u/sf-keto

Playing selections from Bloom ATM. Delightful!

Thanks, Brian.

I do a lot of Pilates Mat & it seems to me that Watch & Fitness+ systematically undercount these workouts, possibly because they typically don’t involve a lot of wrist motion.

Any tips to handle this? A hour of Pilates is definitely more than 60 Active Calories.

Thanks.

We’re fortunate to we have so many men here in our supportive & open group who are courageous enough to share their health journeys & help others.

Health is for everyone & we must end the stigma, the inequality.

The University of Michigan partnered with Apple to study the effects of hearing loss on walking speed, using Apple Health data from 57,000 US iPhones.

As a 45+ woman, I’m aware of how dangerous falling can be for the elderly. My own grandma never really recovered from breaking her hip in a fall. So I was also happy to learn that wearing hearing aids reduces falls.

Looking at my own iPhone Health data, I can see walking significant walking improvements myself! Which I hadn’t really noticed until I looked today. But it’s true that I had lost the ability to hear my own footsteps.

‘ “Our ability to move confidently relies on subtle cues from our environment, such as hearing our own footsteps. If we aren’t receiving that auditory input, it can affect our walking speed, doctors say.

So why does walking speed even matter? It’s considered an important indicator of overall health. A hale and hearty speed signifies that your body’s systems—including your heart, lungs, muscles and nervous system—are working well together.
“We call it the sixth vital sign” ….

The massive real-world study served as resounding confirmation of past research: Not only does walking speed typically decrease with age, greater levels of hearing loss are linked with slower walking speed for adults of all ages. The biggest correlation is among people age 60 or older.

“The fact that we have objective information about hearing status and everyday walking at a scale like this is an exciting contribution and a powerful supplement to traditional public health,” says Dr. Carrie Nieman, associate professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at Johns Hopkins University, who wasn’t involved in the Apple study.

If someone notices a decline in walking speed, checks their hearing and discovers a problem, hearing aids could help improve many aspects of health. What isn’t yet known, Nieman says, is whether hearing aids can improve gait and walking speed.

A three-year Johns Hopkins controlled trial showed that hearing aids significantly reduced the rate of cognitive decline among older adults at risk of dementia—and reduced the risk of falls. ‘

If you check your phone data, has your walking & walking steadiness improved over time since you began wearing your hearing aids?

Do you have an elderly relative who could benefit from this information?

WSJ news story: https://archive.is/2026.05.10-230346/iphone-study-c53c482a

Full text of study: https://sph.umich.edu/applehearingstudy/study-updates/assess-and-assist-features.html

When will the society realise this is a systemic issue that requires a truly systemic, meaningful & equitable health/food environment adjustment, even a serious reform?

‘The report, published by The King's Fund, says obesity rates have continued to climb despite 14 national strategies being introduced since 1992, leaving millions more people at greater risk of serious illness.

Dave Buck, Senior Fellow for Public Health at The King's Fund, said: "For more than three decades successive governments of all stripes have talked the talk on obesity but have not sufficiently walked the walk.

"After 14 national strategies, millions more people are living with obesity than would have been the case if governments had taken more effective action, with real consequences for people's health, family life, work and the NHS.” ….

Buck said: "New weight-loss drugs could make a real difference for some people, but they are not a silver bullet.

"They should be seen as a complement to, not a substitute for, longer-term preventive measures that address the fact the everyday food environment makes it far too easy for people to become unhealthy.
"This would avoid a short-term 'sugar rush' of a wider GLP-1 rollout, which should be treated as part of a broader effort to tackle obesity."

The think tank also warned ministers must ensure people who would benefit most from the drugs are not priced out of accessing them, saying unequal access risks widening health inequalities.’

Full report: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/reports/tackling-obesity-nhs

Have we talked about this study from last February yet?

It’s very small & the methodology seems a bit flawed, but it’s interesting.

“This study aimed to evaluate whether reduced-frequency dosing of GLP1 receptor agonists maintains weight loss, body composition, and metabolic syndrome improvements following successful initial treatment with standard weekly therapy.

Patients maintained reduced-frequency dosing for an average of 36.3 weeks. Weight decreased from 87.9 ± 2.4 kg at pre-treatment to 74.1 ± 2.4 kg at plateau and further to 72.4 ± 2.2 kg on maintenance dosing (p < 0.01). Total body and truncal fat declined, while skeletal muscle mass stabilized on the reduced-frequency regimen. Metabolic parameters improved during weekly dosing and these gains were maintained during reduced-frequency therapy.

Conclusions
In patients with prior weight loss and metabolic improvement on GLP1 therapy, reduced-frequency maintenance dosing preserved outcomes. These findings support structured de-escalation as a promising strategy to reduce treatment burden without sacrificing efficacy.”

Most of the participants could maintain their weight loss near goal by dosing every 2 weeks.

But note the methodology!

“Eno is a conundrum: impish disruptor and happy polymath, he can also be a bit of a tech prig lecturing us from on high, dropping serene apothegms that turn out on closer inspection to be vanishingly banal. It’s as if there are two of him: Brian has a great sense of humour, Eno can be suffocatingly precious; Brian picks a brilliant selection of Desert Island Discs, Eno nominates for his beach read Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony and Solidarity; Brian is all weird eros, Eno makes music that can be oddly clenched or wafty; Brian is inspiringly playful, Eno writes software to systematise (and cage, and kill) that playfulness.”

Released June 2026, v. 10.62.1.0

Went into my audiologist to get it this afternoon. It contains bug fixes to improve the connection to phones, stop drop-outs while streaming, & so enhance sound quality.

The upgrade process is seamless: my audi just connected my devices to her computer, waited about 3 minutes, disconnected & told me to put them on.

As I did so I heard the re-start bongs, which sound like the lovely temple bells in Japan. And that was it. In & out in 10 minutes.

Personally I’ve never had a drop-out issue, but I know others here have mentioned it.

Recommend! Who else here has had it done?

Terrible & unnecessary loss of life, at great expense to our NHS. When will our government wake up to the human, social, business & economic costs of these needless deaths?

“About 170,000 people are expected to die from heart-related conditions linked to obesity – one of the leading causes of preventable illnesses – by 2035, according to a leading charity.
The analysis, conducted by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), found that about 45 people a day are expected to die from cardiovascular disease linked to excess weight and obesity in England over the next decade, as long as current trends in obesity rates continue. In the UK, about two in three adults are overweight or living with obesity, and worldwide, more than half of adults and a third of children and young people will be overweight or obese by 2050.

Based on data from the Global Burden of Disease study, the analysis indicated that there were 16,156 cardiovascular disease deaths attributable to high BMI in England in 2023, at a rate of 28 deaths for every 100,000 people.”

“New cases of obesity are rising fastest in younger adults in England, a study suggests.

Rates of new diagnoses for people in their 30s were nearly 20% higher in 2024-25 than they were in 2019-20, according to the study published in The Lancet. For people in their 20s, new cases jumped by 16%.

These increases were higher than in older age groups - although the most common ages for diagnosis remained the 40s and 50s.

But experts said the trend towards earlier diagnosis was worrying given obesity increases the risk of illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Alongside the age-group breakdown, the team also identified significant differences between different ethnic groups - earlier onset of obesity was more common in non-white people - while the areas with the highest levels of deprivation also saw steeper rises.

These patterns, when it comes to obesity, are well established, but the acceleration in new cases among younger adults was more unexpected, the researchers said.”

Hi All, I don’t normally have a wax issue. I just clean & brush my devices normally every day. There’s rarely any visible or palpable dots of wax, even looking at the receivers with some magnification.

I’d say my wax is quite “dry.”

So I’ve been changing my ReSound wax filters every 3 months more out of precaution than anything.

But this week the UK has seen absolutely bonkers temperatures & suddenly my ears are running with wet, sticky wax!

There was even a coat of wax on the neck of the receiver under the foot of my closed domes yesterday. I changed the filters immediately.

Is this common? Is this 35° C/ 95° F literally melting the wax inside my ears? Am I looking a daily/frequent filter changes while this extreme heat continues?

Reported in Japan, published in March, submitted in 2025. This just floated up coincidentally on Pub Med while I was searching for another topic. Has this ever been reported in Britain?

“In real-world settings, the incidence of diabetes remission remains low. The factors identified as being associated with diabetes remission included a short duration of diabetes, low baseline hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels, absence of ongoing diabetes pharmacotherapy, and post-intervention weight reduction. However, substantial weight reduction is difficult to achieve in routine clinical practice.

Tirzepatide is a novel antidiabetic agent that functions as a dual agonist of the glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptors. Clinical trials have shown that tirzepatide significantly reduces HbA1c levels and induces substantial weight reduction. We herein report two cases of diabetes remission after temporary tirzepatide therapy.”

Full text: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13019020/

I spoke to a friend today who said he was was going to upgrade his phone so the forthcoming AI voice could be customized to sound like Majel.

I said I wasn’t sure her estate would be okay with that. Or do we have even enough data of her voice anyway for that?

He insisted modern LLM technology could create her voice even with only a few minutes of her voice. And that every Trekkie would do it.

I have mixed feelings. It would be cool, but would it be ethical? I wonder.

“Tirzepatide doesn't just help people lose weight; it also activates brown adipose tissue, representing a major milestone in obesity research, according to a study being presented Monday at ENDO 2026, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in Chicago, Ill.

Until now, tirzepatide's weight-loss effect has been attributed primarily to reduced appetite, leading to smaller portions.

Brown adipose tissue was long thought to disappear after infancy and was only confirmed in adult humans through imaging studies in the late 2000s. It is markedly suppressed in obesity, and until now, moderate cold exposure has been its strongest known activator.

In a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial in premenopausal women with obesity, Herman and colleagues used cold-stimulated PET/CT imaging and MRI scans to measure brown adipose tissue activity before and after 24 weeks of treatment.

"We found that tirzepatide significantly increased brown adipose tissue activity and volume, and it also showed potential signs of converting white subcutaneous fat into more metabolically active 'beige' fat," Herman said.

Tirzepatide increased PET/CT-detectable brown adipose tissue activity from 41.2% to 64.7% of participants, while no comparable change was seen in the placebo group. "We were also encouraged by the consistency of the signal across other imaging modalities employed in the study that may capture different component of brown fat biology," Herman added.”

Full text available at link