Member-only story
This Just In: Bio Tracking
Do you know what your resting heart rate is?
JJ Abrams guest-edited a 2009 issue of Wired Magazine titled “The Mystery Issue.” From Abrams’ editorial to uncrackable CIA codes, every corner of the magazine engaged the reader with games, puzzles, and an exploration of the unknown.
At the end of the magazine, an article explored the mysteries of our own bodies. Gary Wolf wrote about tracking every facet of his life, from sleep to heart rate to blood pressure. In 2009 this was an absurd idea. Today, our phones do track data for us automatically.
(Note: according to the Wired website, this article published two months after The Mystery Issue, but my brain remembers otherwise. If only I had logged it eleven years ago, I’d know for sure.)
I wear an Apple Watch that captures all sorts of data, all stored safely in the Health app on my phone. There are now three years worth of my heart’s beats per minute (BPM), daily step counts, standing minutes, calories burned, and more.
But I didn’t stop there. Nearly a decade after Gary Wolf’s project seemed crazy, I started tracking my own body’s data. I store additional data not captured by my watch in the Health app, including daily weight, temperature, water intake, and more.
