iWatch, the quantified self and the worried well

(image via 9to5Mac)

It seems almost inevitable that Apple will launch an iWatch later this year, and most pundits agree that “the quantified self” will be the main theme of this new device. An emerging tech trend, the quantified self connects wearable devices with online services to provide continuous monitoring of a user's health and fitness.

This new category has seen some growth, with devices such as Nike’s Fuel Band, Jawbone’s Up and Fitbit generating plenty of press coverage and modest sales. But as with tablets and smart phones before, Apple’s entry into the nascent category could redefine its purpose and massively broaden its appeal.

I’ve been involved in health and fitness tech for many years, both as a user (tracking my runs on Nike+) and as a developer (I co-created Reps & Sets, the gym logging app for iPhone). So I know from personal experience the tremendous potential that exists for using technology to support people in their health and fitness goals. 

But there’s something about quantified self products that troubles me. We often lazily bundle “health and fitness” into a single phase, but they are in fact two distinct things. After all, you wouldn’t get medical advice from a personal trainer any more than you'd ask your doctor to help improve your bench press.

Quantified self products cross the line from fitness to health, and in so doing, they pander to the “worried well”: those whose only symptom of illness is their anxiety that they may be sick. Oddly, as medical science has improved our health, this anxiety has steadily risen.

Be careful what you measure

As any self help book will tell you, it’s best to focus on what you want, rather than on what you don’t want. Fitness tracking products focus on positive goals. The best ones highlight our achievements and progress, providing us with encouragement and motivation to continue.

Quantified self products, on the other hand, medicalise us, tracking metrics such as blood sugar and blood pressure. These kinds of data may provide insights to qualified medical professionals, but will offer little meaning to the average user. Instead, they encourage us to anxiously obsess over inconsequential fluctuations in our body’s normal functioning.

In other words, the quantified self encourages us to look for problems rather than to look for progress.

Looking for problems can create problems

There are two main problems with this. The first is false positives. Health screening can be a highly effective intervention, but it doesn’t always follow that we should screen for every possible kind of sickness. Some types of screening result in high levels of false positives - where a healthy patient may be told they are sick and undergo unnecessary, unpleasant and sometimes risky treatment. Ultimately, scientists must study the data to determine whether the benefits of the screening for a particular disease outweigh these risks. 

No such determination is made with quantified self products. Instead, healthy individuals are subjected to endless ongoing tests for no apparent purpose, and presented with results that they are not qualified to interpret.

The second problem is the vicious circle - the kind of negative feedback loop you can get into when you obsess about your health. The anxieties created by worrying about non-existant health problems can result to very real stress-related health problems. As a result, the worried well may over time become the worried unwell.

Track your fitness gains, not your health problems

As a former cancer patient, I know what it’s like to have every aspect of your health monitored. Chemotherapy is not fun. But fortunately for me it was effective. Now I choose to focus upon the benefits of successful treatment, by pushing my body as far as it can go in terms of my fitness. And that’s what I choose to measure: the progress of my fitness.

Of course, my health is more important to me than my split times on a marathon. That’s why I still go for regular checkups at my hospital, who do all kinds of tests. But I prefer to leave the quantification of my health to qualified medical professionals who I trust.

The art of running well

There are many schools of thought on how we should run. Some say we should run barefoot, and land on the balls of our feet, while others say we should run heel to toe. Some say we should push our shoulders back, while others would prefer to keep them loose...

Over the years, I've come to realize that our running style is just as personal as our handwriting. Everyone is an individual and everyone has their own unique way of running. Even top athletes, (like Paula Radcliffe and her nodding head,) have their own unique style.

But while no two running styles are the same, I have concluded that there is still one reliable yardstick for judging a good running style, and it is this:

When you run, make everyone you pass wish that they were running too.

If we truly believe that running is a good thing, then we should embody the benefits of running whenever we run, so that others get a real sense of it, and want some of what we've got. And while there may be as many different running styles as there are runners, I've found that there are still some key characteristics that are always present in this style of running:

1. Smile: let everyone know how much you love running by getting your smile on every time you put your running shoes on;

2. Relax: allow your limbs to flow in an easy and graceful way;

3. Focus: zone in on the experience, exist in the moment and become one with your running;

4. Connect: when you're running, you're a part of a global family. Other runners are your brothers and sisters. Say "hi" to them as you pass.

If you want other people to get the same benefit out of running that you do, don't just tell them how great it is. Show them. Embody the essence of running. Be the change.

The Red Queen's Race

Last week, I ran the Bath Half Marathon. It's the first big competitive race that I've ever run, and it represented the culmination of over a year's training, as I built up my fitness and stamina after coming off chemotherapy.

By a strange twist of fate, just days earlier, my doctors had discovered a new lump, and I was booked in for a scan the day after the run. So even as I was at my peak of physical fitness, I knew that I could be back on chemotherapy in a matter of days.

Before my cancer treatment, I had never been interested in sport, and I never ran anywhere. I simply did not consider myself to be athletic. But my experience of cancer treatment and recovery forced me to challenge a lot of my presuppositions about myself. I discovered that I possessed greater strength and emotional stamina than I ever imagined. And I realised that my negative self image had been seriously limiting my potential.

So, even as the chemo had been reducing my physical stamina, it was also like an incubator for a new me. It forced me to raise my game, just to stay in the game. Sometimes being held back is precisely what we need in order to ultimately be propelled forwards. It's like the Red Queen says in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass: "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Like running on a treadmill. Imagine what happens when the treadmill stops, but you don't. You start moving forwards… fast.

And since the chemo, that's exactly what I had been doing. Moving forwards fast. But the looming possibility of a return to chemo threatened to bring my journey to an abrupt halt.

This uncertainty could have cast a cloud over my run, but that's not how it turned it. In fact, the scan served to heighten the intensity of my experience on the big day. Since my future was clouded, and all of my past year had led up to this point, it caused me to focus entirely upon the day itself. To reside in the moment. The experience was all the more vivid, intense and exhilarating as a result.

As it turns out, the scan results delivered good news. And upon reflection, I realised that I was glad the scan had coincided with the half marathon. It made me realise that I had never left the Red Queen's treadmill, and I never will. We're all on that treadmill - it's just life. Sometimes it's going forwards, sometimes backwards, sometimes stationary. That is outside of our control. All that we can do is to keep running.

Smile

If you are a writer, you write.
If you are a runner, you run.
If you are happy, you smile.

If you write, you are a writer.
If you run, you are a runner.
If you smile, you are happy.

If you want to be a writer, write.
If you want to be a runner, run.
If you want to be happy, smile.

It really is that simple. We can't control our thoughts, but we can control our behaviour. And our behaviour exerts a powerful influence on our feelings over time. If I've learned anything over the past two years, it is this: if you seek true happiness, then smile. It is as simple as that.