Do Mindfulness and Health Trackers Mix? Deepak Chopra and Fitbit CEO James Park on Managing Stress With Data

A version of this article also appeared in the It’s Not Just You newsletter.Sign up here to receive a new edition every Sunday. I’m a tech believer. My first job with TIME was to set up new communications systems and convince cranky foreign correspondents to trust them. Alexa and Google Home have colonized my apartment. And not only did I give my DNA to 23andMe, but I even answer their follow-up questions about whether I like olives or get carsick so they can map those genes. (Naturally, I also want to donate my body to research after I’m done with it–and if there were a way to send me a report in the afterlife about what they find, I’d request it.) [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] So you can imagine how very excited I was when Fitbit and other wearable health trackers, including Amazon’s Halo and the Apple Watch, started coming up with ways to show us data on our stress levels. There’s a bevy of new devices that monitor not just our heart rate, daily steps, and the quantity of our sleep, but the quality of our sleep by hour, skin temperature, and fluctuations in our blood oxygen saturation. Many of these biomarkers relate to our mental wellness and physical health, and there’s new wearable technology that picks up on our emotions. But even data geeks like me realize there are crucial questions about whether technology is a solution or part of the problem when it comes to stress management. It’s fair to ask whe...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized It's Not Just You Source Type: news