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Is Your Body Managing Energy Efficiently? Your Device Can Now Tell You with Insulin Resistance Trends

This new insulin resistance trends feature is coming to Pixel Watch 3, 4 and 5 and Google Fitbit Air this autumn!

By: Shamira Sridharan Weaver, Ahmed Metwally

Google’s new Health Guardian feature passively tracks your body’s energy efficiency and serves as an early warning system for your metabolic by estimating insulin resistance trends without a single drop of blood.

The Quick Takeaways

  • No Needles Required: The tool uses passive sensors on your wrist to track monthly shifts in your metabolic wellness, reserving formal lab work for when you’re at the doctor’s office.

  • Actionable Fuel Gauging: Think of it as a personal efficiency meter, giving you a sense of how efficiently your body absorbs energy from food and manages it throughout your activities.

  • Proactive, Not Reactive: By catching insulin resistance trends early, you can tweak your activity, nutrition, sleep and lifestyle.

Why It Matters to You

Over 40% of adults live with quiet, invisible changes in how their bodies process energy. Because you can’t necessarily ‘feel’ insulin resistance, you might not realise that your body is struggling to manage glucose and is putting stress on your body.

Our technology brings those unseen signals into the light, allowing you to fine-tune your energy management with simple daily choices.

The Invisible Insulin Resistance Crisis

In a healthy body, your cells act like eager hosts, quickly opening their doors when insulin knocks to deliver glucose (energy). But when insulin resistance is trending high, those doors stay locked. The body has to knock louder and louder, pumping out more insulin to get the job done. The pancreas, which produces insulin, will work harder to create more insulin to clear the sugar from your blood. You may not feel this quiet struggle, but over time, it overworks your metabolic system, leaves you feeling chronically drained and sets the stage for future hurdles. An exhausted pancreas may stop producing insulin, causing blood sugar levels to rise and potentially leading to diabetes.

But the good news is – insulin resistance trends can be shifted downwards with lifestyle changes!.
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Your Wearable as Your Personal Lab

Checking your metabolism is generally something you do when a medical professional flags something as concerning. This traditional testing is reactive, focusing on identifying problems rather than prevention or optimisation. Google layers on a proactive approach. By turning the sensors already sitting on your wrist into a passive, non-invasive metabolic lab, this new Health Guardian feature empowers you to more effectively track subtle shifts in your metabolism.

Over the course of a month, this new Health Guardian feature promotes awareness via passive tracking, quietly keeping tabs on an orchestra of signals: the rhythm of your heart, the quality of your sleep and your daily movements. By weaving these threads together using our proprietary model, your insulin resistance trends can be estimated without requiring a single drop of blood. You might be wondering how accurate this actually is. Our insulin resistance trend metric has been validated against traditional laboratory results, which typically rely on a fasting blood draw to evaluate levels of both fasting glucose and fasting insulin.

Taking Control of your Insulin Resistance Trends

The goal of this new feature is to help you take control of your wellness, serving as a gentle reminder to pause and check your routines. When this Health Guardian feature detects sustained, elevated insulin resistance trends over the month, it alerts you with a gentle nudge to help you adjust your daily habits and get your metabolism back in its sweet spot.

More information can be found in our peer-reviewed research published in Nature.


Please note: This feature is not intended to diagnose, mitigate, treat or cure any disease. This feature is not a pre-screener for diabetes, nor is it intended to monitor glucose levels in real time. Do not use this feature for diabetes management or rely on this product to alter any medications or insulin levels. Consult a medical professional for any questions about your metabolism.

Insulin resistance trends feature will be available on Pixel Watch 3, 4, 5 and Fitbit Air this autumn.

More information can be found in our peer-reviewed research published in Nature.

Wearables built for you

Get 3 months of Google Health Premium included with Fitbit and Pixel Watch on us (then £7.99 per month) for new and returning eligible users only. Recurring billing. Cancel anytime.1

  • Your Pixel Watch or Fitbit captures every step, every heartbeat, every night of sleep. It all flows into Google Health automatically.
  • Wear it to work, to bed, to the gym. Your wearable tracks your activity around the clock, wherever life takes you.
  • The more your wearable tracks, the clearer the patterns become. See how sleep affects your energy, or how activity shapes your recovery.3

Wearable

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Google Pixel
Watch 5
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Wearable

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Google Pixel
Watch 4
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Air
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News and insights

Recent announcements, findings and highlights from our team

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FAQ

  • Google Health is a wellness service that tracks your fitness, sleep and wellness data through wearables like Fitbit, Pixel Watch and other devices. It includes a digital wellness coach built with Gemini that works as your AI coach, using your metrics to adapt workout plans, optimise your sleep schedule and answer wellness questions specific to you. Developed with wellness experts, your coach gets smarter as it learns your patterns, helping you make progress that actually sticks.2,3
  • The Google Health app brings together your fitness, sleep and wellness data from wearables, apps and medical records to give you a holistic view of your wellbeing in one place. With a Premium membership, you get an AI coach built with Gemini that gives you workout plans that adjust based on how recovered you are, helps you find out how much sleep your body needs and answers questions about nutrition or what your metrics mean.2,3
  • Yes, Google Health is free to download and use. You can track your metrics at no cost. There's also a Premium membership available that unlocks proactive coaching and personalisation across fitness, sleep and wellness.2
  • Yes. Google Health connects with a wide range of wearables, apps and devices for activity and wellness tracking. It works with Fitbit, Pixel Watch and other compatible trackers, syncing data from fitness apps, smart scales, glucose monitors and more. You can even import medical records securely, so all your wellness information lives in one place.
  • Yes. Google Health tracks your menstrual cycle, including predicted periods, fertile windows and symptoms like mood, flow and energy. Your data builds over time, giving you a clearer picture of your cycle and how it connects to your sleep, fitness and daily routines. You can also ask Google Health Coach questions about your cycle wellbeing anytime and get answers based on your personal data.2

  1. Available to users in the United Kingdom, must be 18 years or older. Offer ends 26/05/2027. New and returning users only; one trial per customer and not transferable. Requires valid method of payment and compatible device. Automatically renews for £7.99/month after trial; cancel at any time. Membership cannot be gifted. Return of purchased device results in cancellation of subscription. No refunds for partial billing periods, except as required by applicable law. More details at g.co/fitbit/terms.

  2. Requires Google Health Premium subscription (sold separately), Google wellness app, Wi-Fi and Internet connection. Features subject to change; availability varies. Not intended for medical purposes. Gemini features work independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy; results may vary.

  3. Not intended for medical purposes. Sleep tracking features are not intended to diagnose or treat any medical conditions and should not be relied on for medical purposes. It is intended to provide information that can help you manage your well- being. Consult your care professional before making changes.