BSX
Even if you drink eight glasses of water a day, you still might
not be properly hydrated.
That’s the message Dr. Dustin Freckleton wants to get out to the
public with a new product called the LVL
band — a wearable fitness tracker that uses
infrared light to monitor your hydration levels in real-time and
offer advice about how much water you need to stay healthy.
“Everybody understands very strongly how important hydration is,”
says Freckleton, who was inspired to create LVL band after
suffering a severe hydration-related stroke when he was in
medical school.
Even at the sprightly age of 25, Freckleton needed three months
of physical therapy before he learned to walk again. And though
he eventually completed medical school, he decided that becoming
a practicing physician was less important than helping the public
avoid the negative effects of dehydration:
poor sleep,
poor cognitive function, and, in extreme cases, debilitating
injury.
“When we express that we not only measure hydration, but the
problems it solves, like around sleep and exercise, there’s an
A-ha moment for people when they say ‘Oh my gosh, that’s what I
need,'” Freckleton, the CEO of the data and performance company
BSX Technologies, tells Business Insider.
The
bluetooth-enabled app for LVL band, alerting the user to their
current hydration level and providing advice to replace lost
fluids.
BSX
In the same way your eye uses incoming light to create a visual
image, the LVL band shines near-infrared light into your body,
which then comes back to the band in the form of a spectroscopic
image — essentially a fingerprint from inside your bloodstream.
Software in the band analyzes that information to
measure specific biometrics, like heart rate and hydration
level.
Throughout the day, the LVL band gives wearers a small vibration
to notify them when their hydration levels are getting low. A
smartphone app that accompanies the band offers an estimated
dehydration level, say “18% dehydrated,” and advises you to drink
a certain amount of water accordingly.
Over time, Freckleton says, the app will learn when you tend to
exercise and go to bed and calibrate its recommendations based on
those behavior patterns. For example, you might get a
notification encouraging you to drink 12 ounces of water two
hours before your regular workout time, so that you’re in the
best state possible to exercise.
Later that night, you might get another notification reminding
you to drink 10 ounces before bed, to keep you hydrated as you go
6-8 hours without water.
Read-outs of varying
hydration levels on the LVL band.
BSX
Freckleton believes the device is superior to other fitness
trackers because of what’s under the hood. Most other
trackers use green light technologies to gather biometric data,
but Freckleton says the light doesn’t penetrate very far and
too easily gets absorbed in the body. The margin of error in its
calculations— say, in measuring heart rate — is therefore greater
than it would be with the LED technology found in LVL band.
LED
gets 10 times deeper into the body and easily reports back to the
device with the desired fingerprints.
This near-infrared technology isn’t new, Freckleton says,
but its application is novel.
Hospitals, for instance, have been using infrared light therapy
for years to
speed up the healing process for burn victims. Even Olympic
athletes
prefer the technology for recovery because it helps cells
regenerate more quickly, getting the athletes back to
competition.
Freckleton says companies like Apple and Garmin are already
making the switch to red light in some of their products because
they realize how much better it is for measuring the body’s
signals. When the LVL becomes available in summer 2017, the
device will cost $199 (though people who pre-order through Kickstarter will
receive it for up to 50% off).
BSX began researching red light technologies five years ago. To
date it’s gathered data on thousands of subjects, many of whom
have entered BSX’s scorching-hot “Sweat Lab” to willfully get
dehydrated through vigorous exercise. As part of the research,
BSX tracks subjects’ health via blood and urine samples and
cross-checks the LVL band’s readings with the formal results.
BSX
So far, the data has come back wholly positive. Results shared
with Business Insider show that the LVL band is highly accurate,
exceeding even military or first-responder standards for
hydration measurement, Freckleton says. The measured levels were
only 0.32% off from the actual values tested in the lab. The band
also tracks heart rate with similar accuracy.
According to Freckleton, the results are so specific that they
can predict how much better you’ll perform in several hours based
on how much water you drink right now. That’s how smart the data
has allowed the algorithm to become.
“Before a person goes to bed, let’s say the middle of the
afternoon the previous day,” he explains, “we can say, ‘Hey,
you’re about 19 ounces low right now. You’re gonna sleep 23%
better tonight and feel better in the morning if you drink that
now.'”
He adds that the LVL band’s ability to offer specific
recommendations demonstrates that data isn’t the ultimate goal —
regular people often need help interpreting all those random
numbers.
He admits that there are challenges in convincing people that
hydration is worth adding a tracker to your wrist. Yes, people
should drink when they are thirsty, Freckleton says, but that
common-sense approach only gets you so far. Given his own
history, Freckleton wants to empower people as much as he
can. And he’s confident the data will back up the
band’s utility.
“[LVL band] takes the information and puts it into action,” he
says. “It gives you something very real to act on and see the
benefit from the next day.”
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