There are many methods to trace your well being, however lately most contain sporting a tool. Kohler has a brand new strategy: an app-connected digital camera on your bathroom that analyzes your poop and urine.
The Dekoda scanner attaches to your bathroom bowl and scans the contents to disclose insights about intestine well being and hydration, funneling all the info into an app so you possibly can observe adjustments over time.
The machine is admittedly uncommon, however gastroenterologists say there’s worth in monitoring your bowel habits over time. Whether or not you want a tool that can assist you do it, although, is debatable. Listed below are the small print in regards to the Dekoda scanner, plus what docs give it some thought.
How the Dekoda Scanner Works
The machine particularly makes use of spectroscopy to see how gentle interacts along with your poop, whereas retaining observe of issues like how typically you go, the consistency of your waste, and its form. Dekoda can even analyze your urine to see how hydrated you’re.
Not everybody who sits on the bathroom can have their output analyzed, although. To make use of the scanner, you’ll want to carry your cellphone subsequent to a sensor on the surface of the bowl or use a fingerprint analyzer to get issues began. Then, Dekoda will do a steady scan from the begin to end of your “session.”
Quickly after your toilet journey, you’ll get insights delivered to a companion app in your cellphone. The app tracks your bathroom knowledge over time to create a profile of your well being and progress.
Kohler stresses on its web site that Dekoda has “discreet optics” that analyze the contents of your bathroom bowl and nothing else.
The Dekoda is powered by a chargeable battery. When energy is operating low, customers can take away the battery from the sensor and plug it right into a USB cable.
A consultant from Kohler Well being didn’t reply to On a regular basis Well being’s request for remark.
How A lot Does the Dekoda Scanner Value?
There are just a few charges related to the Dekoda scanner. The {hardware} (the digital camera and its housing) prices $599. To make use of the scanner, you additionally want to enroll in a Kohler Well being app membership.
The price of the app membership varies. Single customers will pay $6.99 a month or $70 a 12 months, whereas these with a household membership (which might analyze as much as 5 individuals) will pay $12.99 a month or $130 a 12 months.
Kohler Well being App Provides You Well being Insights
Like many health and well being trackers, knowledge from the scanner goes right into a corresponding app.
The app analyzes a variety of issues, together with your bowel motion consistency and frequency, how hydrated you seem like, and whether or not there’s blood in your stool. All these metrics are sorted into charts that element this info and the way it adjustments over time. The app additionally crunches knowledge to ship insights, like what number of classes you had in a day and a breakdown of the sorts of stool you handed.
The Dekoda will even offer you a intestine well being rating you possibly can monitor over time.
What the Contents of Your Bathroom Bowl Can Inform You About Your Well being
Whereas it’s a bit unconventional, gastroenterologists say there’s worth in trying in the bathroom bowl.
“The thought of offering individuals extra direct entry to private well being knowledge is a wonderful one,” says Aditya Sreenivasan, MD, a gastroenterologist at Northwell Lenox Hill Hospital in New York Metropolis. “It has gained a ton of momentum in our tradition, from companies like 23andMe offering genetic knowledge, corporations providing microbiome testing, and legal guidelines that mandate that sufferers have entry to their very own medical data.”
However Dr. Sreenivasan says that deciphering knowledge from the bathroom bowl is “extraordinarily difficult” for a tool, particularly in the case of areas of drugs that aren’t fully understood, just like the intestine microbiome.
You’ll be able to gather plenty of the info that the Dekoda gives just by trying in your bathroom bowl, says Rishi Naik, MD, an assistant professor of drugs within the division of gastroenterology, hepatology, and diet at Vanderbilt College Medical Middle in Nashville, Tennessee. “I might see potential makes use of for these with visible impairment or when doing colonoscopy preparation, to visually be capable of see in case your colonoscopy preparation has labored,” he says.
A Good Poop Scanner Is No Substitute for Colon Most cancers Screening
Dr. Naik worries that individuals could confuse the info supplied by this machine with most cancers screening, and keep away from future exams because of this. “It shouldn’t be confused with stool-based exams for colon most cancers, that are detecting stool DNA, or fecal immunochemical exams, which detect hidden blood within the stool that this machine has not been proven to choose up,” he says.
Total, docs suggest simply trying out the contents of your bathroom bowl. However whether or not you want a tool to assist with that is questionable. “Your bowel actions might be helpful to guage for significant adjustments of your intestine well being,” Naik says. “Modifications in stool caliber, mucus, and blood may give clues in your digestion, absorption, and total intestine well being and your diet.”
He factors out that you should use on-line diagrams just like the Bristol Stool Chart to search for adjustments in your personal bowel actions by your poop and evaluating it with the chart.
Probably the most useful knowledge from a scanner like that is the power to sense blood within the stool, Sreenivasan says. “This could set off consideration for a colonoscopy in the fitting setting,” he says. “Different insights into intestine well being are possible tougher to interpret. The small print matter right here tremendously.”
In the event you occur to identify blood in your stool, whether or not by way of a tool or the bare eye, Sreenivasan says it’s necessary to contact a healthcare skilled for an analysis.
Naik says it’s additionally essential to see a healthcare skilled when you’ve got persistent adjustments in bowel habits, like:
“These should not regular and ought to be evaluated,” Naik says.
