The data was accurate. I was genuinely below average. But accuracy and relevance aren't the same thing.
In an age when we carry our vital signs on our wrists, the promise of self-knowledge has revealed an unexpected shadow: data without wisdom can wound as surely as ignorance. Michael Hicks, a wearables editor who sought to optimize his health through continuous monitoring, found instead that one uncontrollable metric — heart rate variability — became the seed of a genuine anxiety disorder. His story raises a question older than any algorithm: when does the pursuit of self-understanding become a form of self-harm, and who bears responsibility for drawing that line?
- A health-conscious tech editor's smartwatch data quietly transformed from a source of empowerment into a daily trigger for dread, culminating in a therapist's stark advice to simply remove the device.
- Heart rate variability — a metric that is deeply genetic and largely unfixable — is being framed by wearable platforms as a competitive score, pitting users against community averages they may never be able to reach regardless of how healthy they are.
- Despite losing weight, cutting alcohol, exercising consistently, and receiving a clean bill of health from his doctor, Hicks watched his HRV score remain stubbornly low, exposing the gap between clinical health and algorithmic approval.
- Reddit communities reveal this is not an isolated case — scores of healthy people are spiraling into health anxiety over metrics their devices present as failures but medicine would consider unremarkable.
- The resolution being navigated is not medical but philosophical: learning to distinguish actionable data from noise, and accepting that some numbers will worsen with age no matter what we do.
You buy the smartwatch because you want to know yourself better. For a while, the data feels like power. Then one morning the numbers tell you something is wrong.
Michael Hicks, the wearables editor at Android Central, is the kind of person who trains for VO2 Max scores and tracks his resting heart rate against others. When he began wearing an Ultrahuman Ring Air, most of what it measured came back excellent — except one thing. His heart rate variability, the natural irregularity between heartbeats, kept registering below average for his age. A quick search confirmed what the ring was implying: low HRV can signal stress, poor sleep, heart conditions, anxiety, depression. He was, by the device's logic, losing.
What the device didn't tell him — what the gamified dashboards rarely do — is that HRV is profoundly individual. Healthy people with good habits and no underlying illness can still score low. It isn't something you fix. But the Ultrahuman Ring Air compares your nightly results to community averages and top-percentile benchmarks. Samsung Health praises you for beating your past self. The framing is unmistakable: health is a competition, and your score determines whether you're winning.
Hicks entered fix-it mode. He lost weight, reduced alcohol, ran and rucked throughout the year. His annual checkup was clean. His blood pressure improved. His HRV didn't move — hovering in the mid-to-high 20s on devices that showed healthy runners scoring between 70 and 100. He was in his thirties, apparently aging like someone twice that.
The anxiety compounded until he sought therapy. His therapist's first suggestion was direct: take the ring off. The data wasn't informing him — it was harming him. After a few sessions, she told him he didn't need ongoing care, so long as he kept reminding himself that a low HRV score is meaningless when every other health indicator is fine. The fix was never medical. It was the decision to stop watching.
Hicks still believes wearables offer genuine value — catching arrhythmias, flagging sleep apnea, and perhaps one day monitoring blood glucose with clinical precision. But he's arrived at a harder truth: some data cannot be acted upon. Some metrics will decline with age regardless of effort. And the relentless pressure to improve every number, to beat every average, can manufacture the very anxiety the device claims to be protecting you from. His advice is simple — know your body, use the data wisely, and don't be afraid to take the thing off. Sometimes the healthiest choice is to stop looking.
You buy a smartwatch or a smart ring because you want to know yourself better. You want the data. You want to optimize. The device sits on your wrist or your finger, taking your pulse dozens of times a day, measuring how well you slept, how stressed you are, whether your heart is doing what it's supposed to do. For a while, this feels like power. Then one morning you look at the numbers and they tell you something is wrong.
Michael Hicks, the wearables editor at Android Central, is a competitive person. He trains for excellent VO2 Max scores. He compares his resting heart rate to others. He likes goals that push him to be healthier, to live longer. When he started wearing an Ultrahuman Ring Air, the device did exactly what it was designed to do: it measured his sleep, his blood oxygen, his recovery. Most of the numbers were excellent. But one metric kept coming back poor. His heart rate variability—the natural irregularity in the time between heartbeats—was consistently below average for his age.
Heart rate variability matters because it reflects what your autonomic nervous system is doing. When you're stressed or unwell, your heartbeat becomes more regular, more like a metronome. Harvard Medical School and the Cleveland Clinic both note that low HRV can signal stress, poor sleep, unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, and potentially serious health problems: heart conditions, anxiety, depression. A simple Google search confirmed what the ring was telling him. His numbers were bad. He was losing the game.
What the medical literature doesn't emphasize clearly enough is that HRV is deeply individual. Healthy people with consistent sleep, normal diet, regular exercise, and no particular stress can still have below-average HRV. It's not something you fix. It's not something you should compare to others. But smartwatches and smart rings are designed to make health a competition. The Ultrahuman Ring Air directly compares your nightly results to the "Community Average" or "Top 10 percentile average." Samsung Health praises you for beating your past self and shames you for slacking off. When the data says you're losing, it's hard not to believe it.
Hicks went into what he calls competitive "fix this" mode. He lost weight. He cut back on drinking. He ran and rucked regularly throughout 2024. His annual checkup came back healthy. His blood pressure improved. His blood work was fine. But his HRV score stayed in the mid-to-high 20s. His Pixel Watch 3 measured him at 29 milliseconds. His Garmin Fenix 8 showed 36. For context, regular runners with high VO2 Max often see HRV scores between 70 and 100. WHOOP reports that people in their mid-30s average around 60. His numbers, he realized, were normal for someone in their 60s or 70s. He was 30-something and apparently aging like someone twice his age.
The anxiety spiraled. He tried therapy. His therapist's first recommendation was blunt: stop wearing the smart ring. The data wasn't helping him. It was hurting him. After a few sessions, she told him he didn't need ongoing therapy as long as he reminded himself that his HRV score didn't matter if he was otherwise healthy. The real fix wasn't medical. It was psychological. He needed to stop looking.
Hicks still believes wearable health data is a net positive. These devices can catch irregular heart rhythms that signal serious problems. They can warn of sleep apnea. In the future, they might detect dangerous blood glucose levels or excess sweat loss during extreme heat with clinical accuracy. But he's learned something harder: some data you can't do anything about. Some stats will get worse as you age no matter what you do. And the pressure to improve them, the constant comparison to averages, the framing of health as a game you can win or lose—that pressure can create the very thing the device is supposedly warning you about. It can give you an anxiety disorder.
He's not alone. Reddit threads are full of healthy people panicking about their low HRV scores. The devices are working as designed, measuring accurately, providing real data. But the context around that data—the gamification, the comparisons, the implication that you should be able to fix everything—creates a kind of health anxiety that no amount of running or therapy can touch. His advice now is simple: arm yourself with knowledge of your body, but don't be afraid to take the device off. Some things you can't control. And sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stop watching.
Notable Quotes
My first step should be to stop wearing smart rings because the data wasn't helping me.— Hicks' therapist
Arm yourself with knowledge of your body's health, but don't be afraid to take your smartwatch or smart ring off for sleep data once you've been warned of a problem.— Michael Hicks
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
You got healthier by every objective measure—better blood pressure, better blood work, more exercise, less alcohol. But the number that was supposed to prove you were healthier didn't change. How does that even happen?
That's the thing nobody explains well enough. Heart rate variability isn't like weight or blood pressure. It's not a lever you pull. It's more like your body's signature. Some people are just born with lower variability, and it doesn't mean anything is wrong. But when the device shows you a number and then you Google it and find out it could mean heart disease or anxiety, your brain doesn't care that you're healthy. It only cares that you're losing.
So the device was accurate. It was measuring something real. But the real thing it was measuring didn't actually matter in your case.
Exactly. And that's the trap. The data was accurate. I was genuinely below average. But accuracy and relevance aren't the same thing. My therapist had to tell me to stop wearing the ring because the data was creating the problem it was supposedly warning me about.
Did you ever consider that maybe your HRV actually was telling you something—not about your heart, but about how you were living? That the anxiety was the real signal?
I thought about that. But I was already doing everything right. I was exercising, eating well, sleeping more, drinking less. The only thing left to fix was my mind, and I couldn't think my way out of a number that wouldn't change. That's when I realized the device had trapped me in a loop where the only solution was to stop trusting the device.
What would you tell someone right now who just got their first smartwatch and is about to see their first "poor" score?
Know that the device is measuring something real, but it's not measuring your worth or your health as a whole. Some numbers you can improve. Some you can't. And the ones you can't improve—those are the ones that will destroy you if you let them. The bravest thing you can do is look at the data, acknowledge it, and then decide whether it's actually telling you something you need to act on. Most of the time, it's not.