What Your Wearable Device Is Really Telling You About Your Autoimmune Health
Alissa Klein, MS, CHHC
Jul 22, 2026
For most people, a wearable device is a way to count steps and check sleep time. I get it, as that’s how many of my coaching patients come to me thinking about it, too. It’s also how I used to think about it in the early days of doing the same tracking myself.
But when you’re living with an autoimmune condition, the data these devices generate is so much more than a number on a screen. It’s a window into what’s actually happening inside your body, sometimes before you can feel it yourself.
My Own Healing Journey
In my early 20s, I was diagnosed with what my doctors described as a circulatory condition. The guidance was simple: keep your hands and feet warm in the cold months, and you’ll be fine. So I went about my life for the next decade thinking that was all there was to it.
But my body was telling a different story. I started developing carpal tunnel syndrome. My joints were stiffening. I was spraining my arms and legs far more easily than any 20-something should. These weren’t random, unrelated symptoms; they were signals. I just didn’t have the language or the framework yet to understand what they were saying.
It wasn’t until my late 20s that I finally received additional autoimmune diagnoses. And with those diagnoses came a reckoning: I had been living with autoimmunity for years without knowing it.
What followed was essentially a second full-time job. I read everything I could find. I watched videos. I studied the science. I found an integrative physician who began pointing me in the right direction… and then she moved, and I was on my own again. Eventually, I came across the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) and Dr. Isabella Wentz’s Hashimoto’s Protocol. Something clicked. These weren’t just dietary recommendations; they were a framework for understanding that everything in the body is connected.
So I picked a day, and I changed everything. My nutrition. My sleep. The way I let stress show up in my body. The way I moved. Within a couple of weeks, symptoms that had been nearly debilitating began to subside. After three months, my autoimmune antibodies had dropped by 50%. I remember saying to my husband: This can’t be kept a secret.
That realization is what led me to health coaching, to becoming an AIP Certified Coach, and ultimately to AndHealth, where I now support patients with chronic autoimmune conditions as part of an integrative care team alongside rheumatologists, dermatologists, neurologists, and clinical pharmacists.
Learn more or schedule a visitWhy Wearable Devices Matter for Autoimmunity
When I talk about wearable technology with my patients, I’m not talking about gamifying your step count or chasing a perfect sleep score. I’m talking about using data to understand the interplay of lifestyle factors on your body, and how that interplay connects to your immune system.
Think of it this way: most of us can’t look inside our bodies and see what’s happening. We feel okay until we don’t. A flare feels like it comes out of nowhere. Fatigue sets in and we chalk it up to a bad night’s sleep. But the data doesn’t lie, and often, it’s been whispering warnings long before our symptoms get loud.
At AndHealth, we use Oura Rings with our patients specifically because of the depth of insight they provide. (I have no affiliation or sponsorship with Oura or any wearable company; it’s simply the device we’ve found most useful for our patients.) We’re looking at three metrics in particular:
- Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a measure of the variation in time between your heartbeats, and it’s one of the most powerful indicators of how your autonomic nervous system is functioning. Higher HRV is generally associated with good recovery and resilience. Lower HRV often signals that your body is in fight-or-flight mode, either from over-training, an oncoming illness, or chronic stress. HRV is deeply personal. Your genetics, age, hormone cycles, and mental-emotional state all influence it. But it’s also responsive to lifestyle choices you can control: sleep quality, stress management, nutrition, and environment.
- Body Temperature rises from your personal baseline when your body is being challenged. Because so many daytime factors can affect temperature, we look at nighttime readings for the clearest picture. A spike in nighttime body temperature, especially when paired with other changes, is an important signal.
- Resting Heart Rate reflects your cardiovascular recovery and fitness over time. In the short term, it’s also sensitive to stress, eating patterns, and exercise load.
When all three shift at once, that combination can indicate an autoimmune flare is approaching. Sometimes this happens days before the patient is even aware something is off.
The Patient Flare I Caught Before It Escalated
A couple of years ago, I was reviewing a patient’s data as part of my routine check-ins. Her HRV had dropped dramatically. Think of a roller coaster cresting a hill and going straight down. Her body temperature had risen by more than a degree. And her resting heart rate was climbing.
I reached out. Hey, your data is showing some changes, are you doing okay?
She wasn’t. She was starting to feel unwell. We got her in to see her specialist quickly. Her provider confirmed she was entering a flare, and we were able to adjust her care plan before it progressed further.
That’s the power of this approach. Not just tracking data, but interpreting it in the context of a person’s life, and acting on it in real time.
Learn more or schedule a visitHow We Actually Use This Data With AndHealth Patients
A few principles I’ve learned from working at the intersection of lifestyle coaching and wearable technology:
- Trends matter more than individual data points. One low HRV night might just mean you ate late or had a stressful afternoon. But a week of declining HRV, rising temperature, and a faster resting heart rate? That’s a story worth paying attention to. We look for patterns over time, because it’s the compounding of lifestyle factors, not any single event, that most affects autoimmune health.
- Don’t become hyperfixated on scores. I see this with some patients; they start competing with themselves, trying to hit personal bests in sleep scores or readiness scores. But that actually misses the point. The scores are a snapshot, a guideline. The real opportunity lies in what’s underneath them.
- Tag everything. One of the most useful features in wearable apps is the ability to tag events such as an acupuncture appointment, a new medication, a high-intensity workout instead of your usual yoga, a late dinner, a stressful meeting. When we go back to analyze trends, those tags help us connect the dots. Maybe every time you eat after 8 pm, your HRV drops significantly the next morning. That’s actionable information.
- Don’t overlook mental and emotional health. Most wearables don’t account for emotional well-being, but we know that chronic stress is one of the most significant drivers of autoimmune activity. I’ve had patients whose data consistently showed a stressed, engaged state even when they didn’t feel stressed. They were just busy. Moving from one thing to the next to the next. The data revealed what their nervous system was experiencing, even when their conscious mind had adapted to it.
A Note on the “Why”
Autoimmunity is like an onion. Every time you think you understand it, there’s another layer. When I was first diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, I could have stopped there. But I kept asking why. Why is this happening? What’s driving it? And each “why” led me deeper: to root causes, to interconnections, to a more complete picture of my own body.
Wearable data is one tool that helps both me and my patients keep asking why. It doesn’t replace clinical care. It doesn’t replace the expertise of a specialist, or the guidance of a personalized care plan. But it adds a layer of self-knowledge that’s genuinely hard to access any other way.
If you’re living with an autoimmune condition and you’ve been curious about wearable technology, my encouragement is this: don’t think of it as a fitness tracker. Think of it as a translator, helping you understand a language your body has been speaking all along.
And if you want support making sense of what you’re hearing, that’s exactly what we’re here for at AndHealth. You can learn more about our integrative approach to specialty care at andhealth.com.
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Tracking your health is one part of AndHealth’s whole person care. We also give our patients living with autoimmune conditions access to a full care team that includes a specialist, clinical pharmacist, health coach and patient care navigator. AndHealth is accepting new patients in Ohio and Indiana, with appointments available soon.
We’re in-network with Medicaid, Medicare, TRICARE, and most commercial health plans. For patients without insurance at this time, we can help you access care.
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About the Author
Alissa Klein, MS, CHHC, is a Certified Health Coach, AIP Certified Coach, and National Board Certified Health Coach at AndHealth.
She specializes in supporting people living with chronic conditions through health coaching as part of a coordinated care team.
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