Stress Accuracy?

I have a job where I am moving a lot, all day. My watch has told me since I got it that I'm in the 80-90 stress range all the time. Garmin Stress is related to HRV it seems mostly.

I have found with other wearable that they only measure HRV when you're sitting still and won't take a measurement otherwise. 

How can garmin accurately measure that if I am constantly moving all day?

For example, the Garmin HRV Stress activity forces you to sit still to get an accurate stress measurement via HRV. 

Everywhere I read it says to sit down and dont move to get an accurate reading.

https://help.welltory.com/en/articles/3361520-how-to-take-accurate-heart-rate-variability-measurements

https://elitehrv.com/the-8-biggest-mistakes-made-when-measuring-hrv

and more...

  • They try to do their best with some approximation.

    Garmin has a "real" stress/HRV test too where you need to sit and stay still for 2 minutes and it's done with a chest strap too for a better accuracy.

    The 24 hours stress is something different but still pretty accurate in my opinion...also keep in mind that activities or a lot of movement stop the stress measurment.



    As you can see it's not measured continuously...only when you're more sedentary or when you don't move too much.

    I definitely don't have any idea on how much movement is too much for Garmin but keep in mind that even some running tests/features keep the HRV in consideration with both chest strap or optical sensor so there is definitely something that can be recognized even while moving.

  • I think it depends on the purpose you are taking HRV readings - if for a training perspective then yes you absolutely want to take a specific reading at a specific point of time and you want it to be as consistent as possible which means staying still etc to reduce any  chances of anomolies - hence the HRV Stress Test: https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/garmin-technology/running-science/physiological-measurements/hrv-stress-test/ however what is the point when your watch automatically does that for you every night: https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/garmin-technology/running-science/physiological-measurements/hrv-status/ and tracks it against a baseline for you.

    Health stress (and why they don't call it HRV) is only based off HRV is not about training its about how your body is reacting to current day's training, and the variety of factors that you are throwing at it.https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/garmin-technology/health-science/stress-tracking/ So yes it does make sense based on its purpose that it is tracking HRV etc while you are active (while not tracking - you will notice that the time you track an activity Stress is ignored - though you can get the post activity impact on your stress): 

  • You must have excellent sleep, to recover so well overnight. 

  • The example was to show many "active" periods during the day for the no stress recording and, casually, it was also a really good night too.

    In the actual period it's a bit more difficult due to tight schedules with work/workouts but i was used to have an average of 10 as a stress.

    Few days ago Smiley

  • Well, here's my examples... 

    You'd think I'm the most stressed person in the world based on this. I look on google, reddit, etc and everyone always says their "garmin stress is always high" so I am trying to figure out what the issue is because looking at my watch and seeing my stress at 98 out of 100... stresses me out.

  • Keep in mind that stress can be something positive too...also it's pretty common that the day at work is looking as in our examples.

    What you should try to improve is the night part where you have some spikes...i don't know if it was just a bad dream or if you woke up for a while or whatever.

  • You're saying the stress level that high is common? 

  • Yep.

    The key is not to not have "stress"...the key is to have a balance between stress and recovery.

    Having a stress free life would be better but sometimes you can't avoid to stress your body considering that activities like running or working out(both suggested to keep our body healthy, etc) are stressful in some ways.

    This is without considering all the other sources that could be work or other issues.

    For some of them we can try to implement "corrective" actions but not for all of them.

    Even digesting a heavy lunch/dinner can increase stress levels for example so you can try to avoid to eat heavy every day or you can avoid to drink alchol too much as it's another source of high stress for the body.

  • Thank you for the explanation Slight smile

    It would be great if the "stress" glance and graphs somehow incorporated the screenshot explanation a bit better. The balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic. To me (and probably others) high stress just simply means bad to the untrained eye!