missed beats

Could someone explain why if my PM is set at a base setting of 70bpm then why should I get a missed beat? I can understand why I could have missed beat above 70 and odd beat in between the PM`s 70 . If I have this missed beats and count say 65bpm instead of 70 then is the PM faulty?
Thank You ...mg

2 Comments

pacing

by Tracey_E - 2015-11-03 02:11:34

It's not set to do 70 bpm, but rather it's programmed by seconds. To keep the math easy, let's say it's set to 60 bpm, which is 1 beat per second. It doesn't watch over the course of a minute to see if you get below 60, it watches constantly. If the heart goes a second and does not beat, it paces and causes a beat. Over a minute, this may not work out to exactly 60, but that's ok, close means it's still working like it should. 65 is acceptably close to 70.

Sometimes there are small beats between the stronger beats that we don't feel but they're there, so what feels like 65 could easily be 70.

If you are using a monitor rather than counting manually, pacing can throw them off and they are not always accurate with us. When the monitor doesn't show what you expect, count manually. My new phone has a heart rate monitor, it picks up pacing spikes as well as beats so, on the rare occasions it counts anything at all, it always shows my rate crazy high, like 250.

It's highly unlikely your pm is faulty. It's more likely one of the above reasons. Try not to spend your day counting, it will make you crazy! If you feel bad or have reason to think something is off, go ahead and count. The rest of the time, trust the pacer to do its job. They're high tech computers, much more dependable than our hearts.

Beats

by Alma Annie - 2015-11-04 12:11:37

My PM is set to 50, very low I think but that is what the EP wants. I often have missed beats, and if I count for a full minute, then there may only be 46. However what I have worked out is that the PM sorts it out at the time of the missing beats, so really it would still be 50 per min. That is why I have a PM I suppose. Maybe you can't understand what I am trying to say as it sounds clumsy to me, but I know what I mean!!
Alma Annie.

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