Metablog

The Avacore CoreControl, sometimes known as The Glove, is an extremely neat idea. It regulates the core temperature of your body by directly cooling your blood. It turns out that by keeping your core temperature in the normal range, you can exercise a lot longer and more effectively than you could otherwise. I always wanted one because I play a lot of DDR, and I always get tired (and sweaty) more quickly than I get bored.

So for a while I thought about trying to build one using the principles in the linked article. It’s actually a very simple device, mechanically. All you have to is make a chamber that your hand fits in along with a source of cold, like an ice pack. You make the chamber airtight, with a simple seal around your wrist. Then you pull a slight vacuum in the chamber. Just enough to bring all the blood in your palm to the surface. The seal doesn’t have to be all that tight. Then you leave it for a minute or so while your blood circulates.

The vacuum counteracts the vasoconstriction effect that naturally happens when your skin encounters cold, allowing the heat to be transferred out much more efficiently than without a vacuum.

But I never did build it. I’m not a very mechanically-minded person. I’m much more of a programmer than an engineer. So when I discovered a few days ago that the product had finally come to market (a few years ago), I was pretty excited. How much would I spend on it? Oh, probably a few hundred dollars.

How much does it cost? They don’t say on their website. So I called them. $3000. Wow. So I told them, you know, you should consider offering a set of plans for hobbyists, who are most likely not among your potential customers at that price. (Nor are your potential customers likely to be frugal or nerdy enough to build one themselves.)

The fucking sales lady hung up on me. Not even a “no thanks”.

Fuck Avacore.

If anyone reading this has any talent for building things, how about let’s make some do-it-yourself instructions and post them online? You know, using basic tools and materials you can get from a general hardware store.

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