>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Hello everybody, I'm Dr. Terry Simpson and today

we're going to talk about health wearables. Whoop.

The Apple Watch, Withings devices,

Aura and ultrahuman rings. Which one is

actually worth your money and do they really improve your health or are they

just expensive digital trophies?

I've tested these wearables extensively and today I'm going

to break them down. Which device is best for fitness

recovery, sleep and heart health? The hidden

costs of these devices, the ah, subscriptions, fees and

replacements and who really owns your

data and why? I ultimately chose

Withings as my go to wearable. Stick around to the

end where I'll share my personal experiences with these

devices and why I canceled my Apple

Watch cellular plan.

Let's dive in.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: I am your Chief Medical Explanationist, Dr. Terry Simpson

and this is Fork you fork University,

where we bust a few.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Myths and make sense of the mad.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Things have come a long way since.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Early in my surgical career when I would buy

pedometers for my post op bariatric or weight loss

surgery patients. I'd buy them and give them to.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Them because I wanted them to walk.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: In those days we didn't have the.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Apple Watch and pedometers were something they.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Could track on and get a visualization.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Of what they did.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Did it work?

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Well for some patients, it worked pretty well.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: For others, they seem to put them away.

Modern wearables have advanced tremendously. They

can track your heart rate, your sleep, your heart

rate, variability, activity levels, blood oxygen

levels, temperature, even do an EKG

and tell if you have atrial fibrillation. A dangerous

heart condition. Probably the most common one

that everybody has on the wrist today is the Apple Watch.

It tracks all of those things that we talked about,

including a fall detection. You know, I fall in and can't go

up. But Apple can no longer track blood

oxygenation due to a patent dispute. And the

cellular models of the Apple Watch, you know,

they require a monthly subscription. Whoop is a

device that came into fore in the last few years. It focuses

on recovery, strain and sleep. And this device

started by tracking really high caliber

athletes to help them say, nope, you've done

a little bit too much work and you've got to hang back.

So it's a really comprehensive device. The

Oura ring is pretty popular these days. It's a ring

that tracks sleep stages, heart rate variability

and body temperature. Withings is the

only one besides Apple to be FDA cleared for

atrial fibrillation detection with a focus on

medical grade tracking. Unlike Apple,

Withings still tracks blood, oxygen and

heart Rate continuously during sleep. Thanks to its

longer battery life. It's being worn at night for weeks without

interruption and there's no subscription required.

The ultra human ring and there are some others now are

newer rings with focuses on metabolic

tracking and recovery. A uh, 2020

Nature Digital Medicine study found that risk

based devices overestimate activity

but underestimate calories burned.

And rings tended to be more reliable for sleep and

heart rate variability.

So what does heart rate variability or HRV and

strain? What do those metrics mean? Heart

rate variability measures the variation in

time between heartbeats. It's a

reflection of how well your autonomic nervous

system is functioning. A higher HRV

means better recovery, lower stress, and

improved cardiovascular health. A uh, lower

HRV means fatigue, overtraining,

stress, or even illness. I

noticed that my HRV went down down

for a couple of days before I developed symptoms of

COVID Kind of scary if

you think about it. But it's nice to know you're getting sick and

it's time to hang back and recover a little bit. It's also nice

to know when you've taken too much strain in your

workout, which sometimes I tend to do.

But here's the problem. HRV fluctuates

a lot based on hydration, sleep and time of

day. So if I don't get much sleep at night, or

if I'm dehydrated because.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: I just didn't take in enough water.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: My HRV goes lower. So

Whoop and Aura measure HRV during sleep, which is a

little bit more stable. Apple Watch and Withings

measure HRV periodically through the day, which may be

less reliable due to other external factors.

So HRV is great for trends over time,

but not necessarily on a daily health

score. Strain is

whoop's proprietary score that estimates how

hard your body is working based on heart rate

variability, heart rate and activity levels.

The problem? Strain scores don't account

for individual fitness levels. What's a high

strain score for one person may be normal for

another. And remember, they started their

company based on the most incredible athletes in

the world and have been bringing it back down to

us. Caffeine,

stress, dehydration and alcohol can

all artificially or not artificially raise

strain scores. So strain tracking can really help elite

athletes. But for most people, it's just a number to obsess

over. Battery life is

important. I mean, there's nothing worse than having a device

on you and then all of a sudden it doesn't work. The Apple watch

is good for 18 to 24 hours. Its charging

time is 1 to 2 hours. The problem is

sometimes I have woken up and put on my Apple

Watch to see its low power because I didn't quite fit it on the

magnetic device carefully enough.

The WHOOP is good for four to five days. And

actually that's what they say I find my whoop is good

now for about three days and it takes about an hour

and a half. Charging the Oura ring four

to seven days. I found it good to be about three to five

days. It takes about an hour to charge it.

The Withings watch three to four weeks and it takes two

hours to charge. And the Ultra human, four to six days. One to

two hours. Withings wins by a landslide. It's

the only watch you don't have to think about charging every night. And

that makes it really good for sleep

tracking. So I find that for

me, the Withings, which is FDA cleared for

continuous heart tracking, atrial fibrillation, blood

oxygen, has a great battery life, doesn't have a

subscription, and has strong privacy protection,

really tends to be the one that I liked

for heart health and for fitness. Apple watch. But

you have to be careful. The cellular fees are a lot.

The cellular fees for my Apple watch from Verizon were

$21 a month for recovery

optimization, Whoop, if you can afford it, or Withings,

and for sleep and metabolic training. The Withings,

Aura and Oura rings are great. So I

told Verizon I didn't need to pay the $21 a month

for.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Cellular surface on my Apple watch anymore.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: The Withings looks better. It's sleek, it's classic.

It can stay on my wrist day and night. The battery

lasts nearly a month. Apple watch barely a

day. There's no subscription, and the whoop and

aura of those subscriptions can get expensive fast.

Withings also integrates with an entire health system.

I use our blood pressure monitor, I use our scale to

track my weight and a sleep pad, which is FDA cleared for

diagnosis of sleep apnea. I had the WHOOP

for over a year and a half. And if you love your

Rolex, Omega or Timex but still want health tracking,

one Whoop is a great option since you can wear it on your arm and keep

your classic watch on your wrist. Now I love watches,

but day in and day out, Withings has become my

go to. And the reason is it just

looks like a watch. And I got tired of wearing an

Apple watch and it constantly ticking me or uh,

reminding me of something. But sometimes

I like going out at night and I wear the watch that my

dad gave to me in the last year of his life. I

don't need to track everything. I, uh, can be free of the digital

age. So sometimes when I go out for a nice dinner,

I'll put on my dad's watch to remind me of my

dad. And just because it's a great looking classic

Seiko and I go without

any tracking. Finally, I'm not a

ring fan. You know, as a surgeon, rings

don't work for me. Every surgeon I

know, every surgeon loses rings in the

hospital laundry. And that's why most of us don't

wear rings at all.

Wearables are great tools, but they don't

replace healthy habits. And tracking

is only useful if you act on the data, not just

obsess over it. Please do check

out my new substack.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Channel if you want more information about wearables, which you can

find@tsimpson.substack.com

youm can also find me on YourDoctorsOrders.com

and4Q.com this podcast

was written and researched by me, Dr. Terry Simpson.

And while I am a physician, I am not your physician. And before you

embark on physical activity that might cause you some

strain, please do check with your doctor to make sure you can

handle that. Not a chiropractor, not an eastern

trained guru, but a real board certified medical

physician. This was distributed by our

good friends at Simpler Media and my friend, the pod God, Mr.

Evotera, have a great week.

Hey Evo. I remember when the first Apple watch came

out.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: I was so excited and I picked.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Up one and you said, I don't need a watch.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: I got a phone.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: I can look at the time, all that. You aren't a watch wearer. I am

a watch wearer. And you know what I found about the Apple watch?

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: It's really not a watch. I just had

to give it up.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Although I do like wearing the Withings because it actually looks like a watch.

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: But that's me. What's on your wrist these days?

>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Anything besides the arm of your beautiful wife?

>> Speaker C: My wrist remains unadorned, my friend.

Though now that I am the age that you were when we

first met many years ago, maybe I

need that, uh, Withings things.