Paralympic track star Hunter Woodhall and his wife, Olympic long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall, made people around the world melt after rooting each other to dual gold medals at the Paris Games. But while Woodhall is back at training, he just revealed that he had to take a time-out to have emergency surgery—and his Oura ring was what pushed him to go to the hospital.
In an Instagram reel that’s now gone viral, the 26-year-old started off by sharing that his Oura ring “may have saved my life.” As Woodhall explained in the video, he began experiencing stomach pains after eating a salad that contained blue cheese. At the time, he attributed the cramps to the dairy, not recognizing they were actually symptoms of appendicitis, a potentially life-threatening infection.
After getting COVID right before the Paralympics, Woodhall developed a “weird intolerance to different kinds of lactose,” he said. “I figured it was the cheese on my salad, but this was so much worse than anything I have ever experienced.” He ended up “throwing up all night.” Eventually, he tried to sleep, thinking he would feel better after a good night’s rest.
But when he woke up in the morning, Woodhall said he still felt pain. That’s when he opened his Oura app, where he received a “Major Signs” symptom alert that suggested something was seriously off with his health. It was the first time in the four years he’s been wearing the ring that he saw that notification.
“This instantly caught me off-guard,” he said. In the notification, the app told him that his resting heart rate and body temperature had increased above his normal range. “Knowing the pain was in my right abdomen, I searched what the symptoms [were] for appendicitis, and all those symptoms lined up to what the ring was saying,” he said.
That prompted him to head to the hospital. There, he received a CT scan, which showed his appendix—a small pouch located at the end of the large intestine—was enlarged. He ended up having emergency surgery to remove it, and is now recuperating with his dad, who just had open heart surgery.
“Sometimes you get a sign right when you need it,” he wrote in the caption of his post. “Although scary, I’m so grateful things worked out.”
How can smart health trackers be helpful in emergency situations?
Woodhall’s story is freaky, but he’s not the only person to have a health tracker signal a serious health issue. The Internet is packed with stories from folks who have detected early signs of cardiac blockages, heart rhythm problems, and other conditions by using a tracker.
Doctors have witnessed this in practice, too, particularly for heart issues. Take atrial fibrillation, or AFib, an irregular heartbeat that can raise the risk of blood clots, stroke, heart failure, and other complications. Consumer devices can detect this by using photoplethysmography, which measures changes in blood flow based on the intensity of light reflected off your skin’s surface, per the American College of Cardiology. Popular smartwatches like Apple Watch and Fitbit can now alert you to signs that may suggest this condition.
“I have seen some of these commercial monitoring devices be helpful in identifying atrial fibrillation with a rapid heart rate,” Cedric Dark, MD, MPH, associate professor of emergency medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, tells SELF.
In fact, Ali Jamehdor, DO, an emergency medicine physician and medical director of the Weingart Foundation Emergency Department at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, tells SELF that the ability to detect atrial fibrillation is one of the best features of these devices. “A lot of times people will not have any idea that they have this irregular heartbeat because they may not even sense it,” he says. “This has been, in my opinion, one of the most important things these instruments are good for.”
But as Woodhall discovered, smart devices can raise the alarm for things outside the cardiac realm too. After all, along with tracking the beats of your ticker, many also measure temperature, respiration, and other data points.
While Dr. Dark says that heart rate monitoring is one of the more useful features of these devices from an emergency medicine standpoint, he also believes that real-time temperature tracking is also handy. “Fever is a key sign of an infection like appendicitis,” he says.
Together, “these two are very important vital signs” docs can use to get a measure of your health, Erin Muckey, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, tells SELF.
There are limitations to these devices, though.
According to the docs we spoke to, while health trackers can be helpful in detecting serious issues, they’re not perfect. That’s a fact many of these trackers are upfront about.
Oura, for example, states that its temperature readings are 92% accurate under real-world conditions. Its night time resting heart heart rate measurement is 99.6% accurate, while its heart rate variability (the variation in time between consecutive heart beats) is 98% accurate when compared to a medical-grade electrocardiogram (ECG), which measures the heart’s electrical activity. The brand also stresses that the ring isn’t a medical device, and isn’t designed to diagnose or monitor medical conditions.
As for the Apple Watch, the fine print includes caveats about what the watch features are and are not capable of doing, including the fact that it’s not constantly monitoring for AFib so it may not detect all instances. Apple also notes that the companion ECG app cannot detect heart attack, stroke, blood clots, or other heart-related conditions. The company stresses the importance of seeking immediate help if you experience concerning symptoms.
What’s more, using these kinds of devices inaccurately—say, if they don’t fit quite right—may throw off readings too. That’s something Dr. Muckey says she’s personally experienced. “Sometimes my watch says my heart rate is half of what it is, even though I’m breathing hard, and I notice that it’s loose,” she says. “You just have to use your own judgement to say that a reading doesn’t make sense.”
Okay: I just got an alert from my health tracker. Is it time to freak out?
If you happen to get an alert from your health tracker, don’t panic. But doctors say it’s worth at least paying attention to this information if you’ve been using your device correctly. That’s especially true if you’re also having other symptoms—like dizziness, trouble breathing, chest pain, and feeling faint—along with the alert, Dr. Dark says. Or, say, the severe stomach pains Woodhall experienced.
In these situations, “it makes sense to speak with your physician or seek medical care,” Dr. Dark says. Something else to consider is if your symptoms are normal for you, Dr. Muckey says. “In someone who always has headaches, a headache would not be a red flag,” she explains. “But if someone never has headaches and is now having terrible head pain, I’m more worried.”
That’s why Dr. Muckey recommends looking at health readings from your tracker as a guide more than anything. “People should listen to their bodies,” she says. “Your fitness tracker may tell you that everything is fine, but if you’re having pain like nothing you’ve ever felt, that should be a signal that something is off.”
Unfortunately, though, as Dr. Jamehdor points out, you might not have any symptoms if your heart rhythm is off. If you feel like you’re using your device correctly and you get an alert about your heart but you otherwise feel fine, he still recommends doing some digging: Get your heart rate checked at a local drugstore, contact your doctor about an evaluation, or go to your local urgent care to get evaluated. “This is potentially dangerous enough that, if you blow it off, you’re doing yourself a disservice,” he says.
While Dr. Muckey says it’s important not to be “obsessive” about your health data, she also believes there’s a role for these trackers in health care. “If you are already feeling unwell and the numbers also being off help you make the decision to seek medical advice, I think that’s wonderful,” she says.
And that could have been what gave Woodhall that potentially life-saving push: In his video, he admitted that he’s “so stubborn” that he didn’t think he would have gone to the hospital without his ring’s alert, possibly putting his life at risk. Now, as he detailed in a follow-up Instagram story, he’s hopeful that sharing his experience will help someone else who may be in a similar situation. “Still extremely sore, but feeling better,” he added.
Related:
- It Shouldn’t Be This Expensive to Be a Paralympic Athlete
- The Path Out of Sport Isn’t Always Clear for Retiring Paralympians
- How to Get Rid of Gas Pain If You’re Feeling Crampy, Bloated, and Desperate for Relief
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