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A little more than five years ago, in the early hours of my birthday, no less, I woke up to what I thought was that intense and prolonged alert that the Apple Watch gives you when it\u2019s about to go dead.<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t it.<\/p>\n
My brush with the ECG alert<\/p>\n
Apple Watch was actually informing me it had picked up signs of an irregular heart rhythm suggestive of atrial fibrillation. Idiot that I am, I went back to sleep. Unsurprisingly, that didn\u2019t fix it. About 40 minutes later, I gave in and decided to go to the hospital.<\/p>\n
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Upon arriving at the hospital and past triage, I told a very skeptical doctor that my watch had picked up signs of atrial fibrillation. He hooked me up to the big ECG machine whose miniaturized version had already diagnosed me from my wrist, and confirmed it: \u201cHoly crap, you really are in AFib\u201d.<\/p>\n
The weird thing is that much like what happened to many accidental AFib discoveries<\/a> I had read about since Apple Watch Series 4 came out with the ECG feature, I didn\u2019t feel sick or otherwise weird at all.<\/p>\n Looking at the ECG, it was obvious that something was wrong. But it didn\u2019t feel<\/strong> wrong, unless I really tried to notice it. I had felt what doctors call extrasystoles in the past, which are temporary missteps of the heart rhythm, but that was different.<\/p>\n In the end, I\u2019m still not sure if I would have safely found out about my AFib if I hadn\u2019t been an Apple Watch user\u2014or any smartwatch with such a feature, for that matter. I\u2019m glad I did, though, as an irregular heart rhythm can cause blood to clot inside the heart. And you really<\/strong> don\u2019t want that clot traveling to your brain or your lungs.<\/p>\n Five years later, everything is fine. I took antiarrhythmic medication for a while, and I\u2019ve been keeping up with cardiologists and regular exams. I also started working out and exercising beyond just recreationally closing my rings, which has actually turned out to be fun.<\/p>\n Much like with Zac Hall and his half-marathon journey<\/a>, exercising has become a part of who I am, and this whole thing introduced me to great apps like SmartGym<\/a> and Gentler Streak<\/a>. To this day, I still get startled when the Apple Watch warns me that its battery is low, and that it\u2019s about to die. And every time I chuckle to myself and think, \u201cHey, better you than me, buddy.\u201d<\/p>\n Have you or someone you know ever received an alert like this on an Apple Watch? Let us know in the comments!<\/p>\n