Cyclic changes in women's hormone levels throughout life introduce far greater complexity than men's health, leading to studies that do not take into account women's menstrual periods, pregnancy status, or menopausal status. Second, there are well-known and historical gender biases against women in research, which has resulted in fewer studies focusing on women and a significant reduction in the overall representation of women in research. Thanks to the popularity of devices like smart rings, especially the smart ring for women, biometric technology has been added to the wear that women are interested in to measure various indicators of physical health, making it easier for women to have a deeper understanding of their health.
Tracking one's health has never been easier. Due to wearable devices and their increasing popularity, there is growing interest in understanding changes in our bodies that are trying to tell us about our health. Yet despite improvements in access to health data, there is little guidance, particularly for women, on what our health indicators mean and how to combine them.
With the resurgence of interest in health and wellness over the past decade, there are now a plethora of products that can help track biometric data, such as counting steps, measuring sleep and heart rate, and more. Many of these products increase awareness of the user's physical state. But despite clear biological differences, few offer differentiated insights into women and men.
On March 7, 2023, Movano Health announced the results of a study on the wearables market. The results showed that accuracy is a major factor for women when considering wearables. The study is a comprehensive study of 1,000 women aged 30-75, who are potential users of smart wearable devices, using online surveys and online discussions. Gained insight into women's needs for how wearables can play a role in their daily lives. When women were asked what lifestyle attitudes and goals resonated most with them, 85% said they wanted to understand their bodies and 75% wanted to improve their health.
Source: Metrics of Women’s Health on Smart Ring for Women
Biometric health data, which are biological data points captured directly from sensors or cuffs on the skin, include in this article blood oxygen, heart rate variability (HRV), heart rate (HR), blood pressure, body temperature, and respiration Frequencies are important indicators of health and disease status, and they are increasingly recognized as effective predictors of disease risk. However, when traditional reports provide health statistics and corresponding solutions to the general population, women's health data are not included in the reports, and women's specific biological stages, such as menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopausal status, are rarely considered.
1. Sex hormones
Hormones are chemical messengers produced by endocrine glands and released into the bloodstream. Hormones help regulate body functions and maintain overall health, such as appetite, sleep, and growth. Sex hormones are hormones that play an important role in sexual development and reproduction. The main glands that produce sex hormones are the adrenal glands and the gonads, which include the ovaries in women and the testicles in men. For women, the main sex hormones are estrogen and progesterone. The production of these hormones occurs primarily in the ovaries, adrenal glands, and placenta during pregnancy. Female sex hormones also affect weight, hair growth, bone, and muscle growth. Although these hormones naturally fluctuate throughout a person's life, long-term imbalances can lead to a range of symptoms and health effects.
2. Menstrual Cycle, Menopause, And Fertility
Unlike men, who have stable hormone levels from puberty onwards, women's hormones fluctuate from month to month, affecting health indicators. Health indicators correspond to the rise and fall of progesterone and estrogen levels during a woman's menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause. These include increases in body temperature and resting heart rate and decreases in sleep quality and heart rate variability. Similar changes in biometrics occur during menopause and pregnancy. Therefore, a smart ring for women developed means recording and calculating the impact of female hormones on health indicators, providing more rational health guidance, ovulation prediction, and health monitoring in the form of fluctuation curves.
Factors that Affect Women’s Health Data
1. Basal Body Temperature
Basal body temperature(BBT) varies depending on the individual, age, activity, genetics, and time of day. The average temperature ranges between 36.1 and 37 degrees C. For women, basal body temperature varies with the rise and fall of progesterone during the menstrual cycle, and it rises immediately after ovulation and continues to be high during the luteal phase, then drops to its lowest point during menstruation and the follicular phase. The thermogenic effects of progesterone and the cooling effects of estrogen create this relatively stable and predictable temperature cycle. Therefore, BBT is often used by healthcare professionals for pregnancy planning or prevention. For women in the menopause transition, an elevated core body temperature usually occurs before hot flashes.
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2. Blood Pressure
High blood pressure is the main reason for about half the possibility of strokes, myocardial infarctions, and 28% of end-stage renal disease. However, women are less likely to develop high blood pressure before menopause than men because of the differences in the renin-angiotensin system and nitric oxide system. These differences exist due to the protective effect of female sex hormones on vascular tone. So after menopause, this protective effect of the sex hormones begins to wear off, and women over the age of 65 are more likely to develop hypertension than men. Addressing the huge impact of high blood pressure on heart disease in women, it is important to monitor cardiovascular health to intervene early when women are at higher risk.
3. HRV&HR(Heart Rate)
Heart rate variability (HRV) is now a common indicator that we use to monitor heart health and general body condition. Abnormalities in HRV may indicate the presence of heart disease, anxiety, and other underlying health problems. Women’s reproductive hormones can significantly affect cardiovascular function, further affecting HRV, leading to fluctuations in HRV throughout the menstrual cycle, including higher HRV during the proliferative phase of the cycle, or the first 14 days or so of the cycle. Since increased risk of cardiovascular disease and cognitive decline are also associated with menopause, HRV can be an important marker to help determine when to take action to improve a woman's health.
The Importance of Women Tracking Their Health Metrics
1. How to Track Metrics of Women’s Health
Smart watches and smartphones have become some of the mainstream ways of monitoring and tracking women's health, but there are problems such as being inconvenient to carry, unable to accurately sense the temperature, and inconvenient to wear during sleep, so the smart ring solves the uncomfortable nighttime and early morning temperature measurement and provides highly accurate finger temperature sensors, coupled with the app's mature algorithms, which are able to accurately predict the day of a woman's ovulation, to Track the fluctuating changes of women's hormone levels, providing a professional reference for women's reproductive health.
2. How to Improve Your Health by Tracking Data
2.1 Sleep
Adequate sleep is a necessary way to maintain good physical and mental health. During sleep, the body cycles through the stages of rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep an average of four to six times per night. Each sleep stage includes changes in muscle tone, brain wave patterns, and eye movements. Women face many obstacles in getting quality sleep. This is mainly due to their fluctuating hormone levels that affect their ability to get a good night's sleep.
2.2 Physical Sport
Physical activity is one of the most important means of staying healthy. The dopamine produced during exercise also gives people a mood boost. Adequate physical activity can prevent, delay, or control the development of a wide range of diseases, and it is also possible to determine one's health status by monitoring physical indicators during exercise.
2.3 Focus on Your Menstrual Cycle Health
The menstrual cycle is a natural process of the female reproductive system that repeats monthly from the onset of menstruation. For women, a regular menstrual cycle reflects the health of the uterus and ovarian function, and paying attention to the menstrual cycle has therefore become one of the most important means of strengthening women's reproductive health.
2.4 Mental Health
The lifetime prevalence of mood or anxiety disorders is higher in women than in men, and changes in sex hormones may increase women's vulnerability to mood disorders, with 10-20% of mothers currently suffering the negative effects of postpartum depression. Mental health affects the nervous system, endocrine system, lifestyle, and biometrics. While mood may seem unrelated to your health, it is closely linked to many health-related outcomes, so by practicing physical activity, breathing exercises, and positive thinking, you can eliminate negative emotions, which in turn affects health indicators such as HRV back to normal levels.
Conclusion
The difference in physiology between women and men determines that women's need for daily wearables cannot be limited to simple aesthetics, and the pressure of society and life also drives modern women don't have much time to listen to professional advice and remember their menstruation and ovulation cycles regularly. Women need an accurate, fast, and comfortable health assistant to help them take control of their health. This assistant can be a family doctor, but of course, this is only possible if the financial situation permits, for most women, a smart ring as their health assistant is perfect, and the rise of the smart ring for women reflects this growing demand.
Femometer is dedicated to women who care about their health and love themselves and provides accurate ovulation prediction for women. The Femometer App offers women's health guidance, ovulation prediction, conception, pregnancy, and menstrual cycle health tracking data analysis.
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