You are hard-pressed to find someone NOT sporting some kind of fitness tracker, smart-watch, or other wearable health technology product as you walk down the street. Rings, bands, watches, and other similar devices have exploded in popularity in the last decade due to the focus on increasing activity, tracking calories burned, and monitoring sleep as a means of weight loss and disease prevention.
Now if you’re wondering what these are, wearable technologies are devices that can be comfortably worn on one’s body and have a feature of tracking information on a real-time basis.
These devices are equipped with movement sensors to read your activity, speed, duration, etc. They even provide their users with health and fitness recommendations by syncing to their smartphones.
Smart Health watches were once used to only count steps, but now with the advancement in technology, it monitors its wearer’s heart rhythms and alerts those who might have a problem.
A Wearable ECG monitor measures the wearer’s electrocardiogram and sends the reading to the user’s doctors, and detects any kind of atrial issue. It’s also able to track speed and distance as well as tracks walks, runs, and swimming activities.
There are hundreds of varieties of such wearable tech in the market that help in keeping a check on the physical activities of a person. These have provided a whole new direction to the industry of health and fitness.
Now whether you are convinced that you need one or not is entirely up to you but here are some of the benefits that wearable technologies offer –
Activity Tracking- Your requirement may be as simple as just wanting to know how much you walked or ran and how many calories it burned for you. While many smartphones also provide apps with this information, there is the practical problem of the phone being in your pocket and therefore not reading the back and forth movement that your wrist can read. And that’s why a tracker on your wrist will give better information.
Heart Rate- In addition to basic activity, it’s always good to know how much you are exerting, so that you don’t over-do it. Heart rate tracking helps in this area. This works both for people who just started working-out and advanced athletes.
Data Storage- Trackers store data so that you can go back days or weeks or months to see how you are progressing. Mobile phone sync helps easy retrieval.
Friends- Its always nice to have shared goals and a bit of healthy competition. Trackers allow you to make groups with friends and track each other. A bit of fun while you workout!
Sleep- It is important to sleep well, and these trackers help you track all 3 kinds of sleep so you can see how your sleep quality is. You can then use your judgment to vary your activity periods and other lifestyle patterns to improve your sleep quality.
Stay Fit. Stay Healthy.
