Fitness tracker to monitor stress and being run down

i have never posted anything on any forum before so I hope I am doing it right. 

I have been using a wrist fitness tracker that monitors my heart rate, heart rate variability and sleep. The bit that interests me most is the “body battery” and “stress” measures. I was pretty sceptical to start with but I have found that I cope much better with stressful situations when my “body battery” is high. When it is low I am best to have some quiet time.  It has also been useful to look back and see when I have been most stressed. 

I am on the autistic spectrum myself and work with adults with intellectual disability and autism. I am thinking that this has potential to be be really useful. 

Has anyone else found a fitness tracker useful for monitoring how stressed or how run down they are?

Parents
  • have a hunch that there is some value in using the data provided by fitness trackers. Anything that can help us track stress levels is a good thing, especially if you're not naturally aware of your stress levels. 

    When I suffered a huge burnout in 2017, I dug into the historic resting heart rate data from my Fitbit, and noticed it was climbing over the month leading up to me going on sick leave and then fell massively; indicating (I'm assuming) stress that I wasn't particularly in touch with at the time. 

    It's not simple though, as Plastic said sometimes I feel stressed and look at my tracker and my heart rate is normal.

    I find the more "processed" metrics difficult to work with, as my brain wants to know the underlying formula / algorithm before I can trust the measure. But something as simple as heart rate and resting heart rate can surely help us know ourselves better.

Reply
  • have a hunch that there is some value in using the data provided by fitness trackers. Anything that can help us track stress levels is a good thing, especially if you're not naturally aware of your stress levels. 

    When I suffered a huge burnout in 2017, I dug into the historic resting heart rate data from my Fitbit, and noticed it was climbing over the month leading up to me going on sick leave and then fell massively; indicating (I'm assuming) stress that I wasn't particularly in touch with at the time. 

    It's not simple though, as Plastic said sometimes I feel stressed and look at my tracker and my heart rate is normal.

    I find the more "processed" metrics difficult to work with, as my brain wants to know the underlying formula / algorithm before I can trust the measure. But something as simple as heart rate and resting heart rate can surely help us know ourselves better.

Children
  • I recently couldn’t work out why my “body battery” measure had been plummeting right through the day. I had a bit of a cold but nothing major. That night and the following day I was ill with a high temperature and barely able to sit up. It stayed low while I was ill then started to improve before I had realised that I had a little more energy and was starting to improve. 

    I share the the concern that I don’t fully understand the metrics. The heart rate variability measure does seem to have science behind it though when I have googled it. It should probably be used alongside the heart rate and resting heart rate and individuals work out its relevance to them.