Instant cooling concept device to combat menopausal symptoms

Vasomotor menopausal symptoms, including hot flushes and night sweats, are largely the main problems women suffer with at this time in their lives. Cambridge Consultants and the National Innovation Centre for Ageing collaborated on a series of workshops to understand the impact of hot flushes, how women manage them, and come up with technology to improve outcomes. The result is a portable, discreet hand-held concept product called Pebal that provides instant cooling. It works by applying cold to temperature receptors on the skin, which gets the message back to the neural system. It does not require a power source, so it is always ready to release compressed refrigerant inside the device, probably at the press of a button, which condenses out onto a thermally conducted plate which is placed on the skin, providing instant cooling for a few minutes. The refrigerant is contained in replaceable consumable pods capable of around 11 applications a day.
Nicola Millar, senior Programme Lead for Lifelong Health at Cambridge Consultants, said: “When a woman goes into menopause, her oestrogen levels drop, and this tinkers around with the thermal balance, which is regulated by the hypothalamus in the brain. And so the brain sends messages out that say ‘I’m overheating; I’ve got to get rid of lots of heat.’ And these come from nowhere. In a way, it tricks the brain, because the body’s core temperature is not changing. So we said, hang on, let’s put this on its head a little bit. Could we create a device that could send a message back to the brain, and say ‘you’re okay,’ your body is not overheating?”