Technology advancements have led people into leading sedentary lifestyles. Most of us are glued to our laptops and phones for a prolonged time. In such an environment, it is very important to keep a check on our health as well. Smartwatches are the best devices for this use case. These days, technology has become so advanced that smartwatches are becoming as capable as our smartphones, despite the much smaller size in which they are available.
Smartwatches have become very popular in India. With brands like Noise and Boat offering great value-for-money smartwatches at affordable prices, more and more people are shifting from classic analogue watches to smartwatches.
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How are Smartwatches Improving Our Health
Apart from displaying time and date like classic watches, smartwatches have a lot more to offer. Key features that are offered in most smartwatches today include access to notifications, heart rate sensors, timers, sports mode, step counting, health reminders, music control, temperature sensing and an endless number of other convenient yet useful features. Thus, smartwatches can help you improve your health by keeping a track of it and sending relevant reminders. Here are five of the most important ways smartwatches are improving our health.
1. Sleep Monitoring
Sleep monitoring is available in almost all smartwatches, including affordable ones. This feature helps to count the number of hours one can sleep. Further, a smartwatch can also rate the intensity of sleep from light, moderate and deep sleep. This is done through a combination of a gyroscope, accelerometer and heart rate sensor.
2. Health Reminders
Smartwatches give timely reminders to keep a check on your activities. A smartwatch reminds you to drink water on time, and also sends a notification when you are sitting for too long. An endless list of similar features is offered by different smartwatches, which help to balance our health and busy lifestyles.
Apart from this, some smartwatches also offer menstrual cycle trackers for women so that they can keep a check on their menstrual health as well.
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3. Sports Modes and Step Counting
Step counting is one of the most basic features which are available in every smartwatch. It keeps you motivated to complete your step goals every day, and also notifies you when your daily target has been achieved. Users can set their daily goals as per their capabilities, and then perform accordingly.
For sports enthusiasts, analysis of their performance and skills is crucial. This is made possible through smartwatches, which help you to measure and track various aspects of your biological activity relevant to a particular sport. The most common sports modes offered by numerous smartwatch makers are Cricket, Basketball, Badminton, Yoga, Indoor Fitness, Aerobic Capacity and a lot more.
4 . Heart Rate Sensing & Emergency Alerts
All modern smartwatches come with heart rate sensors. It allows you to track your heart rate during exercises allowing you to keep in a zone that matches your capabilities. Although they aren’t as accurate as actual heart rate monitoring systems, they are good enough to provide a rough idea about our heart rate. In case a smartwatch detects an unusual activity in the heart rate, it immediately notifies the user so that he/she can take adequate actions before any serious circumstances occur.
Blood oxygen levels can also be measured using a smartwatch. Premium smartwatches such as the Apple Watch Series 4 onwards offer additional features such as the electrocardiogram (ECG) to keep better track of cardiovascular health.
5. Calorie Tracking
Smartwatches can measure the number of calories burnt by you during a workout or even during regular activities. Although there is no direct way to count the number of calories burnt, a smartwatch uses algorithms which make use of the metabolic data from various sensors to formulate the approximate value. The faster your heart beats, the more calories you burn.
A smartwatch motivates you to perform physical activities to burn the required amount of calories every day, thus leading to a healthier lifestyle. You can adjust daily goals as per your potential, and perform physical activities until the smartwatch reminds you about the goal completion.
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Best Smartwatches for Health and Fitness Tracking
There are a plethora of options available in the Indian smartwatch market. However, only a few of them are reliable and accurate enough to become dependent on. Here’s a list of the best Smartwatches to buy in every price bracket, which is focused towards health and fitness.
- Apple Watch Series 8: Rs. 41999 Onwards
- Apple Watch SE: Rs.27900
- Garmin Venu 2: Rs. 37999
- Fitbit Sense: Rs. 20999
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 4: Rs. 15100 Onwards
- Fitbit Charge 5: Rs. 11999
- Amazfit GTS 4 Mini: Rs. 7999
- Redmi Smart Band Pro: Rs. 3999
The premium offerings from the likes of Apple and Fitbit are much more reliable than the affordable ones. It is good to get an approximate measure of our daily activities and health, though not a hundred per cent is reliable.
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