Measuring Resting Heart Rate

Quantified Self QS newcomers
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Hey all, is there an official definition for what’s considered a resting heart rate?

Assuming I have heart rate data for every second of the day, I’m hoping to automatically calculate this value without sitting down and saying “I’m currently resting, let me measure my heart rate…”

After reading through countless scientific articles and forums, I still couldn’t find any official methodology for measuring RHR.

Some of the options I saw included:

  • Lowest heart rate while sleeping
  • Average heart rate while sleeping
  • Heart rate immediately after waking up
  • Lowest heart rate while awake

Does anyone have any insights or suggestions? :slight_smile:

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There is no strict “official definition”, plus many companies won’t even say how they calculate the resting heart rate they show in their services :angry:

If you want to be able to detect small changes in your resting heart rate from day-to-day, you will likely need a much stricter protocol than if you just want rough, longer-term trends (i.e. measure at the same time every day, after the same amount of “resting” in the same position, at the same room temperature etc).

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I feel your pain! I have 4 trackers for RHR and they all use different metrics and show different numbers :see_no_evil:

At the end of the day I’m guessing my methodology doesn’t matter as long as I’m consistent about it.

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You want something that measures ECG and gives you data so you can use FOSS software. See contec and i think it was aidalabs…