Advantages and disadvantages of smart devices

(WNDU) – Smart watches have revolutionized the way we monitor our health and well-being.

Harvard Health said about one in five people have one. But how accurate is that information?

New research shows the pros and cons of smart devices.

Your smart watch tracks everything from steps and calories, to heartbeat and sleep.

Studies show that the benefit of these devices is that people who monitor their health with a smart device increase their physical activity by an additional 50 minutes per week and take an additional 1,200 steps per day.

Health alerts can detect potential health issues like irregular heartbeats… but do these smartwatches always work that way?

Health psychologist Dr. Vanessa Volpe’s team at North Carolina State University put smartwatches to the test.

“These are good starting points, but they don’t work the same way for everyone,” Dr. Volpe said. “If you ever turn this device around, you can sometimes see beams of light, often green light, coming out of the back of this device.”

The green light passes through the skin and bounces back to sensors in the watch, but Volpe said green light reflects differently on different skin tones.

“If you have more melanin in your skin, and therefore darker skin, light will not penetrate and reflect to the same extent,” Dr. Volpe said.

Dr. Volpe found that for people of color, up to half of the signal may be reflected, which can affect heart rate readings, blood pressure and irregular heart rhythms.

“The technology itself, and particularly the way it was designed, did not take into account people of color, especially darker skin tones,” Dr. Volpe said.

Dr. Volpe believes this discrepancy is a sign of medicine’s failure to understand the impact of race on health, and she hopes her findings will help address racial inequities in health care.

Another downside to wearing your health information on your sleeve.

Fitness trackers typically connect to the user’s phone via Bluetooth technology, making personal information vulnerable to hacking.

To protect yourself, change your default fitness settings so that no one can share your data.