A resting heart rate of 98 beats per minute sits above the range most research considers typical, which is roughly 50 to 90 BPM for adults. It is not, however, in rare or alarming territory. A large real-world study using smartphone-connected sensors found the average adult heart rate was about 79 BPM, but the 95th percentile reached as high as 110 BPM in younger adults, meaning a meaningful number of people walk around with resting rates in the upper 90s and beyond. Whether 98 BPM is a problem for you depends on context that a single number cannot capture.
Where 98 BPM Falls in the Data
The textbook cutoff for tachycardia has traditionally been 100 BPM, so at 98 you would not be classified as having a clinically fast heart rate by that definition. But that threshold is somewhat arbitrary. A review in the journal Heart noted that a typical resting heart rate falls between 50 and 90 BPM, with natural variation throughout the day and across individuals.1PubMed. Resting heart rate: what is normal? The Health eHeart study, which collected real-world data from over 92,000 people using wearable sensors, found a mean resting heart rate of about 79 BPM with a standard deviation of roughly 14.5 BPM. That puts 98 BPM more than one standard deviation above the mean, placing you in the higher end but still within the range of variation that exists in healthy populations.2PubMed Central. Real-world heart rate norms in the Health eHeart study
Age shifts the picture. The same study found that the 95th percentile of resting heart rate was at or below 110 BPM for people aged 18 to 45, at or below 100 BPM for those 45 to 60, and at or below 95 BPM for those over 60.2PubMed Central. Real-world heart rate norms in the Health eHeart study So if you are in your twenties or thirties, 98 BPM is elevated but comfortably within the 95th percentile. If you are over 60, it edges closer to the statistical fringe and warrants more attention.
Temporary Reasons Your Rate Might Be 98
A single reading of 98 BPM can easily reflect something other than your true baseline. Your heart rate is not a fixed number. It responds to a surprising range of short-term influences that have nothing to do with heart disease.
Your nervous system constantly adjusts how fast the heart beats through two competing branches. One branch (sympathetic) accelerates the heart, while the other (parasympathetic, driven mainly by the vagus nerve) slows it down. At rest, the vagus nerve normally has the upper hand, keeping your rate in check.3PubMed Central. Autonomic neural control of heart rate during dynamic exercise: revisited Anything that tips this balance toward the sympathetic side will push the number up.
Common culprits include caffeine, which blocks adenosine receptors and triggers catecholamine release,4PubMed Central. Caffeine and Arrhythmias: A Critical Analysis of Cardiovascular Responses and Arrhythmia Susceptibility stress or anxiety (which floods the system with adrenaline), dehydration, recent physical exertion, or even just standing up and walking to the couch before sitting down to check. If you measured your heart rate within an hour of drinking coffee, after a stressful phone call, or while slightly under the weather with a cold, 98 BPM could be completely unremarkable.
There is also a strong daily rhythm. Heart rate peaks in the afternoon and dips to its lowest point during sleep, with the fitted maximum occurring around 4:30 PM in controlled research.5PubMed. Robust circadian rhythm in heart rate and its variability: influence of exogenous melatonin and photoperiod A reading taken at 3 PM will naturally be higher than one taken first thing in the morning. If you want a true resting value, measure it after waking and before getting out of bed, or at least after sitting still for five to ten minutes.
Medications That Raise Resting Heart Rate
Several commonly prescribed drugs can push your resting heart rate into the upper 80s or 90s. Central nervous system stimulants used for ADHD, such as methylphenidate and amphetamine-based medications, increase resting heart rate by an average of about 5 to 6 BPM compared to placebo. A meta-analysis of randomized trials found that adults on these medications were roughly two and a half times more likely to have a resting heart rate above 90 BPM than those on placebo.6European Neuropsychopharmacology. Meta-analysis of increased heart rate and blood pressure associated with CNS stimulant treatment of ADHD in adults If you take a stimulant and your resting rate is 98, that medication is likely contributing several of those extra beats.
Other medications that can raise heart rate include certain asthma inhalers (beta-agonists like albuterol), decongestants containing pseudoephedrine, some antidepressants, and thyroid hormone replacement if the dose is too high. If 98 BPM is a new finding for you, it is worth reviewing any medication changes with a doctor before assuming the rate itself is the problem.
Medical Conditions That Push the Rate Up
When a persistently high resting heart rate is not explained by lifestyle factors or medications, a handful of medical conditions deserve attention. The most common is an overactive thyroid. Hyperthyroidism increases heart rate, strengthens heart contractions, and lowers vascular resistance, all of which translate into a faster pulse. These cardiovascular effects are among the most clinically relevant signs of thyroid dysfunction.7PubMed. Thyroid disease and the heart A simple blood test can rule this out.
Anemia, whether from iron deficiency, chronic illness, or blood loss, forces the heart to beat faster to compensate for reduced oxygen-carrying capacity. Chronic infections and inflammatory conditions can also keep heart rate elevated. And while less common, inappropriate sinus tachycardia is a diagnosis of exclusion in which the heart rate is persistently above 100 BPM without an identifiable external cause. At 98 BPM you would not meet that formal threshold, but the distinction between 98 and 102 is more semantic than biological.
What the Mortality Data Shows
The reason doctors pay attention to resting heart rate even when it is below the tachycardia threshold is that the relationship between heart rate and health outcomes is not binary. It is a gradient. A large meta-analysis covering over 1.2 million people found that for every 10-BPM increase in resting heart rate, the risk of dying from any cause rose by about 9 percent, and the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease rose by about 8 percent. People with resting rates above 80 BPM had roughly 45 percent higher all-cause mortality and about a third higher cardiovascular mortality compared to those in the lowest heart rate category, even after adjusting for traditional risk factors like smoking, cholesterol, and blood pressure.8PubMed Central. Resting heart rate and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in the general population: a meta-analysis
The Copenhagen Male Study followed men for 16 years and found an even steeper gradient: compared to men with resting rates of 50 or below, those with rates above 90 BPM had roughly triple the mortality risk, with an estimated 16 percent increase in death risk for every additional 10 BPM.9PubMed. Elevated resting heart rate, physical fitness and all-cause mortality: a 16-year follow-up in the Copenhagen Male Study Cardiovascular mortality risk became statistically significant at around 90 BPM in the broader meta-analysis.8PubMed Central. Resting heart rate and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in the general population: a meta-analysis
This does not mean a resting heart rate of 98 BPM is sentencing you to an early grave. These are population-level statistics, and individual risk depends on your full health profile. But the data strongly suggests that getting your resting rate below 80 BPM, if possible, is associated with better long-term outcomes. The relationship between heart rate and mortality appears to be continuous rather than having a magic safe-versus-unsafe cutoff.
Fitness Level Is the Biggest Controllable Factor
Among things you can actually change, physical fitness has the most reliable effect on resting heart rate. A systematic review and meta-analysis of exercise intervention studies found that exercise training lowered resting heart rate by an average of about 3.3 BPM compared to control groups. Endurance training showed the most consistent effect, but yoga, strength training, and combined programs all produced meaningful reductions as well. Men saw slightly larger drops (about 4.3 BPM on average) than women (about 3.4 BPM).10PubMed Central. Effects of Exercise on the Resting Heart Rate: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Interventional Studies
Those are averages from controlled trials with relatively short training periods. People who train consistently for months or years often see much larger reductions. Elite endurance athletes routinely have resting rates in the 40s and 50s. Even a moderate walking or cycling habit sustained over a few months can make a noticeable dent in someone starting from 98 BPM.
Yoga specifically has been studied as an intervention. One controlled study found that a structured yoga program reduced resting heart rate by about 6 BPM while the control group showed no significant change.11European Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine. Effect of Yoga on Resting Heart Rate and Blood Pressure: A Controlled Physiological Study This makes sense given that yoga emphasizes slow breathing and parasympathetic activation, directly addressing the autonomic imbalance that often underlies a higher resting rate.
How Age and Sex Shift the Baseline
Resting heart rate tends to decline as people get older. A Brazilian study tracking heart rate across age groups found a gradual decrease, with average rates falling from about 77 BPM in younger adults to about 73 BPM in older groups.12PubMed Central. Does the Aging Process Significantly Modify the Mean Heart Rate? This aligns with the Health eHeart data showing tighter upper percentiles for older adults. If you are 65 and consistently clocking 98 BPM, that is more atypical for your age group than the same rate would be for a 25-year-old.
Sex plays a role too. Women tend to have slightly higher resting heart rates than men, partly because of differences in heart size and stroke volume and partly because of hormonal influences. Estrogen and testosterone have different effects on cardiac function, with estrogen generally considered cardioprotective.13PubMed Central. Role of biological sex in normal cardiac function and in its disease outcome – a review So a woman with a resting rate of 98 is statistically less unusual than a man at the same rate, though neither should ignore a persistently elevated number.
Measuring Resting Heart Rate Accurately
Before worrying about a single reading of 98 BPM, consider whether the measurement was reliable. Wrist-worn wearable devices are reasonably accurate at rest, but accuracy drops during activity. A study comparing several popular wrist devices to a medical-grade ECG found that at low activity levels, the readings were fair, but some devices significantly underestimated heart rate during vigorous exercise.14PubMed Central. Are Activity Wrist-Worn Devices Accurate for Determining Heart Rate during Intense Exercise? At rest, the main issue is not accuracy per se, but timing. If the device recorded your rate while you were walking, fidgeting, or had just sat down, the number will be inflated.
The best practice is to check your pulse manually or with a device after sitting or lying still for at least five minutes, ideally in the morning before coffee. Do this on several different days and average the results. A single afternoon reading of 98 from a smartwatch does not tell you much. Five morning readings averaging 98 tell you a lot more.
The Vascular Side of the Story
Beyond the mortality statistics, there is a vascular reason to care about a persistently elevated resting heart rate. Higher heart rates are associated with stiffer arteries. A study in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis found that as resting heart rate went up, the flexibility of the carotid artery and aorta went down in a dose-response fashion, independent of blood pressure medications or physical activity level.15PubMed Central. Association of resting heart rate with carotid and aortic arterial stiffness: multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis Earlier work showed the same pattern in both people with normal blood pressure and those with hypertension, with the strongest links found in the carotid artery and thoracic aorta.16PubMed. Association between high heart rate and high arterial rigidity in normotensive and hypertensive subjects
Arterial stiffness matters because stiff arteries increase the workload on the heart, contribute to high blood pressure, and are themselves a risk factor for cardiovascular events. It is not entirely clear whether a faster heart rate directly causes arterial stiffening or whether both are downstream consequences of something else, like low parasympathetic tone. But the association is robust across studies and holds up after controlling for the obvious confounders.
Environmental Factors Most People Overlook
Your physical surroundings can push resting heart rate up in ways that have nothing to do with your fitness or medical history. A study of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease found that personal exposure to higher air temperatures over a few hours was associated with a resting heart rate increase of about 1.5 BPM per interquartile range increment. Ozone exposure had an even larger effect, associated with a roughly 2.3 BPM increase, and nitrogen dioxide exposure was linked to about 1.8 BPM higher.17Environmental Science & Technology. Associations of Personal Hourly Exposures to Air Temperature and Pollution with Resting Heart Rate in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease That study looked at a particularly vulnerable population, so the effects in healthy adults would likely be smaller. But on a hot, smoggy day, these factors can stack.
Long-term air pollution exposure may have a subtler chronic effect. A study of over 10 million reproductive-age adults in China found that each 10 microgram-per-cubic-meter increase in three-year average fine particulate matter exposure was associated with a small but statistically significant elevation in resting heart rate, and about 4 percent of tachycardia cases in the population could be attributed to particulate matter exposure.18Environmental Pollution. Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter and tachycardia and heart rate: Results from 10 million reproductive-age adults in China If you live in an area with significant air pollution or are reading this during a heat wave, the environment itself could be contributing a few extra beats per minute to your resting measurement.
The Heartbeat Budget Across Species
There is an intriguing observation from comparative biology that adds perspective, even if it does not directly guide your medical decisions. Among mammals, there is an inverse relationship between resting heart rate and lifespan. Small animals like shrews, with heart rates in the hundreds, live a few years. Elephants, with rates around 30 BPM, live for decades. When researchers calculated the total number of heartbeats in a lifetime for dozens of mammalian species, they arrived at a surprisingly consistent figure, averaging around 700 to 800 million beats regardless of species.19PubMed. Rest heart rate and life expectancy
Humans are an outlier on this curve, living far longer than our heart rate would predict, likely because of medicine, nutrition, and shelter from predation. But the broader pattern is real: within humans, a faster resting heart rate is consistently associated with shorter lifespan, echoing the cross-species relationship.20Ageing Research Reviews. Heart rate, lifespan, and mortality risk Whether this reflects some fundamental wear-and-tear on the cardiovascular system or is simply a marker of autonomic health remains debated. Either way, it reinforces the idea that a lower resting rate, all else being equal, is a good thing to aim for.