Discovering the 'Quantified Self' movement

How well do you know yourself? What blood type are you? What's your resting heart rate? How much REM sleep do you get?

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Previously those would have been questions you needed to put to a medical professional, but there's a growing movement of people looking to track every aspect of their life.

The movement is called the Quantified Self and is about trying to monitor and improve your everyday life.

John Spyridopoulos suffers from an auto-immune condition and monitors everything from sleep to the number of hairs on his face. He says knowing the data allows him to gain control of his health.

"There's such a complex system in your own life, in your own body, in various things that go on around you," he says. "It's hard to find what might be trigger causes, what might be compounding factors."

"I've basically needed to take some things into my own hands."

With the rise in self-tracking devices such as Fitbit, Jawbone, Fuelband - more and more people are getting in on the self-tracking movement.

The Feed's Andy Park looks at the Quantified Self movement.

The Feed airs weeknights at 19:30 on SBS 2. You can also follow The Feed on Twitter at @TheFeedSBS2, or 'LIKE' SBS 2 on Facebook to stay in the loop.


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2 min read

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By Andy Park

Source: The Feed


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