Welcome to Optimizer, your go-to weekly newsletter delivered every Friday by Verge’s senior reviewer, Victoria Song. Here, we dive into the latest gadgets and health products that claim life-changing potential. Subscribe to Optimizer for more insights.

Recently, our editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel, excitedly informed me about his new Whoop band, which he acquired through a generous year-long offer from Chase. A few days later, he sent me a screenshot that left me chuckling. The Whoop AI coach suggested ways to boost his testosterone levels, despite them being perfectly healthy. The AI seemed more focused on “performance” optimization. Nilay found the suggestion amusing and gave me the nod to share this quirky tidbit, highlighting its humor to those who know him well.

I had a good laugh, but soon my inbox was flooded with pitches related to Whoop. Curiosity piqued, I searched online and discovered that Whoop had secured a massive $575 million in new funding, with renowned backers like Abbott, Mayo Clinic, and LeBron James. This investment catapulted Whoop’s valuation to $10.1 billion, and CEO Will Ahmed hinted at plans for a public offering. The week culminated with Whoop filing a lawsuit against Bevel, accusing them of replicating their app design.

Whoop seemed to be everywhere. Had anything changed since my last review a year ago? Curious, I retrieved my Whoop MG from a pile of review gadgets. After a week of testing, my opinion remained unchanged: it’s a wearable that can be occasionally frustrating and is primarily suited for athletes.

Over the past year, the landscape of health and wellness technology has evolved dramatically. I’ve discussed many of these shifts in Optimizer. When you trace the roots of emerging trends like AI coaches and biometric analysis, they often lead back to two key players: Whoop and Oura.

The premise of wearable tech is straightforward. Wear the device, track your metrics, and establish a baseline. This allows you to notice when something’s amiss and consult a doctor equipped with detailed data. Such proactive health monitoring could potentially save your life or, at the very least, help you maintain a healthier lifestyle.

It’s an attractive premise, and it has saved lives. But as I wrote in my CGM feature earlier this week, fulfilling this wearable vision is often harder than it seems and can come at a high personal cost. And this wearable promise is starting to shift. Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed a new cycle emerging. Tell people using wearables will help them take control of their health. To do that more effectively, collect even more specific and specialized data. To make sense of this massive amount of data, inject AI into the process. To justify adding AI, hop on wellness trends and frame this as a more personalized way to take control of their health.

From there, the hype cycle evolves. To reinforce the previous feature cycle, reemphasize that wearable tech will not only help people take control of their health, it will help them live longer. To do that effectively, introduce new scores that predict lifespan and aging. To make sense of new scores, update AI bots to dispense generic health advice as a resource. To justify adding AI, remind them that this personalized experience holds the key to living a longer, healthier life.

Rinse and repeat with a new wellness trend.

Engaging in this cycle can help a startup earn a seat at the big kids’ table. Whoop and Oura are two of the most successful examples of this. Both companies initially differentiated themselves from Fitbit, Apple, Samsung, Garmin, and Withings by eschewing simpler fitness tracking and focusing heavily on recovery. Step counts, calories, and activity tracking weren’t the important things. Sleep quality and how much physiological stress you took on? That was the secret sauce. Throwing in relatively unique recovery metrics with sleeker, display-free designs also sweetens the appeal among a niche, but highly influential and aspirational, clientele: professional athletes and movie stars.

But then the bigger players glommed onto the whole recovery schtick. So, both Whoop and Oura pivoted toward more innovative health features. Oura doubled down on detecting early signs of illness and estimating cardiovascular age. Whoop was one of the first wearable companies to add AI coaching in 2023. Then, both companies added partnerships to help people order blood tests and integrate the data into their platforms. Oura partnered with Dexcom to bring glucose data and added a chatbot. Whoop introduced longevity features, such as estimating how fast you’re aging by giving you a Whoop Age. (As I wrote in my MG review, the Whoop Age metric is my villain origin story.)

This isn’t inherently bad. The danger is when this cycle goes unchecked or begins outpacing necessary guardrails. What was once a clear distinction between wellness and medical features has grown increasingly blurry. Adding AI to the mix complicates things further. Then factor in both Oura and Whoop’s popularity with the very people who should be regulating these shifts. Several congressional staffers have been spotted sporting Oura Rings and Whoop bands. The devices have been embraced by the MAHA movement — RFK Jr. asserted that every American ought to be using a wearable device in the next few years. Whoop’s Ahmed met with the Health Secretary in May last year, a few weeks before that wearable proclamation. Oura has also lobbied in Washington for relaxed wearable technology regulation.

Case in point, Whoop received a warning from the FDA for a new blood pressure feature in July, which prompted Oura CEO Tom Hale to pen an op-ed proposing a digital screeners category with less stringent FDA clearance requirements. (Whoop, for the record, opposes that idea.) The FDA hasn’t fully agreed yet, but it did introduce updated wearable guidelines earlier this year. Not that long ago, Samsung cited those updated guidelines as a reason why its latest blood pressure feature didn’t need FDA clearance.

I’m naming this wearable hype cycle precisely because its ripple effects are starting to concern me. Explicitly, Whoop’s recommendation for Nilay made me think of the many influencers who have come to peddle testosteronemaxxing on social media. (“Low T” is another so-called health crisis on RFK Jr’s mind.) How many of them started supplementing testosterone because of their wearable journeys? How many ordinary people have received similar advice — and what paths did this encourage them to seek? And it’s not just testosterone. You could apply this to dozens of other health trends, like proteinmaxxing, nutrition, and perhaps even peptides.

It reminded me of the several outlandish recommendations that “innovative” wearable features have given me. I’ve been told to eat obscene amounts of protein by AI strength training features. I’ve been given training regimens that have caused repeated injuries. For all my wearables know about me, they don’t always understand what’s truly best for me. How can they?

As I wrote in my CGM feature, I’ve spent several months trying to address my metabolic issues. That’s been an ongoing, mentally challenging process. It requires a whole new set of medications, the side effects of which have made it difficult for me to work out for the past six weeks.

What have my Whoop band and Oura Ring said about that? Well, my cardiovascular age went from being seven years younger to two years. My Whoop Age says I’m five years older. My various smartwatches keep yelling that my VO2 Max is dropping. I know this is temporary — but trying to keep up with all the wellness trends and innovations baked into these platforms is something I cannot do. Alas, I am human.

That particular wisdom was hard-earned. Putting myself into the shoes of the average person? I’m starting to understand why wellness grifters have such a hold, why doctors are reporting an increase in public mistrust for evidence-based treatments, and how movements like MAHA gain traction. That, too, is its own cycle.

The healthcare system sucks and we can’t trust medical elites. Wellness grifters step in and recommend wearable tech and dubious supplements to fill the gaps. More and more people glom onto the trends. Seeking relevance and differentiation, wearable makers hop on these trends. And thus, we end up with people distrusting vaccines, injecting various peptides, and readily agreeing to hand over their blood, sweat, and urine to health tech companies.

None of this is Whoop or Oura’s fault. They’re just one, very influential part of the equation.