UKH

As you dear reader may or may not know I had a heart attack in March 21 and have had long covid since December 21.

The long covid is gradually getting better and I need to start exercising again. What I have learned is I can exercise to a level but if I go over that level even though I feel fine at the time (by the time I feel like I'm pushing it it's too late if that makes sense) it will kick the crap out of me later. 

So I dug out my Jabra Pulse ear buds, they read your heart rate and verbally relay it to you at your pre defined intervals. My thinking is learn what my heart rate is in conjunction to how much of a kicking I take the next day and just to suit.

Unfortunately in November 22 Jabra removed the app from the Google play store and there isn't a replacement. 

Does anyone know of a product that does similar? There are a million things that monitor heart rate but do they relay it to you via earphones, I don't want to be glued to a screen whilst exercising. 

I'm fancying the fitbit charge 6 but the information available is all about obtaining data via the app after exercise not during.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Do you mean to say you somehow lost the installed app off your phone? 
if you Google Jabra apk you should be able to download it and install it manually if you’re even remotely IT competent 🙂

I’d be surprised if your earbuds or a Fitbit type thing gave you the accuracy you would need. Mrs JLS uses a Fitbit and it regularly gives false reading.

I think you would need something that uses a chest strap and records the workouts for review later.

Unless you are cycling where you literally can have the screen in front of you for the entire workout, the best I can suggest is using an interval timer app on your phone to give you an audible beep reminder to glance at a watch showing your HR.

The standard solution for monitoring heart rate while exercising would be a watch (connected to a chest strap, as JLS suggests, if greater accuracy is needed). Personally, I wouldn't think of glancing down at my wrist occasionally as being "glued to a screen", but it's pretty common for people to want to train in a specific heart-rate zone, so you could probably set a decent watch to beep and/or vibrate to indicate if you've strayed outside a chosen window.

Good point about the zone alarms on good watches. I’d have thought that would provide enough live “feedback” for the OP’s purpose.

If you on Facebook then check out the group “beat long covid with a smartwatch” - has more information on this subject than you will ever need. A cheap Garmin will work fine for your purposes (having some kind of heart rate variation monitoring is really useful), but if you want to go the full chest strap route then I have an unused one I need to sell, just DM me if interested. 

Also just to check, do you know of all the various ways to deal with an over stimulated nervous system? Eg breathing exercises, yoga nidra/non sleep deep rest, humming/singing, etc? Can all be very helpful (according to cardiologists as well as internet randoms). These things won’t stop the feeling of being flattened if you overdo it, but they will reduce the impact considerably.

Thanks, I have had a look and it is there. I'm not It competent but I'm sure I can follow a guide. I didn't lose the app, it's 2 phones ago. 

My ear buds used to be close enough to the readings on the gym machines for me. It doesn't matter if they are out either, as long as they are consistent I can work to it. 

Thanks, I will check the group out. I will also look in to what you suggest re breathing etc. 

My coping for the last 2 years has just been crack on through the week and ignore everything as much as possible then rest up on the weekend but I feel now I'm recovered enough to start being proactive but carefully. 

I would be tempted to splash out on a piece of equipment that works, perhaps an up market Apple Watch with ECG. Ideally HRV, pulse rate recording and ECG would be a suitable combination. Many Garmin watches will do the first 2 quite well, so you could combine that with a phone ECG device. Whatever sports device just don't believe the oxygen saturation figures as these are often in fairy pixie land. Apple Watches have both saved a few lives and also annoyed the hell out of quite a few doctors!

Just wondering, have you done a basic test for dysautonomia? Your doctor should do it (but probably won’t) but it’s easy enough to do for yourself at home if you have a blood pressure monitor. Also are you using anti-histamine? Again, your doctor can prescribe famatodine (but probably won’t without some prodding) - often takes the edge off things.

In the meantime the Visible app is worth a try as a basic heart rate variation monitor which can help you spot if you’ve overdone it. It’s free and takes a few minutes a day so not onerous. 

Some garmins do but its a mixed bag so you would need to look at specific models.

I think music equipped ones can rely the heart rate alerts to you and some of the others can but only if connected to the phone app with the phone being connected to the headphone.

Think all of them do vibration alerts and beeps but latter clearly not much use if you are wearing headphones and vibration aint always the best.

One thing to bear in mind is the wrist based options tend to be slower to pick up changes than chest bands. So depending on how careful you need to be and what you are doing, eg they suck at intervals and also mountain biking due to wrist flexing in my experience, a chestband might be needed. That said they can be paired with the watch and so used for the more messy stuff and just use the wrist measurement the rest of the time.

Nope, not been tested. The only 2 tests they have done was at the covid referral where they did a sit stand test and a grip strength test, I didn't do very well with the sit stand but my grip strength was exceptionally good, anyone would think I used spanners for a living. 

That's way ott for what I need. All I need to do is keep my heart rate at an acceptable level and I'm sorted. 

One of the lads at work is going to sort out the APK on my phone for me. The era bud reader is accurate enough for what I need and as I already own them it fits with being a Yorkshire man, I don't need our battle cray of OW MUCH

As others have said, I would look at a Garmin and get a chest strap for it, the chest strap HR monitors aren't very expensive and are much more accurate (might be how old my watch is but the wrist based HR has always been more likely to pick up my cadence than HR). You can set high and low heart rate alerts (and set up different ones for different activities if you want a different warning for running than cycling etc)

People using a heart rate monitor as a way of reducing the impact of chronic illness tend to need basic information pretty much constantly. Practicality is definitely a plus.

Of course they didn’t…! It’s worth testing for as if you have a nervous system problem there are a bunch of known and safe interventions that help considerably.

I’d strongly recommend HRV monitoring as something that can let you know if you’re overdoing it before you actually feel it. The Garmin body battery feature isn’t exactly HRV but it’s based on it and is really handy. 

Completely by chance, I've just seen these on another website - Sennheiser Momentum Sport earbuds with heart rate monitoring (not released yet, though):

https://www.sennheiser-hearing.com/en-US/p/momentum-sport/

Same site also linked these:

https://mojawa.com/products/haptifit-terra-preorder

Garmin (Instinct Solar) watches let you set an alarm which goes off when you arrive at a pre set HR. It can both beep and vibrate on your wrist. Not exactly ear phones but I expect just as useful.

I will speak to my doc, I have my cardiology review in a couple of weeks so I will ask then

What is HRV? 

Thank you for all the advice by the way. 

They look interesting. 

Good luck! Is it worth asking for a lean test, they should be able to do this at your GPs or anywhere really.

Antihistamines seem to help a lot of people, you can ask for famatodine or a similar antihistamine, or maybe ketotifen. Some evidence, if you care about such things:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10388239/

There is a good roundup here, it's two doctors talking and it's not that technical, but it's for doctors and suggests things that they really should do (but might not):

https://podcasts.rcpe.ac.uk/show/clinical-conversations/long-covid-part-2-1...

Melatonin is also good if you're sleep isn't great and it's also anti-inflamatory, recommend it as good sleep if your friend.

Heart rate variation. Changes in HRV are a really good way of showing if you're building up fatigue over a period of days or weeks which could lead to you suffering increased symptoms. The Garmin doesn't use HRV directly but includes it in its "body battery" feature which can be very helpful in pacing and getting the right levels of activity so as not to increase long covid symptoms.

Happy to help!

Several Garmin's so have HRV measurements - overnight and averaged over the week, rather than just as part of body battery.

I noticed a decline in health in winter 22 when I stopped taking antihistamine at the end of summer so I went back on them, they definitely help. 

Yes of course, my mistake. The cheap ones don’t, but they are almost certainly fine for illness monitoring without that feature.