Stress Monitor Helps to Avoid Heart Attack and Stroke

What is a stress monitor, how to monitor stress, what are stress monitor devices and how they help to lower stress to improve heart health?

how to monitor stress to avoid a heart attack or stroke — Stress monitors help to lower stress and avoid heart attack and stroke

Did you know that those under high stress are 2.5 times more likely to have a heart attack [1]? According to the American Heart Association "Stress may lead to high blood pressure, .... heart attack and stroke" [2]. Is there an easy way to objectively monitor your stress level and get an early warning to avoid these major heart health challenges? This post provides the answer.

What is stress, how is it linked to blood pressure and why could it kill you?

Stress triggers the release of cortisol, the "stress hormone," which prepares your body for a "fight or flight" response. In the short term, this can be helpful, but chronic stress leads to persistently high cortisol levels. This can disrupt various bodily functions, including blood pressure regulation.

Prolonged high cortisol levels can damage blood vessels, making them less flexible and more prone to plaque buildup. This, in turn, can lead to high blood pressure and increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.

What is stress monitor (stress monitor device) and what are the ways to monitor stress?

Stress monitor is a general name for a device or technology which objectively measures human level of stress. There are several ways to monitor stress level objectively.

Measuring the level of cortisol, the ‘stress hormone’ in blood. Unfortunately cortisol is very unstable, its concentration in blood changes rapidly and taking blood tests 24x7 from someone outside of the lab environment is not practical.
Measuring heart rate, breath frequency, blood pressure or perspiration level. All these parameters increase in most people under stress. Unfortunately these parameters do not produce reliable signals as they usually also increase when someone is involved in moving, i.e. walking upstairs.
Heart Rate Variability (HRV).

What is Heart Rate Variability (HRV)?

HRV shows how the time between consecutive heartbeats, which are called R-intervals, changes within a period of time. If a user is stressed out, the time between heartbeats stays fairly constant. If a user is relaxed, the time between heartbeats shows higher variability. These changes in variability are quite small and can be detected only by ECG devices or by sensors of your smartphone’s camera, smartwatch or smart ring.

HRV is regulated by the parasympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system. Parasympathetic system (PNS) controls the so-called ‘rest and digest’ state of the body. This is the reason why measuring HRV is an effective way to understand how our body is doing while trying to maintain a state of balance in response to different life stresses.

Scientists call the state of balance among all the body systems needed for the body to survive and function correctly homeostasis [3]. Multi year research by different teams shows that HRV is a practical, cost effective, and non-invasive way to measure the activity of the autonomic nervous system as relates to stress [4].

HRV is a proxy for the so-called Total Life Stress (TLS), a sum of all the stress factors someone experiences in their life: exercise, relationships, diet, sleep quality, lifestyle, environment, etc. Heart rate, hormones, blood pressure, glucose etc, react to life stresses and our autonomic nervous system tries to keep our internal systems in balance.

Are HRV and Heart Rate the same?

IMPORTANT: HRV is different from heart rate. Two people may have the same heart rate, for example 60 beats-per-minute (BPMs). Yet one of them may be very relaxed with high HRV and the other one totally stressed out with low HRV.

Usually stress monitor apps invert HRV data to make readings more intuitive: lower stress (which corresponds to higher HRV) is linked to a higher state of relaxation. And vice versa: lower HRV values indicate higher stress.

How do stress monitor apps work?

Most of the stress monitor apps on Apple AppStore or Google Play use HRV as a mechanism to measure stress. Different smartwatches (i.e Apple Watch, Garmin, Samsung, Xiaomi, etc) record HRV data and save it to users' Apple Health or Android Health Connect accounts.

Smartwatches are a reliable stress monitor based on HRV technology

HRV can also be captured when you measure heart rate by pressing your finger to a phone’s camera. Stress monitor apps extract HRV data from Apple Health or Android Health Connect accounts to provide a user-friendly stress analysis. Hence these apps require access to user's Apple Health or Android Health Connect accounts.

How is the stress monitor of the BreathNow app different from other apps?

BreathNow is a popular blood pressure app which helps users to track and lower blood pressure, heart rate and stress with the help of calming exercises, i.e. guided breathing or meditation.

Stress monitor of BreathNow has three functions:

It helps users to understand how life activities impact their stress level. For example, did an extra glass of wine at the party last night lead to higher or lower stress next morning?
Objectively identifies calming activities which work best for them. For example, users select between slow breathing, meditation or stretching as the best activity for them to lower stress.
Monitors stress level during the day manually, with a phone’s camera, or automatically with Apple Watch. Once the stress monitor identifies an increase in stress level, it alerts the user and leads him/her to perform a calming activity. BreathNow includes a broad set of calming activities: breathing, meditation, stretching, calming music and more.

IMPORTANT: Some sophisticated medical grade equipment (usually a special version of an ECG machine) can provide deep interpretation of HRV data and split it into different indicators: i.e. different types of stress, energy level, illness risk etc.

However a consumer device like a smartwatch or phone camera produces HRV data which is quite noisy and hence it is sufficient only for basic analysis. This data can NOT be used in practice for deep analysis of stress factors.

BreathNow shares with users stress data which can be REALISTICALLY obtained from a consumer device. We do not present confusing signals which CAN NOT BE calculated from noisy HRV data received from a smartphone or smartwatch.

The other thing to be aware of is that different people have different absolute HRV values. Two people may have similar absolute HRV values with one being stressed out and the other one fully relaxed.

Hence while using mobile apps and HRV to study someone’s stress it makes sense to focus primarily on two things: daily or weekly trends and stress difference between two closely spaced events, i.e. before a relaxation exercise and immediately after.

What is the scientifically proven stress (HRV) measurement routine?

For consistent stress measurement results for the daily graph a user needs to take HRV reading first thing in the morning: right after waking up, while seated on their bed [5].

Unfortunately, switching on the 24x7 stress monitoring mode on Apple Watch is not a straightforward process. BreathNow is one of the very few apps which has this process clearly explained to our users in our Help section.

How to interpret stress data in the BreathNow stress monitor?

BreathNow displays stress measurement results in two ways:

A. A graph which shows a trend in stress changes. This graph shows how user stress changes from one day to another. You can make the following conclusions based on the trend of this graph:

Small variations in stress from day to day, no obvious trend observed. See the chart below. Most likely you properly control your stress. Congratulations!

Example from BreathNow stress monitor: stress properly managed, no trends observed
The graph is trending up. Most likely your stress is building day to day. Try to increase quality sleep time, spend more time walking in nature, do more breathing exercises and meditations in BreathNow. If done consistently, it produces long term positive effects.
The graph is trending down. This is a great opportunity to increase your energy level to be more productive. Go for a moderate intensity exercise like brisk walking, jogging, cycling or swimming. Alternatively do more Energise breathing exercises in the BreathNow app.
The graph shows a sudden spike in stress level after a morning measurement while you exercise as usual and do not experience any other obvious stressors (i.e. too much alcohol the night before). This may be an indication that your body is fighting some sort of acute illness, i.e. stomach or viral infection.

B. Text comments which explain how stress has changed between the two consecutive measurements. BreathNow will inform you whether your stress level increased, decreased or stayed the same after the previous measurement. This is a great way to check how particular exercises help you to calm down (breathing, meditation, stretching, etc) or energize you (aerobic exercise like jogging or cycling, Energize breathing, etc).

Take a stress measurement, perform one of the exercises in BreathNow, check stress level again. This is a great way to check which particular exercise produces the best results for you.

Here are some other popular questions and answers related to stress monitors.

What is stress monitor in smartwatch and how stress monitor works in smartwatch?

Some advanced smartwatches (see more on this below) can read not only the user's heart rate, but also their Heart Rate Variability (HRV). The value of users HRV is used as a measure of their stress.

How to monitor stress level ( how to monitor stress)

As explained above there are several ways to monitor stress: blood test, heart rate, blood pressure, breathing frequency and perspiration. However when it comes to measuring stress in everyday life the most widely spread technology is HRV (Heart Rate Variability)?

How to monitor stress on Apple Watch?

For some reason the Apple Watch stress monitor is one of the well hidden features of this wonderful device. It is possible to monitor stress with Apple Watch but you need a stress monitor app to enable this feature. BreathNow is a free stress monitor for Apple Watch. Install BreathNow app with stress monitor Apple Watch and study the apps Questions and Answers (Q&A) to learn how to enable 24x7 stress monitor in Apple Watch.

Stress monitor vs Welltory?

Welltory is one of the mobile apps which allows you to monitor stress among other health parameters. It uses HRV to measure stress level.

Stress monitor ring?

There are several stress monitor smart rings on the market with Oura being the most popular one. Its main features include health and wellness tracking, particularly focusing on sleep, activity, and readiness. It offers detailed sleep analysis, 24/7 heart rate tracking, HRV data and advanced temperature monitoring, all within a sleek, comfortable, and stylish design.

Stress monitor Samsung watch?

Several Samsung Galaxy Watch models include stress monitoring features. Specifically, the Galaxy Watch 5, the Galaxy Watch 4 and 4 classic, Galaxy Watch Active 2, Galaxy Watch 3, Galaxy Fit, and Fit 2. These watches use Heart Rate Variability (HRV) data to assess stress levels

Xiaomi stress monitor?

Several Xiaomi smartwatches and fitness trackers feature all-day stress monitoring. These devices include the Xiaomi Watch 2, Xiaomi Smart Band 9, Xiaomi Watch S4, and Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro.

Summary

HRV is a practical, cost effective, and non-invasive way to measure the activity of the autonomic nervous system as relates to stress
HRV data from consumer devices, like Apple Watch, are quite noisy and allow reliably to show changes only between days, between closely spaced measurements or identify trends with 24x7 stress monitoring. Strict measurement routine should be followed to secure reliable data.
Stress monitor of the BreathNow app helps to reduce heart health risks notifying a user if their stress is up and immediately offering activities to lower it.
Try BreathNow blood pressure app and let us know how it worked for you

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