A nursing student in Australia is encouraging Apple Watch owners to enable heart notifications, following the wearable’s detection of her undiagnosed thyroid condition.
The Apple Watch’s heart rate notifications feature has alerted numerous people to detect issues with their heart, and the nursing student’s recent TikTok posting shows how the device can detect very early changes that could end up being diagnosed month later.
TikTok user Lauren posted a video on February 2, encouraging her viewers to enable notifications for detecting low and high heart rates, irregular heart rhythms, and for its cardio fitness levels.
@studyvlogloz @studyvlogloz ‼️ #thyroidproblems #thyroiddisease #thyroiditis ♬ original sound – Lauren 🤍
The video, spotted and shared by The Independent, shows the nursing student displaying the features that should be enabled, along with her admission that she should have enabled the features earlier than she did, as it had medical consequences.
Lauren says she was diagnosed with a thyroid condition a few weeks earlier, and says she would have realized something was going on “if my Apple alerted me of changes.”
“Instead of me waiting for the symptoms to get really bad, I could have gone to the doctor back in October, when there was this dramatic drop in a matter of days,” Lauren adds, alongside a screenshot of a graph from the Health app. “It dramatically dropped, which means my cardiovascular system wasn’t working as well as it once was.”
Lauren had experienced other symptoms, including fatigue, a sensitivity to heat, gaining weight, dry skin, and increased irritability. She was diagnosed with thyroid hemiagenesis in December and is currently undergoing treatment.
Lauren said, “Don’t get me wrong, your Apple Watch is definitely not something you should follow as medical advice, but it can come in handy, I guess, as a tool to prompt you to go get things investigated further.”
“But on this occasion, I really wish that I had all the settings toggled on and noticed the changes and gone to the doctor sooner,” she continued.
(Via AppleInsider)
