It feels as if every year a new fitness product becomes America’s newest craze. Currently, the Fitbit wearable, which allows users to track number of steps walked, sleep quality, and other health data, has become a popular commodity among tech-savvy health enthusiasts. However, this device has caught the eye of athletic trainers—some of whom think it can be used to help solve the current epidemic of serious concussions in sports. Dr. Jordan Hamson-Utley, the Program Director for the Master of Health Science in Athletic Training at the University of St. Augustine, has been looking at new ways to care for concussions particularly at the high school level. She believes that Fitbit could revolutionize the way that athletic trainers monitor and treat concussed athletes.
Many athletic trainers and nurses know just how difficult and costly it can be to treat concussions. “I was busting my back trying to get blood from athletes before and after concussions,” Hamson-Utley describes. This method is very costly, with blood tests costing $50 per test. Many high schools simply cannot afford to use so many resources on accumulating the data to accurately treat this disease. Dr. Hamson-Utley struggled with this problem, until “[she] got a Fitbit [her]self, and thought—wait a minute—this is the key!”
Get The Latest Sports Tech News In Your Inbox!
The standard Fitbit only costs $99, a price very affordable in any high school’s health budget. Even though the product is cheap, Hamson-Utley lauds its reliability, stating “for $99, a person is really getting more information than you get from a physical. The Fitbit is as reliable as any other tracker. It’s the best we have right now.” Although the wearable was not initially intended for serious health care purposes, it could be a great help to athletic programs due to its reliability and low financial cost.
Tracking an athlete’s steps can help give us a picture of an athlete’s normal day, and how strenuous it is. Then, health trainers can more accurately determine how much rest an athlete needs, relative to his or her normal exertion level. “Every athlete’s experience is going to be different. What does getting to class look like for them?” From a hulking lineman to small running back, each athlete requires different levels of rest and recovery for concussions. Dr. Hamson-Utley’s ultimate goal is to create a database of hundreds of athletes, differentiating between sport, position, and weight. Then, a health trainer can recommend treatment relative to the health data generated by the Fitbit of similar athletes to the patient.
“The beauty about the Fitbit,” Dr. Hamson-Utley goes on to explain, “is that it can be set at a certain percentage of steps to vibrate on their wrist.” This allows an athlete recovering from a concussion to get real time feedback on their physical activity. By staying below a certain threshold of steps, an athlete can be sure that he or she is getting the rest needed for a proper recovery.
From what Dr. Hamson-Utley has experienced, the response to this new study has been overwhelming. The culture around concussion treatment in America has changed—what was once viewed as a veritable non-injury has now led NFL stars such as Chris Borland to retire. “When I say I’m doing concussion studies,” says Hamson-Utley, who has done research in football havens such as Texas, “people line up to wear the Fitbits.” This positive reaction portrays both the new level of concussion awareness among athletes as well as being extremely helpful in the researcher’s goal of collecting data. It should not be long before we are able to start seeing the results of Fitbit’s data gathering possibilities.
The next step in Fitbit-concussion research, according to Dr. Hamson-Utley, will “be this fall, with the football programs and the high instance of concussions in that sport.” Then, Fitbits will help athletes make sure that they are getting the rest they need—even in the hectic environment of a high school or University. “The next steps,” she adds, “are doing the post-concussion piece based on the information we’ve gathered.” This will surely require more Fitbits and more high schools buying into this unconventional way of treating this issue. However, the early interest in this research bodes positively for more Fitbit studies in the fall.
The concussion problem is very difficult to solve, and surely requires out-of-the-box thinking. Dr. Hamson-Utley is one of the health researchers who believe that this new piece of technology can help provide a clearer picture of how “rest” can be quantified for a concussed athlete. So this football season, if you see an athlete wearing a Fitbit, they might not merely be buying into the latest fitness craze—they could be gathering essential health data helping them to take care of their body.