How Accurate are Fitness Health Trackers? by: Patricia Loiacono

Fitness health tracker million dollar companies are quickly on the rise and showing tremendous popularity. These trackers are marketed to be an everything in one device that calculates daily nutrition, exercise, heart rate, calories, and even sleep. But according to an article on Daily Mail.com and other research, the trackers are more inaccurate than we think.

Researchers say that over 40% of gadgets are expected to be inaccurate at detecting not only calorie intake and heart rate but sleep as well. According to the Daily Mail article, many fitness trackers “such as the Fitbit Force, include a sleep mode that aims to provide users with some insight into their shuteye, such as how long they slept, and how many times they were restless or woke up. Some trackers go a step further: the Jawbone UP breaks down sleep time into deep and light stages, and the Basis B1 recently launched a new sleep analysis that aims to measure REM sleep in addition to deep and light sleep stages“. Many researchers are skeptical that fitness trackers can track sleep stages because these devices are very prone to mistakes. This can become a problem when people with actual sleeping disorders receive false reassurance. Experts in the field worry that consumers may be in danger when they put too much trust in these devices to accurately monitor sleep.

FitBit has received a lot of bad attention on their trackers being highly inaccurate when measuring one’s heart rate. The study in this article says that heart rate monitors can be off as much as 20 beats per minute during a high-intensity workout. This is definitely a problem when dealing with patients that have heart issues and need to depend on their heart rate monitor to for accurate information. Patients who work out with heart conditions need to pay close attention to their heart rate in order to not cause any further damage. If patients who have myocardial conditions use FitBit and depend on the information that it shows, then they might be in danger for a cardiac event and even a fatality.

The most important thing to do before purchasing any wearable technology is to do your research about the companies and products that you are interested in. Any sort of technology has the potential to be hacked or show and provide inaccurate data. It’s crucial that consumers, especially with health conditions, think about this factor before totally relying on the product they purchase.