Random Heart Rate Dips on Apple Watch

Wearing your Apple Watch with the right fit — not too tight, not too loose, and with room for your skin to breathe — keeps you comfortable and lets the sensors do their jobs. For best results, the back of your Apple Watch needs skin contact for features like Wrist Detect, the Taptic Engine, and the electrical and optical heart sensors.  For more info, see:

Wearing your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Even under ideal conditions, Apple Watch may not be able to get a reliable heart rate reading every time for everybody. For more info, see:

Monitor your heart rate with Apple Watch - Apple Support

Hi there!

I have also had this issue. I never really paid attention to my Apple Watch heart rate until I had COVID.

I started to pay attention and noticed these random spikes. I went back into my history, and it looks like this has been happening randomly ever since I had my Apple Watch.

I did speak to my cardiologist about this and even wore a holter monitor because of it and it all came back normal.

My cardiologist told me it must be artifact meaning that it has something to do with the Apple Watch reading.

When I see these pop up on my watch, it scares me for a second, but there were no symptoms involved and my HR went back to normal.

Just today a few minutes ago, it showed my HR go 87-90-42-97 and I was in the car driving to target. So I’m not sure if this is something in the way I am wearing my watch, or if I am moving a certain way that causes it.

My watch has done this. It’ll have a random readying in the low 40s and one time it was 215. My PCP referred me to a cardiologist who made me wear a monitor for a week. Long story short, my watch kept picking up weird readings that the monitor did not. This might not be the case for everyone, but hopefully it’s just a tech error.

Random dips can be a skipped heartbeat. Random high could also be an extra heartbeat generally when your heart rate doubles it’s an extra heartbeat.. that said there are light sensors that flash through your wrist and sometimes being too tight or too loose cause the same situation. I would pay more attention to how you feel if you had a symptom then I would worry about what the watch says mine for instance just said I was at 82 all the sudden while taking a high paced walk.. then suddenly bounced up when I felt the pulse in my neck. It was definitely higher than 82..

I had this problem non stop with my ultra 2. I got a whoop and my zone that I used and both of them say my heart rate was consistently at 80bpm when Apple Watch says 39-45 bpm. Very frustrating. I wouldn’t buy another Apple Watch for health tracking tbh. Calories are of course just guessing. Heart rate randomly dips. Workouts randomly stop. I’ve tried shaving my arms, putting it one inch above wrist bone, tried both arms, tightening and loosening it. Nothing helps. I’d return it if I could..

There is really nothing for them to look at. What some people here are experiencing are call outliers.

>>An outlier is a single data point that goes far outside the average value of a group of statistics. Outliers may be exceptions that stand outside individual samples of populations as well. In a more general context, an outlier is an individual that is markedly different from the norm in some respect.<<

In some individuals an outlier is a valid data point that is an indicator to a potentially serious issue and needs further discussion and analysis. It’s easy to design a filter to remove outliers but wouldn’t that underserve the individuals that need to be warned about a potential issue?

I think people that wear medical devices and general health indicators should seek the services of medical professionals and not rely exclusively on internet discussion forums. 😀😀

If you had the 10 minute warning from your watch it seems like you are experiencing brachycardia rather than a watch fault or random dip. I would contact your healthcare provider / GP to discuss and have a heart monitor fitted

This thread has 4 pages of posts. The explanation is already provided. Did you read through any of the posts? I’m happy to provide my explanation again.

>>There is really nothing for them to look at. What some people here are experiencing are call outliers.

>>An outlier is a single data point that goes far outside the average value of a group of statistics. Outliers may be exceptions that stand outside individual samples of populations as well. In a more general context, an outlier is an individual that is markedly different from the norm in some respect.<<

In some individuals an outlier is a valid data point that is an indicator to a potentially serious issue and needs further discussion and analysis. It’s easy to design a filter to remove outliers but wouldn’t that underserve the individuals that need to be warned about a potential issue?

I think people that wear medical devices and general health indicators should seek the services of medical professionals and not rely exclusively on internet discussion forums. 😄 😄 <<