<p>Developed by a team at the Charite medical school in Berlin, the device has the ability to gauge the damage that bad habits such as smoking or a fondness for junk food are having on the body.<br /><br />They expected that a version suitable for home use could be on sale by this summer for as little as 175 pounds, the Daily Mail reported.<br /><br />A similar gadget called "tricorder" has already been shown in TV series "Star Trek" in which Dr McCoy aboard the fictional Starship Enterprise used it to diagnose and treat the crew.<br /><br />But, researchers said the real-life equivalent will shock people into leading healthy lifestyles in the same way as standing on the bathroom scales jolts many into a diet.<br />The scanner, which looks like a computer mouse, works by creating a "fingerprint" of a person's lifestyle by shining a beam of light at their body, collecting the reflected light and analysing it for information on which wavelengths have been absorbed.<br /><br />This allows it to measure levels of health-boosting antioxidants in the skin.<br />Antioxidants are credited with warding off a host of diseases and keep ageing at bay by mopping up free radicals -- dangerous oxygen molecules produced when food is turned into energy. Existing techniques for measuring antioxidants in the skin all require small samples to be cut away.<br /><br />Professor Jurgen Lademann, who lead the project, said: "We have developed a non-evasive, protective system where the reflected light contains information about the level of antioxidants."<br /><br />The scanner takes as little as 30 seconds to rate a person's antioxidant level between one and 10. Changes in diet and lifestyle are also quickly picked up, he said.<br /><br />"If you decide to change your lifestyle and eat salad tonight, you will see a small increase in the antioxidant reading tomorrow. If you eat salad every day, your reading will be higher still after three or four days," Prof Lademann said.<br /><br />The device is being tested on 50 secondary school pupils in the hope that it will encourage them to address bad habits.<br /><br />Prof Lademann, who admits to changing his own lifestyle after taking the test, said: "We expect that the behaviour of the students will change when they are quickly made aware of their own physical reaction to certain behaviours."</p>
<p>Developed by a team at the Charite medical school in Berlin, the device has the ability to gauge the damage that bad habits such as smoking or a fondness for junk food are having on the body.<br /><br />They expected that a version suitable for home use could be on sale by this summer for as little as 175 pounds, the Daily Mail reported.<br /><br />A similar gadget called "tricorder" has already been shown in TV series "Star Trek" in which Dr McCoy aboard the fictional Starship Enterprise used it to diagnose and treat the crew.<br /><br />But, researchers said the real-life equivalent will shock people into leading healthy lifestyles in the same way as standing on the bathroom scales jolts many into a diet.<br />The scanner, which looks like a computer mouse, works by creating a "fingerprint" of a person's lifestyle by shining a beam of light at their body, collecting the reflected light and analysing it for information on which wavelengths have been absorbed.<br /><br />This allows it to measure levels of health-boosting antioxidants in the skin.<br />Antioxidants are credited with warding off a host of diseases and keep ageing at bay by mopping up free radicals -- dangerous oxygen molecules produced when food is turned into energy. Existing techniques for measuring antioxidants in the skin all require small samples to be cut away.<br /><br />Professor Jurgen Lademann, who lead the project, said: "We have developed a non-evasive, protective system where the reflected light contains information about the level of antioxidants."<br /><br />The scanner takes as little as 30 seconds to rate a person's antioxidant level between one and 10. Changes in diet and lifestyle are also quickly picked up, he said.<br /><br />"If you decide to change your lifestyle and eat salad tonight, you will see a small increase in the antioxidant reading tomorrow. If you eat salad every day, your reading will be higher still after three or four days," Prof Lademann said.<br /><br />The device is being tested on 50 secondary school pupils in the hope that it will encourage them to address bad habits.<br /><br />Prof Lademann, who admits to changing his own lifestyle after taking the test, said: "We expect that the behaviour of the students will change when they are quickly made aware of their own physical reaction to certain behaviours."</p>