#184 Doom Spending, Russian Plague Fears & Brain Measuring Wearables

We’re back with another week of headlines and the latest in the wellness industry. We start with the news that the death of a 28-year-old lab technician, Darya Shipilova, at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia has sparked international concern over a potential pneumonic plague exposure. The facts of the story remain unclear, but as flu season is approaching - should we be taking better precautions? And more generally, there's a wider conversation about our exposure to news, and how that can affect our daily lives.

Next up, we dive in to Lightberg Magazine’s article Your Next Wearable Might Read Your Brain. This is the news that after years of tracking our steps, our sleep, and our heart rate, wellness technology is moving into cognitive health. Consumer wearable devices can now measure brain activity through everyday form factors like behind-the-ear pucks, headbands, earbuds, and headphones. There’s various ways they work, EEG (Electroencephalogram) is one example, which reads fast electrical rhythms from the brain using tiny sensors woven into fabric or plastic pads. fNIRS (Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy) tracks blood oxygen levels in the frontal cortex to measure mental effort. The devices aren’t necessarily sexy or cool yet, but this feels like the next frontier in wellness, wearables, and brain health.

And lastly, are you a Doom Spender? In trending we look at the rise of the act of spending money on short-term, instant enjoyment, rather than saving it, to cope with economic stress and worries, and general pessimism about the future. It’s a worrying trend, but can certainly be understood - the question is who does the best out of it? And subsequently, does the wellness industry benefit from it?

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