When you’re in nutritional ketosis, your body metabolizes fatty acids into three types of ketones: acetoacetate (AcAc), beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), and acetone. BHB stays in the blood, AcAc is excreted in the urine, and acetone is exchanged in the alveoli of the lungs when you breathe.
The presence of acetone in the lungs allows BIOSENSETM, a breath ketone monitor developed by Readout Health, to detect the concentration of ketone bodies in your breath and produce accurate, high-resolution data that reflects how deeply your body is in ketosis.
The Most Accurate Way to Measure Ketones by Breath Acetone
The concentration of breath acetone varies greatly over the course of a single breath. Each time you exhale, the concentration is low at the beginning because your breath is diluted by outside air. Because the exchange between the blood and the alveoli occurs deep within the lungs, the concentration of acetone is highest at the end of each exhale.
Understanding the changes in acetone concentration throughout an exhale led us to develop BIOSENSE™, a device that samples only the latter portion of breath in your lungs. This sampling method enables highly accurate breath acetone sensing in order to accurately measure ketones by breath.
When you blow into the device, your exhalation creates a rising, then falling, pressure. The device’s sensor listens for the moment this signal reaches its maximum and begins to fall again. The decreasing pressure indicates that you’re near the end of your breath, and the control unit activates the pump to pull in your breath sample. The resulting measurement produces a reading on a scale of 0-40 ACEs, a unique unit for measuring breath acetone.
With BIOSENSE™, you can get an accurate reading of the depth of your ketosis without having to deal with painful finger pricks or imprecise urinalysis. The high-resolution, granular feedback will allow you to easily see how your body reacts to certain foods, exercises, and other factors so you can make well-informed decisions about your health.
