Who should buy the Powerbeats Pro 2? The answer will surprise you.

Apple’s Superstar lineup for marketing the Powerbeats Pro 2:

Shohei Ohtani.

Lionel Messi.

Lebron James.

Your mom.

Wait…what??

Yes, that’s right. Your mom is a Superstar, and an ideal candidate for the Powerbeats Pro 2, at least if she’s anything like mine.

My mom was in the market for some durable earbuds back in October 2021. Besides being wireless, she only had one criterion: the earbuds had to have a loop that goes around her ears and keeps it secure. She wears a headscarf, and headscarves don’t go well with any AirPods that she has tried since they simply are not secure enough. As a bus driver, the last thing she wants to do is try to find her ear bud in the driver’s footwell.

The Powerbeats Pro were the best choice, and she has been using the same pair every day since November 2021. They’re still going strong, and once they go bad, I will probably get her the Powerbeats Pro 2 that I am testing out. I can’t give them to her now because her original ones still work, and she wouldn’t want me to get her new headphones for no reason. I might even get a lecture about wasting money if I did.

It’s an Asian thing.

Just don’t tell her about my Apple Watch obsession.

She’s in her 60s, yet these are perfect for her in many ways besides the secure fit. She is a marathon talker on the phone, and she will be happy with the much better battery life. She manages battery life by alternating ear pieces, and she keeps her other ear free for listening to her surroundings.

I don’t even want to try to explain to her how the force touch tips on AirPods work, let alone the swipe gestures, but the actual buttons on the beats make it simple and easy to understand. A simple volume rocker and a “beats” button for play and pause. Real, clickable buttons, perfect for the elderly and non tech-savvy. She is already used to this layout, so she will feel right at home.

The smaller case will make more room for her purse which is already full (what purse isn’t full anyway?), but it won’t be too small for her to lose it either. The balance is just right.

The other cool aspect about the Pro 2 is heart rate monitoring. My mom refuses to wear an Apple Watch because that’s just one more thing to learn and charge, but she wears her beats all the time. When she is not actively listening to lectures or talking on the phone, her iPhone would be logging her heart rate with the Pro 2. It only logs your heart rate when you are actively in the Health App with both earbuds in place, but it would be nice for her to see at least one health metric. The minute you leave the Health app, the heart rate monitor stops, probably to preserve battery life.

My plan is to get her interested in heart rate monitoring, and then eventually upsell her into an Apple Watch for all the other health benefits.

Lastly, if you’re afraid someone might steal her earbuds, buy the Quick Sand color. That hue of light grayish-brown is a similar color to hearing aids, and looks the part when placed in your ear. I instantly felt older when I looked in the mirror instead of younger and hip.

Storing things inside Your AirPods Pro 2 case.

I ended up getting a mini workout done when I was not really expecting to at my son’s wrestling practice. Normally I just use the time to do some writing, but now I have to split the time between writing and working out due to less free time at home with the new baby.

The Milanese band is my band of choice for jogging, but I forgot to swap it out and was wearing my link bracelet. I wear the link bracelet a bit loose since it’s uncomfortable when tight, but I needed to tighten it up for the workout.

I ended up taking out one link, and storing it in my AirPods Pro 2 case. It fits pretty good inside there, and even attaches magnetically making it harder for the link to fall out. I do use the smaller sized bracelet labelled 38mm (also the same as 40mm, 41mm, and the new 42mm), but I’m confident there is enough space for the larger links to also fit.

I’m not a fan of working out with the link bracelet, but it’s doable, especially if you have storage for your extra links.

You can store one link in each slot.

The links have a strong enough magnetic connection to not fall out when turned upside down. If you drop the case though, they will pop out and fly away.

Did Apple fix its Drug Interaction Checker for Pregnancy?

I have tried out Apple's Drug Interaction Checker once again, a year and a half since the last time I looked at it. I had 4 complaints about the Interaction Checker when I first tested it:

1. Two drugs in the same category that are taken together do not bring any warnings to consult your Healthcare Team, even though they can cause severe problems.

2. Two of the literal same drugs, with one being the brand and the other being generic, when taken together do not bring any warnings to consult your Healthcare Team, even though taking the same medication twice can cause problems.

3. The Medications section does not give you warnings if you are pregnant and are taking dangerous medications.

4. The Medications section does not give you warnings if you are pregnant and drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, or use cannabis.

Has Apple fixed these issues? 

They have not fixed problems 1 and 2, which you can read about in more detail.

Problem 4 is also not fixed. You do not get any warnings about pregnancy or lactation when you tell the Health app that you’re consuming alcohol, cannabis, or tobacco, even though these are all red flags.

Problem 3 has been fixed. I am glad to say that the Cycle Tracking section, which includes pregnancy, "talks" to the Medications section and gives you the proper warnings about your medications if you are pregnant.

Here was the list of drugs I used to test out the Health App (same as last year):

1. Crestor (generic name is rosuvastatin) - cholesterol medicine.

2. Zocor (generic name is simvastatin) - this is the same drug category as above, used for cholesterol medicine.

3. Simvastatin - literally the same drug as Zocor.

4. Rifampin - used for treating tuberculosis.

5. Lisinopril - blood pressure medication. 

6. Accutane - for severe acne.

7. Chantix - for smoking cessation.

8. Promethazine VC with Codeine - used to treat cold, stuffiness, and allergy symptoms.

Now when you go to the Medications section in the Health App, you get critical alerts right at the top:

If you scroll to the bottom, you will see a new "Medication Information" section that lists your Drug Interactions, as well as Pregnancy and Lactation warnings.

If we go into the Pregnancy warnings, we get very useful information for each drug that is problematic. There are 4 other alerts mentioned, but are not as critical and don't have the yellow banner.

Critical alerts are highlighted in yellow to catch your attention.

Even though these drugs are not highlighted in yellow like the critical alerts, the information here is still important.

Lactation warnings also are available, which is great and gives people more time to consult with their Healthcare Team.

None of this information was available last year, so Apple did a great job of integrating medication alerts with a woman’s pregnancy and lactation status.

They still need to fix the other 3 issues I mentioned, and treat alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco as drugs instead of “medication factors,” which is their legal classification.

How Apple will probably implement their blood pressure technology.

Whenever I go to my annual Doctor’s visit, it's nice to notice certain technological advancements when getting that initial screening by the nurse. 

Your height is measured by what I would call an extremely large digital caliper connected to the weighing scale, where they lay the top part of the “caliper” on your head, and instantly know your height. 

Your weight is digitally and effortlessly measured. I do miss the old scales where you had to move the weights and find that point where the balance finally starts to budge. It was more dramatic since you could see the nurse constantly sliding the weight past the point where you would hope the scale would balance out, only to realize you put on a few more pounds.

Your pulse is checked with an oversized digital clothespin that they put on your finger instead of the nurse clutching your wrist. 

Your temperature is checked execution style as they shoot your forehead with infrared rays instead of sticking a thermometer up your…in your mouth.  

Finally your blood pressure (BP) is checked…the old-fashioned way. You still have to remove your bulky jacket and strap that overly “velcrofied” arm cuff on while the nurse uses her stethoscope to check your blood pressure.

It’s the one vital information of your health that still requires old methods to get right. As a matter of fact, one could argue that your blood pressure reading is the most important reading of that visit because high blood pressure, or hypertension, leads to worse outcomes for every other health condition.

It’s the most important, yet it is also the most tedious because your blood pressure constantly changes throughout the day. If you buy any sort of portable blood pressure machine, you will notice a whole list of prerequisites before you take your blood pressure. Here is what the CDC says you should do before taking your blood pressure:

Don't eat or drink anything 30 minutes before you take your blood pressure.

Empty your bladder before your reading.

Sit in a comfortable chair with your back supported for at least 5 minutes before your reading.

Put both feet flat on the ground and keep your legs uncrossed.

Rest your arm with the cuff on a table at chest height.

Make sure the blood pressure cuff is snug but not too tight. The cuff should be against your bare skin, not over clothing.

Do not talk while your blood pressure is being measured.

There are other factors as well, such as “white-coat syndrome,” where a patient is nervous about getting their blood pressure taken, and it becomes falsely elevated.

This is all assuming you’re using an arm cuff, which is the most accurate. Wrist cuffs are more convenient but less accurate, and now you have to factor that into the equation.

There have been advances in how blood pressure is measured leading to more convenient choices in the future, such as photoplethysmography (PPG). This is where your device can be used to shine infrared lights into your skin to detect blood volume changes. It is a graphical representation similar to an ECG, where people who know a heck of a lot more than me can determine what is wrong with a person's heart. 

This PPG technology can be used on your finger, your wrist, your foot, and even your ears. (Apple Ring and Apple Toe Ring anyone?)

It’s really inexpensive compared to an ECG, and your Apple Watch uses PPG all the time to get information about your pulse, blood oxygen levels, and your cardio health. If someone had a sensor on their wrist and on their finger for example, you can then calculate the pulse travel time (PTT) between the wrist and their finger, and use that time measurement to estimate blood pressure.

According to a study by Nature, that is still less accurate than using an ECG along with one PPG datapoint, such as your wrist or finger. This is actually better for the end user because you only need to have one device, along with an ECG which your Apple Watch already measures.

So in theory, your Apple Watch measures an ECG which has its own waveform, which can be correlated with a PPG waveform that measures changes in blood volume. You end up with 2 waveforms that can then be studied and analyzed along with machine-learning and anonymous, historical user data to determine blood pressure.

That would be how the Apple Watch can analyze blood pressure without any other complicated cuffs that inflate on your wrist, which would be a disaster since so many things can go wrong with an “Apple Cuff.” 

“You’re using it wrong.”

“You’re placing it wrong.”

The Apple Watch by itself naturally sits on the flat part of your wrist, and you don’t have to tell anyone how to wear it.

But it doesn’t end with the Apple Watch.

Apple already has another device that can be just as good, dare I say, even better at determining blood pressure.

According to researchers at the University of Toronto, noise-cancelling earbuds have the potential to measure blood volume changes in your ears, giving more data points to analyze a person’s blood pressure:

Many earbuds have noise-cancelling technology, which relies on having an outer microphone and an in-ear microphone. The outer microphone listens for ambient sound while the in-ear microphone listens to what’s happening inside the ear. It turns out that the in-ear microphone is able to pick up on some very interesting sounds inside the body, including heart sounds. Research has shown that you can use the audio recorded from inside the body to measure heart rate, but you’re really able to get the same sounds you would hear from a stethoscope. We’re hoping that we can analyze these heart sounds using different signal processing techniques to infer someone’s blood pressure. 

Furthermore, they are even optimistic of bridging many technologies together to get better results:

One study we’re hoping to do alongside this project, or maybe a little later, would be to compare and contrast all the different technologies being considered for blood pressure monitoring – earbuds, smartwatches, smartphones – to see what works best. Can we get better performance with earbuds versus a smartwatch? Can we combine a smartwatch and earbuds to get an even more accurate measurement? 

I found another study where they did use time differences between pulses going into the left and right ear, and they were able to get promising blood pressure results that did not significantly differ from the true blood pressure measured with a proper arm cuff.

They called it “Stereo Blood Pressure,” which just sounds awesome.

Not only that, but their diagram even had a guy wearing AirPods.

These studies still had limitations due to small sample sizes and the candidates all being normal healthy individuals, but it’s still progress.

When will Apple actually implement blood pressure measurements into their devices?

Apple doesn’t want to be first at something, they want to be the best. 

They were first with Siri, and look at what that’s done for them.

Whenever Apple releases blood pressure monitoring, I think it will be a feature for both AirPods and the Apple Watch. They will work together to get the best data and eliminate any hurdles.

For example, you can’t wear AirPods when sleeping, but you can wear your Apple Watch to sleep and get data and information when in a more relaxed state.

Another hurdle could be a lack of data points for better accuracy. Each device separately only provides 2 data points each:

1. Apple Watch - single-lead ECG and PPG on the wrist.

2. AirPods - PPG on the left and right ear.

It’s not hard for most people to wear an Apple Watch and AirPods, so getting information from 4 data points will be a lot easier and unobtrusive.

When you combine those 4 data sets along with advances in AI, machine learning, and historical data analysis, you get a pretty good recipe for blood pressure monitoring. 

Of course it sounds easy on paper, but it makes sense for Apple to take a safer approach like they did with Sleep Apnea. Their blood pressure technology will sense changes in blood pressure and not actually give you a reading like 120/80. It will probably alert you if you have an elevated BP over a sustained amount of time, and it will err on the side of under-diagnosing versus over-diagnosing incorrectly. 

They would rather have false negatives and put their disclaimer similar to their sleep apnea disclaimer:

It's important to remember: not all people with sleep apnea will receive a notification. If you believe you have sleep apnea you should talk to a doctor.

When this technology is released and ready, it will be a game changer for the healthcare industry because of how effortless blood pressure monitoring can be. Simply wear your AirPods and your Apple Watch and go about your day.

The icing on the cake? 

Not knowing when your blood pressure is being taken is the most accurate way of measuring it.

Time to stand.

This is perhaps the most underrated health feature of the Apple Watch, and the most important.

The “Time to stand” function is so important, and something you hopefully you won’t realize too late in life.

As a healthcare professional and as someone who has to stand a lot for work, I can tell you with certainty that the days I have to work and move around a lot, I actually feel less lower back pain. When I am off and sit on a computer trying to think about what to write, I feel more back pain.

I would encourage everyone to take their “Time to stand” reminder seriously because it will help you in the long run.

Remember, sitting is the new smoking.

Be careful with Apple’s Drug Interaction Checker

I set up my 15 Pro Max as a fresh new testing device, and I added the same drugs that I had on my 16 Pro Max. This list on my 16 Pro Max was ported over from my health data when I set it up initially.

Here’s the list of drugs that I setup as a dummy patient profile:

1. Crestor (generic name is rosuvastatin) - cholesterol medicine.

2. Lisinopril - blood pressure medication. 

3. Zocor (generic name is simvastatin) - this is the same drug category as Crestor, used for cholesterol medicine.

4. Chantix - for smoking cessation.

5. Simvastatin - literally the same drug as Zocor.

6. Rifampin - used for treating tuberculosis.

7. Gemfibrozil - cholesterol medicine.

8. Promethazine VC with Codeine - used to treat cold, stuffiness, and allergy symptoms.

9. Accutane - for severe acne.

I had the exact same list of drugs on both phones, but I had more drug interactions on my 15 Pro. The 16 Pro was only showing 8 Serious and 4 Moderate interactions, while the 15 Pro was showing 2 Critical, 9 Serious, and 5 Moderate interactions.

I tried to see what was the reason behind this, and I could not see anything different. Sure, I skipped putting an image background and pill color for my 15 Pro drugs, but that shouldn’t matter.

The main drug causing more interactions was Gemfibrozil, so I archived it and then unarchived it to see if it would “fix” the amount of drug interactions I had. That did fix the problem.

In fairness to Apple, these type of glitches happen in all software based systems, including Pharmacies.

Considering there were 2 Critical and 1 Serious interactions that would not be seen, it’s always a good idea to consult with your care team whenever new medications are added or doses are changed. Even when taking over-the-counter medications, you should add it to your drug list to see if it can have harmful effects.

It also can’t hurt to archive and then unarchive your medications every so often.

After I archived Gemfibrozil and then unarchived it…

I got the proper amount of Drug Interactions to display.

Sleep Apnea detection on the Apple Watch could have been much better with Blood Oxygen data.

Lauren Jeffries from Tom’s Guide talking about how reliable Apple Watch’s sleep apnea detection works:

To avoid the possibility of false positives, Apple decided to prioritise specificity over sensitivity. These terms mean:

Specificity: The percentage of those without moderate to severe sleep apnea who wouldn’t receive a notification

Sensitivity: The percentage of participants with moderate to severe sleep apnea who are correctly identified by the algorithm. 

Apple recorded the notification performance as 66.6% for sensitivity and 95.9% for specificity. This means that there is potential for many cases of sleep apnea to remain undetected even when using the Apple Watch. 

This is what concerns Dr Runge, who says, "The lack of accuracy is a significant issue. I don’t mind the idea that the Apple Watch will “over diagnose” sleep apnea. At least in that setting people will get formal evaluations. It is the under diagnosis that concerns me — people with sleep apnea may say to their partner 'see, I told you I didn’t have sleep apnea.'"

If you look at Apple’s study, sensitivity for severe sleep apnea had a sensitivity of 89.1%, while sensitivity for moderate sleep apnea was 43.4%, giving an average score of 66.3%. What that actually means is the Apple Watch is best at detecting severe sleep apnea 89% of the time. It is not that great at determining moderate sleep apnea at only 43%.

Apple would rather underdiagnose people than give false positives, which is still better than no diagnosis at all. They were able to get this far with just the accelerometer sensor:

The Sleep Apnea Notification Feature is a software-based medical device that analyzes Breathing Disturbance data collected nightly by the Apple Watch accelerometer sensor.

I wonder how much better the Apple Watch could have been at detecting Sleep Apnea if they included Blood Oxygen data, which is another key component in diagnosing sleep apnea. To perform another study at this scale would take years, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple’s sleep apnea detection gets better sensitivity with more crucial data points like blood oxygen levels once the battle with Masimo ends.

Which Apple Watches have Blood Oxygen availability?

The Blood Oxygen sensor on the Apple Watch is a nice tool to help those that require frequent monitoring of their oxygen levels. It can provide data that can help treat people who have lung issues, heart problems, and even blood issues. Unfortunately, support for the Blood Oxygen sensor is limited in the United States due to Apple’s ongoing legal battle:

The removal of the Blood Oxygen feature is the result of an intellectual property ruling from the United States International Trade Commission, which Apple is appealing.

The Blood Oxygen feature is no longer available on units sold by Apple in the United States on or after January 18, 2024. These are indicated with part numbers ending in LW/A. Learn how to identify your Apple Watch.

To make it easier I have made two lists here to show you which Apple Watches do and don’t support Blood Oxygen availability in the United States.

With Blood Oxygen availability:

1. Series 6

2. Series 7

3. Series 8

4. Series 9 model numbers NOT ending in LW/A.

5. Apple Watch Ultra 1

6. Certain Apple Watch Ultra 2 Natural Titanium models NOT ending in LW/A.

Without Blood Oxygen availability:

1. Series 9 model numbers ending in LW/A

2. Apple Watch Ultra 2 model numbers ending in LW/A. This includes all Black Titanium models.

3. All Series 10 models.

If you own a Series 9 or an Ultra 2 in Natural Titanium, you need to go to your Apple Watch app under General > About > Model Number, to see if your watch has Blood Oxygen capabilities.

I have a Series 10 which doesn’t support Blood Oxygen at all, but it is confirmed with the LW/A at the end of my model number.

This patent dispute will eventually get resolved, and once that happens, Apple will resume Blood Oxygen availability for all watches that had it disabled.

If you are buying online through a 3rd party retailer or on eBay, make sure you check the model number so you can tell if the watch has Blood Oxygen capability.

You can also get the model number from the box:

This one has Blood Oxygen enabled…

This one doesn’t.

How about other countries?

If you live in one of the countries where Blood Oxygen is supported (almost every country except the USA), all Series 6 models and higher have Blood Oxygen availability, except the Apple Watch SE and SE2.

If you are traveling abroad, it might be worth buying your Apple Watch from abroad since it will have Blood Oxygen enabled, and you can bring it back to the States and not lose functionality.

Update 1/9/25 @ 7:37PM - changed the description of the Apple Watch Ultra 2 from “Slate” Titanium to “Black”Titanium.

Is my Apple Watch band going to give me cancer?

Stephen Warwick from TechRadar:

Scientists from the University of Notre Dame have called for more comprehensive studies and greater transparency from manufacturers after a study found elevated levels of so-called "forever chemicals" in some consumer smartwatch and fitness tracker bands.

The study, published this week in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, analyzed 22 watch bands from numerous brands and price points and found that some of these bands contained elevated levels of PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl substances), namely perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA). These chemicals are colloquially known as "forever chemicals" because they have an almost unbreakable chemical structure which means they don't degrade or break down over time.

The tested brands include many of the best smartwatch manufacturers and accessory makers including Apple (and Apple Watch Nike sport bands), CASETiFY, Fitbit, Google, and Samsung.

As reported by Notre Dame News, nine of the 22 bands tested contained elevated levels of PFHxA, with more expensive bands generally found to have higher levels.

The conclusion of this study? Inconclusive:

While the study does mention some big names in the smartwatch sector, notably Apple, Samsung, and Google, it's difficult to extrapolate too much because the study doesn't give the results for each brand. Companies like Apple clearly advertise Fluoroelastomer as present in its best Apple Watch bands, notably its Nike offerings, Sport Band, and the Apple Watch Ultra's Ocean band. However, the study doesn't tell us which of the bands offered by these major players were tested, or if they were the bands with notably high PFA levels.

Also why it’s inconclusive:

Speaking to Yahoo Life, Jamie Alan, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University called the findings "interesting", but said that the study doesn't give any insight into how much PFHxA is absorbed through the skin, if any is absorbed at all. Other specialists in toxicology and dermatology agreed, stating that it is unlikely a significant amount of PXHxA would be absorbed through the skin. Finally, Alan pointed out that the study involved chemically extracting these compounds from Apple Watch bands, something users aren't doing when they wear these items day-to-day. "So although they found very high levels, that does not mean any significant amount is getting into our system," she concluded.

Apple sells 4 bands that are made of fluoroelastomer:

1. Ocean Band

2. Sport Band

3. Nike Sport Band

4. Hermès Kilim Single Tour

Interestingly the solo loops are made of liquid silicone which is a safer material.

If you look at Apple’s (and any company’s) Substance Specifications Report, you will see a number of substances on that list that can freak you out. On Apple’s 2023 report on page 8, you will see PFAS and specifically PFHxA used in “All Materials,” and an example of their use is “Protective and oleophobic coatings.”

If you remember your Apple history correctly, the iPhone screen has an oleophobic coating.

It could very well be that your iPhone and many other phones out there are coated with PFHxA, and your touching them all day while you’re snacking on Chick-fil-A.

Your Apple Watch band is not the only thing with dangerous chemicals in it. Millions of products out there have them.

It is good to be aware of these studies and how likely it can harm the human body, but the unfortunate reality is that these chemicals are everywhere.

Your pizza boxes are coated with an oleophobic coating so the oil doesn’t seep through the box. It makes for a better presentation to the customer.

Your heat-printed receipt from Best Buy that fades before the 14-day return policy? It has phthalates. Another chemical that can harm the body and cause cancer.

The list goes on.

If someone gets cancer or any other illness, most of the time you can’t blame one specific factor and say that is the cause. It is the cumulative effect of many factors, including these chemicals that are growing in our highly industrialized world.

What does Apple plan to do about PFAS? They plan to phase it out based on a 2022 report.

What can you do about it? Make informed decisions and take realistic steps to decrease exposure.

Even though the Apple bands with fluoroelastomers might not actually be harmful, you can choose to play it safe and use another band.

Just like you can opt for emailed receipts instead of physical ones and dine-in for pizza.

This study just stirred the pot, but it hasn’t cooked any solid information.

When your passion becomes your bane.

Cate Twining-Ward from L.A. Times:

The first thing I do each morning is check my watch — not for the time but for my sleep score.

As a runner, when the glowing red letters say my score — and my training readiness — are poor, I feel an instant dread. Regardless, I scroll on, inspecting my heart rate variability and stress level — snapshots that influence the tone I carry into the day.

What does dreading my smartwatch’s interpretation of my athletic competence say about me? That I have become a pawn in the gamification of health data.

Last year, electronics represented one of the largest proportions of total Black Friday sales, according to Deloitte. That’s when I bought my first smartwatch, a Garmin.

This year, I’m throwing it away.

I was the perfect target. For several years, I had been preparing to run my first marathon. I watched fitness influencers, ultramarathoners and Olympians optimize their training with meticulous tracking and high-tech devices. I wanted in. I got the watch and joined Strava, a social media network for athletes.

Once I had a tracker on, sleep became sacred. I traded late-night socializing for it, confident that I’d cash in on race day. I built my day around my nights, transfixed by a false sense of control over my circadian rhythm.

Sleep, just like my running routine, had slowly morphed from a bodily function into a technological token of productivity.

I was hooked, emboldened by the illusion that I was training intuitively. I pushed hard when my Garmin nudged me, and even harder when I wanted to prove its metrics wrong. I began to run more for the PR (personal record) badge and “your fastest 5k!” notifications than for mental clarity and solitude.

I ran because I loved it, and because I loved it, I fell prey to the Strava-fication of it. Suddenly, I was no longer running for myself. I was running for public consumption.

I realized this only when it literally became painfully obvious. An MRI found that the lingering pain I’d been ignoring in my heels — something my watch hadn’t picked up on — was caused by four running-induced stress fractures.

Recovering from the injury forced me to be sedentary, and during that time I’ve thought a lot about the app-ification of exercise culture.

I’ve realized that health optimization tools — the ones marketed as necessary for better sleep, a lower resting heart rate, higher VO2 max (a measure of how much oxygen your body absorbs) and so on — are designed to profit off our fitness anxiety. We track ourselves this way and that way, obsessing over our shortcomings to no apparent end. In doing so, we are deprogrammed from listening to innate physiological signals and reprogrammed to create shadow experiences such as posting our detailed workout stats or running paths on digital walls that no one is looking at.

I’ve also learned that if you stop tracking, you will feel marginally but measurably better.

I don’t deny that today’s fitness gadgets are incredibly alluring, and in many ways tracking can be useful for training. I am convinced, however, that overreliance on the data collected by devices and apps — and the comparisons we draw from sharing it — can quickly corrupt and commodify what I find to be the true essence of running: being present.

When we aren’t tracking, when we are just doing, we can begin to reap the dull yet profound psychological benefits of endurance sports — the repetitive silence, the consistent failure — that can’t be captured in a post or monetized.

And when we endure the mundane and difficult aspects of a sport, over and over, we often make gains that are mindful as well as physical, becoming more aware of how and what we pay attention to. This is no small task. It takes discipline to remain aware, present and undistracted.

Exercise is a rare opportunity to allow our bodies’ movement to color our thoughts from one minute to the next. When we’re in motion, we don’t need to analyze our health metrics. We can learn to accept the moment and be humbled by our limitations.

Gift-giving season will attempt to convince you that you need devices to make your exercise more effective and efficient. There will be bright and beautiful advertisements featuring famous athletes. There will be a sleeker smartwatch and a cutting-edge GPS tracking shoe sole like that one Instagram keeps showing you. Be skeptical.

Freeing yourself, even temporarily, from the smartwatch or smartphone or smart-fill-in-the-blank that is tracking your every move is a challenge worth taking on. Because every walk or run or ride is a new story, and without fitness devices the path remains ours to choose.

I pasted the whole article here, because it has a nice flow and also describes something that a lot of people go through.

A phase many people have known too well for too long:

When your passion becomes your bane, to the point where you’re harming your body instead of helping it.

This is one of the reasons why I don’t track my health to an absurd amount. As a matter of fact, I don’t close my rings most of the time because I work in a sterile lab environment, and you can’t even wear your Apple Watch, or any jewelry for that matter.

I also don’t track my sleep with it because I work the graveyard shift 35% of the time, and 65% of the time I work a normal 9-5 routine. If I were to track my sleep and vitals obsessively, I know I would feel worse about it because objectively, it would be considered “non-optimal,” even though I have my own routine that works for me and my body.

I only track my rings on days that I formally workout, since I know I can hit my goals. I could pause my rings or change my daily calorie count which Apple allows with watchOS 11, but that is just too much work and too much tracking.

I’m not trying to turn my life into stats and data and be dictated by it.

The same thing goes for even writing on this blog and my passion for Apple products. There could be moments of excitement when new hardware gets announced, but if I was trying to beat the other websites for content, I know it would be a losing battle because I’m one guy vs teams of people.

That excitement would turn into a form of exhaustion since I can’t keep up with everybody else.

New Apple announcements would turn into a flurry of, “what should I write about to increase my view count?”

I’ve realized that it isn’t about the clicks and views, but it really comes down to writing because you actually care about the subject and you actually want to help people make good decisions, even if it is just one person.

Or maybe you just want to write about something that interests you and others who like your hobby, as a form of entertainment or nostalgia.

If you want to follow your passion and build something out of it, you need to take it easy and at a pace that is sustainable, or else you will get burned out.

You need to find that balance of passion, purpose, and consistency.

Testing Apple's Drug Interaction Checker - How Accurate is it?

Note: These features were tried on iOS 16.5, and on iOS 17 Developer Beta 1. 

I tried to put Apple’s drug interaction checker to the test, and let me start off by saying that overall it does a good job of catching interactions. It’s not perfect though, and can even be dangerous. That is why you should always consult your care team to determine if any medications need to be stopped or changed based on your health situation.

With that being said, let me set the scenario here.

I used a bunch of drugs to test out Apple’s system, and to see how well it can track drug interactions and interaction factors. First, let’s check out the list of drugs:

1. Crestor (generic name is rosuvastatin) - cholesterol medicine.

2. Zocor (generic name is simvastatin) - this is the same drug category as above, used for cholesterol medicine.

3. Simvastatin - literally the same drug as Zocor.

4. Rifampin - used for treating tuberculosis.

5. Lisinopril - blood pressure medication. 

6. Accutane - for severe acne.

7. Chantix - for smoking cessation.

8. Promethazine VC with Codeine - used to treat cold, stuffiness, and allergy symptoms.

After putting in your medications, you get a list of drug interactions that pop up. When you enter the interactions page, you will see “Current Factors” at the top. These life factors can look for interactions between your medications and said life factors. Apple currently provides three life factors:

1. Alcohol consumption

2. Marijuana

3. Tobacco

With all life factors turned OFF, there was 1 Serious and 4 Moderate interactions.

After turning ON all 3 Interaction Factors, the number of interactions increased to 8 Serious and 4 Moderate, which is no surprise.

Although technically all of the drug interactions are present, there are fine details that many people might not be aware of. A thorough pharmacy based system would find a few more discrepancies. 

Let’s look at my list of drugs from above once again:

1. Crestor (generic name is rosuvastatin) - cholesterol medicine.

2. Zocor (generic name is simvastatin) - this is the same drug category as above, used for cholesterol medicine.

3. Simvastatin - literally the same drug as Zocor.

4. Rifampin - used for treating tuberculosis.

5. Lisinopril - blood pressure medication. 

6. Accutane - for severe acne.

7. Chantix - for smoking cessation.

8. Promethazine VC with Codeine - used to treat cold, stuffiness, and allergy symptoms.

Drugs 2 and 3 are duplicates, and drug 1 is in the same category as 2 and 3. In a pharmacy drug utilization review system, these 3 drugs would pop-up as 2 or even 3 separate drug interactions, and would require consultation with the patient. Odds are the patient is stopping one medication and starting another, or they have switched from a brand name to a generic. Apple’s interaction checker however doesn’t give you these warnings. 

Does Apple’s drug interaction checker screen for pregnant patients?

In its current version of iOS 17 Developer Beta 1, Apple’s drug interaction checker is not designed to screen for pregnant patients. Here’s the process that I used to find out.

I changed my gender in the Health app to female and added an active pregnancy that is currently nearing 3 months. I wanted to trigger more life factor interactions, since some of these drugs on my list are a big no no during pregnancy. 

After adding my pregnancy status, I still had the same 8 severe and 4 moderate interactions. I even gave the phone a few days to perhaps “sync” the pregnancy information and maybe it would trigger some sort of alert. After a few days, I checked the drug interaction checker again and it still had the same 8 severe and 4 moderate interactions. There was nothing in the medications section indicating that Apple was aware that I was pregnant, and there was nothing in the pregnancy section that triggered any alerts based on my drug profile and substance use. There was no warning to stop drinking alcohol, or to stop using tobacco or cannabis due to direct fetal harm, even though I was “using” all those substances.

Now let’s disregard the life factors and just think about the medications and the active pregnancy. If these drugs were in a patient’s profile at a pharmacy and the patient had a pregnancy status of positive, the computers would sound red alarms: 

Let’s look at the list of drugs again (for the 3rd time now!):

1. Crestor (generic name is rosuvastatin) - cholesterol medicine.

2. Zocor (generic name is simvastatin) - this is the same drug category as above, used for cholesterol medicine.

3. Simvastatin - literally the same drug as Zocor.

4. Rifampin - used for treating tuberculosis.

5. Lisinopril - blood pressure medication. 

6. Accutane - for severe acne.

7. Chantix - for smoking cessation.

8. Promethazine VC with Codeine - used to treat cold, stuffiness, and allergy symptoms.

Drugs 1, 2, and 3 would be considered very high risk to the fetus.

Drug 5 is considered Pregnancy Category D, which means positive evidence of human fetal risk.

Drug 6 is considered Pregnancy Category X (not allowed at all during pregnancy), and with this drug in particular there is up to a 35% chance of severe birth defects. 

As you can see from such a patient drug profile, a successful pregnancy would most likely not happen. 

Now in fairness to Apple, they do state the following to let people know that not all interactions might be caught by the Health app:

“Health is not able to check for all potential interactions. More information is available on the labels of your medications. Discuss any questions about your medications with your care team.”

Is Apple’s drug interaction checker flawed?

Right now, Apple’s drug interaction checker works in a bubble. It can take hundreds of drugs, along with the life factors of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis use, and spit out every interaction between these factors. 

While I believe that Apple has made great progress by adding a medication log and even providing drug interactions, it still requires more work. The pregnancy section of the Health app needs to talk to the medications section in order to make it a more robust and reliable system that holistically looks at the person’s health. I believe this is a work in progress for Apple, and in due time they will get there since they have a strong focus on health and fitness.

Even when Apple does get there, remember to always seek professional advice from your healthcare team in regards to your medications and health concerns.