today in comparative fitness wearables

[kaberett]

Garmin: once again today told me that my heart rate variability was Unbalanced. It has been complaining about this for the last two days as well, and suggesting that I sort my damn sleep out. On the one hand it isn't wrong, but on the other I've not been doing that much worse these last few days compared to the rest of the month...

... but I did, I realised, start going "... is this... prodrome?" about two days ago.

... so I double checked my records, and bingo: previous report of unbalanced HRV was indeed my previous migraine.

It's even attested! I might have a new "definitely prodrome" early warning sign! It might even not be relevant for very much longer!

Which naturally led to me wondering how I'd managed to miss the pattern in the Fitbit data, to which the answer is "it isn't there" and "wow, Fitbit is reporting really different numbers for this" and indeed "... Fitbit thinks the day Garmin detected an uncharacteristic dip was instead an unusually high value". I have not (yet?) gone digging into what they're doing differently, but I'm finding myself oddly disinclined to trust Fitbit on this one...

Comments

[joshuaorrizonte]

Fitbit is pretty unreliable for anything but steps, IME. Which really sucks, because I prefer Fitbit's meal tracker and ability to change the band over the Garmin (My Garmin's band is irritating my wrist terribly).

I'm glad you've got a new warning sign, though! Not glad it IS a warning sign, but glad it's something to let you prepare for the migraine (as much as one can).

[kaberett]

I have to use Decidedly Perforated watch straps, it turns out, but swapped out the one on the Garmin I'm mostly okay. (... needing to do this was however part of the reason I decided the vívosmart was a No, though...)

[ludy]

Yay! For useful data Bah! at the continued existence of migraines