Health wearables are bringing an unprecedented level of sophistication to fitness regimens everywhere. There was a time when all you could do was check your heart rate with two fingers after a run and estimate the number of calories you burned. However, with wearable technology you can get a full analysis of your workout, or even just track your activity level throughout a normal day at the office.
Wearable health technology provides constant tracking of your activity, and can promote a healthier lifestyle. Fitbit fitness and sleep trackers, for example, hook users up with Facebook friends for friendly competition, and give badges for distance, number of steps in a day, and more. A fun dashboard encourages users and provides accountability.
Fitness wearables also give you a more in depth look at your overall health than if you weren’t wearing a device. Health wearables do more than just notify you of your heart rate. They can track the number of steps that you take throughout the day, the amount of calories you’ve burned, muscle contractions during a workout, effort exerted, fatigue experienced, number of reps, your velocity, your pace, and much more. This provides a way to track your exercise, and can also encourage you to exercise more regularly.
In addition to Fitbit’s automatic tracking, it offers opportunities and encouragement for users to track other aspects of their health. The game-like aspects of wearables can make people more likely to track their blood pressure or their heart rate, and gathering the information regularly can make it easier to provide accurate information to healthcare professionals.
These wearable devices can come in the form of monitors worn on wrists or on ankles, but they can also be embedded directly into clothing.
The capabilities of wearable health technology are pretty amazing, but it’s even more amazing when you consider that the technology is still relatively new. It’s still a developing technology, and what it will be capable of in the future will far exceed its capabilities now. It’s feasible that wearable health tech could check important vitals and communicate those directly to a physician.
While it’s great that health wearables can give people a better look at their training and overall fitness, they don’t replace your doctor. There are plenty of things that your health device can’t tell you. Wearable technology that tracks your health can be a great tool, especially when used in conjunction with guidance from a physician.
