HRV numbers a bit weird

Hi There!

A few questions on HRV for any of the detail oriented people out there (AKA quantified self geeks like myself).

1) Does anyone else have extremely volatile HRV values overnight (within the same night)? Is this considered normal or a sign of an issue or measurement problem? It will routinedrop drop from 70 to 30 in a matter of minutes. I don't think I have sleep apnea, but it might be the first thing my mind jumps to. What do others overnight HRV look like? I've attached an image of mine from last night, which looks fairly typical.

2) When I do a health check on my Garmin instinct, the values are always a lot higher than my overnight HRV, unless of course I'm doing something strenuous. I find this strange, but perhaps the algorithm for overnight calculation is different?

3) On the HRV status page in the connect app, it shows you an "awake average" for HRV for today. Does anyone know what this is actually measuring? I doubt the device is measuring HRV 24/7, so I would think this is something else.

Thanks a million for any help!

So it will routinely drop from >80ms to <40ms in the space of minutes

0 gaijin over 1 year ago

Your overnight variability looks perfectly normal to me. Here's mine for last night:

HTH

0 trux over 1 year ago in reply to gaijin

My graphs are not flat either, but usually look less rough than that, although there are nights where the HRV may vary wildly too. It may be caused by a number of factors - the tightness of the wristband, the way you move during the sleep, or some disturbance in the sleep. Frequent periodic drops of the HRV may be possibly also a sign of snoring or sleep apnoe, but I do not think the variability of the HR Variability you observe is anything pathological.