HEALTH
Playing Health Detective with ChatGPT and Health Auto Export
How I uncovered patterns in my health data using Apple Watch and a little AI help
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As my sciatica slowly healed, I increased my daily step count. I had read reports that said the 10,000 steps a day advice was nonsense, but then a new study seemed to say that it is not. This new study claimed that averaging 8,000 steps is associated with a significant decrease in a number of cancers, and that even higher numbers showed more decreases.
But wait. Association is not always correlation. Maybe people who walked less didn’t feel well because unrecognized cancers were already developing in their bodies. Or, maybe the average didn’t matter as much as the peaks that contributed to the average. Because I wasn’t about to read a study jammed with science and math, I asked ChatGPT about my concerns.
My chat buddy mentor told me the study did take my first thought into account, but that I could be right about the peaks being an important factor, so further studies are planned.
Well, hold my beer; I can do peaks. I had been doing 12 to 14,000 steps every day for a few weeks and it was wearing me out. I decided I’d cut that out twice a week and just accumulate whatever normal life gave me without trying to pack in more. My chat pal expected that to be about 4,000 steps, but it actually turns out to be about 6,000 and more. That does make it easy for me to get higher numbers on the other days.
I get curious
I already knew about the strong rumor that Apple is planning an AI health coach, something that may or may not be announced at this year’s WWDC. It makes sense — they have collected years’ worth of data in their Health app. An AI could look at all that and give us (or at least those of us using devices that can report to Health) very helpful information.
I had even suggested that through Apple’s feedback page. I’m sure they were well aware of the opportunity, but it never hurts to let them know there are people who want a specific feature.
I can do that now!
Who knows how long we’ll have to wait for that? Right now, it’s just a rumor. ChatGPT isn’t a rumor; I just needed a way to feed it the health data Apple has collected from me. I asked how I could do that and was informed that several apps could create CSV files that El Chato would be happy to analyze.
I chose this one:
The analysis
I asked ChatGPT what data it wanted, had Health Export spit out the needed files, and uploaded them. After a bit of spinning and thinking, I got back a detailed and very useful report. Nothing upsetting was present, but I did get some diet adjustments I’ll implement.
The analysis looked at a number of things:
- Step trends vs. fatigue: Did higher step days correlate with poor sleep or high heart rates?
- Resting heart rate patterns: Any signs of stress or overexertion?
- Sleep: Did days of more/less sleep match how you felt?
- Nutrients: Were there shortfalls? Excess sodium? Too much sugar?
- Calories in vs. calories out — energy balance
- Protein & fiber: Did you hit targets? Any patterns around satiety or digestion?
If and when Apple’s Health Coach arrives, I’ll compare the two outputs. One big advantage of Apple will be that I know my privacy will be protected; I don’t fully trust OpenAI on that. On the other hand, Apple might do this on-device, which means a less capable LLM. I asked ChatGPT its opinion: it seems to think an on-device LLM won’t be able to offer much. My own guess is Apple will do a decent job.
Maybe we’ll know soon!
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