The Food Medic - S10 Ask Dr Hazel: Can fitness trackers cause health anxiety?

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

This weeks listener question is : “I understand that fitness tracking technology can really help to understand what's going on in our bodies, giving us better awareness so that we can take action. However, can tracking take its toll?”If you would like to submit a question to the podcast, please send your voice recorded question to [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Hello and welcome back to Ask Dr. Hazel, our mini episodes that drop each week between our main episodes where I answer all your burning questions. So let's jump into this week's listener question.

Hi Hazel, I really wanted to get your take on fitness tracking technology and how to use it to optimize your health. It's something I've been on the fence about because of past experience of using pedometers during lockdown for example and beating myself up for not hitting my goals like step count or activity level. I understand that fitness tracking technology can really help to understand what's going on in our bodies, giving us better awareness so that we can take action. However, can tracking take its toll? For example, I might wake up and see that I've not gotten enough sleep that night. You know, it could worry me and have the opposite effect of knowing that I didn't have enough sleep that night.

And therefore the following night might be up thinking that I've not had enough sleep or I didn't get enough recovery time and it becomes more of a negative than a positive. This is maybe more about mindset, but I'd be interested to get your thoughts and advice on the use of metrics, not only for our physical health, but mental health as well. I'm loving all these questions related to fitness, and I'm loving the fact that a lot of you are taking your health really seriously. But this question does raise a really important point, and I'm really excited to get into it in a bit more detail. So on the whole, research suggests that wearables tend to lead to positive improvements in our health behaviours, like physical activity levels, for example, which I guess is pretty obvious. However, there's not a huge amount of research looking at the psychological impact of these wearables.

Now, when I was doing my research for this question, there's quite a few anecdotal reports in the media. For example, an article published in The Conversation reported results of a survey that indicated that users experienced feelings of guilt and pressure to achieve their daily goals, like their step count, with some experiencing such intense negative emotions that they viewed their wearable as the enemy. Now, of the limited research we do have, using a wearable seems to be mostly positive for a lot of people, providing multiple psychological benefits and very few negative psychological implications, although there are a few exceptions, of course.

Some researchers found that while wearables can make us more active, they can sometimes reduce our enjoyment for the activity that we're doing. Now, you mentioned sleep sleep and actually in 2017 the term orthosomnia was coined in a paper which describes the preoccupation with improving or perfecting wearable sleep data. This was because the authors were finding that with some of their patients sleep trackers were reinforcing sleep related anxiety and perfectionism. So to answer your question, yes, tracking any body metric can cause anxiety or negative outcomes but it is very individual. So if you find your smartwatch or wearable is making you feel bad or guilty or you're fixated

on a specific health goal then perhaps it's not a healthy option for you and it may cause more harm than good. Sometimes the best tracker is listening to your own body and looking at the bigger picture thinking about things like did you sleep well and wake up refreshed? Did you move your body on most days of the week? Did you aim to have one to two portions of veggies at each meal? And remembering that overall health also includes our mental health and peace of mind and sometimes the healthiest thing will be skipping a workout or staying up late to catch up with your best friend who's been out of town or to have a slice of cake on your birthday. So I'm keen to hear everyone else's thoughts on this. How was your relationship with your fitness wearable?

Is it mostly positive or has it ever led to feelings of guilt or negativity? Please let us know and that's all from me. See you again next time.