8 Fitness and Wellness Tech Innovations That Could Seriously Upgrade Your Life
As a plugged-in wellness connoisseur, you might have heard of Natural Products Expo West, the healthy food world’s biggest annual meeting of the minds (or, brands). CES (Consumer Electronics Show) is a similar event, geared toward techies.
And over the past few years, the two totally different conferences have started to overlap when it comes to trends. That’s because wellness has never been buzzier, and tech companies are increasingly focused on showing off innovations that help people eat better...and exercise smarter, sleep more soundly, and so much more.
To kick off the new year, I spent lots of time at CES 2018 in Las Vegas this January scanning for stand-out tech innovations in health and wellness. These are the products I found that have serious ahead-of-the curve wow-factor and real potential to improve the ways you integrate wellness strategies into your everyday life.
Keep reading for the buzziest wellness tech at CES 2018.
1. The smartest (and nicest) scale yet
Qardio makes a few different at-home health devices, like a futuristic blood pressure cuff and ECG monitor. But the one you’ll likely want for your bathroom is the new QardioBase 2, a sleek-looking scale that measures weight and full-body composition stats like percent body fat and muscle mass. It’s also got cool features like the ability to recognize individual family members and a pregnancy mode that can track your nine months with charts. And if you hate numbers, a “motivational goal setting mode” allows you to replace them with smiley faces (really).
2. The next-gen face mask
A gadget called a "UFO" is guaranteed to grab your attention, right? That’s what Foreo has dubbed its “advanced smart mask,” a device that simplifies the messy sheet-mask process into a 90-second treatment it says will help give you clear, glowy skin. The UFO utilizes a few skin-care technologies common in dermatologist offices—LED light therapy, cryotherapy, thermotherapy, and T-sonic pulsations—to deliver results at home.
3. Sun protection that looks like nail art
No, this is not an excuse to skip your daily sunscreen application. But L'Oreal’s UV Sense device could give your current routine an upgrade. The battery-free wearable measures UV exposure and comes in tiny adhesive gem form, which means you can stick it on your running sneakers or sunglasses. It totally looks like nail art if you’re up for that, though.
4. Refrigerator or personal assistant?
If Samsung’s SmartHub 3.0 could just get the food into the oven, kitchen labor would basically be eliminated. The smart fridge manages your food stash by allowing you to see what you’ve got stocked from the grocery store, tracking expirations to reduce food waste, and providing recipes based on what you’ve got. And this new model’s expertise extends to other household tasks, too, because it syncs up with other smart home devices. It can show you who’s at the front door, for example, adjust the thermostat, and read you the news and the weather.
5. The mattress pad that helps you sleep
Nokia Sleep’s new Wi-Fi-connected mattress pad tracks your sleep patterns and then sends the data to the brand’s Health Mate app, where you can analyze how well you’re snoozing each night. If you’ve got other smart bedroom systems, you can also program the device to do things like turn the lights off, adjust the thermostat when you get into bed, or open the blinds when you wake up.
6. A skin-care-savvy mirror
Mirror, mirror on the wall...have my fine lines gotten any better? And can you play that new Taylor Swift song while I do my cat eye? Those are the kinds of questions you can ask the new HiMirror Plus+, which is Alexa enabled and allows you to track how well your skin-care routine is working in terms of hydration, pigmentation, and more.
7. Boutique fitness brings running workouts home
Peloton already revolutionized at-home spinning with its tech-forward bike, and now it’s doing the same for the treadmill. Its tread (which, yes, costs a whopping $4,000) comes with a 32-inch HD touchscreen where you can stream live or recorded classes while you run. In other words, treadmill time will be motivational instead of so boring. (Or is that just me?)
8. Brain science is tapped for extra-good zzz's
You’ve kind of got to trust the scientists on this one. That is, until you start waking up feeling way more rested, hopefully! Philips released SmartSleep, a device that looks like a headband and detects brain activity. When you go into deep sleep, it plays white noise in a pattern that is said to enhance your sleep. Of course, whether you’ll be able to get to sleep while wearing the somewhat bulky headband is debatable.
Already on the smart-home train? Here are 5 ways you can turn Alexa into your personal wellness coach. And this is how you can use your Apple watch to hack your treadmill.
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