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LVL Hydration Monitor tells just how dehydrated you really are

LVL hydration monitor wristband and activity tracker
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LVL hydration monitor wristband and activity tracker

After suffering a stroke due to dehydration, BSX Insight founder and CEO Dustin Freckleton ended up with temporary partial paralysis and a three month stretch of physical therapy learning to walk again. Immediate medical attention kept it from being worse, thankfully, but it was an eye opener. The silver lining was the creation of LVL, the world’s first wearable to measure your hydration level.

While it may not translate to the “party trick” realm, the new LVL Hydration Monitor keeps tabs on your internal water levels and lets you know when it’s time to imbibe. For athletes, it could mean the difference between sailing across the finish line and cramping or worse. For everyone else, it’s a simple reminder that we probably all need to drink more water throughout the day to perform better mentally and emotionally, and it’s as simple as wearing a fitness tracker…and fortunately it measures your activity, too…

The project opened up to early bird sales on Kickstarter just a couple days ago and has already blown past their goal, so it’s funded, but you can still nab one for $99, more than half off the planned $199 MSRP. Chip in and you’ll get a device that measures your hydration levels in real time, including sweat rates to show what you’re losing. It then combines that data with your heart rate from the built in sensors, your activity level and calculated caloric expenditure during both rest and activity to make hydration and refueling recommendations. It even adds in mood, sleep and performance analytics, suggesting how much you need to drink to optimize all three.

LVL hydration monitor wristband and activity tracker

First off, why would you need this? If Gatorade commercials are to be believed, as little as 1-2% dehydration can result in significant declines in athletic performance. But, BSX says, we’re pretty lousy judges of our own hydration levels and efforts. And for the general population, it can affect mood, sleep, intellectual performance and even weight – when we’re dehydrated we may think we’re hungry and overeat, but in reality we were probably just thirsty.

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So, how does it work? Rather than rely on green lights like current wrist based HR monitors, they developed Red lights that operate at Near Infrared (NIR) wavelengths that see deeper into your arm to measure hydration levels. The bonus is that they also measure your heart rate at a claimed 8x to 10x more accurately than the green lights. The device and its prototypes were tested on more than 250 people and proven to be as accurate as urine, body weight and blood tests, meeting or exceeding the requirements for first responders and the military. Heart rate measurement claims to be within 2.7bpm of actual, compared to a claimed +/-14bpm with other devices, which would make it the most accurate wrist based HR monitor on the market.

The basic data is shown on the band’s OLED screen, and it connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth LE to show more through their app. Battery life is four days with continuous activity, sleep, HR and hydration monitoring. It’s water resistant to IP67 spec and takes just two hours to charge. The app is available for iOS and Android, and their program is an open API, so third party developers can use the info to integrate LVL into their own apps.

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It’s available with brown or black leather straps or a silicone sport band. Share the Kickstarter campaign on social media and you can get a limited edition teal band, too. Check it out on Kickstarter, and check our article on the BSX Insight lactate monitor to complete the athletic performance measurements.

OneLVL.com

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29 Comments
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Rowan
Rowan
7 years ago

Does it tell time too?

Antipodean_eleven
7 years ago

Now THIS I can use… Very smart and more useful than many could possibly imagine.

Antipodean_eleven
7 years ago

… as I read in a military survival manual once, by the time you are thirsty, it’s too late.

Rob King
7 years ago

Myth: If you’re thirsty, you’re already dehydrated.
Fact: It’s not too late. In fact, thirst is the body’s way of telling you to drink water, and you’re not at risk of becoming dangerously dehydrated the minute you feel a little parched. “When you get thirsty, the deficit of water in your body is trivial — it’s a very sensitive gauge,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, told HuffPost in January. “It might be only a 1 percent reduction in your overall water. And it just requires drinking some fluid.”

Tom
Tom
7 years ago
Reply to  Rob King

Agree 100%, but not sure if this is true in a race environment, when I’m distracted to the max. Dehydration is so darn critical in endurance racing, I’m tempted to give this a shot. Thoughts?

Larry Miller (@Laxon3)
Reply to  Tom

For training alone, to learn how your body acts in different humidities etc would be great. I will be getting one after the price comes down.

Antipodean_eleven
7 years ago
Reply to  Rob King

Maybe. I have a pretty high tolerance for not drinking, ie. I can drink very little and not feel it any ill effects. Not a good trait and unless I make the effort to drink, I sometimes won’t. It’s caught me out more than once, resulting in dehydration without realising it. Soooo, in my case the ‘myth’ is very true, as by the time I am thirsty, it is usually past the point of being a slight hint.

FWIW, and no offence to Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, I’ll go by what the SAS put in their training manuals; as my case proves, not everyone’s the same so don’t wait for the “sensitive gauge” to kick in.

augsburg57
7 years ago

The concept is good, but the video is over the top – the device sounds like it will cure cancer and solve world hunger.

Luiggi
Luiggi
7 years ago
Reply to  augsburg57

Recipe for a successful Kickstarter campaign:
– Create a story where the “inventor” has gone through a life-threatening situation.
– Show how that very situation motivated him to create a device which would prevent It.
– Include the possibility of said device sharing your personal records vía social networks. It doesn’t matter if the device monitors your speed, blood sugar level, poop frequency, etc.

jlg
jlg
7 years ago
Reply to  Luiggi

Luiggi, do you have evidence that Dustin Freckleton create a story where he has gone through a life-threatening situation ?

Andy
Andy
7 years ago

Or you could just drink more water?

Dan
Dan
7 years ago
Reply to  Andy

Shhh, that’s to simple and doesn’t require a computer to think for you. Next they’ll make a device to tell you you’re hungry because eating every 45-60 min is difficult. Remember once you feel hungry it’s to late, you’re already dead.

Robin
Robin
7 years ago
Reply to  Andy

The problem is that dehydration can be insidious, and it’s not at all uncommon for someone to miss the signs of dehydration.

Dan
Dan
7 years ago
Reply to  Robin

Insidious, horrible movie. If you can remember to look at a watch you can remember to drink. Unless of course this has type of alarm to notify you.

Dan
Dan
7 years ago
Reply to  Dan

Unless of course this has a type of alarm to notify you.

Ron
Ron
7 years ago
Reply to  Dan

So short-sighted. My wife has become dehydrated to the point of medical problems on numerous occasions. She just doesn’t get thirsty like other people do. To top it all off she has ADHD so keeping things like this on her mind all day is very difficult for her. And yea, I used to think ADHD/ADD were bs until I married her and really see how her brain works.

Open your mind up. Not everyone’s body is like yours. What is simple for you may be difficult for someone else. The world has too many people with your condescending, know it all attitude.

$dmoney$
$dmoney$
7 years ago

The display should turn dark yellow when your getting dehydrated. This way it’s consistent with my other hydration meter. Just sayin.

Dno
Dno
7 years ago

Does it comes with Warrenty?

Dno
Dno
7 years ago

Warranty..

tw
tw
7 years ago
Mike
Mike
7 years ago

Talked to a buddy one the engineering team a quantified self/healthcare setup and he believes this is a PR move than anything else. Why? 50K goal. That’s how Kickstarter is working these days. And with coverage here and dcrainmaker it appears to have worked.

J
J
7 years ago

Hmn

Flatbiller
Flatbiller
7 years ago

Is this similar to the device that you attach to your handlebars and notifies you if you forgot to wear your helmet?

durianrider
7 years ago

If you are not passing clear urine every 2-3 hours then you need to drink more because your blood volume is dropping now and you are literally reverse blood doping.

Drinking to thirst is definitely the WORST hydration tip one can give. It is already too late by then and your watts have dropped right off and you are about to get dropped.

If your urine is yellow or straw then you simply need to drink more.

clutterbuster
7 years ago

I recently woke up at a friends house, face planted onto the floor in the bathroom. She managed to get me up and head to the bedroom. I face planted, out cold again. EMTs … severe dehydration. I drink continuously … but I was in a different climate … not sweating, but definitely a hotter place than home. Took a day and a ton of IV fluids to get me back up to speed. This is worth it’s weight if it works. It’s going to be a pretty good Hosp bill … (out of network, etc.) This is a whole lot less expensive… even for the NOT so athletic folk out there.

Joan
Joan
7 years ago

I definitely am interested in this and could be a life saver. I drink a lot and still have gone to med tents after races dehydrated and gone to hospital twice ! It’s very scary when you can’t move your feet/hands and they are hurting badly. After iv’s and cooled down feel better but very expensive!

Brett
Brett
7 years ago

Having nearly killed myself doing a 160k bike ride a few months ago due to being dehydrated, if this works half as well as it looks like it does, it’s amazing

Michael Soldwisch
7 years ago

Does the heart rate monitor transmit with ANT+ wireless?

Deandra Dsouza
6 years ago

Has anyone brought this? I’m looking for a product review.

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