Sponsored
The Health Diaries: How the Samsung Galaxy Watch8 supports my heart health
Sponsored By
Performance-led runner and member of Ireland’s elite racing community, Adrienne Murphy tests the Samsung Watch8 to see how it can help support her cardiovascular fitness. Wearing it for six weeks, she reports back on how the Watch8 acts as her trusted training partner, offering invaluable insights to guide, and improve, her training.
We live in a world with so much information, and sometimes it can feel like an overload. The world of wellness, while fascinating, can be a minefield, and sometimes feel overwhelming. There is so much to know and understand with lots of new trends and buzz words: personal metrics, bio hacking tips, good sleep hygiene, nutrition, exercise routines, red light therapy… the list goes on and on. Even writing this, I can feel my own stress levels rising at the thought of everything I could be doing to improve my health and wellbeing. But what is truly realistic?
I’ll be honest, before I began wearing the Samsung Galaxy Watch8, I wondered if the watch would possibly add to my stress levels. My current sleep situation is poor. (We have a nine-month-old baby and I’m awake for regular feeds during the night). I worried that scoring poor points for sleep might make me feel bad.
But here’s the truth, from wearing the Samsung Galaxy Watch8 I’ve learned and gathered so many key insights about my body, my energy levels and sleep scores, which have been extremely valuable and have allowed me to train in a much smarter way. Over the last few months, I’ve actually made changes to my weekly training program based on these results to ensure I don’t get sick and to prevent injury.
If you have a wearable, you may be familiar with terms such as HRV (heart rate variability), even assessing sleep scores and recovery levels. But one crucial aspect of our well-being that can often be overlooked is the health of our cardiovascular system. Enter ‘vascular load’, a metric which is tracked on the Samsung Watch8 and helps us understand how hard our heart and blood vessels are working. Think of it as a stress gauge for your cardiovascular system, measuring the strain placed on your heart as it pumps blood through your body. A pretty incredible insight, right?
Vascular load is tracked while you sleep, running passively during the night, providing a personal baseline and comparing nightly trends. This isn’t a metric I was familiar with, but it’s been fascinating to understand more. So here’s what I have noticed: when I had higher readings, this correlated with poor sleep or increased stress. While lower readings often followed a more restful night and consistent recovery.
I’ve really started to see the link in lifestyle factors too. The days when my hydration was on point and the evenings when I focused on a wind-down routine (for me, that’s some light stretching, having my magnesium drink and reading a couple of pages from my book rather than scrolling in bed), my sleep score tended to be on the higher side and in turn my vascular score in line with my baseline.
When it comes to exercise, as we know, this is a form of stress on the body. I noticed that my vascular load levels weren’t overly affected unless my recovery was poor. But, if I did a really tough workout in the afternoon, I noticed the reading the next morning is higher. This is where I am using the insights to guide my training and adjust lifestyle factors when needed. If I notice that my vascular load is higher for multiple nights, it’s a clear sign of overload and this is where I focus more on sleep, recovery, reducing stress levels and adjusting my training sessions.
Reading your metrics: what to know
What has been key for me is to recognise these trends and use them as a proactive side to improving my health. Some takeaways for me and may benefit you too, if you are new to reviewing your metrics:
- A single high reading is not cause for alarm but consistent elevation may mean more recovery is needed.
- Ensure your training program works for your lifestyle – what are you noticing week to week and what areas may need more attention?
- Ensure your training program factors in recovery and rest days.
- Vascular load is based on trends, not on one night. I would recommend wearing it for a minimum of one week for accurate insights.
- Leveraging these insights will enable you to train at your highest potential. After wearing the Samsung Galaxy Watch8 for two to four weeks, I noticed distinct patterns that helped me modify my workouts for more effective training.
With the Samsung Galaxy Watch8, your everyday movements go much further. Using the power of Galaxy AI, the watch becomes your personal run coach, vascular health monitor, and recovery guide, so you can track, train and improve your overall performance. Over the coming months, Adrienne will be trialling the Samsung Galaxy Watch8 and sharing her fitness and training journey on IMAGE.ie.
Also Read
