This is Technology Bytes, episode 90, for November 24th, 2024.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So this week has not been one of my better weeks.
I’ve been a little bit under the weather, or maybe a lot under the weather, and that just doesn’t happen very often to me.
So it brought up something that I hadn’t really paid a lot of attention to, except to know that it was there, and that is the Vitals app from Apple.
And what is that app?
Well, it’s something that they’ve added recently that tracks some overnight health metrics.
So in order to take advantage of these, you have to have an Apple watch, which I do, and you also have to wear it while you’re sleeping, which I also do.
And so the things that it monitors is your heart rate, your respiratory rate, your wrist temperature, your blood oxygen, and your sleep duration.
And then also in the Vitals app, it will measure training load.
That’s not part of the overnight health metrics, but it’s something you can track over time to see how you’re recovering, how hard the workouts are.
The idea, I think, there is to be able to adjust to make sure that your body is working appropriately and has the time to recover appropriately.
I haven’t really seen that yet or been able to use it, but the Vitals app does provide some great information.
So one of the things that the Vitals app does, obviously I read the list, but a couple of things I want to point out.
One is your wrist temperature.
So this is not a measurement of the actual temperature of your wrist, but it gets a baseline and it’s going to do the same kind of thing for the sleep apnea, I believe.
Um, as we get into iOS 18 more, but the wrist temperature is, are you off from what it was typical after having taken some data through a number of nights?
And I, sorry that I don’t know exactly how many that is.
And, and much of that is true for the rest of the measurements and what Apple is interested in providing in, in light of your health is to say, here’s where normal is.
And in technology, I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts.
There’s one guy that always says, if you don’t know what normal is, then you don’t know when something’s outside of normal and acting weird.
It may just be the way it’s always been, and you just noticed it.
And so that’s kind of the idea of these health metrics.
It’s like, I don’t know what normal is.
So that’s why I really liked the Apple watch because it provides that it has taken that data over time and let you know, here is where you usually are.
And as I said before, you end up wearing the watch at night so that it can take those measurements and you can turn on or off the notifications for the vitals app to say, Hey, yeah, I want to know when it’s out of, out of whack or whatever.
And, and so that’s pretty cool.
And there are lots of stories on the internet about how people have used that.
And today you get to hear mine.
So I’ve heard a number of stories of people who use the vitals app, who wear their watch overnight, and then the information that they get lets them know that things aren’t correct, whatever that may be.
And so this week I was sick and I was really curious if at some point my watch would pop up and say, Hey, things are not where they used to be or where they usually are, are you sure you’re okay?
And initially I didn’t see that, but then a number of hours after I got up on the day that I really didn’t feel well, that, um, my watch finally said, Hey, there were two outliers in your overnight vital metrics, your heart rate was high and your respiratory rate was high.
Both those things made a lot of sense to me because I was sick in such a way that, you know, you get the chills, you get hot.
I think my heart is kind of racing at that moment and also, um, I’m breathing funny because you can probably tell I’m still fighting this cold, but because of that and because of a stuffy nose and maybe a sore throat, you just breathe differently.
And so your respiratory rate is different.
And both of those things jumped out.
In fact, when I look back and was looking through it, it happened a couple times over that days where I wasn’t feeling super.
And the only thing that kind of surprised me was that my wrist temperature didn’t change, and I thought that might have changed because the way I was feeling and how I was sweating and the fever that I had, I assumed that that might be different as well, although the watch didn’t tell me it was.
I didn’t take my temperature, so I don’t really know if the watch missed something.
Um, I’m not very good at being sick and measuring things.
That’s why I like the Apple watch.
I let it do it for me.
But the reality is that the Vitals app shows you great information, shows you a load of information and also information you can share with healthcare providers and things like that.
But in this one instance, I think the watch told me I was sick and maybe I’m making it up because hindsight’s 20, 20, but something changed and I know that I was sick and I’m not surprised that the things that changed my heart rate and my respiratory rate changed because I was sick.
So great app.
I’m looking forward to not being sick anymore and not getting any notifications from it, that something is haywire.
But if something is, it will be nice to see if the Vitals app knows that something’s weird and out of bounds and lets me know either after the fact, because that’s really often what happens or lets me know that, Hey, you should be, be feeling poorly because of this.
And then maybe it comes on later.
And so I’m like, Oh, now I know why I feel this way, either way, I don’t think it’s the end all for health, but it is another step that Apple’s taking in making the watch have significant impact on the health of its users.
That is all I have for today.
As always, if you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybitesatmerigfamily.com.
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