Tech and Wellness Will Combine Like Never Before in 2025, but Will We Benefit?
Today’s technology makes it easier than ever to understand what’s going on under our skin. The question remains: Have we gone deep enough?
Providing wearable health trackers to consumers, e.g. smart watch and smart ringcontinue to refine their research into how our bodies work. continuous glucose monitor – Will officially enter the “mainstream” US health market in 2024 and be licensed for non-diabetics – Giving us a deeper understanding of our metabolic health is a noble and lofty goal neglected For most Americans.
When we load our shopping carts with the latest technology and spend money on apps in the name of health, are we really getting healthier? exist Some Case, Yes. It’s possible, even likely, that we can’t track what we most need to track—at least not yet.
Is technology distracting us from the root causes of health problems?
Dr. Dave Rabin is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist who has spent 20 years studying stress and what he calls “chronic burnout.” He has extensive experience in the field of unconventional treatments including psychedelic research and is currently apollo nerveis a wearable device company that aims to improve your health by sending vibrational pulses to your skin. His work has led him to believe that unprocessed trauma is the root of most of our mental and physical health problems. He describes unprocessed trauma as at least one intense or meaningful challenging experience, after which you have no support.
Rabin believes that the way most people currently use technology is not doing us any good and that we need to do more to achieve the goal of solving health problems. Here’s why: The purpose and goal behind many consumer technologies and apps on the market is to sell us stuff and “distract us” from how we’re feeling. Plus, we may have trapped ourselves in one unprocessed stress response after another from our smartphones, health tracking apps, and all the other information taking up our headspace and time. Yes, even in the name of health.
“Ultimately, we are training ourselves to have more of a stress response — but people are not taught how to use it safely,” Rabin said. “Everything about healing starts with feeling your feelings and facing your pain instead of running away from it.”
Suffice it to say, we are exposed to pain (physical or mental) every time we open an app or wearable device designed to help us track our health or improve our well-being. True “better health” requires us to connect our dots and make sure we focus on health trends that truly serve our version of “wellness”—whatever that may be.
As we look toward a healthier 2025, we should continue to ask ourselves whether our technology is actively improving our lives or taking us away from them. We should also consider asking less questions about existing technologies that can help us become healthier and more questions about which technologies can help us become healthier. how and regardless Use it first. We probably already have a good toolkit built into us to improve our health.
“Most people think their smartphones and technology cause them stress, but that’s not what technology is supposed to do,” Rabin said. “Technology should serve humanity.”
Here are some of the hottest trends to watch in 2025, and how to make them make sense for your health.
Healthy brain, healthy aging: Can technology connect the dots?
Interest in “healthy aging,” an umbrella term that refers to spending more time staying healthy rather than just living longer, is not just a buzzword in 2024, but an entire movement. By 2025, we expect healthy aging to gradually enter more areas, such as tonicBut one area we should be focusing on to keep up with healthy aging is brain health. Dr. Daniel FriedmanA neuroscientist and chief of the epilepsy division at NYU Langone Health, N.J., calls technological advancements in the name of brain health an “interesting area of research” that is not yet fully formed.
Specifically, Friedman points to research on how people use cell phones and consumer devices—how fast they type, how they interact with the devices, and even the complexity of the words they type—as evidence that dementia and “early predictors” of neurocognitive problems.
Dartmouth researchersFor example, an app called RealVision has been developed that tracks how users interact with their phones through eye movements and instant responses, making it possible to identify dementia in its early stages. Other research Published in 2024 Information collected from smartphones was also studied to identify older adults at risk of dementia based on wayfinding data (i.e., navigating around).
It may take some time for technological advancements to impact consumer devices to truly benefit people’s lives in terms of actionable health advice.
“If your phone told you, ‘Hey, by the way, you have a 20 percent risk of developing dementia in the next 10 years,’ you would probably feel angry and panicked,” Friedman said.
At the same time, he stressed the importance of understanding modifiable health factors that we know may increase the risk of dementia or brain health. These include get enough sleepmove your body regularly and have regular check-ups hearing and vision health Make sure your brain is receiving the messages it needs to stay busy and eat nutritiously.
Fuel for Mind and Body: A Continuous Focus on Nutrition
The importance of a well-rounded diet rich in essential nutrients has been around for a long time, but 2024 has seen a particular explosion of interest in nutrition and an increased focus on the idea that “food is medicine.”
2025 will build on this. For example, this year we will see revision The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are primarily a dietary pattern, have been shown to Support a healthy heartlimit your intake of foods like red meat and ultra-processed foods. New guide Emphasize plant-based proteins such as beans and lentils as well as vegetables and fruits.
Another area of nutrition and holistic health that will continue to grow through 2025 is the gut microbiome. This field continues to gain momentum due to connections to metabolic health, skin health, and more. Genetics, medications, and lifestyle factors influence gut health, but the primary determinant is nutrition and the foods we eat.
Federica Amati, Clinical Medical Research Scientist and Chief Nutritionist at Health Sciences and Home Gut Testing Company ZoeTell us about upcoming research that will help build consensus by increasing awareness of diet and how it affects gut health, and therefore overall health.
“We’ve reached the point where we can use gut microbiome data to understand what people actually eat,” Amati said. An upcoming partnership between ZOE and Massachusetts General Hospital will explore potential links to specific strains of gut bacteria, These bacterial strains are associated with increased risk of infection colorectal cancer in young adults. The findings could have huge implications for the growing number of people facing this diagnosis.
Gut health also has a direct link to inflammation, which over time has continued to evolve not only into a buzzword, but into a necessary scourge that in many cases leads to or accompanies autoimmune or chronic disease, or even A greater evil than necessary. Amati explains that when we are sick, inflammation is necessary to help us prevent infection or (to a lesser extent) other daily body functions. The problem is when it becomes chronic and simmers for months or years, it Had with Cancer, heart disease, diabetes and infertility.
“When we think about metabolic health conditions and chronic disease, inflammation is the fire that fuels it,” she said. There is a direct link between overall health and solid nutrition, Minimize inflammatory foods Amati cited examples such as processed fats found in store-bought baked goods, alcohol and red meat. In fact, fiber is good for your gut microbiome and anti-inflammatory.
It doesn’t have a screen and doesn’t fit our technical definition of tech, but an increased focus on fiber and incorporating more fiber into our diets through whole foods will only gain momentum in 2025.
“It’s not rocket science, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
Holistic Wellness: How to Really Feel Good in 2025
Rabin, who works in emotion regulation through his company, said, Vagus nerve that regulates emotions The stimulator space may emerge in 2025. Perhaps more interestingly, Rabin suggests that in the near future, technology will continue to close some of the health vulnerabilities that wearable data may create.
“You’re going to see more products coming out that use closed-loop AI,” Rabin said.
This means that in the future, we will see more health technologies “creating signatures” for our bodies, more directly articulating what our health data looks like when we feel good and when we feel bad. This may be extended to Apollo and Oura Ring integrationwhich already integrates mind and body by combining information on rigorous health metrics like heart rate variability with anxiety-calming properties.
Another factor to be aware of in 2025 is how you allow notifications into your life, or how your consumer technology works for you. Dr. Ryan SultanOne way to reduce stress from technology is to pay attention to whether it helps you stay healthy, says a psychiatrist who heads Columbia University’s Bioinformatics Laboratory. This seems simple enough, but the way apps are designed doesn’t always make it look so intuitive.
“A lot of apps do take notifications too seriously,” Sultan said.
Should we be relying on technology to help us become healthier in 2025? The answer may all depend on whether it actually helps us achieve our health goals by gaining insight into them. The idea that we should look at the root causes of disease from a more holistic perspective rather than a symptom-oriented perspective is relatively new in Western medicine but draws on healing practices from Eastern cultures. For example, health practices such as breathe continue to gain popularity and accumulate a wealth of evidence for their potential role in anxiety management.
By 2025, we may have more technology that promises to benefit our health, but that doesn’t mean it’s a magic bullet, or that we should use it all. While health technology is being mass-produced and available over-the-counter, health is truly personal and the methods you use to increase your health should be based on what works best for your body and mind.
In other words, in a world full of things vying for every inch of our sight and every inch of our brains, we shouldn’t just be picky. We should do this for our health.
