Isn’t that what life is? An ongoing experiment?

Every now and then, there are enough disturbing changes in my health to make me reexamine what is happening and act. I would say that stress precipitates most of the changes, and that a lot of the stress is unavoidable. Still, to not pay attention and consider taking action that might help is, well, it’s stupid.

That is why I sometimes spend money that I would have thought excessive at another time in my life. The difference now is that I know how much it costs to deal with chronic illness and how limiting it is when my body succumbs to things gone awry. Health care is expensive. I would rather spend now to avoid spending later.

The “thing” I’ve done now is called Lumen. It’s getting a lot of coverage on Facebook, and the marketing is extensive. It’s a small device that measures CO2 in the breath and tells what fuel the body is burning at the time of testing. It helps me know when I’m burning fat instead of carbohydrates. An accompanying app on my phone helps me understand what I need to do to switch from one fuel to another, and when are the best times to do that for optimum health.

Last year (or maybe the year before – I’ve lost track of time.) I experimented with Noom, and learned a lot about metabolism, weight loss, and the psychology of eating. It worked well for me but I gradually stopped using the platform because I felt my good habits had been formed. Then came the illness and death of my husband, the birth of my grandchild, lots of travel, lots of decisions. My good habits took a back seat. Comfort eating kind of took over.

Lumen is very similar to what I learned in Noom, but now I’m not guessing whether I’m in a fat burning mode. I know, because of the Lumen device.

I thought it might be helpful to others and valuable to myself as I look back, to record my experience with Lumen, so here we go.

More tomorrow.