Welcome to another edition of Cool Facts.

These short episodes are about new things we just figured out about how we can upgrade ourselves

and about how our bodies and the world around us works.

This cool fact is about tattoos and your blood pressure,

and it matters even if you don't have any tattoos.

It's because continuous blood pressure monitoring has been something that researchers and physicians really, really want.

If you could track your blood pressure over several hours,

it'd provide a much broader view than that one and done testing that you do at the doctor's office,

or maybe you stick your arm in the machine, the pharmacy, or maybe you're like me,

you have a little tool at home, but you never use it.

That's the downside.

Continuous blood pressure monitors are bulky, they're intrusive, they're uncomfortable,

and frankly, no one uses them unless they're really sick.

Luckily, a team of the University of Texas in Austin created something they're calling an electric tattoo,

and it changes how people monitor their own blood pressure,

at least if they have an electric tattoo.

It's based on something called electrical bioinpedance,

which is the strength and speed of an electrical signal that's sent around the body.

The researchers used graphene as an electric component to develop a lightweight monitoring system.

These are atomically thin, self-adhesive, lightweight, and unobtrusive, temporary electronic tattoos

that act as an interface to your human bioelectric field.

This device is basically weightless, it's basically invisible,

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