as you probably know by now I've been starting to use the ketogenic diet as a potential means of treating and managing my schizo affector disorder part of being on the ketogenic diet means that your body is getting into ketosis and producing what are called ketones which are used as energy and fuel for your brain and your body but it seems like a bit of an abstract concept you know how do I know if my body is producing enough ketones how do I know what levels of ketones work best for my body or what levels I need to be producing or levels my body is producing and so a really handy tool that's available is Ketone monitors and there's a variety of different kinds of these monitors that you can get and so we tried out four of the different kinds the main different kinds that you can use to track your ketones and to monitor your ketones and in this video I'm going to be taking you through a bit of a brief review of each one of these four different monitors and then also just comparing and kind of giving you a review of which one I found to be the best okay so maybe we'll start out with the most affordable and probably the most accessible for a lot of people and that is the keto well this one is called keto wise but the urin strips are basically what I'm talking about here and in this package you get this which when you open it up has these little strips that you pee on sounds a little bit unhygienic but it's not that bad you can generally do it without getting pee on yourself and that's good but basically this little pad will change to a color that corresponds to the colors on the side of the Box um which will tell you roughly how many ketones you're producing and if you're in ketosis or not now it's not exactly the most exact measurement because they're kind of big ranges from nothing to 0. 5 to 1. 5 to four and then a big jump up to 8 and 16 and that's a big jump for ketones I think the therapeutic range is generally in the 3 to 5 range um but DrPalmer has been on our Channel and said that he usually aims to get anywhere above 1.
5 for his patients to be in medical ketosis um so I guess if you're this color or above it's good so kind of more of the ready magenta um but again this wasn't really my favorite and I haven't used this very much because it is really inexact um and it's I don't know I don't really like peeing on a stick on a regular basis I guess quickly before we move on we should talk about the price of this one the reason why I said it was the cheapest and most affordable is this big box of strips was $10 which you get a lot of testing for that and it's more on the affordable side I think you can actually pick these up at mostes as well too they're just Ketone test strips for urine so the next one that I'll talk about is the biosense breathalizer so this is the breathalyzer type of monitor where you breathe into it and it gives you a measurement of how in ketosis you are this one actually gives you a measurement of your Aces so it's not actually how much ketones you're producing but it's what's called Aces which I believe is the acetone that's registered in your breath and so it gives a range from 0 to 40 um when you blow into it this one is $299 us on the biosense website and so it is a little bit pricier um but it is really kind of convenient it's really easy to just pick it up give a quick blow and kind of get an idea of what level of ketosis you're in now that said once I got to a certain point of getting into ketosis it was really after maybe the first week all I've blown since then is just High it doesn't even give me a number or anything because I think it's over 40 and 40 is the only thing it measures up to so it doesn't really let me know what level of ketosis I'm in how many ketones I'm making or anything more exact that I kind of need to know like that it just gives me this reading of high which is a little bit unhelpful and so I've kind of moved farther away from using this and more towards the other two and I'll get into why more when I talk about those so it takes a little bit while to prepare the device every time um okay so you press Start wait for it to get ready success analyzing I just drink ginger ale so sugar-free ginger ale and you're not supposed to drink oh well it's giving me the same reading anyway so it was fine but High which is all it ever gives me which is okay to know that I'm in ketosis but it's a little unhelpful also this vibrating it is kind of a handy tool to just have to get a quick view of if you're in ketosis or not um so yeah this is the biosense breathalizer it also I showed you guys in some Vlogs but it spends a lot of time like with this intense vibration um and it's in self-cleaning or whatever it's doing and so that's a little bit weird to deal with and you kind of have to just hold it while it's vibrating for long periods of time which makes it maybe a little bit less quick to use something else that was kind of nice about this one is that it does have an app that goes along with it so you can kind of track your various readings over time through the app and the app also connects with um like food tracking apps like chronometer which is what I use to track my macros and whatnot and so it's kind of nice that my biosense breathalyzer scores automatically get input into chronometer as well the next one I'm going to go over is the keto Mojo which is a blood glucose and Ketone monitor so basically it works by pricking your finger to get a blood sample and then touching the strip up to it and it gives you a reading of the level of ketones that you're producing it's a range from0 to I don't know how high it goes up to but it's usually you're aiming for again that 3 to 5 m Mo um region this one is fairly affordable compared to the $2. 99 price tag on this one I think it's $45 for the kit um and then an additional about $1 per test strip which can add up CU you probably do need a lot of test strips to be testing regularly especially when you're starting out but they do have a kind of starter kit that comes with the lancets the fingerpicking thing the keto Mojo I'll open it up this is basically what all it comes with everything in here um everything you need basically plus 60 uh ketone strips and 60 glucose testing strips so that's kind of a nice way to get yourself started we got that as well as a bunch more strips part of that is because they don't currently ship to Canada and so we had to ship it to some in the states who then shipped it to us thank you very much for that um but that's why we kind of loaded up on them so it was a bit more expensive but the kit that comes with 60 test chips of both I think is about 95 USD so not bad and you know it's probably a good intermediary between a more expensive one like this or like this which I will get into as well now that said about shipping to Canada they did share with us that they are planning to start shipping to Canada within the next 60 days or in about 60 days or so so if you in Canada and wanting to get your hands on a keto Mojo stay tuned for that that is in the development so this is a pretty affordable option it has an entry-level option again the $45 kit which really comes with everything you need and 10 I think test strips which probably won't be enough so you will need to get more test stps but again they have the $95 pack which comes with an additional 60 of both the ketones and the glucose testing strips so we found this one to be really really accurate and a really good test and part part of why we knew that it was more accurate is because it comes with these test Solutions um or control Solutions which you can test for a certain range of ketones that is known to be in it to make sure that it's functioning properly and the test trips are accurate so there's a degree of confidence involved when you are able to test it like that it's fairly easy to use it is maybe a little bit painful you guys gave me some tips about where exactly in the finger to prick it and I guess it's more helpful to prick it more to the side less nerve endings or whatnot so once you get used to stuff like that it's really not too bad and it is pretty easy to do three times a day when you're starting out to get a reading of where you're at at different points in the day and around meals and whatnot what's nice about this one too is that it also has an app where you can connect your keto Mojo and upload all of your testing and whatnot and through the app it also gives you an additional reading that is kind of a measurement of how in ketosis you are and that's called your gki reading success so my gki right now is 1. 2 and that's with a 4.
0 Ketone level and an 87 glucose so 1. 2 is under two so that's good in terms of therapeutic levels of gki ketosis so I talked about this and I provided what Nicole had to say about that in our last Vlog but basically it's another reading that can measure how in ketosis you are as it pertains to kind of medical treatment ketosis and you're kind of aiming to be under 2. 0 and so it gives you that reading as well which is kind of Handy and it also connects with chronometer as well so you can put your readings your blood glucose and your keyturn readings into chronometer and then you just have to make a note in chronometer about what your gki score was but it's really really handy and nice that it connects with other apps like that as well and the fourth one that we tested out was one that I was probably the most excited about it's called the sbio Ketone sensor and what it is is basically this little patch I still have it on here that connects to the back of your arm which provides a continuous monitor of your Ketone levels now I don't think that this one is even available yet in the US I don't think it ships to the US I don't think it's been approved there yet or whatnot I thought it came from a UK or european website but it shipped from China so not sure but it also says on the box not for medical use which is probably of note but it was kind of a nice way to just get an idea of where my ketones were at any given time it has an app app that it connects to through Bluetooth and you can monitor anytime you want what your Ketone levels are now that said it was a little bit more on the pricey side so one of these is about $100 and one only lasts 2 weeks I'm hairy this is awful okay oh oh that was inside me it's like a filament of some kind it's not really a needle but it's a little gnarly so that was I guess what was inside of me and tracking my ketones through this little device and then reporting back to my phone I'm a little nervous again ah like last time it was no big deal just do it what work last time this is fine this is fine you're fine you're fine okay I'm fine I can do this I can do this I can do this I can do this I can do okay yeah it's fine what we found was that it really only was accurate for maybe the first week and after that it definitely started to diverge from the readings that we were getting from like the keto Mojo and again we knew that the keto Mojo was more accurate because of the test solution that we were able to test it against so it was kind of interesting that this was handy to begin with and was pretty consistent with the keto Mojo to begin with the first maybe week but after that it really started to lose accuracy and at one point I think I tested on the keto Mojo and looked at the reading on this and it was like 4.
