Startup Breathalyzer Device Measures CO2 Levels And Metabolism

[Soren]

Lumen measures metabolism, creates personal nutrition plan with a single breath

"Lumen — an Israel-based digital health and wellness company — has officially launched its new device to help with weight management out of beta. With a single breath into the device, users are provided with a personalized nutrition plan to help lose weight and achieve fitness goals."

"The Lumen uses Respiratory Exchange Ratio, which is the preferred method for determining metabolic fuel. By taking a single breath, the Lumen measures the carbon dioxide production and oxygen uptake of a user’s breath in order to calculate how much energy is being burned from carbohydrates or fat."

This seems like it would be good to have if it can accurately measure your true metabolism and carbon dioxide levels. Anyone else aware of similar devices for measuring CO2 levels?

It's currently on indigogo for 199 but won't be shipped until Feb 2019.

Not sure if this is something worth having or not but it certainly peaked my interest.

Lumen: Hack your metabolism & lose weight

 

[Soren]

I think it is meant to be a replacement for respiratory quotient. But unfortunately it doesn't seem to be giving you any specific data instead it gives you suggestions on how to "burn more fat" based on what your body is currently burning for energy.

Basically tells you if you are burning mostly carbs or fat for energy (which i guess is pretty good to know with regards to metabolic health) but then it tells you if you are burning carbs for energy to cut carbs so you burn more fat .

Unfortunately their web page does not explain how it works and what it is actually measuring. Anyone have any ideas?

Here's hoping this turns out to be useful and not just a gimmick.

Here is a video and a picture for anyone who is interested.

 

[Dan W]

It reminds me of the Breezing. Hopefully it doesn't have their same limitation of needing to replace the sensor frequently, theirs worked out to $5 per session! I couldn't find anything on that in their FAQs.

 

[ddjd]

Isn't the oxygen percentage on a 10 dollar cheap heart rate monitor a pretty basic but accurate reflection of co2 in the body?

I lived at 10,000 feet for a year and my oxygen percentage that whole time was between 89-93 max.

At sea level, it goes up to 98/99%.

Hold my breath for two minutes (bodies co2 levels go up considerably) and the oxygen percentage goes back down to around 91%

Its pretty basic. I don't know why everyone doesn't just use that

 

[Blossom]

Looks interesting. It reminds me somewhat of indirect calorimetry although not nearly so involved.
Indirect calorimetry - Wikipedia
I'm not sure how different it is from traditional capnography/end tidal Co2 measurement because it's not clear to me from the link how the device works. It could be the same or similar but rather than using the information to make clinical/medical interpretations they gear it towards nutritional analysis? Here's an example of a portable capnograph device.
Masimo - EMMA Capnograph
More background on capnography and capnometry:
https://www.ebme.co.uk/articles/clinical-engineering/capnometry-capnography

 

[yerrag]

I don't know what bases are used to determine what food they would recommend people to eat, and whether the recommendations given are going to redound to an improvement in metabolism, or merely make people lose weight. Is it merely measuring end-volume tidal CO2, and then using this information to give recommendations? Is it going to recommend more fats in a diet because CO2 levels are high? Or more carbs because CO2 levels are low? Does it consider temperature and heart rate? How does it know if sugar metabolism is faulty, and is merely glycolytic, and producing plenty of lactic acid? How does it take into account the variation in people's ability to metabolize sugar, from diabetics to people with normal response curves of blood sugar?

If they could offer an app along with this that could serve as a full-fledged capnometer, then I would buy this unit at $200 in a heartbeat. If not, it's just another device with an algorithm that's not customized to my context, and is just as bad as seeing a doctor whose only function is to be a vending machine for allopathic prescription drugs.

It says it will help you lose weight. It says it will tell you what to eat and when. More likely it will tell you to eat less if you have low metabolism. It may tell you to eat less also if you want to lose weight, or it will tell you to burn more calories through exercise.

What it doesn't do at all, it seems, is to improve/increase your metabolism. It makes you adjust to your own metabolic rate, however poor your metabolism is. I would rather that it helps you to improve your metabolism, if it needs to be improved. This is a more worthwhile objective as it leads to an improvement to your health. But you won't see this objective being what this device is about. Because it's more complicated. It's not a slam dunk. It involves more parameters, and these parameters are not so easy to tweak. Not as easy as losing weight.

Perhaps if they just sell this device as a capnometer, and then refer the user to this forum, and then let the user get all confused at first learning the ins and outs of metabolism, before he gets on the program to improve/increase his metabolism, the user can actually improve his health. For sure, there would be users that would be disappointed (because they like it as simple as abc) and give the device bad reviews, and the device would have 3 stars out of 5 at best, but at least a good portion of the users would be benefiting from it. In contrast, they may be getting 5 star reviews with the "losing weight" crowd, and they would be selling like gangbusters, but this company is not educating, not contributing to better knowledge, but simply feeding off the ignorance of the general populace. It's not going to make the world better at all. It would just be another "gadget" added to the modern junkpile.