Neat! I've been thinking about this lately. If you had accurate CO2 and O2 measurements, you could calculate how many milligrams of fat you are burning during exercise.
Portable replacement for a $60k VO2 Max machine
11–20 of 112 posts
Re: Portable replacement for a $60k VO2 Max machine
#12Sometimes I wonder if the way to bypass the insane regulations around medical devices is to just publish them online for anyone to build themselves. Sure I won't have the minutes detail of million dollar medical equipment, but maybe I don't need all that precision, or maybe that's better than having no access at all to the measurements at all
I think this would really be great. The extra regulations of the FDA are showing to be more and more of a burden as years go on (let's not get into their corruption). Something like a chip and a device sold separately but trivially put together. I myself ran into this problem when trying to buy a blood lactate meter as an American, which can be trivially purchased all across Europe and Asia.
Re: Portable replacement for a $60k VO2 Max machine
#13First comment on page. >My wife is an Ironman as well (Muskoka, Tremblant and Penticton). . She's been using Zwift since last year. Great way to train btw and great idea but. My concern would be a collapsed lung(s) if this wasn't calibrated correctly. To each their own, but stressing your lungs and diaphragm this much isn't a great idea. In a lab they can at least make sure you don't hurt yourself.
How would you get a collapsed lung from using this? And how does its calibration influence whether you get a collapsed lung? This device doesn't interfere with inspiration, and a large breath of air inflates your alveoli.
Re: Portable replacement for a $60k VO2 Max machine
#14First comment on page. >My wife is an Ironman as well (Muskoka, Tremblant and Penticton). . She's been using Zwift since last year. Great way to train btw and great idea but. My concern would be a collapsed lung(s) if this wasn't calibrated correctly. To each their own, but stressing your lungs and diaphragm this much isn't a great idea. In a lab they can at least make sure you don't hurt yourself.
How could it cause one’s lungs to collapse? Isn’t the idea of measuring VO2 max that a tight seal is formed and all input and output is measured for O2 and CO2? It isn’t pressurizing or depressurizing.
Re: Portable replacement for a $60k VO2 Max machine
#15Sometimes I wonder if the way to bypass the insane regulations around medical devices is to just publish them online for anyone to build themselves. Sure I won't have the minutes detail of million dollar medical equipment, but maybe I don't need all that precision, or maybe that's better than having no access at all to the measurements at all
What are the insane aspects of the regulations?
Most of them are written in blood.
Re: Portable replacement for a $60k VO2 Max machine
#16The title should be changed to reflect the title used in the article. "Accurate VO2 Max for Zwift and Strava" Especially considering the following: > Physiology labs that are normally used for testing VO2 max cost upwards of $60,000 and are certainly not portable. They have sensors that measure the same things only on a much finer level.
The person who wrote the article must've had a specific audience in mind, so they chose one title.
The person who posted the article here must've had HN's audience in mind, so they chose a different title.
Titles convey ultra-dense summary of the content, so there can be many titles appropriate for any given article. The purpose of the title is to attract _attention_ of the audience who the title-writer thinks would find it most interesting.
The reason someone writes an article, or posts in a forum, is to spread an idea, or a message, and have other like-minded people, or people who may find the info useful, read it. Exception: content written for commercial/monetary gains has no goal other than grabbing eyeballs, to make more money.
So, yes, it's okay to edit titles, but only if they're egregiously misleading, or inappropriate, or if there's a better title to convey the summary and attract the attention of folks in the said forum.
Context (as to why this request of yours triggered me): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25093563
Re: Portable replacement for a $60k VO2 Max machine
#17Sometimes I wonder if the way to bypass the insane regulations around medical devices is to just publish them online for anyone to build themselves. Sure I won't have the minutes detail of million dollar medical equipment, but maybe I don't need all that precision, or maybe that's better than having no access at all to the measurements at all
What are the devices you have in mind? It doesn't seem like the intersection between "people with biomedical engineering skills" and "people who need treatment limited by the expense of the equipment" would be that large. I suppose I can imagine a sort of shadow economy of cheap medical treatment on home-built equipment, but surely the providers would be uninsurable and sued into oblivion at the first mistake.
Ones that immediately comes to my mind are ultrasound,and hearing aids. If they were unregulated there would be cheap OTC devices available.
Re: Portable replacement for a $60k VO2 Max machine
#18This is really great. For those who aren't familiar with what these machines can do, the calculation of an athlete's Vo2 max really isn't all that useful. However, a breakdown of the fat and carbohydrate calories burned at various efforts can be incredibly useful for helping an athlete learn how to fuel correctly for performance over distance.
I'm not a physiologist or physician (and I'm sure what I'm about to say may be max cringe to the bonafide experts that are around), but my basic understanding is that when expending effort, you burn calories from fat stores and from glycogen stores. Glycogen stores store around 2000 calories, and expending one's glycogen stores results in hitting "the wall" - your body simply doesn't have any fuel to proceed. Your fat stores, on the other hand, provide access to tens of thousands of calories.
People are generally fat-inefficient - any effort immediately biases towards consumption of glycogen. And when you're out, that's it. Your day is done. So knowing the rate you're burning carbohydrate calories can inform an athlete how often and how much to fuel.
Some people are born "fat-efficient", meaning they can access their fat stores easier. Fat efficiency can also be improved through low-intensity endurance training with improved diet. So athletes will periodically do a VO2 test to stay in-tune with how their body is using the fuel sources available to it.
Many years ago I did an Ironman (Couer d'Alene) and a Vo2 test indicated I needed to aggressively consume calories (at the effort I was planning to ride) on the bike. After all, you have to get off the bike nutritionally prepared and hydrated to run a marathon. So that's what I did, and I had a good day considering I really wasn't all that fit.
Endurance and ultradistance events aren't really tests of toughness. They are science experiments. It's all about figuring out how to take one's fitness and stretch it over the distance of the event.
One additional note - there are machines much less expensive than 60k available, but they are still pretty expensive (in the thousands).
Re: Portable replacement for a $60k VO2 Max machine
#19This is really great. For those who aren't familiar with what these machines can do, the calculation of an athlete's Vo2 max really isn't all that useful. However, a breakdown of the fat and carbohydrate calories burned at various efforts can be incredibly useful for helping an athlete learn how to fuel correctly for performance over distance. I'm not a physiologist or physician (and I'm sure what I'm about to say ma…
A friend of mine does keto and after running a marathon reported that they did not experience "the wall". Presumably this is because they were using fat to begin with, not after mile 15 or whatever.
Re: Portable replacement for a $60k VO2 Max machine
#20First comment on page. >My wife is an Ironman as well (Muskoka, Tremblant and Penticton). . She's been using Zwift since last year. Great way to train btw and great idea but. My concern would be a collapsed lung(s) if this wasn't calibrated correctly. To each their own, but stressing your lungs and diaphragm this much isn't a great idea. In a lab they can at least make sure you don't hurt yourself.
I see where you're coming from I assume that you are talking about the device resistance when breathing in and you're worried that the adhesion between the lung sac and the cavity wall breaks.
You can pull a pretty good vacuum with just your lungs, so I'm not overly worried about that. And pressure is not a problem unless you have a weak spot in your lung.
But still, it's a good point to make and maybe the author could measure the flow resistance in both directions and optimize for that to ensure that it never becomes a problem, even in people that might have a hidden defect.