January 5, 2024 – Matteo is halfway through his journey, and biological data from the wearable technologies are yielding the first results.
The Villa Beretta Rehabilitation Research Innovation Institute and its Clinical Director, Dr. Franco Molteni, are closely following professor Matteo Parsani on Athar East to West, his exceptional coast-to-coast journey across Saudi Arabia.
- By engaging in such an extreme physical and mental challenge, immersed in an ever-changing natural environment, Matteo Parsani’s adventure can be considered, by all means, an exposome research project. In fact, environmental exposures, including exogenous factors (such as light, climate, and ecosystem), endogenous factors (such as metabolism and microbiome), and behavioral factors (such as lifestyle, sleep, and stress), can modify an individual’s gene expression and, therefore, their biology and health. Even though the exposome is a relatively new concept (created in 2015), we know that in order to understand the influence of exposures from a variety of external and internal sources on Matteo’s health, we need to have an understanding of some internal biomarkers. This is why we collect all the biological inputs from his body every day.
- None of this would have been possible without the role played by KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology). Indeed, Matteos is monitored around the clock by the groundbreaking wearable technologies developed by their affiliated faculty professors Nazek El-Atab, Khaled N Salama, Atif Shamim, and Ahmed Eltawil. Health tracking, including sleep, rest, sweat, and heart rate, are among the biological markers that are monitored. A crucial role in ensuring Matteo’s safety is also played by the medical staff who are following him, under the valuable supervision of Dr. Mohammed Alatwi.
- So far, data shows that Matteo’s body is reacting in a very positive and efficient way to the challenge. He is not experiencing significant pain, and two weeks of intense workouts have not affected his overall condition. Matteo has lost a little bit of weight, which was expected, but the physical load is well balanced. He is able to spend many hours a day on the move by combining hand cycling with a trike. He wears sensorized pants with built-in electrodes for Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) to induce pedaling while on the trike. When struggling with mental fatigue, Matteo finds relief and renewed motivation in music.
