Ask HN: Best way to track personal energy levels, and Heart Rate Variability? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best way to track personal energy levels, and Heart Rate Variability?

8 pointsekpyrotic5 comments

Hi all,

I have read that heart rate variability (HRV) is a good indicator of well-being, health, and energy levels.

With the arrival of the New Year, I want to get my energy, health, and well-being in check. A couple of questions for others, if anyone has any experience of monitoring and tracking this data?

1) Is HRV a good proxy for general well-being, or are there other metrics that should be considered / integrated?

2) How have you tracked and monitored HRV, and any other metrics that you think are important to energy / well-being?

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I am an enthusiast for Garmin smart watches and bands, even if I think the heart rate monitoring and pulse ox is less than perfect. (Sometimes the pulse ox reads around 82% around 10 pm at night when I am awake, certainly not experiencing sleep apnea, and not struggling to breathe or feeling any distress.)

Garmin devices measure stress based on HRV. When I look at the numbers in real time I think they are often accurate but I see my lowest stress levels when I am having a lazy weekend where I feel really low energy (certainly not 'great'.)

If I look at my charts of stress over the day the notable thing is that there are gaps: yesterday 7 hours of of 24 were gaps, all during the waking hours.

I don't find the stress readings averaged over a long period of time (weeks, months) to be meaningful.

Still I like having a slim timepiece, making GPS tracks, heart rate monitoring, step count, music, etc. You can get great deals at

https://g.factoryoutletstore.com/

Having tried a few I have a preference for the Vivosmart bands and the Vicoactive watch. I am wearing a Vivosport right now and like it the least of the bunch mostly because despite a nice color screen the U.I. is not so good. (Sometimes it's hard to navigate away from whatever screen it is on to see the time.)

I don’t know of any consumer device that measures HRV accurately or consistently, Garmin and Apple included. You can wear a Garmin on one wrist, and an Apple Watch on the other, as I did, and you will not get the same results between them.

HRV is best measured by qualified medical people with professional equipment.

Here’s a better/cheaper/simpler way to do roughly the same thing:

- Get yourself a paper calendar and a red Sharpie.

- Run or walk x miles every day.

- After your run or walk, draw a big red X on that day. Also draw an emoji covering your general mood, if you’d like.

- Strive for 7 X’s every week. Settle for 5 or more. Never skip more than one day at a time.

There's a chap on YouTube that compares smart watches to pro (or prosumer?) devices. His take away from testing apple series 7 watch [0] is that it's very accurate when it comes to heart rate and HRV.

The appeal of having a smart device like this is that you don't have to worry much about manual tracking. My problem with the Apple Watch is that I couldn't keep it charged.

I've also heard really interesting personal stories about Garmin body battery functionality so I might check that out next.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHQxhuqgvaw

I have a Garmin Fenix 6 Pro and it does a pretty good job tracking my HRV, but I am not sure if the best measure (at least for me) to track my well being. I find just step counting and "activity minutes" to be a better metric for me. Basically if I force myself to walk, bike, etc I end up having a better week then if I do not. I also try not to read to much news.

The Oura 3 looks pretty next level for that kind of thing.

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