FITNESS TRACKERS MEASURE HEALTH 

Only a decade ago, smart pedometers used to measure just our steps. Now, activity and fitness trackers have become even more relevant to our lives, as a growing range of gadgets have added the monitoring of critical health metrics.

Wearable health tracker technology is the newest way to monitor conditions that can become life threatening, especially for people aged 40 and over. There are many wearable health trackers that provide you with accurate and consistent monitoring of metrics such as heart health, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation of your blood. They can also provide an alert when you’re experiencing a medical emergency and communicate data to an emergency officer or a medical professional when you’re unable to do so.

Let’s look at these health trackers according to the metrics they measure.

HEART HEALTH

One category of health trackers can monitor your heart rate 24/7 to provide data on your heart health. The data you obtain from this type of health tracker can guide you in ways to help you improve your overall health by targeting the most important organ of your body – your heart.

Healthy hearts are more efficient at pumping blood around their body.  This can be represented by a slower but strong heart rate. On the other hand, people with higher heart rates are more likely to have conditions like blocked arteries or weak vital organs like a fatty liver, inflamed kidney or an overall inflammation. This makes it harder for your heart to pump blood around the body, putting pressure on the heart, and forcing it to beat a lot faster.

The benefit of health trackers that can monitor the heart is that it gives you a lot of data showing the state of your overall health.  One-off readings can give you data for only a minute, or even a day. But a wearable health tracker can show you changes to your heart rate over a long period of time.

Of course, this data from health trackers needs to be confirmed by medical-grade equipment. You can also share this data with your doctor.  Should your doctor confirm the presence of a problem, you and your doctor can put a health program in place.

How can a health fitness tracker help your heart?

People concerned about their health may use activity trackers to improve heart performance. Activity trackers can give you a solid snapshot of where you are. This is important because you have to know where you stand right now if you’re going to improve and get better.

You may have heard the old phrase, ‘that which is measured… improves.’ Of course, this phrase is most often used in business, but it also applies in the world of health and fitness. If you track something, you know what needs the most work.

Here’s an excellent video on heart health and exercise.  There are thousands of similar videos that remind us of the importance of exercise, eating well, sleeping well to our overall wellness. But how many of us start measuring the state of our health, and then moving on to improving it? A health and fitness tracker can help you get started.

BLOOD PRESSURE

Today’s health fitness trackers are high tech and will help you keep great records of your regular blood pressure readings.  For example, the Withings Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor for Apple and Android is a sleek device that’s easy to use and transport.

With this device, you can take your blood pressure quickly and easily.  The device syncs to your smartphone and you use the phone to start the measurements, record readings, and look at data over time.

When it’s time to head to the doctor, you can bring your smartphone to share your blood pressure readings since your last appointment.  You can even send them directly to your doctor if you prefer.

Understanding blood pressure. Here’s an excellent video on blood pressure, what cause high and low blood pressure and what you can do to create that balance.

PULSE OXIMETER

A pulse oximeter is a method for monitoring a person’s oxygen saturation. Oxygen saturation (sometimes referred to a O sats, or simply, sats – measures how much your blood is saturated with oxygen. It’s vital for your body to carry oxygen through your bloodstream and distribute it to your organs, tissues, and cells. A normal O sat is between 96 percent and 98 percent. Low O sats can lead to brain dysfunctions, confusion, shortness of breath, high blood pressure and abnormal heart rate.

FITNESS TRACKERS MEASURE FITNESS

Let’s look at what information are most often tracked by the best fitness trackers out there. These would be steps taken, calories burned, and sleep length and quality,

There are a few reasons why these metrics can be extremely important. For one, when combined, all these information can paint a very good picture of your overall health. Note I didn’t say complete picture. I said, a very good picture, which means that one should never take this information as 100% accurate report of your medical state.

STEP COUNTERS

If I asked you how many steps you’ve taken today, how many of you would immediately look to your wrist? If you had a step counter, you would know exactly down to the last step, how far off you are to your 10,000th step for today.

It used to be we had pedometers strapped to your belts. Now our step counters are on our wrist as wrist bands or smart watches, monitoring our steps, our calories lost, our food intake, and more.

But why use a step counter? These products remind us to move. All research about physical activity unanimously show that one of the biggest risks for heart disease, obesity, stroke, and diabetes is a sedentary lifestyle. It follows then that to increase our physical activity is one of our best protection against poor health.

 

CALORIE COUNTER

The best calorie counter works with your activity tracker to tell you how many calories you have lost.

What can the best calorie tracker do to help you lose weight? Basically, fat loss comes down to one simple rule: in order to lose weight and burn fat, you need to make sure that you burn more calories than you consume. Therefore, if you are burning off more calories than you’re taking in you will create a calorie deficit and you will start to get slimmer.  If you combine it with exercise, you become leaner and more toned.

For those who want to measure all this input and output, there are now activity trackers that can help you do that. These trackers record your caloric intake and your exercise to absolutely give you the highest chance that you lose weight.

SLEEP MONITOR

Another metric of today’s health tracking gadgets is how much (or how little) you sleep.  These sleep monitors can tell you if you’re asleep or awake, your sleep position, which position you sleep best in, and how often you wake up in the night.  Most of them also monitor your heart rate, your oxygen saturation and what state your sleep is at!

One of most popular sleep monitors is the Fitbit Flex Wireless Activity Plus Sleep Wristband. It measures how long you sleep, and tells you how well you slept during the night. It has the added benefit of being a fitness and health monitor, so with one product, you can track your activity and sleep so you can improve the way you look and feel.