In a race with Amazon to the bottom, Samsung has unveiled a new spy machine robot called “Ballie” that rolls around people’s homes watching and listening to everything they do while controlling all their electronic devices.
First unveiled back in 2020, Ballie’s latest hypothetical design is roughly the size of a bowling ball on wheels – previously it was only about the size of a tennis ball. The spying device also now contains a built-in projector that can display a virtual work call, a yoga program, or whatever else the user wants projected on a wall or ceiling – the video below shows what Ballie looks like and what it does:
(Related: Previously, Amazon’s Echo device was considered to be the ultimate spy machine to listen to and record everything users do and say.)
Does the world really need another in-home spying device?
At the recent CES 2024 event, Samsung showed off the Ballie in a demo, though attendees were not allowed any one-on-one time with the spherical robot device. In the demo, Ballie’s movements were “obviously tightly scripted and controlled,” to quote Engadget‘s Nathan Ingraham.
Ingraham says the demo “at the very least … gave us an idea of how the company envisions Ballie being used.” In other words, Ballie’s real-life use cases are still all hypothetical as the device is still under development.
An actor at CES 2024 asked Ballie to start a workout routine for him, which prompted the machine to project a workout video on the wall for immediate use, along with music to go along with it.
“Sure, you could just use your TV for that, but when one of the exercises called for laying down, Ballie shot the video to the ceiling so the actor could continue following along,” Ingraham explains.
In another demo example, Ballie displayed a visual representation of the air quality of a home to which it was connected via an air purifier. Ballie displayed not only particulate statistics but also a warning that the filter in the air purifier needed changing.
“The idea here is to show that Ballie can talk to all your smart home devices and display info from them, even if they don’t have a dedicated display,” Ingraham says.
Much like a smartphone, Ballie is also able to display a user’s calendar, place phone calls and even show video footage of, say, the inside of one’s “smart” Samsung refrigerator or the front stoop in the pathway of a “smart” doorbell.
“It’s cute, and it was fun to see Ballie confidently rolling around the floor of the demo area, but I can’t help but think that it’s solving exactly zero real world problems either,” Ingraham further notes.
According to Samsung, the first working Ballie devices will be on sale towards the end of the year, but not everyone, including Ingraham, is convinced it will actually materialize.
“I’m not fully convinced, as we’ve seen a lot of similar projects die in the wind, but I am definitely rooting for the little robot,” he writes.
Reports indicate that the latest iteration of Ballie presented at CES 2024 contains a spatial LiDAR sensor and a 1080p projector, the latter of which has two lenses and allows the robot to project movies, video calls and “greetings” on its surrounding surfaces.
A video shown during the device’s keynote depicted Ballie greeting a user who just returned home from work or an errand by projecting the word “Welcome” on the wall.
Pick up your smartphone. Yes, you’ve held it a thousand times, it’s like an extension of your hands. But let’s do an experiment: Grab it by both ends and stretch it out as far as it will go. Now twist it. Wrap it around your forearm. Cool, right? Now let it snap back.
Wait, what do you mean your phone won’t bend and stretch?
That little exercise in imagination illustrates what’s possible in the realm of wearables – electronic devices we wear close to or on our skin. Today, smartwatches and phones are still hard, inflexible blocks of plastic and metal. Tomorrow, all that will change.
ASSIST Center Director Dr. Veena Misra (center left) and then Deputy Director Dr. John Muth (center right) are pictured in the Nanofabrication Facility at North Carolina State University. The
“In wearables, flexibility, stretchability, and washability are all key requirements,” says Veena Misra, PhD, a professor of electrical engineering at North Carolina State University and director of the ASSIST Center, a fresearch institute funded by the National Science Foundation that develops wearables to aid health.
“We are seeing these kinds of developments across the board,” Misra says, “and you can track that in the number of [research] papers coming out in wearables. That number is just growing exponentially.”
We tend to think of wearables as fun consumer gadgets, but a growing school of thought says they will drastically improve health care – providing a vehicle for continuous, long-term monitoring to predict adverse events and closely track disease, improving treatments and health outcomes worldwide.
For that to happen, wearables must work seamlessly with our bodies. That means making conventionally hard, rigid devices and systems more like human skin – soft, bendable, and stretchable.
How does one manage that? By redesigning electronics at the molecular level, miniaturizing sensors, and creating unheard-of power sources to support what engineers call a skin-like “form factor.”
To coin a phrase, it ain’t science fiction. It’s happening as we speak, and the new products these advances will create – potentially starting in health care and crossing over to the consumer wellness market – could become as normal as that clunky, inflexible phone you can’t put down. Here’s how.
Why Does Form Factor Matter?
A wearable that conforms to your body is better in two crucial ways: It’s less obtrusive for the user, and it allows for a more reliable measurement.
“Sensors and sensor systems a lot of times suffer from mechanical mismatch,” says Alper Bozkurt, PhD, an electrical engineer, and Misra’s colleague, at NC State and ASSIST. “If you have soft tissue that’s moving around, but a rigid sensing device that’s not moving around, your measurement may not be reliable.”
That’s because all that extra banging around between the device and your body shows up as “noise” – meaningless information that can distort the measurement and may lead to false conclusions.
In wearables, flexibility, stretchability, and washability are all key requirements. Dr. Veena Misra
Then there’s the “human factor,” Bozkurt notes – the issue of compliance.
“One of the challenges is, we design things in the lab, test everything, and bring it to our medical operators, and they raise their eyebrows and say, ‘No, my patients are not going to wear this,’” Bozkurt says. “You cannot imagine a future for wearables without solving the compliance issue.”
People want a device that’s comfortable, doesn’t stick out, and requires little interaction, Bozkurt says. “We call it wear-and-forget.” You might compare this to wearing a Band-Aid – sure, you notice it occasionally, but mostly it fades into the background, without interfering with your daily tasks and without others even noticing it’s there.
A wristwatch may seem comfortable enough, but applications extend beyond what a wristwatch can enable, notes Michael Daniele, PhD, a fellow member of the NC State / ASSIST team, who studies soft nanomaterials to engineer devices that monitor, mimic, or supplement body functions.
Wearable devices are being developed to help patients and even treat them in ways “in which the patient’s comfort is a priority,” he says.
Take the use of electrodes and electronics in lower-limb prosthetic sockets as an example, he says. “Picture a few metal screws pressing into your limb that you are supporting all of your weight with, or picture filling your shoe with an array of rocks. That’s the state of wearables for such a user.”
OK, So How Do You Make Electronics Soft and Stretchy?
One way is to take hard things used to monitor health – like silicon chips – and make them so thin they become flexible. Among the first to demonstrate this kind of material technology in skin-like wearable devices was John Rogers, PhD, in 2011, in a landmark Science paper titled Epidermal Electronics.
“We’d been pretty active in that field for a number of years,” says Rogers, who at the time was at the University of Illinois and has since moved to Northwestern University. “But then we realized that even silicon – which most people think of as a very rigid, brittle rock-like material – can be made into forms and shapes, and at thicknesses that allow it to be bent and … even stretched.”
Rogers, whose team has several applications in development, uses an etching technique to shave off the surface of a semiconductor wafer.
“It turns out all the action in those integrated circuits is happening on that very-near-surface layer,” he says. “All of the silicon underneath is just serving as a mechanical support.”
That critical layer is then embedded into an elastic polymer matrix, Rogers explains, allowing them to design fully functioning systems that can bend, twist, and stretch.
Still others use a different approach, building electronic parts from scratch out of materials that are inherently soft and stretchy – polymers. This is the kind of work Stanford chemical engineer Zhenan Bao, PhD, does, using a range of polymers with conducting properties.
“In our work, we gain a fundamental understanding on how to design plastic molecules so that they have the functions and properties we want,” Bao says. For skin-like electronics, the plastics are designed – on a molecular level – to be conductive, elastic, and soft.
One of the newest creations out of Bao’s lab is a polymer that lights up, enabling skin-like visual displays. She imagines a skin patch with the display right on it, or going further, a telehealth appointment where the doctor could see and feel the texture of the patient’s skin via a three-dimensional, lifelike display. Example: One exam to check for severe water retention in heart failure patients is to press on the skin to see if it bounces back, Bao says. The patient would wrap an electronic sticker around their leg and press on it to generate a display for the off-site doctor. “The doctor would be able to feel on the display the texture of the skin that the patient would feel,” she says – from a remote location.
“Of course, this is still far away,” Bao notes. “But that’s what I think would be possible that can be enabled by skin-like displays and sensors.”
More Wild Advances: Liquid Metals, Plasma Bonding, Chemical Sensors
Still other developments are continuing. Advancements in liquid metals allow for stretchable conductive wires. Textile-based, moisture-resistant antennas can transmit data while worn close to the skin. Methods like water vapor plasma bonding attach thin metals to soft polymers without losing flexibility or using high temperature and pressure that can damage super-thin electronics.
Sensors are improving too – that’s the part that interacts with whatever you’re trying to measure. Most commercial wearable sensors are mechanical (used to track physical activity) or optical (heartbeat, pulse oximetry). But chemical sensors are in development to measure internal markers in the body as well. These are critical in revealing the full picture of your health, says Joseph Wang, a doctor of science and professor of nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego, who has published research on biosensors and wearable devices.
Stanford researchers created a polymer that lights up and can be used to build a flexible color display. It holds up when stretched or flexed.
For example, a rise in lactate and drop in blood pressure can mean you have septic shock. Measuring potassium levels can give information about heart rate changes. And combining blood pressure and glucose measurements may reveal more about metabolic health than either one alone. “If you combine them, you get better evidence,” Wang says.
This is where the new tech can get really geeky. Chemical sensors are made from some of the most exotic nano materials, including graphene, carbon nanotubes, and gold nanoparticles, Daniele says. Some (glucose sensors in particular) use enzymes that bind to target molecules. Others use aptamers, short single strands of DNA or RNA.
Chemical sensors typically work with body fluid such as sweat, saliva, tears, or – as is the case for continuous glucose monitors – interstitial fluid (the liquid between the cells in your body).
“Most of the things you want to measure in blood you’ll be able to do in interstitial fluid if you have the sensor technology,” says Jason Heikenfeld, PhD, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Just imagine having a full blood workup done by simply putting on a skin patch, no blood sample required.
Heikenfeld has also investigated sweat, which appears useful for measuring hormone levels (such as those that regulate stress, sex, and sleep) and prescription drug monitoring – that is, monitoring levels of a drug in the body and tracking how quickly it’s metabolized, he says.
Sweat sensors may also find a place in at-home tests, Heikenfeld says. “If there was a people’s choice award for bio fluids, sweat would win,” he says. “We don’t want to do blood, don’t want to drool in a cup, don’t want to mess with a urine stick. Tears, forget it. The test would be a simple patch you slap on your arm; collect some fluid, put it in an envelope, and mail it to a lab.”
Wearable Power Sources: Beyond AA Batteries
If you want to create a stretchable, flexible electronic device, you’ll need a stretchable, flexible, and even washable way to power it. Many of today’s wearables, like smartwatches, are powered by very small but still rigid batteries, Bao says. Hence the bulky form.
“There’s certainly a big demand for high-energy density, truly flexible batteries,” she says.
If there was a people’s choice award for bio fluids, sweat would win. Jason Heikenfeld, PhD
This demand has prompted researchers from across the globe to develop batteries that can stretch and flex. To name just a few recent examples, Canadian researchers developed a flexible, washable battery that can stretch to double its original length and still function. In Singapore, scientists created a paper-thin biodegradable zinc battery that you can bend and twist and even cut with scissors – like any piece of paper – and it will still work. Still others are engineering batteries into long strips that can be used in smart clothing.
Another option is wireless power, Bao says. The battery does not need to be in the device – it can be in your clothes or your pocket and still power the sensors. Bao’s lab at Stanford has developed a sticker-like wearable called BodyNet that can be charged using radio-frequency identification, the same technology used to control keyless entry to locked rooms.
Still others – like Misra and her colleagues at ASSIST – are exploring battery alternatives like energy harvesting, or converting body heat, solar energy, or movement into power.
Misra is working on an energy generator that can convert the temperature difference between your skin and the room into energy to power a device. “You have a skin temperature of, say, 98.6 degrees,” she says. “The temperature in your room is probably about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And that temperature difference of 28 degrees can be dropped across a device called a thermoelectric generator, which can convert that energy difference into power.”
Just imagine: No more worrying about the battery dying, getting wet, or having to be recharged. “Your body is the battery,” Misra says.
What’s Next
For wearables to truly reach their full potential, all the parts must become more power-efficient and come together in a flexible, stretchable package, Misra says. They also must be designed in such a way that millions, if not billions, of people will want to wear them.
Just as important: Devices destined for the medical world must provide top-quality data. If the collected data isn’t gold standard, what good is it? And all that data needs to be turned into useful information. That’s where data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence come in. “These are not unsolvable problems,” Misra says, “but they’re exciting problems that a lot of the community is working on.”
Bottom line: Our wearable future is well on its way.
Exposure to microwave radiation from cellphones, routers, cordless phones, smart meters, baby monitors and other wireless devices causes massive mitochondrial dysfunction due to free radical damage
Excessive free radicals triggered by low-frequency microwave exposure from wireless technologies have been linked to cardiac arrhythmias, anxiety, depression, autism, Alzheimer’s, infertility and more
In addition to remediating obvious EMF exposures, strategies that may help reduce the harmful effects of EMFs include optimizing your magnesium level, eating Nrf2-boosting foods and pulsing molecular hydrogen
By Dr. Mercola
I was recently interviewed by Dave Asprey when I visited his Bulletproof lab on Vancouver Island.1 In it, I review the real dangers of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) emitted by electronic devices. I will also do a more comprehensive lecture on this topic at Asprey’s Bulletproof Conference October 13 through 15 at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, California.
Avoiding excessive EMF exposure is an important component of optimizing mitochondrial health. In fact, this is going to be the topic of my next book. Like my latest best-seller, “Fat for Fuel,” which details my metabolic mitochondrial therapy program, I want the book on EMFs to be peer-reviewed by the leading scientists and researchers in the world who understand the truth and are free of industry corruption.
The key is to translate the science into clear and understandable language, and offer practical recommendations on how to remediate the problem. After all, we are swimming in an invisible ocean of EMFs just about everywhere you go these days. It’s near-impossible to avoid microwave exposure completely, but there are ways to reduced it, for sure.
Your Cellphone Is a Major Source of EMF Exposure
As noted by Asprey, his studio is hard-wired, and that’s one simple way to reduce exposure from Wi-Fi. You can also shut your Wi-Fi down whenever you’re not using it, and certainly at night when you’re sleeping. When using your cellphone, use the speaker phone and hold the phone 3 feet away from you, using a selfie stick. I’ve measured the radiation and you decrease your exposure by about 90 percent this way.
When not in use, make sure your cellphone is in airplane mode and/or keep it in a Faraday bag. These are just a few quick examples of how you can protect your health while still living in modern society. I have carefully measured the radiation coming from my phone and even when it is on and not calling someone the radiation doesn’t come down to safe ranges until I am 25 feet away, which is why I keep my phone in airplane mode most of the time and only use it for emergencies or when I am traveling.
It took me awhile to figure this out. I got rid of all the wireless devices and Wi-Fi in my house, yet the EMFs were still high. Then I finally realized that it was my phone (while on) that caused it. My levels dropped below 0.01 volts/meter once I put it in airplane mode. This is a key point. For nearly everyone reading this, the majority of the radiation you’re exposed to is not coming from the outside into your home; it’s coming from the items in your home.
Nonthermal Damage
Most of the radiation we’re exposed to today is microwave radiation, which does include radiation from your microwave oven. If you still have one, I recommend replacing it with a steam convection oven, which will heat your food just as quickly but far more safely. When you turn that microwave oven on, it will expose you to very dangerous microwave radiation at levels that are far in excess of your cellphone. We’re not talking about thermal (heat) damage here. We’re talking about nonthermal damage.
I recently interviewed Martin Pall, Ph.D., who has identified and published several papers describing the molecular mechanisms of how EMFs from cellphones and wireless technologies damage plants, animals and humans.2,3,4,5 Many studies have shown that when you’re exposed to EMFs, intracellular calcium increases. Pall also discovered a number of studies showing that you can block or greatly reduce the effects of EMFs using calcium channel blockers — medication commonly prescribed to patients with heart disease.
This turns out to be a crucial point, because it’s the excess calcium in the cell and the increased calcium signaling that are responsible for a vast majority of the biological effects of EMFs.
Pall has discovered no less than 26 papers showing that EMFs work by activating voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs), which are located in the outer membrane of your cells. Once activated, they allow a tremendous influx of calcium into the cell — about 1 million calcium ions per second per VGCC.
Importantly, the cellular membrane is 7 million times more sensitive to EMFs than the charged particles inside and outside of the cells, which are what safety standards are based on. In other words, the safety standards are off by a factor of 7 million!
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A Chain Reaction of Harm
When there’s excess calcium in the cell, it increases levels of both nitric oxide (NO) and superoxide. While NO has many beneficial health effects, massively excessive NO reacts with superoxide, forming peroxynitrite, which is an extremely potent oxidant stressor.
Peroxynitrites, in turn, break down to form reactive free radicals, both reactive nitrogen species and reactive oxygen species (ROS), including hydroxyl radicals, carbonate radicals and NO2 radicals — all three of which do damage. Peroxynitrites also do damage all on their own.
So, EMFs are not “cooking” your cells. It’s not a thermal influence. Rather, the radiation activates the VGCCs in the outer cell membrane, which triggers a chain reaction of devastating events that, ultimately, decimates your mitochondrial function and causes severe cellular damage and DNA breaks. It also decimates your cell membranes and cellular proteins. In a nutshell, it dramatically accelerates the aging process.
Common EMF-Related Health Problems
As noted by Asprey, he used to keep his cellphone in a pants pocket on his right leg. He now has 10 percent less bone density in his right femur, which he believes is related to carrying his cellphone there. Needless to say, he no longer carries his phone on his body. Now, since the biological damage is triggered by activation of your VGCCs, it stands to reason that tissues with the highest densities of VGCCs will be more prone to harm.
So, which tissues have the highest concentration of VGCC’s? Your brain, the pacemaker of your heart, your nervous system, retina and male testes. Indeed, studies dating back to the 1950s and ’60s show the nervous system is the organ that is most sensitive to EMFs. Some of these studies show massive changes in the structure of neurons, including cell death and synaptic dysfunction.
When the VGCCs are activated in the brain they release neurotransmitters and neuroendocrine hormones, and elevated VGCC activity in certain parts of the brain has been shown to produce a variety of neuropsychiatric effects. Among the most common consequences of chronic EMF exposure to the brain are: 6
Common heart problems linked to EMF exposure include:
Cardiac arrhythmias (associated with sudden cardiac death)
Atrial fibrillation / atrial flutter
Premature atrial contractions (PACs) and premature ventricular contractions (PVCs), also known as heart palpitations
Tachycardia (fast heartbeat) and brachycardia (slow heartbeat)
Many who suffer these conditions are on dangerous drugs. If you have any kind of heart or brain-related condition, you really need to take EMF exposure seriously, and take steps to remediate it. There’s simply no question about it — EMF exposure can trigger these and many other conditions. The drug is not treating the cause of the problem, and if you truly want to get well, you need to address the causes. EMFs may not be the sole contributor, but it’s a significant one that should not be overlooked.
Reproductive Effects and Cancer
EMF exposure may also increase a man’s risk for infertility if he wears his cellphones near his groin and/or uses a laptop on his lap, and a woman’s risk for breast cancer is higher if she tucks her cellphone in her bra. Studies have linked low-level electromagnetic radiation (EMR) exposure from cellphones to an 8 percent reduction in sperm motility and a 9 percent reduction in sperm viability.7,8
Wi-Fi equipped laptop computers have also been linked to decreased sperm motility and an increase in sperm DNA fragmentation after just four hours of use.9 In regard to breast cancer, the most common location for breast cancer is the upper, outer quadrant. When the cancer is located in the upper, inner quadrant, it’s more likely to be related to cellphone radiation (if you’ve been carrying your phone in your bra).
How to Lower Your Exposure
The first step to lower your exposure would be to identify the most significant sources. Your cellphone is a major source of exposure, as are cordless phones, Wi-Fi routers, Bluetooth headsets and other Bluetooth-equipped items, wireless mice, keyboards, smart thermostats, baby monitors, smart meters and the microwave in your kitchen. Ideally, address each source and determine how you can best limit their use. For example, remedial interventions could include:
Swapping a wireless baby monitor for a hardwired one
Carrying your cellphone in a bag instead of on your body, and keeping it in airplane mode and/or in a Faraday (shielded) bag or case when not on a call
Turning off your Wi-Fi at night. Even better, don’t use Wi-Fi and switch to wired Ethernet
Using your laptop on a table rather than your lap
Using your cellphone with a headset or on speaker phone, and keeping the phone as far away from your body as possible using a selfie stick. Ideally, use landlines whenever possible
Hardwiring as many devices as possible to avoid Wi-Fi fields. This includes mice, keyboards and printers. Avoid Ethernet over power (EOP), however, as this strategy increases the variability in your power lines, causing dirty electricity. You can partially remediate this with capacitors or filters, but it’s not an ideal solution. EOP is better than Wi-Fi, but not as good as running an Ethernet cable
Installing a Faraday cage (copper- and/or silver-threaded fabric) around your bed. If you live in a high-rise and have neighbors beneath you, place the Faraday fabric on the floor beneath your bed as well. This may significantly improve your sleep quality, as EMFs are known to disrupt sleep
If you have a smart meter, take steps to have it removed and replaced with an old analog meter. If your area is planning on installing them, be proactive in preventing its installation. For more information about this and guidance on how to go about preventing smart meter installation or getting it reversed, see “InPower: A Mass Action of Liability“
To identify EMF sources you might not have considered, it would be a worthwhile investment to buy a microwave meter. The Cornet ED88T10 is likely the best low cost meter out there, but their manual is terrible so you need to watch this video by Lloyd Burrell to learn how to use it.
When I travel, I’ll check the room in which I’m staying to determine the best side of the bed to sleep on. I’ve found there can be a tenfold difference between one side of the bed and the other. The Trifield meter is quite popular, but it’s important to realize that Trifield meters are only good for screening for magnetic fields. Although they measure microwave radiation, they can be very inaccurate and should not be used for that purpose.
Nutritional Intervention
Nutritional intervention can also help reduce the harmful effects of EMFs. It’s not a permanent solution you can use in lieu of remediation, but it can be helpful while you’re implementing more permanent solutions. The first is magnesium, as magnesium is a natural calcium channel blocker. Many are deficient in magnesium to start with, and I believe many may benefit from as much as 1 to 2 grams of magnesium per day.
Increasing Nrf2 is also helpful. NRf2 is a biological hormetic that upregulates superoxide dismutase, catalase and all the other beneficial intercellular antioxidants. It also:
Lowers inflammation
Improves mitochondrial function
Stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis
Helps detoxify the body from xenobiotics, carbon-containing toxicants and toxic metals
Activates the transcription of over 500 genes in the human genome, most of which have cytoprotective functions. This includes the three genes that encode enzymes required for synthesis of reduced glutathione, which is one of the most important antioxidants produced in your body
You can activate Nrf2 by:
Consuming Nrf2-boosting food compounds such as sulforaphane from cruciferous vegetables, foods high in phenolic antioxidants, the long-chained omega-3 fats DHA and EPA, carotenoids (especially lycopene), sulfur compounds from allum vegetables, isothiocyanates from the cabbage group and terpenoid-rich foods
High-intensity exercises that activate the NO signaling pathway, such as the NO dump exercise
Calorie restriction (such as intermittent fasting)
The Benefits of Molecular Hydrogen
Another helpful supplement is molecular hydrogen. Tyler LeBaron’s website, molecularhydrogenfoundation.org,11 lists several hundred studies relating to hydrogen. You can also find a number of his lectures on YouTube. In summary, molecular hydrogen consists of two atoms of hydrogen, the smallest molecule in the universe, which:
Is a neutral molecule that can defuse across any cell membrane, instantly
Has no polarity
Is a potent, selective antioxidant
Free radicals are actually important; they do serve health functions. The problem is excess free radicals, or the wrong ones. Molecular hydrogen has been shown to target free radicals produced in response to radiation, such as peroxynitrites. Studies have shown molecular hydrogen can mitigate about 80 percent of this damage. The take home message is it can be quite valuable when flying, for example, to counteract the damage caused by gamma rays encountered at 35,000 feet.
Your body actually makes hydrogen gas, about 10 liters a day, which benefits your body. However, when you have a steady state of exposure, you don’t get the other benefits, so you want to pulse it. That’s where you get the benefit. I’ve taken molecular hydrogen tablets on my last few flights, and it worked great. There are a number of different ways to get it, but the most practical way is to take molecular hydrogen tablets.
Once you’re at about 5,000 to 10,000 feet, put the tablet in a small bottle of lukewarm water. Put the cap back on and leave it on while the tablet dissolves to prevent the gas from escaping. Once dissolved, drink it as quickly as possible. The hydrogen gas will continue working for about two hours, so if you’re on a longer flight, you may want to do a second dose halfway through.
Light-emitting electronic devices keep readers awake longer than old-fashioned print.
Use of a light-emitting electronic book (LE-eBook) in the hours before bedtime can adversely impact overall health, alertness and the circadian clock, which synchronizes the daily rhythm of sleep to external environmental time cues, according to Harvard Medical School researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. These findings of the study that compared the biological effects of reading an LE-eBook to a printed book are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on December 22, 2014.
“We found the body’s natural circadian rhythms were interrupted by the short-wavelength enriched light, otherwise known as blue light, from these electronic devices,” said Anne-Marie Chang, corresponding author and associate neuroscientist at Brigham and Women’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. “Participants reading an LE-eBook took longer to fall asleep and had reduced evening sleepiness, reduced melatonin secretion, later timing of their circadian clock and reduced next-morning alertness than when reading a printed book.”
Previous research has shown that blue light suppresses melatonin, impacts the circadian clock and increases alertness, but little was known about the effects of this popular technology on sleep. The use of light-emitting devices immediately before bedtime is a concern because of the extremely powerful effect that light has on the body’s natural sleep/wake pattern and how that may play a role in perpetuating sleep deficiency.
During the two-week inpatient study, twelve participants read digital books on an iPad for four hours before bedtime each night for five consecutive nights. This was repeated with printed books. The order was randomized with some reading on the iPad first and others reading the printed book first. Participants reading on the iPad took longer to fall asleep, were less sleepy in the evening and spent less time in REM sleep. They had reduced secretion of melatonin, a hormone that normally rises in the evening and plays a role in inducing sleepiness. Additionally, iPad readers had a delayed circadian rhythm, indicated by melatonin levels, of more than an hour. Participants who read on the iPad were less sleepy before bedtime but were sleepier and less alert the following morning after eight hours of sleep. Although iPads were used in this study, researchers also measured other devices that emit blue light, including eReaders, laptops, cell phones and LED monitors.
“In the past 50 years, there has been a decline in average sleep duration and quality,” said Charles Czeisler, the HMS Frank Baldino, Jr., Ph.D. Professor of Sleep Medicine and chief of the Brigham and Women’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. “Since more people are choosing electronic devices for reading, communication and entertainment, particularly children and adolescents who already experience significant sleep loss, epidemiological research evaluating the long-term consequences of these devices on health and safety is urgently needed.”
Researchers emphasize the importance of these findings, given recent evidence linking chronic suppression of melatonin secretion by nocturnal light exposure with the increased risk of breast cancer, colorectal cancer and prostate cancer.
Use of a light-emitting electronic device (LE-eBook) in the hours before bedtime can adversely impact overall health, alertness, and the circadian clock which synchronizes the daily rhythm of sleep to external environmental time cues, according to researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) who compared the biological effects of reading an LE-eBook compared to a printed book. These findings of the study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on December 22, 2014.
“We found the body’s natural circadian rhythms were interrupted by the short-wavelength enriched light, otherwise known as blue light, from these electronic devices,” said Anne-Marie Chang, PhD, corresponding author, and associate neuroscientist in BWH’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. “Participants reading an LE-eBook took longer to fall asleep and had reduced evening sleepiness, reduced melatonin secretion, later timing of their circadian clock and reduced next-morning alertness than when reading a printed book.”
Previous research has shown that blue light suppresses melatonin, impacts the circadian clock and increase alertness, but little was known about the effects of this popular technology on sleep. The use of light emitting devices immediately before bedtime is a concern because of the extremely powerful effect that light has on the body’s natural sleep/wake pattern, and may thereby play a role in perpetuating sleep deficiency.
During the two-week inpatient study, twelve participants read LE-e-Books on an iPad for four hours before bedtime each night for five consecutive nights. This was repeated with printed books. The order was randomized with some reading the iPad first and others reading the printed book first. Participants reading on the iPad took longer to fall asleep, were less sleepy in the evening, and spent less time in REM sleep. The iPad readers had reduced secretion of melatonin, a hormone which normally rises in the evening and plays a role in inducing sleepiness. Additionally, iPad readers had a delayed circadian rhythm, indicated by melatonin levels, of more than an hour. Participants who read from the iPad were less sleepy before bedtime, but sleepier and less alert the following morning after eight hours of sleep. Although iPads were used in this study, BWH researchers also measured other eReaders, laptops, cell phones, LED monitors, and other electronic devices, all emitting blue light.
“In the past 50 years, there has been a decline in average sleep duration and quality,” stated Charles Czeisler, PhD, MD, FRCP, chief, BWH Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. “Since more people are choosing electronic devices for reading, communication and entertainment, particularly children and adolescents who already experience significant sleep loss, epidemiological research evaluating the long-term consequences of these devices on health and safety is urgently needed.”
Researchers emphasize the importance of these findings, given recent evidence linking chronic suppression of melatonin secretion by nocturnal light exposure with the increased risk of breast cancer, colorectal cancer and prostate cancer.
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