My wife asks me to do this on occasion. Can't do it!

Is it a mental thing? I don't even sleep in the same bed in the case that I have a gf. She disturbs my sleep too much. When I was a kid, one of my good friends had parents that slept in separate beds, I thought it was totally weird, Fast forward 25 years later and I am all about it.

Hello Thomas Gerlach and All,

While the electrical signals the heart provides are normally more detailed than pulse (I do not think you can do HRV with optical pulse) ...... it is worth noting that (as you know from working with pacemakers) the electrical signals can be missing or skipping .... and pulse is where the rubber meets the road .... is the blood pumping?

Prior to getting a Biotronic pacemaker I needed to wear my heart rate strap above my nipples to get a signal that matched my pulse.

Below my nipples gave a signal to my Garmin device that was double my actual pulse.

As to the side of the bed theory affecting posture..... hilarious ...... I sleep like I am on a spit roasting ..... and turn every couple of hours ... though I spend little time on my stomach ..... probably equal time sides and back. My wife similarly turns from side to side ...... and wakes me if I start snoring when on my back ....

I did a brief (7 day) research project as a subject for NASA and the Stanford Sleep Center wired up with a portable electroencephalography device while flying long missions ... the purpose to determine if taking cat naps of 15 to 30 minutes improved performance compared to no naps. Taking naps made marked cognitive improvements on very long missions.

NASA and Stanford have collected a lot of data and you might contact them about the theory you are 'leaning' toward.

Consider the possibility that older couples you see leaning in opposite directions have bad breath or need orthotics.

I was also part of a sleep study in college, but I slept at 14,000 feet to simulate sleep apnea, afterwards they took a blood pressure and HR for four hours. I thought it was comical because they placed the HR and blood pressure reading so I could see them. Found it interesting that everytime the HR approached 40 it would jump back up out of pure excitement.

As for electrical signals, the normal heart doesn't skip a beat, now you must have a pacemaker for a reason so your heart may, but that is where the pacemaker is designed to kick in and stimulate the heart. The depolarization of the heart, what signifies the contraction of the ventricles by the typical "big spike" you see on a EKG, still happens when the pacemaker does it job, it may appear different on 12-lead because the origination of the spike occurs from likely a different part of the heart than rather where it would have originated naturally.

Which leads me to me having my own gripes regarding HRM straps, mainly that I have always wanted them to record the HRs so I review after the fact what was counted as a heart rate. Pacemakers do a lot of filtering of noise to make sure they know when a true heart rate is happening. It is still possible if settings and filters and where the leads are to fool it occasionally. An example of this is a pacemaker dependent patient (needs a pacemaker to sustain life), maybe is having some really tough time with bowels and squeeezing a lot. I have seen it where the patient squeeze so much, so hard and enough electrical noise that that pacemaker thought it was a heart beat, doesn't pace, and then the patient passes out.

Anyway, an optical HR for a pacemaker patient does make some sense given that I don't actually know how HRM work. I assume the engineers have done their due diligence and tested and designed with pacemaker patients but maybe not. Thanks for reminder in keeping my eyes open. With that being said, there have been some studies on how accurate nurses are in taking pulses thru the wrist, you be surprised how inaccurate they were. Not saying a computer can't do a better job than a human, but just that it is tough.

WIth all the being, said I think the best option is for pacemakers to wirelessly transmit an ant+ stream. I am sure it could be done and I would have the most confidence in that method.

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So you tell us that :

1- you don't find Optical HR reliable, but yet have not tried the most reliable one, The Rythm+. Maybe you should give it a try, and place it correctly (user error happens)
2- "optical heart rate is a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist", yet the HR reading from my chest strap (Garmin Premium) is inaccurate on 100% of my winter runs, for at least 5 to 10min due to electrostatic issues... and it also goes crazy if I happen to be sweaty on my bike when the winds turns on.... how reliable is that ? None of that happened since I switched to Optical HR....
It comes with its limitations, such as another kind of user error (forgetting to charge it), or doesn't have enough battery life for long ride, but I still have that inaccurate chest strap for that....

Overall, I used it on about 100 training sessions and believe it is reliable and provide with better overall quality data, as you don't have those electrostatic spikes, or drops....

The only reason I'd consider the optical sensor is the reality that every single darn chest strap invariably fails after about a year for me. And the last 3 months of it get increasingly glitchy before it suddenly dies. I'm getting tired of buying HRMs - I've bought one every year for nearly a decade now.

And yes, I've done everything in between to try and increase the longevity, none of which are satisfactory - Garmin warrantee send-backs, replacing the batteries which has been least effective, different non-Garmin straps, replacement straps while keeping the same pod, HRM gel, rinsing the strap after every use, etc.

The only reason I'd consider the optical sensor is the reality that every single darn chest strap invariably fails after about a year for me. And the last 3 months of it get increasingly glitchy before it suddenly dies. I'm getting tired of buying HRMs - I've bought one every year for nearly a decade now.

And yes, I've done everything in between to try and increase the longevity, none of which are satisfactory - Garmin warrantee send-backs, replacing the batteries which has been least effective, different non-Garmin straps, replacement straps while keeping the same pod, HRM gel, rinsing the strap after every use, etc.