Healthy Me - At Home and Away: Adderall

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Friday, November 28, 2014

The Next Intrusive Wave of Computing Comes in a Pill

Hugh D'Andrade's design to commemorate Electronic Frontier Foundation's 20th Birthday. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

BY NICK BILTON

SAN FRANCISCO – They look like normal pills, oblong and a little smaller than a daily vitamin. And as society struggles with the privacy implications of Google Glass, they may represent the next, even more intrusive wave of computing: ingestible computers and sensors stuffed inside pills.

Some people are already swallowing them to monitor a range of health data and wirelessly share it with a doctor.

Inside the pills are tiny sensors and transmitters. Swallowed, the devices make their way to the stomach and stay intact as they travel through the intestinal tract.

“You will – voluntarily, I might add – take a pill, which you think of as a pill but is in fact a microscopic robot, which will monitor your systems,” Eric E. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, said last fall. “If it makes the difference between health and death, you’re going to want this thing.”

One pill, made by Proteus Digital Health, uses the body as its power source. Just as a potato can power a light bulb, Proteus has added magnesium and copper on each side of its tiny sensor, which generates just enough electricity from stomach acids. As a Proteus pill hits the bottom of the stomach, it sends information to a cellphone app through a patch worn on the body. It can track medication-taking behaviors and monitor how a patient’s body responds to medicine.

Executives at the company, which recently raised $62.5 million from investors, say they believe that the pills will help patients with physical and neurological problems. People with heart failure-related difficulties could monitor blood flow; those with central nervous system issues, including schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease, could take the pills to monitor vital signs. The United States Food and Drug Administration approved the Proteus pill last year.

A pill made by HQ Inc. has a built-in battery and wirelessly transmits body temperature. Lee Carbonelli, HQ’s marketing director, said the company hoped to soon have a consumer version with a smartphone app.

Future generations of pills could be used for convenience.

At a conference in May, Regina Dugan of Motorola Mobility showed an example, along with wearable radio frequency identification tattoos that attach to the skin like a sticker.

Once that pill is in your body, “your entire body becomes your authentication token,” Ms. Dugan said. Sit in the car and it will start. Touch the handle to your home door and it will unlock.

But ingestible computing’s privacy implications are daunting.

“This is yet another one of these technologies where there are wonderful options and terrible options, simultaneously,” said John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group. “The wonderful is that there are a great number of things you want to know about yourself on a continual basis, especially if you’re diabetic or suffer from another disease. The terrible is that health insurance companies could know about the inner workings of your body.”

There is one last question for this little pill. After it has done its job, what happens next?

“It passes naturally through the body in about 24 hours,” Ms.Carbonelli said, but since each pill costs $46, “some people choose to recover and recycle it.”

Taken from TODAY Saturday Edition, July 6, 2013

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Natural brain cell regeneration?
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Sunday, August 3, 2014

The Perils Of Wandering Minds

English: Adderall (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

03-August-2014
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by Peter Catapano

When we humans are asked to perform under pressure -- say Neymar is coming at you to score a tiebreaker (The ball is dancing on his shoe. How does he do that? The samba is blaring.); or maybe you have 24 hours to save the global financial system (The president's calling again, or is it your mother?) -- our internal directives, if we can stay calm enough to summon them, are usually variations on a single theme: Concentrate!

The ability to focus is important not only in crises, but in all areas of life. Daily distractions come not by the handful but by the hundreds, and the person who can tune them out at will and concentrate on the task at hand is at a clear advantage. But it is not easy.

"Of course, we would like to believe that our attention is infinite, but it isn't," Maria Konnikova, the author of "Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes," wrote in The Times. "Multitasking is a persistent myth. What we really do is shift our attention rapidly from task to task. Two bad things happen as a result. We don't devote as much attention to any one thing, and we sacrifice the quality of our attention."

To this problem, Ms. Konnikova offers a solution: she cites research that shows that the relatively simple practice of mindfulness meditation can improve our ability to concentrate. "These effects make sense: the core of mindfulness is the ability to pay attention. That's exactly what Holmes does when he taps together the tips of his fingers, or exhales a fine cloud of smoke. He is centering his attention on a single element. And somehow, despite the seeming pause in activity, he emerges, time and time again, far ahead of his energetic colleagues."

Vanquishing competitors with laser-like focus may be desirable in a competitive adult world, but the pursuit of the Holmesian ideal can be taken too far, too soon. A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control reported that in the United States one in 5 high-school-age boys and about one in 10 school-age children overall have received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (A.D.H.D.), an increase of more than 40 percent in the last decade. These numbers lead some to believe that both parents and doctors have become too quick to force naturally energetic children (kids being kids) to adapt to adult standards of behavior. And this being the United States in the 21st century, there is a pill for it.

"About two-thirds of those with a current diagnosis receive prescriptions for stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall, which can drastically improve the lives of those with A.D.H.D. but can also lead to addiction, anxiety and occasionally psychosis," The Times reported. Misuse of these drugs is one the rise, taken not just as medication but as a focus-inducing "study aid" for students of nearly all ages. Sometimes those cases come to unhappy ends.

The author Ted Gup wrote in The Times about his son, David, who received a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. at about 5 years old. When David died from a mix of alcohol and drugs at age 21, in 2011, Mr. Gup held himself partly responsible.

"I had unknowingly colluded with a system that devalues talking therapy and rushes to medicate, inadvertently sending a message that self-medication, too, is perfectly acceptable," he wrote.

That message, Mr. Gup said, has become part of "an age in which the airwaves and media are one large drug emporium that claims to fix everything from sleep to sex."

"I fear that being human is itself fast becoming a condition."

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Taken from TODAY Saturday Edition, April 27, 2013

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Are you playing with fire?

Image via Wikipedia

I recently heard from my sister that she was diagnosed with polyps on her nose, which was due to her husband's incessant smoking. That's right, it was secondary smoking, or passive smoking. the very culprit. And as always said, the sufferings and woes of people affected by secondary smoking is more that those doing the puffing.

If you are into that habit of lighting up and smoking away, here's something that may make you stop - if you will.

Read on...

Are you playing with fire?

by Eveline Gan

YOU are craving a nicotine fix, but you don't want the second-hand smoke to affect your child. So you step outside for a puff, thinking what a responsible parent you are.

Well, think again.

A study has found that toxic particles from cigarette smoke, also dubbed as third-hand smoke, can linger on surfaces such as human skin, clothes or furniture, long after the cigarette is extinguished and smoke cleared from the air.

The study, published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that after exposing a piece of paper to smoke, the levels of newly-formed carcinogen (cancer-causing substances) rose by 10 times higher when it interacted with an indoor air chemical called nitrous acid commonly emitted by household appliances or cigarette smoke for three hours.

"A lot of parents think that if they smoke at home when their children aren't around, their children are safe. Although ventilation will help smoke dissipate, the particles simply embed themselves on furniture, carpets and other surfaces," said Dr Lim Yun Chin, a psychiatrist at Raffles Hospital's Raffles Counselling Centre.

"Even smoking outside will not help because the nicotine residues will stick to a smoker's skin, hair and clothing."

The Easy Way to Stop Smoking: Join the Millions Who Have Become Non-Smokers Using Allen Carr's Easyway Method

He added: "When the toxic particles land and embed themselves on objects in the home, you run the risk of children receiving chronic exposure to these contaminants. It may be as simple as an infant, being held, inhaling and touching toxins from a smoking parent's clothing."

Chronic exposure to second- and third-hand smoke is harmful to children.

While it is well-known that toxic particles from cigarette smoke affects the lungs and heart, recent studies have also found that it may affect brain development.

According to Dr Lim, research has shown that cigarette smoke is linked to lower intelligence and other behavioural problems such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and aggressive and defiant behaviour, in children.

LifeSign QuitKey Smoking Cessation Computer

Professor Kua Ee Heok, a senior consultant at the National University Hospital's psychological medicine department added that while many of the study findings are inconclusive, one thing is for sure.

"We know that children in such families (with smokers) may have a tendency to smoke at an earlier age because of 'Learned Behaviour'," Prof Kua said.

"Learned Behaviour" is one that is observed through experience and then carried out by an individual. A child exposed to cigarette smoking in a smoking household, who then picks up the habit, is an example.

How To Quit Smoking Even If You Don't Want To

As such, parents who smoke should try to quit for the sake of their children, advised Dr Lim.

If your self-help methods have not been effective, try professional help or visit a smoking cessation clinic.

A combination of medication - to reduce withdrawal symptoms - and counselling to ease the stress of quitting can help, said Prof Kua.

Taken from TODAY, Health - Tuesday, 20-April-2010;
Source article is here, Are you playing with fire?
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