Wearable Sweat Sensors Could Track Your Health by Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor | January 27, 2016 01:08pm ET

Wearable sensors could analyze and measure skin temperature, and levels of metabolites and electrolytes in human sweat. Credit: Der-Hsien Lien and Hiroki Ota View full size image

Blood tests allow doctors to peer into the human body to analyze people's health. But in the future, there may be a less invasive way to obtain valuable information about a person's health: wearable sensors that use human sweat to look for signs of disease.

Sweat is a rich source of chemical data that could help doctors determine what is happening inside the human body, scientists explained in a new study. Perspiration is loaded with molecules, ranging from simple electrically charged ions to more complex proteins, and doctors can use sweat to diagnose certain diseases, uncover drug use and optimize athletic performance, they said.

"Sweat is pretty attractive to target for noninvasive wearable sensors, since it's, of course, very easy to analyze — you don't have to poke the body to get it — and it has a lot of information about one's health in it," said study senior author Ali Javey, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. [Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies]

Commercially available wearable sensors, like the Fitbit and the Apple Watch, track users' physical activities and some vital signs, such asheart rate. However, they do not provide data about a user's health on a molecular level. Now, scientists say "smart" wristbands and headbands embedded with sweat sensors could sync data wirelessly in real time to smartphones using Bluetooth.

Previously, studies of sweat largely relied on perspiration collected off the body in containers that was later analyzed in a lab. Now, researchers have devised a soft, flexible, wearable sensor array to continuously monitor changes in four molecular components of sweatand to provide real-time tracking of a person's health.

These devices might one day help athletes track their performance and enable doctors to continuously monitor the health of their patients to better personalize their medication, the scientists said.

"This could help tell athletes to take liquids or warn them they are going through heat shock," Javey told Live Science.

The invention uses five sensors to simultaneously track levels of glucose, lactate, sodium and potassium, as well as skin temperature. This data is fed to a flexible board of microchips that processes these signals and uses Bluetooth to wirelessly transmit data to a smartphone. All of these electronics could be incorporated into either a wristband or headband.

"We have a smartphone app that plots the data from sweat in real time," Javey said.

The researchers tested the device on 26 men and women who pedaled indoors on stationary bikes or ran outdoors on tracks and trails. Sodium and potassium in sweat could help check for problems such as dehydration and muscle cramps. Glucose could help keep track of blood sugar levels. Lactate levels could indicate blood flow problems, and skin temperature could reveal overheating and other problems.

In addition, the skin temperature sensor helps adjust the chemical sensors to make sure they get proper readings, the researchers said. For instance, higher skin temperatures increase the electrical signals from glucose, which can make it look as if people are releasing more glucose in their sweat than they actually are.

Previous wearable sweat monitors could track only a single molecule at a time, which could generate misleading information, the researchers said. For example, if a lone sensor showed a drop in a molecule's level, it might not be because that molecule's level is actually falling in a person's sweat, but rather because sweating has stopped, the sensor has detached from the skin or the sensor is failing. The inclusion of multiple sensors could help shed light on what is happening to a person and the sensor array as a whole.

In the near future, the researchers hope to shrink the device's electronics down and boost the number of molecules it monitors. Such molecules could include heavy metals such as lead, which recently made news for appearing in dangerously high levels in the water of Flint, Michigan, Javey noted.

In the long term, the researchers hope to conduct large-scale studies with their device on many volunteers. The data such work gathers could help researchers better understand what levels of various molecules in sweat mean for athletic performance and human health, Javey said.

The researchers have filed a patent on their work, although they are not currently collaborating with anyone to commercialize the sensors, Javey said.

The scientists detailed their findings in the Jan. 28 issue of the journal Nature.-

INVENTOR

Ali Javey

Conexant Systems Distinguished Professor at UC Berkeley

San Francisco Bay Area

Higher Education

Current	UC Berkeley,  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Previous	UC Berkeley,  Harvard Society of Fellows
Education	Stanford University
Websites	Personal Website Summary Ali Javey received a Ph.D. degree in chemistry from Stanford University in 2005, and was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2005 to 2006. He then joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley where he is currently an associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. He is also a faculty scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he serves as the program leader of Electronic Materials (E-Mat). He is an associate editor of ACS Nano. He is the co-director of Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center (BSAC), and Bay Area PV Consortium (BAPVC).  Ali's research interests encompass the fields of chemistry, materials science, and electrical engineering. His work focuses on the integration of nanoscale electronic materials for various technological applications, including novel nanoelectronics, flexible circuits and sensors, and energy generation and harvesting. For his contributions to the field, he has received numerous awards, including APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (2011); Netexplorateur of the Year Award (2011); IEEE Nanotechnology Early Career Award (2010); Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (2010); Mohr Davidow Ventures Innovators Award (2010); National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research (2009); Technology Review TR35 (2009); NSF Early CAREER Award (2008); U.S. Frontiers of Engineering by National Academy of Engineering (2008); and Peter Verhofstadt Fellowship from the Semiconductor Research Corporation (2003). Experience Conexant Systems Distinguished Professor UC Berkeley July 2015 – Present (7 months) Professor UC Berkeley June 2014 – Present (1 year 8 months) Associate Professor UC Berkeley July 2010 – Present (5 years 7 months) Program Leader - Electronic Materials Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory July 2006 – Present (9 years 7 months) Assistant Professor UC Berkeley July 2006 – July 2010 (4 years 1 month) Junior Fellow Harvard Society of Fellows July 2005 – July 2006 (1 year 1 month) Education Stanford University PhD, Chemistry 2001 – 2005

10 Quick Scientific Facts that Will Blow Your mind

1.There is enough DNA in an average person’s body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back. 17 times

The human genome, the genetic code in each human cell, contains 23 DNA molecules each containing from 500 thousand to 2.5 million nucleotide pairs. DNA molecules of this size are 1.7 to 8.5 cm long when uncoiled, or about 5 cm on average. There are about 37 trillion cells in the human body and if you’d uncoil all of the DNA encased in each cell and put them end to end, then these would sum to a total length of 2×10¹⁴ meters or enough for 17 Pluto roundtrips (1.2×10¹³meters/Pluto roundtrip).

2. The average human body carries ten times more bacterial cells than human cells

It’s funny how we compulsively wash our hands, spray our countertops and grimace when someone sneezes near us—in fact, we do everything we can to avoid unnecessary encounters with the germ world. The truth of the matter is that each and every one of us is a walking petri dish! All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug or 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho. Don’t worry, though. Most of these bacteria are helpful; in fact, we couldn’t survive without them.

For one thing, bacteria produce chemicals that help us harness energy and nutrients from our food. Germ-free rodents have to consume nearly a third more calories than normal rodents to maintain their body weight, and when the same animals were later given a dose of bacteria, their body fat levels spiked, even if they didn’t eat any more than they had before. The gut bacteria is also very important to maintaining immunity. (image source)

3. It can take a photon 40,000 years to travel from the core of the sun to its surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of the way to Earth

A photon travels, on average, a particular distance, d, before being briefly absorbed and released by an atom, which scatters it in a new random direction.From the core to the sun’s surface (696,000 kilometers) where it can escape into space, a photon needs to make a huge number of drunken jumps. The calculation is a little tricky, but the conclusion is that a photon takes between many thousands and many millions of years to drunkenly wander to the surface of the Sun. In a way, the light that reaches us today is energy produced maybe millions of years ago. Amazing! (image source)

4. At over 2000 kilometers long, The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth

Coral reefs consist of huge numbers of individual coral polyps – soft-bodied, invertebrate animals – linked by tissue. The Great Barrier Reef is an interlinked system of about 3000 reefs and 900 coral islands, divided by narrow passages, just beneath the surface of the Coral Sea.Spanning more than 2000 km and covering an area of some 350 000 sq km, it is the largest living structure on Earth and the only one visible from space. But this fragile coral colony is beginning to crumble, battered by the effects of climate change, pollution and manmade disasters. (image source)

5. There are 8 times as many atoms in a teaspoonful of water as there are teaspoonfuls of water in the Atlantic ocean

A teaspoon of water (about 5 mL) contains 2×10²³ water molecules, but each water molecule is comprised of 3 atoms: two hydrogen and one oxygen. Moreover, if you’d laid down end to end each water molecule from a teaspoon full you’d end up with a length of 50 billion km or 10 times the width of our solar system. (image source)

6. The average person walks the equivalent of five times around the world in a lifetime

The average moderately active person take aound 7,500 step/day.  If you maintain that daily average and live until 80 years of age, you’ll have walked about 216,262,500 steps in your lifetime. Doing the math;  the average person with the average stride living until 80 will walk a distance of around 110,000 miles.  Which is the equivalent of walking about 5 times around the Earth, right on the equator. (image source)

7. When Helium is cooled to almost absolute zero (-460°F or -273°C), the  lowest temperature possible, it becomes a liquid with surprising  properties: it flows against gravity and will start running up and over the lip of a glass container!

We all know helium as a gas for blowing up balloons and making people talk like chipmunks, but what most people don’t know is that it comes in two distinct liquid states, one of which is borderline creepy. When helium is just a few degrees below its boiling point of –452 degrees Fahrenheit (–269 degrees Celsius) it will suddenly be able to do things that other fluids can’t, like dribble through molecule-thin cracks, climb up and over the sides of a dish, and remain motionless when its container is spun. No longer a mere liquid, the helium has become a superfluid—a liquid that flows without friction.

“If you set [down] a cup with a liquid circulating around and you come back 10 minutes later, of course it’s stopped moving,” says John Beamish, an experimental physicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Atoms in the liquid will collide with one another and slow down. “But if you did that with helium at low temperature and came back a million years later,” he says, “it would still be moving. (image source)

8. If Betelgeuse would explode transiting from the red super giant stage to supernova then our sky would light continuously for two months. It can happen anytime, within a couple of thousand years, tomorrow or even now

Betelgeuse lies some 430 light-years from Earth. Yet it’s already one of the brightest stars in Earth’s sky. The reason is that Betelgeuse is a supergiant star – the largest kind of stars in the Universe. Betelgeuse has a luminosity about 10,000 times that of the Sun and its radius is calculated to be about 370 times that of the sun. If it were positioned at the center of our sun, its radius would extend out past the radius of Mars. Because it’s near the end of its lifetime, Betelgeuse is likely to explode into a supernova. (image source)

9. An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body

You have about 5 litres of blood in your body (at least most people do) and the average heart pumps about 70 ml of blood out with each beat. Also, a healthy heart beats around 70 times a minute. So, if you multiply the amount of blood that the heart can pump by the number of beats in a minute, you actually get about 4.9 litres of blood, which is almost your whole body’s worth of blood. In just a minute, the hearts pumps the entire blood volume around your body. (image source)

10. The known universe is made up of 50,000,000,000 galaxies. There are between 100,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 stars in a normal galaxy. In the Milky Way alone there might be as many 100,000,000 planets. Still think you’re alone?

source:http://www.zmescience.com/