Related

Heart Rate/Stress/HRV/Sleep

Mrs.B
4 months ago

I bought my VA5 on April 28.  I wore a VA3 for years before I bought this one.  I bought it on purpose because I have asthma, and being able to see stress/heartrate helps me better understand my condition.  However...

Even on my VA3, I noticed my resting HR was way higher than my family members.  My husband and son wear Fitbits, by my daughter wears a Garmin VA3.  I confirm my heart rate using a pulse oximeter, and it's correct.  I've had cancer on my left side, so radiation to my chest area, but my cardiologist has confirmed through multiple tests that my heart is healthy and functioning normally, and my heart rate is simply higher than others.  Possibly due to perimenopause.

Since I bought my VA5, I've struggled with it.  It is telling me that because my RHR is higher (even though I've adjusted the numbers accordingly) that I'm stressed all the time.  Even during sleep.  My body battery has managed to score 65 one single time since I've owned the watch.  My sleep, even when it's fine, says it's abysmal.  Even if I'm totally relaxed, mediate before sleep, or even take sleeping meds.  Nothing helps.  

My questions are these:

1.  How should I set my heart rate numbers to make this actually work for me?  If my heart is healthy, and it's had all this time to learn that my heart rate is normally higher (it is consistent with the measurements on my VA3 as well) why is it consistently saying I'm stressed? 

2.  I've reset the watch, it is updated to 10.20 (a whole other set of problems, it consistently has Bluetooth disconnects from my phone - working with Garmin on this) yet it simply will not alter it's apparently low opinion of my health.

3.  I've tried so many different things, resets, wearing my watch tighter, looser, on the other arm.  I've slept with both my Garmin and a Fitbit, the heart rate measurements are the same.

4.  I don't smoke or drink.  I exercise regularly, fairly gentle, flat walks twice a day.  I am not sedentary, even during the school year I have a combination of periods of sitting and periods or standing/walking.  Yes, I'm still working my way back to health from cancer.  Only meds I take are for reflux, cholesterol, and asthma.

  • 0 4 months ago

    I got a Vivoactive 5 in April to replace my Vivoactive 4. This was just before I took an international trip and it recorded a lot of high stress numbers in the first couple of weeks, I thought the high stress measurements were due to travel and jet lag but after I came home it continued to read high stress levels even on days when I didn't leave the house and spent most of the day resting with similar numbers to the days where I went to the gym and did a very heavy lifting workouts.

    This week I put my Vivoactive 4 back on and suddenly the stress levels seem to be much more comparable to before in that a busy day at the gym records a high stress level and a quiet day records a low stress level. All I can suggest is that the Vivoactive 5 is very bad at recording stress compared to the VA 3 and 4.

  • 0 1 month ago

    After three months, has anything changed on the stress detection?

    My father was a smoker and asthmatic, the stress graph was always very high even when he stopped smoking. When you have a harsh breath and you get used to breathing that way and it seems like everything is normal.

  • 0 26 days ago

    Same here, it thinks doing simple tasks like cleaning the kitchen or cooking dinner are stress, I lose more body battery cooking than working out or jogging, this watch sucks! Body battery is drained everyday to 5