How The Body Can Become A Battery

Gymama Slaughter at TEDxBaltimore 2016.

(Screenshot via YouTube)

To change batteries, scientists and engineers at UMBC’s Bioelectronics Laboratory are looking within.

For the very first time, the battery is included, and that battery is you, said Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Gymama Slaughter.

At TEDxBaltimore, Slaughter detailed new development of sensors that can be powered by the body:

“The basic consistency of the battery has not changed in over 100 years,” she said. “And one of our biggest limitations when it comes to our need to be mobile is that batteries are large, heavy and can only be fashioned into a very few restrictive shapes.” Of course, they also need to replaced.

Batteries and the human body share a key common component in that both have lots of stored chemical energy. In fact, with its requirements to constantly power cells, Slaughter said, the body contains a lot more chemical energy than a battery.

“The human body has an infinite source of power,” Slaughter said.

Harnessing that power for electricity is the focus of the Bioelectronics Laboratory’s work. Teams of chemistry and electronics specialists are starting with diabetes.

Glucose monitoring is a key element of diabetes treatment. The blood sugar also produces chemical energy that powers cells. The team is working on using that energy for a glucose monitor.

“We’re using the electrical-chemical breakdown of glucose to measure blood sugar levels, and generate electricity simultaneously to power our devices,” Slaughter said.

The device in development would be implanted a few millimeters underneath the skin, and contain microelectronic circuits.

Blood sugar levels are monitored continuously, and the data can transmit to a smartphone or other device for reading. The continuous monitoring would allow doctors to change up patterns of care depending on what the readings are saying. Whoa.

We’ve reported on Singularity’s efforts to create a renewable battery, and the use of smartphones for diabetes care at WellDoc, but this is the first effort that combines the two.

Source:- http://technical.ly/baltimore/2016/02/03/body-can-become-battery-gymama-slaughter/

How To Stop Dieting 101

The Best Choice You Can Make For Your Body & Your Peace Of Mind

If you’ve reached this page, you’re probably sick of dieting.

You’re probably sick of the restrictions, the rules, the constant stress about what to eat and when.

But in our culture, diets and weight loss are sold as an answer to everything. Want to date more? Go on a diet. Tendency to binge? Go on a diet. Family history of diabetes? Go on a diet.

But here are a few facts about dieting that will blow your mind:

• In 95% of cases, people who lose weight gain all of the weight back in 3-5 years (and 83% gain back more weight than they lost.

• Americans spent 60.9 billion dollars on diets and diet products last year. (That’s over $200 for each and every person living here.)

• Weight loss is not a cure for any disease.

Why Stopping Dieting Is The Healthiest Thing You Can Do For Your Body & Mind
Getting Started: How To Heal Your Relationship With Food & Your Body By Letting Go Of Dieting For Good!

• How To Breakup With Dieting — Breaking up is always hard to do, but I try to make it a little easier with this post.

• How Does Health At Every Size Compare To Dieting? (Breaking Down The Desire To Be Thinner — If you only read one post, this one should be it. Learn here how dieting stacks up against the Health At Every Size approach. (You may be shocked by what you read.)

• Are Diets And Disordered Eating Behaviors Really So Different? — Disordered eating in fatter folks is often praised, even if dangerously restrictive. Check it out and see what you think.

• Diet School Dropout — Trust me, you’ve been learning how to diet in diet school long enough. Here’s why dropping out of this kind of school is a great idea.

• Losing Weight To Fit In — Is It Worth It? — Sometimes it may seem like it would be so nice to be thin so you could fit in better. But is trying to lose weight to fit in really worth it? Learn how you can “fit out” and feel great in this post.

• The “I Did It, So You Can Too!” Phenomenon! — Every day, celebs and diet gurus tell us that they lost weight, so we can too! Check out this post if you want to hear the really important stuff that they’re not saying.

• One of my favorite resources on stopping dieting is my book, Stop Dieting Now: 25 Reasons To Stop, 25 Ways To Heal (also available for Kindle and Nook).

All of this may be hard to hear, and even harder to take in. I totally get that. But now that you know the truth, you can start to unravel some of the emotional and physical damage that dieting has caused you.

Want my top 5 tips for loving your body and healing from dieting sent directly to you? Sign up here:

If diets don’t work and weight loss is illusory 95% of the time, what do you do?

This is where I can help.

What you’re in need of is a big fat paradigm shift.

There is a wonderful, healing alternative to dieting, and it’s called Health At Every Size. In studies comparing it to typical weight loss methods, participants who used Health At Every Size principles had better overall health (better blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride numbers), less stress, and a more positive body image than dieters.

So I want to share with you something that I do in my practice every day — how you can apply Health At Every Size principles to your life so that you can be healthier, less stressed out, and feel great in your body.

Here are 7 of my favorite resources for learning to let go of dieting forever!

Source:- http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free/stop-dieting-101/

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

Image courtesy of Glane23

On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the C.E.O.’s and company presidents had come together for a rare, private meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial, the men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by their skill in fighting one another for what they called “stomach share” — the amount of digestive space that any one company’s brand can grab from the competition.

James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury, greeted the men as they arrived. He was anxious but also hopeful about the plan that he and a few other food-company executives had devised to engage the C.E.O.’s on America’s growing weight problem. “We were very concerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was becoming a major issue,” Behnke recalled. “People were starting to talk about sugar taxes, and there was a lot of pressure on food companies.” Getting the company chiefs in the same room to talk about anything, much less a sensitive issue like this, was a tricky business, so Behnke and his fellow organizers had scripted the meeting carefully, honing the message to its barest essentials. “C.E.O.’s in the food industry are typically not technical guys, and they’re uncomfortable going to meetings where technical people talk in technical terms about technical things,” Behnke said. “They don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to make commitments. They want to maintain their aloofness and autonomy.”

A chemist by training with a doctoral degree in food science, Behnke became Pillsbury’s chief technical officer in 1979 and was instrumental in creating a long line of hit products, including microwaveable popcorn. He deeply admired Pillsbury but in recent years had grown troubled by pictures of obese children suffering from diabetes and the earliest signs of hypertension and heart disease. In the months leading up to the C.E.O. meeting, he was engaged in conversation with a group of food-science experts who were painting an increasingly grim picture of the public’s ability to cope with the industry’s formulations — from the body’s fragile controls on overeating to the hidden power of some processed foods to make people feel hungrier still. It was time, he and a handful of others felt, to warn the C.E.O.’s that their companies may have gone too far in creating and marketing products that posed the greatest health concerns.

Sugar Detox

Every time I manage to give something up I end up acquiring a new addiction.  When I gave up drinking I was so successful that I decided to give up smoking 3 weeks later.  I thought I had cracked it.  Unfortunately I then reacquired my habit of eating enormous amounts of chocolate each day.  It didn't happen straight away.  At first I was just eating one bar a day.  I didn't realise that without the alcohol my stress levels were going through the roof.  I had been drinking to blot those out and very successfully too, might I add.

11 Things a Sugar Detox Can Do for You

By Dan DeFigio from Beating Sugar Addiction For Dummies

Sugar, in excessive amounts, is one of the most harmful substances you can eat. When you look at a piece of candy, a soda, or a bag of pastries, you may not think of the word toxin, but refined sugars (along with other artificial sweeteners) place a huge physiological stress on your body’s systems.

High blood sugar levels cause damage to blood vessels and organs, and high insulin levels promote fat storage. Sugar makes your immune system less effective and creates a strong inflammatory response throughout the body. Getting off sugar can end all that!

Aiding weight loss

When you stop feeding yourself empty sugar calories, and when your insulin levels aren’t elevated from eating too many carbohydrates, you begin to lose weight. More specifically (and more importantly), you begin to lose body fat.