The Beat Is On

For three days, I walked around hooked up to an electrode pad 24/7, just to find out what exactly stresses me out. Did it work?

- Jasmine Teo

How well do you know yourself? Do you get stressed out by tight deadlines, an overbearing boss or just where to go for lunch? Does doing yoga, meditating, or just spacing out in the shower truly relax you? I’ll be the first to admit that the only stats I know about my body are those vital ones that I need to buy clothes that fit online. Okay, and what I get from my annual health check-up report (but who really remembers any of that, right?) However, to borrow the words of John Mayer, your body is a wonderland so there’s no harm in knowing more, especially when it comes to daily health and productivity.

Which is why I willingly got strapped up to the Firstbeat Lifestyle Assessment device for three days. What looks like a piece of equipment from a hospital ward is really a health tracking monitor from Finnish company Firstbeat. The physiological analytics company first designed it to track the performance and recovery of athletes at the Olympics, but soon realised that non Olympian plebs could benefit from knowing how their bodies react to and recover from daily challenges too. Obviously, this little doodad tracks more than just how many steps you’ve walked, unlike other most fitness tracking devices. It delves deep and monitors your heartbeat 24/7 over a period of three days, and via a heart rate variability analysis, identifies your stress triggers, quality of sleep, your body’s ideal way of rest and recovery, and optimal level and type of physical activity for the individual.