Turning Physiological Data from Garmin Wearables into Personalised Nutrition

Linked to six leading causes of death globally, impacting businesses with more than $300 billion costs each year, stress is an obvious cause for concern for individuals, employers and countries. But help is at hand. Garmin wearables have features that can help users to track and manage their stress levels. They also allow users to track metrics that influence stress, such as physical activity, diet and sleep. Now, thanks to food tech start-up myAir, it’s possible to use that same data to create customised, plant-based nutrition bars to help users find even more stress relief.

Improved Sleep Quality and Stress

An open-label pilot study conducted by myAir issued Garmin vívosmart^® 4 activity trackers to participants to monitor sleep duration, sleep quality and stress levels. After wearing the device for 2 weeks to establish baseline measurements, participants were then monitored for a further 2 weeks with daily consumption of botanically infused nutrition bars.

The study led by Dr. Gil Lewitus from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology found that myAir functional bars improved 73% of participants’ anxiety scores and 84% of participants’ sleep quality. In addition, 54% of participants increased their sleep duration, and 64% of participants experienced an increase in deep sleep duration, as measured by the vívosmart 4 devices. The study concluded that bars infused with a proprietary unique blend of adaptogens and hops extract could improve sleep quality and relieve stress.

Turning Physiological Data into Personalised Nutrition

Every person reacts to stress differently, experiencing symptoms of varying levels and at different times. Garmin wearable data is inherently unique to the wearer, meaning it can be used to create a tailored nutrition solution. By integrating the Health API with its platform, myAir allows Garmin customers to optionally share their wearable data with myAir. Short questionnaires are also used to help myAir gain psychological insights. myAir uses the combined quantitative and qualitative data to create a formulation mix that delivers a specific stress-release effect based on each consumer’s unique stress profile and cognitive needs.

myAir and Garmin

The myAir team analysed the technical specifications of multiple activity devices before selecting the vívosmart 4 based on its ease of use, reliability and collection of relevant metrics. myAir Founder Dovev Goldstein said, “We’ve been using Garmin devices to track stress, sleep and activities for a long time. This experience led us to choose Garmin devices as the most accessible and accurate means to use in large scale experiments and to reach trusted results.”