Whenever I wear a smartwatch, I find that my anxiety increases — specifically, my health anxiety. Also known as hypochondria or illness anxiety disorder, this type of anxiety makes me worry that I am or may become ill even when I’m healthy.

What’s ironic is that part of my job involves testing health-monitoring wearables, including fitness trackers and smart rings. While I love exploring this technology and do think it can help you learn more about your body, I have to be careful about how I use it so my anxiety isn’t triggered.

“Healthy adults and individuals with pre-existing medical conditions are increasingly using these devices to manage their health. Whether 24/7 access to health information from a wearable actually helps or potentially harms people is really unclear,” says Dr. Lindsey Rosman, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology and co-director of the Cardiovascular Device and Data Science Lab at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

When you add in the ability to search your symptoms online or ask an AI chatbot in your wearable’s app about every anxiety-induced health question that pops into your head, it becomes even more difficult to discern between what’s helpful and harmful. 

To help myself and others with health anxiety navigate the world of wearables so we can either enjoy using them or know when it’s time to stop, I reached out to experts for their advice.

1. Turn off health-related alerts

Rosman has observed clinically that it can be beneficial to either scale back or turn off the features that make you anxious. This can be especially helpful for people with pre-existing conditions that are already being treated, such as atrial fibrillation (AFib, an irregular heartbeat), as your wearable’s irregular heart rhythm notifications will only make you anxious and can prompt you to see your doctor when it’s not medically necessary.

Plus, certain medications can affect the accuracy of wearable sensors, provoking false alarms. 

“We published a case report on a patient who performed over 900 EKGs [electrocardiograms or ECGs, which measure the heart’s electrical activity] on her smartwatch in a single year,” says Rosman. While most of the EKGs were normal, inconclusive alerts fueled her anxiety, leading to multiple ER visits, spousal conflict and the need for therapy to reclaim her daily life. The patient had no psychiatric history prior to getting a smartwatch.

Dr. Karen Cassiday, author of Freedom from Health Anxiety and owner and managing director of the Anxiety Treatment Center of Greater Chicago, says that even patients who don’t have health anxiety can find wearables to be intrusive when they get too many alerts. “They discover they want to be less aware of every moment of their body’s functioning,” she says.

Thankfully, most wearable health features can be turned off completely or customized. 

For instance, Shyamal Patel, SVP of science at Oura, maker of the Oura Ring, shares that the device’s Personalized Activity Goals allow you to choose to see steps instead of calories, adjust your daily activity goal or hide calories completely, which can be necessary for anyone who finds calorie counting triggering or overly rigid. 

2. Avoid checking your device all the time

Referring to a 2024 study she worked on that examined the impact of wearables on the psychological well-being of patients with AFib, Rosman says that about half of the participants were checking their heart rate every day out of habit, not because they felt symptoms. 

Cassidy explains that while people with health anxiety may initially find wearables helpful, compulsively checking to make sure their vitals are normal can accidentally become a form of negative reinforcement that further propels the anxiety.

“Often when I work with anxious people, we try to cut back or eliminate the need to compulsively check for reassurance on their wearables, as well as with ChapGPT or other digital ‘doctors,’” says Cassiday. 

When people refrain from compulsively checking, wearables can provide useful feedback that counters the false belief that something terrible will happen to their health.  

If checking your health metrics causes anxiety, try reducing how often you view them on your device or in its app. Setting an alert to check weekly, at a minimum, could help — especially since it’ll give you a broader picture, making you less likely to hyperfocus on a single data point that seems off. 

You should also avoid checking your wearable’s health information right after you wake up or before you go to bed, as this can set the tone for an anxious day or make it harder to fall asleep. 

If having a screen on your wrist makes it difficult for you to stop checking, a screenless smart ring or fitness tracker such as the Whoop 5.0 may be a better option, since they rely on apps instead of screens.

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“You choose how much or how little you engage with the app, which gives those who might be anxious about their health the option to limit the amount of time they spend with their data,” says Patel.

3. Focus on trends, not one-off metrics

When I asked both Patel and Dr. Jacqueline Shreibati, head of clinical for platforms and devices at Google, how people who wear their devices can reduce health anxiety, they emphasized the importance of tracking trends — not individual metrics.  

“We focus on long-term trends (rather than isolated metrics) to help users maintain a balanced relationship with their data,” says Shreibati. “What being healthy means differs for everyone, and we encourage users to consult their physician if they have any concerns.”

Patel points to the Tags and Trends features in the Oura app. Tags lets you tag lifestyle factors such as travel, alcohol, meditation or late meals, which you can then view in Trends to see how your behavior affects your recovery and sleep over weeks, rather than looking at a single score that may one day seem abnormal.

4. Remember that your smartwatch can’t replace a doctor

“Most consumer wearables were originally developed as personal wellness devices, which are not required to demonstrate safety and efficacy like traditional medical devices (e.g., a blood pressure cuff or pacemaker),” Rosman explains. 

Yet we’ve begun using these wearables to monitor our health, using metrics such as heart rate and rhythm, blood oxygen, stress, sleep and physical activity. Now, some of these devices have medical-grade sensors, software and algorithms approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to detect irregular heart rhythms, hypertension and sleep apnea.

Despite FDA approval, wearables are simply not doctors, and they cannot provide medical diagnoses or treatment. That’s why it’s essential to understand what your device actually measures.

The ECG feature on many smartwatches is just one example of this. FDA-cleared as it may be, a single-lead ECG that only uses one electrode to record your heart’s electrical activity from your wrist is not the same as the 12-lead, hospital-grade ECG a cardiologist would use. 

While your wearable’s ECG can surface a potential symptom worth investigating with your doctor, it can’t replace a professional or their medical-grade equipment.

The gap is even wider for features including stress and sleep scores, which haven’t been clinically validated because there’s no one single gold standard to validate against. These numerical scores are calculated from bodily signals such as heart rate, temperature, movement and heart rate variability, which tend to correlate with your stress and sleep states. But the translation from raw signal to “your stress score is 74” is more of an educated estimate.

“What you’re seeing is a rough indicator of how your nervous system is functioning, not a medical diagnosis,” Rosman emphasizes.

Patel adds that not all physiological stress is inherently negative. “Some forms of short-term physiological stress can be healthy and adaptive,” he says. “That’s why we aim to pair data with in-app context and insights, so members can better understand what they’re seeing rather than receiving that information in a vacuum.” 

Nonetheless, when you don’t know exactly what your wearable is measuring, a “bad” stress or sleep score can seem scary when it isn’t necessarily a cause for alarm, but rather a sign that you may want to have a deeper conversation with your doctor.

5. Get your doctor’s thoughts

Just like you should talk to your doctor before starting a new medication or diet, you should get their thoughts on whether you could benefit from using a wearable.

“Education is probably the most underused tool we have,” Rosman says. 

When you don’t know what a healthy heart rate or ECG looks like, one seemingly atypical reading can send you into a panic. That’s why it’s essential to speak with your doctor so you understand your own baseline and if a wearable makes sense for your current health condition.

As a guide, Rosman provides the following questions you can ask your doctor:

• What type of wearable should I use? 
• How often should I check this data? 
• What are healthy numbers for me? 
• What do I do when I get an alert? 
• When should I call the clinic or seek emergency care versus waiting? 

“A fast heart rate after climbing stairs is not the same as a dangerous arrhythmia, but without that context, a notification can feel terrifying,” Rosman adds. “So much wearable-related anxiety comes not from the data itself, but from not knowing what to do with it.”

6. Know when it’s time to remove your device and get help

When asked when someone should consider parting with their wearable or seeing a professional for health anxiety, Cassiday says that it’s similar to what many notice when they keep checking their smartphone for the next text, TikTok or other digital data.  

“If you find yourself interrupting pleasurable activities or your free time to check, or if you feel anxious about not checking, you have a problem,” Cassiday states. 

For instance, if you only stop thinking that you’ll have a heart attack when you check your wearable and see your resting heart rate. Or, put simply, if you only feel at peace after someone or something, such as a wearable reassures you that you’re in good health, it’s time to get professional support. 

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To find help, Cassiday recommends using the resources provided by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America or the International OCD Foundation, as health anxiety can be related to obsessive-compulsive disorder. 

7. Consider cognitive behavioral therapy 

When you have health anxiety, the gold standard for care is cognitive behavioral therapy. It involves exposure to health-related worries without any form of reassurance and learning to accept the uncertainty that comes with not knowing our future health status, manner of death or time of death.  

“People need to learn that all the vague symptoms that trigger their health anxiety are just normal variations of normal body functioning and aging,” Cassiday explains. “They have to reframe the symptoms they notice as nothing to examine, discuss or manage and instead trust the facts of their other evidence of good health.”

CBT can help you live in the present instead of spiraling into the anxiety-inducing “What if?” of the future.

Who should and shouldn’t use wearables

Wearables can be great for people who like tracking their fitness to motivate them toward their goals, or for patients and their care teams when medically necessary. Though they usually cost hundreds of dollars, wearables can be less expensive than medical tests. Some are even HSA- or FSA-eligible. 

“In AFib specifically, being able to correlate your symptoms with actual rhythm data can be genuinely empowering,” Rosman says. She’s observed that the patients who thrive with wearables are those who use the data as information — not as something to fear — and those who don’t participate in 24/7 surveillance.

In Rosman’s 2024 study, two-thirds of AFib patients said their wearable made them feel safer and more in control. Even so, there is still the risk of unintended consequences.

Just as doctors would never prescribe a medication without knowing the potential benefits, risks and how to manage them, wearables should be no different. “The technology has moved so much faster than the science, and we need the scientific evidence from clinical trials to catch up,” Rosman explains. 

Since the evidence isn’t there yet, Rosman is hesitant to say anyone should categorically avoid wearables. 

Despite that, people who are highly anxious about their heart or prone to obsessive symptom monitoring should approach with caution. The same goes for those with conditions involving unpredictable, abrupt symptoms, such as paroxysmal AFib and POTS, because the uncertainty of not knowing when the next episode will hit is stressful enough, and constant monitoring can make it worse.

A note on the science (or lack thereof)

Rosman has conducted research on the connection between wearables and anxiety, including a 2025 review describing the psychological effects of wearables on patients with cardiovascular disease and a 2024 study examining their impact on the psychological well-being of patients with AFib. 

The 2025 review found that while wearables can help promote healthy behaviors and provide data for diagnosis and treatment, they also pose risks, such as adverse psychological reactions. 

In the 2024 study, it was concluded that wearables were connected with higher rates of patients becoming preoccupied with their symptoms, being concerned about their treatments and using both formal and informal health care resources.

On the other hand, a 2021 study that analyzed the 2019 and 2020 US-based Health Information National Trends Survey found that using wearable devices for self-tracking can indirectly reduce psychological distress. Still, misinterpretation of wearable data may cause unnecessary panic and anxiety. 

A 2020 qualitative interview study featuring patients with chronic heart disease also found that while wearables’ data may be a resource for self-care, it can create uncertainty, fear and anxiety.

Ultimately, more studies are needed. 

“Honestly, we don’t have good scientific evidence in this area yet,” says Rosman. “Despite widespread use, there have been no clinical trials I’m aware of that have looked at the benefits and potential health risks of specific wearable health features.”

Rosman’s team plans to be the first to investigate this in patients with pre-existing heart conditions.

Wearables’ impact on our health care system

When wearables cause health anxiety, they can prompt healthy individuals to schedule unnecessary doctor’s appointments. This places a burden on our health care system, which is already experiencing shortages, making it difficult for people who actually require medical attention to access care. 

Rosman’s 2024 study found that those using a wearable sent nearly twice as many patient portal messages to their doctors. Responding to these messages from patients takes time, isn’t reimbursed by insurance and can contribute to burnout.

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As a result, Rosman believes we need better systems for managing wearable data in clinical settings before we scale it further: “Wearables are changing how we deliver care in ways we haven’t fully prepared for.”

Wearables can further widen health care inequity due to their cost. 

“These devices are expensive, they were mostly designed and tested in young healthy people and they’re marketed toward higher-income consumers,” Rosman explains. “If we’re not thoughtful about access, wearables could actually widen health disparities rather than close them. That’s the opposite of what we want.”

The bottom line

While wearables have their benefits, there are also risks to consider, especially given the limited research on the subject.

If you purchase a wearable and it triggers health anxiety, you don’t have to use every available feature, wear it constantly or continue to wear it at all. Before you even buy that device, you can arm yourself with anxiety-reducing knowledge by getting your doctor’s expert opinion.  

However, if health anxiety continues to take over your life, it may be time to remove your wearable and seek professional help. 

As for me, writing this piece has been a necessary reminder that, while there’s a lot we can’t control in life, the power is in our hands (or on our wrists or fingers) when it comes to the technology we put on our bodies or invite into our homes. Just like an itchy sweater or a lumpy armchair, we can send the technology that doesn’t serve us packing.  

OpenAI has started previewing its GPT‑5.6 series, which will be available in three versions, to a limited number of trusted partners. The company says the variant Sol is its strongest model yet, while Terra is for everyday use and has a similar performance to GPT‑5.5 despite being twice as cheap. Luna, the last variant, is the company’s lowest cost model. OpenAI plans to give them a broad release sometime in the coming weeks.

The company gave the US government a preview of GPT‑5.6 and its capabilities before today. It’s also  by the administration’s request that it is previewing the model to a small group of trusted partners “whose participation has been shared” with the government. “We don’t believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default,” OpenAI wrote in its announcement. It said it’s taking the “short-term step,” for now, because it ensures it can release its latest model series to the public soon. 

President Trump signed an AI cybersecurity order earlier this month, which asks companies to present their most powerful models for voluntary government review 30 days before making them publicly available. According to a recent report by The New York Times, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI and Microsoft have been giving the government early access to their latest models even before Trump signed the order. Meta was the only holdout, and the US government has reportedly been urging it to submit its AI models for evaluation. 

GPT‑5.6 introduces a “max” reasoning effort, which gives Sol more time to reason deeply. Sol is also OpenAI’s most capable model for cybersecurity and is the best option to help users find and fix vulnerabilities. OpenAI says Sol comes with strengthened protections for high-risk activities and sensitive requests. It also says that the company had spent several weeks finding its weaknesses and fortifying it against real-world attacks.

The company put safeguards on all the variants, however, to make sure they hold up to real adversarial pressure. In addition, OpenAI trained GPT-5.6 to refuse “prohibited cyber assistance,” including attempts at jailbreaking the model. It spent 700,000 GPU hours to find universal jailbreaks to develop measures against them, and it pledges to implement a “rapid-response process to reproduce, assess, prioritize, and remediate newly discovered jailbreaks.”

OpenAI’s focus on jailbreak prevention likely stems from what happened to Anthropic. A couple of weeks ago, Anthropic suspended all access to its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models after a directive from the government. While the company didn’t say it outright, Amazon and other companies had reportedly notified authorities that its models could be jailbroken and used for malicious purposes. It has started lifting its access block, though, since US government has just given Anthropic permission to redeploy Mythos to a select group of organizations. 

The company has priced GPT‑5.6 Sol at $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output, much less than what Fable cost when it was still available. ($10 for input and $50 for output for the same amount of tokens.) Terra costs $2.50 for input and $15 for output, while Luna costs $1 for input and $6 for output. 

TikTok is no longer just a video app. The platform has spent the past year adding hotel bookings, in-app commerce, sports hubs, casual games, microdramas, and a fintech licence application, building out the infrastructure of what the industry calls a “super app,” a single destination that handles tasks users currently spread across a dozen different services.

The super app model originated in China, where WeChat combines messaging, payments, ride-hailing, government services, and e-commerce into one platform with more than a billion monthly users. TikTok’s parent company ByteDance already operates Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which integrates AI shopping agents, ticket bookings, and payments in ways that Western platforms have not matched. The question is whether that model can cross the Pacific, and TikTok, now under primarily US ownership after a January transition to an Oracle and Silver Lake-led joint venture, is the vehicle ByteDance is using to find out.

The most commercially significant expansion has been TikTok Shop. According to eMarketer, TikTok Shop grew US sales by 407 percent in 2024 and another 108 percent in 2025 to reach nearly sixteen billion dollars, capturing more than 18 percent of total US social commerce. That share is expected to reach roughly 24 percent by 2027, putting TikTok in direct competition with Amazon, Shein, and traditional online marketplaces.

In May, TikTok launched TikTok GO, a feature that lets US users discover and book hotels, attractions, and experiences without leaving the app. The service partners with Booking, Expedia, Viator, GetYourGuide, and Trip, turning travel content that already drives millions of views into a direct booking funnel. It puts TikTok in competition not just with Google Search and Google Maps, but with the entire online travel agency industry.

The company is also pushing into financial services. In March, Reuters reported that TikTok applied to Brazil’s central bank for two fintech licences, one to offer prepaid accounts where users can store funds and make payments, and another to operate as a direct credit provider. Brazil, where TikTok reaches roughly 131 million users aged 18 and above, would be the first market where the platform handles money directly.

TikTok has also built a dedicated hub for the 2026 FIFA World Cup with live scores, match schedules, standings, and curated video highlights, keeping sports fans inside the app instead of switching to ESPN or Google. ByteDance, meanwhile, continues investing in content tools, recently unveiling its Seedance AI video model that produces 30-second clips at native 4K resolution. The parent company’s broader ambitions in AI, commerce, and entertainment all feed into TikTok’s platform expansion.

The entertainment push extends to scripted content and gaming. TikTok launched PineDrama in January, a standalone microdrama app offering bite-sized TV shows in one-minute episodes, and has added casual games to its DMs. The company previously attempted a music streaming service in 2023 but shut it down in November 2024, pivoting to partnerships with Apple Music and Spotify instead of competing directly.

Whether any of this amounts to a true super app outside China remains an open question. Western users have historically resisted consolidating their digital lives into a single platform, and regulators in the US and EU are more likely to scrutinize a company that handles shopping, payments, travel, entertainment, and social networking under one roof. TikTok is betting that the habit of opening one app for everything can be built incrementally, one feature at a time, rather than arriving fully formed.

Craft Recordings and Bluesville are adding two more essential titles to one of the stronger all-analog blues reissue programs currently on vinyl: Jimmy Reed’s Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall and Skip James’ Devil Got My Woman. Both LPs have been cut from the original analog master tapes by Grammy-nominated engineer Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab, using an AAA mastering chain, and pressed on 180-gram vinyl in partnership with Acoustic Sounds.

The packaging is not an afterthought, either. Each release comes in a tip-on jacket with an obi strip and new album reflections by Grammy-winning producer, songwriter, and bluesman Scott Billington—details that help distinguish Bluesville from the usual bare-bones catalog recycling. High-resolution and standard digital remasters will also be released alongside the vinyl editions.

Reed’s 1961 Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall is a studio recording despite the misleading title, and includes “Bright Lights Big City.” Skip James’ Devil Got My Woman, released in 1968, is a far starker and more intimate affair, built around the Delta blues legend’s singular guitar work, fractured vocals, and the title track that became his signature song.

The new releases follow Bluesville’s recent AAA editions of Albert King’s I’ll Play the Blues for You and Eddie Kirkland’s It’s the Blues Man!, both of which we just reviewed. Those records demonstrated that Craft is taking the series seriously: strong tape work, clean pressings, properly made jackets, and prices that have not yet wandered into the usual audiophile nonsense.

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Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall Vinyl Reissue Brings a Blues Essential Back

Jimmy Reed’s Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall is not a live album, despite the title’s rather shameless attempt to borrow some Manhattan prestige. Originally released by Vee-Jay in 1961 as a double LP, the record was assembled from studio material rather than Reed’s actual Carnegie Hall appearance the previous year. Bluesville’s new edition focuses on the first disc, collecting sides A and B on a single 180-gram LP.

That distinction matters less once “Bright Lights Big City” begins rolling out of the speakers. Reed’s best work was built from deceptively modest ingredients: a loose, infectious shuffle, clipped electric guitar, harmonica, and a vocal delivery so relaxed it could sound almost casual. Yet the groove was nearly impossible to resist. “Bright Lights Big City” reached No. 3 on the R&B chart in 1961, crossed onto the Billboard Hot 100, and later became a No. 1 country hit for Sonny James. The song’s influence on British rock, country, and American blues is difficult to overstate.

Born Mathis James Reed in Dunleith, Mississippi, Reed became one of the defining figures of postwar electric blues after signing with Vee-Jay in 1953. Working closely with guitarist Eddie Taylor and drummer Earl Phillips, he built an extraordinarily successful run of singles that included “You Don’t Have to Go,” “Honest I Do,” “Baby What You Want Me to Do,” and “Big Boss Man.” His appeal was never about virtuoso fireworks. Reed made the blues feel conversational, danceable, and accessible enough that everyone from Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones to Van Morrison and the Grateful Dead eventually came knocking.

The new Bluesville pressing includes “Bright Lights Big City,” “Tell Me You Love Me,” “Hold Me Close,” and “Blue, Blue Water,” the latter featuring Eddie Taylor and Phil Upchurch. It also benefits from the same careful production approach as the recently reviewed Bluesville editions of Albert King’s I’ll Play the Blues for You and Eddie Kirkland’s It’s the Blues Man!.

For listeners who know Reed only through compilations, or through somebody else covering “Big Boss Man” — this is a strong place to start. It is not the full double album, but it contains enough of Reed’s particular magic to explain why so many musicians spent the next several decades trying to find that same pocket.

Where to buy: $32.99 at Amazon (available August 21, 2026)

Skip James Devil Got My Woman

There are plenty of Delta blues records that sound old. Devil Got My Woman sounds as though it was transmitted from a place slightly outside time, where conventional tuning, meter, and emotional restraint were politely asked to leave the building.

Born Nehemiah Curtis “Skip” James in Bentonia, Mississippi, James was never a conventional bluesman. His singing could rise into a high, ghostly falsetto, while his guitar work moved through unusual minor-key voicings and open D-minor tuning with a fluidity that still feels unnerving almost a century later. He was also a formidable pianist, and the music rarely follows the tidy twelve-bar rules that made other Delta blues artists easier for later generations to imitate.

James recorded for Paramount in 1931, but the records did not turn him into a star. The Depression did not help, nor did the fact that his music was too strange, too personal, and too far removed from the more accessible blues styles of the day. He largely disappeared from public view for more than three decades before John Fahey, Bill Barth, and Henry Vestine found him in a Tunica hospital in 1964.

That rediscovery brought James to the Newport Folk Festival and back into the studio, where he recorded a run of material for Melodeon, Takoma-related sessions later issued as She Lyin’, and Vanguard. Today! arrived in 1966, followed by Devil Got My Woman in 1968, his final album released during his lifetime.

The Vanguard set is a solo performance in the truest sense. James handles the vocals, guitar, and piano himself, moving between instruments rather than relying on a backing band to soften the edges. The title track, a revisiting of one of his 1931 Paramount sides, remains the centerpiece, but the album is deeper than a single famous song. “Little Cow, Little Calf Blues,” “22-20 Blues,” “Sickbed Blues,” and “Illinois Blues” reveal a musician still capable of making familiar blues language feel unsettling, intimate, and completely his own.

James died in 1969, only a year after Devil Got My Woman was released, but the music kept finding new listeners. The title track later reached a wider audience through Ghost World and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2020. That is deserved recognition, although the better reason to own this album is simpler: nobody else in blues sounded remotely like Skip James, and nobody has managed to replace him since.

Where to buy: $32.99 at Amazon or get both for $57 at Craft Recordings (available August 21, 2026)

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