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Microsoft's New Smart Bra Could Stop You From Over Eating
walterbyrd writes "A team of engineers at Microsoft Research have developed a high-tech bra that's intended to monitor women's stress levels and dissuade them from emotional over-eating. The undergarment has sensors that track the user's heart rate, respiration, skin conductance and movement — all of which can indicate the type of stressful emotions that lead to over-eating, according to Microsoft researchers. The data is sent to a smartphone app, which then alerts users about their mood."
The fundamental problem with this is that overeating doesn't cause obesity.
Some recent scientific results (*) have clarified obesity, and are completely at odds with every "common knowledge" explanation. The bad news is that we don't know what causes obesity and there's nothing anyone can do [currently] to combat it. The good news is that it's not related to a) what you eat(**) b) how much you eat, c) your willpower, d) genetics, or e) exercise.
Relax, it's not your fault.
In the current model the digestive system presents a river of nutrients, from which the body takes what it needs to maintain a specific weight.The body has a set-point in the manner of a thermometer for how much nutrition to take in, and something in the environment disturbs this set-point(***), resulting in obesity. There is strong statistical evidence that this is not related to the amount or type of food eaten(*) (within dietary reason) or the level of exercise. Over 700 possible factors have been suggested, including Bisphenol-A in packaging, estrogenic compounds in the environment, and water fluoridation.
Your diet worked for you, and that's great; however, it didn't fix your obesity(***): something you did along with the diet changed the environment and your body regained a normal set-point. For this reason, no diet is universal: it's happenstance.
Exercise isn't what fixed your obesity. Again, nothing related to nutrition (within obvious limits) or exercise is the cause of obesity. Something else is at play. Whether exercise is good for you is a different issue; it's just not the cause of your obesity.
Modeling your body as a thermodynamic system sounds logical and "makes sense", but without actually going into starvation it's not the correct description of the problem. You can burn many calories simply by sleeping with fewer covers (more than you can by exercising), but your body will simply take more from the stream. This won't affect your obesity.
* Modern-day laboratory animals are fat, despite having the same diet and exercise as lab animals raised in previous decades. Statistically, the trend is very strong.
** A nutritional balance is necessary (of course). Whether junk food is good for you is a separate issue; however, it's not the cause of your obesity.
*** The difference in caloric intake between normal and obese is about 30 calories/day (about 3 peanut M&Ms), which is roughly 1% of your daily nutritional needs. No diet has this level of resolution, no diet can be this accurate by measuring servings without taking into account the condition of the serving (ie - chicken fattier than average, veggies drier than average, &c.)
FTFA: "Czerwinski explained that her team tried to develop an underwear version for men, but it didn’t end up working because underwear is located too far away from the heart."
Thanks for reading, asshole.
I was a software engineer at Microsoft from 1995-2002. So while my comments are indeed biased (and really, the first four years were an awful lot of fun, even if I did have to work with windows, but it is not a work experience I would want to return to) they also reflect a fair bit of personal experience.
But more the point, the potential product, as presented, isn't useful to me. Might be to other people, can't speak for them. I find the idea of an instrumented bra interesting. (Or, rather, instruments that would attach to an existing bra. I'm picky about my bras, and they have to hold up to running and martial arts.) The app they're using it for? Not so much.
For me to be interested in it, I would want access to the raw data, and to be able to hack it. I don't pretend my case is likely to be that common. But without those features, meh. There are hackable heartrate monitors available, and that'll do more of what I care about.
Polar actually sells a sports bra version of their heart rate monitor strap. It's a brilliant idea, because wearing the strap under a sports bra isn't really all that pleasant. Lots of us do it, but it sort of sucks. You still have to attach the actual monitor with the transmitter and battery to the bra, but the electrodes and wiring are built in.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
DO NOT buy one of these for your wife or girlfriend. In fact, don't ever acknowledge that you're aware of its existence.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."