Shradha Puri

Your birthday tells you how many years you've been alive. But it doesn't necessarily tell you how your body is aging. Two people can be the same age and still have very different levels of cardiovascular fitness, sleep quality, heart health, and metabolic health. In other words, while their chronological age may be identical, some of their health markers may tell a different story.

Our wearables have slowly turned the body into something we can measure throughout the day. A smartwatch can track our heart rate, while a smart ring can tell us how long we slept and how active we were. Yet, there is still a gap. While consumer wearables may help us understand what our body is doing, they may fail to demonstrate what is going on inside our body. Stress is an especially interesting example here.

Last month, my smart ring told me I was under high stress at 7 pm on a Tuesday. I wasn't feeling "high stress" at all, instead, I was just running up the stairs because I had forgotten my laptop charger and needed to get to my Zoom meeting in six minutes. The same night, an hour later, I really was feeling stressed as I looked at a full inbox that I didn't want to read. My ring gave that moment almost the exact same score. That's when it clicked for me. These sensors aren't measuring stress.