⚡ 31MAY2026: The Health Tech One

Happy Sunday everyone!

After coming off of several months of inactivity due to an injury (embarrassing martial arts fail), I'm slowly rebuilding and have been leaning heavily on tech and apps to help me make more informed decisions about my diet and exercise plans. So for this issue, I thought I'd share some of the health tech I've been playing with lately or that I'm eager to check out. We'll be back to our usual format next week. Enjoy!

Note that some of the links in this issue of the Hiro Report are affiliate links and may earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you.

My Current Core Health Tech / Gear / App Stack:

💍 Oura Ring 5 - Oura just announced the 5th generation of their smart ring, which is now 40% slimmer than previous models while still claiming an impressive 6-9 days of battery life. They have also added high blood pressure detection to their list of "Symptom Radar" alerts, where they can use your health data to warn you of chronic and acute health issues. I've been using my Oura Ring Gen 3 for a few years now and have been very happy with it. I've found it to give me generally more accurate results for sleep and recovery data than the Apple Watch, and it frees me up to be able to wear my analog watches and still get all my nerdy health data collected. I still dream of Apple making a similar offering, perhaps to pair with some smart glasses at some point.

⌚ Apple Watch Ultra 3 - While I love the Oura Ring for everyday use, nothing beats the Apple Watch Ultra for me when out on hiking/running trails and in the weight room. The big display is perfect for quickly glancing at pace, cadence, and heart rate data while running, and I appreciate the first-class integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystem. While the ~2-day battery life is a big improvement from earlier Apple Watch models, I do wish we could triple or quadruple that in time.

📈 Bevel for iOS - This app has really become the main hub of my health and wellness ecosystem. It aggregates data from Apple Watch (and Apple Health) and the Oura Ring to give me actionable insights into my health, fitness, nutrition, and recovery. It's been a valuable analytics tool for the last year or so that I've been using it, but the recent 3.0 update that added AI integration with memory has been a massive improvement. I can now ask questions and get informed feedback on my health data and workouts. I'm now doing multiple check-ins a day, asking questions like "Did I push myself hard enough on that workout?" or "Have I gotten enough potassium given how hard that workout was?" and "What should I snack on this afternoon?" etc.

👟 Avelo Running Shoes - I've long loved running, but have often felt like that love was not reciprocated. Every time I get into a decent running routine, I wind up wrecking my knees and having to stop for months/years to recover. The team at Avelo (which consists of ex-Nike and Garmin employees and a bunch of PhDs) have made some pretty amazing smart running shoes that give you real-time running insights and long-term trend analysis to help you spot and correct issues that can lead to injuries. I've been using data on my cadence, pronation, foot strike patterns, and more to dramatically improve my technique in just a few months, and I'm already running faster than I have in a decade. Love these things.

🧢 Alter Ego Running Hats - I wrote about these hats recently; they're waterproof / sweat proof, ventilated for good airflow, and come in a number of different profiles depending on the type of hat you like. I find them to be super comfy, and perfect for running in the hot summer weather without getting gross sweat stains and residual odor. I just throw it on, run, give it a quick rinse in the sink after my run, and within a few hours it's dry and ready for me to wear while I play in the backyard with the kids. (The above link is for Amazon for ease, but you can find a better selection at the Alter Ego website.)

👕 Rhone Atmosphere T-Shirt - These are easily the softest t-shirts I own and also ridiculously fast drying, all without looking like a plasticky workout shirt. I've had to buy a couple of them so I wouldn't have to keep debating whether to wear them for my workouts or for lounging after work.

⚖️ Withings Body Comp Scale - While weight is arguably not the most useful metric for health, I do like to keep track of trend lines AND I am interested in tracking my ratios of body fat to lean mass. I've tried a ton of different "smart" scales over the years and I keep coming back to Withings. The weight and body composition data is consistent enough to find trends over time, and the effortless WiFi connection lets the scale upload my data to Apple Health every night so it's backed up and accessible to all my various health apps.

Other apps I've been playing with or want to experiment more with:

🏃‍♀️ Whistle AI Workout Planner for iOS - I've been using this app off and on since launch and just yesterday they launched a massive update that levels up AI integration with your existing health data so that you can have the AI coach build everything from a custom one-off workout to an entire regimen centered around your current stats, goals, equipment, and needs.

🗒 Shape for WatchOS - This clever app lets you input a natural language description of your workout and it turns it into a custom workout in the Apple Watch Workouts app for you (or Garmin, Wahoo, or Strava). This way you can copy a workout plan from Bevel or Whistle like "Next Tuesday: 5 minute warm up, 4 x 3 minutes at max speed with 2 minutes cool down, and 5 minute cool down" and Shape will set that up as a custom workout with all the intervals all set for you, and program it to load on Tuesday so when you open the Workouts app on your watch on Tuesday you can just hit start and go. Best of all, the app gives you an MCP server and REST API so Claude / ChatGPT / etc. can read and write workouts for you and have them synced to your watch.

🩸 Kasane Life for iOS - This app is still in private beta, but is a cool concept. I've admittedly not gotten to put it to full use yet, but I'd like to spend more time with it. In short, it uses private on-device AI to analyze your health data (to include any medical records or blood labs you share with it) to help you come up with 3 actionable habits you can adopt to improve your health. You then track your progress on completing them and how it impacts your health scores as you adopt the habits over time.

📊 Weighback for iOS - This is a clever little indie iOS app that shows you your weight progress over time, and shows you when you last weighed your current weight, and how long it's been since you last weighed whatever milestone goals you've set, how far you've come from your peak weight, etc. As I mentioned above, I'm less interested in weight than muscle mass vs. body fat, but it's still fun to take a look at the data from time to time.

🔍 FoodNoms for iOS - I've written about FoodNoms several times— it remains my favorite way to log food and look up nutrition info on iOS. It's indie made, very Apple-native, and totally private. Lately, I've been using Bevel's built-in nutrition tracking tools more just to keep more stuff in one app, but FoodNoms reigns supreme if all you want is to track macros quickly and easily.

That's it for this week. May you be healthy, happy, and at peace.