WELLNESS AUTHOR
Mike de Lota M.D.
LOOK HOW FAR WE’VE COME n Dr. de Lota takes a deep dive into the advances in and uses of modern wellness technology.
I
was recently at my parents’ house helping them clean storage bins from the garage when I found an old Jack LaLanne VHS (what’s that?) exercise video. My parents surprisingly still had a working VCR, and I watched as “The Godfather of Modern Fitness” went through a circuit of jumping jacks, tricep dips and his signature one-handed pushup. I laughed to myself thinking these exercises seemed basic and antiquated, but he ended the workout by telling his audience, “It’s not what you do some of the time that counts — it’s what you do all of the time that counts.” Although he was likely referring to regular exercise, proper nutrition and sleep, his words speak to a truism that the world of fitness and
OCTOBER 2021
fitness technology is built on today. Technological advancements in wearable biofeedback devices have allowed the everyday consumer to live that truism and start tracking what we do “all of the time.”
Applications in Fitness Wearable biofeedback devices comprise a multibillion-dollar industry and range from wristworn devices to those strapped onto the torso, arms and legs to “smart clothing” with electrodes woven into the clothing fabric. These devices can help optimize training by allowing the wearer to find the perfect balance between suboptimal exercise load (leading to stagnation and “plateaus” in performance) and exercise loads that overtrain (leading to muscle
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fatigue and injury). For example, the Apple Watch Series 6 uses infrared and nearinfrared technology as well as photoplethysmography — aka PPG, a method of measuring heart rate using a light source and a photodetector on the skin surface — to measure heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV) and heart rate recovery (HRR). Heart rate variability is the length of time between heartbeats controlled by the body’s autonomic nervous system. This system regulates our fight-or-flight and relaxation responses. So, if a person is in a fight-or-flight mode, the variation between heartbeats tends to be low while the variation between subsequent beats is high if the body is in a more relaxed state. In other words, the higher the
