The Withings Wifi Body Scale (Image via Wikipedia)
Is your husband obsessed with a good night’s sleep? Does your wife count every calorie? Is your father-in-law “taking charge of his health?” If so, this holiday season you may be shopping for unglamorous gifts like earplugs, bathroom scales, and digital blood pressure cuffs. But if you have any loved ones who are card-carrying members of the Quantified Self movement, there’s a crop of health-data-monitoring gadgets on the market that could bring some flash to your gift-giving. Here are a few ideas for your favorite self-tracker!
1) Tools for silent nights. The Zeo Sleep Manager, $99, is a Bluetooth headband and smartphone app to track sleep patterns and, ideally, inform diet, exercise, and other lifestyle changes for achieving optimal REM and deep sleep. “Sleep less, feel better,” is the slogan of the $60 WakeMate, another mobile phone accessory with a wristband that wakes you in the morning at your optimal sleep cycle moment within a 20-minute window you select. The gadget can help assess how factors like caffeine and exercise affect sleep quality. (Note to shoppers: the product has been sold out of late, but WakeMate is working on producing more inventory.)
2) Monitor every dash, dance, and prance. For tracking activity, calories, and heart rate as well as sleep patterns, the FitBit and the UP by Jawbone, both $99, are wearable wireless tools. Use either one to chart data on an iPhone, share it with a social network, and parse results with a variety of downloadable apps. The FitBit clips to clothing, and the UP is a rubber wristband. Pinging you to get up when you’ve been inactive for too long, wake at the most desirable time, and assess your energy level after meals, the UP, say its makers, “inspires you to move more, sleep better, and eat smarter.” Cool as the UP is, however, recent quality problems have led to Jawbone pausing production, so you may want to give your loved one an I.O.U. until the product is relaunched. The Gruve Solution from MUVE Inc., uses an omnidirectional accelerometer to measure activity intensity and duration, track caloric burn, and remind the user to move. For $180, it comes with a 12-week online training program and a year’s subscription to the Gruve Network.
3) Peace on Earth, and at work. The emWave2 from HeartMath, marked down to $160 for the holidays, uses a pulse sensor to graphically represent your heart rate rhythm on your computer desktop and help you achieve “coherence.” Company literature says that’s a scientifically measurable state characterized by increased order and psychological and physiological harmony. Used a few minutes a day, the tool is purported to “transform feelings of anger, anxiety, or frustration into more peace, ease, and clarity.”
4) For a jolly holiday. If the words “overweight” and “hypertension” aren’t off limits at holiday mealtimes, the French company Withings offers the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch-compatible Withings Blood Pressure Monitor for $129 and a Wifi Body Scale for $159. The cuff lets you calculate and graph blood pressure and pulse readings over time and easily share that data with your doctor. The scale relays your weight, fat mass, and BMI to your smartphone or computer, letting you chart a curve as your own curves expand or shrink. Someday, we hope, your doctor will allow you to automatically upload that data into dynamic electronic medical records.
5) Jingle bells and genotypes. 23andMe lists 23 reasons why its $207 Personal Genome Service is the perfect gift, including “your genetic information has the potential to save your life.” The company is offering a $10 discount through December 23, but order today to get the kit by December 24. (The kit invites you to spit in a tube and send it back for the company to diagram your DNA from your saliva.) Besides gaining insight into health risks, a genotype can reveal unknowns about your ancestry—a whole new kind of family baggage to unleash at the holidays. For a complete DNA scan that will reveal your loved one’s risk of 47 diseases, from heart attack and diabetes to testicular cancer, DeCODEme offers an $1,100 service. And if you’ve got $50,000 to spare on the extended family, Knome offers a full genome sequence for $5,000, with a minimum order of 10 genomes.
6) Good will toward men. In the true spirit of the holidays, your loved one can use their newly tracked data for the good of humanity, and it’ll cost you nothing. OpenSNP is a platform that lets people who’ve had their own genome sequenced contribute to science. Upload your 23andME or deCODEme genotype to the OpenSNP database, and then share information about your visible traits or phenotype, and you could help scientists discover new genetic associations. Another free app due in the Apple store this month for the iPhone is GeneGroove from Portable Genomics. The program will first anonymize your unique string of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs and then translate it into a one-of-a-kind melody. Play it for friends at holiday parties, or convert it to a ring tone and bring joy to the world.
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