Sadly miss a stress monitor

[Denodan]

Why has fitbit not got yet a stress meter? The beauty of the Garmin fitness watches is theu have stress meter.

As its part of health and fitness why has fitbit not added this app to the ionic or any other fitbit watches?

Its about time we had this feature.

[Dominique]

FWIW, I find resting HR correlates pretty well with stress level for me. What method does Garmin use to determine stress?

[Denodan]

https://www.firstbeat.com/en/consumer-feature/all-day-stress-recovery/

This explians it. We need this fitbit

[bbarrera]

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@Dominique wrote:

FWIW, I find resting HR correlates pretty well with stress level for me. What method does Garmin use to determine stress?

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@Dominique At least for me I would say that is sometimes true, but not always. Yesterday afternoon I was under a lot of stress at work and my RHR was 75-85bpm, which is normal RHR for me when at my desk. Following the link above you see its HRV tech licensed by FirstBeat. Some interesting discussion of the feature, and a few screenshots in DCRainmaker review of Vivosmart 3. Given positive correlation reported in that review, it would have been interesting to see if that device would have detected the stressful customer situation I was dealing with at work yesterday.

Another type of stress is from training, in my case training for an upcoming Gran Fondo bike ride. After a couple days of hard training my RHR (when I wake up) is normal, yet HRV will drop indicating stress. The HRV measured stress, along with an HRV recovery advisor (bike computer), and tracking training load are all helpful tools to avoid overtraining. 

[Dominique]

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@bbarrera wrote:

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@Dominique wrote:

FWIW, I find resting HR correlates pretty well with stress level for me. What method does Garmin use to determine stress?

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@Dominique At least for me I would say that is sometimes true, but not always. Yesterday afternoon I was under a lot of stress at work and my RHR was 75-85bpm, which is normal RHR for me when at my desk. 

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@bbarrera: what I meant by "resting HR" is the single resting HR value the Fitbit algorithm picks up each day, not HR while resting at any particular moment. Here is a perfect example of the past few weeks:

For several weeks in a row, I was living my normal routine (at home, regular schedule, in terms of eating, working, exercising, sleeping etc.). My resting HR (individual values picked up by Fitbit) were around 50-53, which is my normal level. Then I had a trip to the US, which meant two long transatlantic flights in one week, disruption in my diet (hotel food), in my work (attending a busy conference) etc., which is when my resting HR shot up from 49 to 60. Now I’m back home, have resumed my normal routine and resting HR is starting to return to its normal level.

As to FirstBeat, now you’re mentioning it, I’m indeed familiar with it (the technology originates from a Finnish company, and I live in Finland). My guess is Fitbit intentionally chose not to license it. Whether it’s because of the "Not Invented Here" syndrom or cost reasons, I don’t know. 

[bbarrera]

@Dominique yes I understood what you meant, although I've found Fitbit's definition of RHR is not the generally accepted definition as it includes inactive periods during the day, versus HR upon waking up, before any external stress factors interfere with measurement. In fact my RHR upon waking up is usually between 60-70bpm, and while at work its 75-85bpm. 

When traveling, my RHR-upon-waking doesn't change much, maybe rising to upper 60s versus low 60s the days before leaving. And I definitely find that during two rest days my RHR-upon-waking is in low 60s, and then a tough 2 hour afternoon training or group ride will push RHR-upon-waking to upper 60s the next morning. And after a hard block of 2/3 day workouts my HRV declines while Fitbit RHR doesn't respond much. Personally I didn't find Fitbit's RHR algorithm of much value, and when traveling my Fitbit RHR goes up because I'm more active during the day versus when I'm in the office.

Thats what I've seen, and why I said "At least for me I would say that is sometimes true, but not always" because Fitbit RHR has less correlation to stress level than RHR-upon-waking and HRV (at least for stress due to tough 2 or 3 day blocks of training).

[bcalvanese]

This is what I use...

Garmin fenix 5x

The Ionic is a great device for basic fitness, and basic smart features, and I love the fitbit app and community.

But I like the advanced fitness features more, so I opted for the higher end Garmin device.