Syndrome X: Using Consumer-Tech to Counter an All-American Epidemic

Syndrome X, also known as a metabolic syndrome, is a highly prevalent cluster of conditions that increase the risk for heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes and takes the form of abnormal cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, and excess body fat found around the waist. This disease impacts an increasing number of lives and is reaching nearly epidemic levels of prevalence.

Lifestyle changes, medications and exercise are the best ways to decrease your risk, or manage the syndrome, but my experience in healthcare consulting highlights the potential of technology in preventing and managing symptoms.

Wearables: Prepare your Arsenal

Quardioarm

What is it?

The Quardioarm platform offers intelligent feedback about your blood pressure. It offers Apple Health and S Health integration so that your blood pressure data can be used securely in third party applications, or stored in one place if you use multiple blood pressure wearables.

Why is it the best wearable option for BP monitoring?

Unlike many other comprehensive home blood-pressure monitoring solutions, quardioarm offers clinical grade accuracy, and above all a compact and portable design that’s sleek and almost entices you to use it coupled with a gorgeous application that allows for the most novice users to benefit from the extensive functionality.

Data Sharing:

In some clinical environments (often in boutique clinics), there are established protocols with which physicians and other care providers can be sent your data. Access to this data can result in quicker diagnoses, especially if preexisting conditions such as genetically occurring valve failures or atrial septal defects are of concern.

Apple Watch

Apple watch is great at providing heart rates, ECG readouts, reminders to breathe (can lower heart rate), standup warnings (prevents users from sitting to long), and many other features from third party suppliers.

Application Level Self-Care:

The Mindfulness App:

Day-to-day burdens such as those encountered in the workplace or in traffic can easily take a toll on your levels of stress and therefore your blood pressure.

Your body increases blood pressure in-order to prepare a fight/flight response. While this is beneficial in the gym or other physical situations, over time, a reactive personality can contribute critically to chronically high blood pressures. Meditation has been shown to consistently be effective in lowering levels of stress. But for many of us that have an overbearing schedule, we don’t even know how to begin. The mindfulness application offers 5-day guided meditation and can adapt to your schedule with 3 to 30 min long sessions available. It also offers reminders, and statistics to intelligently track your mediation statistics.

Blood Pressure Companion App:

This application tracks blood pressure, heart rate, and weight. The app has a brilliant design and will make monitoring statistics a pleasant and genuinely rewarding experience. It also offers timers for blood pressure monitoring, and even doctor’s appointments. The application embodies simplicity.

Telemedicine Intervention:

High blood pressure is the ideal condition for telemedicine intervention, which is the ability to consult with a dedicated cardiologist or family medicine physician to discuss your heart health concerns. This can also allow for easy access to medications that can let you receive prescriptions for drugs such as alpha-blockers, vasodialators, or renin inhibitors from the comfort of your home (depending on your local laws and medical need).

Depending on your insurance or primary healthcare network, you can use different applications for cardiology consultations, sometimes these can be provided by the network itself.