{"id":391821,"date":"2026-01-06T13:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T13:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/391821\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T13:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T13:48:13","slug":"does-tracking-your-health-data-make-you-healthier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/391821\/","title":{"rendered":"Does tracking your health data make you healthier?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Man<\/p>\n

Customers can get full body scans in less than an hour in private clinics like Prenuvo, here in the heart of New York. <\/p>\n

SWI swissin.ch \/ Aylin Elci <\/p>\n

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From monitoring sleep patterns to scanning your whole body, an increasing number of healthy individuals are privately tracking their physical data to stay in shape. But what are really the benefits?\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

This content was published on <\/p>\n

January 6, 2026 – 09:00\n<\/p>\n

\n Aylin El\u00e7i <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n From innovative treatments to unequal access to medicine, I cover health topics and keep an eye on Switzerland’s Health Valley.
\nI’m Swiss-Turkish, and have a background in communications, journalism and photography. Before joining SWI swissinfo.ch, I covered technology and health at Euronews, and my work has been featured in international outlets including Fayn Press, Mediapart, Le Temps and Times of Malta. <\/p>\n


\n More from this author <\/a><\/p>\n


\n English Department <\/a><\/p>\n

Influencer Kim Kardashian shocked fans this November when she revealed she had been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm that was spotted during a full-body scan at a private clinic. She first posted to her 354 million fans about these scans in August 2023, prompting some media outlets to call the practice the \u201clatest wellness status symbol\u201d.<\/p>\n

Although there is no official data on the number of clinics providing entire body tests to seemingly healthy individuals, the offer is growing and has spread from North America to the rest of the world. In Switzerland, where private clinics, hospitals and luxury wellness centres have been offering preventive health treatments for decades<\/a>, at least five different start-ups offering full-body scans have popped up in the last three years.<\/p>\n

These clinics complement an array of recent preventive health practices at the intersection of wellness and longevity like wearables, small trackers fitted on everyday devices such as phones and watches to measure anything from stress to ageing. Thanks to their ubiquity and increasing affordability, these tools are now part of everyday life. But questions on their real benefits to health remain open and data remain scarce.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn just two generations, our lifespans extended by 20-30 years, so people between the ages of 50 and 70 want to age healthily,\u201d says Dr Francis Meier, a co-founder of the Swiss Center for Preventive Medicine at the H\u00f4pital de la Tour campus in Geneva.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to consider what is good for the patient, and not what is good for business, and those two things don\u2019t always go together,\u201d he says. \u201c[Full-body scans] are a business set up from scratch to make money\u201d.<\/p>\n

Curious about why Switzerland is known for longevity?<\/p>\n

\n More<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

More <\/p>\n

Healthcare innovation\n <\/p>\n

How Switzerland became a longevity hot spot <\/p>\n

\n

This content was published on <\/p>\n

May 2, 2025 <\/p>\n

People have come to Switzerland for centuries in search of the fountain of youth. How did the country become a magnet for longevity seekers?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Read more: How Switzerland became a longevity hot spot
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

According to the doctor, Switzerland has strong screening programmes for diseases that respond well to treatment like breast, lung, prostate and skin cancers, which is why his clinic does not provide full-body scans. Other anomalies found on scanners are either rare diseases with no known effective treatment, or won\u2019t develop into illnesses. Both options can cause anxiety and unnecessary costs for the patient.<\/p>\n

A billion-dollar industry<\/p>\n

This has not stopped the market for health tracking from surging. Clinics, startups and tech giants are positioning themselves as preventive health companies. Their selling point is to catch diseases as early as possible through broad data collection \u2013 even if the client is healthy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Celebrity investors and top venture capital firms like a16z are investing in scanning centres like Function Health, which raised a total of $358 million (CHF285 million) in funding since it was set up in the United States in 2022. Its Swedish competitor Neko Health, founded a year later, raised $325 million. As of 2025, the companies were respectively valued at $2.5 billion and $1.8 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The wearables market is projected to more than double from $60.9 billion in 2024, to $162.7 billion in five years\u2019 time, according to Grand view researchExternal link<\/a>. The industry is also getting backing from policymakers with. In July, the American Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr launched a campaign to encourage all Americans to use wearables, and the Apple Watch got approved as a medical grade tool to detect hypertension by the country\u2019s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September.<\/p>\n

From sleep data to blood sugar, devices can now track nearly everything:<\/p>\n

\n More<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

More <\/p>\n

Healthcare innovation\n <\/p>\n

Steps, stress and sleep: what wearables can measure <\/p>\n

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This content was published on <\/p>\n

Jan 6, 2026 <\/p>\n

Discover how wearables track steps, sleep, stress, heart rates, and more. <\/p>\n

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Read more: Steps, stress and sleep: what wearables can measure
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Those interested in their health data now have a myriad of choice when it comes to brand, price, use and function, starting from step-counters worth a handful of dollars to smartwatches that cost upwards of $400. Full-body scans, on the other hand, come at a higher price as they require a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, which collects a large amount of data to virtually reconstruct a person\u2019s organs and tissues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tests at Swiss start-up Aeon begin at CHF2,490 ($3126) for a full-body scan and blood test, and reach CHF6,990 for an additional bone density scan, a genetic analysis, an appointment with a longevity expert, and an AI body composition analysis. This is not reimbursed by Swiss health insurance.<\/p>\n

Targeting the healthy\u00a0<\/p>\n

Experts say the belief our individual behaviour can impact our health is one of the main reasons behind the surge. \u201cOnly 25% of our lifespan can really be explained through genetics, so there is this idea that if we take care of our behaviour, we could have a healthier life,\u201d says Filipe Barata, senior researcher at the Center for Digital Health Interventions of the federal technology institute ETH Zurich.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both scanning and wearable companies entice clients with phrases like \u201chealth is beautiful\u201d and \u201ctake control of your own health\u201d that stress the importance of wellbeing. They target healthy individuals, whilst emphasising that their services don\u2019t replace medical grade tests or screening.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The offering is] designed for health-conscious adults who want to establish a comprehensive baseline of their health and better understand their personal risk profile,\u201d says a representative for Swiss start-up Aeon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Prenuvo, the company Kardashian used, first opened in Bethesda, Maryland, in the summer of 2024, it reached out to wellness influencers from the area like makeup artist Jeet Bahra. The 39-year-old accepted a free scan against a post on her social media accounts because she didn\u2019t have health insurance and was concerned about breast cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mammographies aren\u2019t mandatory, reimbursed, or conducted before the age of 40 in many countries, including the US. \u201cI\u2019ve had at least a dozen friends who have gone from being fine one day and spotting a lump in their breast the next day that led to a mastectomy,\u201d says Bahra, who got clean results back. Prenuvo didn\u2019t reply to questions on their offer.<\/p>\n

Data overload<\/p>\n

Courtney McKay, a 31-year-old clinical psychology trainee, says she will \u201csurely\u201d get a full-body scan at some point. She has been relying on wearables for the last decade to keep herself healthy and active. McKay has a Whoop sensor bracelet, which she got from her boyfriend who upgraded his own model recently. The two regularly compare stats but stopped checking their sleep statistics first thing in the morning, so that ratings don\u2019t \u201cdictate their day\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to determine how I feel before looking at my data\u201d, says McKay. Many users have been reporting feeling stressed after looking at their sleep data, a syndrome called orthosomnia and first documented in 2017 as the \u201cperfectionistic quest for the ideal sleep in order to optimise daytime function\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lifespan vs health span <\/p>\n

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, longevity is defined as \u201cliving for a long time\u201d. The term is increasingly used to refer to lifespan (total years lived) and health span (years lived in good health, free from chronic disease and disability).\u00a0<\/p>\n

McKay\u2019s \u201chealthspan\u201d data, which includes the measure of her biological age against her chronological one, has also been on her mind. \u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s anxiety, but for example, I was on a hen weekend and I did think staying up late was going to impact my pace of ageing negatively. This is something I don\u2019t think I like,\u201d says McKay. The speed of ageing has become one of the most popular health data, and can be measured with various smart devices. Although she isn\u2019t keen on exercising, McKay says her connected watch motivates her to go to workout regularly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But experts warn there is scant evidence that tracking personal health data translates into healthier lives. According to behaviour-change specialists, awareness of unhealthy habits leads to no change in behaviour in roughly half of cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And when it does correlation is hard to prove.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLongevity research is a hard thing to do because it\u2019s very difficult to really investigate causality, and most findings are correlational,\u201d says Barata from ETH Zurich.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Furthermore, many users don\u2019t routinely share their wearable results with health professionals, especially when they are not actively seeking medical advice (like McKay and Bahra). When they do, these data often have important limitations in accuracy and validation because most consumer wearables are designed as wellness tools rather than medical devices.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving those devices is good I think, but what is still very hard is making clear-cut recommendations,\u201d says Barata. \u201cThe data usually only support broad observations like \u2018you would benefit from moving more\u2019, rather than firm, diagnostic statements,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Find out more about overdiagnosis and why identifying a disease earlier doesn\u2019t always improve mortality:<\/p>\n

\n More<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

More <\/p>\n

Health systems\n <\/p>\n

When diagnosing a disease does more harm than good <\/p>\n

\n

This content was published on <\/p>\n

Aug 25, 2025 <\/p>\n

Switzerland has the highest number of MRI scanners per person in Europe. But more screening doesn\u2019t always lead to better health outcomes. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Read more: When diagnosing a disease does more harm than good
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

While full-body scans offer more precise data than that on a watch, they also call for caution. \u201cI would absolutely counsel people against ever going for that type of health screening,\u201d says Suzanne O\u2019Sullivan, a consultant neurologist at the University College London.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MRI scans came into regular clinical use in the 1990s, and incredibly clear images have only been available for the last decade, the neurologist explains. \u201cWe are in the very early stages of knowing what the insides of healthy people look like, and are only still learning about all our differences and the abnormalities people live with,\u201d says O\u2019Sullivan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Beyond being anxiety-inducing, results from scans can also lead to harmful or unnecessary treatments, according to the neurologist. \u201cThe more tests you do, the more irregularities you will find, until ultimately you\u2019re at risk of having treatment that you definitely did not need because a doctor will always err on the side of treating rather than not treating\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Edited by Virginie Mangin\/ds<\/p>\n

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