(The HN title has "might be" where the page currently has "is".)
> However Teresa Black, along with two other claimants, is arguing that her Fitbit reported a heart-rate of 82 bpm while her personal trainer recorded this at 160 bpm.
I find it somewhat hard to believe that you can be this oblivious as to your own heart rate, especially at high levels.
[Edit for personal anecdata]
Also "approaching the maximum recommended heart rate for her age [...] may well have exceeded it, thereby jeopardizing her health and safety" seems a bit far-fetched - I'm not a small fellow by any means and I struggle to get my heart rate up to my max (~180bpm), much less over it[1]. My highest recent was avg.173bpm, max.184bpm for an illness-recovery 10km.
[1] Unless the Garmin HRM is having one of its moments where e.g. it claims I'm sustaining 250bpm for 4 hours.
Agreed. If you're even just moderately healthy, you can't push your heartrate up until it spirals out of control and you sustain physical damage. What a silly notion. Still, the heart rate being off so drastically does justify at least a complaint - otherwise I could make a wristband that generates random garbage values in the range 70-180 and say it measures heart rate.
> a wristband that generates random garbage values
Oddly, the only HRM I've never (knowingly) had any spurious readings from was my Polar S625X (a decade ago.) Which may be because (IIRC) it had a much lower sample rate than the current Garmin.
> Also "approaching the maximum recommended heart rate for her age [...] may well have exceeded it, thereby jeopardizing her health and safety" seems a bit far-fetched - I'm not a small fellow by any means and I struggle to get my heart rate up to my max (~180bpm), much less over it[1].
Hmm. I'm pretty overweight and can easily go over 180bpm if I'm not watching myself on the treadmill - 5 minutes at 10-11kph will do it.
I'm keenly aware of when my heart-rate rises, I notice it jump if I sprint up a stairwell. When it gets too high I can feel the pressure in my neck and temples. I'm the most out of shape I've ever been at this point in my life and I'm alarmed sometimes at how often my heart-rate stays high after seemingly inconsequential physical exertion so I'm wondering if it's something you tune out when you're really out of shape or overweight.
When I'm doing something active I'm conscious of it. When I'm sitting at a desk I'm not at all conscious of it. I assume it's normal at such times, but how wouldI know if not?
I think it's pretty normal to not be conscious of it when it's at a resting rate. I guess what I meant to say is that I'm conscious of it when it's not at a resting rate and alarmed when it isn't and I feel like it should be.
I can tell when I'm crossing 162bpm (I think it's my personal aerobic threshold). If my HR below that I'm recovering; above that - fatigue starts to build up. Also I can tell when it's above 171 - itchy feeling from lactate start to build up much faster.
I did VO2 max test once and went as high as 220. It feels absolutely horrible after 190 (long-time exposure to HR at that level most likely will do permanent damage to heart).
I'm not that overweight (around 77kg for 1.81m). Last week I went for a trial at a gym and tried a treadmill for the first time in my life, I got to 180bpm in around 30secs at 5kph. I don't do much exercise besides walking 5 to 10km almost everyday and the rare (and slow) 10mins run. The bpm were measured by the treadmill itself, not sure how accurate that is.
5kph is walking pace (a shade over 3mph) and I'd guess that 180bpm was inaccurate - may be a doubled 90bpm?
Anecdata: Last summer I was considerably heavier than 77kg, carrying 5kg of stuff, walking 51km in 10 (hot sunny) hours, and averaged 105bpm (max of 119bpm).
Yeah, maybe the reading was incorrect but I do get a spike in bpms whenever I run or climb stairs. I don't get it when walking or weight training. Might need to check this with some exam...
Threadmill lies to me pretty much all the time. In most cases it doesn't even work for me.
Unless you have a medical condition, it is very unlikely that you'll get 180bpm from 5km/h walk (mine usually don't go above 150 even going uphill with 20 pounds weight vest on my shoulders). 180bpm is 3 hearbeats every second - pretty easy to check with finger on your wrist.
I came here to say something similar. I truly find it hard to believe that people can't tell the difference between 82 and 160. Especially if you've been working with a trainer who would teach you to listen to your body!
[1] Unless the Garmin HRM is having one of its moments where e.g. it claims I'm sustaining 250bpm for 4 hours.
Are you sure you don't have an arrhythmia? My HRM used to do that; turns out I was experiencing supraventricular tachycardia (SVT). I didn't have any symptoms other than my left atrium going bonkers due to a rogue electrical signal in my heart (no lightheadness, no pain, no noticeable loss of athletic performance).
I guess it's possible but it's fairly rare (hasn't happened for a good long while with the new Garmin strap) and is normally fixed by adjusting or swapping the strap for another.
Def. rare, probably no need to panic. Just throwing it out there, as most of the high (or low) readings go away once you get sweaty, or adjust the strap. If the reading stays that high for hours, it's probably worth stopping to adjust the strap, manually check pulse, etc.
Yup. It's total crap. You're not going to push your heart rate so high you damage yourself, at least not a normal/sane person. If it was a serious risk, we'd all be wearing heart rate straps 24x7 with alarms sent to remind us to sit down when our HR gets into dangerous territory.
I have a Suunto Ambit (GPS, HR strap, altimeter, barometer, etc) and a Fitbit Surge HR I got for Christmas. Sometimes both work, sometimes neither works. You use it for what it is. Typically when they both get a good signal, they're reporting the same figures.
Let me guess, the claimant wasn't wearing the Fitbit the recommended 2-3" above her wrist bone at the time.
I think for most people your maximum heart rate is your maximum heart rate. That is, there is a certain rate you can reach and there is not any problem with that.
If there is a question about your heart you go to the cardiologist and get a stress test where you have an ECG attached and maybe also they look at your heart with ultrasound and if your are healthy nothing untoward happens.
If you are not healthy there is a risk of arrhythmia and other things that can go wrong. The risk of this is certainly higher if you are older, but young people, even teens, sometimes have sudden cardiac death under stress.
Anyway, I have seen the old electrical types of heart rate monitors do something like this, where the heart rate seems to bounce back and forth between the true rate and 1/2 the true rate and probably there are situations where the monitor picks up every other beat for some reason.
'Maximum' heart rate is an urban myth. It's a calculated expected maximum which many people can go above. It's like the speed of a car, rather than the RPM with its redline failure meltdown.
Various things affect HR, for example race-day HR is usually 10BPM higher than normal. For this reason HR is more of a helpful secondary metric for an sport with 'real' metrics like speed/distance/weight.
Did the fitbit put her at risk? Only if she ignored all other signs of overexertion or danger, like chest pains, dizzyness, pounding heart beats, etc.
Optical HR monitors aren't that accurate. They are only useful if your analysing trends over time. People that buy these fitness trackers and expect medical level accuracy are either misled by deceiving marketing or not doing enough research.
They can be accurate - In a static test I did the other day, the Charge HR reported the same* as the Garmin HRM, Withings Scales, and a finger pulse oximeter. It was within 5-10bpm of the Garmin on a 25 minute run after I'd adjusted the position according to their advice for exercise.
They are mostly accurate. I use a Garmin Forerunner 235 and the average heart rate seems to be mostly accurate. I don't really pay attention to the absolute values though. It's only interesting to see how they change as I my fitness improves.
And this is an important lesson the plaintiff's trainer should have stressed. The actual numbers aren't (quite) as important how quick they rise and fall as you push and rest.
Except a reading of 60-80bpm when the actual is 160-180bpm is completely inaccurate. Those are opposite ends of most people HR range. 60 is close to, or actually, resting for most people. 160 is a hard aerobic effort, bordering on anaerobic, for most people. The FitBit, if the report is accurate, is completely useless as a fitness tracking devices (WRT to heart rate).
I've got a wahoo tickr chest strap that will report something like half my real HR from time to time... all of these monitoring devices are intended to give some helpful information to go along with a workout, NOT to be a reliable medical device...
Hopefully there'll be some sanity with how this is handled...
Actually - the Fitbit will sometimes have 2x the step count if I sync an activity from the Garmin because that then goes to MyFitnessPal which then comes back to the Fitbit (since you can't sync calories but not steps, unhelpfully.)
I had a Charge HR for almost a month, got one for my wife too. I finally returned them this week. They're nice to wear and pleasant to use, but the battery lasts one day and the reported steps/calories/distance is basically science fiction.
I'm inclining towards this option, too. I didn't think it was likely because both watches (can you call them that?) had the same issues. This reminds me of my experience with Razer: out of 5 mice bought (4 abyssus, 1 orochi), two were faulty.
The reported distance is basically fiction, of course. It's not a GPS device. It's an estimate based on how many steps it thinks you took, and the average distance an average person goes in that number of steps.
As far as I can tell, steps/calories is roughly accurate (eg, not off by much more than, say, 10%) compared with other devices (my chest strap HRM+GPS device, stationary trainers, bicycle computer). Close enough for consumer use.
I echo the poor battery life. I forget what it's rated at, but I get barely 3 days. My old Nike Fuelband was rated at 7 days but I could push it over 2 weeks.
Nothing to see here. Circulate. The only result out of this will be fatter lawyers and a 42 page EULA for FitBit which you have to sign before you are allowed to wear the device.
Poor US of A.
I have always found these things to be a bit iffy. I think it is difficult to accurate track the number of steps or distance you have travelled.
As for heart rate you would think it is easier but again I guess it would depend on the fit around the wrist and the position on the wrist to determine it accurately.
I don't really understand why people are suing over this. If your heart rate is 160 and your Fitbit is saying it is 80 then you return it for a refund or replacement. You don't train yourself to death.
It is a bit like if your sat nav says drive a across a field then into a river.. you should be using your judgement - not deferring it to some device.
If you are struggling to catch your breath or feeling a bit funny then typically you would ease up rather than run yourself to death on a devices say so. I would hope that most people are smart enough to determine that if they can feel their pulse pounding and the monitor says you are barely above resting heart rate then something is probably incorrect with your device.
My parents are lying to FitBit. They get rewards from some place as Amazon gift certs, so my dad has built a step faker using an electric motor. They have made about $50 from this so far.
He used Meccano too. Which didn't go down too well when he tried to take it through in his hand luggage on a recent trip to Spain. Was no trouble in the end but they made him take everything out of his bag and scanned it individually.
In the 1970s he was a computer mechanic, with a spanner and oil and all that kind of stuff. There were only two of those computers in the country, one at Raleigh Cycles and one at Cabdury Chocolate. They used them to do the wages. They had an agreement that if one broke he or his opposite number could jump in a car and drive to the other with a box of cards to run the batch and then fix it later.
He used to take me to work on a Monday night and it's where I got interested in computers. He stopped working in 1978. I wish I had been old enough to understand it more. I was 6-8 at the time.
A really good source of info on this is DC Rainmakers blog. His comments [1] on the lawsuit are worth reading if you're interested.
In terms of heart rate accuracy, HR straps aren't always accurate either depending on placement, body and ambient temperature, moisture etc.
Certain heart conditions can cause the strap (or maybe more accurately the software processing the data) to significantly underestimate heart rate too.
My practical experience: optical trackers almost always lie to me when I do intervals training (though, I haven't tried expensive high-end dual-wavelength devices), while wet chest strap is pretty accurate. As instructions say: just put some water on strap and it will work.
not might be, is. example, walked from my job to the downtown mall. my note 4 said I only walked 3500 steps, yet somehow my fit bit said I walked somewhere in the neighborhood of 6000.
45 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] thread> However Teresa Black, along with two other claimants, is arguing that her Fitbit reported a heart-rate of 82 bpm while her personal trainer recorded this at 160 bpm.
I find it somewhat hard to believe that you can be this oblivious as to your own heart rate, especially at high levels.
[Edit for personal anecdata] Also "approaching the maximum recommended heart rate for her age [...] may well have exceeded it, thereby jeopardizing her health and safety" seems a bit far-fetched - I'm not a small fellow by any means and I struggle to get my heart rate up to my max (~180bpm), much less over it[1]. My highest recent was avg.173bpm, max.184bpm for an illness-recovery 10km.
[1] Unless the Garmin HRM is having one of its moments where e.g. it claims I'm sustaining 250bpm for 4 hours.
Oddly, the only HRM I've never (knowingly) had any spurious readings from was my Polar S625X (a decade ago.) Which may be because (IIRC) it had a much lower sample rate than the current Garmin.
Hmm. I'm pretty overweight and can easily go over 180bpm if I'm not watching myself on the treadmill - 5 minutes at 10-11kph will do it.
I'm keenly aware of when my heart-rate rises, I notice it jump if I sprint up a stairwell. When it gets too high I can feel the pressure in my neck and temples. I'm the most out of shape I've ever been at this point in my life and I'm alarmed sometimes at how often my heart-rate stays high after seemingly inconsequential physical exertion so I'm wondering if it's something you tune out when you're really out of shape or overweight.
Anecdata: Last summer I was considerably heavier than 77kg, carrying 5kg of stuff, walking 51km in 10 (hot sunny) hours, and averaged 105bpm (max of 119bpm).
Are you sure you don't have an arrhythmia? My HRM used to do that; turns out I was experiencing supraventricular tachycardia (SVT). I didn't have any symptoms other than my left atrium going bonkers due to a rogue electrical signal in my heart (no lightheadness, no pain, no noticeable loss of athletic performance).
I have a Suunto Ambit (GPS, HR strap, altimeter, barometer, etc) and a Fitbit Surge HR I got for Christmas. Sometimes both work, sometimes neither works. You use it for what it is. Typically when they both get a good signal, they're reporting the same figures.
Let me guess, the claimant wasn't wearing the Fitbit the recommended 2-3" above her wrist bone at the time.
If there is a question about your heart you go to the cardiologist and get a stress test where you have an ECG attached and maybe also they look at your heart with ultrasound and if your are healthy nothing untoward happens.
If you are not healthy there is a risk of arrhythmia and other things that can go wrong. The risk of this is certainly higher if you are older, but young people, even teens, sometimes have sudden cardiac death under stress.
Anyway, I have seen the old electrical types of heart rate monitors do something like this, where the heart rate seems to bounce back and forth between the true rate and 1/2 the true rate and probably there are situations where the monitor picks up every other beat for some reason.
Various things affect HR, for example race-day HR is usually 10BPM higher than normal. For this reason HR is more of a helpful secondary metric for an sport with 'real' metrics like speed/distance/weight.
Did the fitbit put her at risk? Only if she ignored all other signs of overexertion or danger, like chest pains, dizzyness, pounding heart beats, etc.
* they were all within 5bpm
Hopefully there'll be some sanity with how this is handled...
I've checked the reading three times by comparing with my radial pulse, counting against my wristwatch. Each time it was bang on, or within 2bpm.
That's when fairly inactive, though. Will have to check it's consistent at much higher pulse rates.
But that's a sync problem, not a Fitbit problem.
e.g. Monday was Fitbit:13293/9.54km, Garmin920XT:13612/10.6km, iPhone:12529/9.8km.
Tuesday was similar - Fitbit:24305/19.85km, Garmin920XT:21928/18.6km, Moves:22097/18.2km
As far as I can tell, steps/calories is roughly accurate (eg, not off by much more than, say, 10%) compared with other devices (my chest strap HRM+GPS device, stationary trainers, bicycle computer). Close enough for consumer use.
I echo the poor battery life. I forget what it's rated at, but I get barely 3 days. My old Nike Fuelband was rated at 7 days but I could push it over 2 weeks.
As for heart rate you would think it is easier but again I guess it would depend on the fit around the wrist and the position on the wrist to determine it accurately.
I don't really understand why people are suing over this. If your heart rate is 160 and your Fitbit is saying it is 80 then you return it for a refund or replacement. You don't train yourself to death.
It is a bit like if your sat nav says drive a across a field then into a river.. you should be using your judgement - not deferring it to some device.
If you are struggling to catch your breath or feeling a bit funny then typically you would ease up rather than run yourself to death on a devices say so. I would hope that most people are smart enough to determine that if they can feel their pulse pounding and the monitor says you are barely above resting heart rate then something is probably incorrect with your device.
In the 1970s he was a computer mechanic, with a spanner and oil and all that kind of stuff. There were only two of those computers in the country, one at Raleigh Cycles and one at Cabdury Chocolate. They used them to do the wages. They had an agreement that if one broke he or his opposite number could jump in a car and drive to the other with a box of cards to run the batch and then fix it later.
He used to take me to work on a Monday night and it's where I got interested in computers. He stopped working in 1978. I wish I had been old enough to understand it more. I was 6-8 at the time.
In terms of heart rate accuracy, HR straps aren't always accurate either depending on placement, body and ambient temperature, moisture etc. Certain heart conditions can cause the strap (or maybe more accurately the software processing the data) to significantly underestimate heart rate too.
[1] http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/01/fitbits-multiple-lawsuits...