Heart Rate

hellonew2015

FitBit is saying I am at 57 bpm sitting at my computer desk. I am not an Athlete, I just do brisk walks daily for 30 minutes. is this normal?

I am a female and 46yrs old

NorthCascades

It's normal for Fitbit devices to give incorrect HR readings sometimes, yes. Are you wearing it a few inches "up" your wrist, and tightly enough to prevent light from getting into the optical mechanism?

sijomial

Have you checked your pulse manually to confirm it's actually a true reading?

Bottom end of a (very wide) "normal range" is 60bpm but 57 isn't really remarkable. Normal range meaning most people fall in that range rather than outside the range is a concern BTW.

NHS advice is "You should contact your GP if you think your heart rate is continuously above 120 bpm or below 40 bpm, although this could just be normal for you."

hellonew2015

Good to know! Thank you.

CMNVA

I posted something similar just the other day. I am not an athlete either (and 52). The most of done recently is completed Couch to 5K. My resting heart rate sitting at a computer can be 49-55 bpm. Scared me to death. But my heart does seem to respond appropriately when I exercise. I can't get in for a physical until January so I'll be asking then.

hellonew2015

NorthCascades wrote: »

It's normal for Fitbit devices to give incorrect HR readings sometimes, yes. Are you wearing it a few inches "up" your wrist, and tightly enough to prevent light from getting into the optical mechanism?

It looks better now, I moved it higher on my arm about 3 fingers away from the wrist, away from the lights and it is reading 65 bmp.

Spliner1969

That's the problem with wrist-worn HR monitors, they are wildly inaccurate. If you want something more accurate, wear a strap, the sensor goes just under your rib cage right over your heart. But you don't generally wear those all day like a fitness tracker. You only wear them when purposely doing cardio.

hellobaconplease

My resting heartrate is usually 48bpm and I'm far from athletic!

CMNVA

I've got a new Garmin wrist monitor and my heart rate has been pretty low (just clocked it at 44 bpms sitting here typing). I've been checking my pulse manually and this thing has been super accurate to my surprise.

MeanderingMammal

hellonew2015 wrote: »

It looks better now, I moved it higher on my arm about 3 fingers away from the wrist, away from the lights and it is reading 65 bmp.

To be honest an 8bpm difference means very little, it may or may not be as a result of re-siting the sensor. The only way to know whether the reading is accurate or not is, as suggested upthread, to take your pulse manually and compare.

While optical sensors are perfectly adequate for most use, they're not really appropriate for that sort of snapshot reading. There are a number of factors that can interfere so they're more usefully used for trend tracking or for taking an average over a known period. That way the sources of error should net-off.

If you were querying a read of 30bpm or perhaps 120bpm when sitting passive I'd suggest a device based error.

As to whether 57 is a low reading when sitting passive, difficult to tell. If that's unusually different to what it normally looks like in those circumstances, then yes go and see someone about it. Personally I wouldn't be worried, but my resting heart rate is about 50bpm.

Charlene_1985

My resting HR is usually in the mid to high 40s. But I am an athlete. The other day I went for biometric screenings for my insurance and even the CNA took it as 52 after walking from the waiting room to the sample collection area.

AnnPT77

Charlene_Marie_723 wrote: »

My resting HR is usually in the mid to high 40s. But I am an athlete. The other day I went for biometric screenings for my insurance and even the CNA took it as 52 after walking from the waiting room to the sample collection area.

My cataract surgeon called it fitness-induced bradycardia, or somesuch term. (While waiting to go into surgery, I kept setting off the "low heart rate" alarm, which was set to trip at 50, and finally resorted to raising my legs from the bed & waving them around in the air because the beeping was annoying. ).

OP, this is subjective, but it appeared to me that my resting heart rate dropped after weight loss, for a period of time, almost as if it was used to working harder to pump blood around my obese (but reasonably fit) self, and 'decided' it could slack off once the needed work was reduced. At least it went down for some reason, even though I hadn't particularly changed my exercise volume or intensity. If your weight loss is relatively recent, maybe there's some similar effect for you? (Warning: This is purely speculative!)

MeanderingMammal

AnnPT77 wrote: »

....but it appeared to me that my resting heart rate dropped after weight loss, for a period of time, almost as if it was used to working harder to pump blood around my obese (but reasonably fit) self, and 'decided' it could slack off once the needed work was reduced.

That would be consistent with how the CV system works. By reducing demand on oxygen you reduce demand on the volume of blood moved around. Assuming no change in stroke volume you need fewer beats to move enough oxygen around.

Low to moderate intensity steady state effort helps improve stroke volume, so it would seem reasonable that something as simple as a 2 mile or so walk every day would make reasonable progress in that respect.

NorthCascades

AnnPT77 wrote: »

My cataract surgeon called it fitness-induced bradycardia, or somesuch term. (While waiting to go into surgery, I kept setting off the "low heart rate" alarm, which was set to trip at 50, and finally resorted to raising my legs from the bed & waving them around in the air because the beeping was annoying. ).

When I got hit by a car, they took me to the ER and hooked me up to an ECG, among other things. It would sound the alarm whenever my heart rate went too low, just like yours. And since they had me laying in a bed, it was going off a lot. Finally one of the nurses came over, I told her I'm a cyclist, and she turned the alarm off.

Azdak

MeanderingMammal wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

....but it appeared to me that my resting heart rate dropped after weight loss, for a period of time, almost as if it was used to working harder to pump blood around my obese (but reasonably fit) self, and 'decided' it could slack off once the needed work was reduced.

That would be consistent with how the CV system works. By reducing demand on oxygen you reduce demand on the volume of blood moved around. Assuming no change in stroke volume you need fewer beats to move enough oxygen around.

Low to moderate intensity steady state effort helps improve stroke volume, so it would seem reasonable that something as simple as a 2 mile or so walk every day would make reasonable progress in that respect.

Just an aside: it appears that the decrease in resting heart rate that occurs from long-term exercise training is more due to an increase in parasympathetic tone, rather than directly from changes in the heart muscle itself. In other words, exercise

---

>increases parasympathetic tone

---

> slows down heart rate ----> increases preload/ventricular filling

---

>heart reflexively beats more forcefully/increases stroke volume

The result is exactly the same, it's just that, technically, it's the increase in parasympathetic tone that "trains" the heart, not necessarily the exercise training itself.

In some ways, that makes sense. Even with exercise training, one's resting oxygen needs would not change all that much. So if heart rate was reduced solely due to decreased oxygen demand, one likely would not see as much of a decrease after exercise training. (Again, we're talking resting heart rate, not exercise heart rate). That would also explain why resting heart rate remains blunted (not to the same degree, but still lower than "average") n people who have engaged in years of endurance training, even if they become sedentary and gain weight.

MeanderingMammal

Azdak wrote: »

Just an aside: it appears that the decrease in resting heart rate that occurs from long-term exercise training is more due to an increase in parasympathetic tone, rather than directly from changes in the heart muscle itself.

Useful, thank you. I'll need to go and have a dig around on that.

Azdak

MeanderingMammal wrote: »

Azdak wrote: »

Just an aside: it appears that the decrease in resting heart rate that occurs from long-term exercise training is more due to an increase in parasympathetic tone, rather than directly from changes in the heart muscle itself.

Useful, thank you. I'll need to go and have a dig around on that.

I read so much I don't have time to catalog it all, so I apologize for no reference. I remember the article because it represented such a shift in thinking, and, given my profession, that's a big thing.

It reminded me of the whole lactic acid concept of muscle fatigue. Because increased lactic acid was associated with fatigue, it was thought to be causal. We then found out it was mainly a coincidence--and yet I still think you can use lactic acid levels to predict fatigue and test training improvements. So he practical application still might have value, even though the explanation behind it no longer holds.

30kgin2017

Genetics, we have low resting heart rates in my family. I found my fitbit to be accurate as confirmed with results taken when giving blood etc. I have always had people comment on my heart rate, also my blood pressure is relatively low. I always say what my normal is when having a checkup, giving blood etc so they only ask if its different i.e. when my blood pressure was 97/50 they asked about seeing stars etc.

hellonew2015

Thank you all for your responses! I think what made me question it was when I looked at charts provided online with heart rate ranges, I saw that I was in the athlete category and that concerned me because I only walk daily. Moving my Fitbit position helped showing a better number.