Can devices help us hack our way to wellness?

Lumen is a breathalyzer-like device that measures your metabolism. It was created by twin sisters Michal and Merav Mor, who are both Ph.Ds in physiology and triathlon winners. They understand from their own experience that developing a better understanding of our metabolism and especially how it changes through the day and over time can help us all reach our diet and wellness goals. Michal spoke to What the Future over Zoom from her headquarters in Israel.

Matt Carmichael: I get that I need to eat more veggies and exercise more and watch my carbs. Do I really need a device to tell me that?

Michal Mor: I think one of the main problems that Lumen comes to solve is the frustration around diets because you know that some of the diets might work for me, but not work for me a year from now. This is mainly because that there is no one diet that fits all because our body is always changing.

Carmichael: There so many things that we can measure for the health of our body. Why is metabolism important to measure and why would we prioritize it?

Michal: If I can measure something that already takes into consideration my steps, my nutrition, my sleep and my energy, then I don't need many wearables.

Carmichael: What does five or ten years from now look like for this technology?

Michal: The science field understands that in order to be able to do good science, it’s not enough to test something in the lab because we want to see real data of real people when they’re living their life. So you can see that the more and more trackable and wearable devices we have, the data suddenly becomes more scientifically valid.

Eight years ago, if you needed to manage your health, you would do blood tests. As long as the blood tests are OK, you thought to yourself, “OK, I’m healthy, no need to take any actions.” Today more and more people understand that being healthy is not just not being sick.

Carmichael: Do new technologies open up the idea of biohacking in the “trying to optimize our personal performance” way?

Michal: When we started Lumen, most of our users were biohackers because they came with the motivation to optimize their metabolism. But there was a shift, so it's no longer only for biohackers. More people want to be engaged and to achieve their wellness goals using technology.

Carmichael: How do you help people to develop healthy behaviors, habits and routines?

Michal: I think the real-time feedback loop helps. When you are on a journey of improving your life and achieving your goals, those goals often are far away, and it’s very hard to keep motivated. The feedback loop allows you to see the impact of your actions on your metabolism in real time, even before the scale is going to show it.

Carmichael: Does the future of measuring health generally move more toward embedded sensors in our garments and such?

Merav Mor: We have limited space on our wrist and body, so we’re definitely brainstorming about if the sensors will extend to other things we wear, like clothes.

Michal: The trend is that everything will be passive. We (users) don’t want to put much effort into things. If we imagine the ideal wearable, it’s something where we hardly need to do anything, and it will collect my data and give me a recommendation and help me carry out that recommendation. We want things to be easy. 

Carmichael: Do you see a future where part of the tailored recommendations from something like Lumen include synthetic products or supplements that you can customize to help with your diet and metabolism, or things that you could 3D print at home or have delivered?

Michal: Yes. Lumen currently recommends nutrition, but we are now working on something that takes into consideration your entire lifestyle. Nutrition is a huge and important part, but also your sleep and your activity.

Maybe we see that you are a bit stressed, so we might recommend meditation and mindfulness. Or we could explore collaboration with meal delivery.