This Nurse’s Apple Watch Spotted A Health Problem Months Ahead Of Diagnosis

There are times when our bodies might manifest certain symptoms that we might not necessarily pay attention to and might shrug it off as nothing. We suppose that can’t really be helped because some symptoms are so generic that it’s hard to tell if it’s something we should pay attention to or ignore and hope that it goes away.

Such was the case with Lauren Rebecca, a nursing student from Sydney whose Apple Watch actually detected a health problem months ahead before she officially got it diagnosed. According to Rebecca, she started experiencing fatigue, sensitivity to temperature, and weight gain.

She initially thought that this was because she was “super tired” from having university work and also attributed it to the pandemic lockdown. Speaking to News.com.au, Rebecca said, “With Covid and our health care system being so overwhelmed with everything I thought, ‘no, no, I’m just tired, I’m just rundown, I’ll be all right’.”

However, when she eventually got the issue diagnosed, it turned out that she was suffering from Thyroid hemiagenesis, a rare congenital defect where half of her thyroid was missing. What’s interesting is that according to the data from her Apple Watch, the wearable had actually picked up on something that was off months ago.

According to Rebecca, “I saw that there were alerts at the top of the app that had never come through as notifications because I didn’t have notifications turned on … I looked through it and that’s when I could see the trend that my Vo2 max had dropped, literally in a matter of days.” She notes that had known that in advance, she probably would have sought out help much sooner.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Gadgets, Medical
Tags: Apple Watch, Health, Smartwatch, Social Hit, Wearable Tech