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A person's normal resting heart rate is fairly consistent over time, but may vary from others' by up to 70 beats per minute, according to analysis of the largest dataset of daily resting heart rate ever collected. Giorgio Quer of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on February 5, 2020 as part of an upcoming PLOS Collection on Digital Health Technology.
A routine visit to the doctor usually involves a measurement of resting heart rate, but such measurements are rarely actionable unless they deviate significantly from a "normal" range established by population-level studies. However, wearables that track heart rate now provide the opportunity to continuously monitor heart rate over time, and identify normal resting heart rates at the individual level.
In the largest study of its kind to date, Quer and colleagues retrospectively analyzed de-identified heart rate data from wearables worn for a median of 320 days by 92,457 people from across the U.S. Nearly 33 million days' worth of heart rate data were collected in total. The researchers used the data to examine variations in resting heart rate for individuals over time, as well as between individuals with different characteristics.
The analysis showed that one person's mean daily resting heart rate may differ by up to 70 beats per minute from another person's normal rate. Taken together, age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and average daily sleep duration accounted for less than 10 percent of the observed variation between individuals.
Journal Reference:
Giorgio Quer, Pishoy Gouda, Michael Galarnyk, Eric J. Topol, Steven R. Steinhubl. Inter- and intraindividual variability in daily resting heart rate and its associations with age, sex, sleep, BMI, and time of year: Retrospective, longitudinal cohort study of 92,457 adults. PLOS ONE, 2020; 15 (2): e0227709 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227709
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Monday February 17 2020, @11:48AM (7 children)
So this is well-known, why is it newsworthy? Is it because the data telling us what we already know came from wearables?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 17 2020, @12:06PM (4 children)
Most likely, the news is wearables.
I was a team driver with an old half-breed Apache. The man couldn't get his DOT physicals done on the road. When he was due for a physical he went home, and saw his family doctor, and/or the company doctor. His heart rate was quite low, and doctors unfamiliar with him, and unfamiliar with native Americans always wanted to put him in the hospital. They sure as hell weren't going to give him a pass on a DOT physical that might come back to haunt them!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @12:22PM (2 children)
A family member's resting heart rate is around 44, so whenever he goes to any kind of medical visit the staff measure his pulse and then start asking a battery of questions about heart attack symptoms. But since it's been at that level for decades, we're pretty sure he's fine.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @10:57PM
One of my friends is a competitive cyclist. When he had to go in for a surgery recently, they had to put a placard (reading "Athlete") on his monitors, because his ultra-low heart rate was constantly setting off alarms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 22 2020, @02:18PM
My resting rate is ~ 40, but dips if I'm sick
When the Dr. saw it at 39, I was hooked up to an EKG and sent to a cardiologist to evaluate for a pacemaker.
At the cardiologist, they registered 36.
when I the antibiotics finally kicked in and I wasn't sick, I went back to 40. And I don't need a pacemaker, but we now keep an eye on my heart.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 17 2020, @02:22PM
The legend of Miguel Indurain included a resting heart rate in the 20s BPM. World champion cyclist, freak of nature, but you wouldn't call him "unhealthy."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 17 2020, @02:18PM (1 child)
I was involved in the early development of wearable and long term monitors in the 1990s. One of our backers came up with the catchphrase: "traditional office visit measurements give you a snapshot, continuous monitoring is a movie," and even that falls short, since office visits give you a single frame of information every few months, whereas continuous monitoring can give you 50Hz sample rates 24-7 for the entire time between office visits.
Our monitors in NICUs changed the discharge standard. Before electronic monitoring, preemies would be held in the NICU until 24 hours elapsed with no observed apneas. Thing was, even with 1:1 nurse-patient ratios - parental visitation many hours per day, etc. so many apneas were missed. By the old definition (IIRC 10 seconds without breathing) even normal infants have several apneas per 24 hour period. The definition of apnea for the purposes of NICU discharge was modified to a longer time without respiration, and a higher number of apneas was allowed - simply because the previous practice of medicine was operating "in the dark" and making decisions on the information available.
What I find disturbing about the article is that they seem to imply that the definition of tachycardia may be reduced from 100BPM to 90, simply because we now have drugs which are indicated for use in the long term lowering of the heart rate. That's not due to additional information from long term monitoring, that's more that there's this shiny new (billable) hammer that wants more nails.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @03:36PM
"The engine is idling a little high, let's just forcibly lower the RPMs."
Seems to be a too common attitude to "fixing stuff".