When stress, sleep, focus or energy start shifting and the strategies you used to rely on stop working, this podcast helps you understand why and shows you what to do next without spinning your wheels.
Untamed and Unfiltered Wellness is a grounded, no-nonsense podcast for people who want to live well in the real world, busy schedules, demanding jobs, aging bodies and all.
This is practical, integrative wellness for real life, not trends, not hacks and not one-size-fits-all advice.
You’ll walk away with clear insights, usable tools and realistic shifts you can apply immediately so your body and mind feel steadier, more supported and easier to live in.
Hosted by Jo Swensson, Herbalist and Founder of Olivia Bell.
Olivia Bell Co. - Where Modern Life Meets Ancient Roots.
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Apple Watch. Oura Ring. Whoop. If you're wearing one, you already know how easy it is to start living by the number instead of using it as information.
In this episode I'm breaking down the real difference between medical wearables like continuous glucose monitors and cardiac monitors, which have a clear purpose, and voluntary wearables that can quietly turn into a source of anxiety instead of insight.
We'll talk about orthosomnia, the obsession with a "perfect" sleep score that ends up wrecking your actual sleep, and why a wearable was only ever meant to be a feedback device, not a scoreboard for your worth. Short episode, big shift in how you might look at that device on your wrist tomorrow morning.
I hope you find some time today for some peace, some plants and some paws!
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Jo
Medical Wearables
Health Trackers
Anxiety
Speaker
Welcome to Untamed and Unfiltered Wellness, the podcast where we bridge the gap between modern life and ancient roots, cutting through the wellness noise so you can stop guessing and start building a lifestyle that actually works for you. I'm your host, Jo Swensson, herbalist and founder of Olivia Bell.
Speaker
Raise your hand if you've ever walked in circles around your house late at night so that you could hit your 10,000-step count for the day. Or maybe you've woken up and the first thing you do is grab your phone and check to see what your sleep score is. If that's you, then stick around. Because today we're talking about wearable technology, Apple watches, Oura rings, Whoop bands, and the like. And the strange thing that happens when a tool meant to inform us starts to run our lives instead.
Speaker
Now, I wear an Oura ring, and I have since about 2022. I'm not here to advertise for it or tell you you need to get one. What I want to talk about today is that these types of devices can genuinely do good. There's a difference though between a wearable that's doing a job your body actually needs and one that's just giving you some information. So I want to separate these into two different categories before we get any further because I don't want there to be confusion. A wearable is a feedback device. That's it. It's its whole job. It's something you wear and it gives you some information.
One category is a medical wearable, like a continuous glucose monitor or even a cardiac monitor. These wearables have a purpose, and their purpose is quite clear. A CGM gives a diabetic real-time data that they need to manage their diabetes. A cardiac monitor can catch an arrhythmia before it becomes an emergency. These are tools doing exactly what they're supposed to do. Give you information tied to a real specific medical purpose. But I'm not going to talk about
those today. Today's episode is about the voluntary wearables, the ones that we choose to wear. And that could be an Apple Watch, an O ring, a Whoop, or any type of health tracker. They are things that track your steps, your sleep stages, your heart rate variability rate. They give you a readiness score. They tell you your stress if your temperature has gone up or down. These aren't prescribed to you from a medical doctor. These are ones that we are choosing to wear because we want a little more insight into our body and to understand what is impacting it through our lifestyle, our food, or our sleep. But here's where things go sideways.
Somewhere along the way, a lot of people started treating their scores like a test. And when you spend your day checking your apps frequently, adjusting your behavior to chase the perfect, unattainable number, you start to feel anxious and then defeated when you can't get that perfect score. Researchers coined a word a few years back called orthosomnia. And that basically is describing an unhealthy obsession with getting the perfect sleep score. The point where anxiety about the score itself is starting to interfere with your actual sleep. I know it's counterintuitive. The thing is, studies are looking at wearable users, and what they're finding is meaningful higher obsessive tendencies in those groups. And a real chunk of those users are reporting that the tracking itself is causing them distress, which the whole purpose behind the wearable is to get rid of your stress, to improve your sleep, but now it's impacting your nervous system.
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So I don't want to bury you in data and a bunch of research, and there's more and more coming out about it. But here's what I want you to know there's been a documented pattern lately, and personally I've heard several news reports as well as articles printed from some reputable doctors. What I want you to walk away with today is this a wearable can tell you something happened. It can't tell you why, it can't tell you what to do about it. If that score is low, take the step back and ask yourself what's really going on with you. Are you under stress at work? Did you have a late night the night before? That number is a starting point for curiosity. It's not a countdown, a perfect achievable score.
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If you're checking your data first thing in the morning or multiple times throughout the day, or it's making you anxious, get rid of it. This is your body and your mind telling you that the tool has stopped serving you. Take a timeout, take it off for a week and see if you miss it. So the question is Is a wearable your friend or your foe? Honestly, it depends on entirely on you and how you are using it. A continuous glucose monitor is doing its job for someone managing diabetes. Clearly. Your Apple Watch buzzing because you haven't closed your rings for the day, or your sleep score that is ruining your morning before it even starts because you're looking at your score first thing, then if that's the case, then the device is not serving you.
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But the device isn't the villain here. It's just a mirror. What matters is whether or not you're using it to understand yourself, or if you're letting it decide how you feel about yourself.
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If this episode stuck with you today, join our Substack community where we can explore this idea a little bit further. You'll also find some reflection questions, herbal remedies, and a community of like minded people. It's free to subscribe. The link is in the show notes.
