Overnight or Long Term Readings on Elite HRV
The outcome of what you are looking for will determine whether a short or long-term measurement is what you need. The outcome then determines the tool. If you are looking for extra long-duration measurements, then consider wearables that specialize in taking random bursts of readings throughout the day. Our app is not designed to be on and tracking HRV continuously. There is no rule against it; it will just have a tough time processing those long readings.
If the outcome you are looking for is ongoing health, wellness, and stress management, then short duration measurements trended over time or compared pre/post-event have advantages. This is the area that we've targeted. These two methodologies cannot be compared side by side. Please see this article for additional points: HRV Score Different Than Other Apps
Using Elite HRV for long-term or overnight readings is not recommended. The app is intended to provide HRV insights from short, regular, routine readings taken daily. This is discussed further down in this article. If you are determined to take longer duration readings (i.e, longer than an hour), there are a few considerations we'd like you to be aware of in advance:
- Your HRV monitor must be able to stay on you for extended periods without picking up movement artifacts. A chest strap monitor is currently the best option for this, however, steps must still be taken to avoid artifacts.
- Whether during sleep or throughout the day, it is important to make sure the chest strap does not pick up too many signal artifacts. This can be achieved by ensuring that it is adequately tight around the chest and using strap gel (link)
- Longer readings (greater than 30 minutes) require a lot of processing power to detect and correct artifacts and to generate frequency domain values. These readings will be processed in the background and results will be displayed after processing. It may take several hours to process. Additionally, if the reading is longer than a few hours in duration, it could take days to process.
- Certain phones close apps that run in the background. If you find your phone closes the Elite HRV app after a while, then a “night clock” app can help alleviate this. Night clock apps keep the phone’s screen awake while consuming minimal power. Users have reported that this allows Elite HRV to continue reading for long periods without disconnecting.
Example apps that can keep the screen awake:
- (Android) Night Alarm Clock
- (iOS) Night Time Clock
If your reading does get disconnected, all data up to the point of disconnection is automatically saved locally on your phone or tablet. You will need to “sync” the Elite HRV app for the reading to be saved – at which point you can then add notes/tags to the reading as well.
To sync the Elite HRV, pull down with your finger on the Home screen of the app until you see a Loading or Syncing icon.
24/7 readings (typically from wearables) can be interesting if the data is appropriately analyzed. Please note that we are not aware of a currently available wearable that actually measures HRV constantly throughout the day and night. Most will take random bursts of HRV measurement However, we do not recommend the use of 24/7 wearables for a few reasons.
- Wrist-worn devices tend to be sensitive to movement artifacts, and you can't prevent these from happening if your wearable is taking readings sporadically throughout the day.
- Regarding context (even while wearing a chest strap), your HRV is sensitive to stressors that you may experience throughout the day. HRV itself changes naturally throughout the day, which further complicates the analysis.
- Instead, we have repeatedly found that 90%+ of the insights can be derived from consistent morning "rapid" readings, which are not affected by the same errors or "noise".