It's never been easier to get under your own skin, but are we going deep enough?
Wearable health trackers as they are smart watches and smart rings continue to refine their research into how our bodies work. Continuous glucose monitors — which officially hit the “mainstream” US wellness market in 2024 with a license for people without diabetes — offers an even more intimate look at our metabolic health, yet sublime neglected aspect of health for the majority of Americans.
But as we fill our carts with the latest technology and drop cash on apps in the name of good health, are we actually getting healthier? In some cases, yes. But it is possible, and even probable, that which we should most follow, we cannot yet. At least not at this point.
Dr. Dave Rabin, a neurologist and psychiatrist, has spent 20 years studying stress and what he calls “chronic exhaustion.” He has experience in unconventional therapy spaces such as psychedelic research, and is currently the medical director of Apollo Neuroa wearable company that aims to increase your well-being by sending vibrating impulses to your skin. His work led him to believe that unprocessed trauma is at the root of most of our health problems, mental and physical. He describes raw trauma as at least one intense or significant challenging experience, after which you are not given any support.
According to Rabin, the way most people currently use technology isn't doing us any favors, and more work is needed to get to the bottom of our health problems. Here's why: The purpose and goal behind much of the consumer technology and apps on the market is to sell us things and “distract” us from our feelings. Plus, we may have buried ourselves in raw stress response after stress response under a barrage of notifications from our smartphones, health-tracking apps, and everything else that dominates our headspace and time. Yes, even in the name of good health.
“We end up training ourselves to have a greater stress response — people are not taught to use it safely,” Rabin said. “Everything about healing starts with feeling the feelings, facing the pain and not avoiding it.”
The argument can be made that we face pain (physical or mental) every time we open an app or strap on a wearable device to help us monitor our health or improve our well-being. But truly being “healthier” requires connecting our own dots and making sure we're paying attention to wellness trends that actually serve our version of “good”—whatever that is.
As we look ahead to a healthier 2025, we should continue to ask whether our technology is actively improving our lives or detracting from them. We should also consider asking less questions about what technology exists to help us become healthier and more questions how and do to use it in the first place. Chances are, we already have a good tool for better health built in.
“Most people think of their smartphones and their technology as stressing them out, but technology shouldn't,” Rabin said. “Technology should be at the service of humanity.
Here are some of the hottest trends to watch in 2025 and how to make them count for your health.
Healthy brain, healthy ageing: will technology connect the dots?
Interest in “healthy aging,” an umbrella term for spending more time being healthy rather than just living long, was more than a headline in 2024—it was an entire movement. In 2025, we can expect healthy aging to enter more spaces like supplementsbut one area we need to look at to keep up with Jones' healthy aging is brain health. Dr. Daniel Friedmanneurologist at NYU Langone Health and director of the Division of Epilepsy, called advances in technology on behalf of brain health “an interesting area of research,” but one that is not fully formed.
Specifically, Friedman pointed to research on how people use phones and consumer devices—how fast they type, how they interact with them, and even the complexity of the words they type—as “early predictors” of neurocognitive problems such as dementia.
The Dartmouth researchersfor example, developed an app called RealVision that tracks how users interact with their phone through eye movement and quick reaction time, potentially identifying dementia in its early days. Other research released in 2024 also looked at information collected from smartphones, finding older adults at risk of dementia based on wayfinding (ie, navigating around) data.
It may take some time for technological advances to hit consumer devices in a way that will actually benefit people's lives in terms of actionable health advice.
“You're probably going to get mad and panic if your phone says, 'Hey, by the way, you have a 20% risk of developing dementia in the next 10 years,'” Friedman said.
In the meantime, he stresses the importance of staying on top of modifiable health factors that we know can tip the scale in terms of dementia or brain health risk. They include getting adequate sleepby moving your body regularly, you regularly get reviews for hearing and vision health to ensure your brain receives the information it needs to stay busy and eat a nutritious diet.
Fueling Mind and Body: A Constant Focus on Nutrition
The importance of a well-rounded diet full of essential nutrients is as old as time, but 2024 has seen a particular burst of interest in nutrition and increased attention around the idea of 'food as medicine'.
2025 will only build on this. This year, for example, we will see a revision of the US Dietary Guidelines, which for the most part will be a pattern of eating that has been proven supports a healthy heartwith a limited intake of foods such as red meat and ultra-processed foods. The new guidelines have an emphasis on plant proteins such as beans and lentils and vegetables and fruits.
Another area of nutrition and holistic wellness that will continue to build upon itself in 2025 is the gut microbiome. This area continues to gain momentum due to its connection to metabolic health, skin health and more. Genetics, medications, and lifestyle factors affect gut health, but the number one determining factor is diet and the foods we eat.
Federica Amati, Clinical Medicine Research Scientist and Chief Nutritionist for Health Science and Home Gut Testing Company ZOEtold us that upcoming research in the pipeline will help seal the deal in terms of increasing people's awareness of what they eat and how it affects their gut health (and therefore their overall health).
“We've gotten to the point where we can use gut microbiome data to understand what people are actually eating,” Amati said. An upcoming partnership between ZOE and Mass General Hospital will explore potential links to specific strains of gut bacteria associated with increased risk of colorectal cancer in younger adults. The results could have huge implications for the growing number of people facing this diagnosis.
Gut health also has a direct relationship with inflammation, which, month after month, continues to turn into not just a buzzword, but a necessary evil that, in many cases, results in or is accompanied by autoimmune or chronic disease. more evil than necessary. Amati explained that inflammation is necessary to help us when we are sick, prone to infection or, in small amounts, in other daily bodily functions. The problem is when it becomes chronic and continues to simmer for months or years, that's it was associated with cancer, heart disease, diabetes and infertility.
“When we think about metabolic health conditions and think about chronic disease, inflammation is the fire that fuels it,” she said. There is a direct link between overall health and a solid diet, along with minimizing inflammatory foods such as the processed fats found in store-bought baked goods, alcohol and red meat, Amati gave as examples. Fiber, as it happens, is beneficial to the gut microbiome and anti-inflammatory.
Although it doesn't have a screen and doesn't fit our technical definition of technology, the increased focus on fiber and getting more of it into our diet through whole foods will only gain momentum in 2025.
“It's not rocket science, but it's not happening yet.”
Whole Health: How to Actually Feel Well in 2025
Rabin, who works with emotion regulation through his company, says that innovation in the vagus nerve which regulates emotions The stimulus space is probably in 2025. Perhaps more interestingly, Rabin says the technology will continue to close some of the health loopholes that wearable data can create in the near future.
“You're going to see more products coming out that will use closed-loop AI,” Rabin said.
This means that in the future we will see more health technology that “creates a signature” of our bodies, more directly explaining what our health data looks like when we feel good and when we feel bad. This can be extended to Apollo and Oura Ring integrationwhich is already available for mind-body fusion by combining rigorous health metrics such as heart rate variability with anxiety-relieving properties.
Another factor to watch out for in 2025 is how you allow notifications into your life or how your consumer technology fits you. Dr. Ryan Sultanpsychiatrist who runs a bioinformatics lab at Columbia University, said one way to reduce stress around technology is to be mindful of whether it helps you stay healthier. It seems simple enough, but the way apps are designed doesn't always make it seem that intuitive.
“A lot of apps are really too heavy on notifications,” Sultan said.
But should we rely on technology to help us get healthier in 2025? The answer may depend entirely on whether it actually helps us achieve our health goals by getting to the bottom of them. The idea that we should look at the root cause of disease from a more holistic view, rather than a symptom-oriented one, is relatively new to Western medicine, but it draws on healing practices from Eastern culture. For example, wellness practices such as work with breath continued to catch on and a growing body of evidence for their potential role in managing anxiety.
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 use it all. Even though health technology is mass-produced and available over the counter, health really remains personal, and what you use to enhance it should be based on what's best for your body. and the mind.
In other words, in a world full of things fighting for every inch of our sight and square of our brain, we don't deserve to just be picky. We owe it to our health.