One day , your FitBit might move on from counting footmark and trail your tenderness charge per unit to crackle data on something else : your sweat . A group of northern California research worker from the University of California , Berkeley , Stanford University , and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a wearable sensor that can supervise various components in sweat .
line in a newspaper inNature , the sensor can measure out levels of chemical in stew admit electrolyte like potassium as well as metabolite like lactate ( the latter is found in higher concentration during vivid exercise ) and can keep track of pelt temperature . The flexible , wireless sensor — which sends data to a phone via Bluetooth — can also be incorporate into wrist and headbands .
The table above shows how the make up of travail interchange over time as a written report subject biked at an increasingly high resistance .
so as to test the concept , the researchers had seven test subjects wear the sensing element on their head or wrist while working out in the research lab . Then , they analyzed their sweat during various workouts , such as cycling up a simulated hill ( with high and high opposition ) . They also tested the technology ’s ability to monitor dehydration by transport six runners out for 80 minutes while wearing sensors . The found that the travail sensors were accurately able to detect the signboard of dehydration by monitoring Na and potassium levels , as compared to sweat samples canvass in the science lab .
More enquiry is needed but the engineering might be used in the future to study what sweat can tell us about disease .
[ h / t : STAT ]
All image from Gao et al . ,Nature(2016 )
