Over the past decade, health and wellness has been at the forefront of personal well-being more than ever. While diets to lose or gain weight have, of course, been around much longer, thanks to the ever-growing reliance on personal digital devices, the wellness industry looks very different today. What started off as basic calorie counting or BMI monitoring by a nutritionist switched to apps on your smartphone. Then came the Apple Watch in 2015, setting the trend of wearable health devices in motion, combining fashion and wellness. According to an Above Avalon article, as of early 2021, 100 million people wore an Apple Watch globally. As multiple brands start to release wearable devices across price points–to help us track everything from sleep patterns to blood sugar levels–the real question is, are they essential?
While tracking your health statistics may seem interesting at first, it’s important to evaluate the reasons why you’ve decided to take the plunge. “We’ve just forgotten to be human ‘beings’ and we’ve become human ‘doings’ because we’re addicted to constantly doing things to stimulate ourselves,” says Rashi Chowdhary, nutritionist and formulator, Protein Bakeshop. “We’ve developed this belief system, which has a lot to do with the social media overload, that we are not enough or that we’re incomplete, which creates a constant sense of urgency. That’s when we start to do things like constantly monitoring our sleep and other health data.” Simran Valecha, a fitness trainer and expert, agrees. “People love having control of their lives and their health, and health data tracking apps and devices serve this purpose. Using these apps and devices have become such a trend that even non-athletes now wear smart watches.”
The most positive way to think of data trackers is as tools to inform you about what goes on in your body and make changes accordingly. However, listening to your body and mind is just as important. “A machine can tell me I’ve lost two kilos of body fat, but if my clothes don’t tell me that or I don't feel it, what’s the point?” asks Chowdhary. “An app can tell me that my basal temperature is high, which means I’m close to my period, but if my period is delayed due to another factor, my body is already telling me that, which is something an app can’t.”
The debate about whether health data trackers do more harm or good comes down to one very important factor: your mental health. “If you’re constantly tracking your calories and macros, you can tend to fear food groups like carbs and fats, because every time you’re eating something, you're not in the moment, your brain is trying to dissect the food too much,” says Chowdhary. “It’s nice to get an overview but when we micromanage everything, the process has a bad impact on your relationship with food.”
Valecha experienced a negative impact on her mental health first-hand when she tried using a calorie-counting app for over a year in her teenage years. “My obsession reached a point of no return. I couldn't enjoy a glass of wine without counting the calories, I felt the need to burn the additional 60 calories after the drink and I constantly focused on my calorie intake target. With my knowledge and expertise now, I know better. However, as a 19-year old girl who was flooded with various trends on the Internet, the app only added to the mix that eventually ruined my relationship with food and my body.” Chowdhary adds, “If an app is constantly moving you into fight or flight mode, where you’re constantly stressing about the information it's giving you, then it is working against you.”
Have you noticed people on your Instagram feed wearing a black circular patch on their arms? That’s the Ultrahuman M1, a metabolic health tracker that helps users understand how food and exercise affects them. The continuous glucose monitor (CGM) particularly tracks your blood sugar levels, which is a biomarker that is impacted by everything from your gut health to the food you consume, your stress levels and the time of the day. It provides real-time data of when you’re experiencing a blood sugar spike and also prompts you to take a walk to optimise these levels. “By using glucose and other biomarkers, Ultrahuman is helping people improve their energy levels, lose fat and avoid metabolic disorders,” says co-founder and CEO Mohit Kumar. This month, the company is launching a ring that can help people track more efficiently too.
“Health is highly personal as each individual’s body is vastly different from another,” says Kumar. “While with diet plans, understanding of macros and micronutrients is important, it is also vital to quantify how your body is reacting to various situations. CGM devices, coupled with key insights, empower people to learn more about their bodies. With platforms such as Ultrahuman that focus on metabolic fitness, users can now see exactly how their glucose levels are behaving with their food intake and identify the right fuel sources for their body. Individuals can quantify their food through features on Ultrahuman such as a food score, i.e. rating food on a scale of 1-10 based on how good or bad the food was for their glucose levels. This helps users analyse and tweak their diets, cutting out low-scoring foods and including better scoring foods.”
Chowdhary used a CGM device for 15 days to monitor her glucose levels and experienced positive results. “It really helped me because I could see how my blood sugar levels are not directly related to the food I eat . If I received a stressful email that I couldn't respond to because I was in another meeting, within an hour my blood sugar levels increased. The days I was not sleeping well, my blood sugar went up. It’s important to be balanced about this, take the information and use it to your advantage to make dietary and lifestyle changes.”