Withings Health Mate 4.8 now available, adds Sleep Heart Rate indicator
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The first Withings software release of 2020 improves Apple Health synchronization and adds an overnight Sleep Heart Rate indicator.
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This should not be confused with resting heart rate which is something different. As its name implies, Sleep Heart Rate is the average heart rate of a user while he is asleep. Resting heart rate is the value of your heart rate just as you are about to get out of bed in the morning. It is typically about 10% higher than your Sleep Heart Rate.
You should aim to reduce both of these values. Some say your resting heart rate is perhaps the biggest indicator of your health and fitness. Depending on age, gender, fitness level – it typically ranges between 60 and 80 beats per minute. If you’re especially fit it will dip into the 50s and high 40s. Professional athletes might touch on the high 30s.
To get Sleep Heart Rate you’ll need to update Withings Health Mate to version 4.8.0. The installation file is some 208MB in size. The new functionality is available for Steel HR, Steel HR Sport, Pulse HR and the Withings sleep tracking mat.
In the morning you’ll be able to see your average sleep heart rate as well as a chart showing how this has changed during the night. The value is usually higher during REM sleep. This is because you are dreaming in this phase which involves intense brain activity. During Deep Sleep it should be lower.
The info can also be viewed over a longer period as a quarterly or annual trend. This allows you to work towards lowering your Sleep Heart Rate over time by adopting healthy lifestyle choices.
Withings has also improved Apple Health synchronization. The software allows you to add or remove permissions individually for each measurement type. Withings suggests that you enable as many measurements as possible as this will provide the app more data to work with.
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