Sedentary lifestyles have increased the incidence of type II diabetes, one of the major risk factors for venous circulation problems in the extremities and ultimately death. In this study we have investigated its effect on relaxation and postprandial hyperglycemia by a textile-based pneumatic massager with a polyester cuff. Feeling good has an impact on the body. However, the relationship between mechanical stimulation of the lower extremities in a reproducible manner and physiological indices such as Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and biochemical indices that can be quantitatively evaluated was not clear. A pneumatic massager with a polyester cuff was applied to the lower extremities of 20 healthy adults (31.5 ± 7.0 years old). A 10-minute massage was performed at the intensity that the subjects had previously reported as comfortable. Heart rate and HRV at rest and after exercise was measured. In addition, a glucose tolerance test was performed on 7 subjects of middle age and older (39.6 ± 11 years old), who were massaged for 2 hours to determine the effect of the pneumatic massager on blood glucose clearance in the resting sitting position. The HRV, an index of parasympathetic nerve activity at rest, increased significantly after 10 minutes of use of the lower extremity pneumatic massager, and there was a trend toward faster recovery of the HRV after exercise. In addition, blood glucose levels at 30 minutes after glucose loading were significantly decreased by pneumatic massage. The present study has demonstrated that the use of pneumatic massager, used while desk working, for a short period of time assists relaxation by decreasing heart rate and promoting parasympathetic activation as indicated by HRV, and effective in decreasing the rise in blood glucose levels.

Our laboratory has a strong interest in the Maillard reaction, a food coloring reaction, and has successfully used the Maillard reaction to color not only protein materials such as wool, silk, and leather, but also polyamide fiber with amino groups. However, it also became clear that very long reaction times, such as several days, are required to color theses fibers in dark colors. Interestingly, when the glucose oxides obtained by the Fenton reaction, one of chemical oxidations, was used instead of glucose, the coloring time was greatly reduced, and it became possible to color wool dark brown in a reaction time of about 2 hours. Since the Fenton reaction is highly reactive and cannot selectively oxidize the hydroxyl group of reducing sugars, it is assumed that the reaction solution also contains oxidized products of reducing sugars that are not involved in pigment formation. If the oxidized products of reducing sugars not involved in pigmentation can be reduced, further darkening of the wool can be expected. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the coloration of wool using inositol, a cyclic sugar alcohol. Since the hydroxyl groups of inositol are each present in a close chemical environment, the amount of byproducts from the Fenton reaction is expected to be suppressed. In fact, when wool was colored with inositol oxides obtained by the Fenton reaction, it was colored darker than the oxides of glucose having the same carbon number, and it was possible to color wool with a color close to black in about 2 hours of reaction time.

The modeling software SolidWorks was applied to build a model of the weft-knitted fabric to measure the geometric dimension of the weft-knitted loop. Meanwhile, the multi-physics coupling software COMSOL Multiphysics was used to perform simulation analysis of the loop deformation and stress distribution in the transverse tensile strength of the weft-knitted fabric with directional displacement. And a fabric transverse tensile strength testing experiment was conducted to verify the feasibility of the numerical simulation. The geometric model and numerical simulation analysis model built in this paper were used to simulate the transverse tensile performance of the fabric. The loop deformation measured by numerical simulation is consistent with the experimentally measured loop deformation, and the rate of error between the stress-strain numerical analysis results and the experimental results falls within 9.2%, indicating a good feasibility of the numerical simulation.