Assess Your Ketosis With Breath Ketones
Michel Lundell
Michel is a Swedish engineer that got epilepsy. Medication changed his personality and he found the ketogenic diet as an alternative. In the process of adopting the diet and creating a lifestyle in ketosis, he invented a breath ketone analyzer. While developing the device, the relationship between the different ketones was analyzed. Michel will talk about the difference between breath and blood ketones.
Michel Lundell, driven by a personal journey managing epilepsy, explores the ketogenic
A ketogenic lifestyle is not just about food; it is how you live and how you work. Ketones are a better fuel for your brain than glucose is. You get mental clarity, stable blood sugar, and you don’t get dips in your energy level.
Summary
- Ketosis involves three ketones: acetoacetate (primary energy), beta-hydroxybutyrate (stored in blood), and acetone, which is released and measured via the breath.
- Breath testing for acetone is a practical lifestyle tool because it is painless, allows for frequent daily measurements, and indicates the real-time level of ketosis.
- Measuring ketones via urine or blood has drawbacks; urine strips are affected by hydration, while blood tests are expensive, invasive, and can be skewed by nutrient deficiencies.
- Therapeutic ketosis (above 30 ppm) is the level where significant weight loss occurs and medical conditions like epilepsy, cancer, and narcolepsy are managed.
- A ketogenic lifestyle offers benefits beyond medical treatment, including mental clarity, stable blood sugar, improved athletic endurance, and better muscle recovery.
Article
Assess Your Ketosis With Breath Ketones And The Ketogenic Lifestyle
A Swedish Engineer’s Case For Measuring Metabolism In Real Time
At Biohacker Summit 2018 Tallinn, held on 15 September in Tallinn, Estonia, Michel Lundell took the stage with a presentation that was part personal testimony, part technical briefing, and part manifesto for a life lived in ketosis.
Lundell, a Swedish engineer, did not arrive at the ketogenic diet through fashion or fitness culture. He came to it after being diagnosed with epilepsy, and after medication, he said, altered not only his health but his personality. The search that followed was not for a short-term intervention or a quick reduction in weight. It was, in his telling, an attempt to reclaim a workable life.
“Finding a ketogenic lifestyle was not a quick fix to lose a few kilos; it was about finding a way to be in ketosis most of the time to reclaim my life,” Lundell said.
That distinction shaped the entire talk. Ketosis, as Lundell presented it, was not merely a diet protocol. It was a system of living, one that extended into work, fasting, supplementation, social life and the constant negotiation of everyday habits.
The Promise Of Ketosis
Lundell began with the physiology. Ketosis, he said, emerges when insulin and glycogen levels are low enough to push the liver into converting fatty acids into ketones. Those ketones then become an alternative fuel source, particularly for the brain, which he described as better served by ketones than by glucose under these conditions.
He broke the process into three compounds. Acetoacetate, he said, is the primary ketone body and the one most directly involved in energy production. Beta-hydroxybutyrate, commonly associated with blood ketone testing, functions more like a stored buffer in circulation. Acetone, meanwhile, is released in the breath as a byproduct of fat metabolism.
The distinction mattered because Lundell’s central argument rested on it. If acetoacetate reflects active ketone production, and acetone arises from that process, then breath acetone, he argued, offers a more immediate window into the actual depth of ketosis.
Why Breath, Not Blood Or Urine
For many in the audience, the more familiar tools would have been urine strips and blood ketone meters. Lundell was notably sceptical of both.
Urine testing, he argued, is compromised by hydration. Drink more water and the results dilute. Drink less and readings may appear stronger without necessarily reflecting a deeper metabolic state. For those who become more adapted to ketosis over time, he added, urine may also become less useful as the body grows more efficient at handling ketones.
Blood testing, while more precise on paper, drew a different criticism. It is invasive, costly and, in Lundell’s account, limited by what exactly it measures. Beta-hydroxybutyrate in the blood can rise or fall for reasons that do not straightforwardly map onto metabolic performance. Nutrient deficiencies or impaired utilisation, he suggested, can skew the picture.
Breath testing, by contrast, was the tool he championed both as inventor and advocate. The appeal was practical as much as scientific. It was painless. It allowed repeated measurements throughout the day. And because acetone is exhaled continuously, it could, in his view, reveal real-time changes in ketotic state far better than methods that rely on blood or urine snapshots.
There was, he acknowledged, a technique to it. The most accurate reading comes from air deeper in the lungs, where acetone concentration is higher. Users therefore need to exhale fully into the sensor. The process is less effortless than it sounds, but once mastered, he suggested, it becomes a powerful daily feedback mechanism.
A Lifestyle Measured In Moments
The larger case Lundell made was that ketosis should be understood not as a binary but as a shifting landscape. A person might drift up or down throughout the day depending on meals, fasting, exercise and sleep. The ability to test frequently, he argued, turns ketosis from an abstract goal into something measurable and manageable.
In that sense, the breath analyser was presented not just as a device but as a behavioural tool. Test upon waking. Test before eating. Test after eating. Test before bed. Build a map of how life itself affects metabolism.
This was where Lundell’s engineer’s mindset was most visible. The body, in his framing, was not to be guessed at. It was to be observed, tracked and tuned.
Nutritional Ketosis Versus Therapeutical Ketosis
Perhaps the sharpest distinction in the talk was between what Lundell called nutritional ketosis and therapeutical ketosis.
Nutritional ketosis, he said, occupies the lower end of the spectrum. In that state, a person is still running partly on fat while consuming enough calories to maintain energy balance. Insulin still rises enough to store some incoming energy, and that naturally limits the depth of ketosis.
The real turning point, Lundell argued, begins above 30 parts per million on breath acetone measurements.
“Therapeutical ketosis is where things really happen. This is when your glycogen and glucose are low and your ketosis is high. This is where you feel euphoric and truly want to be.”
This higher zone, he said, was where significant fat loss occurred and where ketogenic metabolism showed its strongest therapeutic effects, particularly for conditions such as epilepsy, cancer and narcolepsy. It was also the state he implied had transformed his own life.
Beyond Treatment, Toward Performance
Lundell was careful not to confine ketosis to illness. He widened the frame to include productivity, endurance and recovery, echoing the broader ethos of the Biohacker Summit itself.
Ketones, he said, offer a more stable supply of energy than glucose, reducing the crashes that often accompany carbohydrate-heavy eating. The result is steadier cognition and longer-lasting focus.
“Ketones provide a stable energy level that prevents dips. Athletes use it to prime their bodies to use fat as fuel so they can recover better and maintain focus throughout a race,” he said.
He spoke of the body’s deep energy reserves with the evangelism of someone who had tested the theory on himself. “I have probably eighty thousand calories of energy available in my body. I could live on water for weeks because I have primed my cells to tap into fat as fuel.”
For athletes, Lundell argued, the implications were significant. A fat-adapted body preserves glycogen for decisive bursts of effort while relying on fat for the long middle stretch. Recovery, he said, may also improve because available ketones can reduce the need to break down muscle protein after exertion.
His examples reached into elite sport. “Formula One racers use a ketogenic diet to stay focused for hours while driving at incredible speeds. They cannot afford an energy crash just because they did not have a snack.”
The Human Story Beneath The Data
What gave Lundell’s talk its force was not only the metabolic theory but the human urgency behind it. This was not a presentation delivered from the cool distance of trend analysis. It was grounded in the biography of a man who had once been told his condition was permanent and that medication was the only path forward.
Instead, he described building an alternative life around ketosis, then inventing a device to make that life more legible.
In that sense, Assess Your Ketosis With Breath Ketones was about more than a sensor. It was about autonomy. About the idea that chronic illness can drive not only adaptation but innovation. And about a recurring desire within the biohacking world to replace blunt averages with personal measurement.
At Biohacker Summit 2018 Tallinn, Michel Lundell offered a vision of ketogenic living that was exacting, data-driven and intensely personal. For some in the room, it may have sounded like a niche metabolic strategy. For Lundell, it was nothing less than a way back to himself.
Part of Biohacker Summit 2018 Tallinn