Wearable technology is not just about fitness. I think sometimes what we see
the media do is that they push it into a particular category. So what we've
begun to recognise is that wearable technology is somehow exclusively for
fitness. But it's not; it's actually about lifestyle, and I think making sure that
you select the right wearable tech to support you in whatever your goal is - I
think that's the crucial aspect to it. So it's about finding what works for you.
It's not solely about fitness: actually it's about behavioral
modification; it's about lifestyle; it's about actually making differences to
small aspects of it.
The greatest thing about wearables is when it comes to
physical activity they often tell you how little you're doing. I think many of
us think that we're very very active, and that really runs to the
lifestyle habit of stress, is that we apportion stress with activity, which
is very a different thing. And I think the first time you wear wearable
tech and you look at things like step count or distance traveled or even
things like calories burned, often what you do is you have a realisation of how
little we actually do during the day, particularly if we've got sedentary jobs.
Because much of our physical activity in the past was based around vocational
activity - what we did at work. Nowadays we live in a service sector environment:
very little activity at work, lots of sitting down. So I think the one great
thing is it's not initially about fitness, unless
that's your goal. I think what it will do is it will just paint a picture for you
of what you're currently doing and when and how you're doing that.
This is where the advances of wearable have come in really. What we started to
do is we started to integrate all of the behaviour within single devices. So what
you can now do with with Fitbit for example - particularly if you can
interface with a smartphone if you've got a smartphone or you've got a
computer - then what you can do is you can actually track your nutrition; you can
track your diet; and you can also track hydration. In doing that what you can
see is that balance between energy expenditure - how much energy we're
expending with regards to physical activity, for example - and energy
consumption: what are we consuming, what foodstuffs, what are the quantity of
calories that were actually consuming? And we can look at that balance between
energy consumption and energy expenditure. Wearable tech is a
wonderful way to do that because it integrates everything into a
single space.One of the big problems we have in life is that these
things aren't necessarily rocket science, but what they're doing is they're
making it simple; they're making it accessible; and they're making it very
very easy to use, and that really is the key when we're looking for behaviour
change.
Stress is an interesting one because invariably in life what we are
trying to do is it's a balance between stress and recovery. Now that stress
comes in many forms, so there is physical stress - when we exercise for example - but
there's also stress from home life, from friendships, from work. There's lots of
stressors and what we're trying to do is optimise recovery, so
that we can actually come into equilibrium. And in that environment it
effectively doesn't become maladaptive; we don't create problems for ourselves.
So there are two things where wearables can be very valuable in that
environment. Number one is the advancements, where for example on the
Fitbit you've got this thing called relax.
And what it'll do is it will simply just run through a very simple set of
exercises where you just take those moments in the day when you feel very
stressed. And what it can do is just give you the opportunity to de-stress, just to
relax through some very simple breathing exercises. Of course what it also does
is it will monitor your sleep, in other words your recovery. Sleep is
incredibly important because it's central to your recovery. If you're
getting poor sleep you're effectively getting poor recovery. So by monitoring
sleep, by identifying when you're getting good sleep bad sleep, when there's lots
of movement during sleep, when there's lots of wakeful periods, what you can do
is you can make changes to that sleep environment. You can improve your sleep
hygiene, so therefore improve your recovery. So wearable tech can
be a really valuable tool when it comes to stress.