The only answer to the question “how to live longer?”, which will not cause controversy and doubt, will disappoint - after all, it is
However, the tendency towards a conscious attitude towardshealth is still traceable, and many are thinking about the importance of a balanced diet, the need for vitamins and nutrients. Technological progress makes this task easier: a simple smartphone is able to show and analyze physical activity, count calories eaten and spent, collect blood biochemistry data and sound the alarm in case of a bad electrocardiogram. It remains only to figure out which indicators to monitor and how to do it. And do it.
Health trackers
Preventative health care starts withobservations. Most often, markers such as physical activity, sleep, nutrition, blood biochemistry, organic amino acids in urine, cardiac activity, blood oxygen levels, and genetic diseases are monitored.
This is a fairly large amount of data, whichIt is difficult for an ordinary person, not a physician, to process on their own. But if indicators for biochemistry, amino acids and genetics cannot be collected without the intervention of specialists, then everything else can be monitored using numerous applications and devices.
Fitness bracelets and smart watches have been able torecord your heart rate and the number of calories burned, analyze the quality and quantity of sleep and even measure an ECG, track your activity level, and the new Apple Watch series can even measure the level of oxygen in your blood.
Smart scales can calculate not only body weight, butand the percentage of body fat, as well as assess the overall condition. With the help of a special application, you can monitor these indicators and draw conclusions in the long term. Calorie counting apps are not so standalone, and you will have to manually enter the food eaten there. Despite this, their contribution is also significant: with enough scrupulousness, they will calculate the total number of calories, proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
Special applications for medical laboratoriesthey collect statistics and dynamics from tests - that is, to find out the result and its meaning, you no longer need to go to the doctor. Special programs and gadgets for monitoring glucose levels have also been developed for diabetics. Some come in the form of a chip or patch that updates measurements every 10 minutes.
Dozens of applications have been developed for womentracking the menstrual cycle. As a rule, these are self-learning programs that adapt to the user, and if something goes wrong, they notify. In addition, they can record changes in mood, weight and other important indicators, and thus compare well-being with the day of the cycle.
Separately, it is worth mentioning about the DNA test, sincegenetic research has already become an important part of complementing the health care picture. It is taken once in a lifetime, with results updated as progress is made and new discoveries help reinterpret DNA. Of course, such a test has its limitations: it does not indicate the presence of a disease, but the risks of chronic and genetic diseases. And, at the same time, knowledge about the possibility of a particular disease is already worth a lot. The key value of a DNA test is that its results make it clear where special health care is needed and where it is worth taking additional tests in a medical laboratory.
How accurate is tracker data
Blood glucose meters and other gadgets for measuring glucoseare certified, since errors are unacceptable here. In the case of the Apple Watch ECG, the data is accurate, but only covers basic metrics. This is enough to see abnormalities in a healthy person, but they cannot be diagnosed.
In DNA tests, interpretation can causequestions and change over time. For example, a genetic test can reveal a predisposition to cancer, but whether a person will get sick or not is still impossible to predict.
If we talk about applications, then here is the accuracyvaries, but it is not so critical. Smart weights shouldn't be 100% trusted when it comes to visceral fat either, but they'll show the big picture. Applications for calculating calories consumed can also give only an approximate picture, because here a lot depends on the person himself - will he always count the rice eaten to the gram and will he not forget to enter that snickers?
And, nevertheless, these inaccuracies are not so important,after all, these are not medical tests and will not be used to diagnose. They serve a general understanding of what is happening with the body of a healthy person and they do an excellent job with this task.
Benefits of constant health monitoring
There are many opinions about the benefits of health trackingskepticism. First of all, this concerns the inaccuracy of indicators, which was already mentioned above. Indeed, if we talk about smart watches or fitness bracelets, the light signal that registers the pulse is sometimes too weak or interference due to movement drowns it out. As a result, the pulse is either simply not measured, or with a large error.
There are works that demonstrate not onlyineffectiveness of trackers, but also even their opposite effect. For example, a study at the University of Pittsburgh involving 470 volunteers found that those who did not wear a tracker lost an average of 2.4 kg less than those who did.
However, other studies show thatRegular activity tracking helps you live a healthier lifestyle by simply getting users to move more. There is also common sense in this: a person who does not intend to regularly exercise and monitor his health is unlikely to monitor himself using a tracker.
However, significantly increaseLife expectancy using trackers is not yet possible. According to historian Yuval Noah Harari, today the average life expectancy is close to natural for Homo Sapiens - 80 years. And it will not be possible to significantly extend it in the 21st century.
What society expects from technology
Microelectronics and modern technologies inDigital health is developing very quickly. We are already one step away from determining the nutraceutical composition of a dish by appearance. This is due to the great interest of science in machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Machine learning helps in huge arraysfind patterns. For example, there are data from millions of patients, their medical records and analyzes. A person or even a group of people is not able to process such an amount of data and reveal the relationship and pattern. And technology can.
There will be even more tracking in the future, we willtrack even more indicators both within us and around us. The capabilities of various gadgets and smartphones to measure the state of the body and the environment will grow with the development of technology: we will be able to determine the purity of the air, its humidity, the state of water, and much more.
How the coronavirus affected the industry
Coronavirus has accelerated many processes thatso they were launched a long time ago. For example, Apple's technology for measuring blood oxygen levels was not created within a couple of months of the pandemic, but was apparently developed in advance. In other areas, you can also see a certain breakthrough caused by the epidemic, but it cannot be said that thanks to COVID-19, many gadgets and new technologies have appeared on the market.
Everything related to the virus has really becomedevelop rapidly due to social necessity. We are, of course, not talking about masks, but, for example, mobile air purification devices have become more relevant than ever. Their production has increased greatly over the past six months to a year, and if you go to any online store, you can find dozens of types of such gadgets.
Immunity Support Tools and Technologiesalso got a boost. Even ginger and lemon have risen in price several times, let alone gadgets related to the control and enhancement of immunity, and even more so express tests for a virus or antibodies.
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