Want to be a cyborg?

Urmi Kothari, an energy trainer, has been wearing the Ultrahuman on and off for the past four months. PIcs/Anurag Ahire

Tracking your steps, heart rate and sleep using a fitness tracker is old hat. Now, dedicated fitness enthusiasts can track their blood glucose level live via their phone, thanks to Bengaluru-based startup Ultrahuman. As opposed to a traditional fitness tracker, the Ultrahuman M1 is an arm-mounted invasive sensor that users must poke into their arms via a spring loaded applicator, and then connect it to their phones. In exchange for sticking the sensor in, users get live updates on their blood glucose levels-seeing it spike or dip in real time. The app provides a "metabolic score", calculated based on glucose variability, average glucose score, and time in target zone. The score, marked out of 100, is reset every night, and users must try and keep it as high as possible.

Urmi Kothari, an energy coach and founder of Kinetic Living, has been using the device for the past four months. "The beauty of it is that you don't have to wear it every day," she says. "When I first got it, I wore it for a month to understand my lifestyle and how I could tweak and hack it, but unless you have a medical condition or are a serious athlete, there's no reason to wear it every day." Kothari found the device useful to point out stressors and little ways to reduce a blood glucose spike-such as taking a walk after a meal, or realising that she wasn't getting enough sleep on work retreats. "You can integrate changes into your lifestyle, but also let your body's intelligence guide and communicate with you," she stresses. The app also provides in-app coaches to help you understand the data it provides, and Kothari says this is crucial to getting the most out of the device - "It is important to have a context and be educated; look at your goals and then assess your need."

Mansi Zaveri started using the tracker to monitor her fitness and health, as both her parents were borderline diabetic

It's not just about using it blindly, as Dr Aashish Contractor, director of Rehab Medicine and Sports Medicine at Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, says: "it's about understanding your goals". "These sort of trackers are helpful to borderline diabetics and serious athletes, especially endurance athletes; regular consumers don't require them to improve their health and fitness," he says. "The trend is for people to pick up on a fad and forget the basics, but you don't need constant glucose monitoring to eat a healthy diet." Contractor, himself a marathon runner, says that there would be benefits to someone like him using it but only "as an add-on, once you have the basics in place."

However, some feel that it may help your basics as well. Tulip Rodriguez, a nutritionist and health coach, says that the Ultrahuman can be a "fantastic tool to understand how your body works. It can help understand which foods cause a spike in blood glucose and that information is gold when making a meal plan." Rodriguez also emphasises the importance of being able to process the data correctly: "For example, a fruit might cause a spike, but if I combine that fruit with a healthy serving of nuts and seeds, the spike won't be as sharp."

Tulip Rodriguez, Mohit Kumar and Dr Aashish Contractor

The Ultrahuman seems especially poised to help those serious about their health and fitness make small tweaks that can lead to big changes. That's what the founders are counting on. At least, that's the intention.

Mohit Kumar, Founder and CEO of Ultrahuman, says that he was inspired to make the product after working out with athletes. "These types of biosensors have existed for some time, but mainly for sports scientists and those with medical issues. They weren't customised for the fitness space," he says. The ‘metabolic score' on the app is a reflection of a user's ‘glucose metabolism', or how their body is processing glucose, rather than just their glucose value, a change Kumar explains is more useful from a fitness perspective, rather than a medical one.

The Ultrahuman M1's users, which is still in beta release, are at an average age of 34 from India's Tier 1 and 2 cities, Kumar explains. Around 30 per cent of their users already wear some kind of fitness wearable, but Kumar believes that the Ultrahuman is useful for anyone serious about their health. He compares using it for fitness as one does Google Maps for travel. Of course you can go on a trip without it, but the GPS makes everything more convenient and efficient. As technology advances, Kumar believes that more people will be able to access more information about their bodies, as sensors become cheaper and more efficient. Currently, a two-week trial period with one sensor - that needs to be replaced after two weeks - costs Rs 4,999, with a 12 week purchase costing Rs 24,999. The device is currently available in India and the UAE, with Ultrahuman launching their first piece of hardware later this week.

Mansi Zaveri, founder of kidsstoppress.com, started using the device because of its access to a wider amount of data points, and the fact that her parents were both borderline diabetic. "There is a tremendous choice of actionable things when you are using it," she says. "You are really conscious of what you are putting in your body and you feel accountable." Zaveri was already a health enthusiast before using the device, and says the application, while initially daunting, was easy-"[the prick was] like an ant bite."

This technology, and our ability to now monitor more and more of our statistics, is exciting for athletes and those looking for that extra edge, but for the ordinary user it might seem a touch invasive - the first few creeping steps before we morph into androids. It's no wonder Ultrahuman calls their users "Cyborgs".