New Health App Gives Your Fitness Tracker a Boost
If you want your fitness tracker to do more than just count your calories and steps, a new coaching program called KiQplan could help you do just that.
KiQplan is an app that takes data from your fitness tracker or smart phone apps, and uses it to build a 12-week personal fitness plan to help users achieve a specific goal, such as losing weight, according to Fitbug, the maker of KiQplan.
KiQplan tells you how much exercise and sleep you should aim to get, and which nutrients you need more or less of. It also includes specific workouts, meal recipes and other tips to help you achieve those goals, Fit bug said. The targets are set each week based on the plan you chose, and are adapted according to your progress.
"KiQplan[s] are designed to take the 'so what?' out of activity tracking to provide structured action plans," Paul Landau, CEO of Fit bug, said in a statement.
Starting Nov. 9, four plans will be available: A weight-loss program for men called Beer Belly Blaster, a weight-loss program for women called Slim + Trim, as well as two plans for women to follow during and after pregnancy, called Healthy Baby Bump and Goodbye Baby Belly.
Although Fit bug makes its own fitness tracker, KiQplan will work with a number of other popular fitness trackers, such as those made by Jawbone, Nike, Misfit and Withings, the company said. KiQplan can also integrate with other apps, such as My Fitness Pal and Run Keeper.
Users can purchase the $19.99 plans as a gift card, which will be on sale at Target starting Nov. 9. The gift cards will be rolled out to other stores in the following weeks, a spokesman for the company said.
People can also download KiQplan plans at the Apple App and Google Play stores, or on the program website.
More plans will be available in 2015, including plans for beginning runners and women in the third trimester of pregnancy, the company said.
KiQplan is an app that takes data from your fitness tracker or smart phone apps, and uses it to build a 12-week personal fitness plan to help users achieve a specific goal, such as losing weight, according to Fitbug, the maker of KiQplan.
KiQplan tells you how much exercise and sleep you should aim to get, and which nutrients you need more or less of. It also includes specific workouts, meal recipes and other tips to help you achieve those goals, Fit bug said. The targets are set each week based on the plan you chose, and are adapted according to your progress.
"KiQplan[s] are designed to take the 'so what?' out of activity tracking to provide structured action plans," Paul Landau, CEO of Fit bug, said in a statement.
Starting Nov. 9, four plans will be available: A weight-loss program for men called Beer Belly Blaster, a weight-loss program for women called Slim + Trim, as well as two plans for women to follow during and after pregnancy, called Healthy Baby Bump and Goodbye Baby Belly.
Although Fit bug makes its own fitness tracker, KiQplan will work with a number of other popular fitness trackers, such as those made by Jawbone, Nike, Misfit and Withings, the company said. KiQplan can also integrate with other apps, such as My Fitness Pal and Run Keeper.
Users can purchase the $19.99 plans as a gift card, which will be on sale at Target starting Nov. 9. The gift cards will be rolled out to other stores in the following weeks, a spokesman for the company said.
People can also download KiQplan plans at the Apple App and Google Play stores, or on the program website.
More plans will be available in 2015, including plans for beginning runners and women in the third trimester of pregnancy, the company said.
Plant-Based Compound May Protect Against Weight Gain
A compound found in plants and some Chinese herbal medicines may trigger the body to burn calories by stimulating the activity of heat-producing tissue called brown fat, a new study in mice found.
In the study, researchers found that the mice that were injected daily with the compound, called barbering, for four weeks burned more calories than the mice that were not injected with the compound. In addition, the bodies of the mice injected with barbering generated more heat when they were exposed to cold air — between 39 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit (4 to 8 degrees Celsius) — than the mice that were not injected with the compound.
The researchers also found that barbering seemed to protect the mice from weight gain during the study period.
"Our works demonstrate the positive function of [barbering] in energy balance," said study author Guang Ning, of the China National Clinical Research Center for Metabolic Diseases.
Unlike white fat, whose main role is to store energy, brown fat burns calories to generate heat to keep the body warm. For example, a study published in July in the journal Diabetes showed that men with high levels of brown fat burned more calories than men with low brown-fat levels while they were exposed to low temperatures.
In the new study, the researchers determined that berberine activated brown fat. They also noted that berberine affected the animals' white fat, which began to "brown" — meaning it started to acquire the qualities of its calorie-burning cousin.
The new results suggest that barbering could have a similar effect in reducing body weight, at least in mice, Ning said. However, further research is needed to determine whether the compound could deliver the same effects in people, the researchers said.
"Although our work [yields] exciting results, it remains hard to say that it can be used freely as weight-reducing drug," Ning told Live Science. More research must be done before barbering could be used in a clinical setting. For example, it must be shown that the compound significantly reduces body weight in people, and also that it is safe to take, he said.
At this point, it is not clear how much barbering a person would need to take to see fat-burning results, he said.
Previous research has suggested that barbering has metabolic benefits, including protecting against diabetes and lowering cholesterol levels. In a study of 36 people with type 2 diabetes, published in 2008 in the journal Metabolism, researchers found that the compound reduced the patients' cholesterol and triglyceride levels. However, some of the participants experienced diarrhea, constipation, flatulence and abdominal pain while taking barbering. The most common side effect reported from using barbering is constipation, Ning said.
In the study, researchers found that the mice that were injected daily with the compound, called barbering, for four weeks burned more calories than the mice that were not injected with the compound. In addition, the bodies of the mice injected with barbering generated more heat when they were exposed to cold air — between 39 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit (4 to 8 degrees Celsius) — than the mice that were not injected with the compound.
The researchers also found that barbering seemed to protect the mice from weight gain during the study period.
"Our works demonstrate the positive function of [barbering] in energy balance," said study author Guang Ning, of the China National Clinical Research Center for Metabolic Diseases.
Unlike white fat, whose main role is to store energy, brown fat burns calories to generate heat to keep the body warm. For example, a study published in July in the journal Diabetes showed that men with high levels of brown fat burned more calories than men with low brown-fat levels while they were exposed to low temperatures.
In the new study, the researchers determined that berberine activated brown fat. They also noted that berberine affected the animals' white fat, which began to "brown" — meaning it started to acquire the qualities of its calorie-burning cousin.
The new results suggest that barbering could have a similar effect in reducing body weight, at least in mice, Ning said. However, further research is needed to determine whether the compound could deliver the same effects in people, the researchers said.
"Although our work [yields] exciting results, it remains hard to say that it can be used freely as weight-reducing drug," Ning told Live Science. More research must be done before barbering could be used in a clinical setting. For example, it must be shown that the compound significantly reduces body weight in people, and also that it is safe to take, he said.
At this point, it is not clear how much barbering a person would need to take to see fat-burning results, he said.
Previous research has suggested that barbering has metabolic benefits, including protecting against diabetes and lowering cholesterol levels. In a study of 36 people with type 2 diabetes, published in 2008 in the journal Metabolism, researchers found that the compound reduced the patients' cholesterol and triglyceride levels. However, some of the participants experienced diarrhea, constipation, flatulence and abdominal pain while taking barbering. The most common side effect reported from using barbering is constipation, Ning said.
What Are You Really Eating ? Wearable Camera Tracks Your Meals
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A wearable camera that hooks around the ear could become a constant meal companion for people who want to accurately monitor their diet.
Many fitness trackers and exercise apps include a diet component, but all of them require users to self-report how much they eat. That method can lead to unreliable data, as people may forget to report some meals, poorly estimate how much they're actually eating or underreport their meals on purpose. Currently, people can "estimate diet and nutrient intake, but the primary method is self-reporting," Edward Sazonov, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Alabama, said in a statement. Sazonov is working on a new device that aims to solve that problem. The device, called the Automatic Ingestion Monitor (AIM), is worn around the ear, like a Bluetooth earpiece. On the front of the AIM is a camera that can snap pictures of what you eat and drink. It also has a motion sensor that sticks to your jaw, under the earlobe, to sense movement. The tracker ignores other jaw movements like talking and only registers chewing and swallowing. The sensor can tell the difference between talking and eating based on differences in jaw movement. The total mass and energy content of the food is calculated based on the pictures of the meals and how many times the person chewed during a meal. "The number of chews is proportional to ingested mass and energy intake," Sazonov told Live Science in an email. The image is analyzed by a nutritionist who identifies the food and estimates portion size, but eventually Sazonov hopes to make that process automated. A computer could calculate portion size using 3D analysis of the images. So far, the prototype works, and Sazonov is working on developing a smaller and sleeker model for more testing. Sazonov hopes the tracker will replace the unreliable self-reported data that many doctors and nutritionists currently rely on. He also hopes it could lead to the development of new weight-loss strategies and help researchers learn more about eating behaviors and eating disorders. There are other high-tech diet trackers like AIM under development, including a wearable pin-on button called eButton that constantly takes pictures and uses 3D analysis to estimate the volume of food people consume. But using a diet tracker like AIM or eButton could introduce an entirely new bias into the data, said Amy Subar, a research nutritionist at the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Control and Population Sciences division, who was not involved with the research. With a wearable device, people know their food intake is being monitored, and it's likely that awareness will influence what they choose to eat that day, Subar told Live Science. To help avoid this bias, researchers can use the traditional self-reporting method to get more natural data. For instance, they can ask people what they ate the day before, when they weren't worried about their diet being tracked, Subar said. Subar said there are also problems with using images to catalog the food a person is eating. Sometimes the images turn out too dark if the person is eating in a poorly lit area like a bar. It's also difficult to identify some foods based on a picture alone. For example, a picture may show that a person is eating a sandwich, but it's impossible to tell what's in the sandwich, Subar said. Subar said new methods like AIM mark a step forward in diet analysis, but there are still many problems to work out. AIM will likely first be marketed as a medical device but could eventually become a consumer product for people who want to track their diet with more accuracy, its creators say. |