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Resting HR spikes (and sleep HR goes up) when sick

I've had my Fitbit HR since March now and I've been sick many times, and Very Consistenly I notice that my resting HR spikes up to "72" and stays there while I'm at the peak of sickness, and comes down when I'm well. Whatever formula they have seems to be extra magical in predicting the onset of viral illness because it starts to go up 2 days before I get any symptoms. Interestingly, the resting HR doesn't directly relate to overnight HR -- my overnight HR is "normally" 54-59, and when i'm sick and my resting HR is 72, my overnight HR is in the mid-to-high 60s. Most people's reactions to this is that the scale of change is insignificant (I'm a scientist / I get comments from other scientists), and I'd agree except that it's alarming precise and these noticeable spikes *only* happen when I'm sick. Anyone else noticing this magical prediction ability and mirroring of illness state??

 

Screen Shot 2015-10-21 at 6.39.41 AM.png

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93 REPLIES 93

@angelafoodcake I have found the RHR that Fitbit uses close and the images below, the first of me sleeping the other night on a balmy Spring evening in Melbourne, which makes you aware of your environment and the second image, which shows that it took me a month for my RHR to settle down after an operation.

 

rhr 3 months 2.jpg


@angelafoodcake wrote:

I've had my Fitbit HR since March now and I've been sick many times, and Very Consistenly I notice that my resting HR spikes up to "72" and stays there while I'm at the peak of sickness, and comes down when I'm well. Whatever formula they have seems to be extra magical in predicting the onset of viral illness because it starts to go up 2 days before I get any symptoms. Interestingly, the resting HR doesn't directly relate to overnight HR -- my overnight HR is "normally" 54-59, and when i'm sick and my resting HR is 72, my overnight HR is in the mid-to-high 60s. Most people's reactions to this is that the scale of change is insignificant (I'm a scientist / I get comments from other scientists), and I'd agree except that it's alarming precise and these noticeable spikes *only* happen when I'm sick. Anyone else noticing this magical prediction ability and mirroring of illness state??

 

Screen Shot 2015-10-21 at 6.39.41 AM.png


 

Colin:Victoria, Australia
Ionic (OS 4.2.1, 27.72.1.15), Android App 3.45.1, Premium, Phone Sony Xperia XA2, Android 9.0
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Totally! I don't wear it during sleep but my resting heart rate tracks very closely with illness, often including a peak prior to illness onset like you described. There are occasional times when it goes up a little without me getting sick, but I'd say 100% of the time that I've been sick my heart rate has been elevated. I had a prolonged illness this summer (flu followed by sinus infection) and it went very high and stayed up the whole time I was sick. I could see my heart rate dropping as I started to get better - gave me hope! I'm also a scientist BTW Smiley Very Happy

 

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Mine also rises a similar amount when sick. It is quite interesting that it starts to rise before the onset of symptoms- then turn down precisely when I feel better.
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The RHR's on my wrist Fitbits are very accurate. I wish it were when you exercise. But importantly we are seeing a measurable advantage at the lower activity levels. When I tracked it through our winter I found extra garments had a measurable effect and this extract from this link

 

Extract

A reduction in heart rate for a given intensity is usually due to an improvement in fitness but a number of other factors might explain why heart rates can vary for a given intensity:

 

  • Dehydration can increase the heart rate by up to 7.5%
  • Heat and humidity can increase the heart rate by 10 beats/minute
  • Altitude can increase the heart rate by 10 to 20%, even when acclimatised
  • Biological variation can mean the heart rate varies from day to day by 2 to 4 beats/minute
Colin:Victoria, Australia
Ionic (OS 4.2.1, 27.72.1.15), Android App 3.45.1, Premium, Phone Sony Xperia XA2, Android 9.0
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I have also seen this very consistently.

Resting HR goes up while sick (even with just a mild cold), with an advance notice 1-2 days ahead of onset of symtoms.

 

I've often thought this could make a very useful/interesting feature.

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Hello everyone

 

I had the fitbit ZIP and IN DEC 2014 last year.. 

and then in Sept 2015 this year I lost it at somewhere so I will be back soon... life go on

 

have a great weekend

 

 

Missy M. as@ nkotblove
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I also noticed the Fitbit Surge is useful during sleep to know when something is going on.  I had a bad episode of heartburn one night that woke me up. (I take Nexium and I forgot it).  My heart rate spiked and sustained for almost an hour AND the other thing that tells me something is wrong when I sleep is the active minutes measured by calories burned.  While I can't find the detailed heart rate data like I have in the app, I do have the calories burned in the log. This morning I felt tired when I woke up like I didn't sleep well.  I got a normal amount of sleep for me but when I looked at the "active minutes" I had 26 minutes within an hour of getting up and looking further it was at 1:30ish in the morning when I was fast asleep! Or so I thought. Makes me wonder what happened. No heart burn this time. The Fitbit is great for insight like this. I look at data all the time (engineer) and I am formerly a paramedic, so I am figuring out new things to use it for frequently.  This is almost like having a medical grade heart monitor on all the time. Things I never knew about are coming to light now.  

 1318.jpg1319.jpg

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@JackP When you need to analyse your HR to a finer level you can create a Custom Activity, for example, in your case call it Surge HR.  That is if you haven't already set your workout on the Surge to record your sleeping activity. For those reading this, my Charge HR's will not record very low level timer activity from the button so you need to create the Custom Activity if you need the one minute HR graphs for sleeping analysis.

 

I use the mobile phone to create the HR graph because it uses the exact calories over the time period you select. If you do it on the Dashboard of the PC it is a bit, hit and miss with the calories. When you create the Custom Activity it flattens the calories over the elapsed time so if you are keen on active minutes and you have selected, say your waking hours it will affect those. So I recommend you delete the Activity created after you analyse it.

 

Here is an example of  a recent sleep period.where we had a balmy Spring night in Melbourne and I was restless with the warmth, but no humidity.  I kept waking up and tossing around.  We have had record above average temperatures this October.  This was created after the sleep period using the Custom Activity.

 

Nice to have another engineer in the posts, by nature I like my baselines as well..

 

blanket.jpg

 

 


@JackP wrote:

I also noticed the Fitbit Surge is useful during sleep to know when something is going on.  I had a bad episode of heartburn one night that woke me up. (I take Nexium and I forgot it).  My heart rate spiked and sustained for almost an hour AND the other thing that tells me something is wrong when I sleep is the active minutes measured by calories burned.  While I can't find the detailed heart rate data like I have in the app, I do have the calories burned in the log. This morning I felt tired when I woke up like I didn't sleep well.  I got a normal amount of sleep for me but when I looked at the "active minutes" I had 26 minutes within an hour of getting up and looking further it was at 1:30ish in the morning when I was fast asleep! Or so I thought. Makes me wonder what happened. No heart burn this time. The Fitbit is great for insight like this. I look at data all the time (engineer) and I am formerly a paramedic, so I am figuring out new things to use it for frequently.  This is almost like having a medical grade heart monitor on all the time. Things I never knew about are coming to light now.  

 1318.jpg1319.jpg


 

Colin:Victoria, Australia
Ionic (OS 4.2.1, 27.72.1.15), Android App 3.45.1, Premium, Phone Sony Xperia XA2, Android 9.0
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Can you elaborate on exactly how to create a custom activity ? I presume it would start and stop at the sleep times but I'm not sure how to create it.
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@JackP wrote:
Can you elaborate on exactly how to create a custom activity ? I presume it would start and stop at the sleep times but I'm not sure how to create it.

@JackP Thanks for getting back. To start creating a Custom Activity you

 

1. On your PC Dashboard

2. Click on Log, Activities

3. Follow these

 

Custom 3.jpgCustom 5.jpg

 

4. Then make sure you sync your phone and now we use the Custom Activity from the phone and you select the time frame. The maximum you can analyse is 24 hours and across "day boundaries"

5. Tap your Exercise tile on the Phone

6. Tap the +stopwatch and fill out the fields

7 Sync your phone so that you can view the "full screen" result from your Log, Activities view.

 

 

 phone exercise a.jpgPhone exercise 1.jpg

 

Because this procedure flattens out the calories over the duration time, it will affect any active minutes and you need to consider deleting the activity afterwards. When you see the activity in the Activity list you will notice a Trash can for deletion.

 

You can use the Custom Activity from the Log, Activities on your PC Dashboard

 

Of course you can do this automatically with the Surge and select either Workout or Yoga from the exercise shortcuts. Eventually you will find a happy balance between using the exercise shortcuts, wearing the Surge 24/7 and battery life.

 

Here is a 24 hour example from my Charge HR. I'm still working on "taming" the spikes when I start to move. In this example all of the daylight activity is domesticated walking, shopping, cafe's for a retired engineer.and the last few hours is some TV viewing.

 

24 hour charge.jpg

 

 

 

 

Colin:Victoria, Australia
Ionic (OS 4.2.1, 27.72.1.15), Android App 3.45.1, Premium, Phone Sony Xperia XA2, Android 9.0
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Thank you Colin.  I did as you suggested and it worked great.  Got much more detail.  As you can see the acid reflux event was long and uncomfortable.  What bothers me is that my heart rate was so high for so long and I didn't even realize it.  Thats longer than when I run! Does nothing for sleep of course.

 

reflufevent.png

 

Also I can tune in the time and get even more detail and a better estimated length of event.

 

 

reflufevent2.png

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@JackP I'm glad I could help you with your analysis. That is a dramatic result. My b-in-law was on Nexium as well, but as his carer I never witnessed the very high pulse rate. He had a very low blood pressure of 95/65 most times and I had to warn his medical staff that's his norm. There is no correlation to BP or pulse according to this link.

 

He was using Nexium to minimise his chances of aspiration pneumonia because he had a parallel delayed swallowing problem.

 

But I'm sure your GP is monitoring the reaction..

 

Keep us posted and being a semi public forum (this week) it is always difficult to talk health issues.

 


@JackP wrote:

Thank you Colin.  I did as you suggested and it worked great.  Got much more detail.  As you can see the acid reflux event was long and uncomfortable.  What bothers me is that my heart rate was so high for so long and I didn't even realize it.  Thats longer than when I run! Does nothing for sleep of course.

 

reflufevent.png

 

Also I can tune in the time and get even more detail and a better estimated length of event.

 

 

reflufevent2.png


 

 

 

Colin:Victoria, Australia
Ionic (OS 4.2.1, 27.72.1.15), Android App 3.45.1, Premium, Phone Sony Xperia XA2, Android 9.0
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Yes! I had pneumonia for two weeks and noticed I had significantly increased time in the fat burn zone without working out. When I don't work out. I normally have very few minutes of fat burn. While sick, I had many days with an hour and a half of fat burn. Very interesting!
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I can reconfirm that at the low end of HR detection the Charge HR definitely detects the onset of infection

  This time I had the odd sneeze and blamed it on my dusty gardening (Summer here). But over a few days my RHR went from 58 to 64 and 2 days ago I woke with sore throat and temperature. Today the RHR  has already dropped to 62.@Runner88

 

 

 

Runner88wrote:

Yes! I had pneumonia for two weeks and noticed I had significantly increased time in the fat burn zone without working out. When I don't work out. I normally have very few minutes of fat burn. While sick, I had many days with an hour and a half of fat burn. Very interesting!

 

 

 

 

 

Colin:Victoria, Australia
Ionic (OS 4.2.1, 27.72.1.15), Android App 3.45.1, Premium, Phone Sony Xperia XA2, Android 9.0
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Son of a gun. . .that is exactly what has been going on with me, but I didn't make the connection.  I couldn't figure out why my "resting" HR was fuctuating.  And I did notice that what they call my resting HR is not my actual resting HR.  I think it is a calculation that works with the other heart rate levels rather than an actual basal metabolism rate.

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I know the fitbit isn't a "medical device" but my heartrate went up 5 bpm during a cold and secondary broncial infection I'm just recovering from. Even though I had my energy returned after the initial cold, my fitbit was telling me I wasn't over it yet. I could tell too. I had a continual slightly runny nose which during my seconary infection turned into a horrid cough that would just not stop...no fever with that like the initial cold. My fitbit is showing I'm now recoverd if I go by my heart rate getting back down to normal.

 

I'd probably recovered faster had I gone to the doctor to get some antibiodics like others at work had done. Anyway I survived. 

HeartRate.JPG

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Fascinating thread. I'd read about this illness-related spike in RHR, and today -- the second day into the first cold I've had since getting my FitBit last August -- I noticed it myself. I'm usually at 49-50 BPM, and yesterday it jumped to 52, and today it's at 55 BPM. The RHR spike didn't anticipate symptoms, however, but paralleled them.
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@EricJon_H wrote:
Fascinating thread. I'd read about this illness-related spike in RHR, and today -- the second day into the first cold I've had since getting my FitBit last August -- I noticed it myself. I'm usually at 49-50 BPM, and yesterday it jumped to 52, and today it's at 55 BPM. The RHR spike didn't anticipate symptoms, however, but paralleled them.

@EricJon_H I posted a couple of weeks ago and during the last few days the same thing.. From a RHR of 48 up to 54 and today I have stinging eyes and the feeling of onset. I never get colds and never had the flu at 76.. Still got my tonsils which is my warning device. But my specialists say it is my genes and I feel my system fighting it is more tiring.

 

I have only had one operation, a major one 9 months ago and while in hospital my RHR went to 74bpm and then took another 4 weeks to come back 62bpm. After getting back into the swing of things I'm now enjoying a RHR average of 49 bpm.

 

At the low levels of activity II'm finding all of the HR models are accurate.

Colin:Victoria, Australia
Ionic (OS 4.2.1, 27.72.1.15), Android App 3.45.1, Premium, Phone Sony Xperia XA2, Android 9.0
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I've noticed the same thing a few illnesses ago. That was my worst one in a long time and it made my RHR go up 20+ so it would have been hard not to notice. It always goes up around 5-8 points before onset of symptoms. Obviously I'm sick now 😛

 

RHR Sick week.jpg

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