February 2019. I got a bit of a pneumonia and fever running I decided to check into the hospital. They realised that there’s a lot of
fluid accumulation around my lungs, They tried to drain it out,
but unfortunately not very successful. I entered into a septic shock. So when I woke up, I was in the ICU. I was actually on incubator, rouse tubes, IV drip. adult diaper, everything. So that really put me to a
crash course into healthcare. I got to see from the nurses,
clinician point of view, as wel
l as myself as a patient
going through all the trauma, trying to get my health back. Hi, I'm Ken, I'm the founder of Pulse Sync. We are the inventor of Gym Tonic, a very popular strength training program
among the seniors in Singapore. Strangely, at that time, I do have the peace that I wouldn’t die, I'm not done. There’s a lot of unfinished work. Therefore, I think I was able to emerge out of these episodes stronger. In fact, give me the urgency in my work. I realised that your strength can
los
e very fast when you’re bed bound. So just imagine if you leave a senior
on a bed and they are immobilised, they will probably reach a point of no return. So I think we need to put greater emphasis to prevent hospital episode. Gym Tonic is strength training program. It helps to tackle age related
loss of muscle mass among the seniors. Back then, strength training in the
more technological way was pretty unheard of. If you visit many senior care center, nursing home, what you can see is seniors
t
hrowing balls around. That’s what they call
a typical exercise. And then we saw seniors continue
to get very frail, very weak,, even if they are in the health care facility. Most strength training machines out
there are generally not designed for seniors. You have to use dumbbells or kettlebells. But for seniors,
we need very safe equipment. Gym Tonic is a very simple,
hassle-free program. Seniors can come in any attire. They need to exercise twice a week. And in 12 weeks’ time they will see
ab
out 20 to 30% jump in muscle strength. All the equipment are designed
for them to exercise while sitting down. There’s no standing, there’s no
moving part like a treadmill. All the strength and resistance
they’re facing are hydraulic, so it’s very smooth and gentle on the joints. The second thing is we realised that most seniors cannot remember what was their last load. Or how much they need to exercise. Therefore, everything is computerised. We will program the exercise plan for them. When they
come,
they just collect the smart card, tap on the machine, and then the machine will automatically
download the our last training plan. I think for those who want to be strong, their reason is actually very simple. Being able to walk to supermarket, bring their grandchildren
to school or cook for the family. Tonic is herbal medicine. So Gym Tonic’s tagline is: Exercise as medicine. So we want people to relate to that. We see aging as a new chapter of life
instead of the ending chapter life. I
think people can still continue
to pursue their dream, do a lot of things they’d like to do, That is also our driving factor that we can continue
to help and support the seniors.
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