While longevity may be the buzzword du jour in the wellness industry right now, the sorts of advancements initially targeted toward enhancing the performance of elite athletes could also help to improve our quality of life.
Take cleats, for example. Many of us probably haven’t laced up a pair since our youth soccer days, but since shaking up the sports world last year with its injury-reducing smart cleats, Caddix is eyeing the opportunity to pivot and begin designing everyday footwear that could benefit the rest of us.
So often, the focus on footwear advancements is related to enhancing performance, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to people who spend many hours on their feet—even if it’s not on a sports field.
“The emphasis needs to be put on longevity as it relates to wear and tear,” Jack Rasmussen, founder and CEO of Caddix, said while speaking at a Fast Company World Changing Ideas conversation at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center.
That’s true even of products that weren’t initially designed with professional athletes in mind.
Jason Wersland, a chiropractor, came up with the idea for the Theragun out of necessity to deal with the pain he was experiencing in the wake of a motorcycle accident.
But over the years, the Therabody founder has seen firsthand how “highly motivated” professional athletes incorporate his company’s tools into their recovery process—information that’s valuable when thinking about how to help someone dealing with more routine pain, like a headache, the founder said.
“If I can change an athlete’s behavior, I can probably change every person’s if I’m in front of them long enough with the right information,” Wersland said during the panel discussion.
Dealing with data fatigue
But there’s also a balance to be struck in terms of what information—and how much—to provide to people.
The growing market of wearable tech gadgets often details a bunch of information that can lead to data fatigue and doesn’t actually address the root problem, said Harry Gestetner, founder and CEO of Orion Sleep.
That’s what led Gestetner to design a passive product—an AI-enabled mattress cover—when he got serious about trying to improve his sleep in the wake of being diagnosed with an inner ear condition several years ago.
While wearables have helped people to better understand what’s happening with their bodies, innovation shouldn’t end there, he said.
“The next innings [are] the intervention layer where we can actually take that data and do cool stuff with it,” Gestetner said. “We use AI to understand what your body does throughout the night and adjust your body temperature to the perfect temperature.”
What athletes teach us about pain
Just as advancements in health-tech products are finding broader use cases that could extend longevity, so too could they broaden our understanding of how human bodies recover from injury.
As she’s aged, Haleigh Washington, a two-time Olympic medalist for the Team USA women’s volleyball team, has come to better appreciate what her body is telling her. And what’s particularly helped is becoming more adept at identifying pain that’s manageable versus pain that’s a problem, she said.
“When pain’s language starts to change, you recognize that you’re looking at a more serious problem,” Washington said during a separate panel discussion at the same event.
Having undergone four knee surgeries, she’s now focused on preventing future injuries by warming up a full two hours before team practice begins.
While that might seem excessive, a good warm-up can do wonders to prevent pain down the road, advised Claire Thompson, a fellow Olympian who competed with the Team Canada women’s ice hockey team and now is a third-year medical student at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
“Your workout will be better, you will be able to train for longer, and you will take less time off being injured if you just take the 10 minutes at the beginning to get your body ready,” Thompson said. “It will save you hours at physical therapy in the long run.”
