Hydration Sensor May Be Coming to Future Apple Watches | How It Works

The Apple Watch has become increasingly popular due to how it’s helped thousands of owners with their physical health. Thanks to every sensor and feature the Apple Watch comes with, many people have lost weight and maintained healthier habits overall – some people have even claimed that the Apple Watch has saved their lives.

It’s hard to believe that Apple might be able to add even more new ways to track your health, but it seems the company is working on just that right now. And no, we’re not talking about the rumored blood sugar sensor.

According to Patently Apple, the U.S Patent and Trademark Office has granted Apple a new hydration-tracking patent. This would help people track their hydration levels with just their Apple Watch and band.

Currently, the usual ways to track hydration can be invasive and not very practical since they require a person to give bodily samples, such as urine, blood, or sweat.

Your fluid would then be tested by seeing its reaction to different chemicals. Since this technique might be unreliable, Apple proposed a different way to track your hydration just with your Apple watch and electrodes.

Just like the Apple Watch manages to track your blood oxygen levels, a sensor would send one or more electrodes to your wrist to see how it responds to perspiration.

Once the electrodes are in contact with the sweat on your wrist, they can be operated to measure the concentration of electrolytes in your body.

• If you have a high concentration of electrolytes in your sweat, that means your hydration levels are low.
• On the other hand, if you have a low concentration of electrolytes, that means you have a higher level of hydration.

Even though this is just a patent—meaning that we don’t know if or when Apple might start working on this sensor—it is a health feature most users would like, as keeping track of hydration can help people drink more water and track it from their Apple Watches, but it would also help people prevent health issues such as heat strokes when they aren’t hydrated and hyponatremia when they’re over hydrated.

With that said, don’t expect this sensor to be coming any time soon. According to numerous rumors, the upcoming Apple Watch Series 7 won’t have many new health features or sensors.

Additionally, the other upcoming sensor Apple is working on, at least according to rumors, is a glucose sensor that’ll help you keep track of sugar levels in your blood. We don’t know exactly when that will come out, but we expect to see it next year.