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HRV variability over menstrual cycle

I’m getting frustrated with the HRV info in my watch.

Over many months it is easy to see a pattern where my HRV drops in the 2 weeks before my period, this is typical for many women and there have been research papers written on it. My Garmin knows my menstrual cycle and has the data on my HRV over months but still tells me I’m ‘strained’ due to lower than 4 weekly average HRV as though the HRV is an anomaly rather than just part of my normal pattern if you consider a longer than 4 week timescale.

I’m considering turning HRV tracking off because it’s giving me useless information. Is there anyway to request Garmin consider a longer timescale for this data or cross reference the menstrual cycle data with it?

thanks!

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0 2203661 over 2 years ago

Me too. Is there any plans to change it? There are multiple studies that show healthy hrv variability over a women’s cycle. It seems wrong that so many metrics are inaccurate for half of the garmin customer base now.

0 2166192 over 2 years ago

This drives me crazy too. I went from unbalances to low with my cycle. It’s a giant roller coaster. Garmin tracks your cycle too. There should be a way to account for this. HRV and sleep tank with my cycle and then training is “strained”.

0 Former Member over 2 years ago

This is an issue for me as well.
can you turn HRV tracking off? If so, what other metrics wouldn’t update then?

0 1852203 over 2 years ago

Just switched to the Forerunner 265, my previous Garmin didn't measure HRV. It seems incomprehensible, and downright ignorant that Garmin wouldn't cross-reference menstrual cycle data to account for this. If I want to just track my period symptoms, I can use any other app for this - the fact that they have integrated a period tracker into their app was the perfect opportunity to gradually add more and more features to help women make better decisions about their training plans, not feel annoyed because our data is labelled abnormal once a month.

Has anyone tried reaching out to the developers directly? Maybe a petition would be a start as well, provided we knew on what channels to share it.

I really hope Garmin has plans on changing this, or is working on it already. As much as I enjoy using their devices, if other companies catch on sooner and take women's needs into account in their software, we might be better off switching to another brand.