THE : FUTURE : LABORATORY : : HEALTH & WELLNESS Photography by Louise Hagger for The Future Laboratory

Transcription

1 THE : FUTURE : LABORATORY : : HEALTH & WELLNESS 2018 Photography by Louise Hagger for The Future Laboratory

2 Health & Wellness : 2 Introduction Until now health and wellness have almost existed in parallel universes. Health was what we took seriously and mostly thought about at the doctor s surgery. Wellness was a hazy pursuit that involved superfoods, smoothies and downward-facing dog. But in 2019, the two worlds will collide. As the pursuit of wellness grows from a niche audience, who could decipher their ashwagandha from their reishi, to a mainstream, everyday lifestyle choice, brands that come under this umbrella are being forced to back up their healing claims. Anecdotally, this movement is evident in the trajectory of Gwyneth Paltrow s Goop website. What started as a newsletter in 2008 has turned into a multi-million-dollar business espousing everything from sex bark a chocolate recipe for a natural aphrodisiac to its Q&A with a shamanic energy medicine practitioner. But this year, the platform started adding new coding to its stories, with categories such as fun For Your Enjoyment pieces, Speculative but Promising concepts that require more research, and Rigorously Tested articles, which feature concepts that are affirmed by scientists. But it s not only wellness being held to account. The healthcare industry is also undergoing change as it begins to catch up with consumers expectations of technologically enabled services. We will explore what these two worlds of healthcare and wellness can learn from each other in our Certified Wellness macrotrend. Alongside this longer-term shift, this report also examines other shorter-term trends bubbling to the surface that are creating a narrative around wellbeing that is holistic, inclusive and digital. As wellness goes mainstream, brands are being forced to back up their healing claims Paramount Recreation Club, Sydney

3 Health & Wellness : 3 Trends Rising From the new products coming to market to the latest technologies changing gyms, these are the trends that will lead the way in Photography by Louise Hagger for The Future Laboratory

4 Health & Wellness : 4 Inclusive Fitness As a healthy lifestyle becomes an embedded mainstream mindset, it is becoming more apparent that the raft of fitness influencers and gurus tend to be biased towards white women of a certain class status and body type. But with new influencers such as Jessamyn Stanley and Lauren Ash finding a voice on social media, the fitness world is becoming more inclusive. This inclusive attitude is now expanding beyond online and into the physical fitness environment. The Everybody gym in Los Angeles is billed as a non-traditional movement that welcomes all bodies, genders, races, nationalities, faiths, classes, sexualities, sizes, ages and abilities. It has non-gendered locker rooms and hosts regular events and programming for specific communities, such as its Fat Kid Dance Party. Through its programming as well as its own workplace culture, Everybody aims to be a wellness centre for everyone, but especially those who are non-conforming or marginalised. There are so many wellness platforms out there in the digital space but the audiences that they re speaking to aren t necessarily culturally specific Lauren Ash, founder, Black Girl In Om UVU Club Redefining Strength The #ripped mindset is being replaced by a definition of strength that includes both body and mind. Male strength is no longer about hitting a certain number [of reps], explains Darren Barber, founder of Barber s Gym and Boulder Club in London. It s becoming focused on what you can handle, psychologically and emotionally, as much as physically. This awareness is changing the way the industry thinks about workout spaces. For instance, Biofit is an indoor-gym concept that uses allnatural materials alongside plants and scent to maximise the emotional uplift of exercise. London exercise collective UVU Club focuses on callisthenic training in the city streets and asks members to leave the machismo at home. We don t live for blood, sweat and tears and all that other bullshit, states the collective in a promo video. [UVU is] somewhere you can come to escape the typical fitness rituals and find a way of moving and thinking at your optimum. 33.6% of men avoid the gym through fear of judgement or anxiety Source: Fitrated Jessamyn Stanley

5 Health & Wellness : 5 Certified Wellness The once distinctly separate worlds of health and wellness are converging as consumers seek a new framework for healthy living that prioritises convenience, accessibility and fidelity. Photography by Louise Hagger for The Future Laboratory

6 Health & Wellness : 6 Intuitive Feedback Biomarkers have changed the way in which we diagnose disease, but traditionally they have been collected at the doctors and analysed in a lab. Engineers at Rutgers University have developed a microchip that could be integrated into personal devices like the Apple Watch or Fitbit to analyse sweat for different biomarkers and constantly track for any signs of ill health. The device ascribes a barcode to microparticles such as bacteria, viruses and environmental pollutants, notifying the wearer of their presence in the body. This is really important in the context of personalised medicine or personalised health monitoring, says Mehdi Javanmard, assistant professor at the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Rutgers University. The evolution of this type of health monitoring will go beyond wearable devices, which can be taken off and forgotten about, to become ingrained within the very fabric of our clothing. Puma has collaborated with MIT Design Lab to explore this vision of the future through biodesign. Today we know of wearable technology as digital data, but biodesign is the future beyond digital wearables. It will enable us to create products that have an intuition Biodesign by Puma and MIT Design Lab of their own, and which adapt to the user, says Charles Johnson, global director of innovation at Puma. The brand is developing a training shoe that adapts to the wearer s biology. The Breathing Shoe consists of an upper made from material filled with bacteria, which when activated by the wearer s body heat, creates responsive air passages. The Deep Learning Insoles, which also contain bacteria, react to chemicals in the wearer s sweat to track performance and record any changes via a layer of electronic circuits and micro-controllers. As part of the project, Puma has also created microbially activated stickers that change colour in response to CO2 levels, which could theoretically be adapted to visualise various bacterial, viral and environmental aggressors. Biodesign is the future beyond digital wearables. It will enable us to create products that have an intuition of their own, and which adapt to the user Fitbit, US Charles Johnson, global director of innovation at Puma

7 Do you dare to know what the future holds? This is a sample of The Future Laboratory s new Health and Wellness Futures Report. To read the full report, click here. If you are already a member of LS:N Global, you can access all of our Trends Intelligence reports for free. Click here to download our most recent in-depth research. Make a better future happen today.