Quantified self and biohacking (vol 2)

 

Some personal reflection on biohacking, and this in relation to physical activity. I have utilized heart rate monitor, pedometer and recently a cardiac readiness measurement tool. Omegawave is an instrument that according to the product information "gives you an overall summary of your body’s training readiness; telling you the status of your cardiac system readiness on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 indicates full recovery from your previous workout." I have had this tool as well as phone application for it for a couple of months. This instrument measures a large amount of information through a two minute heart rate follow up.

The left side of the picture above shows overall cardiac readiness before a hard exercise. This consisted of some 14 km of running with a group of athletes. Cardiac readiness was on good level before training and is on a fair level a day after. Makes sense, but this can also be felt in the body without any extra information. You may ponder what is the extra value of it.

Of course this is not all the information the system provides. There is a lot more available. The question is whether the user is willing (and able) to dig deep into all data available. What could make sense is a change to provide all the heart data gathered to your physician for him/her to analyze when time comes. Whether this is possible or not is not known to me, but could be an additional feature of the system.

I am still probing the tool as well as the results. This all looks very interesting, but will I be able to find real use or not remains to be seen.