[vidyesh]

You are right. From what I see apart from use for sports professionals or people for whom physical health matters too much ( livelihood ) they would make use of it the most.

But still gathering al this data religiously is good ( I haven't yet ) as sooner or later somebody will figure out how to use the data so well that it could ( algorithm / AI ) could determine what you should do today to reach a certain goal to stay healthy which you messed up a day before? For example, people who work out a lot and live on a diet, might some day indulge in something without really wanting to and all this data could tell how much ( theoretically ) will affect your health so what you should do today to make up for yesterday (?).

Think about this on much broader aspect, too much of something eventually is bad. Nobody is going to tell you forever to stop something until you stop, apps like this could gather data and at the end of a week/month/quarter could tell you your score and could rather calculate the risk of xxxx disease/illness which could happen because of your bad eating habits.

All this data could be synced with your medical file/with your doctor in order to keep tabs on your health and push personalised notifications of what and what not to do or just be cautious/warning.

I don't know if such thing really already exists or possible or even good but all this data could be tapped in and used much better way.

Oh and no clue why all this data should be social or public. IMO, it should be private and shared within family/concerned people.

[Retric]

In order to correlate with heath issues your going to need a standard to work from. Which makes collecting most of this info before 'fit-bit 12.0' or whatever somewhat pointless.

What exercise data can tell you is if your gaining or losing ground. So, if you do 10k in the same time but your heart rate is higher or lower that means something. But it's not going to correlate with a say a 1% increase of diabetes because we just don't run studies with that much detail yet.

[vidyesh]

The site seems to be showing that it has gathered a lot more than just eating and burning calories, safe to say such intensive data can be used to correlate with certain standard illnesses to be cautious.

Your data over a period of few months might make more sense to understand what ill-effects certain things have had on you. Think about 1 year's worth of your data being analysed to tell what certain things have had certain health related changes in you. Of course it still would take time to know how the changes you make will change things in you but based on your past data it could predict perhaps?

[hunvreus]

Do you really need an app to tell you you're not eating healthy? Nutrition and exercise aren't that hard; your body is able to let you know fairly easily when you're messing up, if not immediately at least over time. I have a very hard time believing that tracking your calories is going to significantly change your diet in the long term.

If you're overweight, you don't need to check on your smart-watch to know it. If you're drinking too much, you probably know about it already. And if you refuse to recognize it, I'm not sure numbers will help you. You don't need an AI to see that if you're 5 times a week at the pub for an average of 2 hours, you may have a problem.

There seems to be a strong belief that these things are hard to evaluate on your own, that the body is something mystical that can't seem to have any obvious logic. Yet we refuse to listen to the very basic, and reliable, signals our bodies broadcast.

Now if you're diabetic, or developing an illness, having a silent device continuously testing your blood would help. But we're far from it.

[vidyesh]

There is a lot of other data these apps collect other than just the calories you eat or burn. Of course almost everything is a approximation but better than zero data on anything.

Nobody gets overweight overnight. You might not end up being 'overweight' if you know your certain eating habit will end up being bad for you ( everybody has a different metabolism rate ) so you cannot say eating xxxxx causes your friend to gain weight so will it you gain weight if you eat it out of moderation. All the data being collected individually and studied/analysed over time for 'you' is what could change.

Everything you say is right and approximations have been working good for everyone till now, but there is never harm to move from approximations and assumptions to absolute certainty about a few things we can measure ( now ).

This data could help you know when is the right time to test your blood maybe?

[hunvreus]

Honest question; can you point me at these apps? The only stuff I've seen so far is either tracking external data (running, walking, activity, ...) or requires input (for calories for example). There are some dabbling with more interesting data (blood levels for example), but too inaccurate to be taken seriously for now.

I don't agree that approximation are better than zero data; people are already self-diagnosing a lot, without the understanding that numbers, averages and science in that field are not as accurate as we'd like it to be. It takes a physician to accurately guess what may be good/wrong with you (and I mean guess).

Ultimately, I feel there's enough big, obvious metrics you can derive from your body without strapping a fitbit on.

[vidyesh]

Sir, It seems you misread my first reply itself.

>...But still gathering all this data religiously is good ( I haven't yet ) as sooner or later....

Also, Physicians do not accurately take the data. They ultimately diagnose/analyse the data they get from tests/devices/you.

You should read my earlier replies keep in mind that nobody here said that the data could be used to STOP going to doctors, it would rather help us skip a few visits but ultimately of course if something tells you, you are going to be sick ( gadget or sixth sense ) you'll need to go to your medical practitioner. Doctors and hospitals can never be replaced.

Keeping yourself healthy is different from falling sick.