All products and services featured are independently selected by Forbes Vetted contributors and editors. When you make a purchase through links on this page, we may earn a commission.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
I am an accomplished author, journalist, and photographer.
With 2022 underway, you’re probably making all sorts of resolutions about quickly improving your health, diet, weight, stress level and overall well-being. As you’re about to discover, healthcare technology is no longer confined to sickly clinics. There are all sorts of online services and “smart” products that can help.
An Echelon bike is just one of the “smart” tools you can use to stay healthy and fit in 2022 and … [+]
Echelon
But nothing replaces the need to be dedicated and persistent with your efforts to transform your resolutions into a reality that’ll make a positive difference in your life. The 15 services and gadgets described here can make the process of achieving your physical health, mental health and fitness-related goals for 2022 a bit easier.
Control Your Stress Levels
The Apollo Neuro bracelet is worn around your wrist and uses gentle vibrations (scientifically proven touch therapy) to restore balance to your nervous system and ultimately improve your body’s resistance to stress. This will directly impact your ability to sleep better, stay focused on the task at hand, and recover from anxiety and stress faster.
The bracelet’s internal rechargeable battery lasts for between six and eight hours of continuous use. According to the company, “Your Apollo will send silent, soothing sound waves that tell your body that you’re safe and in control, like a song that your body can feel.” Using the device’s seven different modes as needed, over time, your body’s measurable biometrics, like heart rate variability (HRV), will improve.
Unlike health and fitness trackers, you only need to wear the Apollo Neuro for a few minutes at a time when you need to help your body relax and de-stress. It does not need to be worn throughout the day or night.
Apple Fitness+ Offers Streaming Classes For Everyone
Instead of paying for a costly gym membership or expensive in-home fitness equipment, for less than $10 per month, you can use your iPhone and Apple Watch (along with the optional Apple TV device) and a subscription to the Apple Fitness+ service to set and achieve your realistic fitness-related goals.
Apple Fitness+ offers live and pre-recorded classes taught by experts that get streamed from the Internet to your Apple devices. These classes cover 11 different types of workouts that last between five and 45 minutes each.
For just $10 per month (or $80 per year), Apple gives you unlimited access to the Fitness+ service, and you can use apps that come bundled with your iPhone and Apple Watch to set your fitness goals and track your progress every step of the way.
In addition to helping you develop and maintain a personalized workout and fitness routine, Apple Fitness+ offers guided meditations and yoga instruction designed to help you maintain a happy and healthy mind and body.
Fitness instruction is offered at all levels, plus you can choose the type of workout you want to participate in, as well as your instructor. Your Apple Watch (and iPhone) track everything you do in real-time—from your heart rate to your distance traveled and calories burned—and shows you how to benefit the most from every workout you do.
A Powerful Health And Fitness Companion
With a variety of hardware configurations and watchbands available, the Apple Watch Series 7 represents Apple’s top-of-the-line smartwatch, and it’s loaded with health and fitness-related features designed to work seamlessly with the iPhone. The Series 7 smartwatch features an always-on Retina display that’s a bit larger than previous models, and it’s water and dust resistant, not to mention durable.
It’s the built-in sensors and collection of apps, however, that make the Apple Watch Series 7 the ideal companion and tool for health and fitness-minded people. Internal sensors allow you to measure your blood oxygen level and heart rate, take an ECG, and monitor your sleep, for example. It also tracks your activity (steps taken, distance traveled and calories burned) and automatically identifies and tracks a wide range of workout types and fitness activities—including walking, running, cycling and swimming—while offering full integration with the optional Apple Fitness+ service and compatibility with countless optional apps available from the App Store.
Of course, the Apple Watch Series 7 is also a full-featured smartwatch that can be used as a communications and productivity tool in all aspects of your life. With a starting price of $399, you can choose between a GPS (Wi-Fi only) or GPS + Cellular version (which allows the watch to work much more autonomously when you’re away from your iPhone).
Let Calm Help You Control Stress And Get Better Sleep
Available for the Apple iPhone or any Android-based smartphone, the Calm app is a powerful and multi-faceted mobile app that requires a subscription to fully utilize. For $15 per month (or $70 per year), you’ll gain access to an ever-expanding selection of sleep, meditation, and relaxation programs developed by physiologists, therapists, fitness instructors and mental health experts.
By investing as little as three minutes per session, these programs will help you define and achieve your mental health-related goals, and then track your progress using a graphic and sound intensive mobile app. For example, your subscription includes a seven and 21-day mindfulness program for both beginners and advanced users, as well as an instructor-driven Calm Body program that offers stretching and movement exercises.
Peddle Your Way To A Healthier Body
For less money than the cost of a Peloton bike, the Echelon Connect Bike EX-5 will help you achieve a new level of personal fitness by allowing you to participate in unlimited live and pre-recorded workout sessions designed for all ages and experience levels. A monthly subscription is required for the on-demand classes that are taught by world-class instructors. Echelon offers a monthly financing plan that includes the bike and fitness classes for as little as $22 per month for 48 months.
Track Your Weight
A smart scale is designed to measure your body weight and other data, and then wirelessly transfer the information to your smartphone, where it can be analyzed and tracked over time. While there are hundreds of smart scales on the market, the Fitbit Aria Air Scale can be used as a stand-alone body weight scale or used in conjunction with any Fitbit smartwatch for fitness tracker to help you gather and analyze more comprehensive data and trends pertaining to your health, fitness, lifestyle and body weight.
This particular smart scale measures your body weight and BMI, and then sends the data to the Fitbit app running on your smartphone automatically. It can also be set up to work with all members of your household. While it’s not the smartest of smart scales on the market, it’s very simple to use and offered at an affordable price.
Track Your Movement, Sleep And More
If you don’t want or need all of the features and functionality of a smartwatch, the Fitbit Charge 5 is a sleek fitness and health tracker that for measuring your heart rate, skin temperature, stress level and SpO2 level. It also tracks your sleep patterns and activity level throughout the day, and then shares the data (wirelessly) with your smartphone, where it can be stored and analyzed.
One nice feature of this tracker is that it has 20 different exercise modes built in, and it includes a six month membership to Fitbit’s Premium service. Of course, the tracker is also water and sweat resistant, and it comes in several different colors. Additional (optional) band styles are also available and sold separately.
Get Healthy Meals Delivered To Your Home With Freshly
Let’s face it: Whether you’re cooking for yourself, you and your partner, or an entire family, maintaining a healthy diet can be a huge challenge—especially if you’re unwilling or unable to spend countless hours in the kitchen and constantly make trips to the supermarket. Well, Freshly offers a relatively low-cost solution for eating healthy on a consistent basis.
This meal subscription program costs as little as $11.79 per meal (per person). Using the Freshly mobile app, you simply pre-select the meals you want delivered to your door each week. The freshly prepared healthy meals then arrive individually packaged and get stored in your refrigerator. (These meals are never frozen). When you’re ready to eat, simply place each meal in the microwave or a regular oven to heat it up, and it’ll be ready to serve (with minimal preparation and cleanup time) in a matter of minutes.
The Freshly menu changes throughout the year, but always includes at least 50 meal options to choose from, including options that fit every diet or lifestyle—such as plant-based, dairy-free, peanut-free or gluten-free. Each meal ranges between 300 and 650 calories, but all are designed to help people maintain a healthy and well-rounded diet.
When you subscribe, you can choose to have between four and 12 single-serving meals delivered per week. The entire plan is managed from the Freshly mobile app on your smartphone.
Easy Healthy Meals, No Guesswork Required
The June Smart Oven is really a dozen cooking tools in one, and it’s smart in every sense of the word. This oven determines what foods you’re preparing, and using built-in sensors and scales, figures out the best way to prepare that food without ever over- or under-cooking it. With zero cooking skill, anyone can easily prepare restaurant-quality meals using this smart oven in conjunction with June mobile app.
The June oven serves as a convection oven, air fryer, grill, roaster, slow cooker, dehydrator, toaster, reheater, pizza oven, proofer, broiler, and warming drawer—all in one unit that fits on a countertop and is easy to clean and maintain. You’re also able to save a lot of time by not having to deal with extensive meal prep or cleanup.
Breath Clean Air In Your Home
Even if you don’t suffer from allergies, it’s important to consistently be able to breath clean and oder-free air in your home. The Molecule Air Purifier can be set up to automatically filter and clean the air in an area up to 600 square feet. The device takes advantage of two separate filters.
The first filter is designed to capture larger particles, like dust and pet hair, while the second PECO-filter (that’s coated with a proprietary light-activated catalyst) breaks down VOCs, bacteria, mold, viruses, allergens and other pollutants at a molecular level. The end result is that without generating any noise or ozone, this air filter continuously cleans the air in your home and provides for a healthier living space that offers an added layer of protection to help reduce potential viral exposure.
The Molecule Air Purifier comes with a six month supply of air filters. The air purifier itself can be controlled using a free mobile app and has three distinct fan speeds.
This Meditation Tool Tracks Your Brain Waves
By measuring your heart rate, breathing, subtle body movements and brain waves simultaneously, this meditation headset and sleep tracker provides realtime biofeedback, while the accompanying Muse mobile app guides you through meditations, also tracking and analyzing your sleep patterns in the background. The headset has a 10-hour rechargeable battery and fits comfortably around your head. Many of the guided meditation programs require the use of headphones, which are not included. A separate subscription is also required to access more than 300 additional teacher-guided meditations.
The Noom App Helps You Lose Weight Using Science
Noom is a subscription-based mobile app that has multiple components designed to help you achieve various goals, including weight loss and stress reduction. Noom is different from other weight loss programs. According to the company, “Noom uses science and personalization to help you lose weight and keep it off for good. We’ll help you better understand your relationship with food, how to be more mindful of your habits, and give you the knowledge and support you need for long-lasting change.”
The Noom weight loss program is divided into short, personalized and easy-to-understand daily lessons that provide practical knowledge and motivational insight. A series of tracking tools are also provided to measure you food intake and daily exercise. A four month (auto-renewing) subscription, which gives you unlimited access to the program, is priced at $149.
Maintain A Healthy Smile
You probably know how to brush your teeth and have been doing it your entire life, most likely with a manually operated toothbrush. By adding smart technology into it’s iO Series 9 toothbrush, Oral-B has made it easier to maintain a healthy smile, avoid bad breath, and keep your teeth pearly white.
Between the Oral-B mobile app and this toothbrush’s built in display and sensors, you’re guided to use the perfect pressure while brushing all of your teeth (with 100 percent coverage) for the optimal amount of time to achieve the best possible results. You’re also reminded when to change the toothbrush head—which offers gently cleaning micro-vibrating bristles that clean your teeth while protecting your gums.
Oura Puts A Powerful Health Tracking Tool Around Your Finger
The Oura Ring is one of the most powerful and unique health and fitness trackers available. You wear it 24/7 as a stylish ring on your finger, while its built-in sensors collects data and wirelessly transfers it to your smartphone to be analyzed and tracked throughout the day and night.
The titanium ring’s rechargeable battery lasts for between four to six days, and it is water resistant, so you can wear the stylish ring in the shower or while swimming, for example.
This third-generation Oura Ring serves as a feature-packed fitness and activity tracker, as well as a sleep tracker. It automatically measures your heart rate, body temperature, blood oxygen level, steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned and inactive time, for example, and fully integrates with the Apple Health and Google Fit apps, as well as its own mobile app.
Whether you’re fitness-minded or just want to better understand your body, and would like to potentially be warned if you may be getting sick, the Oura Ring features a unisex design, is very lightweight, and contains a lot of internal technology that’s extremely well implemented.
Monitor Your Blood Pressure With Ease
For people with high blood pressure or who need to monitor their blood pressure, the QardioArm Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor wraps around your upper arm and is mobile app controlled. Data is collected and transferred to your smartphone, where it’s analyzed, stored, and graphically displayed for the user. With a few on-screen taps, data can be emailed to a doctor or medical professional.
The QardioArm is designed to measure systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels and heart rate with irregular heartbeat detection. Some of its more advanced features include triple measurement averaging, reminders, geo-tracking across locations, and a relaxation mode. The unit is battery powered and very portable, yet it gathers accurate data that’s presented in an easy-to-understand way using colorful charts that get displayed on your smartphone’s screen.
Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website. Send me a secure tip.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2022/01/04/healthy-tech-2022/