In 2025, we will recover from the inside out. Will technology help us or hurt us?

It’s never been easier to dig deep, but are we going deep enough?

Wearable health tracking devices such as Smart watches and Smart rings Continue to improve their research on how our bodies work. Continuous glucose monitors — which officially hits the “mainstream” wellness market in the U.S. in 2024 with admission for people without diabetes — offers a more intimate look at our metabolic health, a lofty but neglected The health aspect for the majority of Americans.

But as we fill our carts with the latest technology and allocate money to apps in the name of good health, are we actually becoming healthier? in some Cases, Yes. But it is possible, or even likely, that what we need to track most, we cannot track yet. At least, not at this moment.

Dr. Dave Rabin, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist, has spent 20 years studying stress and what he calls “chronic fatigue.” He has experience in non-traditional treatment areas such as drug research, and is currently the medical director of Apollo Neuroa wearable company that aims to increase your well-being by sending vibrational pulses to your skin. His work has led him to believe that unaddressed trauma is the root cause of most of our health problems, both mental and physical. He describes unprocessed trauma as one intense or at least meaningful, challenging experience, after which you receive no support.

According to Rabin, the way most people currently use technology is not doing us any favors, and more work is needed to reach the goal of delving deeper into our health issues. Here’s why: The purpose and goal behind a lot of consumer technologies and apps on the market is to sell us things and “distract” us from our feelings. Additionally, we may have weaved ourselves into unprocessed stress response after stress response under the pile of notifications from our smartphones, health tracking apps and all the rest of the stuff that dominates our mental space and time. Yes, even in the name of good health.

“Ultimately, we’re training ourselves to be more responsive to stress, and people aren’t being taught how to use it safely,” Rabin said. “Everything about healing starts with feeling your feelings and facing your pain and not avoiding it.”

It can be said that we experience pain (physical or mental) every time we open an app or connect a wearable device that aims to help us track our health or improve our well-being. But being truly “healthier” requires that we connect our own dots and make sure we’re paying attention to wellness trends that actually serve our version of “good”—whatever that may be.

As we look forward to a healthier 2025, we should continue to ask ourselves whether our technology is actively improving our lives or taking us away from it. We should also consider asking less about the technology that exists to help us get healthier and more about it how and whether To use it in the first place. We likely already have a good toolkit for improving health.

“Most people think that their smartphones and technology are something that stresses them out, but that’s not what technology should do,” Rabin said. “Technology must be at the service of humanity.”

Here are some of the most interesting trends worth watching in 2025 and how to make them good for your health.

Healthy brain, healthy aging: Will technology connect the dots?

Interest in “healthy aging,” an umbrella term for spending more time being healthy rather than simply living a long time, was more than just a buzzword in 2024 — it was a full-fledged movement. In 2025, we may expect healthy aging to make its way into more spaces such as Nutritional supplementsBut one area we should look at to keep up with healthy aging Jones residents is brain health. Dr. Daniel Friedmana neurologist at NYU Langone Health and director of the division of epilepsy, called technological advances in the name of brain health “an interesting area of ​​research” but not yet complete.

Specifically, Friedman pointed to research into how people use phones and consumer devices — how quickly they type, how they interact with them, and even how complex the words they type are — as “early predictors” of neurocognitive problems like dementia.

Researchers at DartmouthFor example, it has developed an app called RealVision that tracks how users interact with their phones through eye movement and rapid response, potentially identifying dementia in its early days. Other research Released in 2024 It also looked at information collected from smartphones, and found older people at risk of developing dementia based on wayfinding (i.e. navigation) data.

It may take some time for technological advances to reach consumer devices in a way that benefits people’s lives in terms of actionable health advice.

“You would probably feel angry and panicked if your phone said, ‘By the way, you have a 20 percent risk of developing dementia in the next 10 years,'” Friedman said.

In the meantime, he stresses the importance of staying on top of modifiable health factors that we know can tip the scale in terms of dementia or brain health risks. These include Get adequate sleepMove your body regularly, and have regular check-ups Hearing and Vision health To make sure your brain receives the kind of information it needs to stay busy and eat a nutritious diet.

Fuel for mind and body: constant focus on nutrition

The importance of eating a well-rounded diet full of essential nutrients is as old as time, but 2024 has seen a special wave of interest in nutrition and increased interest in the idea of ​​“food as medicine.”

2025 will only build on this. This year, for example, we’ll see review From the US Dietary Guidelines, which will often be the eating pattern for which you are shown Support heart healthEating limited amounts of foods such as red meat and ultra-processed foods. New guidelines Focus on plant proteins, such as beans and lentils, and vegetables and fruits.

Another area of ​​holistic nutrition and wellness that will continue to build on itself in 2025 is the gut microbiome. This area continues to gain momentum due to its association with metabolic health, skin health, and more. Genetics, medications and lifestyle factors affect gut health, but the number one determining factor is nutrition and the foods we eat.

Federica Amati, clinical research scientist and chief nutritionist at Health Sciences & Home Gut Testing ZoeHe told us that upcoming research in the pipeline will help seal the deal in terms of making people more aware of what they eat and how it affects their gut health (and therefore their overall health).

“We’ve reached a point where we can use gut microbiome data to understand what people are actually eating,” Amati said. An upcoming partnership between ZOE and Mass General Hospital will explore potential links with specific strains of gut bacteria associated with an increased risk of E. Colorectal cancer in younger adults. The findings could have huge implications for the growing number of people facing this diagnosis.

Gut health is also directly linked to inflammation, which, month after month, continues to become not just a buzzword, but a necessary evil, in many cases leading to or accompanying autoimmune or chronic diseases, which is too much of an evil. . Inflammation is essential to help us when we get sick, deal with infections, or, in small amounts, with other daily body functions, Amati explained. The problem is when it becomes chronic and continues to simmer for months or years, which it does associated with Cancer, heart disease, diabetes and infertility.

“When we think about metabolic health conditions and we think about chronic diseases, inflammation is the fire that fuels it,” she said. There is a direct link between overall health and solid nutrition, along with Reducing inflammatory foods Such as processed fats found in store-bought baked goods, alcohol and red meat, Amati cited as examples. In fact, fiber is beneficial for the gut microbiome and is anti-inflammatory.

Although it doesn’t have a screen and doesn’t fit our technical definition of technology, the increasing focus on fiber and getting more of it into our diet through whole foods will only gain momentum in 2025.

“It’s not rocket science, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Health as a whole: How to feel healthy in 2025

Rabin, who works in the field of emotion regulation through his company, says that innovation in… The vagus nerve regulates emotions The space for stimulators will likely be created in 2025. Perhaps most interestingly, Rabin says that in the near future technology will continue to fill some of the health gaps that wearable data can create.

“You’ll see more products that will use closed-loop AI,” Rabin said.

This means that in the future, we will see more health technology that “creates a signature” of our bodies, showing more directly what our health data looks like when we feel good and when we feel bad. This may be expanded upon Apollo and Ora’s circular integrationwhich is actually available to blend the mind and body by combining stringent health metrics information like heart rate variability with anxiety-calming properties.

Another factor to consider in 2025 is how you allow notifications into your life or how your consumer technology suits you. Dr. Rayan SultanOne way to reduce stress around technology is to consider whether it’s helping you stay healthier, said I, a psychiatrist who runs the Bioinformatics Lab at Columbia University. It sounds simple enough, but how apps are designed doesn’t always make it seem intuitive.

“A lot of apps are very heavy on notifications,” Sultan said.

But should we rely on technology to help us be healthier in 2025? The answer may depend entirely on whether it actually helps us achieve our health goals by getting us to the bottom of them. The idea that we should look at the root cause of diseases from a more holistic point of view, rather than a symptom-oriented point of view, is relatively new in Western medicine but is based on healing practices from Eastern culture. For example, hygienic practices such as Breathing Continue to learn about and develop a large body of evidence for its potential role in anxiety management.

In 2025, we may have more technology that promises to benefit our health, but that doesn’t mean it’s a miracle cure or that we should use it all. Although health technology is mass produced and available over the counter, health remains truly personal, and what you use to increase that health should be based on what is best for your body. and mind.

In other words, in a world full of things fighting for every inch of our sight and square inch of our brain, we don’t deserve to be just picky. We owe it to our health.