hydration

Is your water bottle trying to tell you something?

Here's one for all the fitness and gadget gurus: the i-dration device.

The prototype bottle, which developer Cambridge Consultants is calling the first in a new generation of hardware apps (although we've found others), dispenses hydration advice by wirelessly transmitting real-time data to a smartphone. The bottle's sensors monitor not only fluid quantity but also temperature and drinking frequency.

The corresponding smartphone app, in turn, uses the phone's built-in accelerometer and gyroscope to measure exercise levels, and then fuses data from a heart-rate chest band with pre-entered details (i.e. height, age, weight) to assess the … Read more

Don't dump the moisturizer just yet

These days just about any piece of health advice seems to involve hydration. Dermatologists in particular have a field day with this, pretty much telling patients to stay permanently lathered in creams, oils, and ointments to lock moisture in the skin. But unless your epidermis is perennially greased, how do you know if your skin cells are flush or parched?

U.K.-based iLift--which is already peddling a somewhat-dubious anti-cellulite device--says its handheld Hydro Test gauges hydration levels with a sensor head that's meant to be held against the skin and then render a numeric estimate on its … Read more

The first 'interactive water bottle'

How far the technology of physical fitness has come. We remember commercials touting the scientific principles of Gatorade and its revolutionary effects on the human hydration process. What Neanderthals.

Today, what's being touted as "the world first interactive water bottle" promises to calculate a person's specific hydration needs with its patented monitoring technology and dispense advice accordingly. According to a post on Trend Hunter, the "HydraCoach" supposedly "tracks every sip taken, monitors daily progress and motivates individuals to achieve and maintain proper hydration."

Now if it only had some kind of way … Read more