Health
Steamless Infrared sauna
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August 22, 2007 Infrared saunas that use radiant energy to heat the body directly are gaining attention in the international market. These products are seen as a more beneficial and therapeutic sauna experience, use far less power, operate at significantly lower temperatures and according to promoters, they are far more effective at releasing dangerous toxins from the human body... and importantly with recent models like the Sahara from Di Vapor, you can also listen to your MP3s. Read More
Personal therapy sensory device sales to soar
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August 22, 2007 As our lives become increasingly busy and stressful people are always on the look out for new ways to relax and find alternatives to drug therapy and conventional Western medicine. The result has been an increase in the number of people engaging in complementary and alternative medicine, which has in turn created a multi-million dollar industry for technologies aimed at delivering personal therapy and relaxation. Read More
Is your sunscreen doing you more harm than good?
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August 9, 2007 In sun-drenched regions the skin protection message has been strongly delivered for years: overexposure equals skin cancer. Despite the warnings to cover up the Skin Cancer Foundation warns that more than 600,000 new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed each year in the U.S. and skin cancer is responsible for 8,500 deaths annually. Paradoxically, suncreens themselves have been identified as a contributing factor in this dilemma, with new products like UV Natural promoting themselves as a safe alternative to other creams on the market which may be doing more harm than good in the ongoing battle against the sun’s harmful rays. Read More
Exercise under your desk while you work
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June 18, 2007 The adverse effects of a sedentary, desk-bound lifestyle are well documented - weight gain, lack of energy, concentration issues and poor health result when we spend the larger proportion of the day not moving. Here's an interesting way to tackle the problem - the Webble is a cute little footrest you place under your desk and push around with your feet, exercising your lower body and stomach muscles through the day as you go. Read More
Total Body Management system - the full body workout?
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June 5, 2007 There will always be a market for people who want the gain without the pain, and the weight loss and body image industry is the number one example. Much has been written on fad dieting and "quick fix" techniques for improved health, and the ubiquitous presence of such products on late night free-to-air television suggests that, effective or not, the demand for these products is not about to disappear. With this in mind we look at the latest developments from Dallas based MedSurge which has just released the Total Body Management system - a combination of body toning techniques that aim to circumvent some of the blood sweat and tears usually associated with attaining your ideal body image. Read More
The Tanita Ironman BC554 - bathroom scales on steroids
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June 4, 2007 Weighing yourself every morning only tells you a small part of your overall health and fitness picture. Is the extra weight you've gained in the last week muscle or fat? This innovative set of bathroom scales tells you your weight, body fat percentage, body water percentage, muscle mass, bone mass, basal metabolic rate and a bunch of other metrics to help you fine-tune your fitness training and better understand your body's composition. Read More
Smart clothing that takes biochemical medical observations through the day
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May 28, 2007 We've been speaking recently with a couple of innovative companies who are taking different angles on how wearable medical observation apparatus can be used in sport and medicine. Now, an EU-funded project is setting out to take the next step - creating comfortable clothing with the built-in ability to measure a range of physiological data using intelligent textiles instead of bulky apparatus. Comfortable and unobtrusive biochemical measurement equipment could play a significant role in preventative and recovery medicine, among other areas. Read More
Developing a viable cure for office worker obesity
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May 22, 2007 Sitting still at a desk all day - like you're probably doing right now - is making the average office worker fatter and less healthy than we've ever been before. Gym workouts and regular exercise are not the key to breaking out of this cycle - a new study suggests that it's the sitting down that's killing us, and that a simple change to spending 2-3 hours a day gently walking at around 1mph while we work could help obese office workers lose up to 30kg a year. Dr. James Levine devised the walk-at-work treadmill to test the effectiveness of getting office workers off their butts - with fantastic results. Read More
Electronic glove ensures CPR is being done correctly
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May 21, 2007 Only 6 months after learning life-saving CPR techniques, around 60 percent of first aiders - including doctors and nurses - forget how to do it correctly. As a result, survival rates from cardiac arrests remain low. The Canadian CPR Glove acts as a quick on-the-job refresher course, making sure the first aider administers the correct frequency and depth of chest compression. It's a simple and cheap device that has real potential to save lives if included in a first aid kit. Read More
Tiny, portable biosensor to be a big gun in the fight against food contamination
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May 18, 2007 As more and more chemical assistance becomes available to farmers, it becomes more and more important to be able to accurately measure if these chemicals make it through into our food and drink. And while pesticides and herbicides can have an immediate or accumulative harmful effect on our bodies, the accidental ingestion of small amounts of antibiotics through animal meat can contribute to the strengthening of bacterial resistance to antibiotics - a potentially more serious side-effect. Testing for contaminants has typically been slow, expensive and limited by laboratory location - but this tiny, portable and cheap biosensor developed in Spain makes it much quicker and easier to test a range of agricultural products on the spot. Read More
Real-time athlete monitoring - the future of sport
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On-the-fly physiological monitoring of athletes is developing to a stage where an elite sports coaching box is looking more and more like a Formula One garage, each player being constantly monitored to ensure maximum performance while avoiding injuries. Speed and conditioning expert Dr Adrian Faccione, founder of GPSports talks to us about the cutting edge of elite athlete management, and the amazing future technologies that are now in development. The original 35 minute MP3 of the interview with Dr Adrian Faccione is available here. Read More
Bluetooth health monitoring lets you upload your vital stats to your doctor from home
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May 9, 2007 Turning the health-care model upside down, a small Australian company is working on bluetooth technology that logs and transmits medical observation data to a central network through a mobile phone - so your doctor can call YOU when a problem is developing. Alive's bluetooth technology is already proving useful in the recovery of cardiac outpatients and the diagnosis of sleep apnea - and a range of products in development aim to make advancements in health monitoring for diabetics, mountaineers and athletes in training. Read More
Cooling glove invigorates overheated athletes - and also delivers training performance gains
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May 9, 2007 While traditional body cooling systems such as ice vests, wet towels and misting fans may feel like they're working to the benefit of the user, they're actually quite ineffective at reducing the body's core temperature, as they work against the body's natural insulation and heat retention systems. Through extensive research into mammalian heat regulation systems, AVAcore has developed a simple, portable device that effects heat exchange to the body core extremely quickly. You don't necessarily feel cooler, you just feel completely refreshed and less fatigued - and the system is producing some remarkable and unexpected results for athletes. Read More
The amazing InnerScan Segmental Body Composition Monitor
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March 2, 2007 We’ve written about Tanita’s Innerscan previously, but the newly released Tanita BC-545 is such a leap forward in technology that it deserves more than just a mention. The BC-545 is designed to assess the impact of your training routine on different parts of your body. It is able to give individual body composition readings for five body segments (each arm, each leg and the trunk area). The measurements are taken quickly and accurately by standing on the 4 footplates and by pulling the hand electrodes that are housed in the base using retractable connecting cables. The monitor then sends a safe low signal from the hand and footplate electrodes through the body. The resistance to the measurement (known as Bio-electrical Impedance Analysis or BIA) is then fed into researched equations to provide your personalized body composition readings. As the device includes a calendar function, it can track the changes over time for you, so you can create comparison graphs showing a history for each segment of the body and for each of the body composition readings, so that you can see your progress, day by day, week by week and month by month over a three year period. The backlit buttons and animated illustrations are clear and user-friendly, and the scales come with batteries included and a three year guarantee. Needless to say, because the device sends electrical signals through the body, it is highly inadvisable to use this device if you have a heart pacemaker.
Rapid prototyping to be used for human implant development
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December 31, 2006 Colorado-based Medical Modeling is set to begin using an EBM (Electron Beam Melting) Metal Rapid Manufacturing and Prototyping System to design and build titanium implants for insertion into the body. The company is also planning to provide surgeons and medical device manufacturers with titanium models for improved surgical planning and implant development. Using data acquired from CT or MRI (Computed Tomography or Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans, Medical Modeling creates highly accurate, three dimensional anatomical models of bone structures – such as the skull, pelvis and spine – and soft tissue – such as the brain and organs. Using its Arcam EBM system with titanium material, Medical Modeling can create fully dense, fully functional models of surgical instruments, guides and potentially implantable devices. The rapid manufacturing and prototyping system is a Stratasys Arcam EBM S-400, which manufacture real parts or prototypes from metal. Read More
The step2play and CyberBike promise exercise for overweight children
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November 18, 2006 Civilisation has a problem - the number of obese children (Ages 6 to 11) in America has more than doubled, and the number of obese adolescents (Ages 12 to 19) has more than tripled in the last 30 years with both representing more than 15 percent of their respective age group populations. Whatsmore, the number of overweight children represents another 15 percent and growing, so the recent development of a novel way of incorporating exercise into the health regime of children bears some thought. A British children’s fitness specialist has developed Step2Play, a step exercise machine that links directly to a child’s Playstation. A rate of exercise can be set at the start of the child’s game and then as long as the child maintains a constant rate of exercise as they play their video game, the game’s controller will remain active. If the child stops, the game pauses and the controller stops working. Two players can use different steppers and controllers to play two-player games. There is also another product named CyberBike which is designed for children as young as four and achieves a similar result. Read More
OSIM releases US$600 horseback riding exercise machine
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August 15, 2006 Singapore’s Osim is in the business of making a range of high quality exercise and health related machinery and it certainly didn’t take the company long to come out with a rival for the Panasonic Joba which has been under development for several years and captivated Gizmag's female readers when we first wrote about it in early 2005 because it’s a perfect machine for maintaining a trim figure. The OSIM iGallop appears to work in exactly the same way as the Joba, working on the body’s core to shape and tone the tummy, hips, seat and thighs. It’s a zero impact exercise machine, and works the body by requiring multidirectional movements to maintain balance, with this constant balancing engaging certain muscle groups, and helping to improve balance, coordination and posture. The new iGallop starts shipping today at Brookstone, and the really good news is that it comes in at US$600, waaay less than Panasonic’s US$2000. Read More
Nike+iPod
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May 24, 2006 Nike and Apple have announced a partnership designed to bring the worlds of sport and music together with the launch of innovative Nike+iPod products. The first product developed through this partnership is the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, a wireless system that allows Nike+ footwear to record time, distance, calories burned and pace with info displayed on the iPod nano screen and real-time audio feedback through headphones. The new Nike+ Air Zoom Moire is the first footwear designed to talk to the iPod and Nike plans to make its other footwear styles Nike+ ready too. It’s simple and in our opinion gives you scant info you can’t get better another way – it’s just an in-shoe sensor and a receiver that attaches to the iPod. While we think the first product is a bit lame, it’ll be interesting to see what happens when Apple, the most consistently innovative company of the last 25 years, and Nike combine technologies with the reach of both companies. With two such innovative parents, we suspect some interesting children will be spawned. Our educated guesses at what they would logically be evaluating as potential products might include new capabilities such as a heart rate monitor to make the 24 hour a day calorie counter more accurate and to enable other useful data to be monitored, GPS functionality for additional info on position and speed and so we can be notified when we’re passing points of interest and hear a podcast about them should we choose, a blood oxygenation and lactose monitor for people who run really long distances, … oh, and maybe a cool Nike cap with a little heads up display incorporated so we can watch video podcasts without headbutting a lamppost. Read More
New Invention “Powers” TVs with exercise.
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January 31, 2006 We’re not sure if this is a good idea, or akin to signing up for a tour of duty with a society of flagellant monks. The EnterTrainer Cardio-TV-Trainer is a wireless device that converts any exercise machine and TV, video game or stereo into an interactive workout system. The EnterTrainer combines a wireless heart monitor and a universal remote control and maintains the correct volume for the device you wish to watch/play/listen to when your heart is working in the target zone you have set. Too low or too high and the volume is lowered until you get your heart pumping in the right zone again. At US99 it’s not all that expensive compared to most wrist-worn heart rate monitors but then again, they can be used to monitor your heart rate anywhere whereas this is location-specific. For some people, the Entertrainer will be very useful, but most will probably find it a little one-dimensional and we figure it’ll get used for a while and unhooked so you can use the game console, telly or stereo in its normal mode … and maybe never get hooked up again. The company is also set to release an “iTrainer” Cardio Training Headphones for use with iPods. In our mind, the idea behind compelling and usable exer-tainment devices is to enrol and reward the participant, not to punish. But if you have an overweight child who watches too much telly, it might be ideal. See what we mean … oh no, not another wicked thought. Read More
Bone exercise monitor for potential osteoporosis sufferers
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December 1, 2005 Osteoporosis is a serious health problem in most industrialized countries where 50% of women and 25% of men over 50 years of age will suffer an osteoporotic fracture. Over 75 million people are afflicted by osteoporosis in Europe, USA and Japan alone. Bone exercise is one the things that can significantly reduce the impact of osteoporosis and has led to the development of a new Bone Exercise Monitor which indicates whether the person using it has engaged in physical activities that may have been helpful in strengthening their bones. The Finish-developed Newtest Bone Exercise Monitor is a small device worn on the hip, and offers an excellent tool for 30 – 50 year-old women to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of their bone exercise. The monitor measures and analyses the user’s physical activity in real-time and indicates the percentage of the required daily bone exercise that has been achieved. Read More
Fitness cards break the monotony of exercise
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November 20, 2004 FitDeck, a new cardgame developed by a former Navy SEAL, enables the creation of your own random fitness workout by simply shuffling the deck and performing up to 50 exercises pictured and described on the card faces. The novel approach to fitness introduces the element of fun and breaks up the monotony of standard exercise regimens. Read More
Exertris Interactive exercise-bike
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The Exertris interactive exercise bike incorporates a gaming console, flat-screen display and an on-board PC linked to pedal-resistance that enables the experience of playing a game and having a workout to be rolled into one. Read More
Philips and Nike to produce electronics for athletic activity
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A recently announced partnership between Philips and Nike will soon see the introduction of a range of portable radios, MP3 and CD-MP3 players designed specifically to be worn on the body during athletic activity. Read More
