The new tidal wave in health and fitness has arrived. 

No longer do you have to carry a notebook and pen with you to keep track of your caloric intake or log what exercises you performed in the gym. There are health apps and wearables that track this information for you. They also monitor your heartrate, steps taken and how many hours of sleep you get. Fitness apps and devices have gotten considerable interest from consumers in recent years. 

Before incorporating these apps and devices into your lifestyle, Josh Hagen, research group lead for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 711th Human Performance Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, suggests you keep a basic principle in mind. “I think it comes down to what are your goals and expectations with regard to a health and wellness plan,” he said. “If you don’t know what it is you want to accomplish health and fitness wise, using these tools will more than likely be useless in the long term. These apps and devices can provide you with a lot of data, so being able to understand and properly manage that data is key to overall wellness.” 

The 711th Human Performance Wing procures and tests health and fitness apps and wearables on the market, and provides comprehensive information for service members. 

Hagen said the three most important things an app or wearable should be able to track are sleep, nutrition and exercise. “Sleep is your number one form of recovery, and there are apps out there which actually can help you get better sleep,” he said. “Nutrition is important because it enables you to make significant improvements to your health. And exercise is pretty fundamental to your health and wellness; there are not only physical benefits, but mental benefits as well, as it relates to stress reduction and mental awareness.” 

The Department of Defense is interested in leveraging the technologies that power these apps and wearables into systems capable of monitoring and tracking other physiological data. The DoD wants to assess a warfighter’s individual fitness and potential risk to reduced performance due to physiological, physical, psychological and environmental threats. Researchers are exploring ways for these systems to adapt, learn and interact with a warfighter to optimize their physical and cognitive status. Such systems can also detect a warfighter’s exposure to harmful chemical, biological or radiological material, as well as concussive forces and/or extremes in temperature. 

“These apps and wearables are only scratching the surface of what they’ll be able to do in the future,” said Brandon Martin, a science and technology fellow with the Human Performance, Training, and Biosystems Directorate within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. “When the method in which these devices collects and provides personal data is improved, I can see these devices encouraging people to become more aware of their health and overall well-being.” 

Hagen said he thinks health and fitness apps and wearables in the next few years will be able to collect and analyze data on a much deeper level. “I can see where devices will provide information on a molecular level,” he said. “Being able to analyze your blood, sweat and just being able to look deeper into what works or doesn’t work best for you personally is the direction I think we’re headed with these apps and devices.”