Smartwatches already know more about us than ever — and the clocks go back a day earlier this year
Wearable devices are collecting ever-growing amounts of health data that experts say can sometimes reveal changes in the body before symptoms appear, while in Europe this autumn's clock change will happen a day earlier than in 2025, even though EU rules have not changed.
Smartwatches as a health laboratory on the wrist
Speaking at the LOGIN conference, Povilas Sabaliauskas, co-founder of the company Pulsetto, said he has been tracking his own health data for eight to nine years and has personally undergone more than a thousand different tests. He recalled that around six years ago he brought a detailed set of results, including glucose readings, to a doctor, but the data turned out to be of little practical use because it was unclear how it had been collected or how to interpret it. According to him, the situation has changed significantly in recent years, as wearable devices now let people continuously gather growing amounts of information — he pointed to entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who tracks hundreds of his own biomarkers, as an example of where the field is heading.
Sabaliauskas, together with Vitalijus Majorovas, founded Pulsetto, a device for stimulating the nervous system that now has more than 200,000 customers, he said. Analysing Apple Health data, he noted, already reveals patterns linked to conditions such as panic attacks, tremor, Parkinson's disease or different types of headaches; during the Covid-19 pandemic, certain changes in the data reportedly became visible roughly two days before symptoms appeared.
However, sports medicine doctor Mykolas Butvila cautions that not all smartwatch readings are equally reliable. While total sleep duration is measured fairly well, the breakdown into sleep phases, heart rate variability (HRV), calories burned, stress levels and VO2max are mostly algorithmic estimates rather than direct measurements — two different watches can draw different conclusions from the same data. Blood pressure readings deserve particular caution, the doctor says, since many devices do not measure it directly but calculate it from the pulse wave. At the same time, a watch can serve as an early signal — for instance, by catching an unusually high resting heart rate that a person would not otherwise notice. Butvila advises seeing a doctor if unusual readings recur, differ sharply from a person's normal values, or are accompanied by symptoms such as palpitations, shortness of breath, chest pain or dizziness.
Clocks go back a day earlier than in 2025
Alongside wearables, the seasonal clock change is again in the news. As tv3.lt reports, EU rules — set out in a 2001 directive — state that summer time begins on the last Sunday of March and ends on the last Sunday of October. In 2026 that date falls on 25 October, a day earlier than 2025's 26 October, meaning clocks will be set back a day earlier than last year — though this stems purely from the calendar, not any new EU regulation. On the night of 24–25 October, clocks will move back from 3:00 to 2:00, giving an extra hour of sleep but bringing darker evenings. The European Commission published the summer-time schedule for 2027–2031 on 18 March 2026, keeping the same rule in place.
Debate about scrapping the seasonal time change altogether has continued for years: the European Commission proposed ending it in 2018, and the European Parliament backed the idea in 2019, but no final decision has been made. Lithuania's transport minister, Juras Taminskas, has discussed the issue with his French and Swedish counterparts and earlier this spring contacted ministers in Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Finland and Sweden to push for joint action.
