Apple Watch users regularly credit the device with helping save their life during health scares and emergency situations. For the founder of Whole Foods, however, it was insight gained from the Apple Watch that helped him improve his life.
Business Insider highlighted this week that Whole Foods founder John Mackey decided to give up drinking three years ago thanks in part to data collected by his Apple Watch.
“I wish I’d stopped drinking 30 years ago,” Mackey said. “That’s 30 years of feeling good that I let go past.”
Mackey said his Apple Watch contributed to his decision to cut alcohol out of his life for good.
“I was tracking my sleep, and some days I didn’t sleep well, and some days I did sleep well,” he recalled. “So, I started to ask the question, ‘Well, what did I do differently when I didn’t sleep well?’”
Through sleep tracking with Apple Watch and reflecting on his habits, Mackey determined that more exercise and fewer large meals before bed meant better sleep. But the biggest insight was from a lack of deep sleep, according to the Apple Watch.
Mackey also shared his experience in an interview on the PLANTSTRONG podcast last year. Mackey named AutoSleep as the app he used to track his sleep. In his own words:
“It [Apple Watch] changed my life. It got me off alcohol over two years ago.” […] “Well, I have an app on the Apple Watch called AutoSleep, and it tracks my sleep.
I sleep with my watch and charge it in the morning when I get up.
And I’ve learned so much from it because it tells me about not only how long I sleep but my quality of sleep and how deep my sleep is. And I started to notice that anytime I drank even one beer or one glass of wine, my deep sleep went to zero. I got no deep sleep and my total sleep would drop about an hour.
And I did numerous experiments because I actually liked alcohol and I didn’t want to give it up. But the facts were so clear. Every time I drank, no deep sleep. And then I began to realize, wow, maybe I should just stop drinking.
And so then the question became, do I want to sleep well or do I want to have a drink? And the answer so far for over two years has been, I’d rather sleep well. But I’ll hold out the possibility there might come a time when I’d rather have the drink, but so far it hadn’t hit me.”
Better sleep means a better life, and for the Whole Foods founder, sleep tracking with Apple Watch unlocked a key insight that inarguably provided answers for how to improve his.
Sleep tracking is now a built-in feature on Apple Watch. Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 are also capable of detecting signs of sleep apnea.
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