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Health Monitoring Approaches
Comparison of different methods to track personal health and their primary focus areas.
Primary Sources
What Taking Off My Health Tracker Taught Me About Wellness
A few years ago, I wore a Whoop fitness tracker. The slim band around my wrist tracked my heart rate and offered me data like heart rate variation (HRV) and recovery score each morning. And it gave personalized insights into how I could improve the way I worked out, slept, and lived. But a year or two ago, I took it off. Not because I replaced it with a different fitness tracker, but because I wasn’t interested in tracking at all anymore. It was one of the best decisions I ever made for my wellness. “Basically, we’re all kind of done with tracking and optimizing everything.” Earlier this year, the Global Wellness Summit (GWS) published its annual Wellness Trends Report, naming the top ten biggest wellness trends they predict for the year ahead. Number two on this year’s list: The Over-Optimization Backlash. Basically, we’re all kind of done with tracking and optimizing everything. When I wore the Whoop, it did give me some helpful insights. I could see how intense my workouts were, how many hours I was actually sleeping, and, based on the surveys you fill out daily, what lifestyle factors affected my recovery — like spending time in nature, eating sugar, having sex, or drinking alcohol. But on countless mornings, I was left with, instead of clarity, more confusion. What’s a girl to do when her low sleep score doesn’t correspond to her totally fine-feeling body? (Or vice versa.) “What’s a girl to do when her low sleep score doesn’t correspond to her totally fine-feeling body?” The app lets you join up with other friends who have Whoops to see each other’s metrics — breeding healthy competition for some, but comparison for me. I worried my sleep scores were always worse, my strain not as high even on days I pushed myself. (And for what it’s worth, the days when my strain was highest were the days I’d go out dancing til 1:00 a.m.) After a year and a half of wear, the fitness tracker hadn’t done much more than make me feel disconnected from my body. And frankly, the trade-off of giving up a good night of recovery for an evening of gabbing with friends over a bottle of wine is one I’ll make over and over. To be clear: The Whoop can be a fantastic fitness tracking device if that’s what you’re looking for — 24/7 monitoring, insights, and advice pertaining to your fitness routines and lifestyle. That’s great if you’re an athlete training for your next Iron Man. But do we all need that? Our health tracker-centric wellness culture can make it feel that wa...
The Longevity Metric: What "High Fitness" Actually Means (And How to ...
Most people think that if they "exercise" for 30 minutes a day, they are fit. They hit a class, they break a sweat, and they achieve their daily goals. Clinical science, however, draws a hard line between being active and actually possessing high fitness. And that distinction may determine how long and how well you live. You might be caught in the "exercise vs. fitness" trap, where you think that exercise automatically results in fitness. But in reality, you can exercise regularly and still have low physiological fitness. Conversely, some people do less and still have more efficient hearts, lungs, and mitochondria (energy generators in your cells). For biohackers, longevity enthusiasts, and performance-driven athletes, high fitness matters. Beyond aesthetics, personal achievement, or bragging rights, it may be the single most powerful physiological metric for predicting human mortality. In this post, we define what high fitness is, why it rewrites your biological clock, and how you can build it efficiently without destroying your joints or living on a treadmill. Decoding "High Fitness": The Gold Standard What does high fitness actually mean? In clinical research, high fitness refers specifically to Cardiorespiratory Fitness (CRF), which is measured by one gold-standard metric, VO₂ max. VO₂ max is the maximum amount of oxygen, thus the O₂, your body can utilize during intense effort. In research and medical settings, high fitness = high VO₂ max. Your VO₂ max reflects the integrated performance of your: Heart (cardiac output) Lungs (oxygen exchange) Blood vessels (oxygen delivery) Muscles (oxygen utilization) Mitochondria (cellular energy production) It is typically measured during a treadmill or cycling stress test. Because testing a person’s VO₂ max isn’t always practical, researchers often use METs (metabolic equivalents) achieved during a treadmill stress test as an alternative. METs Benchmarks: Researchers have set fitness benchmarks for METs, adjusted to sex and age. While several factors may lead to variations in METs, here are the general ballpark ranges for men (will be slightly lower for women): Low fitness:
How the rise of medical device use in pharma R&D is driving wearable ...
How pharma uses wearables One of the most significant benefits of digital health devices to pharma clinical trials is the ability to continuously and objectively monitor biological data.
My Smartwatch Gives Me Health Anxiety. Experts Explain How to ... - CNET
After dealing with health anxiety caused by tracking my body's metrics on smartwatches, I took matters into my own hands with expert advice.
