The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : PCs Can Be Part of a Fitness Regime
Personal computers can be handy for creating big red Valentine’s Day hearts. Sadly for nerds like me, though, typing and moving a mouse don’t do much for the really important hearts, the ones working inside our chests.
But your PC, with some special software and hardware, can help provide the support you need to help keep your real heart--and the rest of you--in better shape.
One way to keep your heart healthy is to control your blood pressure. Hypertension, or high blood pressure, can lead to a heart attack or stroke if left untreated, and for most people the only way to know if you have it is to check.
While frustration with computers can easily elevate blood pressure, there is a computer tool that can help monitor it. Dynapulse 200M (Pulse Metric, [800] 927-8573) is a device that plugs into the serial port of a PC or Mac to measure and record blood pressure and pulse rate.
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Like the blood pressure kit used by doctors, it comes with a cuff that temporarily restricts blood flow in your upper arm. But instead of listening through a stethoscope, the device measures blood pressure and pulse and sends the data to the screen. You can save the data to a disk and view a line chart on how you’re doing over time.
I’m not a medical expert, but I tested the device on myself and members of my family over a period of weeks by comparing its results to what I got from a portable home sphygmomanometer, a $30 device that, according to Dr. Barry Sobel, an Encino hypertension specialist, is very accurate when used properly. Blood pressure can vary from moment to moment, but the results I logged over time with the Dynapulse were generally consistent with those from the sphygmomanometer.
Although it’s nice to have your blood pressure automatically charted and archived, the Dynapulse, with a suggested retail price of $179 and a discounted price of about $120, is a bit expensive. A cheaper option is to use a manual blood pressure gauge and a spreadsheet program to keep track of the numbers.
If you’re really concerned about your heart, you could visit the Mayo Clinic, one of the world’s leading medical centers. But you don’t have to go to Minnesota for a consultation. You can buy a copy of “Mayo Clinic: The Total Heart” ($19.95, IVI Publishing, [800] 952-4773). The CD-ROM, based on the book by the same name, provides a multimedia look at the normal heart and heart disease as well as information on reducing risk, heart tests, treatments, drug therapy and how to identify and respond to an emergency.
The new version, which includes the popular Netscape World Wide Web browser, has links to IVI’s site on the Internet that provide online updates to what is on the disc. I enjoyed and learned from some of the animations and, of course, benefited from what I read of the hundreds of pages of text that are available on the CD. But, as with many books on CD, I’m not convinced that it adds significant value over the book. Although there are some excellent prevention and therapy suggestions, booting a PC and running a CD is the last thing I’d do in an emergency.
You may not need the Mayo Clinic to tell you what’s good for your heart, but if you’re like me, you do need to watch your fat and calories and get enough exercise. If your blood pressure is high, you’ll also need to watch your sodium.
There are a number of diet programs on the market that can help you keep track of diet and exercise. Life Form (about $40 from Fitnesoft, [800] 607-7637 or [801] 221-7777) is billed as a total health and fitness system that helps track your food and exercise, as well as offering a place to record information about your general state of health, including blood chemistry and history. The program is easy to use and set up. It was developed under the direction of WordPerfect Corp. co-founder Pete Peterson, who, after leaving the company in 1992, realized that he was “overweight, middle-aged and out of shape.”
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I can identify. Although I’ve played with the program, I haven’t yet brought myself to go on a diet. Peterson, on the other hand, has been using his own program, and when I saw him last month, he looked a lot slimmer.
Heart Smart (Henning Associates, [800] 823-6896) is a shareware diet program that’s short on price and long on ease of use. You can download a free copy from the Internet or an online service or call the publisher for a floppy disk. It costs $19.95 to register. With this product, you can track your calories, fat, sodium, carbohydrates, protein and cholesterol for thousands of foods. Recording what you eat is as easy as dragging the food to your menu area. If only it were that easy to diet.
Lawrence J. Magid welcomes e-mail at magid@latimes.com and invites you to visit his home page at https://www.larrysworld.com