Tecnhnolgy

[aparsonsmoore]

Hi all

Apologies if I have breached any posting rules, but wondered about technology that people had purchased to deal with diabetes - I'm not talking glucose monitors, but smart scales etc. For example, I decided to purchase a Galaxy Watch for exercise monitoring and a set of Renpho Smart Scales.

The watch is slightly disappointing, do everything consistently well aside from recording my cycle rides (the very thing I bought it for). On the other hand, the scales are brilliant.

 

[trophywench]

Beats me how a scale can see inside you in order to tell you where the fat is, bearing in mind it's the fat round the organs that causes the most problems once you've got rid of the butt and belly excess. Shedloads of folk are TOFI - thin outside, fat inside. It was having that very thing analysed properly that started Michael Moseley off on his crusade to save us all! LOL

 

[Docb]

Hi @aparsonsmoore. A bit of honest straightforward feedback on peripheral things that people have tried to help with coping with diabetes can be very helpful. It's when somebody tries to use the forum as a platform for promoting things that we draw the line.

I'm with @trophywench when it comes to smart scales, just don't know how you can get much more than how heavy you are from standing on a set of scales without making an awful lot of assumptions.

The smartwatch I finally bought was a Fitbit versa 2 which when paired with my bottom end Samsung phone works well on location tracking and journey recording both walking and cycling. I think you have to consider watch/phone as a pair and make sure each is happy with the others software to make sure things work as well as they claim.

 

[grovesy]

I don't see the need to spend all that money for smart scales, when an normal pair do the job.
I was a long time user of pedometer, and the accuracy of them could vary. I have been using an activity tracker for a number of years more recently. I started with a Fitbit which to log a walk I used to have to connect via an app to go for a walk, it annoyed me as many a time the walk would not be logged at the end. My last 2 have been Garmin's and I can log my walk on the the tracker that connects to an app I much prefer. I still think there accuracy is not 100%.

 

[helli]

The only time I am weighed is for my annual diabetes review at the hospital and for a gym assessment. The hospital scales are the old fashioned moving a weight along a balance bar type. The ones at the gym are ultra smart ones that "calculate" fat and muscle mass throughout my body. I can't say how accurate they are but when I have been doing more resistance training, they report more muscle overall, when I have had an injury in my left arm, they report less muscle there and when I have been slovenly, they report more water retention. But this is not for diabetes management; it is just for interest.

My watch is a Miifit band. It's like a FitBit but smaller and much much cheaper. It tracks my steps and is linked to the app on my phone which is connected to my MiaoMiao which sits on top of my Libre. So it vibrates if my BG rises too fast, falls too fast, is too high or is too low. It is not the most fancy smart watch but it does all I need (including act as a timer when I am baking) and more.

As you can probably guess from my mention of the gym (which I am really missing during the pandemic), I do a lot of exercise and maintaining weight is more of a problem than gaining it. I find it motivating to set myself targets such as number of steps walked per day, number of steps run in a week, etc. The smart watch helps me with this and is more than accurate enough. It amuses me that my step count goes up as I knead my bread dough.

 

[Ralph-YK]

Beats me how a scale can see inside you in order to tell you where the fat is, bearing in mind it's the fat round the organs that causes the most problems once you've got rid of the butt and belly excess. Shedloads of folk are TOFI - thin outside, fat inside. It was having that very thing analysed properly that started Michael Moseley off on his crusade to save us all! LOL

I'm with @trophywench when it comes to smart scales, just don't know how you can get much more than how heavy you are from standing on a set of scales without making an awful lot of assumptions.

When I was doing my "Health Living/Eatiing" support thing; at one point they started bringing round some fancy scales. I believe it was something to do with passing a current through you.

 

[Ralph-YK]

I don't use anything.

 

[pm133]

I'm not a user of tech for these things either.
I created my own spreadsheet to record carbs, blood glucose levels and insulin amounts with graphs etc but that's it.
I don't own a smart phone and suspect I never will, a fitbit thing or any kind of smart watch device.
The more I think about it, the more I am wondering whether to just stay with injecting insulin manually and using finger pricking rather than relying on tech to get the monitoring and injecting right for me. It's probably the personal control that I like about the manual process. I'm not sure I ever want to risk taking things for granted and ending up struggling because of dodgy monitors, bad connections, blocked pumps etc.
Maybe I'll change my mind later on but for now I'm pretty content to go "old school".

 

[ConfusedCraig]

Smart scales are not an accurate measure of body fat or muscle mass. They (normally) use resistance between electrodes on your feet to estimate and this is of course pretty sketchy. I am unaware of any other type.

If you really want to know what your bodyfat percentage is, or at least a good estimate of it, bodyfat/skinfold calipers are the best solution. They just measure how much skin (and loose fat) you can pinch out from certain sites and then you look up known bodyfat amounts that coincide with your pinch. They're still not perfectly accurate but they are the most accurate thing you can do at home as far as I am aware.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Smart scales are not an accurate measure of body fat or muscle mass.

No, they're not.

Body fat scale accuracy: How they work and alternative methods

Body fat scales are devices that estimate the relative percentages of fat and muscle inside the body. Read on to learn about how they work and their accuracy.

www.medicalnewstoday.com

 

[aparsonsmoore]

Cool - really interesting to read different viewpoints. I agree about people trying to hijack forums to flog things and hopefully I didn't give that impression. I guess my declaration that my smart scales were brilliant was because I like the information (even though it may be innacurate). It makes weighing myself a little more interesting and I like that it integrates with Samsung Health, Google Fit etc. The other stuff I can take with a pinch of salt, but the weight monitoring has been OK and the scales were an Amazon special and so quite cheap.

My Samsung watch has been a bit more of a disappointment. It's paired to a Samsung phone, so you'd think they'd be harmonious and for the most part it is. However, it sometimes records my cycling and very often doesn't. Out with the club on Sunday and I got a collection of cycling instalments not one continuous journey. Very frustrating. It can sync with monitors as well, but the one the Dr provided (can't complain) isn't supported.

 

[Weekender]

Beats me how a scale can see inside you in order to tell you where the fat is, bearing in mind it's the fat round the organs that causes the most problems once you've got rid of the butt and belly excess. Shedloads of folk are TOFI - thin outside, fat inside. It was having that very thing analysed properly that started Michael Moseley off on his crusade to save us all! LOL

I remember the TV program How To Stay Young in which a very fit and health conscious Angela Rippon had an MRI scan that revealed dangerous levels of visceral fat. I wonder how many other people are in the same position, but don't know because they don't get scanned?

 

[Weekender]

No, they're not.

Body fat scale accuracy: How they work and alternative methods

Body fat scales are devices that estimate the relative percentages of fat and muscle inside the body. Read on to learn about how they work and their accuracy.

www.medicalnewstoday.com

Thanks for the link. I use mine daily since I was diagnosed T2 3 weeks ago and started the Newcastle Diet 15 days ago.
Mine take dozens of attempts each morning to get the biometric data working. It's very frustrating and so I was thinking of upgrading. The article on your link has persuaded me not to bother. I've been looking at an export of the information - I'm not convinced. I think @Martin.A is right the tape measure doesn't lie. I would need to lose 7" to get back into the trouser I wore 5 years ago when I was a heavy smoker (43" to 36"). I don't know if the Newcastle Diet target of lose 15kg (101kg minus 15 = 86kg) will get me there. I think reversing T2 will be good enough!

I guess there is an argument to be made that if they are consistently inaccurate (+/-) the trends are informative.
The trends from my smart scales are graphed below - but it's pretty much a correlate of my weight, so I won't bother maintaining the data. (The final values on the chart are my targets)