How to Be Smarter than Your Smartwatch

Have you ever used a smartwatch? It’s an amazing gadget that monitors all sorts of things about your day: how many steps you’ve taken, how stressed you are at a given minute, how many calories you have burned, how much exercise you’ve done. That’s besides telling you the time of day and the number of messages on your phone (hence, the term “smart”), which is conveniently connected via Bluetooth.

It’s funny that I’ve been writing about regulating screentime and how tech use affects people and yet, here I am, going with the flow and putting on a smartwatch. I’m frankly amazed by technology and how many features a little device can pack, from a way to read your heart rate and record your weight, to monitoring sleep and calculating how much of it is “deep sleep.” Just today I discovered that the smart watch counts walking and moving around as a “break” and notes that the user must take a break every hour.

Wonders of technology

Using a smartwatch has taught me a couple of things. I’m coming from the point of view that a device is a tool that should help you do things that you do better. In my case I started using a smartwatch so I could check the time without bringing out my phone. Seeing the time helps me to judge if I’ve been doing one activity too long or if it’s time for a call or whatnot. That it can tell me I have received a message is a plus (which I hadn’t expected at first). It’s useful especially when I am waiting for a ride and my hands are full. I also tend to leave my phone in random places at home, so I often miss calls; having a watch connected to it lets me know that someone is calling.

But using a smartwatch has taught me also that there is a need to temper one's curiosity. Nowadays, with information just a Google search away (or rather a Gemini question away), it's easy for one to fall into a rabbit hole of health-related concerns. Have you heard of the story of the man who relied so much on AI that he followed the AI's advice to switch his table salt to sodium bromide (a swimming pool cleaner) to lessen his sodium intake? (He got diagnosed of bromide poisoning, got treatment, and survived.)

While many smartwatch users will probably not go down that rabbit hole, it pays to seek advice from your actual physician instead of using any technology—not just the smartwatch but also the AI prompter—to check on your health. No matter how “smart” the artificial intelligence may seem, it cannot replace a doctor. This is also true for discerning what health influencers say online; it pays to seek your doctor’s opinion over the influence of someone who doles out health info without knowing your particular case.

Use the smartwatch wisely

The website of The Keyhole Heart Clinic has a useful list in their article on how to use a smartwatch wisely. There are valuable insights for each item on the list; do read their article, which I have linked here. Below, I share some of my thoughts on them based on my own experiences.

1. Watch for trends, not one-offs. Sometimes smartwatch users can suffer from an overload of data, which they don’t need. The smartwatch helps better in the trend that it records instead of the data without any context. So, like my doctor says when I give her information about things I worry about, observe first if it goes away, and perhaps record the date and time you observed it, so you can see any return to normal or change. Then mention it during your check up at the doctor’s clinic.

2. Correlate with how you feel. The data that the watch collected can be valuable or not depending on the way it is gathered by the device. So, more than the reading, ask yourself how you feel. If you feel fine but the watch says you are not, perhaps you can adjust the fit of the watch and observe. If you don’t feel fine but the watch says you are, observe and ask your doctor. Always look at the data and compare it with how you feel.

3. Verify concerning data with proper medical tests. As the linked article says, the smartwatch is a health buddy, not a doctor. If it shows concerning data, have it checked with your doctor who can request a proper test for you. Plus, you get real advice from a professional who cares about your health. (AI does not have feelings.)

4. Don't self-medicate or change meds based on your watch alone. This one is scary! The fact that they put this in their list means it happens. Don’t self-medicate! Always just follow what your doctor tells you.

5. Consider your skin fit and settings. Of course, the smartwatch only really works well if it is fitted well. Consider also that the device is not perfect. Some devices claim to read blood pressure (mine does) but as to how it reads my BP, I have no idea because the wrist strap does not even tighten. Once, my husband used a wrist-type BP monitor and got a high reading that scared him; he rushed to the ER, and there, it turned out that there was a specific way of using the BP monitor and he got a faulty reading. If a wrist-type BP monitor cannot read accurately, what more a watch without the strap that inflates/deflates?

In the end, a smartwatch is useful so it’s nice to have one. It’s a good way to help monitor your movement (get that hourly break!) and motivate you to accomplish your step goals, get some exercise.

But don’t get worked up over the data gathered. It seems there are people who get stressed out unnecessarily about getting the perfect sleep or a better RHR (resting heart rate) reading. Mental wellness is also important in overall health—if wearing the watch and having all that data in your face just stresses you out, perhaps it is better to unstrap. I think the best is always to seek your doctor’s advice regularly so you can be confident with your overall health… and not let technology play doctor.

"Using a smartwatch has taught me that there is a need to temper one's curiosity. Nowadays, with information just a Google search away (or rather a Gemini question away), it's easy for one to fall into a rabbit hole of health-related concerns."