Strange spikes in heart rate reading

[CharlotteEmily]

Hello, 

I’ve had my Alta HR for a couple of years now and in the last month I’ve been getting readings every couple of days saying that my heart rate is in peak even though I’m not exercising and at least four occasions I’ve been asleep. Last night it suggests my heart was at 200bpm for nearly 2 hours straight, whilst I was asleep and my sleep read says I was deep asleep at this time. 

I’ve not had any physical experience of a racing heart but I’m fretting that there might be something wrong with me! I’m wondering if there’s an issue with the sensor but I haven’t had one up until now. I’ve tried plugging it into my computer and restarting it but I haven’t tried resetting to factory settings. 

Has as anyone else experienced this? I feel like I’m talking myself into a heart attack! 😕 

[Laurent05]

This started happening to me a couple days ago. I’m getting completely inaccurate heart rate readings while I’m asleep or sitting at my desk at work. Has anyone found a cause or fix? My Fitbit is around a year old...

[Alisska]

So far I have not noticed such spikes during the night or something, but my Alta regularly gives me too high reading while I walk from work. Every time I catch it showing something like 180 bpm I check my pulse, and I am not super precise, but it's roughly something like 100, nowhere near 180. I don't know if it's possible that the heart rate monitor could count each heartbeat twice...? I don't think heartbeat can even change as quickly as my readings would suggest.

[KrisztinaSoos]

Same here. Way too high heart rate reading. And also another problem occured the same time: no sleep stages tracking. 

[Janettep]

I am not even wearing mine right now but it is reading 158 heart rate!! Is it possible to reset the Fitbit? 

[Gramma2411]

That's happened to me a few times now, I think it's just a glitch. Just today it said my heart rate was 144 for 4 minutes at noon. It wasnt. I would've felt that. A couple times at night its registered 165 and 184 while I was sleeping. 

[Janettep]

I reset it a few times. I still find it to be off, but at least it doesn't show a heart rate when I am not wearing it anymore.

Sent from AT&T Yahoo Mail on Android

[Joneeg]

I get spikes occasionally on my Alta hr when exercising especially on the treadmill. I go for an hour and my hr is around 100 - 110. Sometimes I will look after I'm done and it will show a spike of 180! Nothing felt out of the ordinary so I assume it's a glitch.

[Alisska]

So, today I checked my Alta's measured heart rate against what I counted (fingers on my writs, eyes on digital clock) and later against a metronome 🙂 and yeah, sometimes it just shows too much! Like 150 when my actual HR is 120.

[asc87]

This happened to me last night. I had a spike of 200bpm for almost 2.5 hours! Other than the random high spikes once in a while out of the blue I've never had this happen. Did you end up finding out anything about your fitbit? Any answers or did it bite the dust?

[Gramma2411]

I never figured out why it happened. It happened 3x over the span of last year. Hasn't happened in over a year though, maybe an update took care of the glitch. It used to always happen at night. But never fully figured out why. Wish I could be more help. Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

[Janettep]

Hi! I never did get it to work properly.  Just yesterday when it was on the counter it said my heart rate was 140bpm! I might just switch brands.

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[chatblanc7]

This has been happening a couple of times recently, so I was looking for info about this the other day. I read another discussion on the topic in which some people were saying that the spikes were indicative of sleep apnea (as several people found out). Yet I woke up last night, looked at it, saw that my rate was spiked. Deep breathed, etc., my hr came down by about 2pm from 122 to 120. Took off the Fitbit and it continued at the same rate then started to rise. Rather like @Janettep, I was just sitting there watching "my" heart race while not being connected. Woke up today and see that I have 30 active minutes. Hmmm. Definite glitch. Restarted just now. 

I would really like to see someone from Fitbit respond to this. I'm surprised no one has since it's been about 9 months on the forum.