What's your resting heart rate?

[goldfinch]

Mine is 42. I posted elsewhere that I wished it counted more than BMI as an indicator of your physical health. We're starting a new health management program at work that will determine our health insurance rates, and while my labwork is stellar (including HR), my BMI is obese for my height/weight. I hate that it's the only tool they use to diagnose your level of health.

Any way to have your doctor certify that you are not overweight (if in fact you aren't) so that you get the best rate? IIRC, most of these programs are incentive programs to get people to change their behavior. If you are not overweight there is no behavior to change.

My BMI is something like 23. I am no longer within the overweight range but if you look at me you can see that I am a round person. I still have way too much body fat.

[Melalvai]

For several days in a row one week when I woke up I put the strap on and went back to sleep and when I woke up again I looked at the watch. 54, 56, 55. So that was pretty consistent. I'm approaching the high end of normal for my BMI.

[shootingstar]

I have no idea what my resting heart rate is. But had my blood pressure done 2 months ago. Have to dig around in my papers to get the reading for figures. It was pronounced as excellent.

I have never had a heart monitor nor taken my own heart rate. Partially because I never had a problem with my heart rate/blood pressure, so I tend to forget my readings. I never had an interest to wear a heart monitor. But I do have an interest in simply maintaining my weight and regular cycling for my own fitness for....past 2 decades.

Our public health care system is such that both healthy and unhealthy people with respect to their heart rate/condition, wouldn't receive a special "rate" /discount.

Come to think of it, I probably am doing something blasephemous on any cycling/jogging etc. forum as a regular participant --ie. not knowing my heart rate.

[Crankin]

Shooting Star, I don't use my HR monitor anymore for cycling. But I do monitor my resting HR and take it by hand at other times, as an indicator of my overall health and stress level. We have a BP machine at home (digital) that I also use once in awhile. It's important for me to keep an eye on it, as mine can be very low or too high; it's very dependent on my stress level.

[shootingstar]

Dumb as this may seem, I gauge my "heart" fitness by how I can cycle certain hills at certain % grades continuously and onward for awhile without feeling pooped out.
Plus know my weight (vaguely since I weigh myself um... 1-3 times per month. I can see the bathroom scale less than 10 ft. from where I am sitting now at the computer.) and how my clothing fits on me.

'Course it helps that I know how much annual approx. cycling mileage I did too. I probably sound as if I don't care about my health, but would just use other indicators to help myself long term.

[roadie gal]

BMI is a very poor, but easily obtainable measurement. When I was in the army my BMI always came out high, but when they did the actual body fat measurements with the calipers I had a body fat of 18-19%. The BMI doesn't take body composition into account at all. Stupid. End of rant.

I used to have a resting heart rate of about 28. Of course that was right before I got my pacemaker...Now my resting heart rate is 60.

[pll]

It is an interesting issue to try to consider some health indicator when setting the insurance rates. The tricky question is which one (or which ones... perhaps it should be a composite score). Given any indicator, there will be people that get hurt by it.

I don't have a measurement of my resting heart rate. At the doctor's office, it's generally around 60, +/- 1-2 beats. I do suffer from some measure of 'white coat anxiety', so that must push my HR a bit higher than would otherwise be. After a couple of medical procedures, in the recovery room, I saw my heart rate was under 50. In terms of BMI, I fluctuate between 19 and 20. I have not had my body fat measured with calipers in many years, but according to my scale in the morning, it is around 19%. A typical BP measurement would be 90/60 or 100/70; my cholesterol panel is very good (not as good as zoom zoom's, though).

[goldfinch]

It is an interesting issue to try to consider some health indicator when setting the insurance rates. The tricky question is which one (or which ones... perhaps it should be a composite score). Given any indicator, there will be people that get hurt by it.

Frankly, I think that we should have national health insurance, paid through our taxes, but that isn't a popular position these days.

Given that it is so hard to maintain weight loss, the number of factors that go into weight gain, including genetic factors, my opinion is that a punitive charge is not going to help.

Here is an interesting article on the issue of charging people different rates, depending on whether they are obese, or smokers, or the like: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/he...pagewanted=all

[pll]

Frankly, I think that we should have national health insurance, paid through our taxes, but that isn't a popular position these days.

+1. I agree with you.

[Miranda]

Sitting here at my pc desk, my HR was 63 bpm. Think first thing in the morning when I've lied in bed, right after waking, and taken it, still about 60 bpm.

Though I'm considered fit by a doctor's standards, my HR is still always higher than you would expect because of my medicines. My asthma meds that I must take to prevent an exercise induced attack just spike my HR like crazy. Also, my allergy meds that are decogestant and antihistimine based affect my overall BP and HR as well. Seems like my HR on the Garmin bike pc is always at least a 100bpm- before I ever even start the ride.

I'm weighing more than I would like now, but am still about 20% BMI based upon just height and weight with a basic BMI calculation.

Sorry you are having a hard time with your insurance rates. I worry this is coming down the pike for us as well. Your's though sounds unfair. DH is so unhealthy and this year to not get a price increase had to do a health screening. Oh geez, if they start changing our rates based upon his health habits we are screwed.

Best of luck to you.

[Owlie]

Frankly, I think that we should have national health insurance, paid through our taxes, but that isn't a popular position these days.

Given that it is so hard to maintain weight loss, the number of factors that go into weight gain, including genetic factors, my opinion is that a punitive charge is not going to help.

Here is an interesting article on the issue of charging people different rates, depending on whether they are obese, or smokers, or the like: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/he...pagewanted=all

+1, on all of it.
My mom's new insurance (which sucks) has the premiums set by I believe a combination of BMI, cholesterol and some other things, but primarily BMI. (Of course, BMI means nothing at the level of an individual, but we knew that.)
No idea what my resting HR is, but the last time I had it looked at (ER), it was around 65-70bpm...probably not my resting HR!

[Crankin]

+1 on the insurance.
Given my experience here, with our "Romney Care," I can't say anything bad. Almost all of my clients are getting therapy because of this insurance; it's a behavioral health initiative for families who have this plan. What I don't like is that if you are a working person and your employer doesn't offer insurance, what the state finds for you can still be pretty expensive.
I have mixed feelings about the issues raised in the NYT article. I wouldn't have a problem, because my BMI is 20, I don't smoke, or have any of the other risk factors. But, I know how hard it is to quit smoking. On the other hand, I kind of do feel strongly that people need to take more responsibility for their own health, but we need to help them. Behavioral change is extremely hard and unless most people get support, it's not going to happen. And using one thing as a measure of good health is just dumb.

[Bike Chick]

This health insurance trend is a bit scary. My BMI is high but my resting heart rate is low and I work very hard to keep my bp and cholesterol counts low. I would be really upset if I didn't get a discount and the skinny little coworker that smokes 2 packs of cigarettes a day did. Perhaps they should devise a fitness exam for the discounts and not rely on where you fell on the chart.

Two weeks ago I made a trip to the er when I got my finger in the way of my embroidery machine needle. To look at me you wouldn't think I was very fit. I'm 53, gray-headed and 10 pounds overweight. When the nurse took my bp and pulse (it was 44) she asked if my pulse was always this low and took it a second time to be sure.

[shootingstar]

So in the U.S., it has always been or recent trend on using certain health measurements by private health insurers for discounts/premium payments?

The reality is that a very healthy person could be suddenly quite sick with a terminal, non-curable disease. So what happens?

My father is not overweight (never was, in fact underweight for several decades), no cardiopulmonary nor respiratory problems at all. He is 82, but has prostate cancer. Not curable at his age. He is not "penalized" by the public health care system for having cancer which of course is not caused by smoking. (He stopped smoking before he married my mother.)

He has never taken his own heart rate and wouldn't know it. But his blood pressure has tended to be slow as diagnosed by doctor over the years.

This is why I can't get just measure my heart rate as my only indcator of health, there are real life examples in my own family, what type of lifestyle and diet long term one adopts to have overall good health.

(And when a terminal disease strikes, at least one is not suffering from multiple complications because of other health problems.)

[tzvia]

I have a BP monitor available to me, and use a Polar HR watch during exercise, and have measured my HR at rest (while watching TV) at around 49~50. Before I took up cycling again in 2008, after stopping in 2002, it hovered in the low 60s at rest. My BP at that time was in the 140s/low 90s. When I last checked it was 117/79. So I guess that between loosing about 30 lbs, exercising, and eating somewhat healthier, I am going in the right direction, at least as much as these things matter.

Being 52 and still about 20 lbs overweight (I am an apple- used to have a Goodyear truck tire around the middle, now it is more like a couple of MTB 2.1s.) Working on it but it has been hard to get those last 20 off. I don't dwell on the numbers, (the BP meter is my mother's, she bought it when she was advised she was borderline high BP), but it is interesting to see how they changed as I got myself into better shape.

Health insurance companies really don't have a much better way to quantify rates- even if we all got whole body MRIs, there would be risks and chance that fluctuate with hereditary and exposure/lifestyle factors. BP, HR and bloodwork are better than darts or guessing, but in the end it all feels like an educated guess.

I've known people who were 'the picture of health' just keel over with a brain hemorrhage. I've known people who were overweight, smoked, had high pressure jobs and lived to ripe old age. I've had relatives told they had 6 months, live 20 years. The science of health is really very interesting, as it involves so much chance.