One of the first major crashes I experienced as a chronically ill person happened on an unusually sunny January day in New York City. It was 2023, and I was riding my bike with a friend, flying high from the exercise. We\u2019d covered just over 40 miles on mostly flat ground, a longish ride, but not out of ordinary for me. And that\u2019s when it started. About 15 minutes from my apartment, my body gave out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At first it was just my head \u2014 it grew hot, and within minutes, my brain felt like it was on fire. Pretty soon, the rest of my insides were burning up, too. As the skin on my arms and face turned red, and my limbs grew heavy, I felt bewildered. I was fine just minutes ago, I thought. I was tired, but the ride didn\u2019t feel that hard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI think I need to stop,\u201d I told my friend. I couldn\u2019t think. I drank some water, ate a snack, and tried to compose myself alongside the bike path on Eastern Parkway. I don\u2019t know how long we stayed there, but my condition didn\u2019t really improve. Eventually we got back on our bikes and pedaled, much slower than before, to my apartment. I turned 34 that day, and what I remember most is the time I spent in bed after the ride, while my immune system went berserk. My spouse was in Vancouver, Washington, visiting family for the holidays, and I was on my own. So I just laid there, barely able to move, until the following evening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Three years later, I barely crash anymore. I\u2019m still chronically ill; I have long covid, and two other conditions: postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which hinders my ability to stand for long periods, and mast cell activation syndrome, which can cause my body to randomly react like I\u2019m allergic to something even when I\u2019m not. This means I have to be careful about how I spend my time and what I eat. But as I write this, I can\u2019t remember the last time I spent an entire day in bed. \u201cSheer luck\u201d is probably the best way to talk about at least some of the improvements I\u2019ve experienced. \u201cPrivilege\u201d is another. I was able to see curious and knowledgeable physicians early on, and I have insurance that covers most of the meds I take.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![\"Arielle](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/03\/268372_Arielle_Tracking_devices_illness_EOrtiz_0036.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400\"\/)
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nBut at least part of the credit for the stability I currently enjoy goes to an unlikely tool: the fitness tracking devices that I purposefully \u201cmisuse\u201d every single day. Because over the last nearly three years, fitness trackers have helped me do the very opposite of what they were originally intended to do. I use them to do less \u2014 not more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The proper way to talk about what I\u2019m doing is to say that I use fitness trackers to \u201cpace.\u201d Pacing is an energy management technique that involves balancing periods of activity with periods of rest to avoid physical and mental overexertion. The idea behind the practice is that by carefully planning and prioritizing the tasks and activities you do throughout your day, people with energy-limiting conditions like mine can avoid falling into a cycle of repeated crashes or worsening symptoms. Pacing isn\u2019t a cure or even a way to improve your overall condition, at least not inherently. But for many people with these conditions \u2014 folks with ME\/CFs (formerly referred to as \u201cchronic fatigue\u201d), POTS, fibromyalgia, or even Parkinson\u2019s, for example \u2014 pacing can make life a little more predictable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s energy conservation,\u201d says Raouf Gharbo, an osteopath at Virginia Commonwealth University who specializes in rehabilitation. Gharbo often tells his patients that pacing can look a lot like \u201cspoon theory,\u201d where a disabled person understands that they have a finite, but variable number of \u201cspoons\u201d \u2014 a proxy for a unit of energy \u2014 that they can \u201cspend\u201d in a single day. With pacing, the idea is to avoid running out of spoons by carefully budgeting them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pacing is hard to learn and even harder to do consistently. And if you ask me, that\u2019s because pacing honestly sucks. It means learning to pay close attention to how your body responds to every little thing you do. Making peace with holding back, slowing down, being patient, and saying \u201cno\u201d to things you might enjoy. Not to mention having to learn to ask for help if it doesn\u2019t come naturally. Plus, your condition is likely always evolving, so you also have to adjust your pacing technique to match it. Something as simple as a change in the weather might alter the number of spoons you have to spend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n All that to say that pacing didn\u2019t come naturally to me. And yet I managed to learn. And I doubt I\u2019d be this far along or this good at it without the two fitness tracking bands I wore, one one each bicep \u2014 like a total dweeb.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Five months after that January bike ride, I had an idea. I went digging in my closet for my \u201ctech box,\u201d a giant plastic Tupperware in which I keep discarded tech devices that I\u2019ve yet to recycle, and fished out a Whoop 4.0 band. I had stopped wearing it more than a year ago because it had started to feel like overkill for the type of sports I practiced. But I had an official POTS diagnosis now, and as part of my treatment plan, my cardiologist put a lot of emphasis on getting good sleep. So, I decided to strap the Whoop back on, thinking that maybe I\u2019d learn something about my sleeping patterns if I used it for a month or two.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But I ended up using it for a lot longer than that. Turns out, I got a lot more out of the Whoop as a chronically ill person than I ever did when I used it for fitness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I got a lot more out of the Whoop as a chronically ill person than I ever did when I used it for fitness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It started simply enough. Whoop has a feature called Recovery that the company says is a measure of how ready the body is to perform. The score incorporates a bunch of metrics like a user\u2019s resting heart rate, their heart rate variability \u2014 a measure of the variation in the amount of time between heart beats \u2014 their skin temperature, and how well they sleep, among other things. The app provides a recovery score every morning and color-codes it. For the average Whoop user, green recovery days are supposed to be great days to push yourself in training, whereas yellow days are what Whoop dubs a \u201cnormal recovery\u201d day, meaning a day during which your body is \u201cmaintaining its ability to perform,\u201d but shouldn\u2019t be pushed too hard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Although these scores can be controversial (see the Whoop Subreddit for complaints), I found them shockingly accurate after I got ill. Now, when my recovery was green, I found myself being able to do more. I was more resilient. But more importantly, on yellow days, I noticed that I was more likely to crash. The trend was even more obvious when I woke up in the red, meaning in the 1 to 33 percent recovered zone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So, I started to use my recovery score to make decisions about how I\u2019d go about my day, putting more limits on myself and the kinds of activities I did on yellow days and red days. All of a sudden, I had a way to loosely determine how many spoons I had at my disposal at the start of every day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That was just the start. Eventually, I noticed that when my daily strain score \u2014 Whoop\u2019s way of measuring cardiovascular and muscular exertion on a scale from 0 to 21 \u2014 hit 10 or above, I would be likely to crash over the next few days. So I started to check the app at regular intervals throughout my day in the hopes that I might avoid reaching a strain score of 10. (For context, Whoop considers any strain score between 0 and 9 to be low.) That\u2019s when I realized that I\u2019d found a way to automate my pacing practice. As long as I remembered to check the app a few times a day, Whoop was doing the monitoring for me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s probably worth noting at this point that I started this experiment well before our Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr., suggested that \u201cevery American\u201d should wear a fitness tracker within four years. I actually don\u2019t agree with that take at all, and I have significant concerns about what tech companies are doing with our health information, especially given how cozy Silicon Valley seems to be with the current administration, which itself seems to hold a particular disdain for the chronically ill, as well as other forms of disability like autism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That said, I also feel pretty strongly that sharing this pacing technique could help a lot of people with energy-limiting illnesses. So with those disclaimers out in the open, I\u2019m still writing about it. And the truth is that I\u2019m not the first person to pace using a fitness tracker, and I won\u2019t be the last. A lot of other disabled people are using their smart watches and trackers in exactly this way already.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI mainly use the watch to monitor how new medications affect my POTS, and whether or not certain activities are too much for my POTS to handle,\u201d says 26-year old Alabama resident Samhit Utlapalli. In 2022, Utlapalli started to faint two or three times a day, following simultaneous covid and flu infections. They eventually received a diagnosis for POTS, which causes significant increases in heart rate when transitioning from lying down to standing up. People with POTS often experience fatigue, dizziness, and fainting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One day, after Utlapalli started experiencing regular fainting spells, they came across a post on Instagram that intrigued them. \u201cI have a lot of other disabled friends, and on Instagram there was this girl \u2014 we\u2019re not super close or anything \u2014 and she also has POTS,\u201d Utlapalli says. \u201cShe posted about how she was using one of the Garmin watches to monitor her heart rate and keep track of how she was doing throughout the day and what she needed to adjust.\u201d Soon thereafter, they purchased a Garmin watch in the hopes that it might help them manage their own condition. And it did.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Today, Utlapalli uses a Garmin Venu 3S when they\u2019re out and about. If they see that their heart rate is getting high, they might decide to \u201csit down for a little bit,\u201d or \u201cchug a shitload of water,\u201d they say.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There\u2019s a word for what we\u2019ve been doing with our fitness trackers \u2014 we\u2019re \u201ccripping\u201d them, says Sarah Homewood, a professor at the University of Copenhagen who researches human-centered computing and specializes in self-tracking. The art of cripping is, in part, \u201cabout hacking or changing the use of existing technologies\u201d to suit the needs of disabled people, she explains.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Homewood began studying the ways in which people with energy-limiting conditions use self-tracking devices in 2021, after she developed long-covid. To monitor her heart rate, she bought a Fitbit. It was only after that that she noticed posts online in which other disabled people were sharing their experiences with these kinds of devices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI started to see people discussing this on the Facebook groups, the support groups,\u201d Homewood says. \u201cAnd so, as a researcher, I was like, \u2018Oh my God, this is so interesting.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Homewood ended up studying her own experience and the experiences of other people with energy-limiting conditions who use self-tracking technologies. Through this work, she and her colleagues determined that the benefits of using a fitness tracker can extend beyond pacing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For instance, many of the study participants reported that the data gathered by these devices was helpful in getting family members, friends, and doctors to take them seriously.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSo many of my participants talk about \u2018data as proof,\u2019\u201d Homewood tells me. Being able to show the people around you that your body isn\u2019t recovering after a full night\u2019s sleep or that your heart rate spikes when you sit up can make a big difference in how friends and family respond to your disability, especially given the stigma that surrounds many of these conditions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the study, participants also noted that pacing with fitness trackers helped them gain a sense of control. But Homewood tells me she prefers to talk about how these devices can help users better \u201cunderstand\u201d their condition, rather than gain control over it. That framing \u201cfeels a little bit less like it\u2019s setting you up for failure,\u201d she says, because a big part of making sense of an energy-limiting condition involves the realization that you often have very little control over how it manifests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Whoop helped me better understand the basic parameters that tended to impact my chronic illness. But it was never intended to be used this way, so I\u2019ve had to train myself to ignore some of its features, like its suggestions for how much I should push myself each day (that number is almost always wrong). The Whoop isn\u2019t nearly as bad as the Apple Watch in that respect \u2014 I say this despite certain improvements \u2014 because unlike the Apple Watch, the Whoop app will very visibly suggest that a user prioritize rest when they\u2019re in the red recovery zone. But for people like me, there\u2019s still no obvious way to turn off its recommendations for hitting daily strain goals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Another major downside of using the Whoop band for real-time pacing was the fact that I had to check the app constantly to make sure I didn\u2019t go above a certain strain score. And then, once I knew how much strain I\u2019d taken on, I had to make some educated guesses about how much gas I still had in the tank to do a given activity without hitting my self-imposed strain score limit. I got pretty good at it, but it wasn\u2019t ideal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Most of all though, I kept wishing that Whoop would implement one very specific feature: I wanted to be able to set the device to vibrate or send me a notification whenever my heart rate went above 120BPM outside of a workout \u2014 like, say, when I was just standing for too long.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A feature like that would have been a game changer for me, given my POTS diagnosis. I\u2019d often think about how great it would be to instantly know when it was time to sit down, or slow down. I had no reason to think a feature like that would ever exist in the Whoop app, but I still wanted it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n My wish was eventually granted toward the end of 2024 \u2014 in the form of the Visible band.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cActivity tracking for illness, not fitness,\u201d is how Visible markets itself to people like me. And unlike almost anything else on the market, the device\u2019s main function is to help people with long covid, Me\/CFS, and other energy-limiting conditions pace.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The idea for Visible was borne out of CEO Harry Leeming\u2019s own experience with long covid, which he developed after a mild infection in 2020. Wishing to keep track of his recovery, he went looking for a wearable designed for people like him. \u201cI remember googling for illness trackers, and I was expecting to find Whoop, Fitbit, and Garmin \u2014 but designed for illness,\u201d he tells me. But nothing seemed to really fit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So, Leeming decided to see if a conventional fitness tracker might help. He opted for a Whoop, which he used along with an Apple Watch. But it didn\u2019t satisfy, and it wasn\u2019t long before Leeming, who is a mechanical engineer, started toying with the idea of launching an app and a wearable that would be specifically tailored for his use case. By 2022, the Visible app was up and running.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I started wearing the Visible band in October 2024. Putting it on felt instantly familiar because it looks a lot like the Whoop band (it\u2019s actually the Polar 360). But I soon realized that for real-time pacing, Visible was far superior to Whoop. Visible has a killer pacing feature that it calls the PaceSetter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The PaceSetter is this little ticker that moves along a timeline throughout the day. It works by setting the pace for how fast a user should go through their \u201cPacePoints\u201d in a day. PacePoints are the unit that Visible uses to measure how much energy a user has to spend in a day \u2014 they\u2019re directly tied to a user\u2019s heart rate \u2014 so the PaceSetter\u2019s goal is to make sure that a user doesn\u2019t run out of PacePoints before the day is through. When the feature is enabled, a user will get an alert whenever they start to surpass the PaceSetter, which helps people know when they\u2019re pushing too hard and need to slow down or rest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When I started wearing the Visible band, I stopped having to devote a bunch of mental energy to figuring out how many spoons I had left for the day based on my Whoop strain score. And that felt incredible! As long as I didn\u2019t get a PaseSetter notification, I knew I was doing alright.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Visible also helped me figure out which activities were costing me the most thanks to its activity tagging feature. Much like the Whoop, the Visible app provided me with a daily heart rate graph, but with the added ability to place tags within the timeline to indicate which activities I was performing during a given period. The app keeps track of those tags and would provide me with the average number of PacePoints I would use on those activities in a section of the app called \u201cactivity insights.\u201d This feature means that a user can actually find out \u2014 for real \u2014 how much energy they tend to use up when they do anything from reading a book and working at a computer to showering and cooking dinner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Because of this, I learned that pickleball was more energetically costly for me than a bike workout, probably because pickleball involves a lot of standing. I also figured out that showering \u2014 an activity that can cost me quite a bit when my symptoms flare \u2014 had a negligeable impact when I was feeling generally okay. So, as long as I kept my showers short, I was able to stop factoring them into my pacing practice altogether.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Finally, Visible delivered the feature I\u2019d spent so much time wishing for: exertion notifications. When my heart rate went into what Visible suggested was my \u201coverexertion zone\u201d for more than a few minutes, I\u2019d get a phone notification. The feature was extremely useful on bad days when I just didn\u2019t have the energy to pay attention to how I was feeling, on top of just trying to accomplish basic tasks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt can ping you, and be like \u2018hey, slow down,\u2019\u201d says Visible user Emerson, who asked that we omit their last name to preserve their privacy. Before finding the Visible app, Emerson tried using an Apple Watch to pace, but they found its fitness-related alerts distracting. \u201c[I was] getting annoyed when I\u2019d get alerts telling me I was doing a great job being active when I was suffering.\u201d With Visible, there are no notifications pushing you to do more. Emerson says they can focus on their life and hand the task of monitoring their heart to the app. \u201cThat was a big energy load off the backburner of my brain constantly,\u201d they told me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Day-to-day, Visible makes it easier to pace. But users can also use the tracker to keep track of their illness on a month-to-basis, thanks to a Monthly Check-in feature that asks users questions about their ability to perform various tasks and activities, like shopping for groceries, sitting up in bed for half an hour, or working a full work day. Visible users who fill out the questionnaire \u2014 which is also available to the public \u2014 get a score out of 6 that allows them to track how their condition is progressing from month to month, if at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cFor a while, I was declining, and I didn\u2019t know I was declining,\u201d Emerson tells me. Seeing their functional capacity results in the Visible app helped them recognize the trend and take action.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Users should spend less time thinking through the ratings, the kind of task Leeming calls \u201cdisability admin.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The more I used the Visible app, the more I grew to appreciate its design. The engineers at Visible, many of whom are disabled themselves, tried to make the UI as simple as possible to limit how much energy users might expend while looking at it. So, for example, there\u2019s very little text on each page to make sure users aren\u2019t overwhelmed, and the scale that\u2019s used for symptom tracking only goes from 1 to 4. The idea here is that by simplifying the scale, users should spend less time thinking through the ratings, the kind of task Leeming calls \u201cdisability admin.\u201d All told, Visible is extremely well thought out and genuinely fills a gap for people with energy-limiting conditions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But despite everything Visible does so well, the armband never fully replaced my Whoop. Instead, I just wore both \u2014 one on each bicep \u2014 for more than six months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The fact that Visible didn\u2019t track my sleep was the biggest reason I kept wearing the Whoop. I also found myself getting annoyed with Visible\u2019s equivalent to Whoop\u2019s recovery score \u2013 a feature Visible calls the \u201cmorning stability score.\u201d Visible didn\u2019t use that score to adjust my PacePoints budget at the start of each day. So on most days, I would adjust my budget manually, something I never quite got right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Whoop band, meanwhile, (sort of) does this by adjusting users\u2019 target strain score based on how well they\u2019ve slept and how much they exerted themselves the day before. I didn\u2019t use this information the way Whoop intended, but the feature was still valuable. If Whoop thought I should do less on any given day, I\u2019d listen to it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I mentioned these critiques to Leeming when we spoke. He told me that big changes are coming to the app, and those updates will address many of my complaints. Some users are currently beta testing sleep tracking, and Leeming says the new functionality should be out in the coming months. The Visible team also plans to introduce an automated version of the morning stability score later this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s not the only good news coming from the Visible team: Leeming says the Visible app will soon be able to predict when a user is at risk of experiencing an energy crash. The company validated this technique in a study \u2014 which is still in pre-print and hasn\u2019t been peer-reviewed yet \u2014 that it conducted in collaboration with researchers at Yale University and Mount Sinai, among others. \u201cThat [study] will inform the next version of our Stability score in the app, which will no longer be reliant on you inputting manual symptoms,\u201d Leeming told me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is part of Visible\u2019s long-term vision: to move users away from having to answer questions about their health. \u201cNo one with these conditions wants to think more about their own illness than they need to,\u201d Leeming says. \u201cIt\u2019s a very different use case from fitness wearables where you\u2019re really trying to hyper-optimize your health.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Last April, I stopped wearing my Whoop. Wearing both devices at the same time felt ridiculous, and I\u2019d reached the conclusion that Visible would be more than enough on its own. And it basically was, for a short while.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thanks to Visible, I had gotten better at pacing and recognizing my body\u2019s signals when I was pushing too hard. At the same time, my health was improving, so much so that I had started to ignore Visible\u2019s exertion notifications. So in May, I decided to end my Visible subscription, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I framed the decision as an experiment: I wanted to try my hand at pacing the old-fashioned way again, sans wearables. But to be honest, I was also hoping to offer my wallet a bit of relief. Paying for Whoop and Visible had been costing me $50\/month; I was paying $30\/month for Whoop and $19.99\/month for Visible. And although Visible was less expensive than Whoop, I had to pay a one-time fee of $90 to get Visible\u2019s fitness tracker (the armband is now priced at $79.90). So I genuinely hoped that the outcome of this experiment would be that I could manage well enough on my own.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I had a chance to ask Harry Leeming about the barrier that Visible\u2019s subscription fee might pose to the community he\u2019s targeting. After all, that population is currently struggling to remain in the workforce. Leeming told me that he understands that many people who live with energy-limiting conditions face financial constraints that can put this app out of reach. That\u2019s why Visible also offers a free version of the app that Leeming says will always be free. That version of the app doesn\u2019t include access to the wearable device, but it can still provide some meaningful insights, he says. \u201cOur long-term goal is to have Visible covered by insurers so that members can access it at no cost, though that process takes time.\u201d That\u2019s why Visible has been conducting research to demonstrate the app\u2019s effectiveness, he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For those who don\u2019t want to pay Visible\u2019s subscription fee, but who still want the benefit of using a wearable device, there is a free alternative \u2014 provided that you already own an Apple or Android watch. MindfulPacer is a free app that was developed by two University of Zurich researchers. The app, which was recently released on iOS and will soon be out on Android, includes features that are similar to Visible\u2019s, like heart rate notifications. But the app\u2019s design philosophy and implementation differs from Visible\u2019s in important ways, mainly because it requires users to input quite a bit of data manually, which can be taxing on folks with a chronic illness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When it comes to pacing though, money isn\u2019t the only barrier to entry. The act of pacing itself, even without an app, \u201cis a huge privilege,\u201d Visible user Emerson says. Pacing often means being able to say \u201cno\u201d to things and having people around you who can help when you need to slow down. Many don\u2019t have access to that kind of support, and when it comes to pacing, \u201ca lot of people can\u2019t do it, and [they] are getting worse because they can\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It would be impossible for me to pace without my support system. That has always been clear to me. But could I pace without these wearables? As it turns out, taking a break from my wearables helped me realize how far I\u2019d come over the last few years. Thanks to Whoop and Visible, I had learned to pace effectively \u2014 and even after I took them off, I was able to apply what I\u2019d learned and continue doing it on my own.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That said, after a few months, I did find myself missing some of the more general features that these devices provide, like sleep and activity tracking. I even missed Whoop\u2019s AI coach to a certain degree, since I\u2019d gotten used to it telling me about the outside air quality and pollen count first thing in the morning. I mentioned this to my wife one day and to my great surprise she told me that she missed me wearing them, too. When I wore a fitness tracker, I seemed more aware of my limits, she said. If my trends showed that I was running low on gas, I would immediately alter my day to allow for more rest. Without an activity tracker, she\u2019d noticed that I was more likely to ignore or dismiss my own body\u2019s signals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After that conversation, we decided to fit the cost of a yearly subscription into our budget. And when faced with the choice between Whoop and Visible, the device I opted to return to was Whoop \u2014 to the tune of $297\/year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I didn\u2019t go back to Whoop because I think it\u2019s better than Visible. It\u2019s not. I went back to Whoop because my health has improved to the point where the detailed information Visible can give me is now unnecessary. I pace more loosely now, which means I only need to check the app twice a day: once in the morning for my recovery score and once more at night, for my strain score.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When combined, those two scores give me a pretty good sense of how much rest I need and whether I\u2019m at risk of experiencing a symptom flare. I also stopped avoiding going over a strain score of 10, though I\u2019m not pushing especially hard either. Most days, I just try to do what feels good \u2014 and prioritize rest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Chronic illness or not, I know I\u2019m not alone in that. Everywhere I look these days, I see fitness tracking companies increasingly putting an emphasis on balancing strain with recovery. Apps like Gentle Streak encourage users to avoid overexertion, whereas Garmin is finally giving people credit for napping. Even Apple has taken steps to warn Apple Watch users about the dangers of \u201cexcessive fatigue\u201d by introducing its training load feature.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And frankly, it\u2019s about time. Exercise scientists have been pushing rest for years now, and yet even after the message had reached pro and amateur athletes, the apps that they used to track their workouts would continue to tell them that they should meet the same activity goals day after day, which can be a recipe for injury or illness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Whether we realize it or not, many of us \u2014 disabled or not \u2014 use these apps to tell us when we\u2019ve been pushing too hard. When I spoke with researcher Sarah Homewood she told me that her research shows that people without energy-limiting conditions often use fitness trackers to \u201cvalidate resting.\u201d And though they may not be aware of it, those users are engaging in a form of pacing, she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Of course, there\u2019s an important distinction between what I\u2019ve been doing and what the average Whoop user does. I think of health as a spectrum \u2014 and something that, under stress, can be depleted. But people who don\u2019t have energy-limiting conditions don\u2019t tend to think of health as finite, Homewood says. Rather, they might think of it as an \u201cexponential thing\u201d that can be optimized in an unlimited way. And resting is just part of that optimization; it\u2019s something that can help them live longer, rather than what\u2019s keeping them alive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s a notable difference, but I don\u2019t really care what makes you rest. I just know it\u2019s essential for performance and for life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In December, I decided to tell Whoop\u2019s AI coach that I have a chronic illness. It was another experiment; I don\u2019t usually recommend sharing private medical information with any AI. But in this case, given how I use the app, I\u2019ll admit that the results have been kind of nice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The AI coach seems to be using a slightly softer tone with me in the mornings when it tells me how well I\u2019ve slept. It also regularly checks in with me about my symptoms and my energy levels. I don\u2019t usually respond to these prompts, but on a whim one evening in February, I did. I told the Whoop bot that I was starting to feel some unpleasant symptoms coming on after a busy week at work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It recommended that I lie down in a room with dimmed lights, no screens, and an ice pack on my head \u2014 which is exactly what my spouse would have told me to do if I\u2019d let her know. Clearly, I really do still need those reminders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Arielle](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/03\/268372_Arielle_Tracking_devices_illness_EOrtiz_0035.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400\"\/)
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