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Why I’m obsessed with health wearables (and you should be too) | Michael Snyder | Your Body on Tech

Explore episode Jun 25, 2026

Where this was said

The Tragic Case: Wearable Data That Could Have Saved a Life

At 24:27 · chapter starts 23:53

Manoush asks Snyder about a Stanford researcher whose wearable data retrospectively predicted a fatal cardiac event. Snyder recounts the story with visible weight: a high-energy, physically active man who worked in his lab for 2 years and wore an Apple Watch and Oura Ring, regularly exercising on a Peloton. After the man died suddenly during a Peloton workout, his wife shared the device data with the lab. Analysis showed an unmistakable step-function change 4 months before his death — resting heart rate up, heart rate variability down, gait altered, sleep shifted — all at once. Snyder's conclusion is not merely tragic but urgent: the data existed, the warning was clear, but no system existed to relay that signal back to the individual or his physician. Building real-time cardiovascular alerting systems — not just viral infection alerts — is now the lab's next goal.

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