Fitbit is working on a new way to help you manage stress throughout the day, with real-time alerts from your fitness tracker that give you early warning before you realize that the pressure is starting to build up. On February 24 the company registered a new patent describing how the EDA (electrodermal activity) sensor found in the Fitbit Charge 5 and Sense could be used to identify particularly tense moments, and help you take action to tackle them.
Most fitness trackers track stress throughout the day by monitoring heart rate variability, with a more changeable heart rate suggesting higher levels of stress. The Charge 5 and Sense work differently, using a dedicated sensor that allows you to perform spot checks if you notice yourself feeling tense.
When you open the EDA Scan app and place your hand over the watch face, very small electrical current is passed through your skin. The watch tracks changes in the resistance of your skin caused by sweat (called EDA responses), which indicates activity of your sympathetic nervous system. Put simply the more EDA responses are detected, the more stressed you are – physically or mentally.
Time to breathe
The new patent describes how the same sensor could be used to identify moments of particularly high stress, which it calls 'arousal events'. If an arousal event is detected, it's logged in a 'bin' corresponding to a period of time. If the number of events in a bin exceeds a particular threshold, your watch will display an on-screen notification. which could just be a warning, or may offer advice on how to calm yourself down.
The patent suggests that EDA monitoring could be carried out continuously, meaning you'd no longer need to take two minutes out of your day to check your stress level. This would also make it easier for you to tell if stressful moments correlate with a particular activity.
"For example, the user's response to a workout may be different if the workout is more challenging or if the user exerted a particularly large amount of energy," Fitbit explains.
"Determining how the user is responding to the stimulus may be useful for developing training and/or recovery routines. In another example, during a meditation session, arousal responses may be indicative of the user losing focus or having his or her mind drift, which may enable a prompt to alert the user to facilitate changes or improvements to their meditation session."
There's no guarantee that this type of continuous stress-monitoring will eventually make its way onto your wrist, but it would make sense considering Fitbit's recent focus on mental wellbeing. If it does, it's possible that it might be rolled out to Fitbit Sense and Charge 5 owners in a future firmware update.
