I Track My Health Data Nonstop — Is This A Problem?

From the moment I wake up, I begin tracking. I track my steps, calories burned, sleep quality, period, and ovulation. I track my runs on Strava and my heart rate, blood oxygen and performance zones. I sometimes track my food, my protein goals, and how much water I’ve drunk in a day. I source the majority of my health metrics from my Apple Watch but I am saving up for an Oura Ring (round-the-clock insights in jewellery form? Yes, please) and I’m more than due to try a glucose tracker. Frankly, I don’t need to worry about artificial intelligence taking over the human race because I AM ROBOT. To be clear, I have no negative associations with all my tracking — I genuinely find it fun and empowering — but to the ears of my loved ones, it all sounds “a bit much.” Or as my friend described it, “living life inside an Excel spreadsheet”. While tracking my health data has become embedded into my everyday life, it’s suggested that it could lead to health anxiety over time. Is there a thing about knowing too much about ourselves?

Many praise wearables for giving people more control over their health outcomes (last year, the UK government proposed plans to give wearables to millions of NHS patients in England), yet some health researchers warn that a dependence on wearable technology can cause anxiety. In research published last year, The Journal of American Heart Association found that people who used wearable technology to monitor heart condition atrial fibrillation (AF), began showing signs of anxious behaviour such as “obsessive symptom monitoring.” Doctors speaking to the BBC also warned that wearable tech can encourage “over-monitoring” your body and even “hypochondria.” “I’m concerned that we will be encouraging people to monitor everything all the time, and see their doctor every time the machine thinks they’re ill, rather than when they think they’re ill,” Dr Salisbury told BBC News, clarifying that wearables also encourage healthy habits such as walking every day. 

It was when I first came across Bryan Johnson, the millionaire tech entrepreneur trying to reverse ageing, that I started to question the long-term impacts of incessant tracking. In the Netflix documentary, Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants To Live Forever, Johnson, 47, shares how he spends $2 million a year in an attempt to stay youthful; it is a full-time dedication. He detailed an intense regimen of taking 54 supplements daily, tracking his blood oxygen, brainwaves, and erections. He gets regular blood tests and MRI scans. And there was that whole weird thing of taking blood from his teenage son. Johnson — chiselled-bodied and smooth like a wax figure — has become obsessed with his own immortality and has an insatiable drive for more data. None of this data would really help prolong the lives of people globally, just himself. Of course, Johnson’s experiment is extreme compared to completing your movement, exercise and stand goals (your “rings”) on your Apple Watch daily. Yet, it does expose how access to intelligent health technology inspires deeper introspection into your health. And with everything we consume, there are pros and cons. 

My wearable tracker got me through my first half-marathon in 2022 and the months of training before it. As I recover from a recent surgery, my Apple Watch is instrumental in my latest fitness journey — every day so far has become an opportunity to “complete my rings” and get my steps in. When my watch buzzes at me to “stand” or finish my “exercise goal”, I do it because not doing it would be a letdown. In the age of “75 Hard” fitness challenges and 365 running streaks, my tracking habits have always felt like a very normal way to engage with health and wellness trends. Now, I am not entirely convinced. 

Why do I like tracking so much? A friend once described me as the child who got the most gold stars by their name in school — and this is true. Completing 10K steps in a day feels like something I can win. Beating my last 5K time is progress I can measure and celebrate — it’s proof of my own progress. Beyond my need to succeed, tracking is evidence that I am taking some control of my health, especially when I was dealing with chronic health issues out of my control. I can’t hide from the health data — good or bad — as it’s there in plain sight on my wrist. 

To understand my relationship with tracking, I spoke to Elloise Skinner, a psychotherapist who specialises in existential therapy and has an extensive background in fitness, teaching pilates and blending physical and mental wellbeing into her work. Skinner believes wearable technology can offer a sense of control over our health outcomes. 

“One of the most important things in terms of our wellbeing and being in the world and feeling like settled and optimistic and fulfilled in life is having a sense of autonomy — the sense that we can make decisions in the world that actually impacts on our lives, that we're in control of the choices that we make and the information that we have,” says Skinner to Refinery29. “That kind of sense of personal autonomy can be so fundamental in feeling like we have a life that is our own. And so I think health tracking can actually be quite empowering, in that respect, in the sense that we can track metrics that help us have a sense of agency over what we're doing.”

The desire to have more autonomy over our health outcomes has grown quickly over the last five years. I bought my Apple Watch during the first lockdown of the pandemic when, understandably, health anxiety was at its peak. I wasn’t alone. It’s estimated that 100 million Apple Watches are in use worldwide (Apple don’t officially release sales figures, but this number is unsurprising) and devices such as Whoop and Oura Rings have become increasingly popular for in-depth data into how well we sleep, monitor physical activity, menstrual cycles and stress. With more people said to be concerned about sleeplessness than ever before and young adults reporting high levels of stress and frequent burnout, wearables feel like a helpful tool. 

When does tracking your health data raise a red flag for anxiety levels? The NHS defines health anxiety as “when you spend so much time worrying you're ill, or going to get ill, that it starts to take over your life.” Health anxiety is also considered a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a mental health condition where you have recurring thoughts and repetitive behaviours that you cannot control.

“[Health anxiety] can present itself in many different forms, but it is this sense of feeling worried about information that you're getting about your health, even though you don't necessarily have a link between that data and a bad state of health,” adds Skinner. 

Understanding the link between wearable technology and health anxiety is still ongoing but concerns are growing amongst doctors and neuroscientists, many of whom believe fitness trackers encourage over-exercising and obsessive thoughts about health. 

“I would agree that based on both evidence and personal experience, wearable trackers can exacerbate anxiety in some users by fostering hypervigilance around biometric data. This effect can happen in both sexes, but appears more pronounced in women,” says Dr. Sophie Shotter, over email. Dr Shotter is an aesthetics doctor with over fifteen years of medical experience and has a specialist interested in wellness, via her science-driven podcast, Age Well.

Dr. Shotter says women’s increased hyper-vigilance to biometric data may be due to “greater physiological variability” due to hormonal cycles and menstrual changes that lead to more “data fluctuations” and perceived “red flags”. Due to this variability, she warns that those with fertility concerns could be vulnerable to false expectations, obsessive use and stress when tracking their ovulation and menstrual data.

“The psychological impact is often underreported by device manufacturers, but small-scale qualitative and cross-sectional studies do link wearables with increased stress, obsessive checking, and guilt, particularly when users feel they're 'failing’ to meet targets,” says Dr Shotter.

Similarly, food tracking and diet apps have been advised against for those dealing with eating disorders. If you use wearable tech to monitor your health and fitness, how do you know you’re not risking your mental health?

“For some people, the feeling that information [about their health] gives them is a sense of control that can also tip over into sort of an obsessive state of mind,” explains Skinner. “Your tracking may look like not being able to go outside of the rules or boundaries that you set for yourself. And I think that can certainly be the case where you're holding on to those metrics as a way to control health outcomes. Because obviously, even though you can track things, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to achieve a certain health outcome. You're not necessarily going to be healthier if you're tracking a certain metric, but it can give you that sense of sort of false control.” 

Wearable tech is giving users more access to comprehensive bio-data than ever before, and for me, the insights are more detailed than I previously felt I needed to know until I purchased one. It’s as if these trackers know our health better than we do. 

“I had an example myself just yesterday where my Oura ring flagged that I had major symptoms of illness because I had one night where my HRV [Heart rate variability] was much lower than normal,” shares Dr. Shotter. “ I’m not an anxious person, but it made me think, ‘Oh gosh, am I getting sick?’. Of course I wasn’t, it was simply that I’d slept in a warmer bedroom than normal.”

All of the experts I spoke to believe wearable technology can be a useful tool when it comes to tracking physical activity and say that while these trackers can give beneficial insights into your health shouldn’t be solely used for rigid goal-setting.

“If someone started off enjoying [tracking their health] but now they feel like they can't stop. That would be a warning sign,” adds Skinner “Also, if you feel like you can't skip a day or you don't have any flexibility — say you forget to track for the day because you're at a festival or you're on holiday or whatever — how does that make you feel? If you can't just skip it and pick it back up, that would also be a concern.”

Truthfully, when I am extremely committed to an exercise regime, I can beat myself up when I have not stuck by the arbitrary rules I’ve set for myself. I am at the mercy of my Apple Watch rings. But ultimately, I understand that life is meant to be enjoyed, not just tracked — and the best indicator of my overall health is simply how I feel.