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Google rolling out blood pressure & insulin resistance, more on Pixel Watch 3, 4, 5

As previewed during last month’s Pixel Watch 5 launch, Google is now starting to roll out blood pressure trends, insulin resistance trends, and sleep breathing quality metrics.

Health Guardian is Google’s overarching brand for the Pixel Watch’s suite of “proactive health and safety tools.” It includes Breathing Emergency Detection, which is available in Europe on the Pixel Watch 4 and 5.

The blood pressure trends feature works by passively measuring your pulse and motion patterns over the course of a month. It’s intended to let you detect “persistent higher cardiovascular trends early.” This works without a cuff or manual calibration, and was trained using billions of minutes of raw heart and movement data. You need “at least 5 consecutive days in a week” of data.

Insulin resistance trends analyze multi-week physiological data to track shifts in metabolic health without requiring a blood draw. Insulin resistance impacts how your body absorbs energy from food, with Google needing a minimum of 7 days of data in a month. The feature uses Google’s largest sensor foundational model. It was pre-trained using over 1 trillion minutes of data from 5 million opted-in users.

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Both sets of trend insights will appear in the Google Health app on the first day of each month.

Meanwhile, sleep breathing quality metrics will track overnight breathing changes. In the morning, you’ll see how much time was spent optimally breathing, while a monthly report identifies longer-term patterns.

Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5 users will be able to set up these three features in the Google Health app starting this week. Access is free on those three devices, with the first trend reports coming in early October.

If you’re a Google Health Premium subscriber, these three features are also coming to the Fitbit Air “later this year.”

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com