Dectecting a temporary (1-2 mins) low heart rate

[ostonica]

I am looking for a wrist monitor that will record the occasions when my HR drops to about half the normal rate.for about 1-2 mins.

I read that 24x7 HR monitors check HR every few mins and turn to continuous when HR increases, but not when HR decreases.

Is there a fitbit wrist monitor that records HR 24x7 and will detect a sudden HR drop . for a short period? 

This has been happening ocasionally for 2-3 years now but we have never been able to record data about it with a halter or ecg, so the Dr was not too concerned about it. 

Thanks

[Julia_G]

Hi, @ostonica, I believe that Fitbits with HR monitors on normal mode sample heartrate every 5 seconds but averages over 5 minute intervals.  If you have it on exercise mode I believe it will sample every 1 second and average over 1 minute intervals.  It does not distinguish between unusually low or high heartrates.  It will sample the same either way.

Not all Fitbits have exercise mode, and you would still get 1 minute averaging, so I am not sure that any Fitbit device will do what you require.

The Fitbit Ionic is the most sophisticated device.  It is possible to create a custom "exercise" setting to capture your heartrate.  For example, I have a "resting" mode (exercise mode! even though it is not exercising).  When I want to sample my resting heartrate I turn on exercise mode (using the "workout" option -- even though I am definitely not working out...) When I am done, I stop workout mode, and sync to my app, then rename to my custom setting of "resting".  I then get a graph of my heart activity sampled at 1 second and averaged over 1 minute intervals, 

If you did this for hours at a time, or even 24 hours, I would think it would have significant impact on battery.  I don't know if yu could run exercise mode for 24 hours.  Would be interesting to find out.  If you try it, please let us know!

[ostonica]

Many thanks Julia. It's very helpful to know about the sampling intervals.

The Blaze does have the exercise mode, so maybe this could detect a HR drop, provided it lasted a minute or more. 

Do you know if it is possible to set a custom heart zone.to a heart rate below the resting heart rate? 

Is it possible to send an alert if the HR drops below a certain value? 

[ostonica]

I got the Blaze yesterday Julia and tried your method overnight. But it looks like it only recorded 47 mins.

Then when I tried to export the heart rate days, nothing I tried was able to get a spreadsheet of that data. 

What do I need to do to export heart rate data to a csv file?

Thanks

Jim

[manhunt9]

I've noticed this with the blaze, it drops alot when I'm cycling I know because I use live data to try and get my heart rate higher than before. Seems like the heart rate on the blaze is crap but then again I heard people complain saying the new firmware has messed up the heart rate I'm not sure what's going on

I regret buying the blaze for this I should of stayed with the charge 2 

[Julia_G]

Hi, @ostonica, unfortunately. I do not think it is possible to export HR data to a CSV file.

I am a little surprised you only got recordings for 47 minutes,  You should be able to get hours on activity mode (I have used the mode for long hikes and many people also use it for golf, which also takes hours).  Might be worth another try.

[ostonica]

Thanks Julia

I must have accidentally stopped the recording the first night becasue I
got 6 hours last night.

It's very disappointing that HR data cannot be downloaded. But I see
that another user has used the API to make a website where you can
download the heart data. So it cannot be too hard for FitBit to do this.

I wonder why this often requested feature is still missing.

Jim