Current Health Trends For Women

The year 2018 is filled with fresh new ideas and hot health trends that will make your life better in different and exciting ways. Here are just a few that should appeal to you:

Wearable Tech Gadgets

Devices frequently used today can be added to clothing! Google has been collaborating with Levi Strauss & Co, the jeans manufacturer, to develop clothing that interacts with tracking devices. The sensitive surfaces will show how many calories you burn while running, give weight and other readings, check sleep patterns, and even make a phone call!

The Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP) of Levi’s, a company of firsts for more than 150 years, has been working on a conductive yarn and woven multi-touch fabric that senses touch gestures able to swipe a hand over jeans or the sleeve of a jacket to silence a phone, play a song, and more.

Now they have created the “smart clothing” Commuter Trucker Jacket, known as Project Jacquard, with Jacquard technology woven right into the sleeve. Officially announced at Google’s annual developer conference, but not announced was a timeline for when any smart clothes, using a special yarn that has to work on existing industrial looms, would be available commercially on a global scale.

Worn on stage was a normal-looking jacket custom made by London tailors with 85 percent cotton and 15 percent Project Jacquard. Waving a hand over the arm, a display showed information such as a phone call picked up by tiny electronics in the flexible snap tag connecting the Jacquard Threads in the cuff, looking like part of the jacket, to the mobile device. The tag also houses a battery which lasts up to two weeks between USB charges.

Nut-Milk Yogurts

Kite Hill has blended its almond milk with live active cultures and 10 grams of almond protein to create new plant-based yogurts. Enjoy creamy yogurt made with Madagascar vanilla beans by itself or with added mouth-watering peaches, strawberries or blueberries.

Healthier Noodles

More alternative pasta options will appear in 2018. Ancient Harvest’s Supergrain Pasta, Green Lentil, and Quinoa Penne will taste like and have the texture of regular noodles but have fewer simple carbs, have 14 grams of plant-based protein and seven grams of fiber per serving, be gluten-free and non-GMO, and offer more nutritious nutrients.

Caution

It is always wise to check with your doctor before trying any unusual foods or other products to make sure that they fit in healthily with the medications you are taking and the particular physical ailments that you have.

 

Does Your Baby Need a Bluetooth Onesie?

Dr. Lori Gore-Green OBGYN

For about $200, parents can link up their infants with a bluetooth onesie or slipper to a monitor which notifies the parents of any changes in regulation. The purpose of the apparatus is to check breathing patterns, sleep patterns, and body movements keeping parents aware and in better contact with their infants, even while sleeping or in the room next door. Many new and stressed-out parents found reassurance in the directness and better response time. The appeal of always being connected, effortlessly, gave parents a peace of mind to carry on with their daily tasks, never more than a baby’s cry away. Others, however, are confused as to the essential benefits of having high-tech methods for infant-to-parent communication, viewing the piece as an unnecessary addition to a relatively uncomplicated process.

A little bit of science goes a long way to show no significant changes in the preventative care of a baby hooked up to bluetooth. While parents have a wider radius of distance they can travel away from the baby without feeling urgently needed, the technology fails to prove itself a deserving commodity. Much more likely, it is a slight scam for new parents worrying day in, day out about the health of their baby.

Dr. David King, writing for the British Medical Journal, retold a similar story with parents buying sleep apnea monitors for their babies. The investment in medical technology, per se, proved to be no protectant against the major concern for parents which is sudden infant death syndrome (which makes up about 80% of deaths in infants up to one year old.). The very nature of SIDS is that its etiology is unknown. Neonatologist Dr Retajczyk explains that the uneducated attempt to be more in tune with one’s baby can make parents worry obsessively over things they do not understand. He asks, “There’s a huge variation [in heart rate] in newborns…so if parents see these trends, does that become worrisome when in reality it’s quite normal?”

At this stage, only one leading company has pledged to conduct clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of its product. Parents and doctors alike should encourage companies with experimental products to further engage in scientific research that lends evidential support to their usage.