In the exhilarating final moments of Sunday’s NFL playoff game, many Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints spectators’ Apple Watches issued warnings that their heart rates were dangerously high for a Sunday spent in front of the TV.
The newest software update for the watchOS4 includes an integrated health monitoring system that tracks a wearer’s heart rate during various activities and sends a warning when the rate doesn’t seem to match the level of activity.
The Minnesota Vikings had led the entire game, then lost their lead in the fourth quarter, before a soaring pass and a 61 yard run sealed the dramatic win for them.
So when millions of onlookers that had been sitting on their couches across the country suddenly jumped up to cheer or jeer as the Minnesota Vikings made a stunning touchdown in the game’s final moments, their watches went wild, too.
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Twitter user Mike VanDeLinder posted a picture of the warning his Apple Watch displayed when the final moments of the Vikings and Saints game sent his heart rate sky-high
The Apple Watch measures heart rate through the color of light reflected by blood pumped into the wrist, a technology called photoplethysmography (PPG) – the same process used by fingertip pulse monitors.
For most adults the normal resting heart rate falls somewhere between 60 and 100 beats per minute.
Mike VanDeLinder’s heart rate got all the way above 120 beats per minute as a result of just one play of Sunday’s game, a rate that he might have expected after walking briskly for the past 10 minutes, not sitting on the couch in front of the TV.
In fact, according to his tweet, this happened twice during the last few minutes of the Vikings and Saints game, prompting abnormal activity warnings from his watch.
‘My Apple Watch told me I was having a heart attack right after that pay and when the game was over I couldn’t catch my breath,’ wrote Twitter user Vestanna.
Another user, Mike Foster said that his watch was ‘witnessing the Vikings affect my heart rate,’ which had spiked to 96 beats per minute during the game.
Apple is not the first to warn of the heart risks of high-stakes football games.
In 2011, researchers compared heart attack death rates surrounding Super Bowl games.
Vestanna guessed that she wasn’t the only Vikings fan whose heart was racing on Sunday
The sudden change from a resting heart rate while sitting and watching the game to standing to cheer the Vikings on confused Twitter user meninonoya’s Apple Watch
In 1980, the Los Angeles Rams suffered a narrow loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the final throes of the Super Bowl. Beginning on game day and continuing for the next two weeks, Los Angeles residents were 22 percent more likely to die of heart-related complications, on average.
Last year, a small Canadian study found that watching sports can cause nearly as much stress to the heart as playing them.
Heart rates increased by 110 percent when the spectators watched a hockey game in person, and by 75 percent when they watched on television.
Other research has found an increased risk of sudden death from heart attacks while watching sports, especially among people with prior heart disease or other risk factors.
Mike Foster’s heart rate did not reach dangerous levels, according to his Apple Watch, but the sharp change in his stress levels is obvious on the watch’s display
A healthy heart rate is also not about speed alone, but the rhythm of the heart.
With such a wide range of ‘normal’ heart rates, a worrisome rate cannot be determined simply through taking a pulse at any given moment.
In order to provide more accurate and useful information to its wearers, the Apple Watch now tracks relative rates and rhythms, taking into account what kind of activity a person is doing – whether walking, running or resting.
The tech giant partnered with Stanford University, highlighting the coordinated effort of its ‘Apple Heart Study’ when it unveiled the software update in September.
The improved monitoring came after many doctors warned that imprecise heart rate measures and warnings from wearable technology may be doing more harm than good by creating unnecessary alarm to users.
Apple’s update also improves the watch’s ability to detect atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia condition that may strike as many as 6.1 people in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The apparent mismatch between their recent activity levels and heart rate triggered the Watch’s warnings to football spectators on Sunday.
While the watch is much more sophisticated at taking heart rates relative to its measure of a wearer’s activity (which the accelerometer measures through movement), it hasn’t quite caught up to unpredictable behaviors, like the stress people experience while watching sports.