Niki Bezzant taps into ‘biohacking’ through health trackers, and asks a dietitian if they really do help.
No doubt, you’ve been exposed to social media influencers promoting various ways you can track aspects of your health. Whether it’s an app to track your sleep; a ring or watch to track your heart rate, temperature, movement and more; a diet diary or a fitness tracker, we live in an information age when it comes to health.
So-called ‘biohackers’ are measuring every possible aspect of their bodies with the aim of cheating death (or at least gaining a few more years). And there’s a ton of marketers with products to sell, all aimed at helping us monitor and track our health.
So, what’s worth monitoring and what’s too much information? Are there trackers that are health-enhancing tools? And what aspects of our health should we be keeping an eye on?
“Some people are fascinated by data,” says dietitian Kate Ellison, who’s aware some of us are glued to our health tracking devices. “They absolutely love to know what’s going on 24-7.”
The question she and other health experts ask is how we’re interpreting all that data.
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“I think probably in some cases it feels a little bit arbitrary,” Kate notes. “I think whatever you are monitoring does need to be meaningful, because it does take time and energy to do it.”
For some, monitoring might be useful to keep an eye on a health condition. “Of course things like blood pressure are important for some people to monitor,” Kate says. “And things like sleep apnoea – if you’ve got breathing difficulties when you sleep, you might be looking at oxygen levels or using CPAP machines or monitors that are telling you how sleep is going.
Some people might benefit from measuring their heart rate if they have certain conditions that may give them an irregular heart rate. And probably monitoring steps and physical activity is a good thing to do, because that could be motivating to exercise.”
Check out the latest issue of Good magazine – on sale at all good supermarkets and bookstores – for more wellbeing articles!
