Home Breath Test Tracks How a Single Meal Affects Your Metabolism
A new device manufactured by researchers at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in Cambridge, England, claims to monitor people's metabolic fuel use at home. This research finding has been published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition.
Researchers investigated the practical use of a handheld breath device split into two sections. First, they confirmed its effectiveness under controlled lab conditions, with the Lumen compared to the Douglas bag test, a gold standard measure of respiratory analysis.
Capturing the Impact of Meal on Metabolism Outside Lab Environment
Later, they involved 12 healthy volunteers consuming a high carbohydrate meal under fasted conditions. Respiratory measures were taken at rest and then 30 and 60 minutes following the meal using both the Lumen device and the Douglas bag air analysis test.‘A portable, home-use metabolic device detected significantly increased expired %CO2 in response to a high-carbohydrate meal.’
The Lumen captures the percentage of carbon dioxide (CO2) as the user breathes out, and it demonstrated a significant increase in %CO2 within 30 minutes of the high carbohydrate meal.
An increase in expired carbon dioxide is associated with a greater degree of carbohydrates being used for energy, as typically quantified by the RER (respiratory exchange ratio) value under lab conditions.
As the increase in %CO2 measured by the Lumen was associated with an increase in RER, the result indicates that the device could detect an acute change in carbohydrate use.
Investigating the Practical Use of Hand-Held Breath Device
The second part of the research investigated whether the device could detect metabolic changes during a normal diet and then in response to a high or low-carbohydrate diet over one week.The participants, 27 healthy active adults, were requested to take measures at home using the Lumen device at set points during each day of their diet under normal living conditions, to represent how the device may typically be used.
The results showed that the Lumen device can detect changes in the participants' %CO2 over the week in response to acute dietary modifications but was not sensitive on a day-to-day basis, indicating it might be more suited to longer-term tracking.
As the device does not measure oxygen consumption, it can only provide indirect measures of metabolic fluctuations, but the researchers believe it could support dietary changes, particularly relating to carbohydrate intake.
Therefore, the research findings demonstrate that a home-use portable device like Lumen could be a useful way of tracking weekly changes in dietary interventions when dietary carbohydrate is the main variable being changed.
It should be noted that our study only tracked for a short period, therefore longer-term studies are needed to assess whether the device can detect metabolic adaptations over time.
However, the Lumen device could be a useful tool to support research and dietary interventions. It may offer a practical solution to tracking dietary changes, particularly concerning regular exercise, but users should be mindful of the complexity of metabolic adaptations and the interpretation of data on a day-to-day basis.
Source: Eurekalert