Heart Rate Vulnerabilities

Users discuss risks to pacemakers, fitness trackers, and wearables from potential heart rate manipulation or signals, sharing personal stories of heart conditions, arrhythmias, heart attacks, and device-detected anomalies.

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Keywords

HR popsci.com TIL GO clevelandclinic.org HN FWIW AND IMMEDIATELY DOCTOR heart heart rate rate resting chest attack pulse wrist survey baseline

Sample Comments

lupire Jun 11, 2021 View on HN

What heart rate makes me most vulnerable?

marzullo Mar 19, 2021 View on HN

Off-topic, but interesting to see my former heart condition randomly linked on HN!

iLoch Mar 15, 2014 View on HN

Couldn't this affect pacemakers, etc?

isostatic Sep 19, 2019 View on HN

Just hope it's not a pacemaker

gitgrump Jan 11, 2022 View on HN

Careful, or they might eventually become a human heart attack!

vidanay Nov 22, 2020 View on HN

Not according to my cardiologist :-/

lazyasciiart May 11, 2025 View on HN

My Fitbit record showing heart rate spikes to 125 was one of the things that I noticed that suggested I was having a heart attack in 2020 (I was).

steve_adams_86 Oct 24, 2023 View on HN

I had a very similar experience. I did measure my heart rate previously though, and the high resting heart rate notifications were new.I was very worried at first because one of my personally prioritized indicators of fitness was how quickly I could go from say, zone 3 to 50bpm. This was quite low, then suddenly I was having 70-90bpm around 30m after exercising.Yet it gradually went away and I never actually experienced discomfort or anything like it. I haven’t seen a high restating rate i

Klonoar Jun 10, 2021 View on HN

FWIW, I also have a heart condition, and experienced no issues.Obviously I can't give you medical advice, but figure it's worth noting that it's not a guaranteed experience. ;P

secretsatan Feb 10, 2021 View on HN

Surely more than 1 condition can cause heart rate changes? Is there a pattern they can match, or is it the most likely cause?