AFib patients using wearable devices are more likely to engage in high rates of symptom monitoring and experience anxiety than non-users, a study shows.
There’s consciousness, and then there’s anxiety inducing obsessive symptom checking. Which may do more harm than good given these are cardiac patients.
Everything in moderation.
Surely we van look at apps that allow more informed data but without the anxiety. Like, here’s your data, this is less frequent than average. Or, here is your data, its the same as before. Or here is your data, its slightly different again, so we’ve already notifies your doctor, but usually this is nothing to be concerned about. Etc.
Lots of patients with other conditions have yo do similar, like diabetics monitoring sugar levels. Or asthmatics who can induce attacks by getting stressed about attacks.
We could build in some mindfulness exercises which help with anxiety. I’d say overall, its better.
It may also be when they were asked. I monitor whatever my watch allows, and plan to base future Watch decisions mostly on new health monitoring.
With each new capability, I obsess about it for a while until it fades into the background. Now I check them all once in a while but the bad part is I don’t follow them closely enough to improve my well-being. There’s a balance somewhere between my tendencies and people who don’t stop
