4 ms·

This is a problem with the medical establishment in the realm of nutrition. They are not taught nutrition and so they do not recognize nutritional problems and

This is a problem with the medical establishment in the realm of nutrition. They are not taught nutrition and so they do not recognize nutritional problems and they are also unaware of their poor performance on doing so. And so there is a subset of unnecessary chronic disease. I'd really like to see someone make a home device that can test for nutritional deficiencies at home. Feed someone something like Soylent, a known input, and then test the "output". And determine nutritonal deficiencies based on how the output differs from healthy individuals. This is already done clinically to an extent, but I think the ability to continuously/cheaply record a nutritional history would be invaluable for many. Blood tests just dont cut it. The body likes to keep blood parameters in far too narrow a range making it hard to deduce intracellular status from extracellular fluids except in critical situations.

msane 12y ago
We need tricorders for food.
- Animats 12y ago
  That's quite feasible if you're willing to have some single-use item that contains the necessary chemicals. There are hand-held blood analyzers that use little plastic discs for each test. Each disc has a pattern of small slots and channels preloaded with various chemicals needed for the test. A few drops of blood are put into a hole in the disc. The hand-held device then rotates the disc to cause mixing, then spins it at high speed for centrifuging, then looks at different parts of the disc with optical sensors. It works, but the discs tend to have a high markup, like print cartridges.
jared314 12y ago
> I'd really like to see someone make a home device that can test for nutritional deficiencies at home. Home health monitoring was the end goal of the "Intelligence Toilet" system made by Toto (Japan). I'm not sure how far they've been able to take it since 2005, but it was suppose to start with urine sugar level monitoring.
- gohrt 12y ago
  Related: http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/19/7245069/adult-swim-infomercial-smart-pipe http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/19/7245069/adult-swim-infome... 'Smart Pipe' is every bad startup in one delightful parody | The Verge

msane 12y ago

We need tricorders for food.

Animats 12y ago
That's quite feasible if you're willing to have some single-use item that contains the necessary chemicals. There are hand-held blood analyzers that use little plastic discs for each test. Each disc has a pattern of small slots and channels preloaded with various chemicals needed for the test. A few drops of blood are put into a hole in the disc. The hand-held device then rotates the disc to cause mixing, then spins it at high speed for centrifuging, then looks at different parts of the disc with optical sensors. It works, but the discs tend to have a high markup, like print cartridges.

jared314 12y ago

> I'd really like to see someone make a home device that can test for nutritional deficiencies at home. Home health monitoring was the end goal of the "Intelligence Toilet" system made by Toto (Japan). I'm not sure how far they've been able to take it since 2005, but it was suppose to start with urine sugar level monitoring.

gohrt 12y ago
Related: http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/19/7245069/adult-swim-infomercial-smart-pipe http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/19/7245069/adult-swim-infome... 'Smart Pipe' is every bad startup in one delightful parody | The Verge