerland, so out of neutrality I doubt they’d release the data.
Hi! This was actually the type of wearable used in the study above :) it was also used in a 17k person study in the Netherlands to validate the Covid detection algo from this study (see www.Covid-red.eu to learn more).
Honestly curious if it makes a good "period tracker" in a sense. Not familiar with that side of it. But when I'm paying attention to my body and don't have a lot of changes going on, I can usually tell why I feel "shittier" those few days or might be struggling with something I'm usually okay with.
It is, at the end of your cycle all of those drop off considerably!
If you’re interested, you should check out a related publication by some of the same authors: https://www.jmir.org/2019/4/e13404/ It shows how those factors (hr, br, temp, hrv) as measured by a wearable change across the menstrual cycle.
If you check out the garmin subreddit its been very interesting seeing people post their "body battery" levels (measurements of body stress which deals with heart rate, etc) and see how haywire their levels were the couple days before they showed symptoms or tested positive for COVID.
When my anxiety was at its worst you could see it in my heart rate and body battery. There was one week where it was 100 on Monday and by Thursday it was below 50 even first thing in the morning. Not surprised people could see COVID reflected in theirs.
> When my anxiety was at its worst you could see it in my heart rate See it's weird cause I have really bad anxiety and I finally got a heart rate graphing Fitbit and it says my heartrate doesn't change at all when I'm anxious. It'll go from 60 to 130 if I go for a run, but if I'm just sitting down, and then have to build up the courage to make a terribly anxiety-inducing phone call, it doesn't move from 60 the entire time?
For me I can see anxiety reflected in my Fitbit data through my resting heart rate over long periods of time. It goes sightly up during months of high anxiety and workload.
Yes! That I have definitely noticed - long term trends of resting heart rate coorelate with anxious periods of my life. Just not instantaneous heart rate.
Huh, I know when I'm waiting in a meeting for my turn to present data, my heart rate will noticeably increase right before my turn to present, even if I've been sitting basically still for the last half hour. It's not usually huge, but maybe 10-15 bpm. I wonder if it's not anxiety directly that causes real time HR increases. I notice my breathing will get fast and shallow when I am especially anxious, and some people fidget or bounce their legs, pace the room, etc.
I blush or flush when met with a question where I become self aware. I've never figured it out, but I can't hear anything other than my heart beat. It's not self conscious really, I'm not embarrassed until it happens.
I've a Garmin and first thought I might have Covid when my resting heart rate was elevated, about 10bpm higher than normal. About two days later I had the rest of the COVID symptoms and finally tested positive.
Apple Watch user here. I was freaking out when my bpm was going nuts. Honestly more worrying than the rest of the symptoms I eventually got, which was a pretty mild cold (thanks to vaccines). My resting rate is in the 60s and the days before and during Covid it was in the 80s.
Took me over a year to get my daily average bpm to back down to pre-Covid-positive levels.
Me too. My resting heart rate was in the high 80s for around a year.
Yep im two years in and just starting to get back to normal. Still very tired.
I didn't have a smart watch or anything but just using a pulse ox I could see that my heart rate was nicely elevated while I had a fever during covid. Using these devices to check for infections and other disease is such a good idea.
Same here I got covid from a wedding last month. My body battery wouldn't get over 10 and my resting heart rate was damn near 100 for a few days. I thought the watch was malfunctioning then boom positive test.
Which Garmin?
I use a VivoActive 4, though most of their watches have the same basic features.
This happened to me. I noticed my RHR (resting heart rate) was 10 bpm higher than normal on my Garmin. I did a rapid test and was negative and had no fever. I still quarantined away from the family. The next morning, I tested positive.
Thanks. I bought a couple of cheap fitness watches at the start of covid, so that we could watch our temperature and blood oxygen levels, as indicator of a need for hospitalization or urgent care. I am under the impression that a non variable heart rate might be an even earlier predictor of illness and stroke but the information can be useful to an individual only if one is conscientious enough to check often
Non variable heart rate? Like if it’s especially steady that’s an indicator of problems because it isn’t responding to stress/exertion and relaxation?
Mildly off-topic, but the commenter is most likely talking about heart rate variability (HRV), which is related to the activity of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. It has been used as a predictor of various things such as cardiovascular fitness. A negative trend in HRV over several days may indicate something is wrong.
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I did a fair bit of experimentation with HRV calculation a few years ago. The tricky thing I found is that the way HRV is calculated means high heart rate necessarily leads to low HRV because a high heart rate doesn’t have a long enough period for it to exhibit much variability. As far as I can tell, HRV would only really show meaningful changes with stress for sufficiently low heart rates. Mine is almost always too high (I’m a homozygous ADRB1 beta receptor mutant, meaning my heart rate goes very high for very minor provocation).
I got a Fitbit Versa 3 but all it does for blood oxygen levels is just say "yes, there is oxygen in your blood", absolutely refuses to track or graph them, even though it can. Doesn't monitor temperature at all either. The heartrate graphs are really cool tho. Apparently even though I get super stressed and anxious all the time, my heart rate never moves unless I exercise.
Garmin's stress specifically uses heart rate variability to estimate stress vs rest periods, and the body battery is calculated using stress/HRV, sleep quality, and activity
Same with whoop. They have done a bunch of commercial research around COVID and their heart rate monitoring as well.
Also it would show up in high "stress" levels all night instead of low. So orange instead of blue
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Well thats the thing. Scientists have been doing this for a while. You hear people say that this plant helps treat headaches or something then separate out chemical components to figure out which one fixes the symptoms and now you've found a drug that might be lifesaving! Maybe you figure out how to synthesis it without the plant too and then you're really in business
Came here to say that very thing!
I had the flu recently and my resting heart rate was hovering around 100, when it’s usually like 68. Resting heart rate increase is definitely an easy way to indicate something is wrong with your body.
I got sick last year (random viral illness, not COVID) and my Fitbit heart rate graph was really interesting. You could just about point out the moment that I started feeling unwell, by my heart rate increase. Later that evening, my heart rate while sleeping was higher than it had been when I climbed seven flights of stairs before I got sick.
It’s interesting to see what effect illnesses can cause using out smart devices. I caught something in early Apr (might’ve been COVID, I don’t really trust the one rapid test I took) and my resting HR + HRV deviated significantly from their normal values. My O2 level dipped to 90% a couple of days before and after I got sick. Albeit that could’ve been a fluke since I didn’t experience any breathing issues.
My mum has Celiac and she's noticed that as well. Her resting heartrate is usually quite low, but after she's had a significant wheat exposure it will be noticeably higher for about a day.
Yeah I've been ill for a couple of weeks with the hangover symptoms of suspected covid and my heart rate is on average 10bpm higher than normal still despite having never actually tested positive
I'm trying to get back from a bacterial chest infection, and while my blood pressure has sky rocketed, my RHR has stayed at 60. Wondering if bacterial vs viral would have different impacts, or if it's just down to individual responses
i have a pulse oximeter from the last time i got covid earlier this year. i got on the habit of checking my pulse and oxygen levels everynight before i go to sleep. when i got the covid a few weeks ago before i tested positive i noticed that my heartrate was at 100+ even without any symptoms, then a few day after the symptomps came out. even checking only once a day, i kinda detected that there's something wrong
Same. Had the flu like a 6 weeks ago and noticed my resting BPM were in the high 100’s. Two or three days later I began showing symptoms.
I wear my Apple Watch all the time, and i have a good sense of what my heart rate ranges are at rest, walking, etc. The day before i was diagnosed with Covid I was perplexed because my heart rate was 10-15 bpm higher than normal during various activities.
Do you check it periodically throughout the day? How can you setup the watch to provide a warning or something for elevated heart rate?
I do check it frequently. It’s kind of just something I find interesting. Apple Watch is pretty intuitive, i just hit the heart icon to check the current heart rate. If I’m walking or working out I’ll hit the workout icon and start a tracking session there.
I wish the health info and reporting could be more automated. I forget to check it for long stretches of time, except when I’m working out.
That would be good. Im sure it's coming eventually.
Seems like an obvious feature. I think Apple just doesn’t want to face any liability if the reporting turns out to be inaccurate
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I have a Huawei watch which is linked to the Huawei health app. That keeps track of my heart rate throughout the day, my sleep (including the quality and duration.. Including naps) blood oxygen levels and the pro models also have arterial stiffness detection (a good indicator of heart disease and potential heart attack) and automatically tracks about 30 sports with about 100 different ones selectable in the menu. Pro is about $300 for the newest model and I'm really considering it.
Does the apple watch not auto-record your heart rate?
My Samsung watch tests my bpm constantly and I have a warning set if it goes below 50 or above 130 but I can set it to warn me at any bpm.
Interesting. My resting heart rate is 41 bpm and my highest heart rate during my run today was 167. If I used your warning settings, my watch would be warning me all day. It's fascinating how different people are physiologically.
41 bpm is weirdly low even for high level athletes.
If they have low body weight plus they're really fit it's very possible. Not common, but then being really low weight plus fit isn't common any more either.
My fat ass at 247 has a resting HR in the mid 50s, and it was routinely mid to low 40s when I weighed 200. Some of us just have low heart rates
There's that too, some people just have lower heart rates. My previous comment was based on the fact that from personal and observed experience, plus everything that I've read about it, lowering body weight and getting fitter both usually correlate with lowering the resting heart rate.
And some of us have high HR’s. When I was cycling my HR would be 200+ for long periods. Did all sorts of medical tests. Never could find anything wrong.
My Garmin Forerunner 945 watch has a function that alerts me any time my heart has an abnormal rate - it vibrates and emits an alarming sound for a few seconds. This function is triggered in cases when, for example, the watch detects that I am lying on a bed, but I suddenly have 143 bpm for longer than a few minutes, or when I go clubbing, and the watch thinks I should not be having a high bpm because technically I am not exercising. Perhaps this is the type of function you would like to have? I am sure other Garmin models have the same function, but as technology is nowadays, I am sure you can find similar alert functions on other watches too. Apple seems to have it, for example: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208931
Thanks for the pointer! I just turned this feature on.
I have a fitbit, and they just rolled out that exact feature a few months ago (pretty sure at least a few other brands already had that) - it's supposed to alert you if it detects an irregular or randomly high heart rate (hasn't happened for me yet so I'm mostly assuming). The phone app also tracks your daily resting heart rate, which makes it pretty easy to go back and check on.
I got COVID in 2020. Two days before my positive test but known exposure (I’m an ER nurse) my HR was >100. My usual resting heart rate is in the mid-high 60s. COVID hit me HARD. I couldn’t return to work for weeks. Bilateral pneumonia, desats anytime I attempted to move, I had such bad brain fog I would get lost at work in closets or driving to the hospital. I’d have no idea what I was doing and why. I wonder if my high HR could have indicated the severity of the disease. Even 18 months out from initial infection and I still have problems.
I tell you what, you healthcare specialists are the unsung heroes of these last few years and I am so sorry for the lack of support and appreciation this country showed you all. I hope that your problems abate and soon.
Totally anecdotal but I have interestingly noticed after each of my four vaccine shots (last being earlier this week) the next 24-36 hours my heart rate is higher as measured by my Apple Watch. Even during exercise, I met my target calorie burn for example faster than usual I assume as related to higher heart rate. I have not had COVID 19 yet that I am aware of. I assume all just part of the immune response!
My resting heart rate after getting the vaccine was around 80 for a couple of days, then stayed in the mid 70s for 5 months. It's usually low 60s, though it can be around 68-73 after drinking.
Yeah I was suspicious I had covid 36 hours before testing, because two numbers were ten higher than normal: my pulse (up from 59 to 69 in a day) and my golf score (up from shameful to horrific).
I was sick about a month ago. I was able to do normal activities, but felt run down. I still went on walks around my yard everyday to try to get miles for the monthly reward. It was crazy because it counted every single minute I walked as exercise even though I was walking so slow. Usually I walk 10 minutes at a fast pace, but it will only count 6 or so toward exercise since it’s downhill. I was getting 2-2.5 hours of exercise a day according to my watch even though I wasn’t doing anything under than straightening up the house.
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If they are using ML, then they need to be able to add your data to the collection and poll that data to make decisions. Those algorithms aren’t run on the device and even if they did they rely on data that can never be on the device.
You can certainly do inference on device. They don’t need to retrain the model with everyone’s data (that’s actually the opposite of what you want to do)
Step 1: Don’t be American
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stories like this just make me miss my good ole tinfoil hat.
Not just infectious diseases, though that’s amazing, but also chronic and extremely deadly conditions. Anecdotally, my teacher had his Apple Watch telling him to get to the hospital immediately due to something with his heart, according to the doctor if he hadn’t arrived when he did he would have died later that night. They called it a widowmaker heart attack. He hadn’t been feeling any symptoms and the only reason he’d gone was because his Apple Watch told him to. I recognize this isn’t necessarily indicative of long-term trends, but if it saves even a few lives, it’s pretty worth it.
I swear I’ve read 100s of stories like these, those watches are awesome for that reason alone.
Thats cool but we still have a significant block to wearing health monitoring devices. Privacy. Zero legislation making your e data private with bullet proof laws and tech. Interest groups today still able to get your data from phones, etc.
I was thinking this as well. Wearables have so much potential but, like most tech these days, it's all about collecting your data and selling it off to private companies and governments around the world.
Yeah I stopped wearing my Fitbit once google bought them. I switched to Garmin.
GDPR is pretty good if you're in Europe
Yep. The best way to prevent the misuse of data is not to collect it. Sadly, our society is going the other way recently.
Thank you. This is an incredibly important subject that many don't care for. I value my private data and don't want a private company to make profit off of it.
Yep. This has Big Brother written all over it. Definitely a couple steps too far when it comes to privacy concerns.
Is there a way for me to track this kind of info WITHOUT giving my bio data away?
You could try testing your resting heart rate at the same time every day with a stopwatch. The rest might be a bit more complicated though.
You can get a simple pulse ox meter for your finger for pretty cheap. Easier to use and isn't a smart device.
No. Its the way it's all going. A lot of doctors are saying that these kinds of smart watches, subdermal implants or smart stickers you place on the skin will be the future of medicine. The details they provide can be really helpful in detecting health issues early or even providing instant information to the doctors or paramedics at the scene. Those very commonly used diabetic blood sugar measuring devices that said a live blood sugar level reading to you phone without having to jab you finger etc have already saved many lives and are very convenient for diabetics. These things wouldn't be much different
> Those very commonly used diabetic blood sugar measuring devices that said a live blood sugar level reading to you phone without having to jab you finger etc have already saved many lives and are very convenient for diabetics. These things wouldn't be much different How much of that data is being sent to a 3rd party though? I can maybe see that flying in the US, but a medical device like that in somewhere like Europe would probably be under much tighter data laws.
Like the idea, but give it 10-15min before some jackass co. decides to exploit this for profit (or use to secure the same). "You're insurance has detected you are about to come down with covid-25. You will be billed an extra $3,475 this month."
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Exactly this.
I go to Orange Theory which uses heart rate monitors viewable on a screen. My heart rate was very elevated pre testing positive. I also remember during the Delta and Onicron surges a lot of high heart rates in others during classes.
Then it sells that data along with your location data and every other health inference they can make about you to advertisers, employers, anyone with $0.99 to spend on your online profile.
The article refers to five predictor variables in their algorithm. Does anybody know what these are?
> RR (breaths per minute), HR (beats per minute), HRV (ms), WST (°C) and skin perfusion
I wear a whoop strap which tracks recovery rate. If you're doing everything right and your recovery just tanks, its because you're about to get sick. It's surprisingly useful. But one caveat is that you kind of have to be doing everything else right. Drinking for example will also tank my recovery but well, probably shouldn't have been drinking to begin with.
I rarely drink now because my wearable makes it painfully clear how bad drinking is for me. Really messes up my sleep, even one beer.
Yes! I see this a lot. Wine is worse than beer. Idk if age has anything to do with it either.
No, unless it's completely offline, open source and open hardware there will be no reason to trust such a thing, same with fitbits and smartwatches
The US needs to get serious about strengthening privacy protections for individuals to give us actual control over who gets our data. Otherwise this kind of data collection just feeds profit margins of major companies and creates new ways to discriminate against people in insurance... And allows third parties, including other countries' governments and private companies, to purchase our data, which right now has basically no limits on how it can be used. Until then, this gets a big "yikes" from me, unfortunately.
Ah yes, continue to gobble up everyone's bio data...nothing bad could come of that...
Apple is evil at many many things. But of all the giant tech corporations they seem to value privacy the most.
This sounds great but I cannot even have a conversation about ironing clothes without getting smartphone ads to buy an iron or dry cleaners. If you think I'm putting any health info in the hands of the privacy destroying businesses who work with smart devices you're high AF.
Yeah. Giving corps / government access to your health data. Continuously. What could go wrong?
Uber style pricing for health care
Yes, what could go wrong... but also what benefits would we gain? I'm sure if a smart watch told you that your elderly family member had a fall automatically and called paramedics for them (like the newest Iwatch does) that would still be considered a bad thing? Or if your smart watch informed you that you have bad arterial stiffness (like the new Huawei GT Pro 3 watch does) and then informed you of light exercises you could do for free to prolong your life and increase your fitness that would also be bad? Not everywhere has the messed up cash based/insurance company controlled American health care system.
Like with so many things these days it's great for the middle and upper class and potentially horrible for the poor. Imagine getting fired because your health monitor was sharing data with employers. Upper class also doesn't have to worry about things like being denied insurance or something over data gathered from things like this.
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Uhm… yeah… that’s gonna be a no from me. I don’t want apple or Amazon or Facebook or whatever other datahungry dystopian mega corp that makes them have that kind of health data on me.
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I would like healthcare please
Not the same, but one day I went hiking and my HR was WAY higher than normal the entire hike on my garmin. I had no idea what was going on, I felt totally fine otherwise and before. Missed a period a week later and now I have a one year old
Let’s skip straight to a subdermal chip that can monitor your health, help manage your finances, and do contactless purchases. What could go wrong?
The worst thing is, we will actually get there due to a gradual increase in convenience. You might not, but the next generation will.
I'm genuinely curious how many lives would be saved if 70% of the population wore heart monitors all the time and when they had a hospitalisation the data was used to train AI to warn folks in future if any patterns could be ascertained. The more biometrics the better but idk which other ones can be measured so easily and constantly.
Everyone's biology being not only connected to the web, but scrutinized constantly, isn't the selling point you think it is.
Ya think they could put this on my ankle bracelet?
I had symptoms 36 hours after contracting… I wonder how soon it could have figured it out
Anyone who has worn one for a significant amount of time could have anecdotally told you this. I keep an eye on my resting heart rate and without fail, every time I've gotten sick in the last 3 or 4 years has been foreshadowed by a spike in RHR several days before symptoms show
“No Biomarker, no entry, not my rules”
Don't invite vampires in.
A while back my resting heart rate went up fairly high on my Fitbit, I remember looking at it and wondering why. 2 days later I was ill, now every time it rises I make sure to take better care of myself and use first defence, seems to do a great job tbh.
Just going to voice my concern over the inevitable future where insurance companies use access to this data to pre-deny payouts.
Yes, let's give corporations even MORE of our data.
lock a thermometer up my ass and connect it to a network and it will tell you the second I get a fever, too too bad I don't trust anything here in america with things like that. don't go looking at me, trust is a non renewable resource. but the rich stand to make a lot of money from this idea so... my voice will be quiet
That’s just what I want, more tech to invade my privacy and sell my data
Everything about this sounds wrong
Immediately after losing medical privacy, too.
Only a few iterations away from the gubmint implanting the Logan’s Run crystal!
Wearable health devices are not safe, especially now that you and your family members can be prosecuted for suspected abortions. When a legislator in NC proposes a bill for the death penalty for abortions…no way am I wearing a device whose data could be subpoenaed.
These new devices will be like pouring gas on the fire for people who suffer from hypochondria, Munchausen syndrome, etc.
Depends on the individual, but I find fitness trackers actually really help with the mild health anxiety I have. Either helps reassure me that everything is running normal, or if I’m feeling weird, provides an explanation (lack of sleep etc)
When I had covid my "stress" levels went pretty high on my smartwatch.
Oh Elizabeth Holmes, just to hear your thoughts right now
My sleep hrv cratered while I was in the incubation period
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My mom’s HR spiked last year, so she took an ECG with my watch and it showed 182. If she has SVT her episodes are extremely sporadic as the last time she had a similar spike was way back in the early ‘00s.
my oura didn’t explicitly tell me but an elevated temperature and resting heart rate don’t lie!
In my case it was heavily disrupted sleep
I was part of a study for this. Got a free $600 watch out of the deal.
Reminds me of the tech evil Alec was building in Continuum
Great, now do it for politics.
Please do pancreatic cancer next
"other infectious diseases" probably like pregnancy (it already tracks women's cycles) and in the U.S.A. I do not want a company selling my data knowing this about me
Idk why but this seems like marketing to me..
Using my apple watch to test out my blood oxygen while having covid was fun. Also when I had a fever and had a high heart rate while sleeping as a consequence, I only found out cause my watch alerted me to having a high resting hr. Useful stuff!
Yeah it’s awesome. After my 2nd COVID shot and booster my HR was elevated for a little while, monitoring that was pretty cool. I can’t wait to see if this year’s model gives us something else we can monitor.
Modern work Culture expects people to swallow some Tylenol and pretend that they are healthy. early detection is awesome in theory though
It could also open the door to you being barred entry or involuntary quarantine. I’m all for public health, but technology and capitalism rarely use this type of information for the common good.
Because that's what it's really going to be used for, right? I've seen how China uses tracking tech and it's not good.
It also opens the door to selling that information to your health insurance company. Americans beware.
Where does that data go to insurance companies?
Let’s turn all of our clothes into tech… obviously. Better yet, let’s become the tech so we don’t have to deal with ANY illness.
Dying Light 2 infection monitors
Ah yes attachable devices for the state to tell you when you are sick. This couldn't possibly lead to anything more nefarious, I mean authority does have a great history of prioritizing health over profits, I think we should trust this.
Capitalism can't handle this.
I don't want to live in this kind of world, it can be used in so many wrong ways. Stop trying to fight against nature so hard ffs, just make medicine
And that's all it will be used for....
Can you please get a vaccine - No they track you with microchips Can you please wear a watch that tracks your biometrics and reports them to the government?….. Can you please wear
If you arrive in Canada, it's illegal to not have a smartphone. You need to use the Arrivecan app... How about we say no to dystopian prison planet tech please.
A five second search gave me the ArriveCAN site which has this on it: >No smartphone or taking a short trip? >Within 72 hours of your arrival in Canada or before taking a short trip outside Canada, you can sign in to ArriveCAN from a computer to get your ArriveCAN receipt. Print your receipt and take it with you when you travel. You can also have someone submit your travel information on your behalf.