Thank you, Fitbit

I have a Fitbit Versa 1; I've had it for about a year and a half now. Our son, Ryan, bought a Versa 2 and handed the Versa 1 down to me.

Because it's an older model, it lacks some of the newer bells and whistles, but I don't miss most of those things. What I did miss was Saturation Percentage of Oxygen (SPO2), Heart Rate Variance (HRV), and Resting Breathing Rate (RBR). But I love the sleep tracking and heartrate monitoring.

The sleep tracking confirmed to me what I had thought for years: I sleep more deeply than average and have fewer dreams. Below is a screen shot from my sleep profile from about six weeks ago, but it's typical. The shaded range is average for men my age. You can see that I'm well below average for REM and well above average for deep sleep:

Now, what I said about SPO2 isn't quite true. Probably about nine months ago now Fitbit made SPO2 tracking available on the Versa 2 and above. With the Versa 1, you could add the SPO2 watch face and see your SPO2 from the night before, and in the sleep profile, if you scrolled all the way down, you could see the variation for that night. But, you couldn't track it day-to-day to watch for trends.

But, man, does SPO2 tracking drain the battery! After activating it, I was getting about 48 hours per charge. But recently, that has become 36 hours. So, I decided to start looking at replacements—not that I was planning on taking the plunge soon, but I wanted to see what was available. I was really attracted to the Garmin stuff because nothing was behind a paywall—no subscription required. But, their basic models weren't touch screen and didn't include an altimeter for hill tracking. But I certainly wasn't happy that in order to access some of the more advanced stuff on Fitbit you had to subscribe. I didn't want the information that badly!

But all that changed about four days ago. Fitbit made SPO2, HRV, RBR, and skin temp variation available outside the paywall! And, what truly surprised me is that the Versa 1 can track HRV and RBR!

To activate it, go to your Fitbit app and click on Health Metrics; it will ask to you approve the tracking and then show you the metrics. See the screen shot below:

Because I have a Versa 1, the HRV, RBR, and skin temp spots were empty, which didn't surprise me because I knew it wasn't being tracked. But, the next day, I was very surprised to see the HRV and RBR there! (See the screen shot below.)

So, thank you Fitbit! The next smartwatch/fitness tracker I get will be a Fitbit. It has the best bang for the buck and fits my needs very well—especially now that more data is available without a subscription.

By the way, I'm not sure how Fitbit calculates the RHR, but using the more traditional way of looking at your heart rate when you first get up, my RHR whould be about 47 bpm, not 53. In the summer, Fitbit tells me it is about 50, whereas I see it as 45 bpm—but I'm not going to quibble; it's still in the excellent range!

And a further note about HRV: The higher the number, the better. Do a quick google search to find out more, but it varies by age. And as far as RBR, unless you are in excellent shape, my RBR would be a warning about sleep apnea. But, for a person in good physical condition (i.e., an athlete), anything in the 8–10 breathes/minute is normal. Again, do a quick google search for more info.

An added little tidbit that many people don't know: On the Fitbit, swipe up to see your stats for the day. Scroll down to the heart rate and swipe left twice. It will show you your cardio-fitness score. It will give a range and tell you where you fall in your age bracket. I'm in the 56–60 range, which for a 67-year old is considered excellent.

Now, if only I could find out how to calculate my functional threshold power (FTP) on my Cycleops mag trainer (it's a dumb trainer). It's about seven or eight years old now; it was given to me by our son-in-law and replaced a fifteen-year-old Cycleops mag trainer. I don't have wireless speed/cadence detectors on this bike, either, so it's all guesstimation. I always keep the resistance set to maximum, too. I've looked everywhere on the internet for help calculating it, and the closest I can come is a graph that shows average speed mapped to approximate FTP. Based on that, I'd guesstimate it at about 200 watts. Is that good? Apparently it's pretty fair, earning a Cat 4 rating.

On drinking and cycling

Bicycling magazine has a post up today about the effects of alchohol on the body. Here's a nice little snippet, but if you drink, even moderately, you might want to read the whole article. The statistics, some of which I was not aware of, are definitely in favor of totally abstaining.

If the health impacts of drinking seem abstract to many fit and healthy-feeling cyclists, most athletes have some awareness that ethanol impairs multiple aspects of performance, especially recovery. Probably most widely known is alcohol’s dehydrating effect, which happens because booze inhibits the antidiuretic hormone that tells the body to hold on to fluid, causing too much to be released through urine. Alcohol also impairs the uptake of glycogen in your muscles, inhibiting the refueling effect of any postride carbs you eat and possibly affecting your performance for up to a couple of days, says sports dietitian Bob Seebohar, R.D.

Most people also know that drinking disrupts sleep, and Kevin Sprouse, director of medicine and sports science for EF Pro Cycling, enlightened me on the details. Specifically, alcohol shortens deep sleep cycles and disrupts REM sleep. Deep sleep is when the body releases human growth hormone, repairs tissues, and recovers physically; REM sleep is generally when cognitive recovery happens. When drinking sabotages these cycles, the result is compromised reaction time and mental focus and the ability to, say, navigate a pack or push through a tough workout the next day. EF riders wear Whoop fitness trackers, and performance staff have seen deviations in their sleep quality—as well as in metrics such as resting heart rate and heart rate variability—after as little as a single drink. Research supports their observations on sleep quality, too.

I know why!

I'm in San Diego for the Annual Meetings of the AAR/SBL. Over the years, I've noticed a trend. Back when I first started doing this, if you got to the workout room after 6:00 AM, you had a limited choice of equipment. I prefer a stationary recumbent. It used to be they would have three upright bikes and two recumbents, plus elipticals and treadmills. I sometimes ended up on an eliptical.

But over the years, the number of people in the workout room has dropped—and the number of bikes had dropped. This hotel has one each of the bikes, as well as four or five treadmills and ellipticals. Because of the small number, I went to the workout room yesterday at about 5:40. Sure enough, someone was on the upright bike, but that left me the recumbent. Interestingly, during my half-hour there, only two other people came in to workout; one on weights and one on a treadmill.

Knowing from experience that the first day of the conference always has the biggest turnout in the workout room, I went down at 5:30 to ensure getting a bike. No problem; no one else was there. When I left at 6:05, here's what it looked like:

Yep. No one was there. I'll bet the restaurants won't have that problem! And that, my friends is why the waistlines of Americans are getting larger.

How about you? What's your fitness level?

Bicycling Magazine has a new article out about fitness and longevity. In it they link to a fun site, World FitnessLevel that estimates your fitness level and fitness age based on some questions. They also are conducting a study, so you can answer a long list of questions if you wish.

So, given that I ride (indoors in the winter) three times a week and walk three to six plus miles a day with a resting heart rate of about 45 (national average for my age is 72), they say my fitness age is:

What about you? How are you doing?

A little exercise goes a long ways

I've had this in my drafts folder for a few weeks...it's about the value of exercise.

After only a week, the young men who had not exercised displayed a significant and unhealthy decline in their blood sugar control, and, equally worrying, their biopsied fat cells seemed to have developed a malicious streak. Those cells, examined using sophisticated genetic testing techniques, were now overexpressing various genes that may contribute to unhealthy metabolic changes and underexpressing other genes potentially important for a well-functioning metabolism.

But the volunteers who had exercised once a day, despite comparable energy surpluses, were not similarly afflicted. Their blood sugar control remained robust, and their fat cells exhibited far fewer of the potentially undesirable alterations in gene expression than among the sedentary men.

<idle musing>
This is basically what Covert Bailey has been saying for over 35 years. Exercise doesn't just burn calories (it actually burns very few), it realigns the body's metabolism so that your muscles become "better butter burners" as he puts it.
</idle musing>