Month: September 2017

Interesting story that I read on Ars Technica just now about the precertification of software and personal health technology by the FDA. It looks like the FDA is interested in making sure that software and its underlying systems are good for people and accurate for giving people using the hardware on their wrists and in their pockets.

The FDA has partnered with some of the biggest names in health and technology to modernize consumer health devices and programs. The agency just announced the companies who will be the first to participate in its precertification pilot program under its Digital Health Innovation Action Plan. Apple, Fitbit, Samsung, and Johnson and Johnson are among the nine companies included in the program, meaning they will collaborate with the FDA to create guidelines for other companies to get FDA pre-certification based on their digital health programs.

The FDA is trying to make it easier for consumers to have access to approved health devices and programs so that each individual can take more responsibility for their own health. Consumers already use wearable devices and health apps to assess general health and specific medical conditions, even though most of these devices do not bear an FDA-approved stamp. The companies participating in this pilot program will help the FDA narrow down “key metrics and performance indicators for precertification” surrounding a company’s digital health software.

Why Would Pre-Certifying Apps Help You?

This is an interesting development because even on my own Samsung S8 I have an SPO2 (Blood oxygen)  and heart rate monitor. It would be nice to know that these were accurate from someone independent like the FDA, although from surfing various forums it seems as though the Oxygen monitor is fairly accurate as well as the heart rate sensor.

Personal health technology can take many forms and I am seeing it moving into our lives very quickly.

Apple in it’s last release of the Apple Watch was highlighting that they can see a time in the future that you could allow the health information that the watch gets to be sent to a doctor to help a diagnosis.

Of course the science fiction of this is a few years out but at least keeping track of heart rate all the time as well as steps would help now.

What Is The Future Of Personal Health Technology?

According to Scott Gottlieb from the FDA:

As we launch our Digital Health Innovation Action Plan, I am conscious of the fact that apps and app updates come to market every day. But the most powerful feature of this market may not be one revolutionary app but rather a combination of apps that provides consumers and providers with the information they need. This can help people better manage their chronic diseases, which could result in less trips to the doctor for checkups, or better awareness of illness, like prompts to a parent with a sick child on when they need to see a provider.

So it looks like the FDA is definitely seeing the future coming fast and I have to agree. Over the last few years with my phones, Fitbits, and seeing others with iPhones and Apple Watches, I can say that the health benefits of the devices that we carry all the time are very interesting and useful and they will be even more useful as new sensors and software come over the next few years

I have had a question that is interesting about the difference between different muscle fibers and tried to get a good answer. Here is the differences between fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers and the difference that they make to your workouts and fitness level.

One slightly confusing area of exercise is the idea that a muscle can do both push a lot of once or move many times. Look at the difference between doing a set of squats compared to running or the difference in the leg muscles of a bodybuilder compared to a triathlete.

All types of skeletal muscle are constructed from densely knit fibers. These muscle fibers can be looked at as Fast Twitch and Slow Twitch muscle fibers. Which kind are you looking for when you are doing s? Which ones do you want to have when you are running distance?

Slow Twitch Muscle Fibers (Type 1 Muscle fibers)

The slow muscles are more efficient at using oxygen to generate more fuel (known as ATP) for continuous, extended muscle contractions over a long time. They fire more slowly than fast twitch fibers and can go for a long time before they fatigue. Therefore, slow twitch fibers are great at helping athletes run marathons and bicycle for hours.

Slow Twitch Muscle Fibers Are:

• Smaller in diameter
• Red in color
• Depend on oxidative phosphorylation for their ATP supply
• Are highly vascularized (better blood supply)
• Have more mitochondria
• More myoglobin

Fast Twitch Muscle Fibers (Type 2 Muscle fibers)

Fast twitch fibers are responsible for the speed of muscular contraction, and a fast twitch response is the ability of a muscle to rapidly contract to a specific distance over a short period of time.

Muscle Fibers

Therefore, any training program that conditions your muscles to go from a state of complete relaxation to an immediate state of contraction is a speed training program.

Because fast twitch fibers use anaerobic metabolism to create fuel, they are much better at generating short bursts of strength or speed than slow muscles. However, they fatigue more quickly.

Fast twitch fibers generally produce the same amount of force per contraction as slow muscles, but they get their name because they are able to fire more rapidly. Having more fast twitch fibers can be an asset to a sprinter since she needs to quickly generate a lot of force.

Fast Twitch Muscle Fibers Are:

• Larger
• White
• Glycolysis is the source of ATP
• Less vascularized
• Less mitochondria
• Less myoglobin

Say you were to help someone lift a heavy couch up a flight of ten stairs. You would use your hands as grips and let your legs do all the work. On the first step your legs will start to recruit type IIa fibers. By the 2nd or 3rd step your nervous system does not recruit more motor units.

This being the case the first set of fibers rest and more type IIa fibers are recruited. Along with these, a number of type IIb fibers are called into play (to maintain fluent motion up the stairs).

As your journey continues more type IIa and type IIb fibers are recruited until by the last step they have all come into play. Your muscle fibers weren’t twitching at maximum speed until the end of the stairs when they neared failure.

Force and Types of Muscle Fibers Needed

The faster a muscle fiber twitches the greater the force is. At the beginning, the fibers weren’t forced to twitch at maximum frequency to overcome the weight, but at the end they had to produce as much force as possible to overcome the . This is how recruitment is designed to maintain a certain amount of force.

Fast-twitch fibers are activated by their neurons at a rate ten times faster than the rate of activation for slow-twitch fibers. The distribution of fast- versus slow-twitch fibers in the muscles is primarily an inherited characteristic, determined by the genetic coding of each person.

While it is common for a person to have muscles with a relatively even distribution of fast-and slow-twitch fibers, some persons inherit a tendency to a significantly greater number of one type of fiber over the other. These people tend to excel in the sports best suited to their muscular composition.

I have to thank a couple of sites for some of this info. Especially bodybuilding.com and Sports Medicine about.com as well Wiki Answers.