Can we compare our sleeping track?

[gadgetrants]

Wow, so glad to hear you're liking it! I have to confess that I have NO IDEA what MS means by resting HR. It's my day job to nitpick and microanalyze things like that, so I'm probably over-analyzing, but...the notion that "this is your heartrate after 10 minutes of rest or non-activity" is totally ambiguous in the context of sleep. Does it mean:

- your HR after the very first 10 minutes of sleep (which is surely non-activity)
- the LOWEST HR reading after any 10 minutes of sleep
- some combination of the above, sampled after each first 10 minutes of "restful sleep" (i.e., over multiple sleep/wake cycles)

I can spin off three or four alternatives, but I'll just say this: I initially read "resting" to mean a reasonable average of my LOWEST HR during sleep. But the definition provided by MS doesn't sound anything like that. In fact, the definition only makes sense to me in the context of wakeful time, i.e., "during the day, 'resting HR' means your HR after 10 minutes of doing nothing." I also probably assumed that there are multiple such "resting" events during the day (or during sleep) and the one reported by MS is the lowest. Truthfully, I can't say which it is.

tl;dr Don't put too much faith in Microsoft's use of the term "resting HR" -- it's very ambiguous.

-Matt

 

[DroidUser42]

tl;dr Don't put too much faith in Microsoft's use of the term "resting HR" -- it's very ambiguous.

I don't recall seeing "resting HR" except during the sleep cycle. And I'm pretty sure it is a type of minimum. From a medical standpoint, it's probably your minimum HR needed to stay alive and not influenced by activity. I'm guessing it's a measure of how hard your system has to work to maintain life function. Lower is better.

 

[gadgetrants]

I don't recall seeing "resting HR" except during the sleep cycle. And I'm pretty sure it is a type of minimum. From a medical standpoint, it's probably your minimum HR needed to stay alive and not influenced by activity. I'm guessing it's a measure of how hard your system has to work to maintain life function. Lower is better.

Thanks! This is a wonderful and spot-on definition of what resting HR should mean, or at least, a common-sense interpretation from a health-centered approach. The two concerns I'm raising are "is that what MS means by their definition?" and "what sleep metrics/data and algorithm are they using to measure resting HR?" The way it's described on the Dashboard page leaves it wide open to interpretation:

Resting heart rate refers to the measure of your heart rate after 10 minutes of rest or non-activity. Your resting HR may be lower while you are sleeping.

I tend to read that definition as suggesting that resting HR (according to MS) is in fact a waking measure -- even though it mysteriously shows up on the "Sleep" page. In other words: why state the resting HR level on the sleep page, and then say it "may be lower while you are sleeping?" That implies you have a "regular" resting HR while awake and then a second "lower" resting HR while sleeping.

NOTE: there is a convoluted path through all of this, which is to propose...the real measure of interest is basal (or resting) metabolic rate, which I'd imagine is rather well-correlated (negatively) with resting HR.

Basal metabolic rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

With four to six weeks of targeted training the body systems can adapt to a higher perfusion of mitochondrial density for increased oxygen availability for the Krebs cycle, or tricarboxylic cycle, or the glycolitic cycle. This in turn leads to a lower resting heart rate, lower blood pressure, and increased resting or basal metabolic rate. By measuring heart rate we can then derive estimations of what level of substrate utilization is actually causing biochemical metabolism in our bodies at rest or in activity.

So maybe: Microsoft's algorithm uses sleep data to estimate the "awake" resting HR, which is an indirect measure of BMR?

-Matt

 

[Black3ternity]

So I just checked my Sleep analysis of the night and this is what I got:



You can clearly see, that my "resting HR" is now down to 54 which is pretty near the majority of you guys and girls here.
I also checked the Heart rate according to the analytic and the text that is showed at the bottom of the page (quoted by gadgetrants) is somewhat unspecific.

Yes, of course your resting HR decreases when you do nothing except be alive. In example, you came home, landed on the couch and stay there, surfing the web for 20 minutes on your phone. The resting HR will be the value that is the lowest and shows how your body works when you do "nothing". In terms of sleep and tracking, it seems to be a little bit different because your body works different.

Here is my heart rate from the night:


You can clearly see, that in the first 20 - 30 minutes, my HR was way above 54 so that is out of the window. The HR of 54 matches my deepest sleep approx. at the middle of my sleep time.
So in terms of sleep tracking, the resting HR is the lowest value that your body reaches while you are asleep and recover from the night.

Little information about my night so the picture makes sense:
I got to bed pretty late (Minecraft kept me awake :grin: ) and so it took me a while to properly fall asleep.
Interestingly: I started the sleep tracking when I was starting to feel tired and I turned off the lights approx. 10 minutes after that. So the 44 minutes "to fall asleep" sounds a bit much, but it can make sense because I usually fall asleep on the left side where I have trouble to reach any proper sleep state. It's a mix between being awake and being in sleep. Like I exactly see what I'm dreaming and I can make sense of it.
After that I turned to the right and fell asleep pretty quick. That seems to be the state where I had the second "wake" time. The awake state at around 4:40am is nothing I remember, but there was a definite increase in heart rate, so it seems, I must have turned or moved while sleeping. And the last wake time before finally getting up was at 6:30am and that I remember because I got up and walked to the bathroom.
So it seems pretty spot on for me. I will definitely track additional days and I think I will report back in a week to see what happened and if my sleep pattern changes or if it gets wildly absurd.

It is a pretty interesting technology and I'm amazed that I'm able to see stuff like that (no matter how accurate to the beat and second it is).
Keep up the great work so we can have a strong community on that stuff!

Regards,

 

[gadgetrants]

Forgive me for spamming the thread, but I slept on the question of "resting HR" last night (pun intended) and came up with another thought. Perhaps what Microsoft is trying to say with "Your resting HR may be lower while you are sleeping" actually means: We are estimating your resting HR while you sleep. We would like to acknowledge that this estimate will likely be lower than the standard estimate, which is normally measured while you are still awake, but in a quiet, still state.

The thought is inspired by some reading on resting HR here http://www.topendsports.com/testing/heart-rate-resting.htm:

The measurement of resting heart rate or pulse rate (the number of heart beats per minute) should be taken after a few minutes upon waking whilst still lying in bed. Give your body some time to adjust to the change from sleeping before taking your pulse (2-5 minutes). If you are not able to take a measurement first thing in the morning, make sure you lie down for at least 10 minutes before taking a measurement.

What stood out in particular was this:

What should it be?
Normal resting heart rates range anywhere from 40 beats per minute up to 100 beats per minute. Ideally you want to have a resting heart rate between 60-90 beats per minute. The average resting heart rate for a man is 70 beats per minute, and for a woman 75 beats per minute.

Personally, the Band says I'm in the low 50's which is remarkably low. I can only assume that the Band is reporting some type of "modified" resting HR that is (as they note) biased by being asleep. Otherwise, when I'm sitting around not doing much my HR is in usually the 70's, which sounds more like a "normal" resting HR.

​-Matt

 

[Nate Silver]

Interesting, Matt. Guess I need to do some reading on the subject. My resting HR typically runs from 44 to 47. Not sure if this means I'm really healthy, or almost dead when sleeping!! :winktongue:

Edited to add: I suspect you're on the right track here. What I'm measuring is lowest HR while asleep, vs resting HR while awake...which is not nearly as low.

 

[DroidUser42]

I'm seeing another question here: What medical purpose does "resting HR" serve? If they really want to know the minimum, then the Band is doing it right. But for practical reasons, the medical establishment may have settled for a "resting but awake" reading simply because trying to sample the HR during sleep wasn't practical.

We might be in the situation where we may be beating ourselves up because we don't match the doctor's office, when the doctors would rather use our readings!

 

[bockersjv]

I don't think anyone should beat (sorry) themselves up over heart rates. The important thing is trends, as you gain fitness your max HR tends to increase and your resting decrease. However HR does help in determining recovery, in that after a vigorous days training it may take a day or two for your resting HR to get back to its "norm". This is very useful information and can help in building training plans and incorporating proper rest days. So HR may help in determining a level of fitness/fatigue but this is not the same as health. You need to add Blood pressure and other factors, such as diet, weight, body composition etc, to determine a state of healthiness. Something the Health Vault attempts to build.

I must admit the Sleep Analysis the band provides has been a real benefit to me. If you are a drinker it clearly shows the detrimental effect on quality sleep that alcohol has. I find it fascinating stuff and is making me change my lifestyle!

 

[Black3ternity]

So it's me again.
bockersjv: you're right. Nobody should beat themselves up over some values, especially if they aren't even confirmed from a doctor.

I've tracked my sleep for every day now and I have to say: It's pretty consistent and shows great insight into my sleeping pattern.

@gadgetrats:
I don't think that the Band is only looking for heartrate-thresholds to determine the state of sleep you're in at the time.
You can see that properly from my recordings.

I'm getting some pretty interesting readings from the band, so feel free to interpret them.

Monday Night:



Wednesday Night:



It's the second night where I have a pretty high spike in heartrate when sleeping.
I have to figure out where it comes from :-D

Regards,

 

[gadgetrants]

It's the second night where I have a pretty high spike in heartrate when sleeping.
I have to figure out where it comes from :-D

Adult-oriented dreams? :amaze:

​-Matt

 

[Black3ternity]

Hehe,

could be a scenario. But I don't remember a thing, so it could be anything.
Have to track that a little bit if a regular pattern occurs like time after falling asleep or specific time-frames in the night.

Edit says:
I messed up the screenshot upload - I changed the original post above to show the heartrate. Don't know how that happened when writing the post. Sorry :-D

Edit 2:
The first spike on the wednesday-HR-shot is from my cat that decided to shout into my ear when I was nearly asleep and scared the heck out of me. =/

 

[gadgetrants]

Really interesting data, thanks! I'm intrigued that you set it on Wednesday night, and it "detected" that you fell asleep at 11:49. Kinda suggests that the Band "could" automatically detect sleep. I also think -- if accurate -- that those swings up to ~100BPM are a serious concern. Maybe you could post a workout with, say, 30 minutes of walking? Or you mentioned preferring stationary exercises, no? Something aerobic and sustained could be interesting to see.

-Matt

 

[Black3ternity]

Hey,

just hijacking the thread for a quick heads-up.
Today I tested the GPS on the band when walking with a colleague to grab lunch. It was pretty much 1km away and we stopped at his car for a minute to grab a jacket. That's the result from the walk in a pretty decent pace.



So in the background of the HR you can see the pace with the little stop at the car. But it should be pretty normal. Just checked my HR when sitting at the PC - shows around 69 - 72. Nothing rad in my opinion. I did a workout on Monday and was on the crosstrainer for half an hour and it showed a max HR of 174 - which is pretty much everything I could push out and after that half an hour I had not much energy left in my body - so it was pretty hard exercise for me.

Like I said with the spikes when sleeping:
I have no clue where they come from. I'm not remembering that I was awake anytime near that timeframe and I have no idea of a bad dream. No sweaty shirt when waking up or something like that. What could be a reasonable explanation for that is, that I know I'm snoring and my girlfriend has to give me a pretty good kick that I stop it when she wakes up from it. Maybe that's causing the "issue" that that is the time when I'm snoring and my body doesn't get the full breath of air it wants and naturally increases my heart rate for it.
I'm going to look if I can find a solution to record the audio of the night and keep checking the Band data just to know if that's happening or if my cat's are jumping around in our bed and my body gets disturbed while sleeping.

These would be the first explanations that come to my mind.
But thanks for your opinion and your thoughts. I'm definitely keeping an eye (and ear aka microphone) out for this spike-behavior.
I mean it shouldn't be too serious because it's approx. the heart rate when I'm walking in a decent pace and nothing like 180+ and beyond.

Regards,

 

[ALpHa.Q.RoUgH]

You guys sleep well. As a 27 year old male as a full-time student and a 40 hour a week schedule, I sleep pretty bad. Average of about 5 hours of sleep and maybe at least 1 hour and 30 minutes of deep sleep. How am I living? lol...

 

[buffalosolja]

All you guys with mid-40's resting HRs need to STRESS more! :angry: Or maybe you're just a bunch of 23-year-olds with no spouse, children, or pets! The rest of us have a lot to worry about!

-Matt

I am early 30's 280lb 6'3 and my resting is in the 40's when I remember to cut the dang tracker on. Wish it was automatic.

 

[todd miles]

Here is a fairly typical night for me. Awake for a bit tossing and turning. I have RA so getting comfortable can take a while.

 

[DroidUser42]

Here is a fairly typical night for me. Awake for a bit tossing and turning. I have RA so getting comfortable can take a while.

Deep sleep in 15 minutes? No problem there. The tossing and turning, turning and tossing looks to be about midnight.

 

[oezkanp]

How i can see the "total sleep" overview for the whole week in the health app?
I cant find it. :-(

 

[Nate Silver]

How i can see the "total sleep" overview for the whole week in the health app?
I cant find it. :-(

I don't think you can.....or at least I can't find it either. You can view it on the web dashboard, though.

 

[Derausgewanderte]

looks like even though the Band was on the correct local time on my trip to Japan, it still shows my sleep on EDT
on the website...
Of course that screws up the average bedtime and wake up time...
interesting...