Fitbit or Apple Watch for running? Garmin or Misfit for swimming? Sleep Cycle or Sleep as Android for sleep tracking? What about measuring heart rate, blood pressure, or tracking how to cut out stress from your life? Dozens of gadgets on the healthcare wearable market promise you a healthier lifestyle, but it’s easy to go astray in the jungle of digital health gadgets. Let me show you my top choices when it comes to health wearables and trackers.

Guidance in the health wearable universe

By now, I have tested and used more than a hundred devices and gadgets that measure health parameters or vital signs.

Thus, I know that finding the right healthcare wearable is a struggle. Sometimes technology in itself does not provide much help. For example, the Amazon Wearable marketplace has so many wearable health devices it makes even harder to choose. Also, there are many problems you might encounter. A bunch of technological problems might arise: the device requires constant attention, needs to be charged constantly, Bluetooth connections unpair randomly and synchronization might be a nightmare. And when you finally “master” technology, it takes the skills of an IT guru combined with that of a trained physician to interpret the data. Some makers of healthcare wearables are better than others at providing insight into how to live better instead of dumping meaningless data in the users’ lap.

So, here’s a list to find you the best health wearables and trackers. The ones that will cause you the least distress and the most positive outcomes according to my own experiences.

1) For having the best night’s sleep

You surely know from the tale of Sleeping Beauty that the survival of empires could depend on a good night’s sleep. Research shows sleep is very important to brain power, health, beauty, and overall well-being. That’s what sleep apps and trackers want to optimize. These usually measure when you fall asleep, wake up, how much time you spend in light or deep sleep, how your REM phase is. The best sleep sensors also possess a smart sleep alarm – the Holy Grail of sleep tracking – , the function to wake the user up at the best possible time.

My choice:

Fitbit Ionic: After Fitbit purchased Pebble in December 2016, The Medical Futurist expected to see a combination of Pebble’s excellent sleep tracking capabilities with Fitbit’s features. That’s the Ionic. It unifies all the experience and knowledge of Pebble and Fitbit, and as a consequence, its sleep tracking function is better than ever. It tracks duration and consistency; while it also shows your time in light, deep and REM sleep to help you better understand your sleep quality. Coupled with the Sleep As Android app, it can also provide the best smart sleep alarm on the market.

Sleep As Android: If you are new to sleep tracking, you don’t need to invest in a sleep sensor right away, a freely available sleep app is perfect for the first time period. Download Sleep As Android to your Android smartphone. It will reveal valuable insights about your sleep: it tracks light and deep sleep, records if you snore, if you talk in your sleep or have sleep abnormalities, and wake you up at the best possible time with its smart alarm.

sleep apnea treatment — Source: www.abcnews.go.com

2) For staying fit and energetic

Only if you spent your last years under a rock can happen that you didn’t hear about fitness and activity trackers, step counts and the 10,000-steps-a-day goal. Wearables and gadgets became a part of every enthusiastic sportsperson’s life. Most smartphones already have built-in apps for measuring your step count, running or biking. These activity trackers might also measure your pulse rate and create colorful graphs to help you figure out the best ways to keep your body fit and healthy.

My choice:

Polar Chest Strap: Polar offers advanced, GPS-based smartwatches as well as the highly efficient chest straps to train and analyze data like a pro. Not only does the Polar chest strap ensure accurate heart rate monitoring, but it also provides connectivity to many fitness apps, gym equipment, smartwatches, and other training devices – taking into account the gazillion of fitness tracking options out there. Moreover, it offers the orthostatic test to find out how much can you strain your capabilities – if you are recovering from an injury or just try to systemically build towards the body of your dreams.

health wearables — Source: www.imore.com

3) For getting rid of stress in your life

Stress is one of the biggest health risks in the 21^st century’s busy urban environment, full of constant impulses and distractions. A turbulent lifestyle comes with a price. No matter whether we’ are talking about heart disease, diabetes, depression, obesity, gastrointestinal problems or asthma, stress worsens them. Long hours in traffic jams, work deadlines, yelling bosses and colleagues, taking care of the kids, participating in social life. The list of stress factors could go on and on. They reduce your level of focus, lead to bad sleep and decrease emotional well-being. Luckily, there are already plenty of technological solutions for mental health out there to offer efficient stress management.

My choice:

PIP: a tiny device designed to give immediate feedback about your stress levels. Its smartphone app helps you learn how to calm down by having you transform a depressing scene into a happy one by actively relaxing. You just hold the PIP device between the thumb and index fingers to measure skin conductivity for a few minutes. The longer you can keep stress low, the faster the scene changes. The task takes me about 15 minutes, while my wife does it in about 4 minutes. There’s no competition here, and it’s no stressor for me, obviously, to think about how much better she is, so I’m working on better results!

mental health with technology — Source: www.healthtechinsider.com

4) For keeping blood pressure optimal

Hypertension is one of the most common chronic conditions throughout the world. In the United States, nearly 80 million Americans have high blood pressure. Many clinicians and patients use home blood pressure monitors to help manage high blood pressure, helping with everything from medication titration to supporting lifestyle modification.

My choice:

Withings Blood Pressure: one of the earliest connected devices available on the market. It consists of an app connecting through Bluetooth to the blood pressure monitor itself. The app measures heart rate, blood pressure and also counts the steps you take weekly. The Withings’ several useful features include the ability to set the monitor to take three measurements and report the average, which is consistent with medical recommendations. You can also set up reminders for various issues from taking your blood pressure to taking your medications.

iHealth Clear Blood Pressure Monitor: as I consider accurate blood pressure monitoring as one of the most important aspects of patient care at home, I decided to give you another choice. The FDA-approved iHealth Clear provides an audio reading of your systolic, diastolic, heart rate, and the range the results fall under. This way, also people with visual impairments can easily use the monitor. It’s also incredibly fast: you can see your readings in 20 seconds! If you are interested in more details, we reviewed the wearable health device here.

5) For keeping track of your weight

In an age when people often assume that the ‘perfect body image’ equals success and health, measuring weight might be the most unpleasant daily activity. Poor scales have no idea that they can be the starting point of daily disappointments – but they shouldn’t be! You have to learn to live in peace with your body but know that weight constitutes an important factor for your health. As you know, obesity might lead to heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and even stroke or cancer. On the other hand, being too skinny also leads to health problems such as anemia, low immune system or fertility issues. Thus, it is very important to find your optimum weight and the right body mass index (BMI) for yourself and to measure it on a regular basis.

My choice:

Fitbit Aria 2: a proud member of the Fitbit-family, a refreshed version of the Fitbit Area introduced in 2017. The smart scale tracks your weight, BMI, body fat percentage and lean mass, and uploads the information to a cloud-based account over your home Wi-Fi network. The Fitbit Aria 2 can sense up to eight different people, using an algorithm to remember longitudinal data. The best part is that it’s connected to the Fitbit app, where anyone can follow how weight changes as a result of their physical activity.

6) For keeping your heart healthy

Your heart, this fist-sized powerhouse beats 100,000 times per day – about 60 to 100 times each minute, pumping five or six quarts of blood each minute. As it is not a monotonous, robotic machine, higher and lower blood pressures can occur, just as the phenomenon of your ticker skipping a beat, especially when catching Jennifer Lawrence or Ryan Gosling sipping coffee on a random Italian terrace. If you allow smart gadgets to access, track and analyze your heart’s health, you can predict and even prevent a host of problems, including serious diseases such as a sudden heart attack.

My choice:

AliveCor’s Kardia: an FDA-approved, medical-grade ECG recorder, now with the option to have a 6-lead ECG outside the doctor’s office. It’s only a little bit thicker than your credit card, and it can tell you within a minute whether your ECG is normal, whether you possibly have atrial fibrillation (AFib) or experience some “unclassified” risks. A study found that coupled with an Apple Watch, the Kardia was able to detect AFib with very high sensitivity. Moreover, another research has shown that when paired with artificial intelligence technology, it was able to detect high potassium levels in blood non-invasively, which could signal diabetes or heart failure.

future of cardiology — Source: www.alivecor.com

7) For measuring your body temperature effectively

You surely remember vividly when you fell sick as a child, and the first thing your mom did was to check your temperature – which took long minutes of sitting still with a clinical thermometer stuck under your tongue or in your armpit. Luckily, recent innovations allow you to measure temperature in a fast and frustration-free way. Within seconds, you can tell whether you have a fever or you just listened to it too much on Spotify and the feeling got you.

My choice:

Viatom Checkme Pro: the closest device to date to the medical tricorder, a proper medical multitool. Not only does it measure your body temperature, but it also traces ECG, measures pulse rate and rhythm, oxygen saturation, systolic blood pressure, physical activity, and sleep. It only takes a second for the wearable health device to determine whether you have a fever. If you are curious about a detailed review, we analyzed the device from every possible aspect here.

Viatom Checkme Pro Review — Source: www.viatomtech.com

8) For helping to meditate well

As you already know, managing stress is vital to your health. There are many ways to effectively reduce your stress level, and you should definitely spend time finding the best possible way to do so. A popular method is meditation, which has been scientifically shown to reduce symptoms associated with stress, depression, and anxiety. Although you might not want technology to mess with your brain; it might actually help you to reach a calm and relaxing state of mind more easily.

My choice:

Muse headband: the brain sensing headband helps you get the most out of your meditation practice by giving you real-time biofeedback of what is going on in your mind. The Muse is not some dystopian headset trying to alter your brain. Instead, its maker, InteraXon, wants to train you to alter it yourself. The routine is simple. You put the Muse headset on, you complete the breathing exercises to the sound of waves (neutral), storms (bad) and tweeting birds (good) which indicate how focused and calm you are. If your mind is too active, the Muse gives you feedback to help you clear your thoughts.

Headspace app: if you would not buy a sensor, try this meditation app, which was even recommended by actress Emma Watson, our favorite Mae from brilliant sci-fi book, The Circle. Although that movie was a flop, Headspace is an app for you to keep in mind. It is the best choice for anyone who wants to learn how to meditate and how to release stress even during a busy day. The daily guide only takes 10 minutes, helps focus and release anxiety, and master meditation. It has hundreds of themed sessions; you can use reminders or practice your weak points. It’s an instant get for your mental wellbeing.

9) For exercising in the best way possible

If the tons of information coming from every possible media channel, magazine, and common sense cannot convince you about the health benefits of exercising, neither can I. However, you should know that according to the US National Cancer Institute, leisure-time physical activity is associated with longer life expectancy. And it doesn’t matter whether you like to use the treadmill, or do cross-fit or aerobic, some health wearables can help you make the most of the exercises.

My choice:

Gymwatch Fitness Tracker: a fitness tracker that is not about counting steps. Rather, it wants to become your personal fitness coach or your professional performance diagnostician. This is a health wearable that is built for the gym, specifically for people that head straight for the weights. Worn on arm or leg, it helps you build muscle in the correct way and makes sure you are completing those reps properly. The tracker gives you visual and verbal, real-time feedback, and also connects you with its community of like-minded fitness enthusiasts.

Gymwatch - Wearables for Christmas — Source: www.gymwatch.com

10) For improving your general well-being

A mistake people often make when wanting to use technology to live better is rushing to buy a wearable device. Devising a way to optimize your life is up to you. A wearable can only show you data, which won’t be actionable if you don’t know what should be changed.

There was no tracker, health sensor or wearable back in 1997 when I started to quantify my health to live to my fullest physical, emotional and mental capacity – for as long as possible, but at least beyond 100 years.

I started to collect data on a piece of paper – and as a starter, I advise you to do the same. (okay if that’s too old-school then in a spreadsheet). I gave a score from 1 to 10 to my mental, physical and emotional health, and I disciplined myself to follow through every day. Starting in 2016, an Excel spreadsheet took over the paper notes, and I’ve been refining the system step by step ever since – according to the technological changes or my changing needs. For example, based on my system, I figured out that I need daily exercise to keep my mental health, so in 2017, I intensively exercised 27 minutes on average every single day. Last year, I had 25 minutes of intensive exercise on average per day, and I trained 150 hours altogether.

Despite my numerous wearable medical devices, I still use such a spreadsheet every day. It helped me to understand how my body works, and understanding the problem itself is the first step towards the solution. Living better starts with vigilance about our health rather than using technology.

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