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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

I'll give you one small example. I started using a sleep tracking app on my iPhone because I have bad onset insomnia and don't sleep well. After one weeks use I noticed that the nights I went for a short 20 min walk before bed I had a much better sleep score. I also fell asleep faster.

Another thing I noticed was that I feel asleep faster if I didn't listen to music or podcasts. I've listened to them for years thinking it helped me fall asleep more quickly but using the app for a week I was able to prove that false. Obviously my data set it very small but the changes seem to be working.

If you collect data on lots of different things all of these small changes/improvements you make could add up to a noticeable difference in quality of life. The holy grail of course is software that can analyse all of these data points and recommend changes.

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IMHO, you don't need personalized data for this kind of stuff.

More seriously, there's plenty of literature out there about these things; spend 5 minutes on Google and you'll find all of these recommendations. You'll know that exercising will help you sleep. You'll read as well that screens tend to disturb our sleeping patterns. These are becoming common sense and shouldn't require you to run you own little experiment to figure it out.

If you want to improve the quality of your life, I doubt a fitbit will help you. You already know what you should be doing starting with the obvious ones:

- Exercise more,

- Eat more healthy (less carbs/sugar/processed food, more vegetables and regular meat/fish/eggs...),

- Sleep more,

- Drink less.

In my opinion you are missing two very key points.

1) Saying "well, you could just find this information some other way" may be true but useless - everyone has different mechanisms that work well for them. If it takes a device or app or whatever for someone to stick with a change they want to make, then good for them.

2) While there is definitely some general health and fitness advice that would benefit most people, it's terribly naive to believe the story ends there. Population averages are just that, every person will also have specific mechanisms and effects that are important to their own wellbeing and not particularly generalizable.

Fair enough. That being said:

1. It matters to me because I see this as a waste of resources (hardware, software, brains) for something that is near obvious. While it's anyone's choice to consume the way they want, I am just morally opposed to it.

2. What these apps address are general health/fitness metrics, in a very superficial manner. As I said, once we have more meaningful tracking I'll be onboard, for now these are rudimentary toys.

Not at all to disagree, but just to clarify: drink less alcohol, drink lots more water. Minor dehydration is amazingly common and you'll be astounded how much better you feel if you force yourself to drink large amounts of water regularly.

There is zero evidence supporting the idea that drinking water beyond thirst is helpful. If anything people tend to have slight electrolyte deficiency, which is exacerbated by fluid over-consumption.

For "people" in general that seems correct in aggregate. For older people we have:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirst#Elderly

You pretty much have to tell old people to drink, after they're too old to know they need to drink.

Its also "semi well known" that cold weather tends to mask thirst symptoms, and the resulting dehydration doesn't help much WRT hypothermia prevention, so this claim is, again, not people in general, but the subset of people in an environment colder than they're used to.

This is horrible advice. This is the type of advice which causes people to give up on what might be a modest improvement, because they rapidly find you can't get anything done when you have to get up to pee every 20 minutes.

I have got enormous value from tracking my resting heart rate and body temperature. Anything under 75 bpm or under 98F and I know I need to eat and sleep more and skip exercise. No need to log. I think a ton of folks would benefit.

Beyond those two metrics I can't think of anything it'd be useful to check regularly. Reflex time or achilles reflex test might be good.

Uhm? Why do you consider a resting heart rate of under 75bpm to be a bad condition?

I'm just assuming that you are within the average age group of hacker news readers (somewhere between 20 and 40 years) it's not really recommended for you to be above 75bpm.

Hypothyroidism. Anything much below 70 is indicative of suppressed metabolism. Up towards 90 is actually best. There are clear correlations between health, intelligence, and resting heart rate. The most intelligent people have resting heart rates up around 95 bpm.

The idea that a lower pulse rate is better comes from the observation that endurance athletes have low resting pulse rates, and it is generally assumed that endurance exercise is healthy. The truth is that high volume exercise suppresses the metabolism and compromises health.

Can you offer a reference for this claim?

Here's a counter-claim: "A normal resting heart rate for adults ranges from 60 to 100 beats a minute.

Generally, a lower heart rate at rest implies more efficient heart function and better cardiovascular fitness. For example, a well-trained athlete might have a normal resting heart rate closer to 40 beats a minute."

Source: Mayo Clinic, http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/fitness/expert-answ...

I'm not a doctor but I don't think that is true for most people. One of the most fit people I know has a resting heart rate of 40-50. Mine is usually 60-70 when I'm calm - when it is 80 or more something is generally off and I need to exercise more.

The low pulse of athletes is adaptively suppressed metabolism. It is not a good thing. The body deliberately reduces resting energy expenditure as a conservation measure because it anticipates the extreme energy demands of training.

Sprinters and strength athletes do no get a suppressed heart rate. It's only endurance athletes and others who train high volume.

This is well understood by a lot of trainers. Low pulse and low body temperature in the morning is an easy way to measure over-training.

People need to get it through their heads that highly trained "fit" athletes are not very healthy, as a general rule. They tend to develop problems relatively young. Marathon running is worst of all, each marathon run showing a statistical reduction in life span.

There seems to be very little evidence backing up your marathon reduces life statements.

- Exercise more, - Eat more healthy (less carbs/sugar/processed food, more vegetables and regular meat/fish/eggs...), - Sleep more, - Drink less.

And as an insomniac I was having trouble with 'sleep more'. People with worse insomnia than me have to go sleep clinics to work out how to improve their situation. Mine wasn't bad enough to warrant that but fortunately there was an app to allow me to do a little of my own research. Without it I wouldn't be able to tell the time it took me to fall asleep - as I would be asleep.

You'll read as well that screens tend to disturb our sleeping patterns

Podcasts and music don't require screens, though, so I don't see why you're assuming that was the problem.

Most people don't have such a high degree of intuitiveness to themselves to know what behavioural variations make any difference.

Google does not interpolate those suggestions from your personal data, that's where the fitbit etc. apps shine.

- Having a glass of water - Going for a short walk - Having a glass of wine - Watching a movie/tv show with your partner - Telling a bedtime story to your kids - Washing the dishes while thinking about your day - Talking to your mum/dad/bro/sis - listening to some calming music - having a shower

How would you know what contributed to your good night sleep?

Having an app/tool tracking these for you and telling you that your best sleep is when you do A C and F not E or G is very valuable.

If you are smart enough to track and figure it out, then heck, I think you have too much free time or you are highly intuitive of yourself

Which app do you use, may I ask?

'Sleep Cycle'. Orange icon with a clock on it. I was always quite skeptical of it and didn't download it until recently. It's been one of the top apps for a few years and has good reviews. I've found it to be quite accurate. It recommends that you keep your iPhone connected to a charger and under your sheet as you sleep but I've found just placing the device next to my pillow works fine and only uses about 25-30% battery life per night.

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