Increased Resting Heart Rate

[alexian]

After switching from my charge HR to the ionic, I've found that my resting bpm has increased by around 10 beats. Has anyone else experienced the same. I have had issues with syncing to wifi/headphones/bluetooth/pandora with the ionic so that might be the cause.

[Jorix]

@shipo Nah, it's just snug enough to be good. Anything more snug (snugger?) and my hand goes numb. Before the Ionic, I wore the ChargeHR just as snug and it was good.

Also, I've reached out to Fitbit Support (they monitor twitter better than they do this forum) and they are aware of the elevated heart rate measurements: "...Yes, there has been an on-going reports about Ionic's heart rate reading being higher as it should be. Our engineers are investigating and working on a fix about it. We would like to make sure as much as possible that all troubleshooting are done before adding up on the report of affected users. Thank you for your understanding and rest assured, things will be back to normal soon..." (sic)

Let's just give them some time to fix the issues.

[3JHTQ9]

Yep, had this problem too. My runs are not almost entirely in peak zone, which is weird and one day I was at absolute max HR for a while, which was a bit worrying. With my blaze this wasnt the case. If it's accurate, I seem to be in much worse shape than I thought. A bit discouraging.

[runwithnewmedia]

Chiming in here to say that I experienced a spike in resting HR with the Ionic as well. I went from 47 to 54, though as of today (2 or 3 weeks with the watch) it showed me back down at 51. 

[mrsethtaylor]

Mine doesn't settle down and regularly is showing me as having a heart rate of 200 or more during a jog - my other fitbit devices had always said similar runs were around 150-165. Resting HR is also a few points high.

Love the new watch and features, can't really use the heart rate features anymore though and have to manually add calories to my log to make up for the difference. Some runs show me as burning as much as 200 kcal more than it should because of the HR data being so far off.

I talked to support and they say they are working on it - if I feel I need to return the device I can or continue to wait for a possible solution via firmware update.

[Muscatrunner]

Same issue. With Surge my average was 137bpm for a 27 min 5K. Now, with Ionic, it races to 155 within a few minutes and then goes up and down by 5 or so. As a 61 year old, this is clearly in my peak zone and of little help to me. 

[Testimony777]

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@Jorix wrote:

Mine went up from 45/46 on the Charge HR to a whopping 57 on the Ionic. Also, while sitting at a desk, my HR reading is around 85-95bpm. When I do a double check with another device, it's perfectly normal around 52bpm.

Weird thing is that during running, the HR readings aren't more than 2 beats off of the readings from my Garmin HRM run chest strap. Maybe Fitbit tried to fix the bad readings during workouts, but totally killed the HR readings when not working out by doing so?

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This is what is happening to me. I just got the ionic and my HR reading when I am just sitting at a desk is sometimes 80 BPM (right now its at 73). In fact I don't think I have seen a BPM lower than 73 during regular activity since I have been wearing the ionic. However, when I am doing cardio it seems to be pretty on par with my charge 2. I've only worn the watch two full days (three workouts) and I haven't seen a change in my resting rate yet. But it is a bit alarming to look down and see my HR near the fat burn range when I am sitting still. 

[SunsetRunner]

Has there been any development/improvement on this subject with the most recent firmware? (@Fitbit)

I've been wearing the Ionic for a couple of weeks, and during every run my hearth rate goes to the Peak zone a lot, even over 200 bpm. Before the Ionic I wore a Charge 2 for a year and with that I reached the Peak zone when I really pushed myself, which seemed to be more normal to me.

[Jeff6584]

I also noticed when I changed from blaze to ionic an increase of 8 to 10 bpm higher.  I have compared my ionic heart rate reading to my blood pressure monitor, my Samsung S8 phone using S health, and at my doctors office with their heart rate monitor; the ionic's reading is matching with all other readings. So maybe my blaze was off a bit.

[ChrisMel]

Same issue here - resting HR has jumped from 48 to 57. Manually I check my HR and the Ionic is still about 10bpm higher, big spike to over 200 when starting a run but then it settles and is accurate. Put my Blaze back on and resting HR is back to 48 and no spike in the start of a run. Did not notice this for a while but when i look at my HR history it been only over the past 30 days and I’ve been wearing the Ionic since it’s release. I’m going to take it back to where I got it from and see if they will replace as I suspect a faulty device (have exhausted all other forms of trouble shooting)

[ZiebeeStephens]

I am experiencing more or less the same thing! Ever since recent updates, the increase fluctuates and some days I didn't think much about it as it wasn't as significant or permanent (and would come back within the typical range of 53-55 bpm, which I have maintained at least since mid-year). However switching to the Ionic, it has shot up to 65! It's got me worrying that I may be developing some health issues, but really I feel like nothing has changed in terms of my daily routine and eating habits, if anything I have been increasing exercises via attending classes in gym. What's going on, FitBit? Is it a bug in the system or should I be worried about my health?

[ChrisMel]

I am assuming a bug

[Jorix]

So, I've done some thinking and might have come with a logical explanation for this issue. But please, correct me if I'm wrong 🙂

When you plot a graph of the cardiac cycle, you'll see several parts in the graph; the P wave, QRS complex and the T wave :

Cardiac Cycle

When I manually measure my own heart beat, I can feel a stronger beat followed by a softer beat. Judging by the graph above, I think I feel the R as the strong beat, followed by the T wave. I suspect the Ionic to pick up my T waves (or at least some of them) as an extra heart beat, effectively increasing the measured heart rate and thus giving a wrong output on the resting bpm.

With this in mind, I did some biased Google searches (gotta love those) and found this discussion about the Apple Watch, describing the same behaviour: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7497413

Could this be the explanation for the issue we encounter? It also might explain why some of us get elevated resting bpm readings and some don't; if your heart also has a stronger T wave it might get counted as an extra heart beat.

Perhaps someone with a medical background can chime in here?

[ComitanDan]

The tech side of me likes your thoughts.  So I went to explore a bit how the sensors work.  Here's a quote from a December article on them.  "use optical sensors to shine a light on your skin and measure your pulse through it".  Your idea would be correct if they were measuring electrical response but I'd suspect the T wave probably doesn't show as a pulse since from my further reading the T wave is in the relaxing cycle of the pulse.  The EKG might show it as an electrical charge (apparently it's actually negative but the positive overcomes the negative values).  But it wouldn't be generating an actual beat or push of blood which is what the optical sensors are measuring.  Still a cool idea.  I'm coming around to the idea that it might actually be measuring correctly and some of the other devices we use might be more incorrect.  Pulse rates people are mentioning in this forum seem pretty low.  I suspect though we'd like to be few of us are that extreme.

On a side note the recent update really fixed some serious problems with synchronization with  multiple days of long gps workouts.  I just ran a test of doing 3 long bike rides with some other exercise over a span of a bit more than a week without sync.  Everything synced correctly when I finally did one.  I was impressed.  In two years of multiple updates microsoft could never get their band to work correctly.  And I continue to be impressed with the battery life.  I'm glad I got the Ionic.

[Jorix]

@ComitanDan Still, when I measure my pulse by hand from the wrist, I can often feel the softer bump following the stronger one. This would mean that somehow there is something happening on the veins in the wrist whenever the T wave happens, right? Also, check this review of the Ionic by DC Rainmaker; specifically the part about the Heart Rate Accuracy: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/09/fitbit-ionic-smartwatch-in-depth-review.html#heart-rate-accuracy

About other devices: when I use my Garmin Fenix 3, it uses my HRM Run chest strap with old fashioned (but really accurate, especially when moist) electrical pulses to measure my heart rate. Using this combination to have it detect my RHR, it's usually between 44 and 48 bpm on days where I'm fully recovered and rested, up to 52bpm when I've had broken nights or tough workouts the day before. My Ionic would calculate it at 51-55 and 57-60bpm, respectively.

But, despite this RHR discrepancy, I really like the Ionic 🙂

[ComitanDan]

I get it.  Thanks for the nice article.  I guess I've decided the benefits outweigh the deficits.  In general the way I now look at the heartrate is for overall trends.  I'm a biker and compare heartrates for the same rides on the climbs and descents.  I also look in general at my daily averages at various times when I do nothing (or something).  So though I agree the Ionic has problems I've taken to ignoring the exact numbers and look more for trends across my normal range of activities.  So if it's showing 70 while I'm reading I'm not going to get too worked up since it always shows 70 and 60 for resting in bed.  If it suddenly shows 80 while I'm reading I'll worry about it.  I guess I've taken for granted it might be inaccurate and have decided to just use it as a trending mechanism on my daily health.  It'd be nice if I could trust the actual numbers but I've decided I can't.  The bike tracking with inclination and heartrate sync is more important.  Again I don't look at the actual numbers as much as how they relate at given points on a ride and at the same points other days.  This way I can get a feel for the inaccuracies but more I can understand changes in my overall conditioning.

[Jorix]

Exactly; as long as the deviation is consistent, you'll be perfectly fine if you just follow the trends. And, don't forget to trust your gut feeling as well, sometimes they tell you more than some measurements.

In the end, if you want need really accurate and professional results, you should go have a true medical sport examination. You'll never get that same level of accuracy from the currently available consumer devices.

It's just that if we can help Fitbit and friends improve upon their current and future devices by providing results, feedback and suspicions, the consumer devices may get more and more accurate. We're still at an early stage of the wearables market, with lots and lots of potential in the future.

[ZiebeeStephens]

So it turns out I have a perfectly valid reason for an increased (albeit inconsistent) resting heart rate - took a while for the news to sink in, but we are expecting our first child! 

[Jorix]

Congrats! Expecting my first child too somewhere in the next 6 weeks... exciting times!

[Jorix]

I noticed that for me the issue seems to be fixed; my resting heart rate slowly dropped from around 57bpm to 47bpm today over the last two weeks (since the latest firmware update). This is more in line with what I used to get with my Charge HR before.

Anyone else seeing a drop in RHR since the latest firmware?

[CKBrown]

I’m noticing along the same lines as everyone else. My RHR is usually in the 60s. Lately it’s jumped to the 80s since the ionic. Thought it might just be stress. But I just used two other devices just now to double check my hr and it was around 8 beats lower than the ionic. I noticed it before when I had just bought the device but it had seemed to correct its self. Now it’s back.