the lumen is a device for measuring
whether or not you’re currently burning
fat or carbohydrates it’s a pretty
simple concept consisting of a co2 and
air flow sensor
and having breathed through it you’re
assigned a score of one to five one
meaning you’re mostly burning fat
five being you’re mostly burning carbs
and that depends on the co2 output of
your breath
but that’s underselling the whole system
because together with an app it forms a
complete dieting and metabolic
gamification system
if you’re the sort of person who loves
to keep track of all your health data if
you have an apple watch to constantly
take blood oxygen levels or you’re the
sort of person who does the occasional
ecg for funsies then you will love the
lumen and if you’re attempting to do a
kato diet and don’t have a reliable way
of telling you you’re currently in a
state of ketosis you’ll also love the
lumen but at nearly 300 is this a device
you or i could make use of in any
meaningful way let’s find out
i’m james bruce and you’re watching
makeusof.com reviews so to be clear i’m
not a health nut in any way i did
actually just buy an apple watch
literally just to test this with however
i did previously use a me band five and
my motivation with the lumen is
evaluating this as a useful dieting tool
for a lay person someone like me
who probably doesn’t exercise all that
much
but also doesn’t eat particularly
unhealthy
however i will say that the app that
accompanies the lumen
has three different tracks that you can
go on that you choose when you set it up
so if you’re not interested in dieting
specifically
you can follow the track that improves
your metabolic flexibility for instance
that’s the ability to switch between
carbs and fat burning as needed
obviously if you are
strongly into your whole cato diet thing
then this is going to be a tremendous
help for you but for me
it’s just a motivational aid i think a
tool to help me understand how my diet
affects me and i guess i went into this
review without any actual expectations
it’s quite a new product category for me
i mean there is no competition for this
on the market either i have done a low
carb diet before and it worked i managed
to lose sort of 15 kilograms but as with
most fad diets i lapsed back into old
ways pretty quickly so i know that low
carb diets can work for me i just need
something to help me along the path
again
to motivate me and to help me understand
my metabolism so just bear that in mind
during this review
okay so onto the hardware
in the box you’ll find the lumen itself
which is basically a small breathalyzer
kind of looks like an e-cigarette and it
features a magnetic cap
a silicon coated body and a small mesh
underneath allowing you to breathe all
the way through it
there’s a charging base which the lumen
can sit on as needed there’s a usb c
charging cable that plugs into the case
and there’s also a neat little fabric
carrying case so you can keep it with
you all the time and not get it dirty
now you’re encouraged to keep it
charging overnight but don’t worry if
you’re heading away for a bit i used it
pretty extensively like five ten
measurements a day for two weeks and in
that time it only went down to ten
percent battery life so
really not a concern there
don’t worry if you can’t charge it for a
week or so it won’t matter but when you
do need to charge it just place it on
the dock and these little pogo pins will
connect and charge
it’s a gorgeously simple bit of hardware
actually
the lumen is incredibly easy to use
there’s only one button on the device
to turn it on and it automatically
sleeps again when you’re finished
however it does need the accompanying
app there’s no way to take measurements
throughout the day and save them to the
device to sync up later
now thankfully you don’t need to faff
around with bluetooth that much you just
press it once to turn it on and then
open up the app and it’ll all
automatically pair it’s super quick and
very simple to use
inhale deeply through your lumen
hold your breath
the only slight annoyance for me was
that the app itself
takes about five seconds to load
exhale in three two
one
now as well as having to use the app it
also requires an active internet
connection to work as i found out when i
killed the wi-fi and data now this
probably won’t matter to most people but
it is a curious requirement
combined with the fact that