Through A Scanner, Brightly

I like gadgets and I like tinkering with my health, so it’s no surprise I sometimes combine the two. Years ago I got a Fitbit, which did a pretty good job of motivating me to do more cardio, despite being absurdly primitive by today’s standards.

Last year I got an Oura Ring, which tracks hearbeat, respiration, sleep, etc. I’ve learned a lot from it — apparently I sleep like a baby — and have generally found it pretty useful in tracking exercise and how my body is responding. (How good is it? A female friend of ours says it infallibly predicts her period’s starting day. I don’t use that feature, but it’s pretty good at figuring out when I’m getting a cold before I do.) It connects easily with an app by Bluetooth.

This year, Helen’s trainer was raving about her Hume Body Pod, a scale that measures bodyfat and more and that comes with a band that you wear around your wrist. It, too, measures exercise, but also tracks blood pressure, HRV (Heart Rate Variability — more of which is generally better), bodyfat, lean tissue, bone density, and more.

The low bodyfat number settled a marital debate; my weight has gone up slowly over the past decade, but I have maintained that the change was mostly muscle gain. Helen met that with wifely skepticism, but now agrees that I’m right.