How to keep up with Omicron Using Your Smartwatch

Every human being does tend to fall sick. Diseases are contagious, and they spread fast. There have always been medicines to cure the Flu, fever, etc., but we find ourselves amid a Pandemic. It is the Corona and Omicron viruses that have set the world back. Technology does help in identifying these viruses in advance, even before the symptoms come in, by measuring blood and oxygen levels. Now, it’s more accessible as these are apps in your smartwatch. Please find below the best watches that warn us of a corona or omicron attack. And learn How to keep up with Omicron Using Your Smartwatch?

How to use the watch to track and monitor your health using the various health-related apps available?

Monitoring blood pressure

How to measure blood pressure with Apple Watch

Here are a few apps and smartwatches which can monitor blood pressure and a brief explanation on how to use them.

Apple Watch

The Apple watch on its own is incapable of monitoring blood pressure, and you need an intelligent device called QardioArm, which combines with the app on the watch and gives you the measurements. Here are the steps

• Fit the QardioArm device onto your left- upper arm
• Qardio app to be opened
• The Start button to be tapped
• Now, the measurements will be displayed

Samsung

• The requirement of the following Apps is essential.
• Samsung Galaxy Wearable
• The Samsung Health
• Samsung Health Monitor

The steps to check the blood pressure on your Samsung smartwatch is as follows:

1. Click on the Health monitor app on your Samsung phone
2. Click on the tab mentioned ‘blood pressure’
3. Keep a Kinetic monitor (for example), which is cuff-based and calibrated with the Samsung watch
4. Seat yourself in a chair with your arm in line with your heart and fix the Kinetic monitor cuff in the same arm. It’s essential to be relaxed once this is done
5. Wear the Samsung watch on the other wrist
6. The app would prompt you to initiate the Kinetic monitor, which would activate the Samsung watch to engage in a measurement process. The reading would be available within half a minute
7. Transfer the reading to the monitor from the watch into the kinetic monitor. Now, add it manually with the other data
8. The process above has to be repeated thrice, and you should not remove the cuff before that. Since all the readings are stored as data, you can go through the history and monitor the movement of your blood pressure

Smartwatches Can Detect COVID-19 Before Symptoms Develop

Even days before a person is diagnosed, wearable gadgets such as smartwatches that continuously track their wearer’s pulse rate and skin temperatures can assist in detecting coronavirus infections.

One study conducted at Mount Sinai Health System in New York and Stanford University in California found that wearable devices like the Apple Watch, Garmin, and Fitbit can determine whether or not a person is positive for COVID-19 even before symptoms a viral test can be performed

The Apple Watch can detect even the most minor changes in a person’s heartbeat. Such a change could indicate an attack by the Corona starter even seven days before the sickness set in.

Analyzing a specific metric known as heart rate variability (HRV) helps. A human being’s heartbeat has an interval between them, but it would vary between people. It also reflects on how efficiently their immune system works. If heartbeat variations are noticed, you should get it checked by a physician.

Covid is also an inflammatory disease, and thus the conclusion is arrived at before the real symptoms set in. Apple watches can measure the heartbeat rate and use the data collected to decide whether a person will test Covid positive or not. Thus smartwatches like Garmin, Apple, and Fitbit Sense can detect the virus before the actual symptoms of Omicron and Corona arise.

You Can Use watches such as Fitbit Sense to Monitor Skin Temperature

The temperature on the skin’s surface is known as Skin temperature, whereas the temperature inside the body is called Core temperature. Even though both are similar, there is a slight difference between them.

You can use Fitbit Sense or the versa three by using an app called ‘Today’. Here are the steps:

1. Locate the Today app and open it on your watch
2. Click on the ‘Core Temp’ tile and log in
3. Set your core temperature, use the negative and positive symbols, and save it

   Using the FitbitSense, the core temperature can be logged into the Fitbit app resident on your phone too. It is essential to know that if the core temperature is between 97 & 99 degrees Fahrenheit the person is healthy and normal. A person is considered unhealthy or feverish if the core temperature exceeds 100.4 degrees F.

The skin self regulates heat and cold, thus maintaining the core temperature. The sensors in the Fitbit devices can calculate your skin temperature for at least thirty days. You can monitor it twice, once in the night and then the following day, and infer how it differs from your baseline.

The Fitbit Sense has a dedicated sensor that measures your skin temperature variation every night. The other models with similar sensors are:

• Fitbit Charge 4
• The Fitbit Ionic
• Fitbit Versa Series
• The Fitbit Charge 5
• Fitbit Charge 2

So how does the Fitbit do this? One should know that everybody’s temperature baseline differs. The Fitbit sensors carry out a minute-by-minute checking/monitoring as you wear it and sleep. You can now calculate your baseline temperature once the Fitbit app stores data over three consecutive nights. You can extend this by wearing it to sleep for thirty nights, too, and then make adjustments to your most accurate baseline temperature.

How do I use the Fitbit to see the trends?

In case you are using your Fitbit Sense,

• Strap the watch on your wrists for the entire twenty- four hours
• Once you wake up, click on the temperature icon on the Fitbit. You would view a reading which may be more or less when compared to your baseline temperature
• You can also view the historical data to understand the variations by tapping the tile

SPO2 Monitor

The body requires a specific amount of oxygen in the blood to function correctly. SpO2, or oxygen saturation, is the ratio of oxygen-carrying hemoglobin to non-carrying hemoglobin in the blood. Low SpO2 levels might cause significant symptoms. The smartwatch includes a wrist-based Pulse Ox sensor to offer improved sleep tracking and altitude acclimatization, and a drop in such levels is a good indication of the Coronavirus.

Among the many apps which are health and fitness-related, SpO2 monitoring is one of them. It helps check your levels of blood oxygen. Here are a few smartwatches that are effective in monitoring SpO2.

Also, read the Best SpO2 (blood oxygen) Smartwatches that you can buy 

• Samsung Galaxy Watch 3

It measures your SpO2 levels using red LEDs and infrared rays, letting you keep track of how much oxygen is in your bloodstream at any one time.

• Apple 6

The Apple Watch Series 6 is ‘reliable’ regarding heart rate and oxygen saturation monitoring. According to a recent study, the Apple Watch Series 6 “is a reliable method to collect pulse rate and oxygen saturation (SpO2) in individuals with lung illnesses under controlled conditions,” according to a recent study.

Use your Smartwatch not just for its fitness features but utilize its health-tracking features to keep up with the ongoing pandemic and take better care of your health.