Lifesource Wellness Connected Complete Health Monitoring System
In this country there is currently a lot of discussion and debate happening over the availability of heath care, and it seems nearly impossible to participate in any kind of daily activity without running across someone who has an opinion on it. Regardless of where any of us stand on the political and social spectrum, health should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind, and the key to maintaining good health always has been and always will be prevention. More than half of the American population will end up with some form of heart disease, and the occurrence of type-2 diabetes is rapidly increasing in both adult and adolescent populations. All is not doomed though, fortunately there are always steps that people can take to monitor their own health and help prevent disease, like eating properly, getting plenty of exercise, minimizing stress wherever possible, and avoiding tobacco use.
In the past we’ve looked at individual products geared toward monitoring and measuring activity, BMI, heart-rate and changes in weight, today we’re going to look at a trio of health-monitoring devices that are designed to help you keep track of whole body health. The Lifesource Wellness Connected Complete Health Monitoring System has three individual components that all work together to give you an accurate idea of your overall well-being. It utilizes a wireless scale, a wireless automatic blood pressure cuff, an activity monitor which is very similar to a pedometer and an ActiLink™ USB Transceiver to process all of the data and organize it into readable charts.
The scale has accurate readings, we found that it was always within a pound of the other scale we have that is consistently accurate. It’s supposed to be a 330 lb capacity, but we couldn’t find a way to test that claim fully. It will calculate BMI (body mass index), and transmits all of the data, both weight and BMI over your wireless network to your computer. The software that will process the data from each device is not included with the set, but can be downloaded from Lifesource’s website. Please be advised that we had some trouble using the software with Windows Vista, but it ran well with XP, and OSX is also supported. We found that our scale could transmit from around 15 feet away from the transceiver, but not much further than that- a bit of an issue depending on the location of your computer and scale.
The blood pressure cuff features things like a 90 reading memory, irregular heartbeat alert, and perhaps the coolest part is the color coding. Most people aren’t well versed in knowing the difference between diastolic readings and systolic readings, or what any of the numbers mean. Since both are very important pieces of information, both individually and combined having a simple green/yellow/red indicator for each number is very useful. The monitor comes with a medium cuff, which should work fine and give accurate readings for any average sized adult, but anyone who has very large or very small arms will want to consider getting a different size cuff, as having a properly sized cuff is necessary for an accurate reading. The display also has a nice large viewing area, and should be easy to read for just about anyone.
We’ve looked at a lot of different gadgets that track your steps, and this activity monitor works in very much the same as others available. Simply clip it to your shoe and go, the monitor tracks steps, calories, activity time and distance traveled. Once again all of the data collected gets transmitted over the wireless network, though it needs to be placed pretty close to the transceiver, and compiled with the data from the blood pressure cuff and the scale to give you a pretty complete overview of your health. The battery in the activity monitor is not replaceable, so if you’re using it a lot you should plan on replacing the whole unit once or twice a year. (Each component of this system can be found individually.)
Our big complaint with this system is glitchy software, and a lot of confusion with multiple users. The software requires a separate scale/blood pressure cuff/activity monitor for each user, and each piece of equipment has to be entered with a serial number to be able to track and store data. There is also the option of using ActiHealth Online Service for access to your data from any computer via the internet, but it has a whole separate set of guidelines for individual and multiple users. (There is a free 30 day trial available with the purchase of the Wellness System.)This service is entirely optional though, and doesn’t affect the ability to use or store data on your own computer. We really wish the system was more seamless in it’s integration, and that it supported multiple users without confusion or requiring separate equipment. The whole system has a one year warranty, and a 30-day return policy.
Lifesource has a list of retailers who carry both the full system and the individual components. We found the most easily accessible place to purchase the entire system was from Costco for $170, though Amazon does also carry it. Whether you use equipment like this to help stay healthy or not we encourage all of you to follow those guidelines listed by the American Heart Association for disease prevention, and wish you good health!
