Does Game of Thrones get your blood pumping and your heart racing? Do the more exciting scenes, perhaps those epic battles the show is known for, increase the rate of your pulse?
The answer to that question is probably yes, at least according to a small study done by data scientist Brandon Ballinger and researchers at the University of California, San Francisco.
Ballinger developed an app for the Apple Watch, called Cardiogram, that monitors a user's heart rate throughout the day. This app can track what activities make heart rates race, and it turns out that one of those activities is watching TV, particularly HBO's Game of Thrones.
Ballinger asked 10 of Cardiogram's users to track their heart rates during specific episodes of Game of Thrones.
For example, here's the average heart rates during the season five finale of Game of Thrones.
As the data shows, heart rates start low but begin to rise as the episode starts unveiling all its plot points and surprises. By the time the Battle of Winterfell begins onscreen, heart rates are up as high as 87 beats per minute. Then, the surprise with Arya being the Defiant One gets hearts pumping at 91 beats per minute.
As the episode progresses, heart rates stay up (it was an intense episode), ending with the shaming of Cersei (93 beats per minute) and the possible death of Jon Snow (93 beats per minute).
Of course, there's really no purpose of tracking heart rates during a TV show, but Cardiogram has a higher purpose here. Ballinger plans on asking Cardiogram users diagnosed with heart arrhythmia to share their data with a specific study aimed at using this data for learning more about heart disease.
Although there are plenty of other heart monitoring apps, Ballinger feels that Cardiogram is much more useful because his app not only offers a better display of the data, but also stores it more often. Most other apps are also targeted for those users interested in fitness, but Ballinger thinks his is more realistic because "most of us are couch potatoes."
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