There’s a lot anApple Watchcan do from a health, wellness, and fitness perspective. It can track workouts and activities, monitor your heart rate 24/7, alert you if it detects irregularities, keep on top of yoursleep duration and quality, check your temperature,measure ECG, stress, and more. There are so many things you probablydidn’t even know your Apple Watch could do. With the new Vitals app that’s part ofwatchOS 11, for example, you can see four key vitals on one graph to determine if they fall out of your typical range and how this corresponds to one another and activities or actions for the day prior. But one stat Apple Watchcan’ttrack is blood pressure. At least not yet. If you’re looking to buy, you might want to wait to buy theApple Watch Series 10, which may add this feature. But it might not work exactly as you think.
watchOS 11 is turning the Apple Watch into a Garmin
The Apple Watch finally gets widely used training tools and brings its fitness performance closer to Garmin’s level.
What is blood pressure?
A quick explanation
First, let’s look at what blood pressure is. It’s a measurement of how well your blood is moving through your arteries. As your heart pumps, it pushes blood from the arteries and into your body’s cells and tissues. You get two numbers in a blood pressure reading: systolic blood pressure is the pressure at which the blood is pushing against your artery walls while the heart is beating. It should be under 120-130mmHg. Diastolic blood pressure is pressure while the heart muscle rests between beats and should be under 80mmHg. Thus, a pretty perfect blood pressure reading would be 120/80.
If you have high blood pressure, called hypertension, it could lead to issues like heart attack or stroke. Conversely, if you have low blood pressure, called hypotension, it could mean your heart, brain, and other parts of the body aren’t getting enough blood. This can lead to issues like blurred vision, dizziness, lightheadedness, and even fainting.
There are smartwatches that measure blood pressure similarly to how a wrist cuff-based blood pressure monitor works. Instead of wrapping around your arm, they use sensors on the underside of the face that touch your skin to detect changes in the blood volume in your arteries. Algorithms then calculate the information, converting this to an electrical signal to come up with a ballpark figure.
Blood pressure monitoring could be coming
Apple Watch Series 10 is rumored to be adding it
While we don’t yet have any factual details about theApple Watch Series 10, which fans suspect will be launched this September at Apple’s annual event, there are rumors that blood pressure monitoring could be a new feature. Some sources, however, suggest that rather than giving you on-demand readings, the sensors would instead provide blood pressure trends throughout the day.
But some sources believe part of the experience will be a blood pressure journey where you can log details about what’s going on in real-time when elevated blood pressure is detected (assuming you receive notifications when this occurs). Maybe it’s a stressful time at work, it’s while you’re going for a strenuous run, after you consume alcohol, or perhaps no explainable reason at all.
Which smartwatches have blood pressure monitoring?
Most are medical-focused devices
Achieving accurate blood pressure monitoring in a smartwatch is admittedly challenging. Even Samsung, which offers blood pressure monitoring in some of its Galaxy Watch models like theSamsung Galaxy Watch 5, requires calibration first using a physical blood pressure cuff. Since this has to be done every four weeks, you’d need to take a trip to your local pharmacy to use a public machine or buy a blood pressure monitor for use at home. That sort of negates the need to use the watch in the first place.
Nonetheless, there are some smartwatches with blood pressure monitoring integrated as a feature, though most are from medically focused brands. There’s the Med-Watch Pro, for example, that’s strictly for blood pressure monitoring (it can track a few other things), and theYHE BP Doctor Pro, a medical-grade device that comes with a patented inflatable air cuff to use alongside it.
How to measure blood pressure with an Apple Watch now
Thereareways around it
There are still technically ways you can use an Apple Watch to measure blood pressure. But you’re really using a secondary device to measure it and logging the compatible data in the Apple Health app. Some blood pressure monitors are compatible with Apple Watch, like the Withings BPM Connect Wi-Fi Smart Blood Pressure Monitor, various models from OMRON, and the QardioArm Wireless BP Monitor. With some models, you can download a version of the app for the Apple Watch and initiate a reading right from the device.
The advantage with all compatible blood pressure monitors is that once synced, you can view your blood pressure readings in the Apple Health app alongside all your other health metrics. So, the Watch itself doesn’t monitor the blood pressure, but it still plays a role in keeping track of the readings. This is valuable if you want to show your doctor or other medical professional a history of readings, as well as to log notes that can correspond with activities you were doing at the time of higher readings.
Of course, keep in mind that the Apple Watch is not a medical device, and if you have concerns, you should always consult with a doctor.
Apple Watch Series 9
