Advances in technology mean health gadgets can now be disguised as jewellery.
Earrings, bracelets and brooches are being redeployed to keep a check on our wellbeing, picking up signs of potential problems and sometimes even serving as a treatment.
Pat Hagan asked experts to assess some of the latest health accessories. We then rated them.
Bangle for painful joints
Gold-plated copper bracelet
Claim: Copper from the bracelet is absorbed into the bloodstream through the skin ‘and distributed to parts of the body where there is a deficiency’, says the maker, easing rheumatic pain. Two magnets inside the bracelet ‘assist health and wellbeing’.
What happened when one writer put extreme expert advice on trial.
By Laura Silverman Jan 8, 2021
As soon as the sun rises, I hide under my duvet. If I must emerge, I put the kettle in the fridge and wear jumpers inside out. At night, I could run a marathon and write a novel. it wouldn’t be good but it would get done. Like one in four of us, I’m a night person. An owl, with fewer feathers.
When I worked as a freelancer, this wasn’t a problem – I’d happily scribble away in the dark, undistracted by emails. But now I ve got a job with regular 9.30am-6pm hours and I ve suddenly seen how others live. Weeks in, I was miserable. Then I read about a regime that could turn night people into morning people.
More than 40 years ago, skin patches were introduced as an effective way of delivering drugs into the body while avoiding the problems of tablets, which have to be absorbed in the gut first meaning the dose can be reduced in strength by the time it reaches its destination.
A patch can also be useful because it avoids the gastrointestinal tract, helping anyone with stomach-related problems, where absorption can be an issue.
The patch delivers small amounts of the medication or treatment directly into the skin, where it acts locally or is absorbed into the bloodstream.
While this approach is already used to help smokers quit (nicotine patches) and women through the menopause (HRT patches), it is now available for a wide variety of conditions.
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Last night I dreamt I was watching athletes take part in a high-stakes race. With moments to go, the lead sprinter collapsed, unable to crawl even the few inches to the finish line. When I recalled the dream this morning, I burst out laughing. You don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to parse the meaning of that bit of nocturnal symbolism.