We firmly believe that staying current (ish) with the technology of the world is key to having a good Third Age. We talked in our Media and Reads section this week about an organization that helps us third agers stay active and comfortable with technology. But some technology can be easy and helpful. This week, we wanted to take a deep dive into a piece of wearable technology that might just save your life – the Apple Watch.
A Fitness Partner for Your Wrist
There are a lot of fitness trackers out there right now. You can go cheap and get one on Amazon for about $50, upgrade to a FitBit or go premium with a Garmin, but Apple has the edge in what their watch can do.
As a fitness tracker, it motivates you to stay active. The activity rings show your movement every day. It soon becomes a fun challenge to “close all your rings” each day.
The watch is set up to track a variety of workouts, including running, cycling, to high intensity interval training. It’s even water resistant so you can use it while swimming!
Advanced Health Features
As a fitness tracker, it measures all the ways you move, but also tracks meaningful health insights.
Unlike many of the watches on the market, an Apple Watch can watch out for unusually high or low heart rates, even recognizing irregular rhythms that can be a sign of a more serious condition. A Michigan woman even credits her Apple Watch for helping her to recognize the signs of a heart attack and saving her life just last April.
Your Apple Watch can also track your blood oxygen levels (isn’t that a relief during COVID times?), and with the ECG app, it can actually generate an ECG.
Safety Features
Something that might make your family feel at ease, besides all the health tracking features, is the fact that your Apple Watch can also detect a fall. If it detects what’s considered a hard fall, the Watch can connect you with emergency services right away. And if you need help, all you have to do is press and hold the side button to dial – even if you’re traveling internationally.
There are many things that make the Apple Watch a great product, but we think its ease of use and the fact it’s chalk full of safety and health-related features makes it a perfect accessory for anyone in their third age.
They start at $399 to get everything we mentioned above, but we feel it’s worth it. And a lot more fun than some of the other MedicAlert items we’ve looked at recently!
