This interesting bandage design by Donn Koh uses a weak electric charge contained within the bandage itself to help heal wounds. The concept is targeted to diabetic patients who are often plagued with ulcers and pressure sores, but could possible be used for anyone with dermal injuries where infection would be especially bad. Once the bandage is applied and activated the light electrical charge doesn’t actually heal the wound but helps to prevent the growth of any infection in order to allow the body to more quickly heal itself.

The Germans are always innovating. And while the typical person doesn’t normally think about cutting edge pillow technology, Daryoush Bazargani does. He’s the German scientist responsible for the latest computerized pillow that can stop you from snoring. The pillow acts like your mate and gives you a nudge by inflating and deflating different chambers. The result is that it adjusts your head and by doing so, clears your airways. It knows when you snore thanks to the encyclopedia sized computer that rests on your bedside table.

This pillow comes with an added bonus. The ability to give you a neck massage. That’s always welcome, by itself. But I have to say, the computer itself, along with the hose, looks a bit too much like life support to me.

I kid you not. The first step is applying peroxide strips on your teeth. Then just put the mouthpiece in your mouth, plug it into your iPod, and crank up the tunes. This is the latest(and only) iPod teeth whitening system. It promises a whiter smile after just 30 minutes of music time.

If I understand the physics of this iWhitening, the music conducts through bone, creating vibrations that make the strips work. I wouldn’t give up regular dental checkup’s just yet, but it’s cool to think that music can magically “rock” your teeth whiter. You’ll want to use it indoors, as the weird mouthpiece will insure that people maintain as much distance from you as possible.

Why go to a rave when you can have one from the comfort of your very own massage chair? That’s the idea at least behind The Rave, a new “synchronized” massage/music chair available for around $900.

The Rave, designed by Raffel Comfort Sciences, gives you four pre-programmed massage treatments which run for 15 minutes. All can be adjusted for intensity and such. This massage chair also serves as an iPod accessory with two full-range speakers mounted in the back. The Rave helps your massage get down when your iPod or other connected audio device is playing by synching your restful vibrations to the bass notes.

As if there aren’t enough things we’re exposed to in our day-to-day lives that could potentially cause cancer, a recent study done by researches at Australia’s Queensland University of Technology suggest that some printers in the office place could be emitting particles that are small enough to be a health risk to workers near them.

In the study the researches found that of 62 printers studied, 17 of them they considered “high particle emitters” with one of them putting out tiny, potentially dangerous particles at the same rate as a burning cigarette. According to professor Lidia Morawska who authored the study, the particles being emitted from the printer are similar in size to those that come from cigarettes. The tiny particles are able to make their way to the smaller parts of the …

It’s got to be difficult to carry the fame that the Apple iPod enjoys without getting some bad press once in a while. A couple months ago we saw that the player can adversely affect pacemakers, and today an article was published in the New England Journal of Medicine stating that wearing your iPod in a Thunderstorm might not be the best idea.

The report cited a case at a hospital in Canada where a man was out jogging during a thunderstorm when lightning struck a tree that was next to him. As a result, the man was thrown about 8 feet, suffered some burns, a jaw fracture and blown out eardrums.

The physicians that treated the man concluded that the injuries he sustained were due to the iPod he was wearing. The burns were found on his …

It’s not exactly a glove and I don’t know if I’d classify it as a watch either, but it is something new that will be shown off at the Wearables Technologies Congress in Munich, Germany this month. This exercise gadget is like a second skin according to Beurer, the makers of the device. It wears on your wrist and hand similar to a glove and monitors your pulse without the need for a chest belt like most heart rate monitors.

Instead of reading the electric pulses from your heart, this this pulse monitoring glove uses plethysmography to detect your hear rate. This makes a simple, one-piece device that athletes can use to monitor their heart rate during exercise. The only downside to this device compared to the more traditional monitors that pick up a wireless signal from the belt is that exercise …

Ask anyone that is a diabetic how much fun it is to test their blood throughout the day, poking their self, drawing blood and then placing it on a sensor to see whether you need to boost or lower their blood sugar level. No kidding, it’s no one’s idea of fun. So why isn’t the Lima, a concept design for a outdoor blood sugar analyzer created by Damian Mackiewicz, already a reality and not just a sketch?

According to Mackiewicz’s notes the Lima works by sensing the blood sugar level just by resting your hand on the surface of the unit. The Lima can then detect what the level is in your blood through infrared radiation. There is no irritating pinprick and you don’t need to draw blood. With over six million people alone suffering from diabetes in Germany (which we guess is …

Measuring your pets body fat isn’t always as easy as lining the paws up on a body fat meter for people but having an overweight (or underweight) pet can be an issue and something you might want to keep tabs on.

This Kao Dog Body Fat measuring gadget for dogs is painless and works by being placed on pre-defined areas of your pets back. It measures the percent of body fat and shows it on a digital LCD screen to compare against the ideal amount of body fat for your pet depending on where you measure.

Once you get the right diet figured out for your dog you can use your automatic pet feeder to dole out the right amount of food and keep a remote eye on his eating habits.

via Ubergizmo

Those Canadians are always thinking, and according to an article on the Beeradvocate they are now brewing a beer that promises to lower cholesterol. Why waste time and money buying both beer and medicine for your high cholesterol when you can take care of both at once?

Last week this Heart Start Premium Light Beer was launched in the U.S. containing two special ingredients that the FDA concluded reduces total cholesterol. The special items are 1 gram of barley beta glucan and 1 gram of plant sterols. According to a study at the U. of California, Davis, subjects given 1 gram of plant sterols twice daily for an eight-week period resulted in total cholesterol reduced by around 8 percent. Beta glucan itself is clinically proven to to reduce cholesterol and provides help in managing blood glucose levels.

No word on the actual …

Of all the rooms in your house that could suffer from a lack of Hello Kitty paraphernalia, you can rest assured that Hello Kitty can help it from being your bathroom. Tanita manufactures a wide range of quality scales and body composition monitors and it looks as if they’ve got a Hello Kitty branded version as well.

The Hello Kitty Body Fat Monitor (model BF-071-KT) shown here uses bioelectric impedance analysis when stepping onto the pads to measure what percentage of your body is made up of fat, and of course it also measures your weight. Aside from body fat monitors being kind of cool, the scale itself is not anything special compared to the Hello Kitty health-conscious “An apple a day..” slogan that you get to look down at every morning.

The Hello Kitty body fat monitor runs about $49, …

The Discovery Channel store advertises this special blue light as a natural remedy to help you go to sleep at night. The Twilight blue light therapy sleep system exposes your body to the soothing powers of blue light in order to re-calibrate a persons Circadian rhythm, that is if you truly want your rhythm re-calibrated.

Turn on the Twilight Mini blue light about 30 to 60 minutes before you hit the sack and the translucent lens will deliver to you the right amount of UV-free light for a total of up to 10,000 hours from one bulb. The Twilight blue light promises to help you fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly once you do, all for the un-cheap price of $89.95.

Discovery via Red Ferret

Here’s a chair you might find worth adding to your home media room layout. The Inada W.1 Massage Chair, claims its manufacturer, is the world’s first massage chair which synchs music and sound from a home entertainment system with massage.

The chair, which has a built-in amplifier as well as speakers integrated into the head rest, connects to your home entertainment system. It takes the music and sound playing from that system and tries to time the massage to the bass range, while also doing tapping and back vibration for the treble range and leg vibration. It comes complete with up and down buttons to adjust the bass and treble levels and is designed to provide you “deeper mental relaxation.” I’m not sure about that last part though – can you imagine trying to relax as an action scene from a movie like Miami Vice …

Pulse oximetry is definitely not a new technology, and even small, finger-sized portable pulse oximeters have been around for a while. But few have had such a clear display and been as reasonably priced as a the Oxicheck.

This device, like any oximeter shines red and infrared light into your finger to noninvasively check your blood oxygen level and heart rate. It has a nice large LCD display that shows and continuously monitors (not records) your heart rate and blood oxygen saturation in real time. This works off the same principals of larger pulse oximeters that you would find in a hospital.

It’s compact and lets you take it with you just about anywhere running on batteries and needing no cords. It’s a handy gadget to keep tabs on your own health, but don’t let it replace getting checked out by your health care professional. …

Hours of coding or playing EverQuest and lack of exercise commonly go hand in hand to promote growth of the waistline of sedentary computer users (like myself). This can usually lead to bad health problems down the road with various parts of your body such as your ticker. Designer Kawok Lau thinks the answer to salvation might lie in your mouse.

That’s right – your computer mouse. Lau has cooked up what is being called the Heartbeat Indicator Mouse. This regular, wireless mouse activates when a person goes to use it by calling upon built-in sensors below the thumb and palm to take one’s heartbeat. The results of your pulse are displayed on a USB device with a LCD screen which you can position on your desktop so you see exactly how often someone’s annoying email spikes your heart rate. This same display will tell you how …