Being healthy and feeling good well into old age has its challenges and there are two main reasons why that is. The first – information about what promotes health is inconsistent and confusing. The second – life is demanding and staying healthy is time consuming. We are often so busy that we don’t have time to whip up a healthy meal, let alone focus on the many habits that create a healthy body.
Modern (In)Conveniences
In today’s fast-paced modern world, we face completely different health challenges than we did one hundred years ago. Today people are tempted by convenient, tasty treats that lack nutrients and often have ingredients that deplete vitality and harm the body. They’re tempted by the convenience of their couches, sitting for long hours surrounded by unnatural environments and seeing nature from a window. If they are lucky enough to have a window, that is. With so many other demands for their attention, being vigilant in educating themselves on what is actually good for them and enacting those changes is overwhelming for many.
What Does it Take to be Healthy?
To create real, sustainable health in the lives of the busy people of the world, each person needs a nutritionist, personal trainer, nurse and therapist on hand to tell them what to eat, how to exercise, what their vitals are and what activities are good for their current mood and neurochemistry. Sounds exhausting and expensive.
Fortunately for the active mother, the successful professional, and any busy person (ie all of us!) the advice of these trained experts is becoming accessible in the form of online apps and wearable technology. Because health is such a sought-after and oftentimes elusive goal, many innovative companies have happily stepped up to fulfill the need to simplify health.
The new gadgets to help you fine-tune your energy levels, sleep quality, diet and overall health and well-being belong to a long, growing list. Here are a few of the best ones:
This smartwatch contains a 3D motion sensor that accurately tracks calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled and quality of sleep. What’s unique about it is that, unlike a phone that you leave at home when you go to the pool, Pebble is a watch that you wear on your body at all times. It also has sensing abilities that smartphones don’t have to monitor your sleep and daily activity with high accuracy. By providing this information and hence awareness, Pebble encourages people to get more movement and better sleep.
An internet-based emotional health program that uses cognitive behavioral approaches, Lantern helps users restructure negative thoughts so they can better deal with life’s challenges. Lantern is a unique program on the market, guiding users to increase their happiness and therefore their health too – something other health apps have yet to do.
Did you ever imagine there would be airbags in your underwear? This clever app senses normal motion and unusual motion, and is able to detect when a person is falling. Prior to impact, an airbag deploys on the appropriate side to reduce injury and prevent the risk of a hip fracture. A whopping 2.5 million Americans who injure themselves in a fall each year, 10% of whom end up with a hip fracture, stand to benefit from this new and unique technology.
Scanadu is a mobile medical device company that develops consumer products that monitor a list of valuable vitals for health tracking and awareness. Scanadu is able to track critical vitals such as temperature, heart rate and hemoglobin all in a matter of ten seconds. It then transfers the information through a smartphone to the user themselves, their family members, doctors, or anyone else for whom this information is beneficial.
ph360 is an online health app that takes into account a considerable amount of user information, including body measurements, family history and lifestyle and then tells users what foods are best for their body’s unique needs, what exercises are ideal for their physical structure, what social activities and environments support them most, and provides suggestions on how best to use their natural talents. The program dives deeply into modern science and ancient wisdom to be able to provide specific and balanced lifestyle suggestions for creating optimal health. This program is unique and doesn’t have any direct competition that provides the same level of detail tailored to the user. The next-gen version of ph360, ShaeTM, is being referred to as ‘Siri for your health’.
Today the quest for the fountain of youth is much sought after and yet easy to miss. The future of health looks promising given the splurge of technology we’ve seen over the last decade and especially in the last few years, some of which is focused on changing the health of the world in a grand way. For small amounts of money, people are now able to have valuable health information in the palm of their hand or on their wrist and are experiencing health at a new level. The future will continue to take health to places we are only dreaming of now.