Fitness Tracker Simplified
Our mornings begin with us strapping onto a fitness tracker as we leave for school, work, or even stay at home.
Fitness trackers have become an inherent part of our lifestyle as the solace in our sedentary lifestyle is sought in going through our activity logs at the end of the day. Isn’t it a wise thing to know how your most simple yet effective wearable works?
Hang in there to find out.
In today’s day and age, the market has a variety of fitness trackers varying in appearance, aesthetics, price, and features. However, each fitness tracker has some common features- step counting, heart rate monitoring, and sleep tracking. I am going to throw light on these common features.
Step counting:
This is the feature of your wearable tracker that determines how bad you should feel about yourself for not having achieved those 10k steps! (oops!!)
A wearable tracker continuously analyses the movements of the body on a three-axis accelerometer. In an accelerometer, the change in motion causes a mass to squeeze a piezoelectric material which produces an electrical charge that is proportional to the force exerted upon it. The measurement of that electric charge determines movement.
This data is recorded all the time, which enables the tracker to trace if the individual is walking forward, running fast, or even standing still.
Heart rate monitoring:
This feature distinguishes between oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin by the differences in their optical properties.
The heart rate monitor of your fitness tracker shines a LED that illuminates your blood capillaries (the tiny blood vessels close to the skin). The amount of light that reflects into the heart rate monitor is used to measure the frequency and amount of blood flow in the capillaries which in turn determine your heart rate in BPM.
Sleep tracking:
This is the feature of your fitness tracker ensures that you get those 7–10 hours of shuteye along with suggestions to improve your sleep quality.
Sleep tracking allows the three-axis accelerometer on the fitness tracker to record any movement, big or small, made by the user. Sleep trackers also use heart rate monitoring to measure the variations in your heart rate to assess when you’re asleep or awake and make a more informed assessment of when you’re in REM sleep. Sleep parameters are established by experts and then specialized algorithms are programmed to make sense of the movements recorded by the tracker based on the sleep parameters.
Now that you know all that’s inside a fitness tracker, you can marvel at this little wonder of technology with more awe than ever!!
Stay curious!
