Why Your Biomarkers and Biometrics Need to Talk to Each Other ?

What’s Really Going On Inside Your Body ?

To truly understand health, we need to look at two kinds of data: biomarkers and biometrics. Biomarkers are signals from blood or tissue tests that reveal hidden biochemical changes, such as inflammation, insulin resistance, or cholesterol levels. They tell us what is happening deep inside at a molecular level.

Biometrics are real-time physiological measurements from wearables, like heart rate variability, sleep quality, and activity. These show how the body responds moment by moment to stress, rest, and exercise.

Biomarkers explain the “why” beneath the surface, while biometrics show “how” the body reacts. Together, they offer a fuller picture of health. Neither tells the whole story alone.

What I’ve Learnt Studying Chronic Diseases

As a researcher at Department of Nephrology, IISc Bangalore, I have seen how chronic diseases develop silently over months or years without symptoms. This slow progression makes early detection quite difficult, as subtle changes can easily go unnoticed.

Wearables capture snapshots of physiological responses, but miss the slow biochemical shifts damaging organs. By the time biometric changes, such as dips in heart rate variability are detected, significant damage may already have started.

Blood biomarkers can reveal these hidden changes months before symptoms or wearable signals appear. For example, a study by Rodríguez-Colón et al. (2010) found that people with higher insulin resistance, even though they weren’t, diabetic had lower heart rate variability and slightly higher heart rates. This means their heart rhythms were already showing early signs of imbalance. It suggests that insulin resistance can quietly affect how the heart is regulated long before diabetes develops, showing why it’s so important to look beneath what wearables show to what’s actually changing inside

What Wearables Reveal and What They Don’t

Wearables show how the body reacts to daily life but can’t explain why.

For instance, your smartwatch might show a sudden dip in heart rate variability after a stressful work week or a few nights of poor sleep. But that drop could also appear if your body is quietly fighting inflammation, which you wouldn’t notice without a blood test.

Physiological signals also fluctuate naturally due to caffeine, activity, or mood, so interpreting wearable data carefully is key to avoiding unnecessary worry.

The Power of Combining Both

Biomarkers reveal the hidden biochemical shifts inside the body, while biometrics capture how the body reacts in real time. Together, they create a bridge between immediate responses and long-term risks, unlocking earlier, more precise prevention.

A study by Svensson et al. (2016) found that people with lower heart rate variability (HRV) tended to have higher insulin resistance, a condition where the body doesn’t use insulin well and can lead to type 2 diabetes. They measured HRV in everyday life using 24-hour ECG recordings and found the association held even when accounting for age, body weight, and fitness. This supports the idea that monitoring biometrics like HRV can give early warning signs of metabolic health risks long before symptoms appear.

Imagine noticing your morning HRV trend dipping gradually over several weeks on your wearable, while your blood tests show a slow rise in insulin levels. That combination can signal early metabolic stress, giving you a chance to make small lifestyle changes like improving sleep, diet, or activity before those shifts progress toward diabetes.

One test or one day’s data isn’t enough. Long-term monitoring transforms raw data into meaningful health insights, helping us act before problems become visible. In fact, we have been fiddling around with this idea at Biopass - combining lab tests with wearable data; to understand the body on a much deeper level. We are essentially building a 'bridge' between the 2 data streams to better explain changes inside the body.

by Nakshatraa Pingale, Researcher at the Department of Nephrology, IISc Bengaluru