What can you learn from the heart-rate metrics on your fitness tracker?
The bottom line
You may use your fitness tracker mostly to count steps, but don’t ignore your heart-rate metrics—they can tell you a lot about your health. Devices now deliver a variety of heart-rate measurements, including resting rate, walking rate and variability (the variation of time between beats). Some can be programmed to notify you of a possible problem, such as a heart rate that is unusually high, low or irregular. Without getting fancy, however, your basic heart rate alone can be revealing.