Apple Watch helped Whole Foods founder give up drinking: ‘It changed my life’ – 9to5Mac

Apple Watch users regularly report that the device has helped save their lives during health scares and emergencies. However, for the founder of Whole Foods, it was the knowledge gained from the Apple Watch that helped him improve his life.

Business Insider reported this week that Whole Foods founder John McKee decided to quit drinking three years ago, thanks in part to data collected by his Apple Watch.

“I wish I had quit drinking 30 years ago,” McKee said. “That’s 30 years of good health that I missed out on.”

Mackey said the Apple Watch contributed to his decision to cut alcohol out of his life for good.

“I tracked my sleep, and some days I slept poorly, and some days I slept well,” he recalls. “So I started wondering, ‘Well, what did I do differently when I wasn’t sleeping well?'”

By tracking sleep using Apple Watch and reflecting on his habits, Mackey concluded that more exercise and fewer large meals before bed meant better sleep. But the biggest finding, according to the Apple Watch, was the lack of deep sleep.

McKee also shared his experiences in an interview with the PLANTSTRONG podcast last year. McKee named AutoSleep as the app he used to track his sleep. In his own words:

“This [Apple Watch] changed my life. It got me off alcohol over two years ago.” […] “Well, I have the AutoSleep app on my Apple Watch and it tracks my sleep.

I sleep with the watch and charge it in the morning when I get up.

And I’ve learned a lot from it because it tells me not only how long I sleep, but also the quality of my sleep and how deep my sleep is. And I began to notice that every time I drank at least one beer or one glass of wine, my deep sleep dropped to zero. I didn’t have deep sleep and my overall sleep was reduced by about an hour.

And I did a lot of experiments because I really liked alcohol and I didn’t want to give it up. But the facts were so clear. Every time I drank, there was no deep sleep. And then I started to realize, wow, maybe I should just stop drinking.

And then the question arose: do I want to sleep well or do I want to drink? And the answer for more than two years was: I would rather sleep peacefully. But I accept the possibility that there will come a time when I want to drink, but so far this has not affected me.

Better sleep equals a better life, and for the Whole Foods founder, tracking sleep using Apple Watch revealed a key insight that undoubtedly provided answers to how to improve it.

Sleep tracking is now a built-in feature of the Apple Watch. Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 can also detect signs of sleep apnea.