Do you use the watch or the garmin app? Is it the instantaneous reading you’re looking at or some sort of average?

Mainly during sleep in the morning report.

If I'm anxious during the day, if I realise it or not, my HRV is unbalanced.

I've it's quite common for fitness trackers to predict the onset of sickness from heart rate variability. I've found they don't offer much real-time feedback, and don't have breathing detection though which was what I wanted to explore for this project, to train hrv

> don't have breathing detection

FWIW my Garmin watch reports a breath per minute metric. Dunno if this is what you were alluding to.

Right, but I don't think they measure it directly (could be wrong), I think they measure it based on change in heart rate

Is this a feature that some trackers offer? When I worked at Fitbit I noticed this correlation (along with resting heart rate) and developed a model that could predict onset of illness a few days in advance with fairly good accuracy. But unless the accuracy is perfect it can be difficult to offer it as a product feature without a lot of validation and experiments showing that your health related claim is accurate.

I can tell I'm sick by looking at my resting heart rate. If it goes up (generally by 5-10 bpm) and I didn't do a hard workout in the past 12-18 hours, I'm pretty likely to be coming down with something.

They probably are but I’m confused as to how you’ve measured your anxiety level to determine correlation with HRV.

Depending on your answer this leads to the follow-up of why not use that measure?

Garmin also has a “stress” metrics but I’ve found it unreliable.

Basically my question is how we’re measuring anxiety to determine correlation.

The OP mentions “unconscious anxiety” which is confusing me, wondering if they are using a questionnaire or something else neat.

If “unconscious anxiety” is being diagnosed based solely on HRV that‘s not how correlation works.

It isn't, as answered elsewhere.

When I mean unconsciously, I mean being unaware in that moment. However reflective hindsight reveals not only correlations in habit, behaviour, and so on but also in hindsight from a calmer frame of mind you can be aware of just how anxious you had become.

Solely based on HRV would be daft. I'm saying it correlates strongly with many other indicators which together are an indicator of my anxiety, realised or not, at that moment.

Ad HRV is a number and other indicators are not, its a great way to have a more quantitative measure which I've found is very helpful. Anecdata and qualitative measures sure, but it works for me.

As with all things measured from a wrist worn sensor, and ove the course of the order of a decade of essentially continuous wearing, I've found that the device may be wrong (and completely off the mark at times) but is also mostly right most of the time.

I don't expect anything else for a device I wear loose most of the time (and snug+proper placement when working out) yet it still gives me eerily accurate metrics to work with.

It def knows when I'm hungover

Oh absolute. Or any number of other chemicals after effects!

Welltory

How does Welltory measure anxiety? Their website just talks about HRV.

I have other signals that creep up when my background anxiety levels are high. By anxiety I mean nervous system agitation, not usually conscious.

I wash my hands more, engage in displacement activities, avoid unfamiliar situations or those that trigger perceived emotional stress or threat.

I become snippy and agitated, again, without being conscious of it.

My HRV matches my partners perception of my anxiety levels, which is a reliable measure imho. When it becomes unbalanced and I reflect, I can see that the other signs have ramped up.

If I'm not aware, or told, my HRV tells me and saves anyone pulling me up.

Mine correlates directly with sleep, alcohol, and overtraining

This is explicitly part of biofeedback practice, learning to recognize and manage your emotional state through your heart rate.