Britt Laura, you know that at the best of times, I'm a little health anxious. I've got health anxiety, and you know, normally I love to tell a joke. I love to be funny. But I have a brain condition which I've spoken about on the show, and I've had a listener's message with me. I've actually it's beautiful. I have a condition called Chiari malformation, and it's congenital. You're born with it. Like the base of my brain, the cerebellum is falling through my spinal cord, blocking the flow
of brain fluid, ruins my central nervousystem. It's a whole thing. I've had mothers of kids that have this condition message me and go I heard you picking up the girls and they've got this condition, and keep you.
Talking about it.
And they were so excited to hear it in the car because then neurosurgeon goes it's a rare condition, no one has it, and then they get in the car and they hear it.
Well, it's also nice to see that somebody that when you're told that your child is born with something, you automatically think the worst is going to happen, even though you hope for the best. So it's nice to be like, look at this normal, successful person that's living with this totally.
But something that I wanted to talk about was was the I don't know how to even explain it. My neurologists calls it wearable anxiety. We all have Apple watches. We even now have smart rings. You've got a whoop.
Whip on me right now. Yeah, they're caught an aura, the one that people wear.
It's like your ring.
Yeah, and it might look lovely, but they're cool. But they monitor our blood pressure. I'm not blood oxygen. They monitor our heart rate, they can atual fibrillation, they could do temperature, they can do everything. And I've realized in the last few weeks that my Apple watch that I wear every day is causing me way more harm than good my anxiety through the roof. I wake up and I have I have like a routine. I check what my heart rate was while I slept, I check my
blood oxygen, I make sure my temperature is okay. I could even do an ECG on my wrist that checks st No. I know, I know. And I was telling my neurosurgeon this, like I've got this and I've got this and I've got this any way, you've got wearable anxiety. They have seen they think people that wear wearables, up to fifty five percent of people that wear like an Apple watch or a ring have health anxiety purely because of it.
I understand it for people who are like high performance athletes who need to track what they're doing and they're like, you know, they're counting their macros and their microbes and all that sort of stuff.
But for the average person.
Like I don't need to know exactly how many steps I've done every day. I don't need to know how many hours or minutes of sleep I've gotten. And also I think it always sets you up for like if you firstly, if you think you've had a good night's sleep and then your watch tells you you haven't, you probably feel more tired. But on the flip side, I know when I've had a terrible night sleep because I'm up with the kids, and it tells me I've had a decent night sleep, and then I feel gas.
Lily dare you I like them.
I think it's just for the right person and the right type of technology. So I think for a lot of people it's super motivating. People want to know the steps that they've gotten because they're like, oh, I haven't hit what I should be for my baseline, I'm going to go do some more. But I think for someone like you Mi's you need to do what I do.
So I wear the Whoop, which doesn't have a screen, so it doesn't so for me, I would get the anxiety around constantly getting notifications on my wrist that there's a message, that there's an emails that I haven't walked enough that I have like the constant. I couldn't deal with it. But I think for you this could be really great. There's no screen, there's no alerts. You forget about it until the morning that you wake up and you're like, oh I check my sleep, check my heart rate.
Get on with the day.
Yeah. I actually think if you've got an Apple Watch hair back your notifications, you can go into settings. I do the same thing. I was getting snapchat notifications like my mom ping ping, I was getting news headlines, I was getting time to stand, I was getting drink more water from my water app. It's two much overloading and it trains your brain. You know what else it does?
It like discourages self management, so it makes you rely on the results from the watch, and then it actually stops me from implementing strategies to make myself actually feel better. Oh the watch is telling me this, so I'll listen to what the watch says.
It's also, yeah, why didn't you turn up to that really important meeting?
Oh?
Sorry, my Apple didn't tell me to. You still look after your own life.
Now you have to keep calendar notifications on because then you miss the meeting. So please be very careful, but just try. Here's my tip. If you're listening to this and you've got Apple Watch, are any wearable? Take it off for a day or a week and just see how you feel.
Make sure I don't want to see you with that on every again.
I got barious. We'll post a photo of the pickup, soeous too much risk for me? William? What are youre up next? Beeking at a gorgeous risks? So the boys are driving your home and we'll see you tomorrow.
Right, yeah, we'll see you tomorrow?
Are you just picturing? Will What is bare risk? I was?
You just gave me a real visual and I was like, am I doing something perverted?
I can't tell? Just a wrist just a wrist just as
Good bye bye