According to recent studies, 70% of adult Americans are currently overweight. There is a massive $56 billion market that is driven by weight-loss chains, health clubs, weight loss supplements, and nutritionists. This year, about 45 million Americans will go on some kind of weight loss diet. However, only a few of them have a fundamental understanding of why they became overweight in the first place. One of the biggest factors driving weight increase is metabolism, which is the rate at which the body converts consumed food into energy. Until more recently, the measurement of metabolic processes was reserved for world-class athletes and dangerously obese medical patients and was exclusively measured in clinical lab settings.
Research shows that metabolic flexibility plays a critical role in assessing a person’s health. Metabolic flexibility represents the body’s capacity for adapting fuel demand to fuel availability. For example, individuals with great metabolic flexibility can burn carbohydrates or fats when as soon as they eat them. Contrarily, individuals that are metabolically inflexible struggle in efficiently using fats or carbs when they consume them. People with good metabolic flexibility are in a better position to gain muscle and perform better during workouts, find it easier to lose weight and maintain it, and are at lower risk of developing obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disorders. Since our body is constantly managing energy storage and consumption, having a better understanding of which fuels are used as energy is essential to understanding weight loss.
Metabolism in humans is complex and driven by several factors such as genetics, sleeping habits, and exercise, among other things. An individual can train metabolism to be more flexible by adopting healthier lifestyle habits such as dieting and exercising. While metabolism is key to weight loss, the only way to test metabolism has historically been through a restrictive, hours-long laboratory process, leaving regular people with zero visibility into their own metabolic rate. For a while now, there has been a technology that can measure the metabolic gases found in people’s breath. There has been increased interest in startups leveraging this technology to measure metabolism without intricate lab equipment or a long lab-based process.
Kli Capital portfolio company, Lumen, aims to give consumers access to their metabolism information so that they have a better understanding of how to manage their health and weight loss. The company has created the world’s first hand-held, portable device to accurately measure metabolism with a single breath. By leveraging a Co2 sensor and flow meter to determine the Co2 concentration, the device reduces the amount of time required for lab testing to measure metabolism from over an hour to a single breath. Through an integrated mobile app, the consumer has the ability to look at their metabolism readings and also receive daily personalized meal plans that meet their health goal needs.
Established in 2014 in Israel, Lumen was founded by Daniel Tal, Dror Ceder, and Avi Smila — the founders of social toolbar applications developer Wibiya — and twin sisters Dr. Michal and Merav Mor, who have a PhD in Physiology and are passionate athletes who compete together in Ironman competitions and ultra marathons. As endurance athletes, the Mors began researching if there was a way for them to understand the impact of their nutrition and workouts on their bodies to improve their athletic performance. They came across a metabolic measurement called RQ (Respiratory Quotient), which is the gold standard for measuring the metabolic fuel usage of an individual. Lumen’s devices have the ability to measure metabolism correlated with respiratory exchange ratio (RER), which is the metric that hospitals use and represents the ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen consumed. After four years of research and development they developed Lumen, with the ability to measure an individual’s RQ in one breath.
“We have dedicated significant research and resources to guarantee that our technology could improve the health of our consumers,” remarked Daniel Tal, CEO of Lumen. “We are truly proud of our device and how it allows any consumer to measure their own metabolism at their convenience.”
The company has since then raised $15 million over the past several years from investors including Disruptive VC, Oren Zeev, Red Swan Ventures, Avishai Abrahami (Wix Founder), and Kli Capital. The Company continues to improve upon the technology and finding additional channels to distribute their products directly to consumers. As a result of the recent Covid-19 pandemic, more consumers have been warming up to in-home medical devices and have increasingly adopted self-diagnostics. The Kli Capital team believes that Lumen will continue to appeal to the masses and provide an easy-to-use way method for consumers to take control of their own health and weight management.
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