Hi myself and my husband are a bit confused as his Apple Watch on the ecg says average 110/120 beats a minute but the average heart rate on the red heart says average between sixties to nineties . We were thinking maybe the ecg is picking up Jist the fast beats as he has persistent AF we are waiting for an appointment. As arrhythmia clinic as last one was cancelled as they are hoping to do a second ablation after the first one failed from 2017 somewhere along the line causing him to have a stroke four months ago effecting his speech , reading and writing . Thank you . I’m wondering if anyone else has noticed the same thing on their watch .
Regards Jackie (The heart function nurse wasn’t concerned about the highest heart rate as she said they hope for 100 beats at least a minute with AF so only 20 over on ecg. His blood pressure moniter says average 80s 90s so even more confusing . He s on bisoprolol 10mg a day for heart and blood pressure .
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Jackiesmith7777
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The HR on the ekg is simply that. An extrapolation of how many bpm your heart was going during the 30 second ekg. You can also just count the QT intervals on the ekg and multiply by two.
I don't know which "red heart" you are referring to. Apple Health has numerous metrics on HR such as "resting", etc. Those would not necessarily be the same as what you got on an ekg, which again is just a 30 second snapshot.
Do you mean the pulsating red heart in the "workout" or some other programs? If it's pulsating, that should mean your projected real time heart rate. The ekg heart rate is your heart rate only during the 30 ekg multiplied by 2.
The ekg on Apple Watch by default is 30 seconds. So for example, if the 30 second ekg is 50, then your bpm (beat per MINUTE) would be 100. That is 50 x 2. Apple automatically does the multiplication for you.
But if my husbands rate is 120 it doesn’t make sense it would be 240 when his heart rate on the pulse red heart says 87 . Sorry for the confusion as maths has never been my strong point lol
If your husband's rate on Watch's ekg says "120 " then it's probably very close to 120 beats per minute (bpm). What I meant was that the ekg is not for a minute, it's only for 30 seconds. So if you actually counted the beats on the ekg it would be about half of the 120, i.e 60. Hope this makes more sense.
Try putting your other finger on the crown while using what you call the red heart, rate monitor app as you would for the ECG app. The watch has two ways of measuring, optical sensor for heart rate background monitoring and Heart Rate app without finger, then also has electrodes for ECG app with finger and Heart Rate app with finger. The electrode test is more accurate.
Thanks Buzby, was also just going to say the pulsing red heart (like an oximeter) is reporting on the blood it can see flowing through capillaries while the AF function will be showing electrical impulses. You can discount BP monitor as they don’t work well in AF.
Thanks, yes, the pulsing red heart which is called the Heart Rate app will switch from using oximeter/optical mode to electrode/electrical impulses mode just by putting your finger on the crown wheel, took me years to realise that. The link I added explains better than I can.
Yes that’s confusing as they use the bp moniter for his heart rate checks, blood pressure as well as the ecg one at the heart function clinic , maybe it’s to get an average beat because of the flutters
The Apple Watch isn’t a medical device, and the ECG is an app, it’s not a clinical grade ECG. Having said that, it’s still useful but it’s not perfect.
Yes I agree and it can also make you paranoid so I’m trying not to look at it through the day just morning and evening on the nurses recommendation as she said it was making me more stressed keep looking at it .
I have noticed a discrepancy between the two apps on the watch but tend to trust the ECG app since it uses a better input method, and one that tries to get round the difficulties of measuring an irregular beat.
Also, the Heart app has a habit of spiking briefly now and then when there hasn't been the momentary increase it shows.
I suspect that what is going on here is confusion between pulse and heartbeats. When in AF, not all heart beats (measured electrically by the EKG) will produce a measurable pulse of increased blood pressure (measured optically from skin colour under your watch). The reason for this is that the beat arrived (at random) before the heart chambers were adequately filled after the previous beat. This is one of the reasons you feel so awful when in AF!
yes we’re getting fed up with his appointment being cancelled which was 30 th of October so nkw have to wait for another appointment which is very frustrating especially for him , he gets very tired which in part is caused by the bisoprolol as my brother I. Law is in the same meds after having a heart attack two years ago . My sister said he is only up for a couple of hours and needs to have a nap .
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