This article first appeared in Kannada in ಕ್ಷ ಕಿರಣ, Dr Shashikiran Umakanth’s column in the Vishwavani daily. The Inside Story is its English edition. ಈ ಲೇಖನವನ್ನು ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಓದಿ
Not so long ago, people wore a wristwatch for one simple reason: to check the time. Times have changed. Today people look at their watches not just to see what time it is, but to check how fast their heart is beating, how many steps they have walked, and how many hours they slept last night! In a way, the credit for bringing the day-to-day workings of our whole body onto a tiny screen on the wrist goes to the smartwatch, or the health tracker.
Health Awareness: A Fantastic Step Forward
Speaking as a physician, this is a genuinely welcome development. These gadgets are doing a great deal to make ordinary people care about their health. When you come home from the office in the evening and the watch reminds you, “Just 2,000 more steps to reach today’s goal!”, there are people who shake off their laziness and head out for a walk.
In the same way, scientific ideas such as what your resting heart rate should be, or how much oxygen there should be in your blood, are now understood by everyone. These are wonderful tools for taking steps towards better health.
The Dark Side of Data: Anxiety
But fire can be used to cook a meal, and it can also burn your hand, can’t it? This smart technology is no different. Overusing it is creating “health anxiety”, needless worry about one’s own health.
More and more of the people who come to the hospital every day now show me the report on their smartwatch or phone and ask, in a panic, “Doctor, it says I got only 40 minutes of deep sleep last night. And when I woke up this morning my heart rate was 98. Is this a sign that something is wrong with me?”
Sleep Tracking: What Is the Reality?
Let us take sleep as the example. In reality, to measure the stages of sleep accurately, such as deep sleep and dreaming sleep, you have to record the brainwaves: an EEG for the brain, much as we do an ECG for the heart. The watch on your wrist only guesses the quality of your sleep from your pulse and the movements of your hand. It is not very accurate.
If you wake up in the morning feeling fresh, it simply means you slept well. Yet some people, though they feel perfectly fresh, see “low sleep score” on the watch and at once start behaving as if tiredness and a headache have set in! This irony of creating an illness in the mind just by looking at data is what we call, in medical language, the “nocebo effect”.
Ignore the Daily Ups and Downs; Watch the Long-Term Trend
So how should these gadgets be used? There is a simple rule: “Ignore the small day-to-day changes; watch only the long-term trend.”
Let me give you a simple example. When you are driving, your eyes should be on the road ahead, not on the meters on the dashboard! Glancing at the dashboard now and then is good for safety, but if you drive while staring only at the meters, an accident is certain.
Our body, too, is a living system. If you ate something a little spicy last night, had a bad dream, or had tension at the office, your resting heart rate may be slightly higher the next morning. This is your body’s natural response, not a disease. There is no need to worry because you slept less one night, or because your heart rate went up a little one day.
But if your resting heart rate has kept rising steadily for a month, or the quality of your daily sleep keeps getting worse, then it is no longer a random blip. It is a “trend”. In such a situation, the sensible thing is to see a doctor and get advice.
A Last Word
A smartwatch is like a compass. It can show us the way to health, but it should never become a remote control that runs our lives. Take the health tracker’s data as information, not as a medical report.
Care about your health, but do not let that care turn into anxiety. A smartwatch should chase away your laziness, not your sleep!
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