I am loving my new Black Stainless Steel LTE Apple Watch Series 3. I bought the first Apple Watch, skipped the second series, and now updated to get the wireless LTE connection with Verizon. One of the new features of the Apple Watch Series 3 is to track your heart rate to alert you when your heart rate is abnormally elevated so you can take action to calm down, or to seek medical attention.

Imagine my dismay to learn I had over 41 elevated heart rate notifications over a two day period! I was never alerted to those multiple notifications, and I was concerned!

After calming down my terror at the 41 elevated heart rate notifications I’d missed — I didn’t want to get another elevated heart rate alert caused by an elevated heart rate alert! — I touched the red notification window to see, more precisely, what was happening and when.

As I scrolled through the pages of elevated heart rate notifications, I tried to clear my mind enough to try to figure out what I was doing at the time of the elevated heart rate notifications.  Was I on the phone? Writing? Working out? What?

I was immediately confused as I realized all of the elevated heart rate notifications from my new LTE Apple Watch Series 3 were pretty much happening one right after the other in 8-10 minute increments. It seemed as if my heart rate had been elevated that long, over that long arc of time, I’d be dead by now.

As I continued to self-investigate, I noticed the dates and times of the notifications were also curious — because, I wasn’t wearing my Apple Watch when the recordings were being made!

In fact, while wearing my Apple Watch, I’d never received any elevated heart rate notifications at all.

I slowly realized all the recording times and notifications were false alarming — because I was asleep when they were happening — and while some people wear their Apple Watches while they sleep, I do not, and never have.

Hmm.

So, I wasn’t dead — yet! — but the readings argued I should be.

Next, I tried to figure out why the entire day of September 30 was missing from my recorded data.  The previous day was filled with alerts, as was the day after the 30th, so what in the world was going on with a “non-alert” day sandwiched between two “death days?”

I started to track, in my mind, where my Apple Watch was when those readings were being taken, while not on my wrist.

I realized my Apple Watch was on my bedstand — but not plugged into the charger! — because I was testing the battery wearout rate of the new watch, and since the Series 3 battery is so excellent, it takes a couple of days for the battery to wane.

My original Apple Watch would barely last a day, so allowing the battery to run down on its own took a lot of patience.

Then I realized I was placing my Apple Watch on my nightstand next to my mechanical white noise machine. We live in a loud city where the sounds, and alarms, of the urban core never cease to annoy you, and the fan inside my white noise machine was roaring right next to my Apple Watch!

Now it was beginning to make sense!

My Apple Watch, even though it was locked, and not wrapped around my wrist, was still actively reading what it thought was “my body” — the world around me! — and that happened to include my white noise machine that, it appears, was somehow being interpreted by my Apple Watch as my beating heart!

I now know the spin rate of my white noise machine in conversion to my alleged elevated heart rate!

If my Apple Watch was actually recording my white noise machine, then what happened on September 30 — the skipped day in my long series of 41 heart rate alerts?

Ahh!

I realized the night of the 30th is when my Apple Watch battery had worn down enough to require a recharge, and the charger is right next to my white noise machine on my nightstand, too, but I guess when the Apple Watch is actually charging, it stops sensing the world around it and all recording, rightly, stops.

My old Apple Watch never had the luxury of not being charged overnight because the battery would not last longer than a day. With the Series 3 Apple Watch, I can charge the watch every other day.

So, there we have it!

Mystery solved!

My heart rate is fine.

False alarms, silenced.

White noise, alerted.