A Fitbit.
For someone who doesn’t walk or take the stairs.
Is there any point?
Discuss, please.
So asked Glenda Watson-Hyatt on Facebook a few days ago. Glenda’s interest was in how much, as an electric wheelchair user, she actually moves.
If you’d like to read the whole fascinating series of comments and discussion that followed, you can find it here.
Some of the comments focused factually on what a FitBit can actually do: from the maybe well-known such as track movement (“steps”), heart rate and calories to the more unexpected (for those of us who’ve not used one, that is) such as tracking duration and quality of sleep. Glenda contributed that her interest in the FitBit was monitoring her heart rate and “getting it up often enough to be beneficial for heart health”.
And then there quite surprising functions like measuring carbon dioxide in the blood which led one Mum to respond enthusiastically, seeing an immediate application for her daughter: “CO2? Really?!?!?! That would be HUGELY helpful for Z as she often becomes hypercapnic before she becomes hypoxic.” Set beside that, a Fitbit that shows who is calling on your mobile phone (“cellphone”) and sends text messages, seems almost the everday.
Others commentated on how they had used a FitBit. One Mum borrowed 4 Fitbits and attached them for a day to the arms and legs of her daughter who has dystonia and atypical movement patterns – mainly for fun and curiosity, she wrote. Nevertheless, the outcome was surprising. The FitBit registered her daughter as “having moved the equivalent of a half marathon”.
The sleep tracking function is not just for monitoring but could be used to determine what it takes to get better sleep, as one contributor wrote – and perhaps to help carers learn what it takes to manage the end of the day better to encourage quality of sleep.
Another reported function was a kind of prompt to action: to eat, to exercise, to read, to go to bed, which can obviously be trained to the individual schedule for those who need prompts to manage their day.
Although Glenda says the she is not herself especially interested in counting calories, for many wheelchair users (like the rest of us who admit to not getting enough exercise!) monitoring food intake can be vital. So one contributor wrote of connecting her FitBit to the Loselt app (a personalised food and exercise plan) “so it tracks nutrients too”. I can see that being useful for my daughter.
A couple of people, of course, contributed a cautionary contrary view: a technical objection that such devices are set up for ambulant people but, even so, are not very accurate. Or that being wrist-worn, “they’re counting steps based on how your arm jerks” or the accuracy of tracking sleep for someone who “moves so much at night that I’m not certain he’s actually awake.”
Glenda reported that she had bought a Fitbit Charge 3 Special Edition. You'd best friend Glenda on Facebook if you want to follow her FitBit journey, as I shall.
That aside, I have wondered about our daughter, Sarah, about her level of exercise and activity. She benefits from a daily plinth programme as part of her adult conductive education group at Paces; she usually goes swimming every two weeks but apart from that she’s in her wheelchair except when she’s sleeping. And for the past year, she’s had a wheelchair with a molded insert which, also being too heavy and wheels set too far back, she has been unable to self-propel.
Apparently, I’m supposed to walk 10,000 steps every day. Perhaps one benefit of a FitBit for Sarah would be to accumulate the data to make the case to social care and health authorities that, as a woman approaching middle age, that she needs much more exercise and a controlled diet, if she is to do the equivalent of 10,000 steps a day - and be fit and healthy enough to lead a long life. And to have that built into her personal Support Plan just as GPs are being encouraged to refer overweight patients to exercise classes.
Who knows - perhaps a Fitbit could be incorporated into Sarah's conductive education?
