How Trustworthy is Your Fitness Tracker Score?

Millions of People Now Start Their Day with a Number – A “Readiness” score, “Body Battery”“Level or Measure of “Strain”“–Delivered by the wearable device on their write or finger. But how much trust should we place in these scores?

Composite Health Scores are Increasingly Used by Digital Fitness Trackers to Offer, Daily Number That Reflects How Your Body is Coping with Recent Demands. WHETHER IT’S MARKETED AS A MASURE OF ENERGY, RECOVEY OR RESILIENCE, THE IDEA IS THE SAME: COMBINE SEVERAL INTERNAL SIGNALS INTO ONE CLEAR INDICLING OF How Prepared You are to Take on The Day.

The Concept Has Clear Appeal. It simplifies complex physiological data – Tutes like Heart Rate, Sleep and Activity – Into An Actionable Recommendation: Push Harder, Take It Easy, Rest. But How Solid is the science behind these scores? My Colleagues and I Recently Driven a Systematic Review Of the Most Widiely Used Composite Health Scores in Wearable Devices to Find Out.

FIRST, what goes into these scores? Typilly, quite the lot –at least on paper.

Most Composite Health Scores Pull Data From Several Biometric Signals –measurements from Your Body That Indicate How’s Functioning. These include remained Heart Rate, Heart Rate Varubility, Sleep Quantity and Quality, Recent Physical Activity, and Sometimes Breathing Rate, Skin Tempeature and Blood Oxygen Levels.

ON PAPER, that’s the Rich Dataset. These Signals Reflect How Your Body Responds To Stress, Recovers Overnight and Balances Exertion with Rest. But what the inputs may be rooted in physiology, the final score can be less informative this it appears.

One ISSUE IS SENSOR ACCURACY. These Devices Rely on Optical Sensors and Motion Tracking to Estimate What’s Going On Inside Your Body, Such As Your Sleep Stages Or Daily Stress Levels.

Even Small Inacracuacies in Measuring Heart Rate or Movement Can Distort The Score. And sincee these metrics feed directly into the algorithm that calculates your “readiness” or “Strain,” Small Errors can add up.

Another Challenge is transparency. MOST COMPANIES DON’T DISCLOSE How Exactly They Turn Raw Data Into The Final Score.

We Don’t Know Which Inputs Matter Most, How they’re Combined or When they’re Adjustrd for Individual Differentes Such As Age or Fitness Level. Without That Clarity, It’s Difficult to Evaluate How Meaningful or Personalized The Number Reily is.

The More Subtle Issue Lies in the Way Right Physiological Signals Overlap. For Instance, Poor Sleep is Often Followed by Lower Heart Rate Variation – The Common Sign of Stress or Incomplete Recovery. But Many Health Scores Penalize You for Both Factors Separaly: Once for the Bad Sleep and Again for the Resulting Change in Heart Rate Varubility.

This Kind of Double-Dipping Can Exaggerate The Effect of A Single “Stressor” (Things That Put Pressure On Your Body Or Mind), Making Your Body Seem More Run Down Than It Trulary Is. IT CREATES THE ILLUSION OF A SOPHYSTICATED ANALYSIS, BUT MAY ACTUALY BE HIGHLIGHTING THE SAME SIGNAL TWICE.

Similarly, disappear scores penalize you for the activity you did yesterday, regardless of how well you’ve recovered from it. If you heart rat varhability and relevant heart rate suggest you’ve bounced back, that should be reflected in your score. But some Algorithms Still Factor in recent expert As a negative, Even when you body is Clearly Coping Well.

To make these scores more personalized, many devices compare your daily date to your typical values ​​–your baseline. If you sleep or recovery looks significantly different from your recent averag, the score adjusts accordingly.

That’s A Sensible Idea In Theory. But there’s at Standard for How Sick Baselines are calculated. Some Devices Use Seven Days of Data, Others 28. Some exclude Outliers; Others include Them. EACH COMPANY DEFINES IT DIFFERENTLY, WHICH MAKES COMPARISONS BETENSEEN DEVICES IMPOSIBLE AND RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT CONSISTANY.

Should you stop Using your wearable?

Not at all. Fitness Trackers Can Still Offer Valuable Insights. Watching How Your Core Physiological Signals Shift Over Over Time – Offom Week to Wek Or Season To Season – HELP You Spot Patterns, Improve Habits and Better Underser Your Body’s Response to Stress and Training.

The Problem is When We Treat The Daily Score as a definitive Measter of Health. It’s not a diagnosis, and it doesn´t always reflect what’s really happening inside your body. So While It’s Fine to Glance at Your Readiness or Recovery Score, Don’t Let It Dictate Your Decisions.

Use your fitness tracker as a guide, but not as your coach, your doctor, or your judge.

This article is republished from The Conversation Under Creative Commons License. Read the Original Article.