It goes without saying that modern methods of travel—planes, trains, and automobiles—are a hell of a lot better than ye olde horse and buggy days, but convenience has a cost. Many hours of remaining sedentary exact a serious tax on your body. While nothing you do can make a long trip a zero-impact affair, there are some things you can do to mitigate the stresses you put on your physique.
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Today I found out that the soft drink 7 UP used to include a psychiatric medication as one of its ingredients.
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Smart pedometers are just the beginning. Sensors of all kinds are emerging to track the way we move, what we do at home and the way we sleep.
Last week, I wrote about a Helsinki-based company called Beddit that ran an Indiegogo campaign for a sleep sensor you attach to your bed. They say it is so sensitive, it can pick up a person’s heart-rate. After making devices like this for medical professionals for a couple years, they are looking at the consumer market with a cheaper product for $149.
They quickly reached their goal of $80,000 in about a week and are looking to tack on more. The company’s pledging to build a web app called Beddit Cloud for backing up and sharing sleep data if they can reach $200,000. The original Beddit already syncs to a mobile app through Bluetooth.
But if they build Beddit Cloud, then a person can automatically upload their sleep measurements to a private web account. This will include visualizations for looking at long periods of sleep data, spreadsheet exports and an anonymous aggregated comparison of your sleep data with other Beddit Cloud users.
They’ll also make the data easily shareable to social networks, putting in some of the social features that are common in more generalized activity trackers like the Jawbone Up. There will also be an open API for third-party apps. They’re planning to have it out by the second quarter of next year if they make this stretch goal.
Did you have a few too many cookouts this summer, and maybe pack on a few too many pounds? Here’s a refresher on some healthy booze to get you drunk while keeping you trim.
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Spending your life at home and never getting out of bed is not only considered socially unacceptable, it can lead to serious medical conditions like bedsores. But thankfully one of those two concerns has been eradicated thanks to the MAP System, a pressure sensing mat that helps prevent pressure ulcers from happening.
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Are standing desks last year’s advice? Whatever. Unless you’re lucky enough to be on your feet all day for work, you probably sit too much. We all do. When we go home, we sit on the couch. When we have dinner, we sit on a chair. When we watch a movie, we sit in the theater. When we go out, we sit on a stool. Our life is full with sitting interrupted by little moments of walking so it’s important to, well, be good at it. This animation video shows you the correct posture for sitting. [Flikli via Laughing Squid]
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Fighting cancer is getting very 22nd century with the introduction of a new technique from researchers at the University of Georgia. The science of it gets a little bit complicated, but suffice it to say it’s pretty futuristic. Lasers and nanoparticles are involved.
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The odds of suffering an intracerebral (IC) hemorrhage during your lifetime (1 in 50) are almost as terrifying as the as the chances are that it will kill you (4 in 10) if it does happen. IC hemorrhages (and the edemas, or clots, they produce) account for 11 percent of all strokes, and are far more likely to severely disable you than the effects of a lesser ischemic stroke. But this clot-busting device might just turn the odds in your favor.
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Those who spend any significant amount of time every day at their desk know the discomfort that can result from an improper work setup, whether it be a stiff back or a pinched nerve. Such was reflected in a Healthy Computing Survey conducted by Microsoft, which it made available today to coincide with the launch […]
Even as the body of evidence of cannabis’ potential as a potent medical precursor grows (especially with the development of CBD-rich strains), smoking it is not without long-term side effects. And we’re not just talking about munchie-induced weight gain, either. A number of recently published studies suggest habitually getting high not only kills your motivation, it might even alter your brain chemistry. Specifically, the part that makes you want to get off the couch.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
