Pacing: Very interesting HealthRising article re HR and HRV monitoring and pacing - I may finally spring for an HR/HRV monitor!

[Float]

You can go into a tech/electronics store and view the display models.

 

[Strawberry]

I would love to know which wrist heart rate monitor has audible heart rate alert zones plus constant heart rate display if possible and large font size. Help and thanks

Iwas looking for a thread to post this, and decided here was appropriate.

I drove to California over the summer, and my heart rate monitor was going all day. You ask for audible alarms, mine isn’t audible, but a nearly silent vibration. I have many people now believing my heart issues purely on my watch.

Ihave the garmin lily, and it is a god send.

pic posted shows me packing to go until 10 am, then leaving at 10 and driving all day. The little dip mid day was my stop for food and pee.

Again, god send.

 

[hapl808]

Yeah, I had to set my HR alert at 120 and it still goes off when I'm relaxing at home.

Has anyone used a home ECG device and has anyone found their physician found it useful? Thinking about getting one but not sure the utility.

 

[Judee]

So I'm still liking the watch (Garmin Vivosmart 4) for telling me if something is a good thing or not. Either my body battery numbers will improve or my sleep will improve or the heart rate shows generally lower.

The not so good things...the watch band is starting to get blister-type pop up areas above the watch face. I think because my wrist is small and the small/medium is still just a little bit too big so I have to wear it tight so it will sit against my arm properly. With the face of the watch being long top-to-bottom it probably puts the pressure in that area the most.

I think the watch came with a 1 year warranty. Their sites says the band isn't repairable. (https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?f...05739&searchQuery=band replacement&tab=topics)

I went through that form and entered my info. It couldn't find the serial number I took from the box so then I emailed the company but haven't heard back yet.

Also it seems not to be picking up on my sleep cycles right away like it used to. I can sleep for say 3 hours and wake up and no sleep is showing. Sometimes it adds it later but sometimes I have to manually add it.

Plus, today I had errands which meant extra walking and my calorie count was pretty much the same (or less even than other days). Not sure how that can be. So that may mean the calorie count is off now.

Lastly the app has started to ask for permissions to my notifications that I don't think it needs so I keep hitting the deny button when my smart phone has that pop up. I can't remember what the permissions were but they were things like my contact list and some others that I can't imagine the device needs for doing the functions I bought it for. (I vaguely recall there being an app update that happened recently though I can't remember for sure.)

Still it's a little annoying and makes me wonder if that's why some of the features on the app are not working as well as they used to. ???

Anyone else having issues?

 

[wabi-sabi]

I am trying out the Heartmath HRV sensor and it's interesting. Not something you wear all day, but can use it to help relax a bit. It might be helping me sleep.

 

[Judee]

Has anyone used a home ECG device and has anyone found their physician found it useful? Thinking about getting one but not sure the utility.

I think @vision blue has some experience with these however I cannot remember if she said it helped with the doctor. Also she may have talked about this in a thread you've seen already. (I'm a little behind on the "times" sometimes. )

 

[Jyoti]

Anyone else having issues?

Ha! Funny you should ask, @Judee.

I still like my Garmin Vivosmart 4 but at about a year out am also noticing some problems. My band (and I have a very small wrist and have to wear it tight as well) is fine. I worried that it would fall apart (forewarned that it wasn't fixable) but it remains in perfect shape.

The Body Battery numbers continue to be quite helpful and fairly accurate for me. Which is the main thing I wanted it for. However, I have to assume that some of the tracking (sleep, steps, heartrate) goes into determining the BB numbers and....

I am noticing that the tracking is not consistent. I have had similar issues with sleep recording that you have Judee. I think it has always been a bit off in my case. Some mornings I get up after having lain in bed meditating for 6 hours, tossing and turning for 2 and it tells me I have had 7 hours of sleep. There definitely has been some rest in this scenario, but no real sleep. I do find it records MORE sleep for me, fairly consistently, than I perceive happening, vs. less, which Judee mentions.

Of late, tracking of exercise has gotten pretty weird. I admit to feeling inordinately proud when I see my minuscule accomplishments in this area recorded, so I have been kind of pissy with it when I take a walk and only a couple minutes of walking are displayed as actual exercise. However, this is not my reason for having it. Still...it is helpful to be able to compare exertion with BB reading, etc. and when it is not accurate, it doesn't offer as much as it once did.

I have been contemplating contacting Garmin, and I think this is the nudge. I am still very happy with the BB readings---they continue to help me immensely, but a bit disappointed by the 'throw-away' seeming nature of the device. A year's warranty and at 12 months exactly it begins to work less well. Sigh.

Has anyone using the Garmin (or other tracker) tried Visible? I have been using it side-by-side with the Garmin and seeing some parallel readings, and some where Visible's pacing number feels more accurate than Garmin's BB. I will continue to experiment.

Thanks for updating, Judee.

 

[wabi-sabi]

Has anyone using the Garmin (or other tracker) tried Visible?

I am using visible and finding it very interesting. That's how I happened to get the heartmath monitor- HRV turns out to be more useful than I thought. I don't have a wearable like the garmin, but I thought I might try whatever visible recommends when they get to that stage.

 

[hapl808]

I turned off sleep tracking for that reason. I find HR, stress, and battery very helpful, so that's all I monitor. It's not perfect, but it's surprisingly good and often shows an oncoming crash. For instance, maybe I have a 50 Battery on Monday and try to work on the computer and feel okay, then wake up with a 10 Battery on Tuesday, but still feel okay. Then wake up on Wednesday with a splitting headache and acid reflux. That declining HRV on Tuesday seems to show the coming crash, even when I sometimes think I've avoided PEM crashes. Used to drive me crazy because I kept thinking other stuff was triggering, as I didn't really understand the delayed nature.

 

[wabi-sabi]

Yes, the difference in how I feel vs the HRV number has been interesting. Sometimes it tells me I need to rest when I don't feel like it and sometimes it tells me I'm OK when I don't feel so good. I'm trying to use it to rest more.

 

[hapl808]

Yeah. Sometimes it seems a bit off, but I've found over time that it often is right, just a day ahead. So if I have an alcoholic drink, I feel fine the next day, but HRV is down. And the following day (2 days after drinking), I'll often have a small crash (for me - reflux, headaches, etc).

If I didn't see that numerically Battery is down next morning every single time I have even one drink, it would be harder to connect the 2 day post-drink crash.

 

[wabi-sabi]

So I should think of my morning score as a prediction for two days from now? Or that it's reflecting what happened two days ago?

 

[hapl808]

Like everything with this, probably not that simple. I do find that for unexpected large swings, it often predicts the next 24-48 hours. In other words, if you normally wake up with a 40 battery but wake up with a 5, the next 24-48 hours are unlikely to be good even if you feel the same when you wake up. Or if you normally wake up with a 30 but wake up with a 90, the next 24-48 hours you might feel a bit less terrible.

Then again, speaking as someone who's relatively severe and there are zero good days, so if you're mild or moderate, might be different.

 

[Strawberry]

Ohhh to wake up with a 90….. It’s okay to dream, right? It’s usually 5 - 15….

 

[Judee]

The not so good things...the watch band is starting to get blister-type pop up areas above the watch face...I went through that form and entered my info. It couldn't find the serial number I took from the box so then I emailed the company but haven't heard back yet.

I heard back from Garmin. I have to send my watch back to them. They provided the label.

Once they get it, they will send me a new watch since as I said the band is not repairable on this model.

I've gotten kinda used to checking this watch all the time so I'm going to miss it and then I'll probably have some techy things where I have to transfer my old watch info to the new. I hope I can figure that out w/o too much brain effort. I don't want to lose all the info I have so far.

Anyway, just wanted to give an update in case anyone is having any issues with their watch.

 

[Judee]

So the new watch is not working right. The Stress readings have doubled. My body battery reading stays parked at 5. It doesn't seem to pick up on rest periods for the most part.

In the last 24 hours, I slept 8 hours and 14 minutes (1h 8m of that being deep sleep) and yet stress reading is still showing 88% and 0 rest time which doesn't make sense. (My normal Stress reading on the old watch ran less than 45 almost all the time.)

C/S said to give it a week for the new watch to learn my body but when I look on their forums I'm seeing others mention this issue even after owning their Garmin watch for months.

 

[Jyoti]

@Judee....this sucks. I am really sorry to hear it. For you, your investment and your information.

C/S said to give it a week for the new watch to learn my body but when I look on their forums I'm seeing others mention this issue even after owning their Garmin watch for months

Sooooo disappointing, no? It sounds like it just doesn't work a lot of the time, which makes it....useless.

 

[Judee]

Has anyone using the Garmin (or other tracker) tried Visible? I have been using it side-by-side with the Garmin and seeing some parallel readings, and some where Visible's pacing number feels more accurate than Garmin's BB. I will continue to experiment.

So I just looked at that link you provided. That looks pretty cool. I like that it's an app geared towards the ME and LC communities. So are you using the Verity arm band? If so, do you have to do the subscription to use that? Just asking in case the watch issues don't resolve because I really was using those readings before to help me track things.

Edit: Is the arm band irritating? I have latex sensitivities and sometimes elasticized things have latex.

 

[hapl808]

C/S said to give it a week for the new watch to learn my body but when I look on their forums I'm seeing others mention this issue even after owning their Garmin watch for months.

When I bought my Garmin Vivosmart, the Battery didn't go up at all for the first week. Seemed like a total dud - then started working. Not sure on the Stress - it was new to me then, so I had no point of comparison.

 

[Jyoti]

So are you using the Verity arm band?

No armband...just my phone for the HRV/BPM. I am finding Visible to be really helpful, particularly in conjunction with my Garmin. (Of course that is dependent on the Garmin functioning, which so far is not your experience, Judee!)

I LOVE that Visible doesn't hound you to DO MORE/ MEET YOUR GOALS/ YOU CAN DO IT! Such a relief. It is wonderful to have a tracker that is concerned with conserving energy instead of urging you to expend more. I like the morning score and find it to be relatively accurate. Not always and not completely, but I am seeing correlation between my 'stability' score (they just changed it from a 'pacing' score) and how the day unfolds. Yesterday I got a warning to pace carefully, but I felt great so I trusted how I was feeling and went with it. Nothing extraordinary, just a little too much joy. Wow. Did I crash. My regard for the Visible score increased; I will attend to it more respectfully in future.

But anyway--for me, the morning score from Visible (which includes yesterday's symptoms, sleep, HRV and heart rate) gives me a snapshot of what to expect, while the Garmin BB gives me instant feedback on how I am doing at any point during the day.

I hope your watch heals itself, but if not, that you find the next thing and that it works for you.