Apple Watch 6 - Are the Health Features WORTH IT? A Doctor's Opinion. By Christy Risinger, MD

Hi and welcome to another edition of your health with Dr Christie, my name is Dr Christy Basinger, and today I'm going to review the new Apple Watch Series 6. Are the new health features worth it? One of the new features of the series 6 watch is the detection of blood oxygen, also known as pulse oximetry. This feature will automatically and periodically check your blood oxygen, and this can also be done on demand. It takes about 15 seconds to take a measurement it obtains the reading with the four photodiodes on the back for the watch and broadcasts a light through your wrist. A normal pulse ox is between 95 and 99, although people can also have values below this, and it can be normal for them. For example, patients with COPD and emphysema often have values in the low 90s at baseline, and this is normal for them.

It would be helpful to establish your normal pulse oximetry baseline when you're feeling. Well, I love this feature for several reasons. Number one silent, hypoxia or a low pulse ox or o2 saturation is one of the indications that you need to go to the emergency room with COVID-19 see my prior video I've provided a link below about pulse oximeters that you can buy at the pharmacy or online and how to know when to go to the her. If your pulse oximetry is low, number two sleep apnea is also a very common problem, and this pulse oximetry can provide a helpful way to take an overnight pulse ox. Reading people will be shocked to see their oxygen saturation going down into the 70s before they have microarousals.

The watch may be helpful to determine if a more formal evaluation for sleep apnea is needed. Number three patients with COPD and emphysema benefit from using home oxygen when their oxygen saturation goes below 88 percent oxygen treatment has been shown to provide many benefits for these patients and actually may prolong their life, so the watch can be a way for them to monitor their oxygen saturation on an ongoing basis. So my verdict about pulse ox is that I really like this feature for the home evaluation of one of the main concerning symptoms for COVID-19, as well as the possibility of detecting sleep apnea in people and helping patients with COPD know when it's time to use home oxygen. Okay, next up is sleep tracking. This is certainly not new technology, as we have seen this on many devices over the past few years, but the Apple Watch operating system 7 includes a new sleep app that offers sleep tracking capabilities and provides sleep analysis in an easy-to-read chart the Apple Watch uses an accelerometer to detect subtle movements associated with breathing.

So it knows if you're, asleep or awake and there's also a wind down feature that helps you to establish a bedtime routine with shortcuts to things like dimming the lights and opening a meditation app in a sleep mode that will automatically turn off your screen and turns on a do not disturb my verdict. I really like this feature. I've done several videos on the importance of sleep, so I like any feature that allows people to understand their sleep behaviors and helps them to get the recommended. Eight hours of sleep a night. Another new feature is handwashing detection in a direct response to Nova 19.

The Apple Watch operating system 7 can now automatically detect handwashing using the motion sensor and mic. It can pick up the sound of squirting soap or water and prompt you to wash your hands for 20 seconds. It can also remind you to wash your hands when you get home via location tracking. My verdict about this. I like this feature, but it unnerves me a little to know that my watch can tell when I'm washing my hands now, let's move on to other health related features that have been around with other operating systems.

The first is the irregular heart rhythm feature. This feature has been around since the December 2018 watch update and the watch captures a tachograph or a plot of time between heartbeats every two to four hours. If the tachograph detects an arrhythmia, then it starts to check more frequently of a minimum every 15 minutes. If five out of the six tachograph are irregular within a 48-hour period, then the user is notified, that they have an irregular rhythm suggestive of atrial fibrillation and to go discuss with their doctor. This feature can also be paired with the EKG feature, and this has been around since series.

Four. An electrocardiogram is captured when a finger is placed on the digital crown, because it creates a closed loop between the impulses from the back of the watch. Now it's not a full electrocardiogram. It only uses lead 1, but the watch will give an interpretation saying it's detected, a normal rhythm, atrial fibrillation, or it's inconclusive. According to the Apple website, the ability of the EKG app to accurately classify an EKG recording of aphid and sinus rhythm was tested in a clinical trial of approximately 600 subjects and demonstrated a 99.6 specificity with respect to sinus rhythm classification and a 98.3 sensitivity for atrial fibrillation classification. Well, why knows about atrial fibrillation important atrial fibrillation occurs when the heart beats irregularly, the upper and lower chambers of the heart beat out of sync with one another, and because blood isn't going through the heart effectively, clots can form which can cause strokes, but many patients have asymptomatic, atrial, fibrillation, meaning that they never have symptoms of this irregular rhythm, but some do have symptoms such as a rapid, heartbeat, palpitations fatigue or shortness of breath.

According to the CDC, approximately 2 percent of patients, younger than 65 and 9 percent of people 65 and older, have atrial fibrillation. My verdict about these features is that they're great, especially for older adults or anyone with heart issues, but you may not need to get a new watch to get it. I spoke with two cardiologists who said that, in their practices alone, they have had several patients use an eye watch to help discover atrial fibrillation check to see if the eye watch you currently have has either one or both of these features. Next up is the pulse rate notification. This also is not a new feature.

You can establish settings when you want to be notified for a pulse, that's either too low or too high, and my verdict about this is that it could be helpful if you have a history of heart issues, either bradycardia, which is a low heart rate or tachycardia, which is a high heart rate, or if you take blood pressure medication that lowers your heart rate, such as a beta blocker. Some examples of this are carvedilol or metoprolol heart rates, less than 50 can be dangerous, and often heart rates higher than 100 can indicate an issue if there's not a clear reason, such as increased activity or emotion, that's causing the elevation of the heart rate. Normal heart rates are 50 to 100 beats per minute, but if you're physically fit your resting, heart rate can get into the 40s, and this is totally normal to speak with your doctor about what a normal heart rate should be for you. Next up is the ambient noise feature following the introduction of the noise app in the Apple Watch operating system, 6, that measures ambient sound levels and duration of exposure? The Apple Watch operating system 7 adds further support for hearing health with headphone audio notifications. Customers can now understand how loudly they're listening to media through their headphones and when these levels may impact their hearing when total listening with headphones has reached.100 percent of the safe weekly listening amount Apple Watch then provides a notification to the wearer. This amount is based on the World Health Organization's recommendations that, for instance, a person can be exposed to 80 decibels for about 40 hours per week without an impact to hearing abilities.

Did you all know that today, one in five teens will experience some form of hearing loss and that's 30 percent higher than 20 years ago and thought to be due to the increased use of headphone use? Hearing loss is gradual, but once it's gone it can't be recovered. So my verdict is that I love this feature. I don't think many people realize how loudly they're listening to their devices and the risks to their hearing and lastly, is the fall detection feature. This feature has also been around since the series 4 watch and uses the accelerometer and the gyroscope to detect a hard fall. If your Apple Watch detects that you're moving after the fall, it waits for you to respond to the alert and won't automatically call emergency services.

But if your watch detects that you've been immobile for about a minute, it will make the call automatically and will notify ems of your location. Why is this feature important? According to the CDC over 800 000 seniors are hospitalized due to an injury from a fall, and we know that seniors who fall can easily break a hip, and that may lead to other complications falls. Are the leading cause of death from injury among adults, 65 and older? My verdict is that I love this feature for older adults. In fact, my parents both have it. They both report that it's worked well for them.

There have been a few times when the alert goes off accidentally, such as when my dad dropped his watch or when my mom grabbed something suddenly as it was falling, but both of them felt like the benefits of the fall detection were worth the occasional hassle. Neither one of them have called 911 accidentally. My series 6 watch is on order, and once I get it I'll provide a full review to give you guys some more insight. Thanks again for joining me.

Source : Christy Risinger, MD