Blog
Maybe unusual ways to quit smoking are the best?
May 3rd, 2013
One of the things our users love about Age Me is the ability to compare what you will look like older if you smoke, versus what you will look like if you don’t smoke. The results can be astonishing. Professionals in the health industry use Age Me to help in smoking cessation courses. Knowing that you will look better if you do not smoke can be a big motivator!
Quitting smoking can be difficult, especially for those who have been smoking for most of their adult life. Young smokers should have an easier time quitting smoking than someone who is in their 40’s simply because he or she hasn’t been smoking as long, however, smoking cessation rates are fairly uniform for any age. Young smokers tend to ignore smoking cessation adverts or government warnings thinking they still have plenty of time to quit without suffering long-term damage. Change in behaviour, as any Psychologist will tell you, comes from within. Seeing the effects smoking will have on your appearance may be more helpful than warning about health consequences a long time in the future.
There are many available ‘tools’ to help people quit smoking. Many people use nicotine replacements such as patches or gum. These may wean smokers off cigarettes, but do little to kick the psychological addiction. Quitting cold turkey works for some people, and counseling has also proven effective for many. However, these are all steps people take once they have resolved to stop smoking. This resolve to quit seems to be the most problematic part – and the warnings about the dangers of smoking written on cigarette packets, repeated in leaflets and emphasized by doctors often fail to hit home.
Although over 50% of adult smokers attempt to quit smoking, many of these people are unsuccessful and will return to smoking in as little as a day or two. This is usually because the temptation to smoke outweighs the resolve to quit.
Research has indicated that an unusual method for smoking cessation is actually seeing what smoking will do to your body using Age Me. Being presented with a visual image of the effect smoking will have on the individual smoker has proven to be surprisingly powerful.
Researchers from Curtin University conducted a study using Age Me in order to determine how effective it was as a tool to discourage young adults from smoking. Adults between the ages of 18 and 30 were confronted with images of themselves in their 50s and 60s after a lifetime of smoking. A smoker’s face will age 1.4 times faster than that of a non-smoker, so a smoker’s face at 50 will look closer to 70 – a grim reality to be confronted with.
The results of the study indicated that this method of smoking cessation was more effective than the distribution of literature, motivating one in seven young adults to quit smoking.
The visual effect and personal impact of Age Me are big factors in its effectiveness. Seeing the skin damage and accelerated aging occurring over a period of decades offers a more personal perspective, which is a stronger motivator than general messages. Many people may know the effects, but seeing the effects is more likely to inspire people to quit.
Age Me software can be tried right here on our website! Why not see what you look like as a smoker or non smoker?
Five great TED Talks on aging
April 16th, 2013
The world is a better place because of the knowledge-sharing that occurs through TED Talks. We recently came across five great TED talks about aging - like the first one from Biochemist Cynthia Kenyon. Have a look-see for fascinating perspectives on getting old, why, and how the process might be alterable.
Photo courtesy of Ted.com
Australian research shows success using APRIL Face Aging Software to encourage young smokers to quit
April 8th, 2013
Natural aging vs. "smoker's face"
Aprilage News Release: Australian research shows success using APRIL® Face Aging Software to encourage young smokers to quit
Toronto (April 5, 2013) – Researchers from Curtin University in Australia have reported success in encouraging young adult smokers to quit by showing them computer-generated images of how their faces might look in their 50s and 60s if they continue to smoke. The results of the Curtin study have been published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. To supply the accelerated smoking-related photo-agings, the researchers turned to APRIL® Face Aging Software of Toronto, Canada. The photo-agings were completed on participants aged 18-30 in a community pharmacy setting to determine if the intervention promoted cessation among young adult smokers.
“Available literature suggests that cigarette smoking continues to be a major modifiable risk factor for a variety of diseases and that smokers aged 18-30 years are relatively resistant to anti-smoking messages due to their widely held belief that they will not be lifelong smokers,” said study supervisor Professor Moyez Jiwa, Chair of Health Innovation, Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute. “As a result, we wanted to look at the issue from a different angle. We conducted the trial to establish whether digitally photo-aging participants using the internet-based APRIL® Face Aging software, would have any effect on their smoking status. We found that using this photo-aging technology to confront smokers with how their smoking will affect their skin aging was effective at persuading one in seven young adult smokers to quit,” he said. Mrs Oksana Burford, a pharmacist and lecturer at the School of Pharmacy, Curtin University, conducted the randomised control trial. The results have been published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research and the full article is available from http://www.jmir.org/2013/3/e64/.
For further information:
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Photo courtesy of RationalSurvey.com
At Aprilage, we welcome inquiries by researchers from around the world who want to use the APRIL Face Aging software in studies to show people the effects of smoking, weight gain and obesity, or sun exposure on their appearance. Independent research showing efficacy of results using our software is one of the things that sets the APRIL face aging software apart from other face aging products on the market. The independent research conducted using the APRIL software can be viewed here.
Once the requesting institution has supplied an Abstract, we evaluate whether or not our software could be used effectively in the manner outlined. If it appears the software can contribute to the study, Aprilage will provide a copy of the software to the researchers at no cost. It was with one recent study from Curtin University, recently published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, where the results proved statistically significant and have been widely reported worldwide.
The study, led by Curtin University PhD student Oksana Burford, aimed to test the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of interventions based on personalised illustrations of “smoker’s face”. It also explored the value of an unfunded intervention within pharmacy practices.
At the six-month period, five of the 80 control group participants suggested they had quit smoking, but only one of those consented to taking a carbon monoxide breath test through the Smokerlyzer CO monitor.
In the intervention group, 22 of 80 participants reported quitting, with 11 confirmed by CO testing. The researchers say this difference in biochemically confirmed quit attempts was statistically significant. They also found a reduction in the average smoking dependence score.
In terms of cost-effectiveness for the health system, the researchers say the mean cost of implementing the intervention was estimated at $5.79 per participant. Interestingly, the mean cost that participants indicated they were willing to pay for the digital ageing service was $20.25.
For inquiries about using the APRIL software in research, please contact us at inquiries@aprilage.com
Photo courtesy of Allure Magazine
Allure Magazine has just published a story about an independent study out of the School of Pharmacy at Curtin University in Perth, Australia which suggests that one of the most potent ways to persuade young smokers (ages 18 to 30) to quit is by appealing to their vanity and showing them pictures of how smoking will age their skin. The study, reported respected medical journal Pediatric News, used our face aging software called APRIL (available via download for professionals or online at AgeMe.com) that predicts what you’ll look like at any age up to 72 if you keep on smoking, or if you give up the habit.
According to the Curtin study, fifty-one percent of participants who got a glimpse at their digitally created future (versus only 14 percent in the control group that did not) reported a lower dependency on cigarettes six months later.
Contrasting facial features key to determining age new research says
March 18th, 2013
The image shows two identical images of the same face, except that the facial contrast has been increased in the left image and decreased in the right image. The face on the left appears younger than the one on the right. (Credit: Image courtesy of Gettysburg College)
We recently came across some interesting new research by Psychology Prof. Richard Russell of Gettysburg College, who has been collaborating with researchers from CE.R.I.E.S. (Epidermal and Sensory Research and Investigation Center), a department of Chanel Research and Technology dedicated to skin related issues and facial appearance.
The contrasting nature of facial features is one of the signals that people unconsciously use to decipher how old someone looks, says Prof. Russell.
In one study, Russell and his team measured images of 289 faces ranging in age from 20 to 70 years old, and found that through the aging process, the color of the lips, eyes and eyebrows change, while the skin becomes darker. This results in less contrast between the features and the surrounding skin — leaving older faces to have less contrast than younger faces. In another study involving more than a hundred subjects in Gettysburg and Paris, the scientists artificially increased these facial contrasts and found that the faces were perceived as younger. When they artificially decreased the facial contrasts, the faces were perceived as older.
“Unlike with wrinkles, none of us are consciously aware that we’re using this cue, even though it stares us in the face every day,” said Russell. The discovery of this cue to facial age perception may partly explain why cosmetics are worn the way they are, and it lends more evidence to the idea that makeup use reflects our biological as well as our cultural heritage, according to Russell.
Pediatric News recently wrote an article about using the APRIL Face Aging software in a research study at Curtin University in Australia. The study, led by lecturer and PhD student Oksana Burford, found that the use of the APRIL helped persuade young people to stop smoking.
Ms. Burford said that she and her colleagues were hoping to find a way to motivate young smokers to quit, as they are generally resistant to most messages. Previous studies have shown, however, that young people do respond to graphic imagery, she said at the annual meeting of the North American Primary Care Research Group. Ms. Burford decided to test a software program that would show teens and young adults how they would look in their 50s and 60s if they continued to smoke.
Overall, one in seven smokers quit after viewing their photo-aged selves. Ms. Burford concluded that the software program is an effective motivator in getting young people to quit.
*photo courtesy of umassmed.edu
The Quantified Self. Biometrics with visual measurement = powerful tool
February 25th, 2013
Gary Wolf, journalist and author, The Quantified Self
At Aprilage, we do a lot of listening to, and reading about, research into biometrics. Here’s a very interesting, 5-minute TED talk by Gary Wolf, who is a contributing editor at Wired magazine, where he writes regularly about the culture of science and technology (as well as many other topics). He is also the co-founder, with Wired colleague Kevin Kelly, of The Quantified Self, a blog about “self-knowledge through numbers.”
As Gary says, “The self is just our operation center, our consciousness, our moral compass. So, if we want to act more effectively in the world, we have to get to know ourselves better.”
There are many personal devices on the market now to measure all sorts of things about ourselves: our sleep, our moods, our diet, our spending, our exercise, our heart rates and blood sugar levels to name a few. But what is the end result of all of this measurement? Do humans measure things about themselves to “improve”? Do any other species measures things?
It is an interesting question to ponder from our perspective, since the APRIL face aging software can be used as a tool to show the effectiveness of measuring various things about ourselves, particularly in the health and lifestyle areas. What if a doctor showed you a picture of yourself before he or she started to measure caloric intake and energy output for the purposes of improving your weight and fitness levels? Then, after following a diet and exercise program and achieving desired goals, showed you another picture of yourself, thereby documenting the results of the measurements visually, as well as biometrically? The old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” could take on new meaning and, we believe, become particularly impactful since you can see the personal results of the measurement.
Amy Cuddy: Your body language says fake it ’till you become it
February 20th, 2013
We stumbled across a very interesting TED talk by Harvard social psychologist, Amy Cuddy that’s relevant to APRIL face aging software. She speaks about using “power poses” (body occupying a lot of space) to make yourself feel more powerful. According to her research, our bodies can change our minds. Power poses can raise testosterone and lower cortisol (produced in stressful situations). Her theory is “fake it ’till you become it” – meaning = act the way you want to be and one day you will be that way.
We wondered if this applied to seeing various images of your own face as it aged – how does this make you feel? When people in a non-clinical setting first hear about face aging software, they usually decline a demonstration. Without even seeing how they will look as they age, they feel it. It’s not something they want to experience. Hence, this is one of the software’s main reasons for success in behaviour modification, as proven in independent, evidence-based research. “Feeling” how you look is a powerful motivator for changing behaviour.
Aging: Well-Being Improves As People Get Older, Despite Physical Or Cognitive Decline, Study Says
February 13th, 2013
Reslience plays key role in well-being as we age
Some welcome news for those of us who are aging, and know it. Today there are about 5 million Canadians, and about 40 million Americans, over the age of 65. The fastest-growing segments of the population are those over 60. Yet aging continues to be discussed as a period of declining physical and cognitive skills. However, according to a recent study, as reported in The Huffington Post, this negative view of aging contrasts with results of comprehensive research involving more than 1,000 older adults showing that people actually enjoy greater well-being as they age.
“It was clear to us that, even in the midst of physical or cognitive decline, individuals in our study reported feeling that their well-being had improved with age,” said principal investigator Dilip V. Jeste, MD, director of UC San Diego’s Stein Institute for Research on Aging, and the current President of the American Psychiatric Association (which was not involved in this study).
“But what was unexpected was that the older adults had higher scores on self-rated successful aging. Thus, physical health and perception of one’s successful aging went in opposite directions,” Jeste added. “In other words, factors other than physical health seemed to contribute significantly to subjective success in aging. These factors were psychological — i.e. resilience and absence of depression.”
Jeste suggests there’s a take-away message for clinicians, which is that being more optimistic in the care of seniors may help reduce societal ageism. “There is considerable discussion In public forums about the financial drain on the society due to rising costs of healthcare for older adults — what some people disparagingly label the ‘silver tsunami.’ But, successfully aging older adults can be a great resource for younger generations,” he said.
The findings also point to a key role for psychiatry in enhancing successful aging in older adults. “Perfect physical health is neither necessary nor sufficient,” Jeste said. “There is potential for enhancing successful aging by fostering resilience and treating or preventing depression.”
Photo and story courtesy of The Huffington Post
Aprilage Face Aging software based on science, not a toy
February 4th, 2013
Smoking ages the face more quickly
When the Ontario Science Centre first approached Aprilage Inc., the creators of the APRIL Face Aging software, they initially wanted to create an experience for children that would be both amazing and eye-opening, and a real crowd pleaser. They wanted to see if it was possible to make the “passage of time” a very personal, and realistic, experience for thousands of visitors in a fast and easy format.
To do so, it was necessary to produce “aging results” based on how real people age, and not on a computer morphing or visual special effect or aging toy with no basis in science. Therefore, the Aprilage creators got to work to first build a statistical database of real people from ages 7 to 70, female and male, in five ethnic groups (African, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, and South Asian). That meant taking pictures of thousands of people using a 3D camera system (with four cameras in the system). Once the database was built, the programmers got to work developing the aging algorithms, and designing a user system that was fast and simple to operate. APRIL Face Aging software was born.
Based on its success, the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., asked Aprilage to further develop the aging process to enable the visualization of face aging showing the effects of smoking, and produce side-by-side images comparing the “smoking aging” to “natural aging”. The results were so effective that APRIL is now sold globally as a tool in smoking cessation and tobacco prevention programs. Recognizing the power of personal visualiztion software in a health education setting, Aprilage further developed two additional versions of APRIL. The BMI (Body Mass Index) module enables the user to choose the level of body mass (additional weight) they wish to see added to their face as they age, up to and including obesity. The Sun Exposure module shows the user how they will look if they have, or will have, heavy and unprotected sun exposure over their lifetime.
All of the aging results for all versions of the APRIL Face Aging software are based on the statistical database of thousands of real people, including children and adults. APRIL Face Aging software is the only commercially available face aging software to be built on such a database, enabling aging results based on science, not special effects. To see the independent, evidence-based research reports using the APRIL Face Aging Software, please click here.
At Aprilage, we’re always on the lookout for new research into any of the areas that the APRIL Face Aging software covers – from smoking, to sun exposure, to weight and obesity. Health educators know that showing patients how they will age with various lifestyle effects on their appearance can be a compelling factor in health education. Therefore, a new study (and resulting discussion in the media) about the relationship between weight and mortality risk, involving nearly three million subjects from more than a dozen countries, was recently conducted by Katherine M. Flegal and her associates at the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health, recently caught our eye. The researchers found that all adults categorized as overweight and most of those categorized as obese have a lower mortality risk than so-called normal-weight individuals.
Contrary to expectations, higher all-cause mortality was NOT observed in individuals with BMIs of between 30 and 35, the “obese” range. Furthermore, mortality was significantly LOWER among those who were “overweight” with a BMI of 25 – 30 than those in the normal weight range. These findings remained consistent even after adjusting for smoking status and pre-existing disease.
Writing about the discussion, John LaMattina in Fobes says that Flegal’s paper provides yet another example of what is termed in the medical literature as the “obesity paradox”. While obesity is a major risk factor for heart disease as well as other diseases like diabetes and even cancer, obese patients seem to have a survival benefit in certain situations. How can this be? An editorial in JAMA rightly points out that BMI is inadequate as a sole predictor of metabolic risk. BMI doesn’t take into account nutritional status, disability and disease; any analysis of overweight and moderately obesity people needs to include a variety of parameters such as blood pressure, lipid levels, fast blood sugar levels and even waist circumference.
Also adding to the Obesity Paradox discussion is Paul Campos, a professor of law at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the author of “The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession With Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health.” Writing recently in a New York Times Op-ed, Professor Campos states: “In reality, of course, it would be nonsensical to tell so-called normal-weight people to try to become heavier to lower their mortality risk. Such advice would ignore the fact that tiny variations in relative risk in observational studies provide no scientific basis for concluding either that those variations are causally related to the variable in question or that this risk would change if the variable were altered. This is because observational studies merely record statistical correlations: we don’t know to what extent, if any, the slight decrease in mortality risk observed among people defined as overweight or moderately obese is caused by higher weight or by other factors. Similarly, we don’t know whether the small increase in mortality risk observed among very obese people is caused by their weight or by any number of other factors, including lower socioeconomic status, dieting and the weight cycling that accompanies it, social discrimination and stigma, or stress.”
All this seems to point to the conclusion that many factors must be considered when assessing mortality risk – BMI is just one.
Health apps are booming. Do they work? Buyer Beware.
January 22nd, 2013
A recent article by Luisa Dilner in The Guardian spoke about the booming growth of health apps. According to the article, there are more than 1,000 new health apps released every month. We’ve written before about the rise in health apps and personal health tools, and how important they can be if produced by reputable organizations and used correctly. However, a lack of regulation means that it is definitely a “buyer beware” market. As Dillner states, “no app as yet can cure you of a disease. An investigation by the New England Centre for Investigative Reporting found that out of 1,500 health apps, more than one in five claimed to cure or treat medical problems.” For those wondering how the APRIL software produces its face aging (or age progression) results, they are based on a statistical database of thousand of real people’s faces, across five ethnic groups, male and female, from ages 7 – 70. APRIL does not photoshop images; it does not use a morphing tool; nor an artist’s overlay. Only real people’s faces, and thousands of them, are used to predict what any one individual may look like as they get older. This is what sets APRIL apart, and we thank all those who have used APRIL and have seen the impressive results.
The Obesity Paradox: Measuring Body Mass can be Confusing
January 14th, 2013
(image courtesy of dailymail.co.uk)
An article in Reuters Health recently reported on a study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that seems to confirm “the obesity paradox”. The obesity paradox suggests that overweight and obese people – even those with additional health problems – live longer than their thinner counterparts In a review of almost 100 past studies covering nearly three million people, researchers found that being overweight or slightly obese was linked to about a 6 percent lower risk of dying, compared to people considered “normal weight.”
Being severely obese, however, was still tied to an almost 30 percent higher risk of death.
“This is actually the common finding,” said the new study’s lead author Katherine Flegal, a senior scientist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Hyattsville, Maryland.
The researchers, who published their results in the Journal of the American Medical Association, used data from past studies, and classified the risks according to BMI (Body Mass Index) categories accepted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
The software that powers AgeMe also uses the WHO categories for BMI. This ensures a reliable and well-recognized standard for users who choose to add the weight gain option when completing their aging.
Gallery feature on AgeMe shows your aging a few years at a time
December 13th, 2012
Did you know that you can see your completed face aging in a sequence of individual images that shows you a few years at a time? This is the Gallery feature. The Gallery tab shows up on your face aging results page, just above your images. Click on the tab, and you’ll see the sequential aged images. Download or share. A great tool to use.
We love when our users share their face aging
December 13th, 2012
Every now and then, some of our users share their agings with us. Whether they’ve chosen to age their photos for fun, or curiousity, or both, we are always happy to see their results. Here is a recent example of two people who aged their photos and plan to share them in their family slide show during the holidays. Certainly an innovative gift idea and we’d love to be a fly on the wall when their aged picture appears before their unsuspecting relatives.
To see what they look like today, here they are – thanks for sharing! Hope the slide show is a big hit.
Female user before using APRIL face aging software
Male user before using APRIL face aging software
As developers of face aging software, what does Botox mean to us?
December 7th, 2012
As you age, what do your wrinkles represent?
At Aprilage, we spend a lot of time thinking about, and working on software that “ages faces”. We do this to further develop and enhance a tool that is used in health education around the world, not only to show people what they look like as they age naturally, but also showing the effects of smoking, weight gain, and heavy sun exposure. Health educators use the APRIL software in smoking cessation programs, and healthy lifestyle counselling. Insurance companies use the software to encourage people to save for retirement, by showing people an “older” version of themselves in order to “relate” to their coming senior years. So, when an article like this : ”Hollywood and Botox: Is the face being erased in our culture?” appears in a major daily newspaper, it gives us pause for thought on the flip side of the aging process – what are people doing when they try to erase the visibile effects of aging? How much “work” is too much? Does it really make a difference in the end?
The fear of “looking old” is widespread – in fact, we are often asked if we have “the reverse process” available – that is, can we make people look younger, and get rid of the visible signs of aging. This request comes from most everyone we talk to, underlying the widespread recognition, and norm, to seek a “younger-looking you.”
We’ve learned a lot about the emotional side of aging through seeing thousands of people’s reaction to seeing themselves get old right before their eyes. Some people turn away, and don’t want to look, while others think ‘it’s cool”, while even others feel compelled to change negative lifestyle behaviours. Whatever the reaction, it is never mild - and the power of seeing “an older you” can be motivating in the realm of health care education. We think aging faces are beautiful, but we also understand why people want to erase their wrinkles, because they may not think their aging face is so beautiful any more. We don’t think that “the face is being erased in our culture” – sometimes it just gets a little sidetracked on its way to eventual old age.
Obama over the next four years
November 29th, 2012
- Obama’s image aged by APRIL Face Aging Software
Four years ago, in 2008, Aprilage, creator of the APRIL Face Aging Software and AgeMe.com, aged a current picture of the U.S. president by eight years, to what would be the end of his second term in 2016. APRIL Face Aging software does not photoshop or morph images, rather it ages images based on a statistical database of thousands of real people’s faces, ages 7 to 70, across five ethnic groups – African, Hispanic, Asian, South Asian, and Caucasian.
Interestingly, BusinessWeek ran on its cover this week an illustration of an aged President Obama with the headline “The Next Four Years.” The illustration imagines Barack Obama four years into his next term. The cover story “reports on the road ahead for President Obama as he faces the fiscal cliff and crucial decisions for the future of the economy, business, and defense. The opposition remains considerable, and no matter how successful he is, the hardest job in the world will take its toll,” according to the magazine’s website.
Businessweek commissioned the photo illustration by Justin Metz prior to the November 6 election. The publication also had a Mitt Rommey cover ready.
What will Obama look like in 2016? We’ll compare the images when we get there and see the difference.
Finnish study on twins says adult Body Mass Index a highly heritable trait
November 21st, 2012
For those of us interested in aging and obesity, this Finnish study on twins and adult BMI offers a unique view on what the study reports is a highly heritable trait. However, as we age, environmental influences also have a major role in the eventual development of obesity and associated comorbidities. The study found that higher levels of physical activity in adolescence can prevent the development of obesity in adult age, and the genetic predisposition to weight gain can be counteracted by an active lifestyle. Simultaneously physical fitness declines and the ability to participate in the very activities that promote healthy cardiovascular and endocrine functions are compromised, leading to a vicious cycle of more weight gain and an escalation in the pathological processes described above. The studies here reviewed continue to give more information on these processes and the ongoing follow-up of these rare, discordant twins is sure to provide even more insight into the continuing process of weight gain over an individual’s lifetime.
Some visible signs of aging may point to heart disease
November 7th, 2012
Reading about the results of the Copenhagen City Heart Study made us pause and think hard about how we look at visible signs of aging – something we study every day at Aprilage. According to the findings presented at the American Heart Association, certain aspects of looking old on the outside might be a clue to what’s going on inside your body. The study finds that people who have three or four physical signs of aging — a receding hairline, baldness, a crease in the earlobe, or yellow fatty deposits around the eyelid— also have a 57 percent increased risk for heart attack and a 39 percent increased risk for heart disease.
Looking at the test subjects both individually and as a group, researchers found that the identified signs of aging were predictors of heart attack and heart disease, or both, without considering traditional risk factors, such as high-blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking, physical inactivity or obesity. In particular, the study found that fatty deposits around the eye were the strongest single predictor of both heart attack and heart disease.
“The visible signs of aging reflect physiologic or biological age, not chronological age, and are independent of chronological age,” said Anne Tybjærg-Hansen, M.D., the study’s senior author and professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Tybjærg-Hansen and her colleagues studied nearly 11,000 test participants as part of the Copenhagen City Heart Study. They were 40 or older, and almost half were women. “Checking these visible aging signs should be a routine part of every doctor’s physical examination,” Tybjærg-Hansen said.
Smokers’ absenteeism costs employers billions a year
November 1st, 2012
We thought this story in WSB (Workplace Savings & Benefits) about the costs of smokers’ absenteeism in the UK was worth reporting here, given the vast amounts of time and money lost due to smoking.
“Smokers are a third more likely to be absent from work than non-smokers – and cost the UK economy £1.4bn ($2.25bn USD) last year as a result, a study by British university researchers finds. A new report which is due to be published in the journal Addiction, found employees who smoked were absent on average 2.74 more days per year than non-smokers. It concluded: “The results of this systematic review implicate that quitting smoking may reduce absenteeism and result in substantial cost-savings for employers.”
Co-author Stephen Weng said: “This piece of work shows there is a big financial impact by smoking on absence. Helping employees quit will help save money in the long run.” Workplace smoking cessation programmes were now a focus of his team, he added. The review was carried out by Nottingham and York university academics and looked at 29 studies from North America, Europe, Japan, New Zealand and Israel. As well as smokers, it found increased absence rates extended to employees who had given up the habit – former smokers were 14% more likely to be absent from work than non-smokers. Gender, however, had little impact, with the risk and duration of absenteeism due to smoking similar in men and women.
Action on Smoking and Health research manager Amanda Sandford said employers could make an effort to reduce absence by providing workplace support to smokers who wanted to quit: “Study after study shows the majority of smokers would like to quit but find it hard to do so.” Creating disincentives for smoking such as banning it in the office grounds or monitoring the time employees took off work for smoking breaks was another possible tactic, she added.”
Who uses face aging software?
October 15th, 2012
From health care practioners and educators, to science museum exhibits, to law enforcement personnel, the uses of face aging technology continues to grow. The ability to show someone what they will look like in the future, and how that will change if they smoke, put on weight, or have heavy sun exposure, is a uniquely valuable tool in these fields. As Dr. Hooley McLaughlin, Chief Science Officer and Vice President, Science Experience, at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto says, “The APRIL face aging software reveals profound information about a person in an instant – I call it “Memory of the Future.” The startling yet delightful effect teaches you more about the meaning of time for a human being than any amount of more technical information.”
How the APRIL Face Aging Software is used is also rapidly developing. Science museums typically will build their own “front end” using the APRIL API, as well as a kiosk-type structure to make their visitors’ aging experience part of an overall exhibit on aging. Health educators download the software to a desktop or laptop computer, to use in the field with patients or clients, often on a one-to-one basis. Corporations, teachers, and health associations, often with a geographically diverse work force or user base, use the online tool, AgeMe, to enable people to conduct their own face agings anywhere. Consumers use AgeMe to age themselves, friends, and family for information and fun.
APRIL is the only commercially available face aging software which produces results based on a statistical database of thousands of real people, aged 7 to 70, across multiple ethnic groups.
Read more about AgeMe or the APRIL Face Aging Software experiences.
When the Ontario Science Centre first approached Aprilage Inc., the creators of the APRIL Face Aging software, they initially wanted to create an experience for children that would be both amazing and eye-opening, and a real crowd pleaser. They wanted to see if it was possible to make the “passage of time” a very personal, and realistic, experience for thousands of visitors in a fast and easy format. To do so, it was necessary to produce “aging results” based on how real people age, and not on a computer morphing or visual special effect or aging toy with no basis in science. Therefore, the Aprilage creators got to work to first build a statistical database of real people from ages 7 to 70, female and male, in five ethnic groups (African, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, and South Asian). That meant taking pictures of thousands of people using a 3D camera system (with four cameras in the system).
Once the database was built, the programmers got to work developing the aging algorithms, and designing a user system that was fast and simple to operate. APRIL Face Aging software was born. Based on its success, the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., asked Aprilage to further develop the aging process to enable the visualization of face aging showing the effects of smoking, and produce side-by-side images comparing the “smoking aging” to “natural aging”. The results were so effective that APRIL is now sold globally as a tool in smoking cessation and tobacco prevention programs.
Recognizing the power of personal visualiztion software in a health education setting, Aprilage further developed two additional versions of APRIL. The BMI (Body Mass Index) module enables the user to choose the level of body mass (additional weight) they wish to see added to their face as they age, up to and including obesity. The Sun Exposure module shows the user how they will look if they have, or will have, heavy and unprotected sun exposure over their lifetime.
All of the aging results for all versions of the APRIL Face Aging software are based on the statistical database of thousands of real people, including children and adults. APRIL Face Aging software is the only commercially available face aging software to be built on such a database, enabling aging results based on science, not special effects.
To see the independent, evidence-based research reports using the APRIL Face Aging Software, please click here.
As the online world gets “more personal”, health apps like AgeMe deliver what consumers want
September 21st, 2012
According to figures from the Rock Health Report, the future of health lies in your smartphone: ”Digital health” is a term used for the practice of medicine and public health supported by mobile devices. As the world gets “more personal” in every aspect, it makes sense that health apps, tailored to individuals’ needs and available when and where they want them, will see a growing market for both medical professionals and consumers. According to Rock, 38% of physicians with smartphones already use apps on a daily basis. Consumers have already been moving to their smartphones for health, lifestyle, sports and fitness apps, but in the not-too-distant future, will also use their smartphones for more personal medical purposes. As boomers age and the digital generations grow older, they won’t settle for anything less.
AgeMe, has from its inception, has created and delivered people’s facial images showing them what they look like as they age naturally, and also with the effects of smoking, weight gain, and sun exposure. That’s why AgeMe is cited as such a powerful tool by those in health and lifestyle education – when showing someone their own “future face”, the effects are very personal and powerful.
For more information on the Rock Health Report, go here: http://rockhealth.com/resources/rock-reports/rock-report-future-of-mobile-health/
