Breathe in, breathe out! Those words are a household phrase in every gym or aerobics class around the world. Now 14 years into the 21st century, the act of inhaling and exhaling are becoming digitized in a bid to improve our health. That’s all thanks to a new app available on Android and IOS platforms called Breezing.
Developed at the Arizona State University, the app was conceived as a tool for athletes to keep fit by monitoring their diets and exercising. The app does so by taking note of your caloric intake, by measuring the carbondioxide and body heat that is found in your breath. With that metric, you begin to have feedback on how your body metabolism is working.
Breath Analysis
The heat from your breath triggers electrical impulses in the device that analyzes inhaled and exhaled air. Eventually, those impulses are sent to the app for interpretation as data. That data provides you with information about the amount of heat or calories you have generated, and enables you to keep track of your metabolism.
Photo: medgadget.com
Apart from all the statistics, the app has the ability to analyze your metabolic rate and then to recommend or advise you on the diet or type of food you should be eating in order to maintain a healthy weight (and of course good health).
The app was developed by a group of professors led by Dr. Barbara Ainsworth, a kinesiologist at Arizona State University. The device and its app work very well using the principles and nature of body metabolism to accurately track an individual’s health status just from a breath sample.
Smartphone Sync
Photo by: Breezing
Since the app is a smartphone-syncing portable device, the metabolism tracker can provide accurate diet and exercise recommendations based on your metabolism at any given moment. More specifically, the app will tell you how many calories your body is burning every day, how your metabolism is changing over time, the number of calories you burn based on metabolism plus exercise (we see big integration potential for the Fitbits of the world), the source of your body’s energy (fat, carbs, etc.), and how your weight progress aligns with metabolism.
Currently, the research group that developed this app is preparing to be weaned from the Arizona State University. It has done this in part by obtaining donations on Indiegogo, in which individuals who donate a minimum of $250 are entitled to a breezing device. The company met that target, so commenced sales in May, and now is fully in business.
Here’s a video explaining the device, made by the ASU researchers and developers of the device (from the Indigogo site):
httpv://vimeo.com/57173689
So go out there keep fit this summer and if possible, enjoy the breeze as you inhale and exhale your way to a better health. Cheers!
