Sweating the small stuff: Smartwatch developed at UCLA measures stress hormone | Hacker News Reader

Sweating the small stuff: Smartwatch developed at UCLA measures stress hormone

newsroom.ucla.edu

65 pointscurmudgeon2227 comments

>“We’re entering the era of point-of-person monitoring, where instead of going to a doctor to get checked out, the doctor is basically always with us,” he said. “The data are collected, analyzed and provided right on the body, giving us real-time feedback to improve our health and well-being"*

Or alternatively, we'll enter a new era of medical surveillance where healthy people are turned neurotic by being subjected to unnecessary medical interventions because their watch tells them their stress levels deviate from the 'norm'.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” "

I don't want to know my health status when looking at my watch. I'm neurotic enough. From college to nervous breakdown; I was way to occupied what my body was doing.

Apple must do marketing research, and decided most people want to know their vitals on a daily basis?

I mean it's pretty useful information. Imagine seeing an indicator that tells you that you have elevated levels of stress, and then you can try different things to reduce the stress. Eventually you could learn, with pretty decent confidence, what works for you and what doesn't.

The blood oxygen level has been useful to me. I have both asthma and anxiety. Figuring out what’s an asthma attack and what’s a panic attack is helpful.

Have you found one that's actually anything like accurate? Every smartwatch I've tried either reads way low or has some other ~obvious sign of not being correct.

My Apple Watch seems accurate enough, if the pulseox reader I have is correct.

How about being served ads based on your state ? Is this still ok ?

Some people can't handle this kind of information very well just like some people can't handle (alcohol|tobacco|social media|video games|sex|marijuana|fitness|etc.) I don't want to live in a world where we can't have things because some people don't handle them well. I would much rather teach people to be good at recognizing and mitigating their weaknesses than to prevent everyone from having access or insinuating things are generally bad which only affect a few.

I can't understand why some people can not. This information is just empirical data points.

The feedback loops for the other things are pretty bad, fitness isn't so bad imo.

It doesn’t matter if you can’t understand why as long as you accept that some do (or don’t).

Its not about whether you can or cannot handle information.

The problem is that this information is not yours. There is an intermediary. There are the companies involved and the governance structure.

So, if the governance structure creates a rule that all watches should report to the government when there is a potential medical emergency, and even that you should be isolated and kept locked in - what can you do about it?

So, this is good information, but information in a different set of hands can be used against your interests.

Then you get into the idea that the government is here to help. I disagree. I think the government is here to govern, and that it acts against me in many ways even though I am doing nothing wrong.

Is it ok for me to have a different perspective? Must I accept the government constraints and the (self-serving) laws it writes? To statist (those who believe in the political paradigm on both the blue and red teams) I should apparently accept government dictats.

People seem to forget that everything the Nazis (National Socialists) did was legal too. A government (which is made up of people like you and I, only the seek power over others) can write appalling laws into the statute.

Anyway, it is naive to think that this is about information. This is another incremental step towards tyranny.

At least in the US, I think medical information might be what saves us across the board.

I just think the future probably looks more like HIPAA laws than what we have had with a big tech data free for all.

On the other hand, I am not even sure a wearable that takes a blood sample is commercially realistic with medical laws. Sweat sample might be as far as you can realistically go.

Of course, 50 years out who knows.

Old Lamplighter? Is that you?

>In the new smartwatch, a strip of specialized thin adhesive film collects tiny volumes of sweat, measurable in millionths of a liter. An attached sensor detects cortisol using engineered strands of DNA, called aptamers, which are designed so that a cortisol molecule will fit into each aptamer like a key fits a lock. When cortisol attaches, the aptamer changes shape in a way that alters electric fields at the surface of a transistor.

While I'm quite interested in being able to track my cortisol levels, the physics and chemistry behind this invention is just absolutely fascinating. I'm definitely going to be following this work closely.

huh, so that means our sweat sends out signals when we're stressed? kinda explains why my dog knows my mood so well... sensitive fella.

The data are collected, analyzed and provided right on the body, giving us real-time feedback to improve our health and well-being

Am I the only one who is concerned about the more dystopian implications of tech like this? Being diagnosed by a doctor is one thing, but in these times where mass surveillance and monitoring is being normalised, I have no doubt this is going to find some rather disturbing applications.

Personally I read this the other way. If the data were analyzed in the cloud, then yes, very surveillancy. But, here it says the data are analyzed on the body - that's great!

Even if it's analyzed locally, it can still get sent to the cloud. If anything it's easier to do so once it's processed data.

I'd imagine this would work similarly to a continuous glucose monitor. The local device stores up to several hours of data. Your phone or other device can upload that data if it's right next to the device. The device itself has no independent ability to transmit.

Unless it works like Oculus, where you can't watch e.g. naughty 3d movies without Zuckerberg knowing about it.

This is data that you just cannot get right now via conventional means.

Your body can produce drastically different amounts of this hormone by something as simple as just being at the doctor, and your values will fluctuate wildly throughout the day.

People take their glucose readings multiple times a day and most are not doctors.

This technology will clear the way for some fantastic insight into something that at the moment is only partially understood.

Shut up and take my money! I would find this very useful

Maybe, but the first thing you should think of is Elizabeth Holmes. May her legacy be that everyone is way more skeptical about the viability of any product.

I don't see the link between this and Theranos, your reply feels like an unsubstantiated dismissal of this research. This is a device that measures cortisol levels in your sweat, which apparently correlates well to the levels in the blood.

What Theranos claimed to be capable of is physically impossible. Cursory technical knowledge of the industry would have made it obvious.

I would supplant your comment with, "Be skeptical of the viability of products that relevant experts are skeptical of."

If you look at the next generation of continuous glucose monitors (not the ones in use today libre2 and dexcom, etc.) they are the size of a quarter now and can be installed below the waist, etc. with bluetooth broadcast.

It's the future for monitoring all kinds of blood bound things. I don't know why they do not add other features like 24/7 heartrate monitoring which would be easy but maybe complicate the user support issues.

Okay that's a pretty good headline

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