Getting up in the morning and letting the fitness band strapped on the wrist like seen in a sci-fi movie which charts your physical activity 24 x 7 through its sensors and inbuilt monitors; has become a new way of life. How accurate are these fitness trackers?? Are they driving you to the fools’ paradise or these are just to console that you are monitoring your health. Let’s get into the nuts & bolts of it.
The technology, Artificial Intelligence, Biometrics and other paradigm tech evolutions have even forced to find digitally working pals/assistants monitoring or tracking the body systems’ progress, so that we don’t miss out on the health aspects in this fast pace moving life. So to start we must know that almost all fitness trackers rely on a heart rate monitor and motion sensors to detect the calorie count and movement respectively. In a layman’s term; if you work harder, your heart will be pumping more, so some mathematics and calorie count is up the sleeve on a digital platform; i.e. on a fitness tracker.
The technology is based on pulse oximetry wherein the infra-red light penetrates the skin and looks for changes in the colour of the blood, the changes are because of increase in heartbeat.
Further these fitness trackers use complex algorithms which analyse the movements or activities. It’s hard to digest but heart rate alone is not an ideal indicator of calorie burn. In actuals, Heart rate is proportional to many factors like, blood pressure, air pressure, temperature, mood, emotions, so even a fast pace game on your mobiles may give rise to your heart rate. But it is not indicative of calorie burn. Though it is mentioned on the manuals that these fitness trackers entirely do not work on heart rates alone but the latest ones too, have still not proved it. It charts the pattern derived from our body. It is a machine overall, may be inaccurate; and might keep you happy or perturbed about your gains or losses.
There are various other factors like your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate); the number of calories required for the various physical activities your Muscle built your Hormonal balance; as a higher level of testosterone will burn more calories and many more internal things.
Apropos, in a nutshell, fitness trackers are actually machines doing an audit sort of duty of your physical responses the body system is too complicated to bring simple digital feeds of fitness trackers and go ahead with it.
Nothing against these fitness tracker; at least these strap-on devices are giving some inputs which prompt you to find a solution and making you aware of something wrong. But a total dependence on them may land you in trouble, if not augmented with physical activity & self-consciousness of your cognitive mind. These fitness machine trackers may help, but mindful machining will work
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