Anyone living with diabetes knows that it’s no walk in the park. Aside from the constant blood sugar monitoring and dietary restrictions, you need to always be in tune with your body to make sure you aren’t missing any warning signs. You have to be sure you’re not hours away from a potential emergency, and you have to have your chain of caregiver communication in place. It all adds up to daily exhaustion, but emerging technology is looking to change that. Enterprising developers are researching how apps can be used to help individuals with diabetes in ways that aren’t as time-consuming or intrusive — and maybe even help prevent a crisis situation. Here are just a few ways that apps are looking to help diabetic individuals manage their condition: Predictive Alerts – and Current Ones An article at EndocrineWeb highlights an app created by Medtronic in conjunction with IBM’s supercomputer Watson. This app will have the ability to predict diabetic danger hours before it happens through constant glucose monitoring. Pamela Reese, spokesperson for Medtronic, tells EndocrineWeb that the app had success in “predicting low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) up to three hours before it occurred” which is early enough to “head off a potentially dangerous health event due to abnormal blood glucose levels.” It’s a prime example of how current monitoring apps and technology can be applied to the medical field in a vital, meaningful way. Medtronic also currently has the MiniMed Connect system, which allows for glucose details to be shared from an insulin pump right to a smartphone or iPod touch app. This lets diabetic individuals easily monitor their glucose levels in the moment, plus it has the ability to connect to friends and family in case of emergency. Yet the new app created with Watson is touted to be “a kind of personal medical assistant for those with diabetes” and will even go beyond the capabilities of the MiniMed app system. Although the app’s accuracy will still depend on the user’s input, it’s a huge leap forward from in-the-moment monitoring to potentially predicting when a diabetic emergency could happen. Caregiver Communication Diabetic kids know what it’s like to constantly have to check in with well-meaning yet persistent parents and doctors. While it’s important to be in touch with one’s health — and to keep a team of caregivers informed — sometimes kids just want to keep things a little more lighthearted. A CHOC Children’s blog postfeatures the story of Reece and Olivia Ohmer, a pair of young sisters with Type I diabetes that have developed a “diabetes emoticon app.” This interesting conceptual app better allows children to communicate with their parents and physicians on how they’re feeling, what they’ve eaten, and when they’ve checked their glucose levels. It’s meant to cut down on the amount of time spent by diabetics informing caregivers of their status — so instead of having to trade messages back and forth, the app provides handy emoticons. “Just because we’re kids doesn’t mean we don’t have good ideas,” Reece Ohmer is quoted as saying, and although they may be kids, their app could have uses for diabetic individuals of all ages. It’s the ability to keep track of reminders and send communications in a way that’s fun, not a nagging chore, that makes this idea stand out. Carb-Watching For people with diabetes, watching their carb intake isn’t about losing weight, it’s about keeping them alive. That’s where the Easycarb app comes in — Healthlineexplains it as “an app for smart devices combined with a dedicated portable Bluetooth scale for food weighing, which together automatically calculate the exact amount of carbohydrates in a given meal.” It even provides insulin dosage recommendations based on the user’s insulin sensitivity, and it tracks all carbohydrates in a database that physicians can later access as a PDF. Ease of Use As technology continues to improve, it’s shining a light on how apps can be used to help with healthcare, including that of individuals with diabetes. It’s always important to not substitute the advice of an app for the advice of an in-person physician, but when it comes to things like glucose monitoring or carb calculating, a handy smartphone app might be just the thing to make life as a diabetic a bit easier.

Jack LaLanne opened the first fitness club in the United States in 1936. The place was Oakland, CA, and the concept of the health club was entirely absurd. Doctors warned their patients to stay away from the gym, alleging that spending time on fitness in a club was not necessary for optimal health. Says LeLanne of the rumors at the time, “People thought I was a charlatan and a nut. The doctors were against me -- they said that working out with weights would give people heart attacks and they would lose their sex drive.” Regardless, the accusations never stopped LaLanne from becoming the first notable personal trainer and becoming dubbed the godfather of health club fitness. Now nearly 80 years later, there are health clubs of every variety on nearly any given block in the country. Large catch-all gyms like 24-Hour Fitness offer memberships for as low as $30/month, making the fitness club an accessible option for the masses. Boutique gyms like yoga studios, pilates studios, or crossfit warehouses are taking the country by storm as Americans find new and different ways to get their sweat on. Within these different fitness centers are coaches and trainers whose sole role is to motivate, educate and teach clients how to properly exercise to attain results while avoiding injury. Enter the next wave of fitness industry development: fitness apps. The applications have similarly swept American attention, as there are apps for nearly every type of fitness tracking and motivation a person looking to exercise could need -- heart rate tracking, pace setting, caloric intake tracking, goal setting, you name it. These apps provide many of the functions a fitness complex is built for, which leads to the natural question: Do fitness apps threaten the booming personal trainer industry? Possibly - and here’s why. Convenience The average American commutes 51 minutes a day, effectively reducing a 24 hour day of activity to 23. Factor in actually working a job, eating some meals, and sleeping in some cases, and our collective American schedules are pretty packed. This leaves room for the desire to find ways to make extra time where possible, especially off the road given commuting woes. Fitness Buddy is an app complete with a variety of exercises to meet just about any fitness need, anywhere a user may be. Workouts are offered to target specific muscle groups and goals, and include a touted 17,000+ exercises with step-by-step instructions, animations and videos. So, if a workout can be performed in a backyard or living room, why not spare that commute time and get it done on site? Fitness apps are the answer for this possibility - and people are loving it. Cost Effective Gym memberships range, providing options for just about everyone. There are the aforementioned $30/month memberships, as well as places like the YMCA that offer financial assistance or memberships on a sliding scale -- but there are pricey gyms out there as well. The popular club Corepower Yoga, founded in Colorado and now in states across the country, offers memberships starting at $135/month. Pilates and crossfit studios also run along the same lines, which can prove a high bar to scale for persons who enjoy these activities but can’t afford to make it happen. FitStar, for example, is a free app that offers fitness videos hosted by former NFL player Tony Gonzalez to provide a robust collection of workouts for the typical gym user. Yet the company created a secondary app for exercisers who specifically enjoy yoga, FitStar Yoga, which is alsao free to download. Fitness apps for these types of exercises are now rampant, inexpensive, and again - convenient. Accountability One of the biggest arguments for personal trainers, besides of course their experience tailoring exercises to a specific person, is their championship at motivation. Having an appointment with another human often forces us as a species to consider meeting obligations, and the personal trainer is a perfect example of that. Yet with fitness apps living in phones near their users at all times, push notifications ping dieters and weight losers to stay on track and get in shape, even letting users know when other people are working out. For example, MapMyRun is an app built for tracking distance, but paired with social features to sync with user’s Facebook accounts and connect with friends who also use the app. When push notifications are enabled, couch potatoes can see when friends go on a run, guilting the user’s competitive spirit with tacit encouragement to hit the pavement. There are also apps like Kiqplan, which works as an overall plan to hold the user accountable over a 12-week period. Among the plans offered are Slim and Trim and Beer Belly Blaster, while the app as a whole is marketed as “your own digital coach.” Users are rewarded with milestones and reminders, replacing some of the core functions of a live personal trainer.   The benefits around fitness apps could possibly outnumber those of personal trainers. Yet will they necessarily replace the trainer altogether? Only time will really tell, as more and more fitness apps hit the market and answer the demand of app users across the country. Do you think fitness apps will replace trainers? Let us know in the comments below.

There are fitness trackers, and then there’s the Naked 3D Fitness Tracker. Clickbait name aside, this new fitness tracking device has the potential to seriously disrupt the market for individuals who want regular, accurate, and motivating details about their fitness journey. In recent years, most fitness tracking developments have come in the form of wearables and other devices that are meant to gamify the process of losing weight. Naked 3D Fitness Tracker is not that. In simple terms, it’s an app for iOS and Android, paired with a high-tech mirror and turntable scale. Pitched as “the world’s first home body scanner,” the device creates a 3D model of your body as you stand on a Bluetooth-connected scale. That scale rotates 360º while the full-length mirror uses Intel RealSense Depth Sensors to do a full body scan in just 20 seconds. Those sensor images are stitched together to create a 3D avatar visualization of your body. That image appears on your app, complete with metrics galore: weight, body fat, muscle gain and loss, circumference of muscles, and more. That 3D visualization isn’t a stagnant image. Instead, built in heat maps highlight where you’ve lost fat and gained muscle over time. Compare your 3D avatar from one month to the next and it’s easy and astounding to see the progress that has been made. It’s the measurement of incremental daily improvements that helps users stay on track with their fitness goals — rather than being motivated by questions such as “am I getting healthier?” The Reasoning Behind Naked 3D Naked 3D was developed by a San Francisco-based startup called Naked Labs. Farhad Farahbakhshian, the CEO and co-founder, is an electrical engineer and former spin teacher who wanted to give people of all sizes an objective and accurate picture of their appearance, health, and fitness level. Farahbakhshian told TechCrunch that without the help of technology, eyes can focus on problem areas, which can lead to inaccurate perceptions of how a body looks. Not only that, but appearance is just one piece of the puzzle: one person can look great but not have enough fat, and another person can be overweight but not realize how out of sync their muscle and fat levels are. While some may challenge the device as promoting body shaming or putting too much emphasis on one’s physical appearance, that’s not the purpose at all. Rather, it’s meant to help people visualize beyond their physical appearance, and use science to keep people on track as they work towards improving their health. Unlike intelligent scales and other devices that estimate body fat within a margin of 8%, Naked 3D can get that estimate to within 1.5%, making it comparable to a water displacement test. Implications for Future Use Projections of body fat and muscle gain are just the start for Naked 3D. Farahbakhshian says the startup is open to integrating with other fitness trackers and services in order to provide people with a more holistic view of their body and exercise routine. He told Wareable that Naked 3D could also be used to detect asymmetries in a person’s body, quirks that could pose the potential for future injuries. With a full picture of your body and its development over time, the device will also likely have the potential to show targeted areas of improvement to prevent strain and increase overall health. Finally, Naked Fit also envisions working virtually with trainers so people can get personalized exercise tips along the way. Naked 3D has been beta testing on real people since 2015 and you can see the results for yourself as of March 2017 when shipping for the mirror and scale begins.