[kstrauser]

When I was training to run a leg of a marathon relay a few years ago, my resting heart rate dropped a lot. One time I mentioned my overnight HR of 38 to my wife, a doctor. Next thing you know, I’m in a different doctor’s office being fitted for a Holter monitor. Everything was fine. Turned out my heart was just in great shape.

The doc said that they’re more aware of low HRs now because so many people are wearing 24/7 heart monitors, aka smart watches. Numbers that use to be taken as signs of “holy crap, something bad’s happening” are sometimes more like “huh, guess the normal range is wider than we thought”.

But for anyone reading who has a fast or slow heart rate: let your doctor be the judge of that, OK? Lots of the time it is something wrong, and you don’t want to dawdle on that one.