By Sai Mattapalli and Rohan Kalahasty, Founders and CEOs — Vytal

The medical field is full of technological innovation, with plenty of exciting new technologies that could improve patient care. One of the most exciting innovations in the medical industry is gaze tracking. This technology is based on the concept that the eyes are a window into the mind, meaning they can provide a comprehensive and — most importantly — quantitative evaluation of the patient’s brain health. This data can then be used to create an exciting new approach to neurological diagnoses and brain health.

Part of what allows gaze tracking to stand out compared to other tools is its ability to be calibrated to the patient’s specific needs and environment. Many tests used to be generalized, which works when identifying outward, common symptoms, but fails to recognize the nuance of brain injuries. Because of the unique nature of each individual’s brain anatomy, it stands to reason that brain injuries and neurological disease will affect each person differently.

Gaze tracking and concussion care

One of the reasons why AI-powered gaze tracking is such an exciting tool is that it can provide a powerful alternative to traditional concussion tests. Not only are concussion tests time-consuming, but they are also highly subjective and inconsistently applied. This is particularly the case if athletes underreport their symptoms or the medical personnel administering the test are insufficiently trained. 

On the other hand, advanced screening tools that integrate gaze tracking can detect concussions much more quickly, efficiently, and reliably. This facilitates immediate action, significantly reducing the potential for an undetected concussion to escalate into something more serious. Untreated concussions can cause undesirable effects like headache, confusion, and nausea, or even cause one to become more susceptible to future traumatic brain injuries.

Gaze tracking to test for neurological disease

However, it’s not just the diagnosis of concussion that this exciting technology could help with — it has also shown the potential to be used to screen for the early signs of neurological disease. With gaze tracking, patients’ conditions can be identified and diagnosed early, ensuring they receive timely treatment, and ultimately preventing the onset of large-scale permanent damage. 

One of the main benefits of this approach to testing for neurological disease is that it is quick and entirely non-invasive. This is a stark contrast to the traditional methods of testing for these diseases, such as CT scans, MRIs, electrodiagnostic tests, or spinal taps — which can be uncomfortable for the patient and often take days or weeks to deliver actionable results.

In contrast, gaze biometrics can give results to patients and their medical providers almost immediately. The readouts given by these tests are quantitative and interpretable, giving medical professionals actionable data to work on. Additionally, this technique allows the condition to be identified at earlier stages of the disease. The characteristic symptoms generally used to diagnose neurological disease often appear too late — after the damage has already been done — while gaze biometrics can show signs of disease in its earliest stages.

Gaze biometrics have also proven useful for longitudinal tracking beyond the initial diagnosis. Medical personnel can use gaze tracking to monitor cognitive decline, evaluate treatment responses, develop personalized medicine, or help maintain patients’ mental health. These capabilities could allow the technology to become an integral part of the treatment of patients experiencing cognitive decline.

Technological advances in the medical industry, such as gaze tracking, are paving the way for a future where patients can receive better, more personalized, and quicker care for brain injuries or neurological disease. With these new developments, care providers will hopefully be able to treat these conditions before they cause any long-term effects for their patients.

The New Normal in LA is Back to Normal

In the same way that you don’t notice your kids growing up day-to-day, but others exclaim how much the kids have changed when they haven’t seen them in a while — the people living in LA are not as keen to how dramatically the city has transformed over the past few years, like I am, as a visitor a couple times a year. Vacationing in LA this past summer, I was delighted to find that the city had emerged from its unruly phase after the pandemic, and now acts like a nice, well-mannered city.  

One obvious difference is the shrinking number of tent encampments. Though they still dot the freeway underpasses and median strips along the side streets, the sprawling bivouacs of campers across the city have vanished. Also, traffic is significantly lighter at all hours as a byproduct of the new remote work culture. Likewise, the streets, stores and restaurants are less crowded. Around town, very few people sported masks, and generally, people seemed kinder and more relaxed. The tiny cookie shop where last year I was barked at by the masked clerk when I entered because I did not see the sign, “one customer allowed inside at a time,” had a short line inside, and the unmasked clerk was cheerful and buoyant.

For a tourist, these are good changes overall, though some of the pandemic fallout has diminished LA, such as permanent closures of restaurants or businesses and others that still struggled to make a comeback.

A favorite restaurant of mine in the Valley, Sun Café, an oasis off Ventura Blvd near Universal Studios, used to be a thriving spot for vegans in the know. After the parking lot across the street was commandeered by homeless and drug dealers during the pandemic, patrons stopped going to the eatery. The proprietors were forced to sell, and sadly the new owners continue to experience sparse crowds.

Other of the old haunts I frequented when I lived in LA for nearly two decades were back to normal. The WeHo Bistro was again serving their to-die-for garlic truffle fries and the gorgeously colored Aperol Spritz drinks to a full house. Trejos Tacos was back to dishing up their inventive bad-ass street tacos. And the Michelin Plated Restaurant, The Lobster, at Santa Monica Pier, is back to packing in locals and tourists for incredible sunset views and outstanding lobster bisque.

Otherwise, most attractions around town have recovered well. A year ago, when we toured the Peterson Automotive Museum, we had to make reservations, submit to a screening that included taking our temperature, and wear masks. This year, the experience was completely carefree. My son and his cousin, both aged 16, who initially balked at the idea of going to a museum, were marveled by the expansive collection of vehicles. They snapped dozens of pics posed next to one-of-a-kind antique cars along with famous rides like the time-traveling DMC-12 DeLorean of Back to the Future, Scooby Do’s van, and the Honda S2000 from “2 Fast 2 Furious.” As a special treat, we toured the Vault, a vast garage of priceless and historical cars parked end-to-end. We were regaled by the docent’s stories of the bulletproof Mercedes owned by Ferdinand Marcos that could produce an oil slick to escape pursuers, and a 1998 Cadillac De Ville Parade Phaeton, more commonly known as the Popemobile.

Another attraction that rebounded with vigor is Cinespia, arguably the greatest outdoor movie event in LA, or anywhere. With thousands gathering blanket-to-blanket on the lawn of Hollywood Forever Cemetery to see films projected on Rodolph Valentino’s mausoleum, this exciting night of picnicking, music and movies has provided memorable film fan experiences for more than 20 years. My teen tourists where thrilled to see Fight Club under the stars, surrounded by patrons wearing black-eye make-up and dressed in flamboyant fur coats and torn and bloodied button-down shirts and ties, like Brad Pitt’s and Edward Norton’s pugilistic characters in the movie. As with every classic and modern classic film screened at Cinespia, the event featured a photobooth recreation of the set, in this case a boiler-room fighting ring. As a generous perk, the photos are posted for viewing on Cinespia’s site for free.

Of course, no trip to LA is complete without cruising Hollywood Boulevard. Compared to the near-empty streets with shuttered shops during 2021 and 2022, the place was buzzing during our visit. On a lively Saturday night, the strip was best explored in the luxury and grandness of a Ford Expedition, the vehicle that served as our crib on wheels for the week.

The boys loved rolling down the windows and opening the enormous sky roof and cranking up the bass on their Apple Music playlist, aptly named Mosh Pit; and I loved that they could sit in the 3^rd row and adjust the stereo to play as loud as they desired on the rear speakers without splitting my eardrums in the driver’s seat.

They had a prime seat to sightsee around Hollywood, and I won Mother of the Year by driving them around town in this impressive ride. At first, I was intimidated to drive such a wide-body vehicle through the streets of LA, but I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to maneuver; plus, when other drivers saw me coming, they would pull to the side to let me pass. It was almost like a parting of the crowd for the guest of honor. It seems when people see a car like this approaching, they show deference, perhaps because of its large size, or perhaps to get a better view to see if there’s a celebrity passenger in the back.

After day after day of tourist-ing and partying into the wee hours of the morning — which for the adults in our group included some curiously strong drinks at the Abbey in WeHo, leading to a search party and a missing person’s report, which is a whole ‘nuther story – we departed LA feeling feted, entertained, and well hosted. Our trip was like a lovely dinner party, with a guest list of people you actually like, good food, enjoyable conversation, and a few antics to make the experience memorable. Our week stay was just the right amount of time too. Los Angeles is again a great place to visit, and in fact, one day, I might just want to live there, again.

Parenting expert Kiva Schuler looks at a radically different way to parent, where we examine our behaviors, expectations, and values as parents and stop asking so many questions about how to get children to behave

To raise happier humans with the courage and self-image to be risk-takers, change-
makers, and creators, we need to redefine our roles as parents. Because, let’s face it, traditional parenting suggests to most young people that their feelings don’t matter, they should play it safe, and that many of their dreams are impractical. This is not the way to raise future adults who believe in the endless possibilities of being alive, who desire to—and do—effect positive social change.

Just because something’s “traditional” or “normal” doesn’t mean it’s right. I used to be apprehensive when speaking about parenting. I didn’t want anyone to feel badly or judged. And I didn’t want to be perceived as some sanctimonious know-it-all telling other people how to raise their children. But, I came to understand Peaceful Parenting. And its universality. And freedom from sanctimony and judgment.

Many years ago, I told my team at The Jai Institute for Parenting that we only needed to reach people who already knew, or felt in their souls, that they wanted to parent peacefully but didn’t know how. “Families know what’s best for their children,” was the thinking. If someone chooses a more traditional approach, “Well, ok, but I guess they just aren’t our crowd.”

But no longer. Peaceful Parenting is, we believe, for everyone who cares about children and our collective future.

Recently, we overhauled our Parent Coach Training curriculum and dove into the most contemporary psychological and developmental research. We interviewed dozens and dozens of parents. We heard stories from their childhoods. Stories that sometimes broke our hearts.

It’s the rare person who wasn’t somehow wounded by their parents. Not because our parents didn’t love us or want to do right by us, but because of pervasive, long-held ideas about good parenting. For example, that good parenting has children meet some prescribed standard of behavior. This means kids are scolded, admonished, shamed back into line, and if they don’t comply, punished or even physically harmed.

Our culture tells us this is good parenting, which causes an internal struggle in parents like us who long for something different. We’re uneasy with the commonplace truism that we need to parent our children authoritatively while feeling—and ignoring or suppressing—the strong instinct that it hurts them and us. When children experience harm, even unintentionally, from the people they love the most, it impacts their self-image and self-esteem.

So when we yell at kids or withhold affection because they’re “too much,” or if we punish them or compel them to stop crying, we’re doing the same thing to our kids that our parents did to us, who were doing the same thing done to them. And back through the generations we go, one after the next, getting bruised, inside and out. Ouch.

Children today face seismic instability, born into a world that, through a constant barrage of news and media, instills in them the idea they’re not safe. Whether it’s climate change, media, the pandemic, etc., the culture is doing a number on our kids. They need us to transcend “normal parenting” now.

I had braces when I was in third, fourth and fifth grade. After that, I had a retainer for less than a year, but I kept losing it and breaking it, so my parents refused to get me another.

They and I had no idea that not wearing a retainer meant my teeth would shift and return to their original state. I also did not know that having four molars extracted to make room for my teeth to move before I got braces would cause dental problems for the rest of my life. Mainly, because the molars that moved to fill the void were not designed to take the crushing force of biting, all of them eventually cracked, and I ended up with root canals and caps and later two had to be replaced with implants. There’s been a big learning curve regarding my dental wellness, and now in my fifth decade, I finally grasp the whole picture regarding a great smile. 

Frankly, I had not thought about my teeth and their positioning since I had braces as an adolescent. The impetus for me to examine my teeth was a comment by a rejected suiter I met on a dating app, who, in an amazing show of immaturity, said that I should look into dental work because I looked like a chipmunk. It was an incredibly hurtful insult, and from that moment on, I became self-conscious of my two front teeth, which, during some time of my journey into adulthood, had taken a slightly protruding stance, and had become misaligned. 

When I studied my teeth intently, I realized all of my teeth were a little off to the left, and the two front teeth had started to overlap the incisors on either side. I asked my dentist about Invisalign. Ironically, as a blogger, I have been approached by Invisalign a couple of times, and they had offered to provide me with free braces if I would write about the experience. I had declined, not thinking, I really needed them, and because when clear aligners first appeared on the market, they were an anomaly, and I simply thought they were “weird.” 

It’s figured it was just as well that I had to pay $4,500 of my own money, none of it reimbursed by dental insurance, to get Invisalign. Because I can give an honest review now, without feeling obligated to give an overly positive assessment of what it’s like to wear these things for nine months, which is a pretty short amount of time compared to many Invisalign treatment plans. 

For starters, the electronic scanning of my teeth to effectively measure for Invisalign was fairly painless and easy. The technician rubbed a wand around my teeth from every angle to re-create them in a 3-D software program. Those images were shipped off to Invisalign, where an orthodontist consulted with my dentist to develop a treatment plan for the most ideal alignment of my teeth. In my case, it would be 19 retainers, each worn for two weeks, so a total of nine months. 

My case was an experiment for my dentist and Invisalign, because in order to get the best results, we temporarily removed three implants, otherwise, the teeth would’ve had to conform to those implants versus later, having the implants remade to conform to my new smile. This meant I would be without three teeth for nine months. It was a commitment and a big sacrifice.

By the way, the third implant resulted from a bike accident that left me with a cracked tooth that could not be saved. For the unindoctrinated, an implant is a fake tooth with a metal post that is screwed into your jawbone. It sounds bad because it is bad. That procedure alone involved a minimum of four visits to the dentist, including the extraction of the tooth and a bone graph, placement of the implant screw, then placement of the crown, with each step requiring three months in between while the gum healed between steps. Not to mention, implants are very expensive. Each one costs approximately $6,000.

So once I accepted that I would be semi-toothless for nine months, the process began. I got my first trays, and the doctor added buttons, or attachments, which are small protuberances on several of the teeth to anchor the Invisalign and promote movement in the desired direction.

These attachments were a huge inconvenience. I had to go back three times because they kept falling off. I would be chewing food and come upon a hard pebble, which was the broken attachment. After insisting the dentist himself put them on versus his technicians, who had failed three times, the attachments finally took, but I questioned my doctor because he seemed to score my tooth first to rough it up so the attachment would adhere. He said this would not damage my tooth, but I still worry about what’s going to be underneath when the attachments are off. 

When I got my Invisalign trays, they came in a nice black drawstring bag with some sample crystals to soak the retainers in to keep them clear because after a week or so where they often start to get yellow. It also came with a little clam-style container, like a makeup compact, to keep the retainers in when you take them out for meals. I ended up buying a couple more of these on Amazon because I found I needed one in my purse, one on my kitchen counter, and one in my bathroom.

I learned that with Invisalign you brush your teeth a lot. I mean a lot a lot. You have to brush them after every meal, and then you have to brush the retainers to keep them fresh. I usually brushed the retainers in my mouth to clean the exteriors, and then took them out to get the insides clean. Sometimes I would brush my teeth about 10 times a day if I took the retainers out to snack, have a drink other than water, etc.

That was inconvenient, as was the tricky part about removing the retainers in public. I often excused myself to the ladies room, because sometimes I had to wrestle with the retainers to get them out, hooking my fingernail under the side of them and yanking down, sometimes quite forcefully, to get them out of my mouth. It was not a pretty sight. Plus, sometimes, there would be strings of saliva on them when I took them out. it was definitely something I didn’t want others to witness. I learned it was best to immediately excuse myself to the restroom upon arriving at a restaurant to cause the least disruption of a normal social situation.

The main problem for me was that I began to chew on the retainers habitually. It was a 22/7 unconscious activity that I tried hard to stop, but it only got worse the longer I wore the Invisalign. I say 22, not 24 hours a day, because you are required to wear the retainers 22 hours a day, except two hours for eating, brushing, etc.

It was like constantly having chewing gum in my mouth. This caused constant production of saliva, which caused constant swallowing, which caused constant stomach upset. Even without chewing, I found myself frequently sucking and drawing the extra saliva from around the retainers and swallowing. My whole life I have not been able to chew gum for more than 20 minutes or so because I got an upset stomach. So essentially having the same effect of chewing gum for 22 hours a day.

To counteract the constant growling in my stomach, I snacked frequently. In a few months, I had gained more than 10 pounds! I had heard that some people lose weight with Invisalign, probably because it becomes so inconvenient to take them out, and have to brush your teeth and the retainers that you skip snacks, but in my case, I had to snack a little all day to stave off an upset stomach.

I thought about carrying around a spit container like someone who chews chaw — or like the wrestler I knew in high school who used to spit in a cup all day to dehydrate himself in order to lose a half pound and make weight for matches — instead of swallowing. Still, I figured that would not only be gross, but I’d end up with a disgusting habit that I wouldn’t be able to break. 

The churning stomach was probably the worst part of having Invisalign, though there are many negatives. Other issues are the pain when you put on your new retainers for the first couple of days. I often got a bad headache from the pressure and had to take Advil for the pain. Then there was the inadvertent whistling, while trying to talk, because of the way, the retainers changed speech patterns.

While the feeling went away after a couple of months, there is always the feeling of something in your mouth. At first, I felt like a boxer with a mouthguard. I felt like everybody could tell I was wearing them. I could see in the mirror that my face looked different, because I couldn’t close my mouth properly while wearing them. Friends told me they could barely notice, but I was very self-conscious of this.

All these negatives might sound like I didn’t think Invisalign was worth it, but even though I am only 75% through my treatment, already, I’m excited to see the changes. Of course, I’d like it to all have been faster, but my dentist told me, “that’s how you lose teeth.“ The movement must be done slowly over time so that the teeth do not loosen and fall out. 

I think the temptation to rush through the process is why my dentist only would give me three trays at a time. I had to come into the office in person at these intervals for a quick exam and pick up the next three sets of retainers.

The Invisalign app has a gallery where you can take pictures of your teeth and compare them through the different phases. The photo gallery is pretty wonky, you can’t zoom in on the photos or edit them, so you might be just as well take photos with your regular smartphone camera app, but at least they are in one place using the Invisalign app. The best part of the app is the CliniCheck 3D animated treatment plan, which shows a step-by-step video of before, and after Invisalign, I found myself hitting the stop-start button and looking at my results over and over again. I could zoom in, and look at a 3-D model of my teeth from every angle. Whenever I felt inconvenienced by having plastic trays in my mouth all day and all night, I would look at the video and try to remember to keep my eyes on the prize. Of course, there was a disclaimer on the app that the video was a simulation, and my results may vary.

The second hardest part of having Invisalign is just the wait. It’s obvious my teeth have become more aligned, but I want the change to be faster, and I want the whole process to be over quicker. I think that’s just human nature, that we want instant gratification. So having to be patient has been challenging for me. I have one other concern, which is, I won’t be completely satisfied with the results. My dentist already informed me that sometimes the teeth don’t move exactly how we anticipate. So the results may not look like the perfect set of choppers in the animated treatment plan.

Despite the hassle, I would do it again.  My biggest regret is that I did not accept the offer by Invisalign years ago, because in reality, my review would be just the same had they paid for my treatment, my teeth would be straight by now, and I would still have $4,500 in my pocket.