The apple watch 6 minute timed walk as opposed to the timed walk in a clinic. This standard was set way before they thought about doing it on the Apple watch. https://www.heartonline.org.au/media/DRL/6MWT_standardised_instructions.pdf
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Apple Watch Can Accurately Assess Frailty, Finds Stanford Study
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I love that some people still try to be argumentative on this thread. Such a reflection of our modern society.
How are we know more about our body a bad thing again?
How are we know more about our body a bad thing again?
Thats also assuming someone isn’t so frail as to not be able to wear an apple watch because the minimum size is so massive that most skinny people and women can’t comfortably wear it. Its perfect for chunky people with wide wrists, but I doubt they are concerned about their frailty.
There were 109 male participants in the study with a mean age of 68.9 years, ranging from 57–89 years, and having various medical conditions including hypertension, coronary artery disease, diabetes, aortic stenosis, and AFib. I suspect a wide variety of wrist sizes were encountered, including those that are "skinny."
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I talked to my dr about them using Apple Watch data. He wasn’t too keen on it. Personally, having a consumer device replace the medical industries ability to extract money from its customers is going to be met with a lot of resistance. So Apple will need to go this alone even if it’s products can do the same job as the pros.
Or all the people that use their device for entertainment, just put the phone down and turn to your woman.... oh, wait. Maybe technology can be useful sometimes.
agreed
I’m also hoping that all these data points collected by all these data sensors never get in the hands of dangerous agents or otherwise detrimental situation like health insurance related things.
This is probably also a place where the privacy efforts have triple the weight in meaning than elsewhere... I guess that an hypothetical Facebook or Google watch will be out of the question for a whole lot of us.
You got a few dislikes there, not from me, but I can attest that the Apple Watch has actually boosted my health I think. Not only the data but the gamification of good habits.
Was already for over 2 years on a weight loss path quite successfully I must say, slowly but steady. With the Apple Watch though it has helped me go from 4 or 5 exercising days a week to the full 7/7 no matter if it rains or snow (February can have -20C or 0F here) just because of wanting to close the damn rings always... been 82 days in a streak today (got the watch as a gift a couple of days before that).
Wanted to mention that it’s a great idea, maybe somehow to try to spin it as if it is “their idea, their choice”. It’s natural to want to help older folks as much as possible, but I have learned that the reason why old folks behave sometimes in dire stubbornly ways is because they are losing agency with every passing minute (already terrifying) and the few agency they have left is being stolen away by everybody around them wanting to do their things for them. My .0002 cents.
That's the reason I got my mother a Series 6 for Christmas.
I had an ECG last year at my doctor's (6 leads, I believe?), and out of curiosity I took one with my Series 5 watch right after. When I showed the result to the doctor, she seemed surprised to find it nearly identical to the one she took moments before.
I'm not saying that an Apple Watch is as good as or can replace medical equipment, but it surely isn't just a toy or gimmick either.
My moms closing in on 90 and is on her 3rd watch. Ability to call for help sold her on S0, to do it on cellular and fall detection on S3, EKG and O2 on S6. Her fav in home feature is asking Siri to set timers. Before she became a Covid housecat her fav outside feature was ApplePay. (Likes health ID, and recording her daily water intake via complication, checking/controlling the garage door, but is somewhat disappointed it doesn’t have MFi connectivity to her hearing aid tho. Even more disappointed her similar aged Luddite BF only has a landline and flip phone.)
This is a slow process.
If you walk 10% percent shower than a year ago, this is significant. But you probably won't notice any difference.
Think of eye sight. Many people don't notice a slow degeneration over decades until they drive into a tree.
An early warning can be very useful.
Agreed. My near 99yo mom’s cardiologist, who has been quoted nationally on the Apple Watch was like, well it’s not as accurate as office eq and can give some false positives. Kinda like it’s a good start but not very authoritative.
I had her ask if because of the few false positives, or even non indications, meant that the folks coming to their doctors due to true positives m, who otherwise wouldn’t, weren’t worth the few errors/omissions. that the cost of the negative wasn’t outweighed by the avoided cost in money and sorrow due to no or late action by patients.
He didn’t really have a response to that.
It’s better to see a doctor given a potential false positive, than to pass away because you didn’t know about a life threatening condition is what you’re saying.
Do it, if there’s a chance she’ll be away from WiFi, or forgets her iPhone, or doesn’t have one, get her the cellular model. (You may know, but recently watchOS allows you to set up a family member’s watch from your iPhone. Doesn’t require them to have their own.). Also, don’t forget to set up her medical ID and populate it with all her medicines and vitamins and any medical issues or past operations, covid vaccination, etc.)
Would be a good thing for her to wear if you can get her to wear it. The fall notification feature alone is probably worth the price of admission for folks, especially those at higher risk of falls, who live alone. I was rushing to get ready for a ski trip and caught the hem of my pants on a door stop and went down in a heap. Didn't really get hurt other than my pride, but I wasn't too far from hitting my head on a beam.
Well people existed for thousand of years without looking at a phone to determine the temperature. To live a free life you do not need to know the temperature down to tenths of a degree. Nor do you have to be supernatural, mere humans have been determining the weather for, again, thousands of years without a phone.
But yes you do have to be sensitive to the environment around you, you have to know a little bit about cloud formations, you have to understand the weather patterns in your area for the given time of the year, and you have to go outside periodically. None of which are particularly hard. But you do have to get out of the Silicon Valley bubble, and that is very hard for a lot of people.
Most of the time the forecast is just plain wrong (well unless you live in SF.) It is only right in SF because the forecast does not change much. We've ignore the forecast for decades because it was so wrong and by following it we were missing out on life. Try it, you might like not being a slave to a phone.
The advantage of a smartwatch over a visit to the doctor, is that you have data over time. You might have an issue once a day, once a week or once a month, go to the doctor and they run a quick test and find nothing. Maybe they would run a longer test with AW data.
I have a Garmin watch and it came with a chest strap and the chest strap has accelerometers in it to supplement the ones in the watches. The use case is to do fine-detailed analysis of your running and can tell you things like vertical oscillation, left-right balance, and so on. So it's no surprise that an AW can determine frailty with a test.
I'm generally focused on VO2Max and trying to get that higher. The two main ways to do that are running and cycling but any intense cardio or HIIT can raise it higher. VO2Max is an excellent indicator of mortality. A VO2Max of 19 implies that your odds of surviving for the next year are even.
I expect to see more devices to connect to the watch to provide health data. I think that there are lots of devices that connect to phones but connecting to the watch would be even better.
I have a Garmin watch and it came with a chest strap and the chest strap has accelerometers in it to supplement the ones in the watches. The use case is to do fine-detailed analysis of your running and can tell you things like vertical oscillation, left-right balance, and so on. So it's no surprise that an AW can determine frailty with a test.
I'm generally focused on VO2Max and trying to get that higher. The two main ways to do that are running and cycling but any intense cardio or HIIT can raise it higher. VO2Max is an excellent indicator of mortality. A VO2Max of 19 implies that your odds of surviving for the next year are even.
I expect to see more devices to connect to the watch to provide health data. I think that there are lots of devices that connect to phones but connecting to the watch would be even better.
I'm a runner in New England where it can be freezing in the morning and in the 60s during the day. I pay close attention to the forecast so I can plan my runs. I do not like running when the wind speeds are 15 MPH or higher so I try to work around cold, rain, snow, ice and wind and I have to plan what I will wear. I often use DressMyRun.com which is a wildly popular website.
One forecast had it raining at 11 AM and another had it at noon so I ran early today. Both helped me decide on what to wear.