Demos
With advances in Nanoscale device engineering, sensors are being embedded in almost everything you encounter on a daily basis. From your mobile and tablets, these sensors collect a huge amount of data, popularly known as ‘Big data’.
Big Data has taken almost every industry by storm, especially the healthcare industry. The vast amount of data generated and collected in healthcare from insurance claims to physician’s notes, Patient medical records, images from patient scans, information from monitoring devices, even conversations about health on social media provide useful information about an individual’s health.
It was only a matter of time before the healthcare industry made Big Data and Analytics one of the largest weapons in their arsenal. Big Data is currently being used to predict epidemics, cure diseases, provide rapid treatments, and avoid preventable deaths. Records of the patient’s blood pressure, sugar levels, calorie count etc. can easily be maintained using apps or gadgets. Therefore mobile health and smart devices, such as MyHydrate, are now very hot topics. MyHydrate uses Big Data to improve your health ensuring you get the right amount of hydration. Here’s how!
Proper hydration is essential for a healthy body. We always hear that we must drink eight glasses of water a day, or 64 oz., but how many of us actually intake the recommended amount to help keep our bodies healthy and functioning properly? Many of us consume caffeinated beverages first thing in the morning before we start our day. Caffeine is a diuretic and removes water from the body. We also consume foods loaded with sodium, which causes fluid retention and can cause unnecessary water retention in our bodies. Our thirst increases because of sodium intake and then we turn to a variety of beverages with caffeine, sugars, artificial sweeteners, and high fructose corn syrup.
Water intake is essential for life, health, and maintaining homeostasis in our bodies. Our kidneys filter toxins from our blood and we urinate out the waste products. If there is not enough water in our bodies, urine will turn dark yellow. In cases of severe dehydration, urine will turn a shade of orange. Dehydration can occur quickly and it is quite unhealthy for the body. According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms of mild to moderate dehydration include dry mouth, dry skin, thirst, headache, muscle cramps, constipation, fatigue, dizziness and lightheadedness, decreased urine output, and overall malaise. For something so essential for our health, too many of us are simply not consuming enough.
A device four years in the making has recently been placed on the market for purchase, which tracks the amount of water we consume in a 24-hour period, and promotes water consumption. This device, called MyHydrate, is a smart bottle and has the potential to become a wonderful tool to help us achieve optimal health and ensuring proper hydration. Something so simple, something so essential and beneficial as drinking water, has become a public health issue.
People are busy, no question. We are often on the go, order takeaway food, eat while we drive, consume meal replacement shakes or bars and will go hours without consuming a beverage. During the middle of the day when we start to feel tired, we reach for the coffee pot. Our lifestyles have caused many of us to put our very own well-being and health on the back burner. MyHydrate brings it back to the forefront of our minds.
MyHydrate is a device that tracks water intake, provides reminders for when you need to drink water, and is spill proof for those of us working close with electronic devices. It is also conveniently mobile with a hands-free clip. It contains a smart disk, which resets every 24 hours and has LED lights on the cap that displays your progress as you drink. When you reach your daily recommended intake, MyHydrate even cheers you on and provides positive reinforcement for reaching a health goal. It also takes into account the ambient temperature, so on hotter days, it may prompt you to consume water more often. We may carry around a water bottle with us, but when we are busy that water bottle is still full at the end of the day. It has happened to me countless times. Having a device that tracks and prompts water intake will optimize your health by keeping your hydration on track.
Keeping your body properly hydrated will make an impact on your overall wellbeing. Benefits of proper hydration include, but are not limited to relieving fatigue and increasing energy, promoting weight loss by drinking water before you consume meals and can increase your metabolism. Proper hydration helps the kidneys flush out harmful toxins as previously mentioned, improves complexion by keeping your skin moist, maintains regularity with bowel movements and prevents constipation. Drinking the recommended amount of water can help you stay focused by keeping your brain hydrated, reduces the risk of certain cancers, prevent headaches, helps to alleviate joint pain by keeping the cartilage in the joints soft, and can enhance your mood as dehydration can have a negative impact on how you feel.
The demand for MyHydrate is increasing and with very good reason. Adding to the already growing availability of smart devices, MyHydrate has the potential to make us healthier by keeping us hydrated. Differences can be felt just within a day from being properly hydrated. Instead of consuming over the counter pain regimens, i.e., acetaminophen, naproxen sodium, or ibuprofen, which can have side effects depending on your current health status, keeping your body hydrated can prevent that headache or joint pain from ever occurring.
This is certainly not a cure-all miracle, but instead of ingesting over the counter pain medications, being dehydrated enough to warrant a visit the emergency room and incurring needless healthcare costs, and possibly increasing the severity of comorbidities, i.e., diabetes, simply drinking enough water each day will help your body achieve optimal function.
For more information about MyHydrate, visit www.myhydrate.com and remember…drink up!
www.thepublichealthfactor.com
