This British Airways Blanket Measures Your In-Flight Happiness

British Airways has come up with a unique way to judge the satisfaction of its customers — the “happiness blanket.”

It’s not just any blanket, of course, as its designed to determine the “meditative state” of premium cabin flyers, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

The blanket works by using neuro-sensors to asses levels of relaxation and stress. Sensor data is transmitted to the blanket by Bluetooth and is displayed via fiber-optic LEDs woven into the wool blanket. When a person is stressed or anxious, the LEDs glow red. When the passenger is relaxed and happy, the blanket lights turn blue.

Read more on this Huffington Post article here.

How can doctors be better at communicating? Let patients’ families join them on rounds

A recent Globe and Mail article highlights the issue of doctor and patient communication. Solution? Letting the patient’s family join them on medical rounds.

“In reality, the medical staff of most hospital units are usually pulled in a dizzying number of directions – continually investigating treatment options and reviewing medical procedures – all while trying to maintain effective communication with the patient and concerned family members. When emergencies arise, the necessary updating of worried family members can sometimes take a back seat. The addition of language barriers, or various cultural issues involving the relatives or friends of a cardiac patient in our care can further complicate what is already a difficult, emotionally-wrenching scenario.

When we have surveyed family members and patients regarding their experience in our Coronary Intensive Care Unit (CICU,) we sometimes hear that family members occasionally feel out-of-the-loop with regard to a patient’s treatment plan.

To address this, we recently introduced a novel pilot project using a family-centred approach to medical communication. Since the beginning of 2014, we have invited families of patients to accompany us – the medical team – on rounds so that these relatives can hear the health care teams’ detailed discussion about their loved one.

Here’s how it works: When a family first meets the medical team, they are briefed on how the process works, and how we will discuss their loved one’s condition. We invite willing family members to join us daily to listen in on the detailed medical discussion taking place. When running through a patient’s medical issues, we use typically use a “head-to-toe” format reviewing the condition of the brain, heart, lungs, intestines, kidneys, skin and the status of the lines used to monitor the patient and to introduce medications to them. Then, we let family members know what further investigation needs to be done, and describe the treatment plan for the day. When this plan changes, families are informed. During these “rounds,” at least 10 medical professionals are present, including a staff physician, four resident doctors, two nurses, a pharmacist, and a patient care co-ordinator.

Including family members in a patient’s medical briefing allows them to get a realistic perspective of their loved one’s condition, educates them about medical terms, provides them an opportunity to ask questions, keeps them abreast about updates and changes, and allows them to better understand the decisions that health care staff make while treating the patient.

It also affords family members the chance to share this information with the rest of their relatives, and even the patient themselves. Furthermore, if language is a barrier, medical briefings through a family-centred approach allow relatives to convey information directly to the patient in their native tongue. This approach also enables family members to develop relationships with the health care team, giving them the sense that the team is approachable in the care of their loved one.”

Read more about the Globe and Mail article here.

Class teaches seniors “parkour” – a sport known for acrobatic, daredevil youths

On a recent morning in London, Lara Thomson practiced spinning on benches, swinging from metal bars and balancing off raised ledges — all elements of a daredevil discipline known as “parkour.”

What was unusual about the scene is that Thomson is 79 and all of her classmates are over 60.

They are members of a unique weekly class for seniors in a sport more commonly known for gravity-defying jumps than helping people with arthritis.

Invented in the 1980s in France, parkour is a sport usually favoured by extremely nimble people who move freely through any terrain using their own strength and flexibility, often using urban environments such as benches, buildings and walls as a type of obstacle course. It’s also known as free running.

The London parkour class of about a dozen students is taught by two instructors who have adapted the sport’s main elements to a level that can be handled even by those over 60 who have replacement joints or other medical conditions.

“I wondered whether it was a government plot to get rid of old people when I heard about the class,” Thomson joked. She said she has balance problems and that the class helps her feel more confident about getting around. “Being able to get outside and do silly things like hugging trees is great,” she said, referring to a stretching exercise.

While most fitness classes aimed at seniors focus on calmer activities such as dance or yoga, experts say parkour is a reasonable, if unorthodox, option.

Read more on the Canadian Press article here.

No lying still in Upright Open MRI machine at Vancouver hospital

The Canadian Press recently reported that Vancouver General Hospital now has an MPI , which allows people to sit, stand and squat so researchers can see their joints in action to possibly prevent hip osteoarthritis decades later.

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Biomedical engineer and University of British Columbia orthopedics professor David Wilson said there are about a dozen such Italian-made machines in the world but the one at Vancouver General Hospital is solely being used for research purposes.

He said the other Upright Open MRIs, in the United Kingdom, Italy and mostly in the U.S., are for patients who are obese or so claustrophobic that they can’t lie in the confines of a traditional MRI scanner.

Wilson, who is also a researcher at the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility, said people who have some hip pain because of a possible bone deformity and are between their 20s and 50s are part of a study to determine if such deformities eventually cause osteoarthritis.

“We had been looking around for a scanner that would give us more capacity to look at the joints where they’re actually working so it’s functional imaging of joints. You’re not trying to take a picture, you’re actually seeing how they work.”

During the scan, patients are positioned so that the bony deformity, which is a bump, runs into the pelvis side of the hip joint as they move.

Researchers are trying to determine whether wear and tear over time causes pain and grinds away at the cartilage, leading to osteoarthritis.

“That’s the big question, and that’s what we’re curious about.”

Subtle bone deformities are believed to be prevalent in as much as 25 per cent of the population, Wilson said, adding younger people are having more hip pain, especially as the population becomes heavier.

The deformities have increasingly become an area of interest for researchers who believe they’re responsible for the pain that develops into debilitating osteoarthritis as people become older.

“The reason that interest is so strong is because it used to be thought that hip osteoarthritis was just idiopathic, it just arose and there was no particular reason. You were just unlucky, you got hip osteoarthritis. Now we think that most of the cases are because of some kind of hip deformity and this is the big one that we’re interested in.”

About 140 patients will be scanned as part of the eight-year study as researchers monitor their pain and advise them on what activities they should or should not be doing to prevent hip problems.

Bone growth and development, not genetics, are believed to be responsible for the deformities, Wilson said.

The participants are part of a larger $2.5 million study that’s been ongoing for three years, involves the Arthritis Research Centre of Canada and is funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research.

A total of 1,100 research subjects are included in the overall study — 500 Caucasians, 400 aboriginals and 200 Chinese.

“We know that Chinese people in China have a very low incidence of hip osteoarthritis and we believe that aboriginals have a higher incidence of osteoarthritis,” said Wilson, who is not part of that aspect of the study.

Dr. Gillian Hawker, osteoarthritis clinical research scientist at Women’s College Research Institute in Toronto, said the MRI study is so important because it may potentially lead to new treatments such as drugs or exercise that could prevent the progression of the painful disease.

“We don’t have anything right now that we know can prevent the development or the worsening of arthritis — nothing, other than weight loss,” said Hawker, who is also chairwoman of medicine at the University of Toronto.

“There’s no question that we have not paid much attention to this compared to the huge burden on our population. It is a huge issue.”

How to exercise during allergy season

If you attempt to exercise outdoor in the spring (when the air begins to fill with pollen) and fall (when the ragweed comes out), it may be difficult to take that daily jog without sneezing or constantly blowing your nose. Read more about exercising during allergy season here.

UNICEF calls for redoubling of commitment to eradicate polio

The World Health Organization this month declared that the spread of the paralyzing and potentially deadly disease polio is now an international emergency.

Global vaccine programs have been set back in recent years by the revelations that CIA has used them as cover in its counter-terrorism programs. Last week the US government promised it would never again use vaccination programs in that way.

UNICEF’s Peter Crowley has led polio vaccination programs in some of the most dangerous parts of the world.

Read more about the ABC article here.