It’s never been easier to get under our own skin, but are we digging deep enough?
wearable health trackers like smart watches And smart rings Continue to refine your discoveries about how our bodies work. continuous glucose monitor — which officially reaches the “mainstream” wellness market in the US with approval for people without diabetes in 2024 — offers an even more in-depth look at our metabolic health, yet a higher neglected Health aspect for most Americans.
But as we fill our carts with the latest technology and spend money on apps in the name of good health, are we really getting healthier? In Some? cases, YesBut it’s possible, or even likely, that the thing we need to keep track of most is something we can’t track yet. At least, not at this time.
Dr. Dave Rabin, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist, has spent 20 years studying stress and what he calls “chronic burnout.” He has experience in unconventional medical fields such as psychedelic research, and is currently the medical director of Apollo NeuroA wearable company that aims to enhance your well-being by sending vibration waves into your skin. His work has led him to believe that untreated trauma is the root of most of our mental and physical health problems. He describes untreated trauma as at the very least an intense or meaningfully challenging experience, after which you are given no support.
According to Rabin, the way most people are currently using technology is not doing us any good and more work needs to be done to reach the goal of solving our health problems. Here’s why: The purpose and goal behind most consumer technology and apps on the market is to sell us stuff and “distract us” from our emotions. Furthermore, we may have found ourselves woven into unprocessed stress response after stress response under the pile of information on our smartphones, health-tracking apps, and everything else that dominates our headspace and time. Yes, even in the name of good health.
“Ultimately we are training ourselves to have a greater stress response — people are not being taught to use it safely,” Rabin said. “It’s all about healing starting with feeling your feelings, facing your pain and not avoiding it.”
It could be argued that we are experiencing pain (physical or mental) every time we open an app or strap on a wearable to help us track our health or improve our well-being. . But being truly “healthy” requires that we connect our own dots and make sure we’re paying attention to wellness trends that actually serve our version of “well” — whether that’s something or the other. Be also.
As we look toward a healthier 2025, we must continue to ask ourselves whether our technology is actively improving our lives or pulling us away from them. We should also consider asking less questions about what technology exists to help us stay healthy and more questions about How And whether To use it in the first place. Chances are we already have a good toolkit for better health.
“Most people think of their smartphones and their technology as something that stresses them out, but technology shouldn’t do that,” Rabin said. “Technology must be at the service of humanity.”
Here are some of the hottest trends to watch for in 2025 and how to make them make sense for your health.
Healthy brain, healthy age: Will technology connect the dots?
Interest in “healthy aging,” a broad term referring to spending more time staying healthy rather than living longer, was more than a buzzword in 2024 — it was an entire movement. In 2025, we can expect healthy aging to make its way into even more places supplementsBut one area we must focus on to keep the Joneses healthy is brain health. Dr. Daniel Friedmana neurologist and director of the epilepsy department at NYU Langone Health, called advances in technology in the name of brain health “an interesting area of research, but one that has not been fully developed.”
In particular, Friedman pointed to research on how people use phones and consumer devices—how fast they type, how they interact with them and even by what they do. Even the complexity of words being typed – as an “early predictor” of neurological problems such as dementia.
Dartmouth researchersFor example, an app called RealVision has been developed that tracks how users interact with their phones through eye movements and quick reactions, potentially identifying dementia in the early days. other research Published in 2024 Information collected from smartphones also was looked at to determine older adults’ risk of dementia based on wayfinding data (i.e., walking around).
It may take some time for technological advancements to reach consumer devices that will actually benefit people’s lives in terms of actionable health advice.
“If your phone told you, ‘Hey, by the way, you have a 20% risk of developing dementia in the next 10 years,’ you’d probably be angry and nervous,” Friedman said.
In the meantime, he stresses the importance of staying on top of modifiable health factors we know can tip the scale when it comes to dementia or brain health risks. This includes getting enough sleepMoving your body regularly, getting regular checkups done hearing And vision health To ensure that your brain gets the information it needs to stay engaged and eat a nutritious diet.
Fuel for mind and body: a sustained focus on nutrition
The importance of a complete diet rich in essential nutrients is as old as time, but 2024 saw a heightened interest in nutrition and the idea of ”food as medicine.”
2025 will only build on this. This year, for example, we will see revision Dietary guidelines in the US, which would be a model of eating mostly shown in support healthy heartWith limited intake of foods like red meat and ultra-processed foods. new guidelines Emphasize plant-based proteins, such as beans and lentils, and vegetables and fruits.
Another area of nutrition and holistic wellness that will continue to evolve in 2025 is the gut microbiome. This field continues to gain momentum as it relates to metabolic health, skin health and more. Genetics, medication, and lifestyle factors influence gut health, but the number one determining factor is nutrition and the foods we eat.
Federica Amati, Clinical Medicine Research Scientist and Chief Nutritionist for Health Sciences and Home Gut Testing Company zoetold us that research coming down the pipeline will help seal the deal in terms of raising people’s awareness about what they eat and how it impacts their gut health (and therefore, their overall health).
“We’re getting to the point where we can use gut microbiome data to understand what people are actually eating,” Amati said. ZOE and Mass General Hospital’s upcoming partnership will explore potential associations with specific gut bacteria strains associated with increased risk Colorectal cancer in young adultsThe results could have a massive impact on the growing number of people facing this diagnosis.
Gut health is also directly related to inflammation, which, month after month, is turning into not just a buzzword, but a necessary evil that, in many cases, results in autoimmune or chronic disease. , which is evil out of necessity. Amati explained that inflammation is necessary when we are sick, have an infection or, in small amounts, to help with other daily bodily functions. The problem occurs when it becomes chronic and persists for months or years, and that is has been associated with Cancer, heart disease, diabetes and infertility.
“When we think about metabolic health conditions and we think about chronic disease, inflammation is the fire that stokes it,” she said. Also there is a direct relationship between overall health and solid nutrition reducing inflammatory foods Such as processed fats found in store-bought baked goods, alcohol and red meat, Amati cited as examples. Fiber, as it happens, is beneficial for the gut microbiome and anti-inflammatory.
Although it has no screens and doesn’t fit our technical definition of fiber, the increased focus on fiber and incorporating it into our diets through whole foods will only gain momentum in 2025.
“It’s not rocket science, but it’s not happening yet.”
Total Health: How to Feel Really Good in 2025
Rabin, who works with emotion regulation through his company, says the innovation in emotion-regulating vagus nerve Exciting space likely in 2025. Perhaps more interestingly, Rabin says the technology will continue to address some of the health vulnerabilities created by wearable data in the near future.
“You will see more products coming out that will use closed-loop AI,” Rabin said.
This means that in the future, we’ll see more health technology that “creates a signature” for our bodies, more directly describing what our health data looks like when we’re feeling well and when. We are feeling bad. it may expand Apollo and Ora Ring integrationWhich is already available to blend mind and body by combining hard health metric information like heart rate variability with anxiety-calming properties.
Another factor to keep in mind in 2025 is how you are allowing information into your life or how your consumer technology fits you. Dr. Ryan SultanA psychiatrist who runs the bioinformatics lab at Columbia University said one way to reduce stress around technology is to be mindful of whether it’s helping you stay healthy. It sounds simple enough, but how apps are designed doesn’t always make it so intuitive.
“A lot of apps are really heavy on notifications,” Sultan said.
But should we rely on technology to help us get healthy in 2025? The answer may depend entirely on whether it’s actually helping us achieve our health goals by getting them to the bottom. The idea that we should look at the root cause of diseases from a more holistic approach rather than symptom-oriented is relatively new in Western medicine but is based on healing methods from Eastern culture. For example, wellness practices such as breathe The body of evidence continues to accumulate and grow for their potential role in anxiety management.
In 2025, we may have more technology that promises to benefit our health, but that doesn’t mean it’s a miracle cure or that we should make full use of it. Despite health technology being mass produced and made available OTC, health truly remains individual, and what you use to enhance it should be based on what works best for your body. And Brain.
In other words, in a world full of things that fight for every inch of our vision and square inch of our brain, we just don’t deserve to be finicky. We attribute this to our health.
