My watch says I’m always stressed - perimenopause?

[SomethingFun]

I have a Garmin watch which gives you ‘scores’ on your sleep, stress levels, body battery and heart rate. Since around September my watch has been saying I’m nearly always very stressed, particularly when I’m asleep. I have been under a lot of stress recently but it has calmed down for a couple of weeks now but apparently I’m still very stressed. I don’t feel particularly stressed apart from when I look at my watch stats and I feel like my sleep is alright.

I’m wondering if this is perimenopause and it’s effecting my sleep? My resting heart rate is a bit higher than it normally would be, but not worryingly so. I generally feel run down as well but I wondered if that is perimenopause too? I do have an appointment to discuss perimenopause with a dr coming up but I was interested if anyone else has had a similar experience 😊

My watch claims something similar and I think perhaps they're not very accurate. I don't have much to be stressed about at the moment.

I'd get rid of that watch, hearing im very stressed would make me extremely stressed.

Yes it does 😁 I’m constantly checking to see if thinks I’m stressed or not which isn’t helpful. I don’t know if it’s me or the watch - it didn’t used to be like this but maybe it’s broken or an update has made it not work properly for me. Or maybe I’m broken and I am in denial.

I am in peri and mine doesn't say this.

I think you might need more to work with than just 'my watch says I'm stressed'!

Have a look at the balance app and mark up which symptoms you have.

I would question the accuracy of the watch.

My watch consistently tells me that I'm way more stressed at home and whilst asleep than I am at work! Don't know how it registers 'stress' as my RHR is around 50bpm

There are more perimenopause symptoms than my watch, I was just hoping it’s that (or my watch) rather than something wrong with my heart or something else terrible.

The app for the watch has this graph that’s blue when you’re relaxed and orange when you’re stressed and it’s orange the whole time I’m asleep, which I’m sure is bullshit as I’m not waking up in the night or having bad dreams. It’s related to heart rate variability and apparently mine is worse than someone in their 70s which I don’t know if I believe as this watch also say my fitness age is younger than my actual age. I can get quite anxious about my health and this isn’t helping but I also don’t want to ignore and put my head in the sand. Argh.

All jokes aside, yes

I think a lot of these indicators are worthless. I had a Fitbit at one point, years ago, for fitness reasons. I ended up selling it on eBay, don't know why I bought it really.

But what was good about it for me was I was able to prove to my doctor how bad mine insomnia was.

Then I realised it didn't make much difference because they hate prescribing sleeping pills

Then also, it was annoying to wake up feeling okay and having the data tell you that you'd only had two hours sleep. I mean that wasn't unusual for me at the time and I coped okay with it but if you actually feel okay, you almost don't need the information

So that circles back to @SomethingFun if you're not stressed and you feel fine, don't let the technology tell you you are stressed. That's kind of nuts.

@SomethingFun is it a Garmin Vivofit? That's what mine is and mine too shows me orange and stressed most of the night. Interestingly its always blue at work (calm) when I feel anything other than calm. Maybe someone programmed the colours the wrong way around

I think it is calculated using your HRV, has that recently reduced? Things that boost my HRV are time outside, amount of steps and breathing exercises (just 5 min of the physiological sigh really helps). Drinking alcohol and eating before bed also dramatically lower HRV.

My venu square Garmin does the same but I assumed it was just inaccurate.

I am 63 so post menopausal. I have a Garmin and it was saying I was stressed as I was asleep and this was giving me a bad sleep score. I was taking a magnesium tablet a while before bed, not looking at my phone, going to bed and getting up at the same time every morning but it still showed stress (even though I was sleeping through the night). Then I realised it was my nightly mince pie and hot chocolate habit. As soon as I stopped them my sleep returned to a good score and no stress. Apparently if you eat anything sugary close to bedtime that causes spikes in blood sugar or something and it shows as stress. Alcohol will show as stress too.