Health and Fitness – Page 23

Don’t wait… get comfortable with the Now Kit

Crowded places, waiting in long lines, a messy home, an excessive workload, sitting in traffic, long days and sleepless nights… for some, these words alone might stress you out.

But don’t exaggerate; everything will be fine! Have you tried to meditate?

The Now Kit comes with the Now Bench, the Now Mat, and complete instructions on how to use the Now Kit, and finally relieve some of that build up anxiety and pressure.

The Now Bench is an ergonomic meditation block that allows you to reach blissful comfort in seconds. The light blue side is softer and the dark blue side is more firm, and you can reverse to decide which option feels the best on your bum. The curved bottom allows the Now Bench to roll, so you can find the perfect angle to focus and breathe. You won’t wear it out, or stink it up, because made from a durable and washable material.

The Now Mat is the thickest rubberized exercise mat on the market. It is a 3/4″ thick of spongey, rubberized material, measuring 22″ wide by 31″ long. The Now Mat is also made from a washable material, and it’s so soft that you’ll forget you’re on the ground.

Meditation isn’t for everyone, we know that. But the Now Kit has a multi-purpose…and I know you’ve been thinking it… so I’m going to say it… Yes! You can use the Now Bench as a yoga block and the Now Mat as a yoga mat!

So whether you are using the Now Kit for meditation or yoga, feel the tensions and stressors evaporate from your sou and your life.

Close the door, dim the lights, spark up some candles, get out your Now Kit, and for the first time in a long time, just relax. You deserve that.

The Now Kit is available on Amazon for $58.54 with free shipping through Amazon Prime.

Biostrap activity tracker fitness band review

Did you start the new year off with a resolution to become more active and healthy? How’s that working for you so far? Resolutions and goals are wonderful things but sometimes we need some extra help with motivation. One way to “see” your progress is to track stats like daily activity, calorie burn, etc. Wearable fitness trackers are good tools to help you monitor your progress. Today I’m going to tell you about the Biostrap fitness tracker which uses a clinical-quality PPG sensor to gather and analyze extremely precise heartbeat data.

What is it?

The Biostrap is a full body fitness tracker that pairs a wrist-worn tracker with a shoe pod sensor. The wristband counts your steps, monitors your sleep, tracks your resting heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, and oxygen saturation. The shoe pod is used for recording workouts with their activity classification feature.

What’s in the box?

The Biostrap total health set includes:

Wristband Sensor (Pulse Oximeter, Gyro, Accelerometer)
3 Wristband straps
Shoepod Sensor (Gyro, Accelerometer). Required for workouts.
Shoe clip
Dual-coil Induction charger base
USB Cable

Design and features

The Biostrap includes a traditional tracker that you wear your wrist and a separate sensor that you attach to the laces on your shoe.

The wrist tracker is the main tracker that you’ll wear all day. The waterproof tracker is housed in a silicone wristband.

The tracker can be removed from the strap to clean it or to clean the strap itself. The Biostrap Total Health set comes with 3 wristbands of different colors so you can choose the color you like best. The strap has a metal button with two sets of “teeth” that snap into slots in the strap. I found it awkward and difficult to put the Biostrap on my own wrist. I’m not a fan of these types of wrist straps because they aren’t easy to put on and I just don’t find them to be very comfortable.

The shoe pod sensor is a small module that snaps into a plastic clip that you slide under one or more shoe laces on your shoe.

Here it is clipped to one of the laces of my steel toed work shoe. Although you might think that the shoe pod is a pedometer that will count your steps, it’s not. The shoe pod is only used to collect activity data when you work out. It can help collect better activity data when you’re running, playing golf, hiking, playing tennis, and many more activities.

Note that the shoe pod is splashproof but not waterproof.

The Biostrap and the shoe pod are charged through a wireless charging dock that you plug into a free USB port on your computer or into a USB power adapter. The charger has two slots, one for each sensor, and two status LEDs that glow white when the sensors are fully charged or the charger is empty.

When the Biostrap and shoe pod are placed on the charger, the LEDs glow yellow until the sensors are fully charged. Then the LEDs turn white.

The Biostrap will only last about 2 days per charge and the shoe pod will last about 3-4 days per charge – if you’re lucky. This one of the biggest issues I found with this fitness tracking system. Battery life is just too short and it felt like I was always needing to charge the tracker on my wrist or the shoe pod.

The Biostrap app

To start using the Biostrap, you have to install the Biostrap app on your iOS or Android device and set up an account which will ask for your gender, weight, and height. You can customize your daily goals for steps, active calorie burn, hours of sleep and workout length.

The app provides a view of each day’s stats that include how many steps you walked, sleep, workout length, calorie burn, heart rate, and breathing data.

Clicking each item lets you see a more detailed view of the data. For example, for steps, it will show you an hourly graph of the time you were walking and more details about the calories burned while walking along with distance and duration.

Here’s what the sleep data looks like.

The app shows you a lot of data about your heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, and oxygen saturation levels. Why would you want to know these things? These stats show your overall heart health. According to the Biostrap site:

Our clinical-quality PPG sensor allows us to gather extremely precise heartbeat data. Biostrap captures over 2,000 heartbeats every 24 hours. Every single pulsewave is analyzed for 29 different parameters, then analyzed against all of your other heartbeats from the last 24 hours.

Each day you can check to see if your stats were low, high, or normal. The app will also show alerts at the top when it detects problems like not enough sleep the night before.

I wore the Biostrap wristband and shoe pod for a full week to track my steps, sleep, etc. Other than some difficulty putting the wristband on my wrist and having to charge the sensors frequently, I didn’t have problems with the hardware itself. But I did notice some issues with the Biostrap app (Android) that were a little annoying. Mainly the app / band would think I was sleeping when I was lounging on the couch for a few hours. I can understand how that can happen and at least the app allows you to delete faulty sleep sessions.

The main problem with the app is that it’s really slow syncing data after you’ve completed an activity like taking a walk or working out. I would check the app to see how many steps I’d walked after a walking session and it would show a very low number which would confuse me. But if I would flip back and forth between days and come back to the current day, the step count would increase each time.

Sometimes it would show weird totals like the image above on the right. This problem with syncing speed led me not to trust the data because I never knew of the stats were up to date or still syncing.

What I like

Heart rate data
Automatic exercise tracking
Wireless charging dock

What needs to be improved

Battery life
Wristband comfort
App is slow to sync data
Expensive

Final thoughts

Having more data about your health and fitness is obviously not a bad thing, so this tracker does have that going for it. The heart rate variability and respiration tracking data is a feature missing with most other trackers that are currently on the market. But, what are you going to do with that data? Is it really useful for most people? I’ll admit that after the first day testing this fitness tracker, I didn’t really pay much attention to those stats. Because I didn’t really care how many breaths that I take per minute.

Since this fitness tracker is pricier than a lot of other trackers that you can buy right now, you’ll need to ask yourself if the extra health data are important to you. If they are, and you don’t mind that the app is sluggish when it comes to updating stats, and the sensors need to be charged frequently, the Biostrap might be the fitness tracker that can help motivate you to reach your fitness goals.

Price: $250.00
Where to buy: Biostrap
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Biostrap.

Nokia is removing a function from their Body Cardio scales by mandatory software update

Owners of the Nokia Body Cardio scale (formerly called the Withings Body Cardio when reviewed by Julie) may have received an email that warned them that Nokia will be removing the Pulse Wave Velocity function from all Body Cardio scales in a mandatory update.

The Pulse Wave Velocity function set the Body Cardio apart from other smart scales that calculated your BMI and measured a few other parameters as they weighed you. The PWV measurement was, in effect, a measure of how fast your blood moved through your blood vessels, which in turn was a measure of the health of the vessels. This measurement was based on previous studies, and when it was added to the Body Cardio scale, it apparently wasn’t a test that was regulated by the FDA. Now, Nokia says of the scales: “We are now learning its capabilities in the area of measurement of pulse wave velocity may require a different level of regulatory approval. In light of this, the decision was made to turn off the pulse wave velocity feature.” This removal was not prompted by the FDA; Nokia voluntarily removed the function to prevent possible future problems.

This update is mandatory and will be applied January 24, 2018; there is no way to opt out. No other functions of the Body Cardio scale will be affected by this update. For the time being, Nokia has announced they have suspended shipments of the Body Cardio scale; in a few months, they will resume shipping the scale without the PWV function.

To compensate their customers, Nokia is offering two options. You may elect a $30 credit for a future purchase of a Nokia health product at the Nokia store, or you may choose to return your Body Cardio scale for a full refund. If you refuse both of these options, you will not be allowed to change your mind in the future.

Read more about Nokia’s decision and learn how to ask for your compensation at the Nokia website.

Make your workouts feel like you’re in a video game

Chris Lawhorn sent me an email telling me about his just-released two workout albums that are inspired by the music from video games of the 80’s. The albums feature a collection of mixes where he’s taken beats from 8-bit games to create tracks that will inspire you to run, jump, and avoid bosses (calories). Best of all, all profits from the album go to charity. Lowhorn’s albums are 35minutes each and are selling as a set for $10. You can listen to a couple track snippets and find out more on Run Hundred, a site that helps you discover workout music based on your own favorite tunes.

Fight toe flab with the Foot Gym

I’ll admit that when I first saw the Foot Gym that I immediately checked my calendar just to make sure that I hadn’t slept through February and March and woke up on April 1st. Although the Foot Gym sounds like a product that you might see on April Fools Day, it’s real.

The Foot Gym has been designed to help people with a variety of foot and ankle related problems like plantar fasciitis. It features light, medium, and firm resistance bands and a massage roller. Instructions show you 7 exercises to help promote strength and stability for your feet and ankles.

The Foot Gym is available in two versions. The regular version is priced at $39.95 and the Pro version is $59.95 and comes with additional resistance bands and a pivoting handle that will let you use the massage roller on other body parts. Visit The Grommet or Amazon for more info.