As ever with social media, viral ads pop up to try and sell you things. This one was a little more interesting than most. A continuous Ketone Monitor, no less, from a company called SiBio.
Obviously being a sucker for a new sensor, I jumped right in and ordered a month’s worth, at $61 for two sensors. Substantially discounted, apparently, to the normal price.
Having received them at the start of July, I’ve now applied the first sensor and am testing it out, before considering running a comparison with ketone testing strips.
Who are SiBio?
SiBio describe themselves as “an innovative company with medical active implant and medical artificial intelligence research and development as its core technology. It is an innovator and leader in the field of biomonitoring, focusing on serving people in the consumer sector, dedicated to improving people’s lifestyles and understanding their physical state, and discovering more body secrets.”
They were founded in Shenzhen in 2015.
How does it work?
It appears very similar to the CGM sensors we know and love. The box everything comes in is similar sized to the Libre2, which contains a two part applicator that’s very similar to the Libre system.
Once applied, the sensor looks like any other sensor. It’s very flat, but has a similar size to a Dexcom G6. It’s not got a large sticky patch, so it remain so be seen whether it lasts a full 14 days. The box also didn’t contain an additional overlay.
Other than that, there’s little difference to what you’d get with a CGM in terms of physical form, and, I assume, function, other than a substrate that generates an electrical signal with the presence of ketones instead of glucose.
And the app?
I think it’s fair to describe the app as fairly simple. It’s targeted at those who are following a ketogenic diet and is designed to tell you when you’re in ketosis. I’ll be giving it some very low carb time to see what comes out.
There doesn’t appear to be a way to extract data from the app, and frustratingly, it’s not a continuous monitor in the sense that it doesn’t appear to always receive data, although the ads suggest it is collected and transmitted every five minutes.
As far as I can tell, the idea is that you open it up and it downloads the last eight hours of ketone data from the sensor while giving you a reading right now. The Bluetooth connection options don’t include an “Always connected” option, which is somewhat frustrating.
I’ve also found that reopening the app often doesn’t result in a reconnect, and I need to click on the downloaded APK and re-install when I want to check readings.
Having said all that, if you open the app every couple of hours, it appears “real-time”.
On top of that, the app isn’t in the playstore, which also raises security and update concerns.
Not a diabetes monitoring device…
The pseudo-continuous data and the set up of the app are clearly designed around nutrition rather than medical monitoring. There are, therefore, no alarms built in to the system.
There is also no notification of the current reading in android notifications, so it’s not possible to allow an app to track those.
Is it accurate?
I don’t know yet. It will need some testing against ketone strips, and I need to acquire those. That and a couple of weeks of low carb should give some indication of how well it works and whether it’s accurate against the blood tests.
From a nutritional ketosis perspective, does it even matter if you know the number? As long as you’re in range and not too high, I’m not sure that it does!
Hi, thank you for this precious review! I see a potential in women with gestational diabetes as they should strictly avoid ketonaemia. Moreover in some people with type 1 diabetes who would benefit from taking SGLT-2 drugs due to renal/heatt failure and should monitor ketones not to fall into dangerous normoglycaemic ketoacidosis. Another use: dealing with say milder ketoacidosis at home, knowing if that needs ER attention if getting worse or is improving during home care.
In fact, this Shenzhen-based company has a CGM product in China that looks identical and has been approved by Chinese regulators. It is currently Abbott Libre’s main competitor in China. I guess they are trying to establish their brand in the UK market with the CKM product, but in addition to regulatory hurdles, they may also face patent conflicts with Abbott when bringing CGM to the UK market. You can do some teardown after your CKM ends and will find the sensor design is almost identical to Libre.
https://www.sisensing.com/
While I am a techie and overall computer nerd, I don’t see many use cases for this device. The only one that comes to mind would be newly diagnosed T1D. Probably because I was doing ketones in the test tube back as a kid before going to the keto sticks about 5-7 years into this journey and keto sticks are not an inconvenient way to check.
I think there are a number of use cases that this tech might be beneficial for, assuming, of course, that it’s accurate!
Potentially it will allow warning of euglycaemic high ketones when using something like SGLT-2 inhibitors (which is a known risk), plus other ketone questions.
Essentially, CKM would be very helpful in research into timing of ketone production in relation to insulin reduction, but also ketogenic diet crossover periods, and allow people with T1D to get real world visuals of what’s really a standard background levelmof ketones.
I think it will provide insights that we can’t think of yet!
Im keto and I can tell you , ketone level is not that constant and predictable . If you take a blood stick reading without context it could mean almost nothing !
for weight loss – or better said “body fat loss’ – this is good way to see how much you are in “fat-burning-mode”.
you have excellent feedback about whatever you are doing or puttin in your mouth.
but you might do this as well with a continuous glucose monitor.
with the ketone meter, you would chase high numbers to lose body fat or use a glucose meter and chase low blood glucose numbers.
however. getting a value every 5 minutes is great for optimizing the level of activity, food and drinks, stress etc.
I was testing a unit and it caught on the back of the lounge and pulled out ski that was the end of that. I feed back to the company that they should have a larger adhesives that went over the unit to make it harder to catch on things.
The app was pretty basic and hard to read as the graph is tiny and in soft colours. I suggested to them that they needed to redesign the app to make it easier to read by using more contrasting colours and being able to pinch and zoom.
It is useful for monitoring ketosis and seeing what effect exercise, fasting, different meals have. I’m not sure about accuracy as I only used it for five days before catching it on the lounge. However, despite being really strict on carbs and practising intermittent fasting of 16 -20 hours and exercising every day, the highest ketone reading I got was 1.8mmol which seems pretty low.
I just have it the third day on my arm and it works fine.
I am using it for losing weight but also to reduce my insulin resistance (i am kind of pre-diabetic).
It works fine and the values seems plausible. I am happy with it because I now can see every response regarding my habbits.
What I can say now is, that it makes a huge difference, if I am sleeping, laying around on the couch, sitting at work or standing and walking.
So it makes sense to be mindful about the degree of being sedentary or active.
Also when going out and drinking alcohol it makes a significant difference if drinking wine or beer etc.
All these observations will help me to optimize my life to lose more weight.
And of course this is a vicious cycle, the more weight, the less energy, the less motivation for walking etc.
So for every kilogram of body fat (in contrast of just “body weight”), my energy will increase and insulin resistance will go down.
At the end a blood sugar measurement device would be ok for me too.
For weight loss it does not make a huge difference to chase high ketone numbers or low blood sugar numbers.
But for the sake of science, I will test this again with two sensors. One SiBio ketone sensor and one Freestyle Libre on the other arm at the same time.
What I don’t know so far is, how I can export data from the SiBio App. I have to check on the file system of my phone if I can download a file an import it with Excel or something else.
So far I am happy with it.
@stefan thanks for comments, I sound similar to you and am going to experiment. I’ve always appreciated the (perceived?) accuracy of the freestyle optimum ketone meter I use during fasting periods and feel the numerical indicator does reflect my state. I’ll also test against a cgm on the other arm. Would be very interested to hear your own findings subsequently.
Any update on data-collection for validation? Particularly over a great range, from the times you estimate below 1.5 mM to the times you think maybe you’re over 2 or 3 mM even!?
Thanks for considering!