Communication is a broad term. I like to think of it as how we communicate with different entities – other people, machines (aka prompting), and surprise, our bodies.
Communicating involves deep listening and then making an appropriate response. When it comes to our bodies, we often listen to it by noticing how we feel (healthy, crummy, ill). A better way is to collect raw data about it and these days, our smartwatches do a great job of measuring our heart rate.
I’ve been wearing a Garmin sports watch to sleep since 2016 when they introduced heart rate monitoring (HRM) sensors. Every morning, the first thing I do is to check my watch and see what was the lowest heart rate achieved during my sleep.
According to Garmin, the average resting heart rate is 60-100 beats per minute (bpm), and very fit people can see readings as low as 40 bpm. My average is about 46 bpm and I use this to tell people why they don’t have to go to the gym or do Hyrox competitions to be fit. I simply jog slowly three times a week and keep my weight constant (since 2013) with healthy eating.
When you exercise regularly and are within your healthy weight range, your heart is strong and doesn’t need to pump as much to send blood around your body.
But what’s more important for me to see is whether there are sudden spikes in the resting heart rate, or if it’s unusually high for days. This means that your body is fighting an infection or there’s something wrong. For the past few weeks after I returned from my Thailand trip, my resting heart rate was hovering around 50. Even though I wasn’t exhibiting any major symptoms, I did feel a bit weak and I think my body was fighting a low level infection. Things finally got back to normal a few days ago.
The other two types of body data that I collect with my Garmin gear are my weight (with the Garmin Index weighing scale) and my VO2 max (my maximal oxygen uptake, measured by Garmin watch during every jog).
If you’ve been wanting to become more healthy, the first step is to start listening to your body’s signals. Do read online reviews to see which brand of smartwatches have accurate heart rate monitors.