So I’ve found that over the last 2 years whenever I’ve been sick enough to need medication that when I’ve gone back and looked at my resting heart rate it’s be elevated for before I’ve noticed any particular symptoms. Sometimes just by 12 hours or so, but on another occasion by 4-5 days. I use HeartWatch to look at my heart rate data, and it does a good job of presenting the information, but can anyone recommend an app that might proactively monitor my resting heart rate against my usual, and prompt with a “your resting heart rate seems higher today, are you feeling OK?”, or something similar? HeartWatch gives me a daily notification to check how I’ve done today if it is open in the background, but something that would give a more targeted notification is what I’d be interested in.
I track resting heart rate - and it seems to behave as you would expect. So, things like sleep loss and the occasional illness bump it up. Level of fitness also affects the underlying resting heart rate.
I use the Health app on iPhone, driven by Apple Watch. But I don’t think this app can trigger anything.
Other apps have access to the Health data but I don’t think they can automate anything.
It seems to me the best you can do - if you’re not feeling well - is check the resting heart rate in the Health app.
But note: The resting heart rate quite often gets revised during the course of the day. For example yesterday my resting heart rate was about 10 above what I expected. Then later in the day it got revised to slightly lower than I expected.
Honestly, I don’t think that it would be a good idea, to watch your resting heart rate from that point of view.
There seems indeed to be a relation between the resting hart rate, and certain kinds of infections, and the german RKI for example is collection data on a voluntary base, to increase the accuracy of the COVID-Data, but while you maybe will observe also an increase in the heart rate, if you uncovered an infection, it will not be necessary the other way around.
So, there is no actually value in watching your heart rate in that way. If it increases there could be a lot of other reasons for that. And if it really increases due to an infection, you got this infection anyway, so the value of this “predictable” information seems to be pretty small for an individual person, if not even dangerous, as somebody might Tend to put too much value into this information, and become sick, just because he/she becomes scared by a misinterpretation.
If you have an Apple Watch you can set a notification if your heart rate goes above 100, 110, etc. But some doctors recommend against measuring our vitals etc. too often because some people can become worried over normal variations that occur during the day.
Mine, who wears an AW and uses iPads in his practice, has me check my BP once a week. You might want to discuss this with your personal physician.
So I found an app called Auto Export which allows me to create a widget of my resting heart rate over the last month, which I’ve added to my Smart Stack. It is a paid app though so not sure that I’ll use it beyond the free trial. Scrolling back through the history of my resting heart rate in the Health App it does seem to be pretty stable, and anything beyond a single day jump seem to align with an illness. I guess my take is that it’s a useful parameter to look at when you’re asking yourself ’am I just tired after a long day, or am I coming down with something’. I’m sure that there is wide variation between (and within) individuals so I am not trying to give out any form or medical advice - more just what I find a useful indicator that I need to exercise some self-care, and to take COVID and UTI home tests (the UTI test was positive for leukocytes and so I reached out to my Dr for support). Thankfully things seem to be back o. The mend at the moment.
I’ve never found these notifications to be timely or useful. When walking or running I want to set thresholds, but it doesn’t seem to work.
I just use the app on the Apple Watch ie Heart Rate.
They did tell me at the cardiologist’s that the EKG’s are pretty accurate.
I understand. My HR dips into the 45 range when I’m sleeping, but its due to my BP meds. If it starts going lower I’ll message my dr and he’ll decide if we need to make changes. I try to not worry about things that I can’t control.
The thing that irritates me is I was once a runner and cyclist and now I am lucky if I can get my HR past 110 when exercising. 
I use an app called Training Today to tell me whether I should skip my exercise for the day or give it heaps or something in between. I have it as a Watch complication which just needs a glance for my current “score”. It’s based on Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and is eerily accurate. I used to skip exercise if I hadn’t got much sleep (esp. less than 6 hours) but Training Today will sometimes tell me “you’re fine, go for it” and in fact the exercise makes me feel better and sets me up well for the day.
In terms of tracking changes over time, the app Exist does exactly this kind of thing with all sorts of health data, including manually logged things. I’ve still barely just got started with it so can’t say how well it works, but that’s its selling point.
This is also one of my philosophies.
One aspect of the explicability that’s interesting is this:
When I was (relatively) super fit my resting heart rate was 10 below what it has been for the past few months. Now I’m getting back into running I’m slowly getting back down there.
Now, I’m not fetishistic about it but it is a useful observation.
The Training Today app looks as though it could well be a useful addition. It looks like it takes a baseline - and with the week I’ve had it’s just telling me to rest. 
Exist looks like it would be overkill for the use case I have - and I’m very wary of expanding my number of subscriptions.
Thanks for sharing those recommendations.
If you zoom out in the Health app you get a “smoothed” view. “6M” seems to me the best for that - for the Resting Heart Rate metric.
I did not know this app exists 
. Just signed up for a 30-day trial. Seem to be good at pulling the data and turn that into useful information. May report back after spending more time on this
I forget to mention…in addition to Exist (only trialling but may be too pricy for me), I am using both Heart hive and Heart Analyzer.
I did a stent placement about 7 years ago so I am more conscious in monitoring my heart condition.