Your Smartwatch Can't Actually Track Glucose Levels

Key Takeaways

• The FDA is cracking down on devices like smartwatches and smart rings that claim to monitor glucose levels noninvasively.
• Only a continuous glucose monitor can do this accurately.
• While some smart devices may pair with your continuous glucose monitor, none are currently FDA-approved to monitor glucose on their own.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning late this week to advise consumers, caregivers, and health professionals about the risks of using smartwatches and smart rings to monitor glucose levels. 

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Accurate glucose monitoring is essential for people living with diabetes.

“Sellers of these smartwatches and smart rings claim their devices measure blood glucose levels without requiring people to prick their finger or pierce the skin. They claim to use non-invasive techniques,” the FDA said in a statement. “These smartwatches and smart rings do not directly test blood glucose levels.”

The devices are manufactured by dozens of companies and sold under multiple brand names. The FDA did not call out any specific brands.

“Regular blood sugar monitoring is the most important thing you can do to manage type 1 or type 2 diabetes, regardless of whether you take medication for diabetes, one dose of insulin or many doses of insulin each day,” Rozalina Mccoy, MD, associate division chief for Clinical Research, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Nutrition at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told Verywell. “Using a device that is not accurate can be life-threatening.”

The unauthorized devices may appear to offer the functionality of a continuous glucose monitor, so it’s important to understand what a continuous glucose monitor actually is.

Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) have gained popularity thanks to their ease of use and real-time monitoring, largely surpassing finger-prick blood tests as the most common way to check glucose levels. While they’re more convenient than a finger prick, they’re not totally non-invasive like the smartwatches and rings claim to be. CGMs rely on a sensor that is inserted into an arm or stomach with a small needle.

“Having the ability to constantly and immediately know glucose levels is important to stay within range,” Willa Hsueh, MD, director of the Diabetes and Metabolism Research Center at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, told Verywell. “Knowledge of glucose empowers patients to play a key role in their diabetes control.”

The first continuous glucose monitor, made by Medtronic MiniMed, debuted in 1999. It required calibration with a finger prick and was intended for use in a doctor’s office. By 2006, DexCom introduced its first real-time continuous glucose monitor for individual use.

CGMs measure glucose between cells in the body, displaying glucose levels on a small device or a phone app. CGM devices can cost several hundreds of dollars to purchase, plus $100 or more per month for supplies like disposable sensors. Many health insurers cover costs, supplies may require copays.

Some of the unapproved devices are available online for as little as $40 for a one-time purchase. 

The FDA didn’t explain why it is issuing an advisory now, when the fraudulent devices have been on the market for years.

“We are all hoping for noninvasive devices that are accurate and reliable, but so, far none of the devices submitted to the FDA for review have been approved,” Mccoy said.

Some smart wearables do allow you to integrate your continuous glucose monitor in order to consolidate your health data, like the Oura ring. But the ring itself cannot monitor your glucose levels.

“[Smartwatches and smart rings] are different than smartwatch applications that display data from FDA-authorized blood glucose measuring devices that pierce the skin, like continuous glucose monitoring devices (CGMs),” said the FDA. “The FDA has not authorized, cleared, or approved any smartwatch or smart ring that is intended to measure or estimate blood glucose values on its own.”

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The FDA says it is working to put a stop to the illegal marketing of any unauthorized products that claim to measure blood glucose levels.

“We applaud the FDA for bringing this issue to the public and look forward to a day when such non-invasive ways of measuring blood glucose become available,” Robert Gabbay, MD, PhD, chief medical and scientific officer of the American Diabetes Association, told Verywell in an email. “Inaccurate measures for blood glucose can have a potentially devastating impact on people with diabetes. Many use these values to decide on treatment, including insulin, and we know that using an inappropriate amount of insulin can lead to hypoglycemia that can lead to serious consequences, including coma and death.”

What This Means For You

Inaccurate blood glucose measurements can lead to errors in diabetes management, including taking the wrong dose of insulin or other medications.

If you think you’ve had a problem with inaccurate blood glucose measurement or have experienced any adverse events from using an unauthorized smartwatch or smart ring, the FDA encourages you to report the problem through the MedWatch Voluntary Reporting Form.

In a warning posted to its website Wednesday, the US Food and Drug Administration reminded consumers that there's no FDA-cleared smartwatch or ring that can measure your blood glucose levels. 

It also said to avoid any wearable that claims it can, and report it if you've used one. For people with diabetes who rely on accurate blood glucose measurements, false glucose information can have dangerous consequences, such as leading someone to take the wrong dose of insulin. 

The FDA didn't name any specific companies marketing their products as being able to accurately measure glucose, which is also called blood sugar. Instead, the FDA called attention to devices that claim to track blood glucose non-invasively, which may be "manufactured by dozens of companies and sold under multiple brand names."

The agency was careful to distinguish smartwatches or smartrings from glucose-tracking products that "pierce the skin," which would include the sensors and continuous glucose monitoring devices that people with diabetes have been using for years to manage their blood sugar. Recently, this biosensor technology has started to move into mainstream wellness tracking, but still with regulatory clearance for specific uses or marketing. 

No major smartwatch manufacturers -- including the likes of Apple, Garmin, Google and Samsung -- claim to be able to measure blood glucose from your wrist. There have been some reports that Apple is working on a non-invasive way to get blood glucose information directly from its smartwatch, as well as rumors about Samsung, but this feature hasn't yet seen the light of day (or your wrist with FDA clearance). 

Why did the FDA issue the warning? 

In addition to approving drugs and medications, the FDA regulates and monitors a swath of consumer products and technologies that people use for health or wellness purposes. When it comes to consumer technology like smartwatches, the FDA clears companies to sell their products with specific purposes or under certain claims. (FDA approval for medical devices or purposes is a completely different thing, which is why it's important to take any health data that you get from consumer tech with a grain of salt.)

In its post this week, which didn't name any specific products, the FDA said it became aware of some "unauthorized products" being marketed to people. 

"The agency is working to ensure that manufacturers, distributors and sellers do not illegally market unauthorized smartwatches or smart rings that claim to measure blood glucose levels," the regulatory agency said. It added that it will "keep the public informed" if new information becomes available. 

Read more: What to Expect From Smartwatches in 2024: More AI, Health Features and More 

Why is blood glucose monitoring on smartwatches a big deal?

Interest around blood glucose tracking in smartwatches has increased because it's one of the last health metrics left out of the wellness profile you can get from an everyday device. From your wrist alone, you can find out your heart rate, how active you were today and even how well you slept, but information about blood sugar has (so far) been limited to devices that can get under your skin. 

Oura has a partnership with some glucose monitoring apps, which glucose trackers can use to paint a fuller picture about how their blood sugar may be connected to other health data. But the ring itself does not take blood glucose information.

We don't know when, or if, blood glucose tracking will become available in consumer smartwatches, smart rings or any other device that could measure blood glucose from above your skin. Reports about it are just that: reports. 

Even if glucose monitoring does become available on a smartwatch, the way it would be marketed and used is another question. There's a difference between blood sugar tracking for people who rely on it for diabetes management, for example, and those who are interested in it for general wellness purposes. (There's less evidence for how useful it is for the latter.)

Taking a broader wellness look, interest in blood glucose levels may reflect a growing understanding of how certain behaviors -- like what we eat and how we sleep -- affect the way our body uses energy, which also affects how we feel. More research on the usefulness of glucose tracking in people who don't have diabetes is needed, but future technology could potentially provide insights to people who wouldn't otherwise have it. 

More than one in three American adults have prediabetes, for example, a reversible condition where blood sugar levels are higher than normal. If unmanaged, prediabetes may turn into type 2 diabetes and raise the risk other health conditions. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 80% of people don't know they have it.

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