The future of health optimization is at your fingertips — or around your wrist.
Health wearables have skyrocked in popularity in recent years. Nearly one in three Americans uses a wearable wellness device such as a smart watch or ring, according to the Health Information National Trends Survey. The wearables market is estimated to reach more than $150 billion by the end of 2029. Users rely on wearables to track everything from physical activity to sleep patterns, heart rate, body composition, blood pressure, and more.
But are they really worth wearing? Preliminary research is promising. Studies show that wearables support self-monitoring and healthy behavior shifts. One study found that when participants wore a fitness tracker, they got 50 extra minutes of movement per week. Another found that wearables can improve sleep quality by accurately measuring sleep variables.
“Objective data like the information provided by a wearable can help improve your health significantly," says Lifeforce Physician Renae Thomas, MD, MPH. “There is a huge difference between thinking you sleep well and having actual sleep scores, for example.”
When it comes to health, knowledge is power — especially when you have expert guidance to apply that knowledge to your everyday life. “Humans, in general, like feedback. We like to know how we're doing — whether that's at work, in our relationships, or in our body's response to changes we're making,” says Lifeforce Clinician Vanessa Clark, PA-C, RDN. “Data helps us understand a problem more clearly, motivates us to make a change, provides feedback about how that change is impacting us, and empowers us to keep going rather than slip back into old habits. Change is hard. Data can be a tool to promote positive shifts, but only when that data is accurate, applicable, useful, and implementable.”
That’s where Lifeforce comes in. We’re here to make your data even more valuable.
Make Your Data Work for You
Gathering your stats is only the first step in your wellness journey. “While wearables are great in that they can provide a lot of information, often it can be overwhelming or confusing, or it can be hard to interpret what the results mean,” Dr. Thomas explains.
Only when you truly understand the data can you harness it to optimize your health. “The most valuable piece of any data collection process is not necessarily in what the information shows, but what to do with it. The magic is in the ‘what now?’ piece of the puzzle. So you have all this incredible information, but what do we do with it?”
If you have data without help deciphering it, Clark likens this to visiting another country with no knowledge of the language versus taking the same trip with a translator. She says, “Can you get around and have some memorable experiences without a translator? Probably. But it would likely be a much more enriching and meaningful trip with someone to help you understand the new and confusing territory you now find yourself in.”
Your Lifeforce team is here to be your translator and guide.
Introducing Lifeforce’s Wearables Integration
Lifeforce members will now be able to connect a wearable device to their Lifeforce dashboard with just a few clicks. You can pair the following wearables:
After a simple setup process, your data will automatically populate in your dashboard alongside your blood test biomarkers. From there, your Lifeforce Clinician will analyze the info and use it to give you even more personalized and results-driven recommendations.
“Your clinician can help explain what data the wearables are capturing, what it all means, and what may or may not be important,” Dr. Thomas explains. “The clinician can also then use this knowledge to create a customized plan for the individual to enhance their results, using wearable data changes over time to make adjustments as indicated.”
Think of it as an expert reviewing your homework and giving you a shortcut to ace your health optimization. “The team at Lifeforce can now turn numbers, percentages, and confusing abbreviations into actionable advice like ‘eat this, move in this way, add this, remove that, or consider this supplement or prescription,’” Clark adds. “That's far more useful information for most people and saves them the time it would take to try to collect that information from a reliable source without expert feedback.”
5 Ways to Boost Your Results With the Lifeforce Wearables Integration
The possibilities to optimize are endless! We asked our experts what data they’re most excited to dig into, and how they’ll use it to support Lifeforce members.
1. Sleep Quality
“For someone with a sleep tracker, such as the Ōura Ring or Whoop, we can use the data to target which particular aspect of sleep is being disrupted,” Clark says. “There are differences in the interventions for trouble falling asleep, versus staying asleep, versus waking up too early. I find that certain formulations of magnesium can be really helpful for sleep onset problems but that L-theanine is better for reducing nocturnal wakings and improving quality of sleep.”
Sleep stats can also help clinicians make a plan for hormone optimization or other medical interventions. For example, “If a woman complained of fatigue and we saw her sleep pattern change during the luteal phase of her menstrual cycle, we would strongly recommend progesterone treatment during those two weeks to restore deep sleep and improve sleep latency, thereby improving daytime energy,” advises Lifeforce Medical Director Vinita Tandon, MD. On the other hand, if a man demonstrates reduced deep and REM sleep with poor sleep efficiency, this raises suspicion for sleep apnea. Dr. Tandon says, “That is important to know before prescribing testosterone because they can be contraindicated. We would recommend a diagnostic sleep study prior to initiating hormone optimization therapy.”
According to Dr. Tandon, Insulin-Like Growth Factor is another biomarker to keep an eye on. “If a member has low-normal IGF-1 levels, and Ōura revealed prolonged sleep latency, this would provide more evidence the person might benefit from the peptide sermorelin to improve growth hormone levels and enhance drowsiness.”
2. Body Composition
Have you dialed in your exercise and nutrition routine, but the scale still won’t budge? A device that measures body composition like the Withings Scale can give you a clue as to why — and, more importantly, what’s next.
“If we're able to track body composition instead of just weight, it puts a member’s journey into a whole new perspective,” Clark says. “We can measure the reduction in fat mass and the increase in lean body mass, which has health and metabolic benefits far beyond just simple weight reduction. A wearable also lets us know when to change direction or escalate interventions. For example, if someone has plateaued in their growth of lean muscle mass, perhaps it's time to consider adding something like testosterone or sermorelin so they can continue to benefit from the changes in body composition that they're working so hard for.”
3. Alcohol Intake
Seeing your stats may inspire you to embrace sober curiosity. “One of the most powerful impacts I have witnessed from wearables is members seeing in real time the detrimental effects alcohol can have on their sleep quality and recovery,” Dr. Thomas says. “This can really help members see the need to cut back in order to support their goals to improve their sleep, hormones, and energy levels. It is also nice to be able to objectively see improvements from sleep-supporting supplements such as Peak Rest™️ or Magnesium.”
4. Hormone Optimization
“As women go through perimenopause, there can be a lot of hormonal shifts that may be subtle and easily missed, such as variations in their menstrual cycles,” Dr. Thomas says. “Tracking cycles with a wearable can be eye-opening, and can also be correlated to blood hormone levels, which can help us create personally-tailored treatment plans to manage symptoms like PMS, heavier bleeding, irregular or shortened cycles, menstrual headaches, insomnia, hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, or body composition changes, to name a few. We can help improve many of these with treatments such as hormonal support, cyclical use of Magnesium, cycle synching workouts, and including certain foods and nutrients at specific times of the month.”
5. Stress Management
Many of our members are high achievers, but that can come with downsides. “A lot of our members are very driven but can sometimes have the tendency to overdo it, creating excessive stress that can impact sleep, hormones, metabolic health, and body composition,” Dr. Thomas notes. “By tracking variables such as heart rate variability (HRV), stress levels, and readiness and recovery scores, it can help them make sure they are optimizing their health in ways that are balanced and sustainable long term rather than resorting to extreme measures or quick fixes that are unsustainable or leave them burnt out and worse off in the long run.”
If you fit that bill, your Lifeforce Clinician and Health Coach can help you implement stress management and mindfulness techniques.
“The clinicians and health coaches at Lifeforce have a unique skill set to help members integrate all of these aspects of health into a distilled message with concrete next steps about how best to achieve your personal health goals,” Clark says. “That is far more valuable than all the data in the world if you don't know what to do with it.”
Ready for expert insights that up-level your health?
To connect your own wearable device(s), head to your Lifeforce dashboard and select Connect Device. If you’re not yet a member, learn more about the Lifeforce Membership here, including how our experts connect the dots on your biomarkers, Lifescore, wearables data, and more to help unlock better, faster results.
This article was medically reviewed by:
Renae Thomas, MD, MPH; ABFM Board Certified in Family Medicine, ABPM Board Certified in Public Health, & General Preventive Medicine; ABLM Board Certified in Lifestyle Medicine
Vinita Tandon, MD, ABIM Board Certified in Endocrinology and Metabolism
Vanessa Clark, PA-C, RDN