INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Our body is continuously storing and consuming energy to keep us alive — but understanding which fuels are being used and why is the Holy
Grail of things like weight loss and body hacking
Today weight-loss market is saturated with generic products because — guess what — trying to tailor-make a solution for an individual is
usually hard and expensive.For a while now there been atechnology around which can measure the metabolic gases found in your breath
The theory goes that if you can do that, everyone can work out what they should be eating and when
A few startups have tried, but nothing really took off
Now a new startup is having a crack and has secured significant funding to go for it.Lumen is a pocket-sized device that measures the gases
in your breath and translates that reading via an app intoadvice that gives you daily personalized meal plans.As I said, this technology was
tried by a startup called PATH Breath+Band, which had a similar device in 2016, but which didn&t take off.The difference with Lumen is that
it raised a decent war chest, as well as blowing up on Indiegogo.It now raised a total of $7 million over the past four and a half years,
These include Disruptive VC, Oren Zeev, Red Swan Ventures, Resolute Ventures, Gigi Levy, Sir Ronald Cohen, Avishai Abrahami (Wix Founder)
As part of that funding it also & in the last few days & raised more than $1 million on Indiegogo.The founders are Merav Mor, a doctor of
physiology (PhD) and cell biology and her twin sister, Michal Mor, also a doctor of physiology (PhD) and cell biology
CEO Daniel Tal is also a co-founder and also founded Wibiya, which was acquired by Conduit
It probably doesn&t hurt that the renowned Frog design helped in the, well, design.As endurance athletes, the Mors began researching if
there was a way for them to understand the impact of their nutrition and workouts on their bodies to improve their athletic performance
They came across a metabolic measurement called RQ (Respiratory Quotient), which is the gold standard for measuring the metabolic fuel usage
Top-performing athletes have been using this measurement for years, but the methods for measuring it are invasive (blood test), lengthy (1+
hour in metabolic chambers) and expensive (upwards of a few hundred dollars).After four years of research and developmentthey developed
Lumen, with the ability to measure an individual RQ in one breath
What once took over an hour to measure, and a team of nutritionists and scientists to analyze, can now be done in less than three minutes
Michal and Merav technology is patent-pending.So far Lumen says more than 300 beta users have lost an average of 6.8 lbs within the first 30
days of using the device.Now, they do have competitors
These include Habit, which does pre-packaged personalized meals; Breezing, a technology that requires three minutes of continual breathing
and the purchase of new cartridges with every measurement ($5); and Levl, which is a small home-lab setup that measures metabolism and
ketosis and costs between $100-150/month
Then there is Ketonix, a computer-connected device that will only provide data on fat burn for users on a strict ketogenic diet.But with
Lumenyou just buy the device and the app is free
No cartridges, filters or replacements.All in all it quite a compelling proposition, so it will be interesting to see if Lumen can succeed
where others have failed.
