Apple Watch scheduled HRV

1

Has anyone happened to find a way or an app that can trigger an HRV sample from Apple Watch on a schedule?

This is out of laziness mostly, I know I can do a Mindfulness session to trigger it, but I don’t always remember and it throws everything way off. I rather schedule it to sample at like 5 a.m. each day.

Thanks

2

That’s not a good idea because HRV is dependent on the sleep stage you’re in. If you are in REM, it will equally be thrown off. You need to establish a consistent habit. Best thing to do is to take a measurement right after waking up.
https://medium.com/@altini_marco/what-you-need-to-know-about-heart-rate-variability-hrv-data-collected-during-the-night-eb3913ffdcf

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Good point, thanks for the article!

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Actually Athyltic and Autosleep do this. They take your last HRV reading before waking up. I think this is better than taking a measure after waking up. Any little thing throws an HRV reading off when trying to do it after waking up. I haven’t been able to figure out a way to get data to automatically update from these apps though - will not pass to health fit also. Athyltic can also analyze HRV as rMSSD.

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2 direct reasons to question your opinion:

  • It might work for people who wake up naturally most of the mornings. That would mean that you probably always are in a ‘light sleep’ stage just before waking. But for people waking up with an alarm, you have 2 chances out of three to be in another sleeping stage.
  • Your position at that moment can be anything: Heart Rate Variability (HRV) measurement timing: morning or night?

I have now almost 4 years of HRV data (missed only 5 days) and the trend is very much in line with my subjective feeling. On the few occasions that they are not in line, a viral infection showed within 48hr.
There was one significant abrupt change when I got a partial thyroid lobectomie. That turned all my HR zones, energy levels and recovery patterns upside down. The first few monts after the surgical intervention, I had to wait for a stable trend to re-establish and couldn’t trust any outcome of the HRV metrics.

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So, I was a little wrong here. But the Athlytic and Autosleep data is an average of your sleep HRV. I’ve been using this data for a year or more and also see a consistency anytime I’m really fatigued or sick with a reduction in my HRV. Morning readings do not work for me, too much going on and I usually wake up before my alarm clock. The more I think about HRV data the more I think how useless it is and that in the future this will be another one of those stupid cycling trends. I basically ignore it anyway if I feel better than it reports how I should feel and even when it tells me I’m ready to smash a ride when I am not feeling it at all which can happen with more weight lifting in my schedule.

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7

I often feel the same way. I have a Duel Garmin HR strap which seems a nice device and I measured my HRV religiously every morning for months. If I thought it was too high or two low, I’d retest and I usually got the reading I thought was most accurate based on how I felt. Funny that. While I can see long term trends between Avg Sleeping and Resting HRs and Training Stress, I could not see a HRV pattern with those. My HRV ratings also had no correlation with Sleep ratings.

Yet there are many ardent supporters who are very satisfied with their results. This measurement evidently can have a lot of value. I don’t know. :person_shrugging: