Continuous Heart Rate Variability Monitoring - HealthPatch

I have been monitoring the health of my autonomic nervous system (ANS) for several years.  The ANS is made up of the sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest) branches.  One way to look at these two branches is to think of the sympathetic branch as a car's accelerator, while the parasympathetic branch as the car's brakes.  The goal is to maintain balance between these two branches, at least when you are not actively engaged in exercise.

 I have used tools offered by HeartMath and SweetWater Health to measure and manage the health of my ANS.  The applications offered by these two companies make use of your Heart Rate Variability (HRV) to show the balance between the two branches, as well as the measure of your resiliency (strength/power of each branch).

Many athletes measure their HRV first thing in the morning to determine the state of their recovery.  See my prior blog post on Recovery - What's Involved for the low down on various ways to test recovery.  As an aside, Proteus, the manufacturer of an FDA approved smart pill, has just announced Recover, which uses a patch similar to the HealthPatch, and will support continuous monitoring of several biometrics, including HRV. Proteus Recover is being marketed for athletes.  They appear to be using HRV, HR and sleep to quantify recovery status.

I was finally able to obtain a VitalConnect HealthPatch sample pack last week. This was my first foray into continuous HRV monitoring.  As a side benefit, the HealthPatch also measures steps, skin temperature, respiration rate, and stress level.

VitalConnect states that the zinc air battery contained in the disposable portion of the patch will last between 48-72 hours. I achieved 84 hours, which included four exercise events and four showers. Not too shabby.

I made use of SweetWater Health's SweetBeatLife (SBL) to pull the data off the HealthPatch.  I should point out that you need to stop monitoring every nine hours due to SBL's current data log limitations. I fired up the VitalConnect mobile app each time I stopped SBL so I could batch upload the data collected during the prior nine hours to the VitalConnect site.

I watched the HealthPatch video a couple of times prior to applying the patch to my chest. The assembly of the patch involves the connection and sealing of the module which stores the data and houses the the low-power bluetooth radio.

I opted to affix the patch on my upper chest, as I wanted to be able to run WHOOP  with my Wahoo TICKR in parallel with SBL for testing purposes.

I was able to collect a lot of data over the 84 hours. The only breaks in recording occurred during the first and third night, when the patch lost connectivity to SBL (first night) or SBL crashed (third night).

You need to keep your iPhone (SweetWater is releasing an Android client soon) charged at all times. I kept it plugged in when I was stationary and at night while sleeping.  I made use of my Mophie Powerstation when I was more mobile.

I have four more patches to test, but will likely wait a few weeks to give them another spin.

Feel free to ask questions.

Enjoy,


Chuck