Fitness watches do more harm than good

Fitness watches make you feel guilty and anxious : Heart patients are warned not to use health tracking devices as new research suggests they do more harm than good.

Heart patients should use fitness watches because they do more harm than good, researchers said yesterday.

Owners of the devices such as Fitbits become more in tune with their health but suffer guilt and anxiety when they miss exercise targets or misinterpret data.

They may link a fast pulse with an increased risk of heart attack or fear that a lower than usual amount of sleep will exacerbate their illness.

A study shows that overall self measurement are more problematic than beneficial when it comes to the patient experience.

Patients begin to use the information from their Fitbits just as they would use a doctor. However, they don't get help interpreting their watch data. This makes them unnecessarily anxious, or they may learn something that is far from reality.

Published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research , the study examined 27 heart patients who used fitness watches to measure sleep , heart rate and physical activity.

Although the patients learned more about their illness and were motivated to exercise during the six months that they wore the watches, they also become more anxious.

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