Top 10 features to monitor your health
When it comes to tracking your health, Garmin has you covered.
Whether you want to monitor how well you sleep at night, track your stress levels throughout the day or peek into your overall health and wellness, your compatible Garmin smartwatch can help.
Let’s walk through some of the health features that can give you a more complete picture of how your body is functioning.
1: Sleep tracking
Advanced sleep tracking1 uses your heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV) and body movement data to monitor when you fell asleep and woke up — including any times you were awake during the night. (If you prefer not to wear your watch to sleep, the Index Sleep Monitor can fill in the gaps to track this).
In the morning, check your Garmin sleep score1 for a rating of 0–100 of how well you slept and for how long. Your sleep score also provides personalized insights to help you better understand and improve your sleep.
With Garmin sleep coach on your compatible smartwatch, you’ll know how much sleep you’ll need for the upcoming night.
Get even more personalized sleep guidance on a compatible smartwatch with sleep alignment, which shows how aligned your body is to its inner sleep cycle using circadian rhythm.
Plus, sleep consistency provides a look at your average bedtime over the past seven days.
2: Body Battery energy monitoring
This is a real-time look at your personal energy resources that helps you connect the dots between stress, recovery, sleep and physical activity.
Your Body Battery number, on a scale of 5–100, reflects how ready you are to tackle a challenge — or how ready you are to rest.
Is yours running low? It may be the result of challenging daily routines, inadequate sleep, overly vigorous exercise or alcohol consumption, or it may simply offer insight into how your body handles stress.
3: Heart rate variability (HRV)
HRV is the varying time between heartbeats, and the milliseconds of difference between heartbeats can help you understand how stressed or well-rested you are.
That’s where Garmin HRV status comes in. After the first three weeks of sleeping with your compatible Garmin smartwatch, it will provide a baseline status.
Your HRV status on your Garmin watch can be balanced, unbalanced (above or below your baseline), low or poor.
If your HRV is below your baseline, that may indicate a lack of sleep, stress, illness or overtraining — though an above baseline reading may indicate overtraining as well.
HRV also plays a role in your sleep, stress level and Body Battery metrics.
4: ECG app
The ECG app2 uses sensors on your compatible smartwatch to record the electrical signals that control how your heart beats. This recording is known as an electrocardiogram, or ECG.
The ECG app analyzes the recording to get your heart rate and detect signs of an irregular heart rhythm called AFib. AFib rhythms occur when the upper and lower chambers of your heart are not beating in sync.
You can use the Garmin Connect™ app to view your history of ECG app results and even export this information as a PDF to share with your doctor.
5: Pulse Ox
The Pulse Oximetry, or Pulse Ox3, feature uses a combination of red and infrared lights with sensors on the back of your compatible Garmin smartwatch to estimate how much oxygen is in your bloodstream as it travels around your body.
This can help indicate whether the cells in your body are getting the oxygen they need, which can be helpful for assessing acclimation to altitude changes during athletic training.
While your Garmin smartwatch is not considered a medical device and this feature is not intended for monitoring of medical conditions, this feature can provide valuable data for those pursuing an active lifestyle.
6: Breathing variations
When you enable Pulse Ox tracking during sleep, your compatible Garmin smartwatch or Index Sleep Monitor can also measure your breathing variations3.
The levels of breathing variations include minimal, few, occasional or frequent variations. The breathing variations feature helps you understand shifts in your breathing patterns as you sleep for a closer glimpse of your health.
These shifts could be related to environment, alcohol or potential sleep disorders such as sleep apnea.
7: Stress tracking
Your compatible Garmin smartwatch uses your heart rate and HRV data to estimate your stress levels on a scale of 0–100.
This data reveals your physiological states throughout the day and can indicate how well your body is reacting to your environment and the challenges of life.
You can even set up your compatible smartwatch to alert you if your stress level reading is unusually high. That alert encourages you to relax and prompts you to start a guided breathing exercise.
8: Women’s health tracking
With features designed just for women — including menstrual cycle tracking and pregnancy tracking — Garmin smartwatches can help women stay on top of their health.
As menstrual cycles can be an indication of overall health, tracking the physical and emotional symptoms can help you see the bigger picture.
Compatible Garmin smartwatches also track your skin temperature1 while you sleep for more accurate period predictions and past ovulation estimates4.
During pregnancy, you can log your daily physical symptoms and mood, learn how your body may be changing, receive exercise and nutrition tips, track baby movement and more.
9: Garmin fitness age
Put a number to just how fit you are by comparing your actual age with Garmin fitness age in the Garmin Connect app.
This feature interprets your VO2 max estimate1, which describes your cardiorespiratory fitness, and compares your current VO2 max fitness level to the normal values of different ages of people (of the same gender).
If you want to lower your fitness age, focus on improving your activity intensity, resting heart rate, and body fat percentage or body mass index.
10: Health status
This feature offers a glimpse into your overall health and wellness.
When you wear your compatible device to sleep, it measures five key health metrics: heart rate, HRV, respiration, skin temperature and Pulse Ox3.
After a 3–4-week period to establish a baseline, the health status feature will assess these metrics and let you know if your averages are within your typical range.
If the metrics are above or below your usual range, it may indicate added stress to the body and could be related to physical activity, potential illness and more.
With the suite of health and wellness tracking features from Garmin, you’ll set yourself up for success. Take the first step in your health and fitness journey today by browsing our full collection of smartwatches.
2The ECG app is only available on select Garmin smartwatches with the latest version of the Garmin Connect™ smartphone app and watch software. The ECG app is not available in all regions; see Garmin.com/ecg for availability. The ECG app is only intended for adults aged 22 years and over. The ECG app is capable of recording an ECG similar to a Lead I ECG and detecting the presence of atrial fibrillation or normal sinus rhythm.
3This is not a medical device and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or monitoring of any medical condition; see Garmin.com/ataccuracy. Pulse Ox not available in all countries.
4The menstrual cycle tracking feature should not be used in support of conception, contraception or birth control. This is not a medical device and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or monitoring of any medical condition.
