Time to watch your health: Five of the best health-tracking features available on smartwatches

Smartwatches are great for tracking your walking steps, getting messaging alerts on your wrist, listening to music and podcasts, and even telling you the time.

They’ve come a long way in the past decade, with sleeker, lightweight designs, wireless charging, and support for mobile connectivity, so you can leave your smartphone at home.

Fitbit kicked off the exercise tracking craze, which has now extended to sophisticated workout planning, and watches can plot your jogging course on the watch screen via GPS to keep you on track.

But the sensor technology going into smartwatches has also advanced greatly, allowing you to monitor your vital signs in a way that previously was only possible with a trip to the doctor’s clinic.

Here are five smartwatch health-tracking features that are increasingly common and can help you identify any health conditions or just keep in shape.

The humble heart-rate monitor is the original health-tracking feature of smartwatches. It takes your pulse, using LED flashes of light to detect the blood flow beneath your skin. The watch sensor measures light reflected off your blood and software then calculates your heart rate.

What’s it useful for? Many people use the heart-rate monitor on their smartwatch to gauge whether they are reaching the right rate of intensity while working out. Most smartwatches display a 24-hour graph, allowing you to spot any major spikes in your heart rate, which may indicate a problem. It’s ultimately a useful tool to keep an eye on your stress levels – if your heart rate is spiking regularly during the day while you are at work, it could be a sign that you are stressing out too much.

Available on most smartwatch models.