Understanding Your WellnessScan Report: What Each Score Means

Your WellnessScan report turns a short ECG recording into five wellness scores and a set of heart rate variability (HRV) metrics. These aren't a medical diagnosis — they're indicators of how your heart is behaving today. Here's what each one actually means.

Important: these scores are designed for wellness tracking, not for diagnosing disease. If you have chest pain, fainting, breathlessness, or palpitations, please see a qualified doctor — don't wait for a score to tell you something.

The two raw numbers everything is built on

Before the scores, your report shows two raw vitals: resting heart rate (bpm) and recording duration. Heart rate is the average beats per minute during the scan. Duration tells you how much signal we had to work with — longer recordings give more reliable HRV numbers, which is why we aim for at least 30 seconds.

1. Recovery Score

What it measures: how well your body appears to be recovered from recent stress, sleep loss, or exertion.

How it's calculated: a combination of your resting heart rate and beat-to-beat variation (HRV). A lower resting heart rate and a healthier natural variation push this score up. People who sleep poorly, are over-trained, fighting an infection, or chronically stressed tend to score lower.

• 80–100: Very well recovered
• 65–79: Good recovery
• 45–64: Average recovery
• Below 45: Recovery may be low today

How to improve your Recovery Score

Recovery is mostly built overnight — this score responds to sleep, hydration, and how much your body has had to absorb in the last 24–48 hours. Quick changes rarely help; consistency over 2–3 weeks does.

• Anchor your sleep window. Aim for 7–9 hours with a fixed wake-up time, even on weekends. Variable wake-up time damages recovery more than short sleep does.
• Eat your last meal 3 hours before bed. Late, heavy meals (and alcohol) keep heart rate elevated through the night and tank next-morning HRV.
• Down-shift training on low days. If this score drops 10+ points below your baseline, swap the planned workout for a 20–30 min Zone 2 walk or yoga.
• 5 minutes of slow nasal breathing before bed. Box breathing (4-4-4-4) or 4-7-8 measurably raises overnight parasympathetic activity.
• Hydrate first thing. 500 ml of water on waking — dehydration alone can drop this score by 5–10 points.
• Cut evening caffeine. Caffeine has a 5–6 hour half-life; the 4pm coffee is still active at midnight.

2. Stress Index

What it measures: whether your body appears to be under strain or fatigue right now. Lower is better here — unlike the other scores.

How it's calculated: heart rate combined with short-window HRV. A higher heart rate and reduced natural variation push this score up. Caffeine, anxiety, poor sleep, and acute illness all tend to raise it.

• 0–24: Very relaxed
• 25–49: Mild stress
• 50–74: Moderate stress
• 75–100: High stress

How to lower your Stress Index

This score is the most reactive of the five — it can change inside a single afternoon. If your reading is high, first ask what happened in the 60 minutes before the scan (coffee, deadline, argument, missed lunch). Then act on the longer-term levers.

• Run a 10-minute reset before re-scanning. Sit, close eyes, breathe in for 4, out for 6. Longer exhales actively trigger the parasympathetic system.
• Match caffeine to your stress baseline. If this score is chronically >50, cap caffeine at 200 mg/day and finish it before 1 pm.
• Add one daily "off-grid" block. 20–30 min/day with no screen, no input — a walk without headphones counts. Sustained input is what keeps this score elevated.
• Eat protein at breakfast. Glucose crashes mid-morning spike cortisol and read as stress here. 20–30 g of protein flattens the curve.
• Strength train 2× per week. Counter-intuitive, but resistance training lowers chronic stress markers more reliably than cardio alone.
• Re-scan at the same time daily for a week. If it stays >60 despite the basics, look at deeper drivers — work load, alcohol, untreated sleep apnea.

3. Rhythm Stability

What it measures: how steady and regular the spacing between your heartbeats looks during the recording.

How it's calculated: we measure the time between each consecutive beat and check how consistent those intervals are. Sudden jumps, skipped beats, or inconsistent spacing lower the score. A consistently irregular pattern is worth showing to a doctor — it can be a sign of arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation.

• 80–100: Very steady
• 65–79: Mostly steady
• 45–64: Somewhat irregular
• Below 45: Irregular pattern — consider a clinical follow-up

How to improve your Rhythm Stability

A single low reading usually reflects scan conditions, not a heart problem — but unlike recovery or stress, this score is one you should also escalate if it stays low across multiple clean recordings.

• Get a clean baseline first. Sit upright and still for 5 minutes before the scan, no talking, no phone-checking. Movement artifacts alone can drop this 10–20 points.
• Remove the obvious irritants. Excess caffeine, energy drinks, nicotine, decongestants, and dehydration are the most common reversible triggers of irregular beats.
• Limit alcohol. "Holiday heart" is real — even 2–3 drinks can trigger atrial ectopics for 24–48 hours afterwards.
• Mind electrolytes. Low potassium or magnesium (common with diuretics, high sweat loss, or restrictive diets) shows up as irregular spacing. Leafy greens, bananas, nuts.
• Treat sleep apnea if you snore. Untreated apnea is one of the strongest drivers of atrial fibrillation. If you snore loudly or wake gasping, get a sleep study.
• See a doctor if it persists. If 3+ clean scans land below 65, especially with palpitations, dizziness, or breathlessness — book a cardiology consult and bring the reports.

4. Electrical Stability

What it measures: how consistent the shape of each heartbeat's electrical waveform looks from beat to beat.

How it's calculated: we compare each heartbeat's waveform against a typical pattern from the same recording. If most beats look alike, the score is high. If beat shapes vary a lot, the score drops — this can simply mean a noisy recording (movement, loose electrodes), or it can reflect genuine electrical variation worth investigating.

• 80–100: Very consistent
• 65–79: Mostly consistent
• 45–64: Some variation
• Below 45: High variation

How to improve your Electrical Stability

Unlike Recovery and Stress, this score isn't directly trainable through lifestyle — it mostly reflects the quality of the recording and the underlying state of the heart muscle. Most low scores come down to noise, not pathology.

• Sit still and breathe normally. Don't hold your breath, don't talk. Even small shoulder shrugs distort the waveform.
• Clean the skin where electrodes sit. Wipe with alcohol or soap and water; remove body lotion. Oily or dry skin both raise impedance.
• Check the technician's lead placement. If you're doing repeated scans at home, ask for the same placement each time — small shifts change waveform shape.
• Rest before scanning. Don't scan straight after climbing stairs or carrying weight; wait 10 minutes for the heart to settle.
• Long-term: protect heart muscle health. Control blood pressure, blood sugar, and LDL cholesterol. These are what keep the heart's electrical conduction tissue healthy over years.
• Escalate persistent low scores. If multiple clean scans show high variation, ask a cardiologist about a 12-lead ECG and possibly an echocardiogram to rule out structural causes.

5. Recovery Phase Stability

What it measures: how consistently your heart "resets" electrically after each beat.

How it's calculated: we focus on the later portion of each heartbeat waveform — the part where the heart's electrical system recovers and prepares for the next beat. Consistent recovery patterns score high. Inconsistency in this phase can be due to recording noise, electrolyte changes, or conditions that affect repolarisation. A persistently low score across multiple scans is worth a doctor's review.

How to improve your Recovery Phase Stability

This is the most sensitive of the five scores — it picks up both noisy recordings and subtle physiology like electrolyte balance or medication effects. Start by removing recording noise; if it stays low, look at the medical side.

• Rescan in a calm, warm environment. Cold skin, shivering, and tension all distort this part of the waveform. Wait until you're settled and at room temperature.
• Watch electrolytes — especially potassium and magnesium. Low levels directly affect the repolarisation phase the score measures. Eat leafy greens, bananas, nuts, seeds; avoid extreme low-carb or fasting protocols right before scanning.
• Review your medications. Some antibiotics (e.g. azithromycin), antidepressants, antipsychotics, antihistamines, and diuretics can lengthen the recovery (QT) phase. Don't stop them — flag the list to your doctor.
• Avoid scanning during illness or fever. Acute infections, dehydration, and high fever all transiently affect this score; wait until you've recovered.
• Build long-term cardiovascular fitness. Regular Zone 2 cardio (3–4× per week, 30+ min) improves the heart's electrical recovery efficiency over months.
• Get a clinical ECG if it stays low. Persistent low scores — especially alongside palpitations, fainting, or family history of sudden cardiac events — warrant a proper 12-lead ECG with QT interval measurement.

The HRV details block

Heart rate variability is the tiny variation in time between consecutive heartbeats. A healthy heart isn't a metronome — small natural variation is a sign that your autonomic nervous system is responsive. We report four standard HRV metrics:

• Mean NN (ms): average time between normal heartbeats. Related to heart rate — slower heart = larger Mean NN.
• SDNN (ms): overall variability across the recording. Higher generally reflects better autonomic balance, though it needs longer recordings to be truly stable.
• RMSSD (ms): short-term variability, driven mainly by the parasympathetic ("rest and digest") nervous system. The most reliable HRV metric for short recordings. Healthy adult values often sit between 20–60 ms, but vary by age and fitness.
• pNN50 (%): percentage of consecutive beat intervals that differ by more than 50 ms. Another short-term parasympathetic marker. Higher generally indicates better recovery state.

Don't fixate on a single number from a single scan. HRV is highly individual — what matters is your personal trend over weeks and months, measured under similar conditions (same time of day, similar posture, similar caffeine/food state).

How to actually use these scores

• Build a baseline. Scan a few times under similar conditions to learn your normal range. One reading is a data point, not a trend.
• Watch for shifts. A sudden drop in Recovery Score or jump in Stress Index — when nothing else has changed — is a useful nudge to rest, hydrate, or back off training.
• Take Rhythm Stability seriously. If it stays consistently low across multiple clean recordings, show the report to a cardiologist. Rhythm issues are the most directly actionable finding.
• Don't panic over one bad scan. Coffee, anxiety, movement, a bad night of sleep — all of these can shift scores temporarily.

What this report is not

A WellnessScan report is based on a short ECG recording analysed for wellness indicators. It does not replace a full clinical 12-lead ECG interpretation by a cardiologist, and it cannot rule out conditions like coronary artery disease, structural heart disease, or a recent silent heart attack. If you have symptoms, a strong family history, or known risk factors like diabetes or high blood pressure, please see a doctor regardless of what these scores say.

Ready to track your numbers over time? Book your next scan in Chandigarh from the home page, or read our guide on what an ECG actually shows for the clinical view.