You buy a smartwatch so you can track various health metrics. One of these metrics is your resting heart rate. You look at the number, and you realize you don’t know what it means.
What is a healthy resting heart rate?
“A normal resting heart rate is between is 60 and 100 beats per minutes (bpm),” says Cleveland Clinic preventive cardiologist Vikas Sunder, MD. “Resting heart rates lower than 60 bpm are found mostly in well-conditioned athletes. We usually see high resting heart rates in patients hospitalized after surgery or with an infection or inflammatory illness.”
Because resting heart rate is a highly individualized metric, the average resting heart rate in a group of individuals is not calculated.
“Your resting heart rate depends on your cardiovascular health, your overall health and the demands you are placing on your heart at any given time,” Dr. Sunder says. “Certain medications, like beta-blockers, can affect your heart rate, as can your response to adrenalin.”
What Your Resting Heart Rate Means
Cardiac output is a measure of how much blood your heart can pump in one minute. It is calculated by multiplying your heart rate (number of beats per minute) by your stroke volume: the amount of blood your heart pumps out in one heartbeat.
“Your cardiac output is a sign of how efficiently your heart is pumping,” Dr. Sunder explains. “When you need more oxygen—for example, when you are exercising—can your heart supply it? An efficient heart is pretty good at speeding up and slowing down when it needs to.”
An efficient heart is muscular, with flexible blood vessels. These characteristics make it efficient at pumping out a large amount of blood with each beat.
“Cardiac output is high and resting heart rate is low, because the heart does not have to beat fast to push blood out into the body,” Dr. Sunder says.
If you are not an athlete and your resting heart rate is slower than 60 bpm, talk with your provider. “Your heart may need to be checked for conduction issues,” says Dr. Sunder.
“On the other hand, a resting heart rate higher than 100 bpm means the organs are not effectively extracting blood from the circulation, so the heart beats faster in an attempt to push out more blood,” he adds. “A high resting heart rate is not a good thing”
How to Lower Your Resting Heart Rate
You can lower your resting heart rate by conditioning your heart to work more efficiently.
“The combination of regular aerobic and resistance exercise will strengthen your heart muscle and improve its stroke volume,” he says. “When your heart becomes more efficient, your resting heart rate slows down.”
Don’t Focus on Numbers
It’s not uncommon for individuals who wear their new smartwatch to bed to be alarmed when they find their resting heart rate drops significantly when they are asleep.
“Be assured that when your muscles don’t need to extract very much blood, your heart rate will be slow,” says Dr. Sunder.
