HRV with pollen allergy

I was wondering if any of you have experienced a ddrop in HRV due to allergies. I seem not to be able to recover very well lately and have a hunch that might be part of the issue.
I found this resource but am curious to hear other people’s experience.

1 Like

I have allergies, but I am not measuring my HRV in the morning… I should start doing it but do not really find the correct way to proceed. Do you wet the HR belt before measuring your HR in the morning as you would do before an activity or you just put it dry and the measurements are good?

To come back to your question, I will try implementing it in my routine, and since we are in the high allergenic period in EU a the moment, I may provide a feedback once the allergies are gone and I have enough HRV measurements to compare with!

Have a nice day

1 Like

I used to measure with a Polar H10 (a bit of moisture was required) and HRV4training. However, I switched to the optical measurement from within the app. It is very reliable once you find a repeatable routine (same body position, no movement).

1 Like

Yes, I suffer mostly from a post nasal drip and sinus, at the change of seasons. It’s not directly linked to pollen, but the timing is around the high pollen count.

I track both HRV and my illness history, and I can see a few days before that I’ll be getting sick.

I wet my HR strap as well before measuring with HRV4training app. I was finding about 50% of the measurements taken with the optical camera on my cheap Android phone were not valid on the app and I just couldn’t get it right. So I’ve switched to the strap and that works fine.

I also have a graph in intervals.icu that plots the HRV and RHR from this with a moving average and a 1SD band. The days where the results are outside the band usually correspond to getting unwell

1 Like

Many thanks @davdf and @Kosio_Varbenov for your reply!

I will do so now, and keep you updated :slight_smile:

Hi, I’m using whoop to read my HRV and give me an ovverall recovery score. Its been 2 weeks now that ive been suffering from allergies and i did find a correlation between my score and my difficulties to sleep because of the allergies… not sure the allergies are really what makes the HRV drops but my lack of deep sleep sure is :frowning:

1 Like

Probably not the most hygienic but I give my strap a good lick in the morning…

1 Like

I thought about it too… But I left a glass of water next to the HR belt so that I can wet it a bit before taking the measurements.

I lick my fingers and then wipe the strap.

Yes with pollens.
I track my HRC since last year.
I can see a drop on by HRV average graph. I did not have a good recovery since the pollens period. I did not train hard and normally I recover well.
Actually only the H10 belt is precise enough for measuring HRV.
All other are kind of gadget that simulate HRV with some formulas.
The important is that you measure you HRV every day at the same time and at the some condition. That’s why I measure them every morning after the wake-up.
The instant value of the measure will not tell you a lot about your health.
Only after a long period and with a graph that show the average HRV tendance can tell you about the health. If the tendance is starting to continusely decrease then it means that the probality that something is wrong or you are in overtraining.
this article tell as well that, HRV usage it is really a personal way : Measuring HRV – HRV Health

Interestingly my RHR is always about 3-5 high during high allergy/pollen season. I have played with using OTC meds to sleep better and find it helps. I try to only leverage for a couple nights off and on.
I did have to try a few. Reactine didn’t work for me but Claritin did.

Interesting topic. I experienced elevated RHR (5bps or so) and low HRV for several weeks during a recent pollen season, for no apparent reason. Just a few days ago both RHR and HRV came back down to normal levels. I can’t say for sure what was the cause, but the symptoms sure correlated with the pollen season.

That is not correct information that the H10 is the only one that will measure correctly.
H9 is also accurate enough, as is Garmin Dual HRM. That’s just 2 others and there a several more HR straps on the market that measure HRV accurately.

2 Likes

Studies haven’t definitively established a cause-and-effect relationship: Some studies indicate a potential link between allergies and increased HRV, suggesting a different mechanism than your concern. This underscores the need for further research.