What Your FitBit Can Tell You Would Surprise You

What Your FitBit Can Tell You Would Surprise You

Everyone with a fitness tracker knows it’s ultimate function: providing up-to-date stats on your health and performance, in order to set tangible goals for your workout routines.

But they can also give you some unexpected health insights you’d be amazed by. These are three Fitbit tidbits you’d never think your health tracker could possibly tell you:


You’re Pregnant!

Most women who’re expecting a child inform their husband of the news. For one FitBit couple, it was the other way around.

A New York man noticed his wife’s Fibit recorded some odd data in a February stretch, and turned to Reddit for advice.

“[Her Fitbit] is showing her heartbeat being consistently high over the last few days,” he wrote. “She logged 10 hours in the fat-burning zone, which I would think to be impossible based on her activity level.

“It’s not lining up.”

A shrewd Redditor wondered a loud if the man’s wife could be pregnant. “Pregnancy is a strong possibility,” he replied. “I might be a dad, YIKES. Now I gotta watch my own heart rate lol.”

And it turns out the unknown Redditor was correct. The man confirmed his wife was indeed pregnant, and is now documenting the FitBit baby’s journey. “It’s definitely a great story to tell [the baby] one day,” said the now father-to-be.

Here is the pic of the screen that started it all! Mom and baby are doing ok. Spoke to the doctor yesterday.

A photo posted by David & Ivonne (@babyfitbit) on


 “You Need a Doctor.”

The Annals of Emergency Medicine published the first-ever story on a fitness tracker assisting in a medical call.

A 42-year-old man arrived in the ER with an irregular heartbeat. The doctor’s needed to know when his arrhythmia began. Thanks to his trusty FitBit, medical staff was able to pinpoint the precise moment his arrhythmia began, within three hours of arrival. Having the knowledge that it occurred within the past 48 hours, doctors proceeded with electrocardioversion, to reset his heart’s natural rhythm.

Without the FitBit, doctor’s wouldn’t have been able to act as quickly, and with the right response, as they did for this lucky guy. Fitness trackers can be valuable in this particular way; Alrred Sacchetti, MD, explains “dizziness with a heart rate of 180 would be approached very differently from the same complaint with a heart rate of 30”, as an example.


“You’re Heartbroken.”

Koby Soto, an Israeli law student and entrepreneur, was studying when his boyfriend got in touch to say it their relationship was toast.

He tried to keep himself distracted all day, unsuccessfully, and couldn’t get to bed that night either. Checking out his FitBit because he had nothing better to do, he saw his grief manifested in chart form: at the moment Soto got dumped, around noon, his heart rate spiked from 72 beats per minute to 88, and stayed elevated all day, peaking at 118 beats per minute.

Photo credit: GP PIXSTOCK/Shutterstock

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