Fulfilling the self through food in wellness blogs: Governing the healthy subject

In the world of wellness, food and eating are fundamentally important to one’s subjectivity: the self in this sphere is created and maintained through food consumption along a plant-based, ‘wholesome’ and healthy personal journey to well-being. This article focuses on the analysis of wellness food blogs run by women, aiming to map out the technologies of the self through which the ‘ideal wellness subject’ is created. The analysis examines technologies of subjectivity as they aspire towards (1) balance, (2) healing and (3) narrativization of the self. The article suggests that the subjectivities related to wellness culture draw from postfeminist and healthist ideologies and are based on a neoliberal discourse of individuality and self-control. The sociocultural indifference of wellness culture and its prerogative to police the self through culturally hegemonic pursuits based on (the right kind of) consumption makes the language of wellness a prominent neoliberal discourse.

Influence of motor impairment on exercise capacity and quality of life in patients with Parkinson disease

This study evaluated the impact of motor impairment (MI) on exercise capacity and quality of life in patients with Parkinson disease (PD). One hundred ninety-two patients (≥50 years old) were divided according to the Hoehn and Yahr stages in: mild (stage I), mild to moderate (stage II), moderate (stage III), and advanced MI (stage IV). Exercise capacity (6-min walk test [6MWT]) and quality of life (Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire [PDQ-39]) were obtained. In this context, 6MWT was progressively worse with increasing the severity of MI (P<0.01). Patients with advanced MI achieved 39% of predicted 6MWT of healthy subject, while subjects with mild MI achieved 83% of healthy subject (P<0.01). In addition, patients with advanced MI presented higher (i.e., worse) PDQ-39 scores in summary index, cognition, mobility and activities of daily live domains compared to other groups (P<0.01). Patients with moderate MI also presented worse scores in PDQ-39 summary index, mobility and activities of daily live domains in comparison with mild MI patients (P<0.01). Higher MI was correlated with worse exercise capacity (6MWT: r=-0.46, P<0.01), with worse PDQ-39 summary index and the mobility and activities of daily live domains scores (r=0.38, r=0.46, and r=0.43, P<0.01). In conclusion, MI is related to lower exercise capacity and quality of life (i.e., PDQ-39 summary index and mobility and activities of daily live domains) in patients with PD.

Development and Functional Testing of An Unloading Concept for Knee Osteoarthritis Patients: A Pilot Study

This paper presents a knee brace design that applies an extension moment to unload the muscles in stance phase during gait, and thereby the knee, as alternative to conventional valgus braces for knee osteoarthritis patients. The concept was tested on one healthy subject during normal gait with a prototype, which was designed to activate and deactivate in order to apply the extension moment in the stance phase only and hereby avoid any interference during the swing phase. Electromyography measurements and musculoskeletal models were used to evaluate the brace effects on muscle activation and knee compressive forces respectively. Simulations predicted an ideal reduction of up to 36%, whereas experimental tests revealed a reduction of up to 24% with the current prototype. The prototype brace also reduced the knee joint force impulse up to 9% and EMG peak signal of the vasti muscles with up to 19%. Due to these reductions on a healthy subject, this bracing approach seem promising for reducing knee loads during normal gait. However, further clinical experiments on knee osteoarthritis patients are required to evaluate the effect on both pain and disease progression.

Smart aging monitoring and early dementia recognition (SAMEDR): uncovering the hidden wellness parameter for preventive well-being monitoring to categorize cognitive impairment and dementia in community-dwelling elderly subjects through AI

Reasoning weakening because of dementia degrades the performance in activities of daily living (ADL). Present research work distinguishes care needs, dangers and monitors the effect of dementia on an individual. This research contrasts in ADL design execution between dementia-affected people and other healthy elderly with heterogeneous sensors. More than 300,000 sensors associated activation data were collected from the dementia patients and healthy controls with wellness sensors networks. Generated ADLs were envisioned and understood through the activity maps, diversity and other wellness parameters to categorize wellness healthy, and dementia affected the elderly. Diversity was significant between diseased and healthy subjects. Heterogeneous unobtrusive sensor data evaluate behavioral patterns associated with ADL, helpful to reveal the impact of cognitive degradation, to measure ADL variation throughout dementia. The primary focus of activity recognition in the current research is to transfer dementia subject occupied homes models to generalized age-matched healthy subject data models to utilize new services, label classified datasets and produce limited datasets due to less training. Current research proposes a novel Smart Aging Monitoring and Early Dementia Recognition system that provides the exchange of data models between dementia subject occupied homes (DSOH) to healthy subject occupied homes (HSOH) in a move to resolve the deficiency of training data. At that point, the key attributes are mapped onto each other utilizing a sensor data fusion that assures to retain the diversities between various HSOH & DSOH by diminishing the divergence between them. Moreover, additional tests have been conducted to quantify the excellence of the offered framework: primary, in contradiction of the precision of feature mapping techniques; next, computing the merit of categorizing data at DSOH; and, the last, the aptitude of the projected structure to function thriving due to noise data. The outcomes show encouraging pointers and highlight the boundaries of the projected approach.

Design and control of a cable-driven rehabilitation robot for upper and lower limbs

The design and control of a cable-driven rehabilitation robot, which can be configured easily for exercising different articulations such as elbows, shoulders, hips, knees and ankles without requiring any orthosis, are introduced. The passive, active-assisted and active-resisted exercises were designed and implemented using impedance control. The controller could switch between exercises according to the force feedback. The effectiveness of the proposed controller was demonstrated by experimental studies. The robot was tested first with a dummy extremity and then with a healthy subject mimicking various types of patients during the tests. Experimental results showed that satisfactory closed-loop performances were achieved.