Watches That Measure Blood Sugar?

[CFLBob]

I hear about this idea occasionally, and it comes up repeatedly that Apple Watches are going to do this. While researching, I found this thread

Samsung watch still rumored to have glucose (and EKG) monitoring

According to this, the next Samsung watch is supposed to have non-invasive glucose monitoring: This is the technology they are using: Apple is supposed to have CGM technology, too. And, both are supposed to do ECG/EKG monitoring. If this actually comes out and works, I’ll have to buy a watch. I’d love to do more testing for glucose, but the Free Style Libre is up to $150/month without insurance.

Are any of these watches out? Anybody have one or seen any real data on how accurate they are?

It’s getting to be time for me to look for a replacement watch. This might be an interesting thing.

[OldDoug]

Glucose monitoring would be great, no doubt it’s coming but haven’t seen one yet. 2 or 3 years ago I got a Fitbit that does ECG. You hold the watch on diagonally opposite corners for 30 seconds. It shows you a two-dimensional trace as your heart beats, like a medical ECG screen, but I don’t know if it’s meaningful. At the end of the 30 seconds you get one of two messages, to the effect of “You’re okay - nothing abnormal detected,” or “Something seems off - you should get checked by a doctor.”

It also analyzes your sleep, and it connects to an app on your phone. After sleeping, you bring the watch and phone close together so the phone can sync with the watch. You get a plot of your sleep from start to finish, and totals of REM, deep and light sleep, as well as episodes of wakefulness. The watch uses skin temperature, heart rate, arm motion, maybe more stuff to figure out what stage of sleep you’re in.

I never got any ‘bad’ ECG messages, but do really like the sleep reports.

[CFLBob]

Thanks, Doug.

I’ve seen the sleep feature talked about before, but I’m only moderately interested. I know I don’t get a good quality sleep but I’m kind of on-hold about that.

We have a “senior cat” who after some medical stuff about a year ago, has come to believe a ritual he simply Must Do Every Night is get me up about 3AM to come out to the kitchen and do some stuff. I think I’ve had two or three nights of uninterrupted sleep in a year.

[ctviggen]

Apple keeps hinting it will be coming out with a watch with glucose monitoring, but they keep delaying it.

If anyone comes out with such a watch, I’ll be one of the people in line for it. And I’m never one of those who buy the bleeding-edge technology.

I have Kardia Mobile EKG, but it has only a limited set of what it can determine for heart irregularities, mainly Atrial Fibrillation (which I don’t have). If you don’t have that, but don’t have an exactly regular EKG, it’s lost. (I have a left bundle branch block, which leads to EKGs that aren’t right, so the Kardia Mobile punts.)

I always thought this was cool:

Oura Ring: Accurate Health Information Accessible to Everyone

It tells you things like heart rate variability, even temperature.

It’s just too expensive.