Grace, the automated tracking and cooling bracelet
by Startacus Admin
Hot flushes affect around 1.5 million women in the UK alone. Step forward Grace, the world's first automated tracking and cooling bracelet that counters menopausal hot flushes.
We’ve all experienced the unpleasant heat of a fever, burning us from the inside out and lighting us up like a Christmas tree, it feels. But 1.5 million women in the UK alone feel these hot flushes without the fleetingness of flu or fever.
Out of nowhere and for no apparent reason, this heat can sear them at any time of the day or night, summer or winter. And while this might be useful for defrosting the car windows, it is highly inconvenient, uncomfortable, and detrimental to health when it interrupts sleep. The sudden feverish heat can easily cause irritability or nausea, it’s not easy to cool down, it often means sleeplessness, and no one makes themselves popular in the middle of winter by throwing open all the windows. All in all, it’s safe to say that hot flushes are not something any woman welcomes.
Enter UK designer Peter Astbury and his product, Grace. Grace is a device that is worn on the wrist and has two goals: first to use its array of sensors to eventually predict a hot flush before it happens and cool you, avoiding the worst of the heat; and second, to track the details of these hot flushes for the user to see in a companion app and hopefully understand them better.
The cooling is a simple idea. A hot flush is caused by the hypothalamus being incorrectly triggered and doing an all round bad job of regulating body temperature. Grace’s cooling tile is designed to trigger it again, this time telling it that it needs to retain body heat (which sounds counterintuitive at first glance, but is the opposite of a hot flush).
One of the worst times to get a hot flush is in the night, so naturally Grace is designed to be wearable at night, in an attempt to allow women to get a full night’s sleep without these hot flushes and night sweats waking them up. That alone would make a considerable positive difference to the mental and physical wellbeing of those who suffer.
Unsurprisingly, even before Grace is available for purchase, it has been a finalist for the Morgan Innovation & Technology Prize 2019, winner of AXA’s Health Tech + You 2018 award, and recipient of the 2017 James Dyson Award. In theory, hot flushes are a simple thing that have a big impact on women’s lives; so a simple device to counter them and have an equally big, positive impact of their lives deserves as much recognition and publicity as possible. We look forward to its release!
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Published on: 15th June 2019
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