We know that Apple had previously used the Apple Watch in a study with Stanford to determine if the device was good enough to track your heart rate and rhythm. It seems that the study helped them come up with new features for the Apple Watch and improve on existing ones. Now it seems that the company could be interested in tackling another health aspect: binge eating.
In a report from CNBC, it seems that Apple will be donating about 1,000 Apple Watches to study binge eating. The watches will be used by participants in the study who do suffer from binge eating. The idea behind using the Apple Watch is to monitor the heart rate of the participant, to try and see if maybe there is a spike in their heart rate before a binge episode begins, in hopes that maybe the watch can pickup on a biological change so that researchers will be able to better keep track of it and maybe understand how it is triggered better.
According to Cynthia Bulik, founding director of the Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders at UNC and one of the researchers behind BEGIN (the study), “We need to collect data from a whole lot of people to see what it looks like. We want to know if it has a biological and behavioral signature.” Participants are also expected to log their thoughts and feelings and share those with a doctor ahead of a session, which combined with the Apple Watch monitoring their heart rate should provide some interesting and hopefully helpful clues.
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