Keep cool during hot summer days.
I don’t like being hot and I do everything I can to make sure I don’t have to be. I’ve used personal fans and different types of cooling clothing to reduce the amount of heat I feel throughout the day. When I heard about this Cooling Cuff, I thought it might be worth my time to try it. Whenever I get hot, I sweat a lot and just feel gross. So, if this little gadget could help alleviate some of that discomfort, I thought I would give it a shot.
DETAILS
The Cooling Cuff consists of a silicone band and a medical-grade cooling pack. The cooling pack is designed to lower a person’s body temperature quickly. The device is meant to help a person save energy during exercise and to reduce the amount they sweat. The cuff provides instant relief for hot flashes and heat-based discomfort. The cuff is worn at the wrist to alter a body’s thermoregulation, rapidly lower core body temperature, and quickly restore temperature homeostasis.
Cooling Cuff includes an entire medical abstract on their website about the science of applying concentrated cooling to the flexor side of the wrist. Here is a summary from Cooling Cuff’s website.
Humans possess complex thermoregulation. The body cools itself when heat is transferred from the blood to the skin, and the heat is then dissipated from skin to the environment, sometimes aided by sweat. The colder blood circulates throughout the body, lowering the body’s temperature. When the brain learns that the body is overheating, and the hypothalamus directs the body to speed up the process: more blood flows to blood vessels near the surface of the skin and sweat glands produce more sweat. As a result, more heat is removed from the body until homeostasis is achieved.
The flexor side of the wrist is the best location to cool the body. The wrist features non-hairy skin, known as Glabrous skin, which possesses specialized blood vessels that can release considerably more heat as compared to hairy skin. Glabrous skin is only found on the hands, feet, wrist, and ankles. But only the wrist is practical for a wearable, making it the optimal location to augment thermoregulation.
This is why the Cooling Cuff was created — to speed up the cooling process. Cooling packs like the Cooling Cuff can remove heat from the area where the body can best dissipate heat – the wrist. When applied to that area of the wrist, the body can cool down up to 66% faster than when it has nothing on the wrist at all.
USER EXPERIENCE
Getting the Cooling Cuff set up is very simple. The cooling pack fits just inside the silicone band. The compartment on the band simply wraps around the cooling pack similar to the way a silicone band wraps around a smartwatch body. The cooling pack should be chilled in a freezer before use. Once it’s placed into the band, you just wrap the band around your wrist with the cooling pack facing the underside of your wrist.
I didn’t have any issues with the band fitting on my wrist and it did seem to cool me down quickly and easily. I tried the Cooling Cuff in a couple of different scenarios. First, I tried it while I was simply sitting at my desk. I wasn’t exerting any energy – I was just working on my computer. The cuff did a good job of helping me maintain my body temperature, but I did have to admit that it seemed to just make my wrist cold since I wasn’t actively doing anything. I also wore the cuff when I was doing some yard work. The air temperature was probably in the 90s and we had a high humidity rating that day. This type of environment usually makes me sweat buckets, but with the cuff I only experienced moderate sweat and the heat was manageable.
In addition to my own experience, I asked my fiance to give it a try, too. She wore it around the house while she was doing some basic tasks like laundry. She said that the cuff helped her, too, but since the cooling pack was so cold, it caused her wrist – or rather the skin on her wrist – to start hurting. We figured this had more to do with the fact that she wasn’t being particularly active.
CONCLUSION
The Cooling Cuff is a unique way to try to keep cool in extreme heat situations. I think it could potentially help people who are prone to heat exhaustion. If you have sensitive skin, you may need to add a layer of fabric between your skin and the cooling pack to make sure your skin doesn’t get irritated, but as long as you are doing some sort of activity, the Cooling Cuff will help you stay cool. This would make a great gift for Father’s Day.
For more information, visit coolingcuff.com, Facebook, and Twitter.
