Lumen Preview
Hey guys. It’s Michael Kummer
here and in today’s video we’ll talk about
Lumen, a metabolic, hand-held breath analyzer
that’s supposed to enable you to hack your
metabolism. In this video we’ll cover what
Lumen is. How it exactly works? And how the
technology behind it works? What is metabolic
flexibility? How accurate is the device? How
much does it cost? Is it worth it? And I’ll
also share with you my discount code.
So we have a lot of stuff to cover in today’s
video but before we get started make sure
you subscribe to my channel and you click
on the little alert button so you get notified
when I publish more videos like this.
(Music plays with “Michael Kummer Fitness”
displayed on the screen)
So what is Lumen? Well, as I’ve mentioned
in the intro, Lumen is a metabolic breath
analyzer that can tell you if your body is
currently using carbs or fat for fuel.
And why is that important? Well, to understand
that we have to talk very briefly about how
the human metabolism works and what the differences
are between burning carbs and burning fat
for fuel.
Let’s talk about the metabolism real quick
so you can understand how Lumen works and
why it does what it does. Generally speaking,
there are two sources of fuel for your body
either carbohydrates that get converted into
glucose which is sugar, or fat that can get
converted to ketone bodies that your cells
can use for energy as well.
So let’s assume you’ll eat a meal that’s
high in carbohydrates. Once you get those
carbohydrates digested your liver starts converting
those carbs into glucose. And so your blood
sugar spikes. You have a lot of glucose in
your blood stream. And that’s a signal for
the pancreas to release insulin which is a
storage hormone that can get those glucose
molecules out of your blood stream and into
your cells where the mitochondria can use
it for energy.
If you eat a meal that’s high in fat and
in particular if you are fat-adapted — we’ll
talk about what that means in a little bit
— then your liver can convert those fats
or fatty acids into ketone bodies and your
brain and other cells in your body can use
those ketone bodies for energy as well.
So those are, on a very high level, the two
ways how your body can use food for energy.
Now there are two important factors to take
into account when talking about either a carb-based
or a fat-based diet. The problem is with the
Western diet, with the standard American diet,
chances are if you’re on a standard American
diet then you run on glucose predominantly.
Meaning your cells are used to using glucose
as it’s … the primary source
The problem is if there is too much glucose
in your blood stream because you’re eating
a lot of carbs and you eat carbs all the time.
Then your pancreas can’t release enough
insulin to take all of that glucose and get
it out of the blood stream. In addition to
that, your cells; if the insulin receptors
in your cells, are saturated then they don’t
need any more glucose. They don’t need any
more fuel. The tank is full, so to say.
So what happens next is, first of all your
cells — as your pancreas releases more and
more insulin — get resistant and less sensitive
to insulin. And in addition to that, your
liver starts converting that glucose into
fat and then stores that fat around organs,
around your midsection, your thighs, anywhere
on the body basically.
That’s the primary reason why you might
be gaining weight or not losing it. Because
the amount of the carbs that you eat are significantly
more than what your body can use, and so it
keeps storing it for a time when you don’t
have access to food. It’s an evolutionary
and ingenious mechanism.
The problem is in our society there is always
food. We never get to the point where we don’t
eat for an extended period so our body can
start using its own fat storage. We never
got to that point. And that’s why we get
fatter and fatter and fatter. In fact, about
70% of American adults are overweight and
30 to 40% are obese. Those are shocking numbers
and predominantly caused by a high carbohydrate
diet.
Now in terms of fat, if your body is fat-adapted,
meaning if it has been enabled to use fat
as its primary source of energy. Then that
not only means that you can use the fat that
you eat as fuel but if you don’t eat fat,
or during times when you don’t eat, your
body can actually start accessing its own
fat storage. And regardless how skinny you
are, you have approximately 20,000 calories
worth of fat on your body that can be used
for energy. So if weight loss is your goal,
then eating a lot of fat, healthy fats and
reducing your carbohydrate intake causes actually
your body to burn more and more fat.
That’s important to understand as we discuss
Lumen and how Lumen works. So let’s get
back to the device and talk why you would
wanna use Lumen? Why is it important to understand
if your body is currently burning carbs or
fat for energy?
Well, first of all if your goal is to lose
weight and in particular lose fat then it’s
good to understand when your body is in fact
burning fat. If you wanna improve your energy
levels, if you wanna improve your overall
health and fitness, if you wanna reduce the
risk of developing a metabolic or chronic
disease.
And to the latter point it’s important to
understand that insulin insensitivity or insulin
resistance —meaning the inability of your
cells to react to the insulin, you know, store
the glucose that the insulin hormone wants
to get into those cells — is the primary
reason and cause for most metabolic diseases
including obviously diabetes, the classic
case but also Alzheimer’s, dementia, stroke,
cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure.
All of those metabolic diseases, that most
Americans and most westerners really, die
from at a certain point, all of those go back
to a disturbed glucose metabolism caused by
a high carbohydrate intake.
So those are just some of the reasons why
you might wanna consider using Lumen to find
out how your metabolism is doing and what
you can change to make a shift.
So the ultimate goal of Lumen is to increase
your ‘metabolic flexibility.’ And that’s
a term that means your body’s ability to
efficiently shift back and forth between burning
fat and burning carbs depending on what you
feed the body.
And metabolic flexibility is incredibly important
because it allows you to burn fat when you
have a high fat meal. But when you eat carbs
it starts using carbs. And that in the long
run increases your health markers, decreases
inflammatory factors and puts you on a better
path to health.
So how does Lumen work? Well, the technology
behind Lumen isn’t necessarily new. Breath
analyzers have been around in clinical settings
and have been used by elite athletes for a
long time. But the problem so far was that
doing a breath analysis to find out if you’re
burning carbs or fat has been expensive. It
requires clinical equipment. You have to go
to, you know … a clinical setting or whatever
to do those tests and they are expensive and
not accessible to people like you and me.
So what Lumen has done is they have put a
breath analyzer that includes basically a
flow meter, that detects how much air is flowing
through it, and a sensor into this little
hand-held device.
The way it works is you breathe in, and then
you breathe out. What Lumen measures then
is the respiratory exchange ratio. That’s
a term for the ratio between the O2, the oxygen
that you inhale, and the carbon dioxide that
you exhale. So the ratio between those two
can tell the device, and can tell you ultimately
whether or not you are burning mostly carbs
or mostly fat.
So in the case of Lumen, what that means is
it measures the CO2 content. And generally
speaking, the more CO2 in your exhaled breath
is the more carbs or the more likely it is
that you are burning carbs instead of fat.
If you’re watching this video and you’re
like, ‘Okay, I wanna lose some weight. I
wanna gain more energy. I wanna be healthier.
I wanna be fitter. I wanna change my diet.
I wanna get away from some of those carbs
more towards a low carb type of diet, may
be a ketogenic diet. How does Lumen work?
How can it help me to make that happen?’
Well, it’s fairly simple. What you basically
do is, you start out with a Calibration Day
where you establish your baseline, your metabolic
baseline, so to say. Then you use Lumen a
couple of times a day. First thing in the
morning after you have fasted overnight and
then may be before a workout after a workout,
or really any time that you want to.
And as you take those measurements Lumen will
tell you if you are burning carbs or if you’re
burning fat. And it will give you recommendations
like, ‘Today reduce your carb intake to
X number of servings. Tomorrow we’re gonna
have a high carb day so we can see if you’re
… how you’re responding to those carbs.’
So it will guide you with nutritional advice
on what you should eat. And then you run those
tests and do your breathing to see how you
respond. And after about 4 weeks you get a
metabolic flexibility score that tells you
how flexible your metabolism is. And ideally,
if you follow the protocol, after that 4 weeks
you have already established a certain metabolic
flexibility that allows you to switch back
and forth between eating mostly fat and eating
a few more carbs.
So the goal of Lumen is not necessarily to
put you straight on to a ketogenic diet with
no carbs and mostly fat and moderate amounts
of protein. Now even though it kind of goes
in that direction but it’s really meant
to help you understand how your carb intake
and fat intake are impacting your metabolism.
And what tweaks you can make from a dietary
perspective to be and become metabolically
more flexible and to start burning fat for
energy.
Because that’s really the most important
point of the whole exercise, you want to get
and enable your body to start burning fat
when you want to. Because that means as I’ve
mentioned before, it will not only burn the
fat that you eat but also your own body fat.
That’s an incredibly powerful weight loss
tool. That’s why the ketogenic diet is so
popular. People use it to quickly lose a lot
of weight.
So now that you’ve heard a lot about Lumen
you might want to know how much is it? Well,
Lumen retails for 299. That’s almost $300.
It’s certainly not an inexpensive device.
However, one of the most important things
with any change that you wanna make to your
lifestyle and in particular to your dietary
lifestyle is to find something that you remain
motivated on doing until the rest of your
life. So a diet is not something that you
can do for three weeks or for four weeks and
the go back to your old eating habits work
because it’s not going to work. So you need
to stick with something.
And I believe that with Lumen there is a very
high motivational factor for a couple of reasons.
Well, first of all the device looks pretty
slick and futuristic. So you wanna show that
to your friends and family and get them inspired
on showing them on what it can do.
The other thing is every morning when you
take a breath. You get a score. And it’s
almost like the Recovery Score of my Whoop
that I’m looking forward to in the morning
when I do the test after getting up. And so
it keeps you motivated to see, ‘Hey,’
you got up after a 12 or 13 hour overnight
fast and, ‘I am predominantly burning fat
or I am only burning fat.’ That’s incredibly
motivating to sticking to the diet or the
dietary framework that you have chosen.
The other thing is Lumen, via its app, offers
a lot of nutritional advice, a lot of insights,
a lot of guidance and interactivity that keeps
you motivated in using it first of all, and
continuing with your dietary habits. It takes
a while. And once you’ve gotten used to
a certain style of eating then you likely
stick to it because eating low carb and high
fat is … you don’t have to restrict your
calories. You don’t have to eat food that
doesn’t taste good. Fat tastes good.
And so together with Lumen and the motivational
factors that I have mentioned, I think there’s
a very high chance of success that you’ll
reach your goals. Be it weight loss. Be it
reduction of risk of metabolic diseases or
maybe reducing the symptoms or eliminating
them altogether if you already have diabetes
or some of those other diseases I’ve mentioned
before.
So I think overall, despite a relatively high
price tag Lumen is worth it because it makes
you stick to a low carb, high fat diet.
And if you want, you can use a discount code:
michaelkummer to get 25 bucks off. That reduces
the price a little bit and makes it more palatable.
Now, let’s talk about a few of the things
that I’ve learnt. Now I’ve been on a ketogenic,
paleolithic diet for over a year. Paleo for
4 or 5 years and then keto mixed in for over
a year. And that paired in with intermittent
fasting that I’ve been practicing for over
one and a half year.
So I wanna argue that my lifestyle is already
relatively healthy, in particular my dietary
lifestyle. I do CrossFit six times a week.
I sleep well. So I do a lot of things right.
So I was kind of unsure whether or not there
would be any value for me of using Lumen.
So one of the things that Lumen confirmed
to me is that I am indeed metabolically flexible.
It wasn’t really a big surprise because
you know, I’ve been on keto for a while,
fasting etc. So I knew that I was metabolically
flexible.
But one of the things that I learned was that
my blood ketone levels are not always directly
correlated with my current state of metabolism.
What that means is that for example, if I
go work out and do high intensity workout
like CrossFit and I empty my glycogen stores.
At that point there is a lot of blood sugar
in my blood stream, obviously. And so my blood
sugar levels would spike. And I could see
that with my continuous glucose monitor. And
whenever blood sugar is high and insulin levels
are high ketone levels are low. That’s just
…there is always that counter balance, which
is why you cannot be in ketosis if you have
a lot of blood sugar or a high blood sugar.
And so what I found out was that even and
especially after workouts where my blood sugar
was high and my ketone levels were low my
body was very much burning fat for energy
at that point. So that would have not … that
was not something I necessarily expected.
The other thing that I found out was that
if I had moderate amounts of carbohydrates
that my body would be burning both fat and
carbohydrates at the same time.
And last but not least, during some of the
… especially during Calibration Day and
during some of the tests that I performed
in between where I intentionally had a high
carb day my body would bounce back to burning
predominantly fat very quickly. And that’s
the metabolic flexibility that I’ve mentioned
before. If I eat two pizzas at night the next
morning I’m back in ketosis. And I’m back
at burning fat. That’s really incredibly
powerful because that allows you then to have
those cheat days if you want to and be right
back at burning fat, be it your own body fat
or be it the fat that you consume with your
diet.
So the last thing that I’d like to mention
is a couple of tips that I’ve learned by
using Lumen now for approximately a month.
One is to take Calibration Day seriously.
When I first got Lumen it suggested on Calibration
Day not to work out and to eat approximately
… I think it was 278 grams of carbohydrates.
That’s more than what I eat in two weeks
normally.
So I’m like, ‘I’m not gonna eat that
many carbs. I can’t. I don’t want to.’
And, ‘I don’t wanna not work out. You
know, today is workout day so I’m gonna
go workout.’
Well, guess what? Lumen couldn’t establish
a good baseline so all my readings that followed
were off. It constantly reported that I was
burning mostly carbs. And I got frustrated.
I talked to Lumen and said, ‘How is it possible?
I’m on keto. I intermittently fast. I work
out a lot.’
And they’re like, ‘How did your Calibration
Day go?’
I explained. And they said, ‘Well, maybe
you should redo Calibration Day and really
follow the protocols.’
So I redid all of that. I prepared a little
bit better. I bought somewhat healthy carbs
like rice, like sweet potatoes and sweet plantains.
And I had that high carb day on Calibration
Day. It felt awful to me to be quite honest
but I pushed through it anyway. I did it on
a rest day where I didn’t work out. And
so after a proper calibration was done my
readings were in line with what I knew my
body was doing and also with all my blood
tests that I was performing. So that’s tip
number one. Take your Calibration Day seriously.
Tip number two is when you do your breathing
make sure you sit down and you wait for a
couple of minutes. And you make sure your
heart rate is low and ideally, close to your
resting heart rate. And that’s because if
your heart rate is high then the CO2 in your
breath might be different and it could make
your results inaccurate.
So don’t do it right after running up a
couple of stairs or whatever and app… typically
if you allow the app access to your ketometer
from your phone or from your Apple watch or
whatever, it can tell if you recently took
a lot of steps and it tells you to sit and
wait for two minutes. But make sure you sit
down. You relax and you do your breathing
while your heart rate is low. Otherwise the
results are not going to be super accurate.
The only thing that I wanna bring up is a
couple of things that I didn’t like with
Lumen. You know, I wanna be as fair as possible
with all of the stuff that I review. I wanna
give the pros as well as the cons. While there
are a lot of good things about Lumen and while
I truly believe it’s a valuable tool that
can help you to get on a better path to health,
there are a couple of things that I didn’t
like a lot.
And one is the breathing; each breathing session,
takes approximately 2 minutes. Now, that’s
not a lot of time of course, but if you’re
in a rush and you’re in a hurry and you
just wanna do a quick breathing to see how
your metabolism is doing. It’s not gonna
work. So you have to sit down. You have to
take your breath.
Typically it takes between 2 and 3 breaths
to get an accurate result. And there is a
15 second pause in between those breaths.
And you know, you need to … you know, turn
on the device. Bring up the app. Wait until
it’s connected: takes a second or two. And
then do your breathing. So all in all, in
takes about two minutes.
And I wish — I don’t know if technically
even feasible — to have it like … done
with one breath, and regardless of if you’re
sitting, walking or whatever. May be in the
future we’ll get that but for now it’s
… you know, it takes about two minutes.
Just set yourself up for that.
I’m … I tend to be a person who is not
very patient. So when I first started using
Lumen I’m like, ‘Okay. Come on. Come on.
I wanna get on with it.’
But in reality breathing is actually very
healthy and especially deep breathing. So
take that opportunity to relax. Wind down.
Don’t think about anything. Just do your
breathing. Look at the results and move on
with your day.
That was really the only thing that I would
wanna change, if that’s technically even
possible. Everything else really fulfilled
my expectations.
It’s a solid device. It feels heavy. It
doesn’t feel cheap. You can tell that this
is good hardware that was manufactured using
quality components. It looks slick.
The app works really well. It’s interactive.
It’s motivational.
So overall, I wanna say that if your goal
is to maybe lose weight, to increase your
energy, to get healthier overall and you wanna
go down that path of reducing your carb intake.
It doesn’t have to be ketogenic but just
lowering your carb intake. Because according
to the USDA dietary guidelines for Americans
the daily amount of carbs that you should
be eating is like 200 and something to 300
and something. It’s ridiculous. I mean it’s
what I eat in two weeks or less.
So I encourage you to give Lumen a try. Use
my discount code if you wanna do so. So you
save 25 bucks. And let me know in the comments
if you’ve got Lumen how it worked out for
you? If you have any questions or concerns
that I can answer before you pull the trigger.
And as always subscribe to my channel and
I’ll see you next time.