Wearables

“impact it's had having on my body i can monitor it on my rings i do blood tests which is important you don't want to just guess what's working what isn't but yeah i know two weeks sounds like a lot but it is”

“Figure out how much sleep your body needs at a minimum. You can do that using some of these rings. It's very good for that. Some people need eight hours. Some people need seven hours. Typically, if you're younger, you need more. The good thing about getting older is you need less typically.”

“I know from my own experiments gets me into deep sleep quickly. And so my efficiency is typically, according to these rings, in the 90s, 90%, sometimes close to 100%. And then I can get away with less, which is nice because I travel a lot.”

“And it really matters sound when you sleep. Yeah, as much, if not more, of any other factor. There's also screen usage, light, your pillow, and wearables. But the other thing is, we're spending more on sleep, and sleep is getting worse. And for this last 20 years, I've been doing science, coaching, and education that enhances human performance.”

“If you flag that and you want to move up the next step, then you kind of have a couple of different ways. And your two options are what we'll call wearables at home tech. These are typically, we'll call them $100 to $600 range. And then past that, you have a true medical option, which is a sleep hospital.”

“It is a giant pain. I know it, but it is probably worth it. If you want to use the wearable, you can do that. The problem with the wearables is numerous. They are awesome at things like awareness, at accountability. They're pretty good for things like total sleep time.”

“and my wearable said to me, You had a bad, really bad night's sleep. And I could kind of put two and two together and kind of establish cause and effect. And I could almost, I guess, test that then going forward and say, okay, don't do that, or maybe get in bed earlier, or the heat was way too high, whatever it might be.”

“B, and C yesterday, or I felt better today. That's not the only metric. And to be really clear, I'm not advocating to ditch all the wearables. We use them extensively. It's just really being careful about what data from those we pay attention to and what we don't.”

“to have more sleep. And for him, like that was the canary in the coal mine. So that's the type of stuff where wearables can be like, you can't replace that, not only from a data, but from a coaching perspective. It was so easy for me to communicate to him: here's your data.”

“So unfortunately, you have to sort of develop enough experience to be able to use that. One question we get commonly asked, which I think is just due to the rise of wearables that people have, is where does HRV fit into understanding where someone's at and if they should be training intensity, day off, et cetera?”

“Is that real? Yeah, yeah. They all do. They all do. That's part of the deal. They measure your heart rate, heart rate variable. Like those wearables? Like the wrist stuff? Yeah. Oh, really? So I'll tell you what I got in mind. I got… What the fuck?”

“And my skin temperature's minus one, so it texts all that shit. I… My problem with wearables is all these tattoos. So, like, this… Oh, okay. It's reading it now. This reads my heart rate. This is a Garmin. It reads my heart rate. Now it's not.”

“typically you know especially in this podcast i've talked a lot about vigorous intensity exercise and with regards to like heart rate measurements right like people are wearing these wearable devices and they're measuring their heart rate and usually it's like you're getting into the 80 max heart rate or above you know and and i it like you said you know it's it's really not”

“physical activity that do matter right so you're not you're not including that as well so why don't we get into this new study it was published published in nature communications wearable device-based date wearable device-based health equivalents of different physical activity intensities against mortality cardiometabolic disease and cancer very good study um maybe we”

“eight years on average um and the important part of the study is how they measured their physical activity it was measured using these wearable devices these wrist worn accelerometers they wore it for a week at the baseline of the study and so then they took all their physical activity from that one week and then you know that was used to establish these physical activity”

“right yeah so people might be confused and they again might be going back to heart rate like when they hear wearable device and they're thinking intensity i know my brain goes right there like heart rate can you kind of explain like how they were able to define light moderate and you know”

“way i age um so and i think maybe that's something we talk about later but i just think that this could and probably should change the way like these wearable device companies program their algorithms and program their the way they like gamify physical activity almost to enhance the um you know the rewarding aspects of the activity that”

“hinting at, you know, I'd say all along, we can also talk about some of the tech in wearable device as well. But I mean, I think the bottom line here, and I don't know what it takes to get updates in these types of guidelines.”

“these earlier self report studies, and just say, we have so much data from wearable devices. Now, we have big health data. I mean, you know, and we have companies like now Google and Aura and Fitbit, I think Google probably owns Fitbit, but it's just, everybody has a wearable these days.”

“To anyone that's interested in improving their health. And I do agree with you, I think we have so much data now on these wearable devices. And as I mentioned, you know, before, I'm on the Health Advisory Board for Google's Pixel. They did buy Fitbit's now Pixel. And I know that they're, they do publish a lot. Like they're one of the few groups that have this”

“wearable data that does academic publications and really are evidence-based. based. And so I know they're going to be probably working on this as well, at least updating some of their, what they're doing.”

“Yeah. And then the fitness trackers and apps. I mean, that's another thing, right? Yeah. I mean, I just think about, and again, I'm not in this sector and I'm not creating these devices, but I'm just imagining a scenario where, like how cool would it be if one, your wearable activity trackers kind of, and a lot of these do it.”

“metabolic point for that activity. I think wearable devices integrating that type of technology in there for the incentives that dopamine boosts, like you mentioned, would be fantastic. I mean, gamifying it. If throughout the day, like, oh, I sprinted to catch the bus and my watch logged it and I could look in there and see like, what was that?”

“And that's kind of why I wrote about it. I wrote about it on my sub stack. And like we're talking about it today. It reframed how I think about devices in a way. And I think it should reframe how a lot of people look at their wearable and the data that it is telling you. I'm not – this is obviously to say that you should ignore it.”

“Maybe think about what you and I talked about in the study today. And then say, did I do maybe more or less? Like should I do more? So just don't rely on your wearable solely. It should be a tool. But you should also evaluate, you know, in the context of your health goals what your activity means and what data your wearable are giving you.”

“I mean, really, really, there's no other way besides either looking. I mean, you can, you might in the future, might even be easier to look at the wearable data. Check your oxygen levels during the night. Check your heart rate during the night. See if you have these spikes that you used to have. And most importantly, see how you feel the next day.”

“and so getting that feedback can sometimes be helpful. Yeah, no, I mean, I, I will talk about wearables later. Yeah, we'll definitely get into that. Um, okay. I mean, any other of these, there's caffeine we could talk about. Yeah. I mean, caffeine, probably the most used psychoactive substance in the world.”

“We were there in the room. We were arguing over this. And those recommendations are not based on wearable data. They're based on, on average, how much sleep do you feel like you get? Because that is what's correlated with the health outcomes. The wearable data is a lot more murky in terms of its correlation with the health outcomes.”

“the wearable data can fall under that and you're totally fine. Like up to maybe an hour even under that and you should be totally fine. So that's, I trust it to be correct and accurate for what it is, but it doesn't mean it's measuring the same thing.”

“And so it's, you got to interpret it with that caution. So that's the caution with the sleep stages. If I show you what a brainwave tracing of sleep stages and a wearable tracing, that you can tell you could, if it's a good device, you can easily tell these are the same person on the same night if you looked at them.”

“And I was explaining this wearable stuff to her. And as we were developing our own trainings with this, and she came up with this way of thinking about it as a bathroom scale is not a weight loss program.”

“What happened? It's like it, that is the number it's probably best at. So if I'm going to make a decision based on wearables, the first number I'm looking at is the, how much sleep did I get and where did it detect the awakenings? Because those were probably correct, especially if they were more than a couple of minutes.”

“they were up and down. So they could use the wearable device to sort of de-stress a little bit and find the sleep that they may not remember. On the flip side, if it's detecting awakening, if you're trying to figure out why you're tired and you feel like you slept okay, you can look at the device and say like, oh, I see what's happening.”

“Kelly Barron. She's at the University of Utah. She's, she's, she's like me. She studies sleep and sleep health and wearables and stuff. And so she came up with this idea, um, putting a name to what we would see in clinic of people who overly fixated on the data to the point of where,”

“We will probably, I'll look at your wearable data, but most people in my world don't even do that. They don't look at your wearable decks. They don't care. If you have a problem with your sleep, I will ask you the questions I need to ask, do the tests I need to do to figure out what that problem is and use all the tools I have to fix that problem, irrespective of whatever your wearable says.”

“I would say most people probably need seven by self-report. That might mean six or six and a half on your wearable. Right. Okay. And then one practical tip for aligning lifestyle with your chronotype. Yeah. I mean, give yourself permission to schedule stuff out in different times.”