In the bustling hustle of the contemporary world, stress is an all-too-familiar companion. But what if our wearable technology could help us recognize and manage it? Enter Fitbit’s game-changing feature – the Body Response for Sense 2. Introduced in early 2023, the feature has stirred considerable interest, and for good reason. This smartwatch function, designed and built by the renowned American tech company Fitbit, employs cutting-edge technology to track and alert wearers of physical signs of stress in real time, potentially revolutionizing how we understand and respond to stress.
Founded in 2007, Fitbit has long been a major player in the wearable technology landscape. The company’s ethos of integrating technology and wellness has driven its innovation, producing devices that not only track but also empower users to take control of their health. With the Body Response feature in the Sense 2 smartwatch, Fitbit continues to solidify its position as a thought-leader in the industry, setting new standards in stress management technology.
The Body Response feature is a result of meticulous research and testing. At its core is a sophisticated Stress Management Score algorithm that calculates a user’s resilience to stressors, factoring in sleep and activity data from the previous week, day, and night. This algorithm is paired with the world’s first on-wrist continuous electrodermal activity (cEDA) sensor – another Fitbit innovation – that tracks physiological parameters like heart rate, skin temperature, and micro-sweat levels throughout the day.
The ability to detect sudden changes in these metrics allows the Body Response feature to prompt users at potentially stressful moments, offering an opportunity for reflection or stress-reducing actions like guided breathing or walks. Over the first month of use, the feature learns more about the user’s baseline activity, enhancing its accuracy in identifying acute changes from the norm.
It’s important to note that this feature does not conflate exercise-induced physiological changes with stress. During exercise, the Body Response algorithm is disabled to avoid false alerts.
Health professionals have offered varied perspectives on this technology. Some emphasize its potential to enhance our understanding and management of stress, while others highlight the importance of users interpreting the data within the context of their own experiences and feelings. For instance, similar physiological responses can be triggered by positive events like going on a first date or hosting a party. Thus, the user’s input in logging how they feel at a given moment is crucial in understanding the context of the physiological changes.
The Body Response feature was put through rigorous testing before reaching the user’s wrist. Participants were subjected to controlled social stress tests, including a mock job interview and a surprise math test under the watchful eyes of virtual judges. The data from these trials was used to train the Body Response algorithm, enabling it to identify signs of autonomic arousal – rapid changes in hormonal and physiological functioning caused by stressors.
To ensure real-world applicability, participants also wore prototype Sense 2 devices during their normal routines for one week, logging stress levels at various times. This process helped confirm that the algorithm could indeed identify periods of logged stress.
The introduction of the Body Response feature might be a turning point in the field of wearable technology. By offering real-time stress tracking, Fitbit has created a tool that can potentially help users not only understand their stress levels but also manage them more effectively. The feature serves as a reminder that stress impacts various areas of life, including physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing. As such, it presents an opportunity to foster a more holistic approach to health and wellness, reinforcing the
The Fitbit Sense 2 has a new Body Response sensor that measures continuous EDA (electrodermal activity) for all-day stress tracking with notifications. EDA measures small electrical changes in your skin’s sweat level to track your body’s response to stress. In moments of stress, the Sense 2 asks you to reflect on how you’re feeling and offers suggestions to help you chill out. It also provides weekly summaries that illuminate trends like your most stressful days and top moods.
As for fatigue, there is no single standard way to measure it currently. Fatigue is often defined as a decrement in mental and/or physical performance caused by cognitive overload, physical exertion, sleep deprivation, circadian phase/circadian rhythm disruption, or illness. It’s a complex state with multiple contributing factors, making it difficult to measure with a single metric. Fatigue can develop in response to physiological challenges or pathophysiological changes, and it impairs cognitive and/or motor performance.
There are several approaches to detecting and monitoring fatigue:
- Subjective Measures: Self-reported fatigue through questionnaires and scales. These provide insights into mental and emotional processes underlying performance in a task. However, these aren’t useful for real-time monitoring.
- Performance-Related Methods: Assess task performance, with emphasis on cognitive skills such as vigilance, hand-eye coordination, sustained attention, reaction time. These methods can’t be used to detect the development of fatigue in real-time, though.
- Biomathematical Models: These models predict subjects’ level of fatigue based on information regarding sleep-wake times, work-rest pattern as well as circadian cycle. However, they’re not able to predict fatigue at the individual level since individual needs for sleep, circadian rhythms, and responses to fatigue are different.
- Behavioral-Based Methods: Detect fatigue through external signs, such as yawning, sighing, eyes closure, or head nodding. Technologies in this category frequently use metrics related to eye movements, head motion, and facial expression. These methods detect fatigue only upon the appearance of its first signs, which may be too late to avoid exposure to fatigue-related risk.
- Physiological Signal-Based Methods: Detect the onset of fatigue based on changes in subjects’ physiological responses such as brain activity measured by electroencephalogram (EEG), heart rate (HR), or electromyogram (EMG). Taking physiological signals as indicators of fatigue enables objective, real-time fatigue monitoring at the individual level. However, changes in physiological variables in response to stressors and fatigue vary within and between individuals, which complicates the detection of abnormal conditions.
While the Fitbit Sense 2 has the capability to monitor some physiological signs that can be associated with fatigue, such as heart rate variability, it doesn’t directly measure or predict fatigue. The device might be able to provide some insights that can be helpful in managing fatigue, such as sleep tracking and stress management features. However, it’s important to note that a comprehensive understanding and management of fatigue often requires a multi-faceted approach, including proper rest, nutrition, exercise, and stress management, and not just tracking with a wearable device.
