Forums >Health and Nutrition>Covid Recovery Tracking, courtesy of Apple Watch
rectumdamnnearkilledem
Has anyone else taken note of data collected by a smart watch before/during/after a bout with Covid? The data my Apple Watch has collected is really fascinating. My VO2max took a dump days before I tested + on rapid home test. Probably about when a PCR test would have been +. I tested + on the 13th of June. DH and DS both tested + on the 11th. I'm still digging out of my Covid hole. I suspect I'm still a week away from maybe being back to my pre-covid respiratory fitness. I can see when I was battling anemia and seasonal allergies, as well. I stumbled-across the obvious Covid dip when I was going to see how things were looking on the anemia front.
Getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to
remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.
~ Sarah Kay
I had what i suspect was covid back in December, at the time, MD was setting records for case loads and it was nearly impossible to get a test in a timely manner. And then since it was around Christmas, all the state & county run testing shut down for 3 days for the holiday. So never had a positive test, but felt awful for a week and had SOB walking up the driveway & steps, so it likely was covid. I had weird looking Garmin data. The dip in vo2 max isn't as dramatic as the spikes in resting heart rate. I had a non-covid uri back in late October/early November, which is spike 1. Spike 2 is from the booster, it kicked my ass and then I would up breakig out in hives with an elevated resting heart rate for a week 2 weeks after it. The 3rd spike is the likely covid. It took a while for my resting heart rate to go back to normal. Running pretty much sucked in January and I felt sore all the time. February was so-so and March finally started to feel closer to normal.
My work requires that we call a hotline for any single new symptom. Even though it doesn't get me out of testing, I will tell them if my resting heart rate is unchanged, as it typically means allergies or if it's up, which means sick.
I had iron issues last summer, it's probably not as dramatic on this chart since it had already started the decline.
Hope you are feeling better.
I am feeling better, thank you! I've been taking Vitron C iron, which seems to absorb well without giving me massive gut irritation. And I'm mostly feeling better, post-Covid. My kid really bounced-back fast, from that. Oh, to be 21!
Wow, your RHR really does seem to be more of a marker for you. In my case, my RHR has been a mess for at least 6 months, thanks to anemia and allergies. I went back and looked at mine and Covid didn't seem to really have any noticeable affect on that. I wish smart watch health tracking technology would have been a thing, a decade or more ago. I'd sure love to have seen my baseline #s in my 20s and 30s.
Garmin has a stress level also, if I'm fighting off something (or had a covid vaccine), it goes up. Typically, this goes up with rhr. I know there is a problem when it tells me I was not at rest when I was sleeping.
I also have a pattern to my resting heart rate. It goes up about 5 bpm around ovulation, then dips, then up another 3-5 bpm the week before my period and then a sharp drop when my period starts.
I agree about having this info 20 years ago. If nothing else, now that I have it, I feel like it makes it easier to tell medical folks when there is a problem. I had low iron last summer (never got to the point of full blown anemia) and it helped drive the point home when I said my "easy"runs were 90 seconds slower at a higher heart rate, this is not normal and it is not "age related". I mean, it could be based on some other stuff, but the dramatic drop was probably me buying gummy vitamins with no iron and using those for 6 months.
I am a total sleep tracker junkie. And now I know that if I have more than a single beer or serving of wine before bed that I will be lucky to get more than 30 min. deep sleep...if I get any, at all.
Garmin has a stress level also, if I'm fighting off something (or had a covid vaccine), it goes up. Typically, this goes up with rhr. I know there is a problem when it tells me I was not at rest when I was sleeping. I also have a pattern to my resting heart rate. It goes up about 5 bpm around ovulation, then dips, then up another 3-5 bpm the week before my period and then a sharp drop when my period starts. I agree about having this info 20 years ago. If nothing else, now that I have it, I feel like it makes it easier to tell medical folks when there is a problem. I had low iron last summer (never got to the point of full blown anemia) and it helped drive the point home when I said my "easy"runs were 90 seconds slower at a higher heart rate, this is not normal and it is not "age related". I mean, it could be based on some other stuff, but the dramatic drop was probably me buying gummy vitamins with no iron and using those for 6 months.
I've been in menopause for >5 years. So I stopped taking a multivit w/iron. Anemia totally snuck up on me. Even without any reproductive organs, I still need iron. I thought eating red meat, dark green veggies, and cooking in cast iron was sufficient, but my blood work proved otherwise. I suspect it's long-term issues from chemo, in my case. I've struggled to keep both red and white blood counts in the normal range, ever since. And it's been ~4 years since I was last on any chemo drugs. Running likely depletes my iron stores, too. And I've had to make sure that my multivit contains vitamin K, as well. The combo of inadequate K and iron made for anemia + a ton of random bruises, which compounded the anemia.
I find the Garmin sleep tracking to be a bit wonky. It esepecially doesn;t do well if you wake up for long period--it then stops tracking. Last summer a drunk driver ran a stop sign & wound up in our back yard at 1am. The noise of him hitting the curb woke me up. I was up for a few hours watching COPS unfold in our backyard. Garmin only gave me the sleep prior to that, not when I finally went back to bed (after watching the Olympics live).
Yikes! Yes, I remember this about sleep tracking on a fitness tracker Garmin I had. It wasn't at all helpful if I took a nap. The cool thing with the Apple Watch is the ability to pick specific sleep tracker apps. The one I use isn't free, but it shows SO much data on a single graph, so I can see HR, respiration rate, and SpO2...as well as noise, but I have that turned-off, as it eats my watch battery super fast. And I didn't find it particularly useful, as noise levels really don't change, unless we have a T-storm. It might be more helpful if a person were being woken by infants or dogs, or neighborhood sounds.
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That's truly fascinating! It's amazing how smartwatch data can offer such valuable insights into our health. Your observation about the dip in VO2max correlating with the onset of COVID symptoms is particularly interesting. Wishing you a swift recovery as you continue to regain your pre-COVID respiratory fitness. It's impressive how technology can provide us with such personalized health information, allowing for a deeper understanding of our well-being. Take care and stay positive on your journey to full recovery! cotton candy t shirt full sleeve
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