Life With Chronic Conditions: Do I need a smartwatch for better health?

This past week I was offered two “free” Apple Watches as part of changing my cell phone plan. The sales person was telling me all the wonderful bells and whistles it has and how it could save my life, my husbands, or my kids.

 

I use to think I wanted an Apple Watch just to keep track of my steps, but realized my phone works quite well in that regard.  I asked my family and they all had the same reaction, “Why do I want to be that obsessed about my health?” They all felt it would make them more neurotic with every blip and said, “no thanks.” As for me, I didn’t want to pay an extra $40 a month for “free” phones.

 

An aside, all these “free” offers have loop holes. If they offer you a free iPad, watches or even a phone, they’re adding other lines etc. on your service and you ultimately pay for the free item and then some. So buyer beware.

 

An article on Digital Trends seemed to echo what my family was saying. Dr. Lindsey Rosman, a clinical health psychologist and an assistant professor of cardiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says her clinic has observed a growing number of patients with concerns about the information they receive from their smartwatches.

For example, in one particularly extreme case that Rosman wrote about in a recent research paper, a 70-year-old woman suffering from atrial fibrillation performed a staggering 916 ECGs on her watch in a single year, resulting in “12 ambulatory clinic and emergency department visits and numerous telephone calls to health care providers.”

The smartwatch data led to no alterations in the woman’s existing medical treatment, but she was ultimately diagnosed with health anxiety since her constant worry and frequent health care visits had a “profoundly negative impact on her mental health, relationships, and quality of life.”…while the latest wearables are capable of detecting certain health issues, they’re still no match for professional health care devices. Even a slight wrist movement, for instance, is enough to trigger an “inconclusive” test warning on an Apple Watch — which can easily be misinterpreted as a problematic reading….

 

Reducing a person’s health down to arbitrary figures like step goals without a proper understanding of one’s personal health, she adds, can lead people to engage in forms of “self-monitoring that has been linked with disordered eating and/or exercising.”

 

Many people affected by chronic conditions also have financial issues. This is also true for older Americans. At the end of the day, approach wearing a smartwatch with caution as it could become an unnecessary expense that you may never really use and/or find it a source of stress.

 

 If you can afford a smart watch and the accompanying plan to begin with, and you aren’t going to get too anxious about it, that’s one thing. However, you can use your phone for a variety of items. Check out Use your phone for better health.

 

 In short, think it through before you purchase a smartwatch.