How the watch shows me that I will be sick, even if I don’t know about it yet – MobilMania.cz

I have experience with Garmin watches, right? they recognize an impending illness before my own body tells me about it intelligibly. I am not alone, other users of watches of this brand describe similar behavior.

See how it looks. Six days ago I noticed that the HRV readings at night, when the Garmin shows a seven-day average, were going down. So far, I’ve been feeling great and there’s been no sign of a problem… On Friday, when the curve went into the red the next day, it was a little weird, but it still wasn’t worth talking about.

Saturday was pretty cool. Both the Garmin and the Elonga bracelet (I will also write about it later) showed me quite a decent readiness for training, so I set off on my bike. I guess I didn’t help myself much, and by Tuesday night it was already clear that this would not just disappear.

Development of HRV (Garmin uses the Czech abbreviation VST) after the next four days. On the display on the left, there are only seven-day averages, and on the right, they are also intersected by a graph with nightly values

HRV, resting heart rate and stress

O heart rate variability (HRV)whose long-term monitoring and development can reveal the state of a person’s organism, you can read this extensive article.

The way Garmin measures HRV isn’t ideal when you want to infer from the values ​​how ready you are for a workout or other physical activity. Continuous night measurements affect, among other things, sleep phases. But when averaged, it’s a good indicator that something is going on with the body.

Another figure that makes sense to monitor is resting heart rate. I know my average values, and when they suddenly jump even just a few units higher, again, something is wrong; even if I don’t know it myself yet.

The perfect indicator that there is now a problem is in the Garmins afterwards stress, especially the night one. When everything is fine, I have a completely blue graph here with nighttime stress below 25. And this is what tonight looked like. Of course, I don’t need a watch for that anymore, I can reliably recognize non-standard condition myself.

No, this is not what normal stress levels look like at night

The Apple Watch that I used for a long time did not tell me this at all. It measures HRV rather haphazardly and covertly. Values ​​are also not averaged, so you can’t track progress from graphs in the Health app. With Garmin, I already know that I can rely on this.

Elonga revealed the same

I got similar results as from Garmin in the morning measuring with an Elonga bracelet. The stress was rather average, it increased only in the last days, but I did not have a very good level of regeneration. In particular, the readiness parameter, which shows the organism’s readiness for physical performance, has been very low for a long time.

Since last week, Elonga has been advising me to be calm with a red warning. Sometimes Readiness ended up in the purple zone, when training is not excluded, but in such a case the bracelet warns that tomorrow’s measurement will reveal more.

This morning’s Elonga

For the first time in the entire measurement period, the Elonga also showed me a higher functional age than my actual age.

Chart with monthly development of regeneration and readiness. With the bottom one, you can see that Elonga also recognized in the last week that something was wrong

You don’t feel it

I am quoting from the article linked above: It makes sense to monitor the long-term development of HRV values. Despite the problems associated with measuring and evaluating HRV with consumer electronics, it is a data that can reveal information about what is happening in the human body that would otherwise remain hidden. This is because a person does not have the ability to feel or subjectively evaluate the state of his autonomic nervous system.

Correctly interpreted heart rate variability will help in monitoring health and stress. They will advise athletes how they can effectively increase their fitness and prevent overtraining. He recommends resting when needed; and train when the body is ready to perform. And HRV can also alert you in time when any health problems are approaching.