Garmin Abnormal Heart Rate Alert (Here’s What To Do)
So, you have had your new Garmin watch for a couple of weeks when suddenly it buzzes on your wrist and lets you know that your heart rate is abnormally high. What should you do here, do you need to go to the hospital, or do you just need to sit down? While this can be an unexpected alert, here are some things that you should do when you receive it.
Most Garmin watches have an alert system that notifies a user when their heart rate passes a certain level. When a user receives this notice they should pause their current activity. Confirm the heart rate by placing a finger on the side of the neck. If the rate remains high, seek medical attention.
While it can be surprising, remember this alert may help prevent you from seriously injuring yourself. Garmin equipment should not be treated like medical equipment so always check your heart rate yourself and wait and see if your body will relax and your heart rate will drop. There is a chance of this alert being faulty so go through the following steps before rushing to a hospital.
What is The Garmin Abnormal Heart Rate Alert?
One of the features of the new Garmin watches is an alert that occurs when your heart rate passes a certain level. In order to do this, the Garmin watches track your heart rate by using a wrist-based sensor. This sensor allows the watch to keep a constant tally of the wearer’s heart rate.
By tracking your heart rate, your Garmin watch is able to provide feedback on your training and exercise. By tracking how fast your heart rate rises while doing physical activity, and how quickly it returns to its resting level, the watch will be able to estimate your fitness level and how prepared you are for more intense workouts. This tracking is not only useful during exercise periods, but also for any time outside of it as well.
Your Garmin can constantly monitor your heart rate while you wear it at work, at home, and throughout all of your daily activities.
While watching, it can notify you when your heart rate falls to an abnormally low level or spikes to an abnormally high level. The way this works is you can input a heart rate level, and when you pass it, your watch will buzz and notify you that your heart rate is too high and you should take a break.
This can help you keep your physical exercise within reasonable limits and prevent you from overtraining yourself. It can also signal you that you might be experiencing a health concern if you are engaged in an activity that should not raise your heart rate like sitting in your work office or watching a movie.
The watch can also be set to notify you if your heart rate has fallen to an abnormally low level. This can serve as an opportunity to do a self-inventory and check and make sure you are safe and your body is functioning properly.
How to Change Your Heart Rate Alert On Your Garmin
In order for you to receive these notifications, you will have to turn them on in your Garmin watch’s menu. Once they are on you will be able to set the guidelines that you like to observe your heart rate. Depending on which Garmin you are using will mean that the process for setting and adjusting this heart rate alert may look slightly different.
Here are some of the more common models of Garmin watches and what this process will look like for each of them.
Forerunner 45
Hold the Up key to open the menu. Select Wrist Heart Rate and Abnormal Heart Rate Alerts. Turn on the High Alert and input the heart rate to set the level. Repeat this process to select Low Alert and input your desired level. To adjust the inputted level, follow these steps and input a new adjusted heart rate level.
Forerunner 55
Open the menu by holding the Up key. Open the Wrist Heart Rate and Abnormal Heart Rate Alerts menus. Within this second menu, turn on the High Alert and input your desired threshold. Repeat for the Low Alert.
Forerunner 245
Access your watch’s menu by holding the Up key. Select the options of Wrist Heart Rate and Abnormal Heart Rate Alerts. Open the High Alert and input your desired heart rate threshold. At this time, you can also input what you would like for your Low heart rate Alert.
Instinct Standard Series
Hold the Up/Menu button until options appear to you. Select the Settings Page. Open the Sensor & Accessories and select the Wrist Heart Rate. Open the option for Abnormal Heart Rate Alerts. Selecting the GPS you can turn on both the High and Low Alerts. From here you can set your heart rate threshold.
Fenix 5
This watch is not compatible with a low heart rate alert.
To set the high alert, open the menu by holding the Menu button. Choose Settings, Sensors & Accessories, and Wrist Heart Rate. Once here, select Abnormal Heart Rate Alert and press the Start/Stop button to turn the status to On. Once on, you will be able to set your Alert Threshold.
Fenix 6
Hold the Up/Menu bottom and select the Settings option. Click through the Sensors & Accessories and Wrist Heart Rate. Open Abnormal Heart Rate Alerts and push the Start/Stop key to turn on the High and Low Alerts (these will need to be turned on separately). Set the heart rate thresholds from here.
What to You Do When You Receive a Heart Rate Alert
When receiving these heart rate alerts, you might be wondering what you should do. Remember that these Garmin devices are not medical devices and should only be used as supplemental items.
If you receive a high heart rate alert, you can check your pulse by placing a finger along the side of your neck. If you do have an excessively fast heart rate, you will want to sit down and take a break from whatever activity you are currently engaged in. If the high heart rate persists, you may want to seek medical attention.
If you seem to be receiving faulty heart rate alerts you might want to check where your heart rate thresholds are set at. Some users have experienced issues where when the watch updated, it set the heart rate threshold to 0, which meant they constantly received high heart rate notifications.