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

**Manoush Zomorodi** (0:03)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day.
I'm Manoush Zomorodi. I am sitting in for Elise Hu. I host the TED Radio Hour podcast, usually over on NPR. I'm also an author, a two-time TED speaker. And this week, I'm here with a special series of episodes all about how you can live a healthier life in our high-tech era.
So, why am I here? Okay, so I had the honor of guest curating a session at the recent TED 2026 conference all about my obsession, tech, the human body, and what is keeping us human in this digital age. Every day this week, we are bringing you one of these talks from my session, followed by a conversation with that speaker to go deeper.
These are people who are at the top of their field, and today we are talking about wearables.
All those smart watches and smart rings and glucose monitors that more and more of us are putting on our bodies to monitor our health. But what can we actually do with all that information that we're collecting? Well, today's speaker has some answers. Michael Snyder is a professor of genetics at Stanford University and director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine. Over the last 20 years, he says he has collected more personal health data than almost any other known human. It's all part of his pursuit to show how we can treat each body as an individual, not as a population average.

**Michael Snyder** (1:39)
And even when we practice health care, if you think about it, it's a pretty archaic process. You will travel to a physician's office. When you're there, they'll take lots of blood. And from all that blood and the time you're there, they actually don't make very many measurements. And from those measurements, they'll treat you based on population averages rather than the individual. We're trying to change all those steps. And one area in particular is remote health monitoring.

**Manoush Zomorodi** (2:02)
When it comes to wearables, there's an analogy that Michael likes to use.

**Michael Snyder** (2:06)
What if you can measure your health with sensors and a dashboard, much like your car dashboard?

**Manoush Zomorodi** (2:12)
So think about your car and think about the dashboard right behind the steering wheel. You can see, like, do you have enough air in your tires? How much gas is in the tank? Now, what if you had the same sort of thing but for your body? That's where wearables come in. And he believes this tech is one way healthcare systems, especially here in the US, can start serving people in better, smarter ways.
I personally have been tracking the findings from his lab because he has made some fascinating discoveries about how we age and what kinds of diabetes there are and how the human body changes depending on genes and the environment. He does this by collecting and analyzing just terabytes of data. So I'm nerding out here. I think you will too. Michael's talk and my conversation with him that's coming up right after a short break.
And now, our TED Talk end conversation of the day.

**Michael Snyder** (3:21)
Our health care system is broken. Our laboratory in the last 17 years has been trying to improve it. And along the way, I've even learned a lot of new things about my own health. It's broken because we practice sick care rather than health care. And even when we practice health care, if you think about it, it's a pretty archaic process. You will travel to a physician's office, that really hasn't changed much in the last 40 years.
When you're there, they'll take lots of blood, and from all that blood in the time you're there, they actually don't make very many measurements. And from those measurements, they'll treat you based on population averages rather than the individual. We're trying to change all those steps, and one area in particular is remote health monitoring.
What if you can measure your health with sensors and a dashboard, much like your car dashboard? That's what we've been trying to do, and you can now do that thanks to a revolution in wearable devices, smartwatches, rings and a host of other devices. These devices will measure things like resting heart rate, heart rate variability, skin temperature and conductance, blood oxygen, even sleep. All of these things we know are very important for our health, and we can now measure them continuously, 24-7, as long as you keep them charged.
I'm such a big fan of these devices, I wear eight of them every single day.
I'm wearing four smart watches, two rings, even my hearing aids are sensors. They measure physiology like these other devices, but they also measure my socialization, which is important for your health as well. So you can track all of these things in real time, and we've been doing just that.