Can a bra with some sensors get you to stop stress eating?

Do you ever get stressed out and reach for food? As it turns out, a lot of people have adopted this habit and it’s leading to poor health and obesity.

So what does a woman’s undergarment have to do with this problem?

What does a woman's bra have to do with engineering?

Microsoft researchers have been working on different ways to curb this habit. They first developed such products as smartphone apps and sensors, and now Microsoft engineers have developed a bra that can detect stress and help prevent women from emotional overeating.

The project aims to raise awareness among women who overeat (although, there are probably men who could also benefit from such a device).

When Mary Czerwinski, a cognitive psychologist and senior researcher at Microsoft, created the bra, there were some issues that needed to be addressed. First, her team needed to find a bra that would be comfortable for long periods of time, and second, they needed to figure out how to gather electrocardiogram (EKG) and electrodermal (EDA) activity from a bra.

The sensor pads for the bra. (Image vie Microsoft Research)

The bra seemed to be the ideal article of clothing for this kind of wearable technology because it sits close to the heart and allows for EKG signal collection. When the team tried to do this with men’s underwear in the past, they were unsuccessful because the location was too far from the heart.

Instead of creating individual bras that contained the materials, Microsoft Research developed conductive pads that could be inserted and removed.

How it works

The bra pads contain sensors and a Generic Remote Access Sensing Platform that contains a microprocessor and is powered by a lithium-ion polymer battery. In the tests conducted by the Microsoft Research team, the EKG sensors gathered heart rate and respiratory data and the EDA sensors gathered skin conductance. The data was then transmitted via Bluetooth to a smartphone app.

The stress-eating bra developed by Microsoft Research. (Image via Microsoft Research)

Participants recorded their own moods on the smartphone app while data was also being transmitted to the app from the bra. This allowed the scientists to accurately predict the relationship between stress and eating .

Effective?

One of the challenges of the study so far is battery life. Participants needed to charge their bra pads every three to four hours. Czerwinski is now looking for solutions to the battery life problem and a more efficient way to monitor the correlation between mood and eating.