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- Hacker News
- Interesting device for those using diet to induce ketosis for diabete or mental illness care.
One great thing about the keto diet is that it is the only diet where you can be sure you follow it correctly ... by measuring your ketone levels.
And for glucose since different people will react very differently to various forms of carbohydrate (and associated foods) a CGM is always a must. (1)
by guerby - I thought this was going to be a non-invasive sugar-level device, but it looks like in fact the innovation here is that a popular CGM line can now do ketones?by petesergeant
- Seems to be the case, yeah
- non-invasive continuous blood sugar measurement is mired in patents and technical challenges. Turns out it's really difficult to disambiguate the absorption lines of glucose from other similarly shaped molecules when you're also dealing with untangling skin conductivity, transmissivity, sweat, inflammation etc.
- What about all the other wearable sensors likeby imglorp
- No FDA authorization I guessby jvanderbot
- These are the same CGM technologies (Dexcom = Stelo and Lingo = Libre), just aimed at the over the counter "health and fitness" market.
This is not verified info, but I would assume these are either A) the exact same device, just with different marketing B) "binned" production runs that did not meet the accuracy threshold for clinical/prescribed use, but are otherwise "good enough" for someone looking to healthmaxx.
by mapkkk - Those ‘only’ measure glucose levels. As the article says, this is the first approved device that monitors both ketone and glucose levels.by Someone
- The difference is that these only measure blood sugar, while the new system also measures ketones, of keto diet fame, which are leading indicators of a really dangerous situation called diabetic ketoacidosis. It's treatable with a hospitalized IV insulin drip, but can be avoided if you have some advance notice.
- just got the https://www.stelo.com/ device. Doesn't hurt at all to install under your arm. The applicator just does this big SNAP! when you press the button and the filament goes under your skin but it's painless and no blood, it's not a needle at all.by andrewfromx
- Ketones are only going to be present if you are exceptionally bad (very high carb diet) or exceptionally good (very low carb diet) at managing your blood sugar. It's not going to be terribly useful for your average diabetic who has fairly good control over their blood sugars.by umvi
- Parents of T1D children will certainly be happy about this.by marcod
- I've fairly good control over not running my car out of the road, yet I have airbags...by brohee
- I am a type 1 diabetic and this is not true, and an incredible oversimplification. And categorizing "very low carb" as "good" and "very high carb" as "bad" is bizarre and untrue. You can go into DKA on a low carb diet.
And low carb vs high carb for T1D is NOT a "good vs bad" equation to start with.
by Trasmatta - Which makes me think the market for these is diet-focused folk. Get the FDA to clear it on medical grounds for a specific usecase then sell it more broadly.
This already happens with CGMs. The bulk of the sales is with people who want them for lifestyle monitoring even though they're only medically cleared for diabetes use.
by dotBen - > your average diabetic who has fairly good control over their blood sugars
I think it's huge for diabetics. It's a mental toll for them. They hate having to constantly prick themselves to take readings. It's awkward, inconvenient and you have to do it multiple times to be sure you got a good reading. And worse of all, it's possible to forget to take a reading when you need to.
by als0 - This is not correct. When someone with type 1 has an illness they can develop ketones while their glucose appears stable within range. This is can lead to death. About once a year, when my son is sick, we need to monitor his ketones with finger pokes. When he has a stomach bug and can't eat, we have had to go to the hospital for a drip to allow us to give insulin and lower his ketone level. Having ketones on the CGM with glucose would have been very helpful.by sjhatfield
- A measure which acts as a high and a low pass filter on a band of less risk which can be monitored by other means, or subject to improvements on measurements and narrow the central zone?
Sounds bloody useful to me.
by ggm - In Europe there is ketone-only continuous meter SiBio that goes for 86 EUR for 2 weeks.
A healthmaxxer goes with CGM to the left arm; CKM to the right arm and gets his glucose and ketones data for roughly 200-300 EUR per month. I did consider running this out of curiosity.
Having 2-in-1 is much nicer. Esp if you are diabetic.
[1] https://www.sibiosensor.com/products/sibio-ks3-ckm-continuou...
by vilius - “Wearable” seems misleading. It looks like this is inserted into the arm like a cgm? Or am I looking at the wrong product?by bilsbie
- Yes.by bakul
- Yes, it's minimally invasive rather than noninvasiveby BrtByte
- It's a CGM with added ketone sensing.by degamad
- bet marathoners and ultra runners will start using this to improve performance
(don't have a problem with that, but it's predictable)
too bad it's not "wearable" like a watch but that might be coming eventually too since Garmin has a patent on it
* https://the5krunner.com/2026/02/06/garmin-non-invasive-blood...
(btw Fenix 9 launched today but it's same hardware as Fenix 8 and no glucose feature)
by ck2 - > to improve performance
How? Like, what is the mechanism where this is useful?
by loeg - I am curious how this will help. During training? During the actual race, the strategy is to eat a much as you can without puking.
- There has been talk, but as one who hangs around those circles I've not heard of anyone actually doing it. But I'm sure someone is. At the same time, what I'm reading is that CGM won't give a non-diabetic any actionable information.by mikestew
- Amateur cyclists already wear CGMs, and as a type 1 myself, they see mine and start asking all about CGMs. It must be so boring for them to worry about fluctuations between 85 and 120.by crisnoble
- I am a founder and researcher at https://replica.health and co-creator of https://metabo-net.org. This is super exciting and cant wait to see what we can learn once large datasets of overlapping ketones + glucose + insulin data become available.
One point I discussed with other researchers at ADA this year: in theory automated insulin delivery does not stand to benefit much from ketone sensors, since diabetic ketoacidosis will almost always be preceded by high blood glucose, which we already measure using the cgm. It will be interesting to see what this ketone data is actually used for.
by jablongo - Ketoacidosis can also happen with stable blood sugars if you don't get enough insulin. There were people rationing insulin due to cost and some of them died of DKA even if their blood glucose was perfectly stable. Another possibility of DKA with good blood sugars is when you are sick. I think this data would be helpful.