Apple is donating 1,000 Apple Watches to a study conducted by The University of North Carolina’s medical school which aims to track biological changes in people with eating disorders.

The new study is called BEGIN (AKA Binge Eating Genetics Initiative), and the goal is to better understand overeating disorders. The study will engage 1,000 participants of ages 18 or older who have experience with either binge eating disorder or bulimia nervosa.

Each participant will get a free Apple Watch which will collect data that the researchers will use to monitor their heart rate to see if there are any spikes prior to binge eating episodes.

Participants will receive tests to analyze their genetics and bodily bacteria and also have access to a mobile app called Recovery Record, which they can use to log their thoughts and feelings, which would be shared with a healthcare professional.

From the Sauce, Cynthia Bulik, founding director of the Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders and author of Binge Control: A Compact Recovery Guide:

“We need to collect data from a whole lot of people to see what it looks like,” said . “We want to know if it has a biological and behavioral signature.”

Researchers hope the collected data will help them to predict binge eating episodes before they happen. If this was to happen, a follow up study could be put in place whereby participants received some kind of alert when they were at risk of binge eating.

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