I’m going to begin a new series of reviews on products and services for trichotillomania. Unless you know very well what trichotillomania is, I’m not entering details – it’s a disorder where you have an uncontrollable desire to outpull nice hair, strand by strand. I’ll go into detail about my rich encounters in another post but also for now I’m heading to just review a few of the items that have been useful for me.
OK, so what is the Keen? So how does it work? Basically you ‘teach’ your music group to recognize the movement that you’re looking for (say pulling nice hair on your crown, your eyebrows, or wherever) and then you get a little vibration when it picks up this movement. It really is this vibration that aspires to consider the unconscious movement of pulling back into your conscious mind and stop the pulling.
If you are captured in the movement, this allows one to bring your mindfulness to the hands tugging, and press a little button on the device, which records the quantity of times you did the ‘activity’. You can track your improvement, using a Bluetooth connection to a smartphone app. I have already been waiting for this for a long period – the mass-media campaign launched in-may 2016 to preorders open then, and like plenty of people I purchased mine – one for every wrist. Until April this year February – regrettably due to a variety of issues there were delays with the shipment.
Something that makes a big difference is that Keen was invented by Aneela Idnani Kumar, a trickster herself, and it really shows in the design and the website. There are genuine compassion and inside knowledge in the fabric of the product. This makes a real difference as while Keen isn’t backed up by technological research, there may be a precedent – Aneela herself has used a prototype to avoid pulling her eyebrows, and models out her success in preventing pulling. 179 for just one bracelet, but if you pull with both your hands you will most probably need two, so it’s not cheap, although there is nothing like it on the marketplace.
- 1/4 glass Torani Sugar Free Caramel Syrup
- Metabolic Rate
- Caitlin Van Zandt
- ΒΌ t salt
- Eat smaller, more regular meals
- Last run: period and distance
- 1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
- Changes in urine color (dark urine color)
The band itself is quite nicely designed – it is comfortable and appears like other body monitoring wristbands on the market as you can see next to my Fitbit Flex here. However, after being very much accustomed to the sturdiness of the Fitbit bands, I came across the rubber keeping the Keen a little flimsy – I question how well it would cope with a child playing in the dirt at school.
Also, it was quite itchy on my skin on a humid day – the sweat on my wrist combined with the multiple stud holes managed to get quite uncomfortable and I had fashioned to remove it. The app is easy to navigate and simple to use. It is not at all something that you would feel ashamed in using before your friends, and if you want Keen for a child, you don’t need to constantly back the bracelet up to the phone all day long. I’m data driven, so I would like to have the option of exporting your history or being able to see your improvement over the past, but it’s fine for a brand-new product.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t picking right up my hair pulling each, and every time, but even though it didn’t go off, I found just putting on the band to be always a reminder, which was helpful. The fake positives drove me a bit nuts though, particularly if I used to be using my mobile phone or keying in at the job. Overall, though, it’s a great product. Considering this is the first iteration of the Keen, there has been a lot of thought and effort placed into it by the team and it certainly does help me in recognizing my pulling behaviors in as soon as.