While longevity may be the buzzword du jour in the wellness industry, the sorts of advancements initially targeted toward enhancing the performance of elite athletes could also help improve the quality of life of ordinary people.
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 at a Fast Company World Changing Ideas panel discussion at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center on Wednesday.
That’s true even of products that weren’t initially designed with professional athletes in mind.
Panelist Jason Wersland, a chiropractor, came up with the idea for the Theragun out of necessity to deal with the pain he experienced in the wake of a motorcycle accident.
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, Wersland 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,” he said.
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 has led to some data fatigue among the general public. Often a device’s detailed output doesn’t actually address the user’s root problem, according to panelist 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 improving his own sleep after 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, volleyball player Haleigh Washington, a two-time Olympic medalist with Team USA, says she’s come to better appreciate what her body is telling her, noting the value of being able to identify pain that’s manageable versus pain that’s a problem.
“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 on Wednesday.
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, even a brief warm-up can do wonders to prevent pain down the road, according to recently retired ice hockey player Claire Thompson, a fellow Olympian who competed with Team Canada 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.”
