All day stress always reports HIGH since update 7.60

Those people who are posting tips on how to relax are missing the point. The issue is not that we are not resting. The issue is that the watch is not correctly calculating rest/stress from the data it acquires, and we are showing as highly stressed at times when it is patently obvious that we are relaxed, such as in deep sleep on a daily basis, when waking up refreshed afterwards.
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This afternoon, some kind of update pushed itself to my Fenix 5S while I was out, and since then, I see lower stress scores and even some blue lines (!!!) on my all-day stress widget. Anybody else see an improvement?

Alcohol is a nervous system depressant so it makes sense that it will make the heart more sluggish for a while afterwards, and temporarily yield a lower heart rate variability. i.e. higher stress values.

Makes a massive difference.

All these people complaining about high stress scores, I wonder if they're treating themselves to a glass of wine or two with dinner every night (nothing wrong with that if they are). But it will definitely cause the "stress" results to go up, for the above reason, and also because your body has to work to process it.

I was drinking a couple of beers on most days in the evening after work or training, and my stress score was really high, even while I was sleeping. Recently I decided to stop drinking totally just to see what would happen to my heart data with the watch and it made a big difference. When I was drinking a few beers most nights (and even more at dinner parties or whatever), then I'd be lucky to get a few blue lines even while I was sleeping. After only four days without any beer or caffeine, I'm actually getting blue lines during the day just while I'm just sitting down at my office, and it's totally blue all night. My stress scores have dropped by a about 35 points.

So anyone having trouble with stress scores, that's my first tip: if you're drinking alcohol every day or most days (even a healthy amount like 1-2 glasses of wine), quit doing that and see what happens.

So anyone having trouble with stress scores, that's my first tip: if you're drinking alcohol every day or most days (even a healthy amount like 1-2 glasses of wine), quit doing that and see what happens.

This is unfortunately not the fix :) My stress values are unrealistically high after 7.60 version and are even higher after alcohol consumption, which does not happen that often. So there seems to some kind of logic in the feature (alcohol causing even higher figures), but I still feel it was working much better earlier.

Makes a massive difference.

All these people complaining about high stress scores, I wonder if they're treating themselves to a glass of wine or two with dinner every night (nothing wrong with that if they are). But it will definitely cause the "stress" results to go up, for the above reason, and also because your body has to work to process it.

I was drinking a couple of beers on most days in the evening after work or training, and my stress score was really high, even while I was sleeping. Recently I decided to stop drinking totally just to see what would happen to my heart data with the watch and it made a big difference. When I was drinking a few beers most nights (and even more at dinner parties or whatever), then I'd be lucky to get a few blue lines even while I was sleeping. After only four days without any beer or caffeine, I'm actually getting blue lines during the day just while I'm just sitting down at my office, and it's totally blue all night. My stress scores have dropped by a about 35 points.

So anyone having trouble with stress scores, that's my first tip: if you're drinking alcohol every day or most days (even a healthy amount like 1-2 glasses of wine), quit doing that and see what happens.

Yes, but that is not the case, this we are talking about is a bug:

- It was working fine for everybody before 7.60 and broke after 7.60.
- Hard reset will fix it, but only for a couple of days, a week if you are lucky, then it goes bad again.
- The values are extremely high no matter what you do or drink (I don't drink alcohol, neither does my wife and both my Fenix5 and her VivoActive3 are affected).
- The values are the same everyday, and at all times of the day, whether you are in deep sleep or just finished a workout.
Basically, the values are amplified so much are no discernible patterns any more, its just completely useless.

That is exactly my point. I was using vivoactive HR before. It did not have too may features, but it measured my RHR pretty well. one week of intense illness and my RHR increased by 15-20. Lack of sleep for a couple of days and it will increase by 5-7. I was not expecting medical level precision. But it predicted trends pretty well. Then I got my FR935. For almost 6 months I had no problems. RHR and stress values correspond to my life style and my work outs. One night of alcohol and it will go up. No sleep for couple of days and it will match how I felt about my body. When I did not drink alcohol for months, trained well a and ran 10K at HR zone 4-5 it will show the stress for 2-3 hours following that and then become normal. But after this stupid update it is completely messed up. I drive the car and it will show stress 75-85. I am sitting in my office it will be around 55. But I have not changed my lifestyle and I am not sick. Now my RHR varies like 55, 64, 57, 33, 61, 58.....without consistency. We want consistency and reliability, but I think Garmin has missed this point completely.

Maybe it was broken before and now it's fixed? (not the other way around).

As far as the actual stress level goes ... I don't know how that can be "broken" ... it's just a number that Garmin came up with to give you a rough idea of your heart-rate-variability during the day. "Right" or "wrong" is whatever Garmin said it is. Maybe they thought it was too low before and decided to bump it up a bit?

I don't know though. All I know is that the heart-rate sensor is bang-on for me (I've measued it against my blood pressure machine, my chest-strap monitor and manually taking my pulse, and the watch is always on the money), and the stress-level scores make sense according to my lifestyle.

BTW, any of you can test the heart-rate sensor super easily by just taking your pulse manually at the same time. If you're getting funny results, then it could be due to tattoos or hair on your arm apparently (I shaved the little patch on my arm where the watch sits, just to get the best result possible). Or maybe your watch is broken or the software is buggy. I dunno. Mine seems to be fine though.

If there is a bug, and the stress scores are "unrealistically high" now, then I guess I must be an extremely un-stressed person.

For me is strange when I go sleep 22 till 6. like Garmin .suggest I always have very high stress between 22-00 and after blue

Jan502, that often happens to me too if I worked out that day.

If I just rested all day and don't drink any alcohol, then it's blue all night.

It might be premature to conclude this is fully fixed but since installing the new beta (8.99) the reported stress levels dropped quite significantly for me (from ~20 during sleep to ~10 during sleep). Those were levels I last saw before 7.60.