Apple Watch Can Accurately Predict Stress Levels, Study Shows

[ghanwani]

Of course, the watch is never wrong, so you won't get stressed wondering why the watch thinks you're stressed.

 

[SenorWhyMe]

I talked to doctors about this; while the study is cool; the issue is everyone is different including health wise physically. Too many factors that can affect blood pressure bpm to trust Apple Watch if you are stressing or not.

 

[lovehateapple]

I think that is pretty common. I’ve seen these types of stories since wrist based heart rate monitors became a thing. They don’t do as well with darker colored skin.

I don't know if it's common or not. It's a something I found out about, that's not on MR (yet), so I thought I would post it in an article about the applewatch. That is all.

 

[ThisBougieLife]

Being told I’m stressed tends to just stress me out more.

 

[paulovsouza]

I swear the breathing app goes off when I’m most stressed.

 

[AgentOSX]

I think it used stockholders as the beta.

 

[SAIRUS]

Heard they used their own software development team to measure the stress levels. Usually before and after a talk with management.

 

[Rockondevil]

My specific HRV routine. You can see my results because I researched this extensively but its definitely not medical advice.

-3-5g fish oil with at least 200IU vitamin E. Taken with food each day.

-Walking/Running for 1 hour every day (I only started this in September you can see how it really helped HRV, but it’s not the whole picture). I just try to spend 11-20 minutes per day in the max heart rate zone.

-Reduce intake of caffeine and other stimulant drugs that increase the heart rate.

-Increase intake of antioxidant foods.

-Be diligent about mindfulness. You don’t need an app necessarily but I used Headspace. Making sure you aren’t constantly bogged down by negative thoughts is very important for this reflex and for life itself.

That jump is quite interesting.

- I do a quite physical job.
- I’m a decent runner. Can do a sub 90 minute half marathon and a sub 8 minute 2.4km (1.5miles).
- Drink a soft drink maybe once a month otherwise it’s water.
- No stress in my life because I just don’t care enough about anything.

Mine seems to have plateaued in the 80’s.

 

[name99]

From a paper in the American College of Cardiology (Nov 01, 2021 | Ayman Haq, MD; Susan White, RDN; Michael D. Miedema, MD):

"In conclusion, dietary fish intake is associated with a reduction in fatal CVD events in a threshold manner, with a benefit seen with approximately 2 servings per week of fish. The use of non-prescription fish oil is generally not recommended due to concerns about the content and purity as well as multiple randomized studies showing no benefit in CVD risk reduction with low or high dose fish oil supplementation. The use of purified EPA has been shown to reduce CVD events in individuals at high cardiovascular risk. Recommendations for fish intake and fish oil supplementation are shown in Table 1. While prescription fish oils, especially purified EPA, may be indicated in certain individuals, for most of our patients instead of taking over the counter fish oil, it's probably better to just eat the real thing."

(bolding mine)

Of course these are the same people who told us for 60 years (based on essentially made up "evidence") to avoid animal fats...
https://journals.lww.com/co-endocri...tory_of_saturated_fat__the_making_and.42.aspx

Unfortunately they've lost all credibility when it comes to dietary claims.

 

[svish]

Good to hear about all the capabilities of Apple watch.

 

[PDUBOKC]

My specific HRV routine. You can see my results because I researched this extensively but its definitely not medical advice.

-3-5g fish oil with at least 200IU vitamin E. Taken with food each day.

-Walking/Running for 1 hour every day (I only started this in September you can see how it really helped HRV, but it’s not the whole picture). I just try to spend 11-20 minutes per day in the max heart rate zone.

-Reduce intake of caffeine and other stimulant drugs that increase the heart rate.

-Increase intake of antioxidant foods.

-Be diligent about mindfulness. You don’t need an app necessarily but I used Headspace. Making sure you aren’t constantly bogged down by negative thoughts is very important for this reflex and for life itself.

The bad thing about taking so much exogenous fish oil is that is has a strong tendency to make a man's "bodily fluids" have a "fishy taste" which your girlfriend or boyfriend won't like much. I hope that was delicate enough to say what I'm trying to talk about. As a scientist, I know this side effect is widely reported to do as I said.

 

[rweiser]

there was a close association between ECG data, including heart acceleration and deceleration capacity, and participants' reported stress levels at the time the readings were taken.

How exactly is that a prediction? Shouldn't the headline (and I realize the word was taken from the original study) read instead, "Apple Watch Can Accurately Read Stress Levels"?

 

[Analog Kid]

Being told I’m stressed tends to just stress me out more.

I was just going to say, “Keep buzzing my wrist to tell me I’m stressed and see if it calms me down…”

 

[tomtad]

So is there an 3rd party app that shows your stress level then?

 

[pauloregan]

Weirdly stress levels reduce when you turn off the Apple Watch setting to tell you to stand up every hour. Utterly ridiculous gadget.

 

[cdarlington1]

I think we know what one of the features in watchOS 10 is going to be.

True. There are already 3rd party apps that do. Welltory being the best.

 

[cdarlington1]

So is there an 3rd party app that shows your stress level then?

Welltory

 

[pshufd]

My Garmin Fenix 5+ has stress score and I bought it in 2018 so Apple is pretty late here. I assume that the other fitness watches have had it as well. It also has HRV but it's a pain to do. You don't have to do anything to get the stress score.

One practical use is that it will provide an indication that you're getting a cold, flu or COVID about 12-24 hours before you start showing symptoms. And then it will give you an indication that you're getting much better.

To improve stress score do things like get more sleep (or meditation), improve your VO2Max, avoid eating soon before going to bed, decrease alcohol consumption. Also, avoid getting sick.

I bought the watch after a cardiac incident to monitor my heart rate so that I wouldn't have to do it manually 10 times a day. The watch has an absolute ton of other functionality too.

 

[_Spinn_]

Low heart rate variability is bad. When you breathe in, the diaphragm moves down and there’s more room in the chest cavity, allowing the heart to beat more quickly. When you breathe out the opposite happened. This reflex is called heart rate variability. It’s controlled by the vagus nerve and ANS. Reduced HRV is a reduction in function of that system. High HRV is also associated with a slower heart beat, which is beneficial for different reasons.

Thank you. This is a very good explanation. Everyone says a high HRV is good but no one bothers to explain why.

 

[therunningman]

I've found this program VERY useful in monitoring HRV from ECG data on the Apple Watch:

‎ECG+ | QTc, HRV, AFib Analyzer

‎ECG+ interprets your Apple Watch ECGs to detect potential arrhythmias and abnormalities, such as PAC, PVC, Long QT, and T wave changes (inverted or flattened). It also calculates HRV to help assess your fitness and overall wellbeing. Key Features of ECG+: ◆ Atrial Fibrillation Detection...

apps.apple.com

 

[Vlad Soare]

Ok, you monitor it, but how do you influence/improve it ?

Like this: 😁

 

[Boydz]

Apple is now a healthcare company more than tech company.

 

[Artemis70]

Highly recommend everyone track and try to increase their heart rate variability. It is directly related to the ability of the brain and heart to handle stress and is a biomarker for autonomic nervous system function. I started working on mine in May and I really feel 3x better and more resilient day to day. The Apple Watch has been tracking this in the background for as long as you have been wearing it. You can take in the moment HRV measures (which is very similar to what this study did) by using the breath app and then checking the health app.

This is one of the most important health metrics it tracks. Another good one related to mental and physical health is “cardio fitness” which is tracked every time you log a walking or running workout. This is a direct measure of how much blood your heart can get to your brain.

I have done some more research and found out that HRV is very age dependent, next to it being very personal. I was wondering why my HRV seemed to be relatively low, while I am extremely fit for my age. Turns out my HRV is pretty good for my age, I'm just old. This means that HRV can only be used to see if you yourself are improving and cannot be used to see if you are healthier than somebody else. In that sense it is similar to your heart rate. The fact that my wife's heart rate is higher when we exercise together doesn't say anything about her level of fitness or her health. With HRV it is the same. You can only validate how you compare against the average for your age and you can try to improve your HRV. But if your HRV is relatively low, while you are already exercising as much as suggested to improve your HRV, there is nothing you can do, even though you are already fit and healthy.

 

[appleguy123]

I have done some more research and found out that HRV is very age dependent, next to it being very personal. I was wondering why my HRV seemed to be relatively low, while I am extremely fit for my age. Turns out my HRV is pretty good for my age, I'm just old. This means that HRV can only be used to see if you yourself are improving and cannot be used to see if you are healthier than somebody else. In that sense it is similar to your heart rate. The fact that my wife's heart rate is higher when we exercise together doesn't say anything about her level of fitness or her health. With HRV it is the same. You can only validate how you compare against the average for your age and you can try to improve your HRV. But if your HRV is relatively low, while you are already exercising as much as suggested to improve your HRV, there is nothing you can do, even though you are already fit and healthy.

I agree that it’s affected by age because the mechanism of heart disease begins the moment we’re born and is progressive. People who are older do have on average more unhealthy hearts than people who are younger because humans store cholesterol in their blood (most animals don’t) and for other reasons. There are more things besides exercise that can be done to improve this number.

As I’ve said in this thread, fish oil, antioxidants and vitamin E are low hanging fruit for increasing HRV for most people. The basic search engine optimized medical sources do not have good info on this metric yet because it doesn’t generate ad clicks and the science on this measurement is ahead of medical practice/recommendations at the moment. Research it on scholar.google.com. I am a scientist by profession but there are a good number of journal articles about this topic that are easily readable by anyone.

This is my favorite paper on it. It’s open access so you can read the whole thing for free.

Heart-rate variability: a biomarker to study the influence of nutrition on physiological and psychological health?​

Please also take low HRV seriously because it is a seriously bad mortality metric even if you are active and otherwise healthy.

 

[Artemis70]

Please also take low HRV seriously because it is a seriously bad mortality metric even if you are active and otherwise healthy.

Thank you for the elaborate response and the links. It is very interesting.

Now that I know what is "normal" for my age (I'm 52), my HRV immediately feels better. Most nights, my HRV peaks just below 100. Some nights it peaks well over 300. I need to read more to understand how it can vary so much under similar conditions. My daily average (as reported by Apple) is over 50.