Lumen Review: How to Hack Your Metabolism + Real Results

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Y’all know how much I love biohacking — doing what I can to be in peak performance. When the team at Lumen asked me to review their product, I jumped at the opportunity. After all, I’m 35 now, and I’ve definitely noticed it’s significantly more difficult to lose weight than it used to be. In fact, a couple of summers ago I did a 17-day water-only fast to try to cure my invisible illnesses, and I eviscerated my metabolism as a result. It took well over a year to repair the damage. So, I made a promise to myself that I’m not doing anything like that again.

Enter Lumen — an innovative device that claims to help you hack your metabolism. It’s a little black handheld machine that you breathe into. I participated in its 7-day Lumen Challenge (several times, actually). There were no crazy diets or exercises; all I did was make little changes based on the tailored suggestions they give after I measure my metabolism throughout my day. Here’s my lumen review.

In this challenge you:

See in real-time how your body responds to food and activity
Learn how to train your body to become more flexible (using fat or carbs for fuel—a flexible one will help you wake up in fat-burning mode, and towards carb-burning mode after eating carbs)
Build healthy habits; nutrition, sleep, and workouts

Inside Lumen is a CO2 sensor and flow meter — this determines your CO2 concentration in just one breath, and can tell the type of fuel your body is using to produce energy.

Lumen Challenge Details

Days 1-4: Gauge your circadian rhythm; track to see how in sync your body is with your daily habits

Day 2: Measure your carb capacity; if your Lumen level is 1-2 before eating, eat some carbs. But if it’s level 4-5, leave ’em out.

Day 3: Do cardio or fast; see the impact on your Lumen level.

Day 4: Eat carbs and exercise; how does your body use fat and carbs when you incorporate exercise?

Days 5-7: Incorporate meal planning and macros; what effect did the nutrition changes have on your Lumen score?

Day 6: Hydrate and optional fast; does this impact your metabolism?

Day 7: Sleep and body clock; how has the week affected your scores?

Using the app, you see your level after breathing into Lumen:

1: You’re burning fat and your carb stores are depleted.

2: You’re burning fat and most of your carb stores are depleted.

3: You’re burning both fat and carbs.

4-5: You’re burning carbs and your carb stores are full.

The goal is to be in level 1 or 2 when you wake. Every week, you get a metabolic flexibility score. Each time you breathe into the device, you get tips and tricks to help you on your journey towards metabolic efficiency.

My 2-Week Lumen Results

I did two weeks of the Lumen Challenge, and these were my results:

Weight: -1%

BMI: -2%

Weight Control: -3%

Fat Mass: -4%

Body Fat %: -2%

Body Water: +2%

Subcutaneous Fat: -2%

Muscle Rate: +1%

Basal Metabolic Rate: +1%

Lumen Review

I think it’s safe to say that Lumen is pretty freaking cool. It isn’t new technology — athletes and scientists have had access for a long time, now we do, too. What I like the most is that I didn’t have to make ANY extreme changes. Just a little bit here and there.