Health

Elon Musk’s other other company, the brain-machine interface startup Neuralink, has apparently put an implant in a human, who is recovering well and seeing “promising neuron spike detection.”

Given the emails I’ve been receiving about my advice to Gen Z, I thought many of you might enjoy this bittersweet essay by 90-year-old Sam Toperoff. He suggests that even in the absolute twilight years, there are still things to look forward to:

Stanley, the maker of the obscenely large adult sippy cups that people are going feral over, confirms that yes, one part of the cups is made with lead — but that exposure to it would be “rare.” Lead in drinking cups has been a problem with other brands’ products in the past.

The NSA is buying your internet data!

In a recent Bloomberg interview, Samsung executive Hon Pak says it’s actively pursuing noninvasive blood glucose monitoring and continuous blood pressure checks. Pak declined to give any concrete timeline but said he hopes to bring it to market in five years.

Fitbit is working with Quest Diagnostics to see whether metrics like heart rate, heart rate variability, sleep cycles, and stress can be used to detect early signs of metabolic deterioration — a leading cause of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and Type 2 diabetes.

The German Bionic Apogee+ is designed to protect backs of medical workers lifting patients out of beds and wheelchairs. It robotically lifts 66 pounds from lower back onto hips and legs, plus adds handles for patients to grab. Hours of use from a small Makita power tool battery!

Researchers discovered up to 100 times more nanoplastics in bottled water than previous estimates. Add that the growing list of places microplastics are accumulating where they really shouldn’t be — including babies’ poop, seafood, the Arctic, and Great Lakes.

At CES, Eureka Park is where you’ll find a ton of smaller startups and tech companies working on next-gen ideas. It’s also where you’ll generally find a handful of companies trying to innovate the way we pee. Toilet humor aside, there’s a lot of valuable information stored in urine — which is why it’s an area of interest for the health tech community. Here’s a look at three urine-related tech startups that caught my eye.

The company announced at CES today that its “Premium Teeth Resin” has been registered with the FDA and enables 3D-printed dentures with “life-like aesthetics” that mimic “natural teeth translucency and opalescence.”

I don’t know if this $249.95 Withings BeamO “multiscope” will ever gain a place in the culture that matches that of HeadOn, but combining a thermometer, stethoscope, pulse oximeter, and EKG all-in-one is ambitious, to say the least.

Consumer Reports is back with another sobering investigation into the bisphenols and phthalates — chemicals known as plasticizers — in common supermarket and fast foods. CR found that despite growing evidence that these chemicals ain’t too great for your health, they were found “in almost every food” at high levels.

This time, it has to fork over $740,000 after an investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James found “a long and burdensome cancellation process” in which the company kept on charging consumers even after they tried to cancel.

With covid cases on the rise, you might want to stock up on at-home tests.

In case you haven’t listened to the most recent episode of Decoder, Hsiang, who is now the United States Digital Service administrator, told us the inside story of how she helped fix the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov a decade ago. Read the full interview here, or listen to the podcast here.

And even if your state has protections, you’re still not safe:

The US Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of two gene-based therapies for sickle cell disease, one of which uses the genome editing technology CRISPR. It’s a big milestone, but access to the therapies for now will still be very limited and expensive, the New York Times explains.

Keith Berman, who claimed he wasn’t taking compensation in his role as CEO, actually splashed out a bunch of company money on himself. Also, he claimed that he could test for covid in 15 seconds. Also also, my guy used a “fake persona to repeat false and misleading statements to investors on internet message boards.”

The US government is once again offering a round of four at-home covid tests you can get for free. You can place an order directly from the USPS website, which will start shipping the week of November 27th.