Health and Wellbeing

For younger readers with perfect eyesight, here’s something you might not know – glasses and contact lenses don’t do anything to cure nearsightedness, they only help compensate for it. In fact, the wearer’s vision often continues to deteriorate as they age. Now, however, a team of scientists have developed special contact lenses that they claim can halt the condition if it’s caught in childhood.  Read More

According to the World Health Organization, there are currently 347 million diabetics worldwide, with 90 percent of those people having type II diabetes specifically. It occurs when fat accumulates in places such as muscles, blood vessels and the heart, causing the cells in those areas to no longer be sufficiently responsive to insulin. This insulin resistance, in turn, causes blood glucose levels to rise to dangerous levels. Ultimately, it can result in things such as heart disease, strokes, blindness, kidney failure, and amputations. Fortunately, however, an international team of scientists has just announced a new way of treating the disease.  Read More

The German Vegetarian Society (VEBU), in conjunction with the natural cosmetics company Sante, has developed an organic vitamin B12-enriched toothpaste whose efficacy has been confirmed by test results presented in Germany earlier this month. This is good news for vegans and aging people who are more likely to suffer from vitamin B12 deficiency.  Read More

We've covered a lot of long-distance lovemaking tools before here on Gizmag – from the tragically innocent Haptihug Telecuddle interface, to the slightly more sleeves-up Kissphone, to the remotely-controlled VIVI vibrator setup at the business end. But none have been quite as "meat and potatoes" as the remarkable LovePalz his-n-herz telehumping setup, which interface with a pair of iPhones to allow simultaneous face-to-face and pole-to-hole communication (to coin a phrase) over any distance.  Read More

Like Honda’s Stride Walking Assist and the ReWalk, the Kickstart from Cadence Biomedical is designed to help improve the gait of people who have difficulty walking and help them regain their mobility and independence. But unlike its robotic cousins that are powered by weighty rechargeable batteries, the Kickstart is able to ditch the batteries altogether because it has no motors to power. Instead, it is purely mechanical and provides assistance by storing and releasing kinetic energy generated by a person when walking.  Read More

Many of us now do most of our work sat at a desk staring at a computer screen for hours on end. While this an inevitable part of modern-day living, it does present certain challenges to our health and wellbeing. A sedentary lifestyle isn't recommended, but it's often difficult to motivate oneself to visit a gym or do any kind of physical exercise before or after a hard day at work. So, what about doing some physical exercise during work?  Read More

Cycling power meters generally need to be affixed to the crank with wire ties, magnets, brackets or double-sided tape. The StageONE from Stages Cycling is a power meter that comes pre-installed on the left crank arm component of a bike. It uses a strain gauge and an accelerometer to capture power output data, which is transmitted via ANT+ and Bluetooth to compatible cycle computers and smartphone apps. Most important of all, it's makers claim it's cheaper than existing cycling power meters on the market.  Read More

Although some medications just don’t work when taken orally, the fact is that nobody likes getting injections. Research being conducted at MIT, however, could lead to a new painless method of drug delivery via the skin. Harsh though it might sound, it involves using ultrasound to blast off the outer layer of skin, so that drugs can then get into the bloodstream.  Read More

While many people may think that being color blind means seeing everything in black-and-white, such a condition is in fact quite rare. Instead, the majority of people who are classified as color blind are capable of color vision, but they have difficulty distinguishing red and green as distinct colors. EnChroma’s Cx sunglasses are designed to help in these cases, by selectively reducing the transmission of given wavelengths of light, thus allowing red and green to stand out.  Read More