Tracking Your Health

Gone are the days of guessing how many steps you took, estimating your calorie intake and wondering how much sleep you got last night. Whatever you want to track, there's a wearable device and smartphone app out there to reveal what you need to know. But is all that tracking doing you any good?

Step tracking is nothing new, but smartwatches and smart rings can act as heart rate monitors, stair counters and exercise buddies, too. Think of activity trackers as the tiny, electronic cheerleaders you never knew you needed. The interactive features such as activity goals encourage wearers to be more active. Researchers published in PLOS Medicine tracked people who took 7,500 steps a day over four years. Though who used pedometers got 30 more minutes of exercise per week than those who didn't track their steps. They also found pedometer users were 44% less likely to sustain a fracture and 66% to have a heart attack or stroke.

Many tracking devices and apps monitor your shuteye, including your sleep duration, sleep quality and sleep phases. Though these methods aren't as accurate as sleep studies conducted by medical professionals, the data can give you something to reflect on. If you have a high sleep score one night, you can determine what might've caused a more restful evening. Maybe you went to bed at a different time, cut out caffeine earlier or read a book instead of staring at a screen before bed.

Unlike monitoring your sleep or steps with a handy device, food tracking takes a bit more input. But thanks to an interactive website and mobile apps, inputting meals, identifying eating habits and checking the nutritional value of foods is easier than ever. Organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Heart Association, and American Diabetes Association all endorse food tracking as a way to identify and improve eating habits.

New to trackers? Try these tips to get the most out of it.

• Sync your data regularly. Many trackers create charts that help you keep track of active days and identify when you may need a little extra motivation.
• Use the extra features such as food and water tracking that often come with tracker apps, or link your tracker to other apps for more functionality.
• Use your height and weight or the calibration feature to establish your stride length.
• Wear wrist trackers on your non-dominant arm for more accurate step counts.
• Wear your tracker every day for the best results.

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