What's a Normal Breathing Rate at Rest and During Sleep?

Respiratory rate is how many breaths you take in a minute. For a resting adult it’s usually 12 to 20 breaths per minute, and it’s lower and remarkably steady during sleep. It’s one of the most overlooked vital signs, yet in hospitals a rising breathing rate is one of the earliest signs that someone is getting worse.

This article is general information, not medical advice.

What Counts as Normal

The Royal College of Physicians’ National Early Warning Score (NEWS2), used across the UK’s National Health Service to spot patients who are deteriorating, scores a respiratory rate of 12 to 20 as normal. It adds points the further a rate is outside that range, with 8 or fewer, or 25 or more, scoring the most. Those thresholds are for people who may be ill; a healthy adult’s resting rate is usually in the middle to low end of the normal range.

During sleep your breathing slows and becomes more regular, especially in deep sleep, and your own nightly average tends to vary by only a breath or so from one night to the next.

What Moves It

• Illness. Fever, infection, and lung or heart problems raise it, often before other signs. In a study of 271 people with WHOOP straps, Miller and colleagues found that a rise in night-time respiratory rate identified 20% of those with COVID-19 in the two days before symptoms started, and 80% by the third day of symptoms. The authors were funded by or worked for the device’s maker.
• Altitude, as your body breathes faster to make up for thinner air.
• Exercise, and for a while after it.
• Anxiety and pain, while awake.
• Medicines such as opioids and sedatives, which slow it.

Counting It Yourself

Breathing is easy to change without meaning to, so it’s best counted when you aren’t thinking about it:

1. Sit quietly for a few minutes.
2. Count each rise of your chest or abdomen for a full 60 seconds, or ask someone to count without telling you when they start.
3. One breath in and out is one breath.

How Wearables Measure It

Watches, rings, and straps estimate breathing from the small rhythmic changes it causes in your heart rate and in the light their sensors read, usually only while you sleep, when you’re still enough. That makes them good at showing your own night-to-night trend, and less useful for comparing with someone else’s device. A night 2 or 3 breaths per minute above your usual, especially with a raised resting heart rate or temperature, is often the first sign you’re coming down with something.

If your resting breathing rate is above 20 when you’re well, or you’re breathless at rest, talk to a health professional.

Following It in Kaizora

Respiratory Rate is on the Vitals page, imported from Apple Health or logged by hand. Since it’s averaged, a week’s value is the average of its readings. Add your own reference range around your usual nightly rate to have unusual nights flagged; see Reference Ranges. On Correlations, putting it beside Resting Heart Rate and Sleeping Wrist Temperature shows whether all three rose together.

The Short Version

• A resting adult breathes 12 to 20 times a minute; sleep is lower and steadier.
• A rise above your own usual rate is an early sign of illness.
• Wearables are best for following your own night-to-night trend.

Sources

• Royal College of Physicians, National Early Warning Score (NEWS) 2.
• Miller DJ et al., “Analyzing changes in respiratory rate to predict the risk of COVID-19 infection,” PLOS ONE 15, no. 12 (2020): e0243693. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0243693