Stress detection in wearables
Stress detection and coping techniques are already available in wearables, and not just forlooking after your mental wellbeing. Wearables are able to use sensors to capture details on physiological measurements to offer insights into what sort of stress your body experiences throughout the day. Through this, you can have a better understanding of the strain and stress that you're putting on your body and tailor your lifestyle and workouts accordingly.
How do wearable devices measure this?
The heart of stress tracking is, well, your heart. Devices like the Apple Watch, Samsung and Fitbit devices use HR monitors that offer 24/7 feedback on our bpms. Over time as more sophisticated models emerge, they've been able to sample the heartbeat at a higher frequency and ultimately provide information about our HRV (see article here). HRV is the measure of the variation of time between each heartbeat which is controlled by the body's autonomic nervous system (ANS) that regulates our heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and digestion. A higher HRV indicates that you're relaxed and a lower HRV suggests that you're stressed.
Some of the more premium smartwatches are equipped with dedicated sensors to detect stress levels more accurately. For example, the Fitbit Sense comes with an ElectroDermal Activity (EDA) sensor which detects stress through electrical changes in the sweat level of our skin.
Generally, there is no catch-all solution to dealing with stress and many people will find different methods work for them to blow off steam. For some it might involve watching TV, working out, swimming, reading, spending time with friends, eating food, anything goes. It's something that we all encounter and it can have a huge impact on our health and our lives.
Whilst in short bursts, stress can be positive by helping you to avoid danger or meet a deadline, but when it lasts a long time, it may be damaging to your health.
How can wearables help?
All smartwatches that monitor stress come with a breathing exercise mode that helps relax the body through long breathing sessions, which eventually brings down stress levels. Some watches even notify you when you have a high stress level and prompt you to do breathing exercises to lower stress, others let you select the duration and intensity of these sessions.
Through the Terra API, we provide connections to a range of different devices so that your users can track their stress levels.
Below is a list of the wearables that track your stress levels today:
- Garmin Fenix series, Venu series, Lily, Vivoactive 4 series, Forerunner series, Instinct series, Enduro, Descent series, Mk2, Epic, Tactix series, D2 series, Vivosmart 4, Approach S62, Marq series, Quatix 6 series, Swim 2
- Fitbit Versa 3, Charge 5, Sense, Luxe, Charge 4
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, Galaxy Watch 3, Galaxy Fit2
- Suunto 9 range, 7 range, 3 range
- Xiaomi Mi Watch
