Resting heart rate for women, and how it differs from men
Resting heart rate is the number of times the heart beats each minute when the body is fully at rest. It's a signal of your body's status, and for women, that signal changes with the menstrual cycle.
In this guide, we explain what a normal resting heart rate looks like for women, why it varies from one woman to the next, and what makes it rise or fall.
- The Ultrahuman Ring measures resting heart rate overnight, when the body is at its calmest, which gives a steadier baseline than a daytime reading.
- Women tend to have a slightly higher resting heart rate than men of the same age.
- For women, resting heart rate isn't fixed through the month. It usually dips in the follicular phase and rises in the luteal phase of the cycle, the stretch between ovulation and a period.
- A resting heart rate that climbs and stays up for several days can be an early sign of strain from illness, poor sleep, or stress, which is why the trend matters more than any single night.
What resting heart rate measures
Your resting heart rate is how fast your heart beats when you're awake and calm, or asleep. It reflects how hard your heart works to move blood when nothing is demanding extra effort.
A lower rate usually means the heart is pumping efficiently, moving more blood with each beat. A higher rate means it's working faster to do the same job.
Fitness, sleep, hydration, stress, caffeine, hormones, and illness all nudge it up or down, which is what makes resting heart rate useful as a general recovery marker.
How the Ring measures resting heart rate
The Ring measures resting heart rate optically, from the pulse of blood in your finger. A green and infrared light shines into the skin, and a sensor reads the small changes in reflected light each time a heartbeat pushes blood through the vessels, a method called photoplethysmography.
From that signal, the Ring picks out each beat and counts the intervals between them. Your finger has dense blood flow, and the Ring sits snugly against it, so the overnight signal is stable and clean.
The accuracy of Ultrahuman's heart rate tracking has been validated against an FDA-cleared clinical sleep monitor. In a study, the Ring's overnight heart rate matched the reference to within a mean absolute error of about 2.4 beats per minute, across six participants and thirty-six nights.
What's a normal resting heart rate for women?
A normal resting heart rate for women is usually quoted as 60 to 80 beats per minute. That range comes from daytime readings taken sitting up.
An overnight number from the Ultrahuman Ring will normally sit below it. Among Ultrahuman members, the middle 50% of women fall between about 54 and 63 beats per minute overnight.
Women do run slightly higher than men. In a large real-world reference set drawn from tens of thousands of adults, women averaged a few beats per minute above men. A typically smaller heart moves a little less blood per beat, so it beats slightly more often to keep up. That's anatomy, not a sign of poorer health.
What counts as normal is also personal. A resting heart rate of 72 may be perfectly healthy for one woman and a few beats above baseline for another. Tracking it over time makes your own baseline the reference, so a meaningful change stands out even when the absolute number looks ordinary.
A reading well above your usual range for several days is the thing worth noticing. Causes range from a stretch of poor sleep or mounting stress to an illness taking hold.
How the menstrual cycle changes resting heart rate
Resting heart rate moves in a predictable rhythm across the menstrual cycle, and the swing is large enough that a nightly measurement can track it.
It tends to be lowest in the follicular phase (in the first half of the month), then climbs to its highest in the luteal phase before a period. In an analysis of more than 11,500 people using a wrist-worn wearable, resting heart rate reached its minimum near cycle day 5 and its maximum near cycle day 26, following the same curve every month.
Progesterone is the driver. It rises after ovulation, lifting your body temperature and pushing your heart to beat faster, which is why the climb starts mid-cycle rather than at your period. Research tracking autonomic function across the cycle found that shift in the luteal phase, when progesterone is at its highest.
Hormonal contraception tends to flatten this rise and fall, because it replaces the natural hormonal swing with a steadier one.
Because the pattern is real and repeating, the premenstrual rise is better read as part of the monthly rhythm than as a problem. That's worth remembering when you look at your Dynamic Recovery Score.
What Ultrahuman's data shows about resting heart rate in women
Across 506,310 Ultrahuman Ring members with at least seven valid nights (323,159 women and 183,151 men), women's overnight resting heart rate averages 58.5 beats per minute against 55.2 for men. The middle 50% of women fall between 53.6 and 63.1.
Figure 1
Women's overnight resting heart rate runs above men's, and the gap closes with age
It is widest in the twenties (5.2 bpm) and narrows to about 2 bpm after 55. In every band the gap is smaller than the spread among women alone: the shaded middle 50% covers roughly 9 to 10 bpm.
Women's overnight resting heart rate runs above men's, and the gap closes with age
Source: Ultrahuman Ring members, 323,159 women and 183,151 men with at least 7 valid nights. Every cell exceeds the 100-member reporting floor.
The gap between women and men is widest in the twenties, at about five beats per minute, and narrows to around two by the late fifties. A woman's own curve isn't a straight climb with age either; it rises through her forties, then edges back down after 65.
But women differ from each other far more than women differ from men. In every age band, the spread among women of the same age covers 9 to 10 beats, which is wider than the sex gap at its widest. Your sex and your age band tell you very little about your own number.
How to read your resting heart rate in the app
Your overnight resting heart rate appears in the sleep summary and feeds your Dynamic Recovery Score, the daily readout of how ready your body is for the day. That score also weighs heart rate variability, so the two are read together rather than in isolation.
Each morning you see the single overnight number and a trend line against your recent baseline, so a one-off spike is easy to tell apart from a real shift.
Because the Ring also tracks skin temperature and where you are in your cycle, a higher reading in the luteal week is something you can read against the month rather than treat as a mystery.
The Ultrahuman blog goes deeper on how thermoregulation shapes your sleep and how an inconsistent sleep schedule wears on the body.
Read the original research
All Studies →This explainer is based on original research by the Ultrahuman Science team. Read the source studies:
Frequently asked questions
What is a good resting heart rate for a woman by age?
The usual quoted range is 60 to 80 beats per minute, measured sitting up during the day. Overnight, which is how the Ring reads it, most women sit lower: the middle 50% of women wearing the Ring fall between about 54 and 63, and the average shifts by less than three beats across every adult age band. Rather than chasing a target number, compare today against your own recent average.
Why is my resting heart rate higher before my period?
In the luteal phase before a period, progesterone rises, which lifts body temperature and shifts the nervous system toward a faster heart rate. A resting heart rate a few beats above your follicular baseline in the premenstrual week is a normal part of the monthly rhythm, not a warning sign.
Does a lower resting heart rate mean I'm fitter?
Often, but not always. Regular aerobic exercise strengthens the heart so it moves more blood per beat and beats less often at rest. Genetics, sleep, and a naturally smaller or larger heart also play a part, so a low or high reading is only meaningful against your own baseline.
Can stress raise your resting heart rate?
Yes. Ongoing stress keeps the activating branch of the nervous system switched on, which can hold resting heart rate a few beats above normal, especially overnight. A rate that stays elevated across several nights alongside a busy stretch is a common and reversible pattern.
Does hormonal birth control affect resting heart rate?
It can. Hormonal contraception replaces the natural rise and fall of estrogen and progesterone with a steadier level, which tends to flatten the usual monthly swing. Women on hormonal birth control often see a smaller difference between their follicular and luteal readings.
How many nights of a high resting heart rate are worth paying attention to?
A single high night is usually noise from a late meal, alcohol, a warm room, or a short sleep. A rise of several beats that holds for two or three nights or more is the pattern worth noticing, since it often lines up with an illness taking hold, mounting stress, or a stretch of poor sleep.
References
- Avram R et al. Real-world heart rate norms in the Health eHeart study. npj Digital Medicine 2019. PMID 31304404
- Jasinski SR et al. A novel method for quantifying fluctuations in wearable derived daily cardiovascular parameters across the menstrual cycle. npj Digital Medicine 2024. PMID 39715818
- Yazar Ş, Yazıcı M. Impact of menstrual cycle on cardiac autonomic function assessed by heart rate variability and heart rate recovery. Medical Principles and Practice 2016. PMID 26828607
- Zhang D, Shen X, Qi X. Resting heart rate and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in the general population: a meta-analysis. CMAJ 2016. PMID 26598376
By Ultrahuman Science
