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ONothing led to anything else and then I was topless on the couch and then a cardiologist, with a wrinkled nose, was explaining that everything was fine except my heart was a little… weird? I can’t remember the exact words, but I think they were little more than “eccentric”, far less than strange. Although he was studying something else entirely, he had noticed that a valve up there was a bit odd, definitely unrelated to the problem I was here for, and unlikely to affect my future health in any way. But now that she had seen it, she thought it best to tell me. Better to know anyway, I asked, right? He shrugged. “Sometimes?” he said noncommittally. “It’s complicated.”
At home I felt my heart beating better, listening for unusual sounds. When I had what turned out to be indigestion a few months later, I went to the doctor, assuming it was this valve that might be getting ready to explode. I don’t have a history of anxiety, I’ve always been pretty much uninterested in what’s going on in my body – I’ve thought about it in a way similar to what happens in the vast deep waters of the sea, necessarily unfathomable. But once this flaw was revealed to me, I felt uncomfortable with all those moving parts, everything that could go wrong.
When I read Caroline Crampton’s recent intimate study of hypochondria, Glass body, with the accurate explanation of the anxiety disorder as “a perceived disease of the body that exists only in the mind,” my hand immediately went to my chest. Crampton traces the rise of potions and devices that promise relief from imagined ailments all the way from quackery in the 18th century to today’s wellness industry, with the likes of Zeebo pills (currently £73 on Amazon) advertised as placebos in which “you are the active ingredient” and plans for technology where every part of our minds and bodies can be monitored. But, she asks, can we know too much? I thought of Crampton’s book as I read recent criticism of the rise of blood glucose monitoring and the Zoe app. They are part of a growing trend for personalized diets, but amid other criticisms (including a lack of evidence of their efficacy), NHS national diabetes adviser Professor Partha Carr told the BBC that the use of continuous glucose monitors (intended for people with diabetes ), when there is no healthy reason for it, can cause an obsessive focus on numbers, which in some cases “can turn into eating disorders.”
These are apps for the “well-worried,” healthy people worried about their health, a growing market at a time when new technology and the old Internet feed anxiety by offering vast knowledge to anyone with wifi. It’s a successful business model because it’s both for the worrier and the worrier. Parents are particularly vulnerable to marketing, their health concerns projected onto their children. In this month A New Yorker, Gia Tolentino describes her efforts to hide her pregnancy from her phone. That meant: no buying baby clothes online, no period tracking, no pregnancy apps—she wanted to avoid surveillance, which is especially difficult when surveillance is recommended.
Between the births of my two children, technology offered parents who wanted to both track their pregnancy (through, for example, additional ultrasound scans) and monitor their baby (using devices such as stuffed toys with hidden cameras or discs to attach to diapers that alert you when your baby rolls over) has exploded. By 2020, I was surprised at how difficult it was, for example, to buy a baby monitor that didn’t include a camera, require a wifi connection, or record my data. Yet despite the appetite for parenting technology, Tolentino finds that it very rarely leads to better outcomes for babies, instead exacerbating or, worse, creating the anxieties these devices were purchased to soothe . The control that anxious people seek by monitoring their babies or bodies is an illusion.
Which is worrying, isn’t it, given the rise of products aimed directly at them. The global market for wearable technology (devices like fitness trackers) was valued at $61.30 billion in 2022 and is predicted to expand significantly by 2030. My nine-year-old’s school friends regularly compare FitBits. Still, there is a possibility that trackers and the like may do more harm than good for some people. IN A new statesman In 2019, a professor of cardiovascular medicine criticized a large study of atrial fibrillation, a common heart rhythm problem, using Apple Watch owners — he said there were no major health benefits to screening these low-risk people, in short , “the kind of people who use an Apple Watch.” In addition, the study would “cause significant stress” in healthy people receiving irregular heartbeat notifications.
Health anxiety is evolving in line with scientific knowledge, with descriptions such as “cyberchondria” (in which anxieties escalate as a result of information found online) and research showing that our new loose contact with medical knowledge is exacerbating people’s fears , instead of delivering us from them. I deeply resent the fact that tech companies are capitalizing on these fears, creating new concerns for profit. I think yes, we can know too much.
Every once in a while, a slight pain in my chest or a memory will cause a flicker of anxiety and I’ll wonder about my deformed heart. But then I sternly remind myself that what goes on under the sea or (unless it affects my life) what goes on deep inside my body is really none of my business.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on X @EvaWiseman
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