How easy would life be if you could obtain all your heart information just by using the bathroom? It might sound crazy, but we are pretty close to such technology.
There are already at-home devices that can offer insight into your heart health, like at-home blood pressure monitors. The problem with at-home devices is that patients don’t often use them properly. Many patients either don’t keep track of their heart health or don’t perform these at-home tests correctly, yielding incorrect results.
Advertisement
But monitoring your heart health at home may soon become as easy as sitting on a toilet.
Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology have developed a toilet seat that can measure important cardiovascular parameters all while a person uses it as they usually would. This new toilet seat can measure blood pressure, stroke volume, blood oxygenation, heart rate, heart rate variability, QRS duration, and QT interval. It can also measure weight if the individual raises their feet off the ground.
The toilet seats measurements have been compared to those devices used in hospital settings. It’s been found that the toilet seats measurements are not far off from those gathered using hospital equipment.
It’s still unclear as to where or when this toilet seat will be made available to the public, but it goes to show that in the near future, keeping track of your heart health at home will become far easier.
Also read:
- The truth about skin irritation and toilet paper
- Natural ways to improve heart rate and get your heart pumping
Mohan Garikiparithi got his degree in medicine from Osmania University (University of Health Sciences). He practiced clinical medicine for over a decade before he shifted his focus to the field of health communications. During his active practice he served as the head of the Dept. of Microbiology in a diagnostic centre in India. On a three-year communications program in Germany, Mohan developed a keen interest in German Medicine (Homoeopathy), and other alternative systems of medicine. He now advocates treating different medical conditions without the use of traditional drugs. An ardent squash player, Mohan believes in the importance of fitness and wellness.
