ShapeUp Enhances Online Health Tracking with BodyMedia FIT Armband System Integration

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Jul
2012BodyMedia FIT teams up with ShapeUp for system integration that will include tracking for how many calories burned, activity level, sleep and food tracking.

(1888PressRelease) July 25, 2012 - Social networking-based employee wellness platform provider ShapeUp today announced the addition of calorie burn tracking and other key data to advance individual weight loss and wellness efforts through integration with the BodyMedia FIT armband-based body monitoring system. The integration enhances the clinically proven social wellness tools that ShapeUp offers to drive cost-effective participation, long-term engagement and positive outcomes in corporate health programs.

By wearing BodyMedia FIT Armbands that collect physiological data with highly accurate proprietary sensors and also maintaining food logs in the online BodyMedia Activity Manager, participants in ShapeUp's employee wellness programs can track their daily calorie consumption, steps, activity, how many calories they've burned and sleep quantity and quality - all important measures for health and weight loss. Once they have synced to the BodyMedia system, users can upload this data to ShapeUp's corporate wellness platform to share progress with colleagues in a social networking environment for team support, assess progress toward their goals, and in many cases earn financial incentives from their employers for their participation and achievements.

"Integration with BodyMedia technology allows our program participants to effortlessly and accurately track and analyze their personal health data, which is a critical component for successful behavior change and health improvement," said Dr. Rajiv Kumar, founder and chief executive officer of ShapeUp. "We are constantly working to provide our clients and participants with the most effective technology-powered tools for success, and BodyMedia systems are an important addition to the arsenal."

"Programs like ShapeUp have embraced behavioral modification tools to help participants make lifestyle changes that benefit their health. Our BodyMedia FIT armband system aligns directly with that mission," said Christine Robins, BodyMedia CEO. "With our system measuring variables like calorie burn and food intake on a daily basis, companies using the ShapeUp program enable their employees to see what they're doing wrong in terms of weight management, motivate them to change, and ultimately bring their weight under control ."

Both ShapeUp and BodyMedia FIT armband technology have been clinically proven to help promote weight loss, with BodyMedia systems having been shown to help users lose three times more weight (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3112373/) than behavioral support alone.

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Tracking Love, Lust in the Brain

HealthDay – 1 hr 22 mins ago FRIDAY, June 22 (HealthDay News) -- Love and sexual desire activate different but related areas of the brain, according to a new study.

Researchers analyzed data from 20 studies that monitored brain activity in people while engaged in activities such as viewing erotic pictures or photographs of their romantic partners.

This meta-analysis led to a map of love and desire in the brain, which shows that two structures called the insula and the striatum are involved in the progression from sexual desire to love.

"No one has ever put these two together to see the patterns of activation," study co-author Jim Pfaus, professor of psychology at Concordia University in Montreal, said in a university news release. "We didn't know what to expect -- the two could have ended up being completely separate. It turns out that love and desire activate specific but related areas in the brain."

The researchers found that love and sexual desire activate different areas of the striatum. The area activated by sexual desire is the same one that is activated by pleasurable activities such as sex or food. The area activated by love is where things associated with reward or pleasure are given a value.

The area activated by love also is associated with drug addiction, the researchers said.

"Love is actually a habit that is formed from sexual desire as desire is rewarded," Pfaus explained. "It works the same way in the brain as when people become addicted to drugs."

He also noted that love activates pathways in the brain involved in monogamy and pair bonding, and added that some areas in the brain are less active when people feel love than when they feel desire.

"While sexual desire has a very specific goal, love is more abstract and complex," Pfaus said. "It's less dependent on the physical presence of someone else."

The study conclusions should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

More information

Your Amazing Brain has more about the science of love.

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Breast MRI Best at Tracking Response to Chemo: Study

HealthDay – 31 mins ago WEDNESDAY, May 23 (HealthDay News) -- Getting chemotherapy before breast cancer surgery can mean the difference between a mastectomy or a breast-conserving lumpectomy, experts say.

And new research shows that getting an MRI during the first round of chemo can help predict quickly if the cancer will respond to the treatment.

MRI works better than clinical examination of the tumor, the standard way to assess how well the chemotherapy is working, said researcher Dr. Nola Hylton, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at the University of California, San Francisco.

Although many doctors order an MRI after all rounds of chemotherapy are finished, Hylton's team did MRIs before, during and after a chemo cycle, and also when all of the chemotherapy was finished.

"What we are trying to do is fine-tune MRI so it can be a more sensitive measure of whether people are responding

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Gov't to speed tracking of E. coli in meat

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