GoKawiilI'm a wellness writer with health anxiety. Also known as hypochondria or illness anxiety disorder, health anxiety is a condition that makes me worry I am or may become ill even when I’m perfectly healthy. One minute, I have a headache, and the next, I think I've got a deadly brain tumor.
What’s ironic is that part of my job involves testing health-monitoring wearables, including fitness trackers and smart rings. While I love exploring this technology and do think it can help you learn more about your body, I have to be careful about how I use it so my anxiety isn’t triggered. I know I’m not alone.
“Healthy adults and individuals with pre-existing medical conditions are increasingly using these devices to manage their health,” says Dr. Lindsey Rosman, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology and co-director of the Cardiovascular Device and Data Science Lab at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “Whether 24/7 access to health information from a wearable actually helps or potentially harms people is really unclear.”
When you add in the ability to search your symptoms online or ask an AI chatbot in your wearable’s app every health question under the sun, it becomes even more difficult to discern between what’s helpful and harmful.
To help myself and others with health anxiety navigate the world of wearables so we can either enjoy using them or know when it’s time to stop, I reached out to experts for their advice.
1. Turn off anxiety-inducing health alerts
Rosman has observed clinically that it can be beneficial to either scale back or turn off the features that make you anxious. This can be especially helpful for people with pre-existing conditions that are already being treated, such as atrial fibrillation (AFib, an irregular heartbeat), as your wearable’s irregular heart rhythm notifications will only make you anxious and can prompt you to see your doctor when it’s not medically necessary.
Plus, certain medications can affect the accuracy of wearable sensors, provoking false alarms.
“We published a case report on a patient who performed over 900 EKGs [electrocardiograms or ECGs, which measure the heart’s electrical activity] on her smartwatch in a single year,” says Rosman. While most of the EKGs were normal, inconclusive alerts fueled her anxiety, leading to multiple ER visits, spousal conflict and the need for therapy to reclaim her daily life. The patient had no psychiatric history prior to getting a smartwatch.
When you get an unexpected health alert on your device, it can understandably cause panic. Cole Kan/CNET/Apple
... continue reading