A nursing student from Sydney is urging Apple Watch users to enable heart notifications after the device detected symptoms of a rare thyroid condition months before being diagnosed.
Sydney woman urging Apple Watch owners to enable heart rate notifications
Lauren Rebecca, a young woman from Sydney, took to TikTok to share how the Apple Watch can detect very early changes in a user’s health that could end up being diagnosed months later. As reported by 7News, Rebecca started experiencing fatigue, nausea, dizzy spells, weight gain, and dry skin over the course of two months, eventually seeing a Doctor in December.
“If you have an Apple Watch, you have to make sure these notifications are turned on right now because I didn’t and I was diagnosed with a thyroid condition… Instead of me waiting for my symptoms to get really bad, I could have gone to the doctor back in October when there was this dramatic drop in a matter of days – and I had it investigated then…
Rebecca was then diagnosed with a rare condition called thyroid hemiagenesis. However, she was shocked to discover that her Apple Watch had detected a “dramatic” change in her health two months prior to the diagnosis.
“Instead of me waiting for the symptoms to get really bad, I could have gone to the doctor back in October, when there was this dramatic drop in a matter of days,” Lauren adds, alongside a screenshot of a graph from the Health app. “It dramatically dropped, which means my cardiovascular system wasn’t working as well as it once was.”
The nursing student admits the Apple Watch was not an item she considered as being a replacement for medical advice from a professional but it still offers beneficial tools. “Don’t get me wrong, your Apple Watch is definitely not something you should follow as medical advice, but it can come in handy, I guess, as a tool to prompt you to go get things investigated further.”
Apple Watch’s life-saving features have been saving people in various situations. Check out our coverage of prior news of such incidents below:
- Apple Watch saves cyclist by calling 911 after he fell from electric bike
- Apple Watch helps save man’s life after he fell in freezing temperature
- Apple Watch saves an 85-years old man’s life in Ottawa, Canada
- Apple Watch saved an elderly man’s life for a second time
- Apple Watch saved a 20 years old woman from an armed burglar in West Milford, New Jersey
- Apple Watch saves woman from a life threatening heart attack
- Perrysburg resident credits Apple Watch for alerting him of rising heart rate
- An Apple Watch anniversary gift saved life of a 58 years old user with asymptomatic arrhythmia
- Apple Watch’s fall detection feature saves life of a cyclist hit by a car in England
