Tigers of Tomorrow: HeatBands – for those with Raynaud's Syndrome or just bad circulation
I couldn’t make it to Cambridge today where a small show of some of the most innovative technologies in the UK have gathered. So, via the medium of press release I’m going to bring you a few of the items that sound pretty good even 100 miles away in Old London Town.
First up is HeatBands which are designed to help those with poor circulation and specifically Raynaud’s Syndrome which I wouldn’t know anything about at all if one of our writers here at TD, Ryan Weir, wasn’t a sufferer himself.
Raynaud’s Syndrome, or as Ryan says, taking great grizzly pleasure as he does so, “Dead Man’s Hand”, is a rather nasty condition that effects 15% of folk out there. It’s essentially chronic circulation where your blood vessels constrict in cold conditions to prevent further losses of heat but do so to the point when your extremities are then robbed of both warmth and feeling making them both very pale and very useless for a long time.
It can often take a very long time to get the blood going again but those at HeatBands have come up with a solution in the form of strips of material that you wrap around either your wrists or ankles that reflect your own body heat back into your skin, keeping your hand and foot temperatures up and stopping the vasoconstriction positive feedback effect.
HeatBands are made from the same material as used in surgery to keep the core temperature of anaesthetised patients steady and they’re now available to the market as disposable strips in a variety of colours costing around 30p or 40p each.
Mercifully the slightly silly look of the HeatBands remain nicely hidden under your winter clothing but with no known cure for Raynaud’s Syndrome, who cares as long as they work?
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