How Wearable Health Trackers Can Help Build Healthy Habits

Most people know the importance of positive health behaviors such as eating a healthy diet, exercising more frequently, and getting adequate sleep. However, maintaining healthy habits is all too often a challenge.

Wearable health-tracking devices may help patients and their healthcare providers. These monitoring devices provide insight and information into a wide range of health habits and data. They can be invaluable for those learning to manage certain new health conditions with diet and lifestyle changes. They also provide clinicians with accurate data that can enhance patient care.

In addition to tracking activity and vital signs, wearable health trackers help create personalized diet and supplement plans. Tracking factors like heart rate, sleep quality, and daily activity helps users understand their personal nutrition needs. This bio-individual approach enables informed decisions on supplements, diet and lifestyle choices. Here’s a look at some of the latest technology, who can benefit from health monitoring devices, and how to use them as wellness or disease management tools.

Options for Health Monitoring Devices

Wearable health tracking devices have come a long way since the clip-on pedometer — although that is still a popular option for many who wish to track daily movement. The market has expanded to include devices that track and gather information about specific activity types, nutrition, calories burned, sleep quality and quantity, body temperature, heart rate and function, blood pressure, glucose, posture, and more.

These devices come in many forms, including:

• Bracelets or wristbands
• Clip-on devices
• Clothing with embedded sensors
• Continuous glucose monitors
• Rings
• Smartwatches

They have built-in sensors that work like mini-computers, collecting and analyzing health information while you wear them.

Potential Benefits of Health Tracking Devices

Wearable devices can help educate you about your health habits, identify areas for improvement, and empower you to make changes. Some devices allow users to download data collected over time, which helps identify trends or share information with healthcare providers.

Health tracking devices also benefit clinician care because they provide objective, real-time data about patient health habits. The data collected is far more accurate than patient-reported information. It also allows healthcare practitioners to follow, coach, and encourage patients and tailor treatment programs.

Recent studies have found possible benefits for tracking and analyzing:¹

• Limb and overall movement in people with Parkinson’s disease, muscular sclerosis, and a history of stroke.
• Medication adherence in patients with diabetes and hypertension.
• Pressure on the bottom of the feet in people with diabetic foot ulcers.
• Heart and respiratory rate and ECG for ischemic heart disease patients.
• Step count, distance, and calories for people with diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, liver disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, and other chronic health conditions.

Wearable tracking devices are still relatively new in healthcare, so there is limited research on their effectiveness. However, evidence suggests that they can help patients make mild improvements in their health with no risk or downside.¹

They appear to have the most significant impact on improving physical activity, body composition, and fitness, according to a 2022 systematic review in The Lancet Digital Health that examined data from nearly 164,000 subjects of all ages in clinical and non-clinical populations. Researchers equated improvements to approximately 1,800 extra steps per day, 40 extra minutes per day of walking, and reductions of roughly 2.2 pounds in body weight.² However, that same study found only small or non-significant improvements in blood pressure, cholesterol, A1C, quality of life, and pain.²

Other studies have suggested that users may have better health outcomes if healthcare providers are involved in reviewing the data and encouraging patients.³

Making the Most of Health Tracking Devices

Many people have health trackers but may not use them to the fullest extent. Others are curious about how these devices support health goals but unsure whether they would benefit from one. For those who are motivated, monitoring devices are worth a try.

These tips can help empower users to make the most out of tracking health habits:

• If you’re on the fence, before investing in a new device, try using free or low-cost apps along with a smartphone’s built-in health app.
• Instead of passively reviewing the data collected, take a more active approach. Use health trackers to create personal challenges to improve on existing positive behaviors.
• Use health monitoring devices to explore behavior patterns and identify barriers to change.
• Work with a fitness professional, nutritionist, behavioral health therapist, or other health professional to overcome challenges and learn behavior modification techniques that can improve health data.

Creating a Personalized Health Plan with Wearable Data

Your wearable health tracker can do more than just count steps—it can help you create a tailored plan for supplements, diet, and physical activity. Instead of taking a broad-stroke approach to supplementation, tracking key biomarkers like heart rate, sleep patterns, and activity levels allows you to better understand your unique health needs. With this personalized data, you can make informed decisions about the right nutrients, foods, and exercises that best support your wellbeing.

While wearable trackers provide valuable insights, working with a healthcare provider can help you interpret the data and refine your personalized approach. A doctor, nutritionist, or wellness professional can analyze your tracked metrics alongside lab tests or medical history to offer a more comprehensive health strategy. They can also guide you in choosing the right supplements and lifestyle adjustments based on your specific needs. By combining technology with expert guidance, you can optimize your health plan and make more confident, informed decisions.

What, How, and Who Should Track

Keep tracking simple by focusing on these behaviors that can make the most significant impact on overall health:

• Nutrition - Apps like My Fitness Pal, Chronometer, and LoseIt are free and work with a smartphone. Everyone can benefit from tracking their eating, even a few days each week. Besides helping with weight loss goals, tracking nutrition can improve your overall diet quality and health metrics such as glucose, cholesterol, and blood pressure if you focus on increasing daily fiber, water, and fruit and vegetable intake.
• Physical activity - Getting daily physical activity also benefits everyone by promoting healthy weight, blood pressure, glucose, and more. Besides monitoring exercise consistency, use these trackers to challenge yourself to exercise harder or longer, try new activities, get more frequent small bursts of non-workout activity throughout the day, and change harmful habits like sitting less.
• Sleep - Poor sleep affects energy levels, eating habits, hormone activity, weight, and glucose. Use wearable sleep trackers to measure and assess sleep quality and quantity, and then experiment with lifestyle changes to improve sleep. Sleep-promoting behaviors include avoiding caffeine and alcohol in the evening, turning off blue-light-emitting devices 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime, and waking up at the same time each morning — even on weekends.
• Stress - High stress can negatively impact weight, sleep, glucose, and blood pressure and contribute to chronic health conditions. Many times, chronic stress is an underlying factor that prevents you from progressing toward improving your health. Some health-tracking devices monitor stress by measuring heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), ECG, and respiration.4 Use this information to experiment with stress reduction techniques like breathwork, meditation, and yoga and see how these alter stress responses.
• Glucose levels - Prescription and over-the-counter glucose sensors monitor glucose levels 24/7. Even if used periodically for a few weeks, the data they provide is invaluable for anyone who wants to learn to manage diabetes, prediabetes, or insulin resistance. Glucose sensors can show users how exercise, sleep quality, periods of stress, and, of course, various diet factors affect glucose levels. These can be helpful for anyone who is motivated to learn more about their metabolic function and wants to experiment with the effects of different carbohydrate types, dietary macros, meal timing, exercise, and lifestyle changes on glucose levels.

Staying healthy requires a holistic and integrative approach. A wearable health-tracking device can be a valuable tool to learn more about individual strengths, identify areas for improvement, and track progress toward healthier habits. Healthcare providers can help patients use their data to educate, encourage, and empower them to make healthy changes.