Re: Well-being - Calm in Your Palm

From Wear-Hard Mailing list Archive (WH) Maintained by R. Paul McCarty

I seem to remember that 90 mins is the full sleep cycle time. You are ready=
 to
wake up at the end of each cycle. If you forcibly awaken at an off minute
however, you feel tired no matter how long you sleep. 90 mins can be better
than   200 in that sense. It would be nice if a timer could be automaticall=
y
started somehow at the exact minute you fall asleep, and then awaken 
you at the
predetermined multiple of 90 mins. This would be much better than setting t=
he
alarm when you lay down, and actually falling asleep 25 minutes later.

Alex

Quoting jon sable <>:

> reminds me of wireless heart rate monitors that were/are the fad back 
> in the early 90s,  with regards to the heart rate monitors sure for 
> training it maybe useful to exercise within a certain range inorder 
> to achieve the highest VO2max possible, in practice, it became a 
> hassle.
>
> Back to this sleeptrackerwatch,   what happens when after using it 
> you find your never awake!?or asleep!?   that would be weird.
>
> reading the site "No, you should not use SLEEPTRACKERr to shorten 
> your regular night's sleep. Physicians recommend getting an average 
> of 8 hours of sleep per night."
> -bummer, as since Napoleon, or before it seems various militaries use 
> an at min standard of 5ish hours.
>
> many medical interns go with far less than that 8 hours.
>
> best low sleep to productivity theory/practice i've read about is 
> 90min sleep, with 5-7 active.  again it depends on what you are 
> doing, a 5 time olympic goldie, credits sleeping in over 8hrs at 
> least twice per week, 10hrs or such.
>
>
>
>
>  On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Sebastien Duval wrote:
>
>
>
>> Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 10:59:56 +0900 From: Sebastien Duval 
>> <> Reply-To: Wearable Hardware Discussion List 
>> <> To: ML Wear-Hard <> 
>> Subject: [Wear-Hard] Well-being - Calm in Your Palm
>
>
>>
>> The StressEraser is used to relax the wearer. I have also seen 
>> devices that monitor sleep (SleepTracker), and blood content 
>> (GlucoWatch). Anybody knows if some people really use such 
>> equipment? * [SleepTracker] http://www.sleeptracker.com * 
>> [GlucoWatch] http://www.glucowatch.com
>>
>> For the GlucoWatch we even have a publication:
>>> Tierney, M., Tamada, J., Potts, R., Jovanovic, L., Garg, S.,
>>> and Cygnus. Clinical evaluation of the GlucoWatch
>>> biographer: a continual, non-invasive glucose monitor for
>>> patients with diabetes. Biosensors and Bioelectronics,16, 9
>>> (2001), 621-629.
>>
>> -- 
>> Sebastien Duval, from Tokyo (Japan)
>> SOKENDAI - National Institute of Informatics
>> ----
>> Source: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3044
>>> Calm in Your Palm By: Samuel K. Moore Biofeedback device promises to
>>> reduce stress
>>>
>>> Standing in front of a room of over a hundred software developers at
>>> the height of the dot-com boom, Michael Wood suffered a paralyzing
>>> panic attack. Wood had reached the end of his tether after months of
>>> grinding work and regular commutes between New York City and London.
>>> He quit his job and devoted himself to understanding?and
>>> beating?stress.
>>>
>>> The result is a sleek, solid, handheld biofeedback device called the
>>> StressEraser, built by New York City=ADbased Helicor Inc., which Wood
>>> founded with his business partner, Adam Forbes. Essentially, the
>>> StressEraser is an aid for deep breathing exercises, which are
>>> commonly prescribed to alleviate stress. The device tells you just
>>> when to inhale and when to stop. It does this by divining the state
>>> of your nervous system by some clever analysis of your heart rate?and
>>> thus indicating when you should take those deep, relaxing breaths.
>>>
>>> Basically, the device is a pulse oximeter integrated with a display
>>> and a microprocessor. Pulse oximeters identify heartbeats by the
>>> variation in the amount of light absorbed through the skin of your
>>> finger as fresh blood pulses through it. The StressEraser monitors
>>> your heart rate to identify the activity level of the vagus nerve,
>>> one of 12 nerves that emanate directly from your brain rather than
>>> through your spinal cord. The vagus nerve connects with your heart,
>>> lungs, stomach, and all the other organs in your gut. It carries a
>>> variety of mellowing signals from the brain, such as the one that
>>> tells your stomach to slacken when you start eating and your heart to
>>> slow down when it's time to relax. [For the vagus nerve's role in
>>> depression, see "Psychiatry's Shocking New Tools," in this issue.]
>>>
>>> The relaxation signal is the one the StressEraser is programmed to
>>> measure. Under the influence of vagus nerve activity, your heart rate
>>> is almost always either accelerating or decelerating. Medical
>>> researchers have known for decades that you can deduce what's going
>>> on with the vagus nerve by following these heart-rate variations.
>>> Roughly, when the time between two heartbeats doubles, the amount of
>>> vagus nerve activity doubles, too. Wood and Forbes built on this
>>> observation by working out, over four years, algorithms that can
>>> predict when the nerve activity is about to peak and detect the start
>>> and end points of a wave of activity.
>>>
>>> The StressEraser uses all this information to help you relax. You're
>>> relaxed when vagus nerve activity is gently rising and falling.
>>> Breathing exercises can produce this state, and they're most
>>> effective when your breathing is synchronized with your vagus nerve
>>> activity. The StressEraser tracks this activity and gives you an
>>> audible and visual cue just ahead of the nerve's peak activity by
>>> plotting tiny changes in your heart rate as a line moving across the
>>> device's screen [see photo, "Sit Back and Relax"]. At the cue, you
>>> exhale, counting in your head to a prespecified number, then you
>>> inhale until the next cue as shown by the plot. The counting gives
>>> you something to focus on, rather than letting your mind wander to
>>> bothersome thoughts, and you can adjust the number you count up to,
>>> based on what's most comfortable for you. What you're trying to
>>> achieve is large, smooth sinusoidal changes in your heart rate. The
>>> StressEraser rates your sinusoid on a scale of one to three, with one
>>> being the roughest and three being the smoothest. Unlike other
>>> biofeedback products, the device will give you a low score if your
>>> relaxation is interrupted by emotionally charged thoughts, which show
>>> up as a jaggedness in the heart-rate waveform. This feedback teaches
>>> you to let go of those thoughts.
>>>
>>> In all fairness, I'm a tough nut for this kind of product to crack.
>>> First, I find it difficult to stick to any kind of routine that
>>> involves self-indulgence. I can't get to the gym regularly or
>>> reliably remember to pack a lunch. So managing to use the device
>>> three times a day for a whole week, as recommended, was out of my
>>> reach. Luckily, guilt is an excellent motivator. I happened to run
>>> into Helicor's Forbes at least three times while I was reviewing the
>>> device. Each of those encounters led to a renewed dedication to spend
>>> time staring at my heart-rate waveform.
>>>
>>> My second problem is that I'm one of the more mellow people I know.
>>> So I couldn't very well expect a revolutionary decrease in my stress
>>> level. That said, the device did relax me in every environment I
>>> tried it in. A usually tension-inducing subway ride home was almost
>>> refreshing. I nearly fell asleep in my office during one afternoon
>>> session. And my ability to concentrate while working amid the clutter
>>> of home seemed a bit improved following 5 minutes of
>>> technology-assisted breathing.
>>>
>>> The StressEraser is easy to use and well designed, having a slim
>>> stainless steel exterior that lends the device a bit of gravitas. My
>>> only quibble is that I would have preferred a button marked "menu"
>>> that would allow you to adjust all the device's key settings, such as
>>> whether or not the cue is audible. Instead, setting adjustments are
>>> distributed among the three buttons on the device.
>>>
>>> At a price of $399, the StressEraser is primarily intended to be
>>> prescribed by physicians, but anyone can buy one. Helicor certainly
>>> means it to be taken seriously as a medical device and is
>>> manufacturing it under U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines
>>> and participating in clinical trials. Two of those trials, for the
>>> device's use in insomnia and in general anxiety, should be complete a
>>> few months from now. Soon, stressed folks all over could be breathing
>>> easier.
>> ----
>>
>>
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-- 

"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in a darken=
ed
room munching pills and listening to repetitive music." - Marcus Brigstocke

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