If you have been using an Apple Watch to track your resting heart rate, You may have noticed that you increase a couple of beats in late 2020. This is what is possibly happening.
Warning: The writer is not a doctor. If you are concerned about an increase in your resting heart rate, ignore everything that follows and contact your primary care physician. Despite this, if you wonder why the measurements are a little different, keep reading!
How Apple Watch Heart Rate Measurement Changed
Your resting heart rate is generally a measure of your physical condition. (and in consequence, your overall health). The more fit you are, The lower the likelihood that your resting heart rate will be compared to that of others your age and biological sex. If you have an Apple Watch, measures your resting heart rate when you stop moving a little and calculates an average throughout the day.
Then, I was quite surprised when, in October, my Apple Watch mentioned to me that my resting heart rate had increased by about six beats per minute. I hadn't stopped exercising, I was not taking medication and nothing else had changed in my lifestyle.
But, What had changed? The operating system of my Apple Watch.
Con watchOS 7, released in September 2020, Apple officially introduced sleep tracking. Before that, I was still wearing my watch in bed, but using a third party app to track things. This meant that my watch was measuring my resting heart rate while I was sleeping..
Unfortunately for my ego, you must be awake when you measure your resting heart rate. Con watchOS 7 and the official sleep tracking, my watch no longer took extra low night measurements into account, so the general daily average increased.
In the graph above, you can see my heart rate still dropped to 46 beats per minute last night.
If you also wear your watch to bed and have seen an equivalent steady jump in your resting heart rate, it is very likely that this is also what is happening to him.
RELATED: How to set up sleep tracking on Apple Watch
What else can increase your resting heart rate?
Of course, software updates aren't the only thing that can increase your resting heart rate. It is also affected by:
- Stress (and sometimes even the stress of software updates)
- Caffeine
- Your age
- The time of day it is measured
- Activity levels
In addition there are many other factors. If you are concerned about a recent change in your resting heart rate, contact your doctor.
How to reduce your resting heart rate
A lower resting heart rate is correlated with better physical condition, which correlates with better overall health in general. It is only one of many measures of your general well-being and not a magic number in itself..
Having said this, you can likely reduce your resting heart rate by increasing your cardiovascular fitness, which is related to some pretty good health results, as a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, type diabetes 2, high blood pressure, dementia, Alzheimer's and some cancers.
Unfortunately, the main way to do this is by exercising. If you are new to it, a couch program at 5k is the best place to start. Over a period of six weeks, go from sitting on the couch to being able to walk or run five kilometers (or three miles). Opposite case, talk to a personal trainer or increase the intensity of your current program.
AND, of course, Talk to a doctor before doing any strenuous activity you haven't done before.
