yo yo yo dr. yo from ECA wellness so it's a beautiful day outside just got back from a
sweaty run and I wanted to share with you guys a text message I just got for my buddy Lee and
he says hey man I just bought a new Fitness watch and I saw it had a bright green light
on the back of it you know anything about it lol now I'm not sure why he always writes lol
after every one of his sentences so this guy will be like hey um you want to grab dinner
lol or hey what are you doing watching the ballgame lol now my understanding of lol is
its laugh out loud but not really sure what grabbing dinner what's so funny about it but
before I answer Lee's question I want to jump in the shower and you guys check out the intro
so the green light in the back oh please watch it's based on a technology called photo
plethysmography or PPG PPG is a non-invasive way to measure health data and to give us biometrical
information it works by an optical sensor in your watch that shoots a light onto the surface of your
skin so when this light reaches your blood vessel some of the light is reflected back
to a photo detector on the watch the intensity of light captures a waveform of the amount of
blood in your blood vessel so depending on the color of light used you can analyze and capture
different biometrics and waveforms since the depth of penetration of light is dependent on
wavelength red light with a longer wavelength has increased depth of penetration than the shorter
green light green light PPG technology is what the Apple watch and Fitbit used to measure heart rate
but some trackers like bio strap use red light PPG for more in-depth measurements so which light is
better at capturing health data well it depends on what kind of data are you looking for green
light PPG is resilient to motion so it is great at measuring accurate heart rate during exercise
but their drawbacks to green light ppg1 it has a limited depth of penetration so since blood
vessels are thin at the wrists any measurements you take at the wrist might be inaccurate number
two the limited depth of penetration also means a limitation on what you can measure you're mostly
limited to accurately measuring an active heart rate with a green light PPG number three since
green light is more absorbed by darker skin tattoos and freckles these individuals have
more inaccuracies in their measurements so how does red light compare to green light well red
light PPG penetrates the skin ten times deeper than green light so what this means is you can
get more clinically relevant data and also measure it at the rest number two since red
light is transparent to skin pigment melanin differences in skin color freckles and tattoos
don't affect your measurements but they're also drawbacks to red light red light PPG is
extremely sensitive to motion and movement so what this means is doing exercise or any any
activity what's going to happen is you're going to get inaccuracies in your readings
number two because red light is sensitive to environmental noise data can only be captured
every few minutes so second by second reading such as active heart rate can be difficult to
record so until the technology improves where one light source can give us comprehensive clinically
accurate data my recommendation is to utilize both light sources at EC a wellness we're using
a green light PPG active heart rate monitor and a red light PPG ECA bio strap to give us clinically
accurate biometric data if you have any questions related to this topic or you have a friend that
also writes lol after every sentence send me a message down below in the comment section or
drop me a message on EC a wellness on Instagram thanks so much for watching if you like this
video hit the like button and subscribe below and I will see you guys in the next video ciao